danielforshort

[danielforshort]

Sometimes when I realize how much I must learn, how much knowledge there is for me to sink my teeth into I get really overwhelmed and want to break down crying bc on the one hand I'm so excited about all this new stuff and I'm so excited that I have the ability to comprehend what is set before me and on the other hand there's a giant mountain of knowledge I have to get into now

Made the truly bold choice of starting my Sunday work day, in which I planned on working on my grant proposal and work tasks from 10am to 6pm, with a Cafe Saigon and a buttery pastry. Let's hope my stomach doesn't throw a fit.

[danielforshort]

Moved locations for a brain reset!! Use your local library! Just hang out there!!

Made the truly bold choice of starting my Sunday work day, in which I planned on working on my grant proposal and work tasks from 10am to 6pm, with a Cafe Saigon and a buttery pastry. Let's hope my stomach doesn't throw a fit.

[danielforshort]

Spring has begun; life is rekindled...

Itty Bitty Spring Dragon stickers ♡

[danielforshort]

art theft isnt what it used to be. now you can just right click save. you used to have to break into a museum. there were lasers and stuff. you don't even have to have a grappling hook anymore.

[danielforshort]

Made the truly bold choice of starting my Sunday work day, in which I planned on working on my grant proposal and work tasks from 10am to 6pm, with a Cafe Saigon and a buttery pastry. Let's hope my stomach doesn't throw a fit.

[danielforshort]

I’m obsessed with the bit in the Hobbit films where Thranduil tells Legolas to go find Aragorn— because if you care enough to dive through the layers of obscure knowledge it takes to understand the timeline, then you’re also the exact kind of LOTR Film Nerd who knows why the moment actually doesn’t make sense.

Tiny brain: “oh cool Legolas will find Aragorn”

Small brain: “ummm actually in the first Hobbit film it says that The Hobbit take place 60 years before Bilbo’s 111th birthday in lord of the rings? So wouldn’t Aragorn be a baby?”

Medium brain: “ummm actually if you watched the extended cut of The Two Towers, it’s made clear that Aragorn is a descendant of Numenor who has an abnormally long lifespan. He is 87 at the time of Lord of the Rings; 60 years earlier, he was 27, a very reasonable age for him to have made a name for himself as a ranger.”

Large Brain: “Ummmm actually in the book it’s confirmed that there’s a twenty-year gap between Bilbo’s 111th birthday party disappearance to Frodo leaving the Shire with the Ring. The Hobbit quest happened 60 years before Bilbo’s famous birthday party. 87-60-20=7 years old. Aragorn would be a lil guy. He would not yet be Strider, the timeline makes no sense.”

Giant brain: “ummm actually the screenwriters have confirmed that the 20 year gap is not canon in the film’s universe. First, it’s really not portrayed as a 20-year-gap in the films— it’s written and shot as if it were a couple months. The screenwriters were also aware of the implications of removing it. For example, in a behind the scenes commentary they discussed how their portrayal of Frodo is much younger than the version in the book —because they removed the 20-year gap. Film!Frodo is an innocent youth going out on his own for the first time, in contrast to the book’s more mature adult— and that deeply affects his characterization throughout the trilogy.

We can consider Legolas’s journey to meet Strider an official canon confirmation that the 20-year gap did not happen in the film’s universe. So the timeline makes sense!”

Galaxy brain: “okay, but even if the timeline works with the LOTR films, this new backstory doesn’t work with the LOTR films’ portrayal of Legolas’s character.

In the Hobbit films, it’s retconned that Legolas went to find Aragorn because he was so overwhelmed by all the death he witnessed in the Battle of the Five Armies. It’s retconned that he has a mother who died when he was young, and a grief-stricken father, and that he’s constantly Angsting over both. it’s also retconned that Legolas was in unrequited love with a grieving woman who loved a dwarf tragically killed in battle. Legolas feels he can no longer stay in the Woodland Realm because of all this loss, which is why he decides to find a new purpose with Aragorn.

But in the Lord of the Rings films, part of Legolas’s character arc is that he’s witnessing death and mortality up close *for the first time in his immortal life.* He’s a fae magical immortal who’s not used to death affecting him personally. This character arc is unique to the films. (it is not reallllllly in the books, and doesn’t jive with the way Tolkien writes elves in general— but it is the way the films chose to rewrite Legolas’s storyline. )

film!Legolas reacts to Gandalf’s death with bewilderment, acting lost, as if he’s experiencing emotions that are entirely new to him. This acting decision is discussed explicitly in behind the scenes materials. Legolas has rarely encountered this kind of death, not in a way so close to him personally, so it’s hard for him to even comprehend. Legolas’s unfamiliarity with mortal death continues through Boromir’s death and into the Two Towers, where he gradually grows more worried over the lives of Aragorn/ the people of Rohan. He reacts with bewildered anger when told to leave Aragorn for dead, and then lashes out at Aragorn when he thinks that everyone at Helm’s deep will die (only to receive the response: “then I shall die as one of them.”)

This character arc ends in Return of the King, with a famous bit of dialogue that does not appear in the books. Gimli says he “never thought he’d die side by side with an elf,” and Legolas cheerfully responds “what about side by side with a friend?” Mortal death goes from something Legolas finds distant/unfamiliar, to something he accepts as a natural part of living among mortals.

This is similar to the changes the films make to Arwen’s character, vs the original book. In the films, both of the “young” elves have arcs about encountering death up close, and yet continuing to love the mortal world. The films contrast them with the “older” wearier elves like Elrond and Galadriel. Obviously this theme is more of a focal point in Arwen’s plotline, but it’s also relevant to Legolas. (And! In early drafts of the Two Towers, Arwen joined Aragorn at Helm’s Deep— I have a theory that the scenes where Legolas worries over Aragorn’s death were originally written for Arwen.)

So!

if you care enough about the Lord of the Rings films to understand that “there is no twenty year gap,” that Frodo is a young ingenue instead of middle-aged adult, that the films have their own storyline/characters/timeline separate from the books, and that therefore the timeline of Legolas meeting Strider can make sense …

….then you also probably care that Legolas had a specific character in the LoTR films, and this new backstory contradicts it.

Giving Legolas a new core motivation where “he’s overwhelmed by angst/grief from encountering too much death” undercuts his entire characterization in LOTR, which was meant to be about encountering mortal death up close for the first time. It also cheapens really impactful moments from LOTR— like Orlando Bloom’s performance after the death of Gandalf, where he really captures the idea that this fae immortal is struggling to comprehend the ordinary human emotion of grief.

And that’s why so many critics get that moment in The Hobbit wrong XD. People always try to critique it from a timeline/continuity perspective, when in reality, the timeline continuity makes perfect sense!!! The actual problem is the way it poorly attempts to retcon Legolas’s entire characterization. And IMHO that’s a much more serious flaw than a continuity error. It’s not “making a math mistake,” it’s undercutting the meaning of Legolas’s story in LOTR.

Super Mega Galaxy Brain: “nothing in the hobbit films is canon except the pieces I like”

[danielforshort]

Spending solstice reading in the sun

[danielforshort]

[danielforshort]

THE ENTIRE WEST IS BEING PUT UP FOR SALE AND I AM BEGGING YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS

Trump’s budget bill has many, many things in it, but buried amongst it is the MILLIONS OF ACRES OF PUBLIC LAND FOR SALE.

This is the entirety of the Arizona state forests, the entire Cascades mountain range. Swathes of pristine desert around the national parks in Utah. On the doorstep of Jackson Hole.

THIS BILL IS BIG, BUT IT CAN BE AMENDED AND ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT PASS AS IS please.

If you have ever enjoyed the wilderness, we stand to lose it all forever.

CALLING your senators - NOT JUST IN THE WEST. ALL SENATORS, is CRUCIAL.

Outdoor alliance has a great resource for reaching out.

I don’t have a huge following but please, everywhere I have ever loved, the forests I grew up playing in, the land I got married on, is all at risk and I am begging.

[danielforshort]

someone convince me that downloading PDFs is not actually the same thing as working on my dissertation

[danielforshort]

Considering printing and putting these up in my office at the lab

werewolves against fascism

free or pwyw download of hi-res, printable versions available here: https://ko-fi.com/s/a2e5b9f250

feel free to use/repost/reprint however much you want. if you leave a tip, a portion (70%) will go to various immigrant rights nonprofits around the country.

[danielforshort]

On Grief and Death and Quietness

At 12:54 EST my uncle texted me to let me know my grandmother had died. I thanked him for letting me know and made it clear i would be certain to be there for her memorial at the family home in Maine. I was at work and took only 60 seconds to step away to text him back, and then returned to my little room of rowdy children eager to play today.

What gnawed at me for the rest of the afternoon was not grief or anger or despair at her death, but the unsettling knowledge that people can and do die every day, and their deaths are left unheralded. Their lives end and they slip away and then a stranger picks up a phone and calls their next of kin. How many people die alone in hospice I wonder? How quickly will we let her absence fade into our background? How many people will even feel her absence?

She has five living sons, the majority of whom live within a 5 hour drive of her. Yet she died alone.

My own father had no designs of his own to see his mother one last time when we were told her health had taken a major turn for the worse. After a short phone call between us he agreed that it would be right for him to try and make the trip to see her. that he ought to be with her one last time before she was gone.

What haunts me now is not her death but this Western culture where your own parents' death can happen with a whimper not a bang and you move on from it with nonchalance. And I don't mean abusive horrendous parents who don't deserve grief and love, I mean complicated parents who did do their best and made many of their own mistakes, but in earnest, wanted to love their children.

I pray that I will never die in this way. Unloved by those I call family. Alone. Forgotten. With a whimper not a bang. With a phone call made by a stranger.

[danielforshort]

Morning routine has been to turn on a video essay and work on this tote bag cover! I'm repurposing a bunch of granny squares I made for my younger sister's requested blanket which she doesn't want anymore (understandable, I started on that sweater 3 years ago)

[danielforshort]

very funny to me when people act like animal farm and 1984 are revolutionary anti government texts that the Powers That Be dont want you to read when they have literally been a part of every standard middle/highschool english lit cirriculum in the usa and beyond for decades. precisely because theyre such convenient primers to propagandize that Commies = Bad. the government is quite literally making kids read them

[danielforshort]

Keep an eye on the grants the fascist state have cut. Understand what knowledge and research is being blocked.

[danielforshort]

They're very separate issues!!

[danielforshort]

I've totally nixed this outfit design and decided to go for something that's more true to her Junior Year teacher fit. I already have a pair of green business casual pants so now I'm just on the hunt for a short sleeved button up top and a cropped business casual blazer.

Aelwyn casual outfit in the works for the seattle liveshow! Going to change up my hairstyle and print a t shirt. Any other suggestions?