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rosario dawson in alexander idk it’s a project

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The only information we have on Elven childhood and maturation comes from Laws and Customs of the Eldar (Histories of Middle-earth Volume X).

For at the end of the third year mortal children began to outstrip the Elves, hastening on to a full stature while the Elves lingered in the first spring of childhood. Children of Men might reach their full height while Eldar of the same age were still in body like to mortals of no more than seven years. Not until the fiftieth year did the Eldar attain the stature and shape in which their lives would after- wards endure, and for some a hundred years would pass before they were full-grown.

In other words, Elves grow almost as quickly as Men until their third birthday and then slow dramatically. They look seven when Men are reaching adulthood. They come of age at fifty but often aren’t fully grown until 100 - so fifty might be the human equivalent of 17 or 18, when adolescents come of age in most societies, while 100 is the equivalent of 25, when the human brain actually finishes maturing. Then, of course, Elves cease to grow altogether. Now it’d be really useful to have a graph showing Elven ages versus the comparable human maturities, so ‘thirty-five-year-old Elf’ actually means something. And if we just connect the dots between our data points, we get a really ugly and uneven growth pattern. We want something that starts fast and then levels out, eventually becoming asymptotic (no matter how long they live, Elves will never reach the physical age of a human 30-year-old). 

The obvious solution is a logistic curve, usually used in population growth and resource saturation models. I had to modify it a little bit to manage the fact that Elves grow at the same rate as Men for the first three years of their lives (that’s the ugly little start to the curve there), but from three forward Tolkien’s statements on Elven aging can be perfectly modeling by a logistic function. I set the asymptote at 27: no matter how long an Elf lives, their body will never mature past the physical age of a human 27-year-old. At 18, 19, or 20 years old, an Elf will look 7. At fifty, they’ll be 18. At 100, 26. Just like Tolkien specified, sort of.

So now we can answer all the urgent questions of the legendarium. Maeglin was 12 when Eöl named him; how old is the human equivalent? About five and a half. In the Annals of Aman Fëanor is 16 when his father remarries: what is the equivalent? Six and three-quarters. 

In my timeline for the birth of the Finwean grandchildren, Maedhros is forty when Fingon is born: what does that translate to? 14 and a half. What age-equivalent are Galadriel’s big brothers when she’s born? Twenty-one, fifteen, and nine respectively. 

The second, zoomed-in graph doesn’t show the curve well but it makes it easy to find age-equivalents yourself.

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How to make templates! Some information on Tumblr photosets.

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The ladies of Disney.

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I am a confessor because I was born so. I did not seek power. I would have chosen otherwise, would have chosen to be like other people. But I must live with what I was given, and make the best of it. Despite what you may think of the Confessors, despite what most people think, we are here to serve the people, to serve the truth. I love all the people of the Midlands, and would give my life to protect them, to keep them free. That is all I wish to do. And yet I am alone.

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Transformation of dwarves

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Sam Winchester 

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today I saw a preteen girl pick up Mean Girls at Target and ask her friend what it was. She didn’t even know. She said it sounded dumb. The people are forgetting. The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.

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