#now and for always

[nowandforalways]

Happy Spotify Wrapped, everyone. Pleased to announce that I have broken my previous record by just...a stupid amount of listens

Like I'm still trying to figure out how this happened logistically

[lordoftheringsmusical]

Today (4 November 2024), the cast and crew of The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale visited the Hobbiton film set featured in Peter Jackson's LotR and Hobbit trilogies ✨️

shared by Michael McBride and Alina Jenine Taber via Instagram stories on 4 November 2024

Musical highlights below the cut!

Clips by Lauren Zakrin (1), Michael McBride (4-5) and Suzanne Hannau (6) shared via Instagram stories on 4 November 2024; posted by Jeff Parker (2-3).

[wolfsbane-and-nettles]

I am so unbelievably happy to say I was able to see the Lord of the Rings musical in Chicago today. It was spectacular. I saw it in 2008, and took my best friend, the Sam to my Frodo, to see it, and we dressed up for the day and everything. We’re taking the train back home now and I am so happy I was able to go there and back again.

[mischieffoal]

Attention Samfro enjoyers, here is your Now and for Always transcription, ready to go. I'm happy to share the musescore file if you'd like to transpose/add instruments/etc., just shoot me a message :)

Based on the official YouTube video from the Watermill Theatre 2023 production of Lord of the Rings a Musical Tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suL8eUXyMx0

And a great recording from @faceofclown (thank you so much for sharing it!!)

And thank you to @nowandforalways for peer-review and ghosts of committees past in the CTS discord for pesky chord identification

[girlgeekjf-blog]

The Lord of the Rings: Now and For Always

So, I fell in love with this song, and the rest of the soundtrack for this musical, years ago. My sister discovered this video of an upcoming revival. I am DEVASTATED I can't see it in person, but so grateful for this video. I could watch it every night before bed. The cast is PERFECT.

[emeraldskulblaka]

I love that "Now and For Always" from the LotR Musical rips your heart out in every single one of its iterations.

"Now and For Always", the one and only - Sam and Frodo reminiscing about the Shire, Sam falling asleep halfway through, and Frodo curling up next to him.

"Gollum/Sméagol" - the once-hobbit, destroyed and tortured by the Ring's power, fighting a hopeless battle against himself while Sam and Frodo sleep.

"Now and For Always (Reprise)" - in Toronto, Sam walking onwards into Mordor alone and grieving for Frodo / in London previews, Sam weeping over Frodo's seemingly dead body while Rosie sings.

The unnamed reprise at Sam and Rosie's wedding - their happiness, the "biggest and best" party, and Frodo still feeling the power of the Ring, the remnants of the Morgul blade wound, unable to enjoy the peaceful Shire.

[makalauriels]

On the Instagram page for the LOTR musical at Watermill Theatre they had a video for a song and I heard "Harfoots plant" in, like, one line and got hit by the feelings. Yes, yes those are my buddies! I know them, I love them! The Harfoots get to a place where they can plant things! No longer wanderers! Also I will kill for Sam's guitar strap. The floral embroidery on that is so beautiful.

[myfairkatiecat]

Hi, Katie!!! Jasmine and/or papyrus for the Ask Game, if you want! I hope you're doing well :D

Hello Sophie! Yes, I’m doing great and I hope you are as well!

Jasmine- do you have a movie or book you loved but will never watch/read again?

Yes, actually: Prince of Egypt. Once upon a time Katie had these two younger foster sisters who Katie showed the movie too. It was great and they wanted to watch it again, and as someone who LOVES that movie, I was like, sure! But it escalated. And suddenly they were watching it every single day. And when their mother finally won the court case and they went back to their house, their mother contacted us to tell us that even though she isn’t religious she had to buy the movie just to make her kids happy!! So as you can imagine, even though I LOVE the movie, I will NEVER watch it again 😂😂😂

papyrus- if you put your ‘on repeat’ playlist on shuffle, what’s the first song that comes up? what do you like about it / associate it with?

So I just now put it on shuffle and the first song that came on was Now and for Always from the LOTR musical. I’m not surprised given how many times I replayed it over and over again soaking in the lyrics. I know that you and I are mutuals through TMBS but I’ve also always loved tolkein, and recently that particular interest snuck back up on me and said BOOM time to pay attention to me again! There’s something about the way it starts out as Sam trying to remind them of home, then becomes Sam hyping up Frodo about how amazing he is on his quest and how they’ll tell the story one day when it’s all over, and then Sam falls asleep and Frodo sings this amazing verse about how much he appreciate’s Sam’s loyalty? It’s the most beautiful thing ever, and it’s all sung in folk music style to a simple melody. So powerful and amazing and I’ve played it so much lately that I’m not surprised it was the first thing to come up!

This was fun! Thanks for the ask :)

[rafeandonlyrafe]

well 🧍‍♀️ as a reminder this blog is NOT a safe space for trump supporters but it IS a safe place for women, queers, trans ppl, people of color, undocumented people, and any marginalized group.

[rovermcfly]

I think a lot of people are forgetting that on tumblr fandom used to be practiced very differently. now everyone fucks off to their discords or tumblr groups to discuss everything with a select few, making tags be nearly only used for posting some finished fanworks or not at all

a decade ago people didn't have tumblr groups. people didn't even have dms. if you wanted to talk to anyone about anything you had to make a post, or send an ask (which more often than not would get published and thereby become a post in the end too)

so next time you think "I have a fandom thought but I have to find a small group of hyperspecifically like-minded people to share it with in private" remember all the freaks you could be missing out on meeting by keeping the tags dead. use tags, make friends. fuck discord.

[darcyolsson]

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you gave/received more than 999 boops, the counter would switch to showing a three-letter word (see this post for specifics). this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

[lordoftheringsmusical]

"Now and For Always" (The Lord of the Rings) - Michael Kurowski & Spencer Davis Milford

featuring the actor-musicians from the 2024 Chicago Shakes production!

[turtlesplaypianos]

You know the feeling when a piece of music is speaking to your soul. It's like your innermost being has found a home inside the notes. And now you want to live there always

[mischieffoal]

A fan animatic/recording/extra verses of Now and for Always, based on the Watermill 2023 production of Lord of the Rings: a Musical Tale :)

I imagine our four main hobbits finding a quiet spot on the Field of Cormallen, away from all the celebrating, and having a little campfire as they think about the journey home, and singing a song to each other.

Happy Tolkien's birthday, @reallyhardy !!!

I hope you like it, I showed it to my mum and she said "and are you planning to marry this person?" but this is just what happens when you give me three months to do a thing in. I spend all of those months doing it. And having an excellent fabulous time doing so.

I was already planning on doing something like this eventually, and then you said that you loved the "besties forever" vibes of our four hobbits, the "siblingy" vibe of Merry and Pippin, and Samfrosie (good), and I though that this song could be exactly that. Well. I thought I'd just write some new verses. Then I thought I could record it. Then I thought I could write some harmonies. Then...

P.S. Let me know when you're planning to post the last chapter of Summer's Last Party and I can record Pippin's new verses if you want to add them into the fic ;)

[goodsniff]

CREATING BLUEY - Tales from the Art Director

Chapter 4 - It's (gotta be) Done! Beyond Bluey

The final chapter. Beyond Bluey and the power of Animation

FREE on Substack

Thankyou all so much for following along. The outpouring of support and care for the artists behind the art has been really heartening throughout this whole process. Not to be cringe but I honestly think this medium captures the human spirit better than any other form of expression, so I know whatever the future brings for us we’ll be able to weather it for that reason alone. 🕊️

[val-of-the-north]

His greed sickens me.