Month: August 2017

faun-songs:

cesiasaurus:

when-it-rains-it-snows:

esendoran:

inquisitorhierarch:

betterbemeta:

volfish:

evnw:

railroadsoftware:

handsomejackass:

horse people are weird

what does this mean

horses can see demons

@betterbemeta are you able to translate this? Is it true horses can see netherbeings?? Will we ever know the extent of their powers???

I think I have reblogged this before but I’ll answer it again bc its a fascinating answer I feel and i was more funny than informational last time.

The truth is that horses see what they think are nether beings, I guess. They have a perfect storm of sensory perception that, useful for prey beings, marks false positives on mortal danger all the time. Which is advantageous to a flight-based prey species: running from danger when you’re super fast is much ‘cheaper’ than fighting, so you waste almost nothing from running from a threat that’s not there. Versus, you blow everything if you don’t see a threat that is there.

Horses also have their eyes positioned on the sides of their heads, which gives them an incredible range of peripheral vision almost around their entire body with only a few blind spots you can sneak up on them in. But this comes at the cost of binocular vision; they can only judge distance for things straight ahead of them. Super useful for preventing predators sneaking up from the sides or behind, but useless for recognizing familiar shapes with the precision we can.

Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety its going to get attacked at any second, that can see almost everything, but mostly only out of the corner of its eye. It has a few blind spots and anything that suddenly appears out of them is terrifying to it. Combine that with that it actually has far superior low-light vision than us, and that its ears can swivel in any directions like radar dishes, and you’ve basically given a nervous wreck a highly accurate but imprecise danger-dar.

To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.

This means that you could approach it in a flapping poncho and if it can’t recognize your shape as human, they mistake you for SATAN… or you could pass this one broken down tractor you’ve passed 100 times on a trail ride, but today is the day it will ATTACK… or your horse could feel a horsefly bite from its blind spot and MAMA, I’VE BEEN HIT!!!… or you could both approach a fallen log in the woods but in the low light your horse is going to see the tree rings as THE EYE OF MORDOR.

However, they actually have kind of a cool compensation for this– they are social animals, and instinctively look towards leadership. In the wild or out at pasture, this is their most willful, pushy, decisive leader horse who decides where to go and where it’s safe. But humans often take this role both as riders and on the ground. They are always watching and feeling for human reactions to things. This is why moving in a calm, decisive way and always giving clear commands is key to working with this kind of animal. Confusing commands, screaming, panic, visible distress, and chaos will signal to a horse that you, brave leader are freaked out… so it should freak out too!

On one hand, you’ll get horses that will decide that they are the leader and you are not, so getting them to listen to you can be tough– requiring patience and skill more than force. On the other hand, a good enough rider and a well-trained horse (or a horse with specialized training) can venture into dangerous situations, loud and scary environments, etc. calmly and confidently.

The joke in OP though is that many horses that are bred to be very fast, like thoroughbreds, are also bred and encouraged to be high-energy and highstrung. Making them more anxious and prone to seeing those ‘demons.’ All horses in a sense are going to be your anxious friend, but racehorses and polo ponies and other sport horses can sometimes be your anxious friend that thinks they live in Silent Hill.

Reblogging some horse knowledge for certain people who write fantasy books but know nothing about horses *cough cough*

reblogging for the line “Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety”.

Also: horses have very limited depth perception. You know that thing where you out your finger on the bridge of your nose and it disappears because it’s behind your field of vision? Now imagine your nose is as long as a horse’s. The blind spot in front of a horse’s nose is huge, four to six feet or so. When a horse jumps, it can’t see the fence, it has to be trained / remember to look for it and remember where it is and how high. They cannot tell if that is a spot of oil or a black hole in the road. It’s probably a black hole. Better avoid it.

Horses can’t see your hand, they smell the treat (and use very sensitive skin/whiskers to feel.) Some horses are garbage at doing this gently, just absolutely awful, but remember – they can’t see what they’re doing.

Horses also have partial color vision – they see horse relevant colors. Blue, yellow and therefore green. No red derived colors. If you want to see an anxious couch have a bad trip, ride it in an arena with alternating sections of purple and yellow seating. Grey grey YELLOW YELLOW HOLY SHIIIIIIIT. Every single horse would walk past the purple seats and go OH MY FUCK at the yellow ones. This is why the bright red (grey) bucket isn’t a problem, but oH my FfffffffffSHIttTTTT do they notice a stray yellow plastic grocery bag.

Last statement here is, instinct tells a horse that anything clinging to your back is going to eat you. That we spend so much effort convincing them otherwise is amazing and in general a testament to the human race’s commitment to Bad Ideas.

Thank u horse science side of tumblr

If you want to see an anxious couch have a bad trip is by far my most fav sentence

Source: handsomejackass

sercauthrienismywife:

‘The Men of Gondor are valiant, and they will never submit; but they may be beaten down. Valour needs first strength, and then a weapon. Let the Ring be your weapon, if it has such power as you say. Take it and go forth to victory!’

Rana Daggubati as Boromir of Gondor

Source: lesbiansforboromir

atariince:

I can’t help imagining little Curvo sneaking into his parent’s chambers to stare at the jewels and to try on some of Fëanor’s clothes and then he would look at himself in the mirror and pretend to be his dad because he just want to be like him and he would not understand why he couldn’t. 

He’s just a fanboy who wants to cosplay.

And years later, his brothers would remind him of it and Curvo would just pretend it never happened, but Celebrimbor would hear all of it and he’d be like “Aaaaaaw” and he would feel better because he’d realise that he and his dad are not so different.

archaicwonder:

Viking Gold Mounted Crystal Pendant, 9th-11th Century AD

A pendant comprising a piriform natural crystal pebble bead in a sheet gold sheath with punched pellets to the borders, ring-and-dot motifs, punched triangles with a pellet to each angle; wire loop to the underside, wire coil to the top and loop, twisted wire suspension hoop with coiled ends. 56mm (2 ¼")

Source: timelineauctions.com

AU where Finwë doesn’t remarry and Míriel comes back to life and then when Morgoth steals the Silmarils he kills BOTH of them

thelioninmybed:

Again and again in Tolkien’s writings, most directly in the quote below, Miriel’s refusal of life is seen as ‘the first presage of the Shadow that was to fall on Valinor.’

[i]n the Elvish legends there is record of a strange case of an Elf (Míriel mother of Fëanor) that tried to die, which had disastrous results, leading to the ‘Fall’ of the High-elves. 

I think that’s pretty gross to blame Miriel when everyone made dumbshit choices but whatever. 

A Feanor without the defining trauma of being the only motherless child in Valinor, not to mention having no siblings to to rail against, probably grows up to be much more secure and much less….Feanor. I doubt he’s ever going to like the Valar and their rule but without the perception that they’re responsible for his mother’s absence and encouraging his half brother’s usurpation, there’s probably less resentment there initially and he may be more willing to listen to reason and not run off to war half cocked. With unquestioned authority as high king, none of the falling into squabbling factions that had preceded this in canon, and his established like +50 to diplomacy, he’d have the entirety of the Noldor willing to wage his war. I’d like to think this more stable Feanor manages a less acrimonious parting from Valinor – he’s not terrified of Fingolfin’s usurpation or rushing in hopes of keeping his people in thrall, and so they take the time to negotiate with the Teleri and/or build their own ships, and may even take the time to get the Valar onside and start the War of Wrath five centuries early. Let’s hope he does because even unDoomed, he and his sons can’t beat Morgoth. Beren and Luthien could still have their adventures, in a fashion, but it’s going to be wacky without Finrod (or even Tol Sirion) and there’s no Fingolfin and thus no Turgon, Idril or Earendil to fly to the rescue. 

Comedy option: in canon, Finwe’s death almost killed Feanor. If both his parents die at once, he ups and dies with them, leaving everyone to fumble around in the dark with their thumbs up their asses until the Valar invent the sun. 

No Silmarils, no Doom, we die like Sindar

cycas:

writer-robin:

Christopher Tolkien explains why his father, JRR Tolkien, wrote down “The Hobbit” in the first place, when it was originally intended to be an oral bedtime story for his children.

(found in the forward to The Hobbit Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1987)

‘Damn the boy’

Hurray for Christopher Tolkien, forcing consistency on his father’s work since 1929. 

Source: torchlake
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