I am not a science person, but my understanding is that sunsets are caused by Rayleigh scattering as light passes through a relatively larger amount of air molecules when it is low in the sky and the light travels perpendicular to the earth’s surface; the light then bounces off the clouds and reflects fancy colors into our eyes all pretty-like.
So, if you had your primary light source actually affixed to the surface of the earth, with light emanating radially from a central point (say, two massively radioactive glowing trees):
A) Would you see sunsets the farther away from the trees you got, with clear light and blue skies the closer you got? B) Would you see sunsets only at a certain elevation, and from a distance? C) Would there be insufficient air molecules to scatter the light? D) Would you have to be like, WAY far away to see sunsets? Like on another continent? (Assuming the earth isn’t curved.) E) I guess shadows would always point the same direction and it would vary depending on where you were relative to the trees? F) HOW DO YOU GET A LIGHT SOURCE BRIGHT ENOUGH TO ILLUMINATE A WHOLE LANDMASS WITHOUT BLINDING ANYONE THAT LOOKED AT IT? G) …Okay, would only Manwë and Varda ever get to see Sunsets from their stratospheric perch on Taniquietl? H) The trees would have to rotate somehow. I mean. They just would have to. Otherwise you’d have one always casting a shadow on a certain part of Aman. And everywhere else that had something blocking the path of the light, for that matter. Some bits of vegetation would get all the sunlight forever and then it’d be like WELCOME TO THE DEADZONE as soon as you hit tree shadow. I) Would the lighting situation improve if Varda put like a big ol’ mirror in the sky to reflect the light back down?
J) Should I give up trying to make actual giant glowing trees work as a viable world building element and stick to a magical/metaphysical/non-literal explanation? orz ;; trees tho
reblogging here because i’m extremely curious about the answer
Looking through my astro notes, I think the answers are (in order):
Yes, yes, no, yes, yes, you don’t, unknown, if you want even distribution of light they would have to move a lot, yes but that just makes the mirror basically the sun, and probably but who is going to stop you?
I hope this helps is some tiny way.
Oh man, I got THE COOLEST input on this question! 😀
(Also thank you to those of you chipping in from outside the fandom! If you’re confused about what’s going on, I’m basically wrestling with some of Tolkien’s more whimsical ideas and trying to ground them loosely in physics– which he’d absolutely hate me doing, btw.)
So far the ideas that I ended up liking the best were the ones that provided a concrete, unique imagery that I can work with for my art and writing. Theseposts and comments in particular were the ones that I think will influence my design the most, but I am SO THRILLED to see more people adding ideas! ❤
The solution I think works best for my purposes is that the trees disperse light not only from their leaves, but also as a kind of luminous pollen. If the trees themselves are not the primary source of light, but the waves of pollen they create, then that relieves some of the burden of them looking like massive radioactive lightbulbs, AND I think I can do away with having them rotate. (Mind you, slowly rotating tress might be cool… I just don’t know how to draw that effectively.)
The pollen drifts across the landmass and fades as the tree it came from goes dormant. The particles would probably be as light or lighter than air, and have unusual properties that allow them to change states like water. When they fall to earth, they are taken in with the groundwater and travel to the aquifers that are Varda’s Wells, which also collect the “dew” from the trees. The atmosphere of Aman would be heavy, luminous, misty, and prismatic, with enough fine particulates in the air and reflective clouds above that there would be plenty of light refraction going around creating pretty colors and effects.
The trees themselves will have fractal branches, and they are massive. I was having trouble picturing the scale of them in relation to Valinor, so I went ahead and squeezed out a model from angry polygons:
Here is Aman, with the two trees in the center. Kinda, sorta, ish.
I’ve put the Gardens of Lorien in between the trees becauseI thought that would be a suitable place for them, what with the mingling of the light etc etc. (I basically ignored Tolkien’s notes on where the various homes of the Valar are located and just plunked them wherever they looked natural).
Alqualondë is sticking off the end there on the peninsula. Up the road is Tirion, with Valmar next door. The hexagonal fortress thingy off to the left is Formenos.
The Woods of Oromë are on the far side (blocked by mountains in this screenshot) and would probably receive slightly less light, but there are possibly other light sources there, such as bioluminescent plants and lamps shiny Ainur prancing about. The large squarish thing is Aulë’s forge, which sticks right into the mountains. The spiral canyon is Mandos. The big phallic mountain sticking way above everything else is, of course, Taniquetil.
Here’s Tirion, and in the background, Valmar, at the foot of Taniquetil. (The weird floaty mickymouse things are clouds. THEY’RE CLOUDS TRUST ME)
The Wells of Varda are represented by the circles on the ground– they are fed by aquifers that collect the fallen tree-light particles and draw them back to the pools. …..Please forgive my pathetically sculpted mushroomoids, I did my best.
(For scale, here is our lord and savior, default-human Stan Lee, who oversees all my creations in Sketchup.)
Thank you, Stan Lee. A star shines on the hour of our meeting.
This continues to be one of my favorite pieces of meta on the blog. Y’all are a cool bunch of smart people, I hope you know that. ❤
Figure 1: A young scamp from Umbar, showing early signs of delinquency. Figure 2: The newly made pirate captain, setting his sights on fame and fortune. Figure 3: Having acquired fame, fortune, and unfortunately, a ring of power, the now-infamous Ji-Indur serves the Dark Lord in Mordor and is bent to His will. Figure 4: Post War of the Ring, our pirate enjoys his extended un-life in retirement, and says never mind to all that wraithrubbish.
(( you know I can’t resist the umlaut eyelashes! ))
This is dedicated to all the perpetually under-slept nurses I know.
____
The old icons had her raising a shield aloft over the wounded, but she hadn’t worn a shield in many ages. “That work I leave to my sisters;” she would say, a stream of smoke blown through a weary smile, “there is too much to be done here.” These days Estë wore gloves of dun leather and a tight fitted mantel that buttoned from under her chin and fell like a dawn-grey column to the floor. Her red hair she kept bound in a practical coif; her wings neatly folded and out of the way at her back (they were crimson, blue and gold.) Sometimes she smoked a long pipe. She had many mortal affectations— they helped her cope, she said.
“Why do they never think.” Estë’s hands flew over a soldier in the marshlands, as quick with thread as Vairë, her needle pulling together ruined flesh and bone. “Why are they so willing to spring forward and charge to a noble death when so many of them simply end up with me, needing their guts untangled and their ribs mended? I’m sorry—” She added quickly, “I need’t tell you, do I?”
Nienna shook her dark head. “Your lament is mine, sister. Please, continue. Give air to your grief.”
Estë snorted, blowing a white plume from her elegant nose. “Grief is a strong word for it. Frustration, more like. Frustration and anger and… and…” Her gloves raised in the air, helpless. “I just wish the living had more will to stay alive. And to stay whole. That’s all. There are too many bolts in the sky, too many swords, too much hunger, too much need, too many great causes that must be fought for until victory or Mandos comes…” Her fingers closed the eyes of a farmer in the hill country, unflinching at the barbed arrow through his temple.
“I could speak with it. It listens, sometimes, to me.” Nienna said.
“Thank you, sister. No.” Stitching in the taut skin of a Teler’s shoulder pulled tight, its thread cut deftly. Blood flowed along its natural tributaries again. Skin grew over hurts and buried them. “It is not Námo’s job to keep a body and its soul together."
"You work very hard, sister. Harder than any of us.” The sisters knit their hands together, pale and strong. “You and your spouse."
That made Estë laugh in fondness and set down her pipe next to a basket of apples , abandoned by a girl who was doubled over her troubled belly.
”My spouse is at play every moment of their work! Irmo lives and breathes dreams— they’re not exactly like Aulë at his forge… Still, if it weren’t for them I’d have run myself into the ground a year after the Firstborn opened their eyes. You know how I am— once I start, it just goes on and on, there’s no end! Always someone falling from a horse or eating poisonous berries or taking an axe to the knee…”
Nienna smiled too— a rare sight, and brief. “Irmo is lucky to have you. It is well they bring you comfort, and bliss. I confess…” the lady of sorrows turned her face away, “I never understood what brought you two together.”
"I do not understand how a dull little peahen attracts the peacock,” Estë clucked, “but their kind continues all the same. —Easy now. There you go.” A woman roared through clenched teeth as a stubborn child was brought, bloody and vigorous, into the world. “…Irmo and I share an understanding that can only be achieved in dreams. We both work at night; then during the day, we are free to—"
The healer yawned, flexing her colorful wings and stretching. “Oh… no. You see? I have a whole camp of scalded Firstborn to visit yet! Just one more and I’ll rest. Just one more—” Her delicate square jaw cracked in another yawn, more insistent than the first. “Oh alright, love! Fine, I’ll lie down! Just for a moment, do you hear? I’m very busy.”
Nienna watched as her sister lay down in a bed of folded reeds, and the whispering grey-green willows of Lorien shivered and sang in a canopy overhead.
A shimmer like oil on water followed her movements, dusting her with motes of glittering dust, soft as moth wings. Slim, bone-white fingers undid Estë’s coif as her head leaned into the comforting grass, hair like a river of copper spilling its banks.
"Lord Irmo.” Nienna nodded in greeting. The prismatic air shimmered in return. “Please. Give her the love, the rest, the cheer she deserves."
Irmo wrapped their ivory arms around their spouse and nodded, bright eyes gleaming with the lunatic mischief of birds.
”Sleep sound, dear sister.” She sighed and slipped away to her bleached cliffs to watch the earth that so needed mending.
– an old drabble about how Sleep is a nurse’s best friend.
Photos my father took in the Vienna Kaiserliche Schatzkammer at my behest (“Daaaad, I need it for art reference!”); obviously flash-photography wasn’t allowed in the museum, but they did let you take pictures– so my dad went and took these extra-long exposure shots, sometimes stabilizing the camera lens against the glass in order to get detail shots of this beautiful embroidery. He did this up until the curators politely told him to stop (the museum staff in Vienna must rack up so much good karma…).
Anyway; my dad is trooper and this embroidery is just beyond belief. In this particular case I have no regrets about having been an obnoxious tourist.
Because I have no self control, I’ve retouched this picture yet again, and in doing so, realized I never really uploaded the finished full sized version to tumblr!
Also, the super-duper high resolution version of this image is available on my Patreon! 🙂
I feel like as long as we’re celebrating Thû’s place on the bear–>wolf spectrum I should reblog this
“…And Huan released [Sauron]. And immediately he took the form of a vampire, great as a dark cloud across the moon, and he fled, dripping blood from his throat upon the trees, and came to Taur-nu-Fuin and dwelt there, filing it with horror.”
What David predicted once,
God accomplished it
Blessed is the Christian sword
truly precious, such a warrior;
confident in the image of The Cross
as their strongest shield,
with power of the holy wrath
will hunt you down, heathen tribes.
The emperor’s sword, at war,
and the pope’s sword, godly and full of
glory,
are getting down together
to the root of all evil,
the disdainful virus of falsity.
(Maya):
What has been written
will be fullfilled.
what has been spoken
will come to be.
Burn, burn, burn
on earth we shall burn
become cinders in
the blowing wind
drift over the land
over the mountains
out to sea..
So you may not comprehend it
So you may not understand it; he will come who knows
how the ages unfold
Weep, weep, weep
but know, know well:
Ash does not suffer,
Ash does not suffer.
“Where is your son, Faramir?”
“He lies within; burning, already burning. They have set a fire in his flesh. But soon all shall be burned. The West has failed. It shall all go up in a great fire, and all shall be ended. Ash! Ash and smoke blown away on the wind!”
Sauron’s Masks: Tol-in-Gaurhoth – War of the Last Alliance– RivkaZ 2017
“There now he brooded in the dark, until he had wrought for himself a new shape; and it was terrible, for his fair semblance had departed forever when he was cast into the abyss"
I wanted to showcase my idea for different battle masks worn by Sauron; one for striking fear in the elves of Sirion, and one to disguise his misshapen visage after the Akallabeth. I thought it would be poetic to see his fair form to wear a fearsome mask while his monstrous form wears a beautiful one; maybe for the sake of vanity, or simply to be recognizable after his imperfect re-embodiment. It seems like something the leaders of the Last Alliance who knew him from before would comment on, while facing him down on the slopes of Orodruin.
@i-gwarth Tumblr is not letting me reply to messages anymore?????
But YEAH, Yes. Exactly. I cannot afford NOT to be wary of that sort of language. That kind of language is responsible for an immense amount of harm, to the world and to me personally. AND INSULTINGLY, Tolkien frequently holds up wishy-washy, “Let’s-Hear-Both-Sides-And-See-What-Happens” councilors and propagandistic language as tools of the enemy– things to beware of. And I’d like to agree with him! Except that he clearly shows both sides using the same or similar tools to achieve their ends.
Tolkien’s protagonists rely on is this *sense* of evil; when Evil speaks it does so in fair words which cannot be trusted, while Good speaks the truth, whether or not it seems fair (which is why Gandalf gets shit everywhere he goes for being the Bearer of Bad News). In theory, right and wrong should therefore be easily parsed: Objective Reality ought to be the focal point of the text’s moral compass. Mordor is untrustworthy and bad because what Mordor DOES is bad; they tear up trees and torture people and Sauron has is historically and personally opposed the Edain in all they do. Meanwhile, what Gondor does is good because they have libraries and trees and value wisdom and peace and kittens, while valiant warmongering is listed as a trait gained in the decline of its wisdom.
But it just ain’t always so!
The text frequently tells us one thing and shows us another, usually muddier, reality. If you run down a side-by-side list of “Things Sauron Has Done” and “Things Numenor/Gondor/Gandalf Have Done”, they come out looking disturbingly similar, right down to bullet-points such as: Torture, Cursing People with Undeath (”I only made NINE! Isildur made a whole tribe into ghost zombies!”), violent total slaughter and disrespectful treatment of enemy dead, slavery (not depicted but frequently mentioned), destroying enemy cities, keeping vassal states and people, conquering territories both peaceful and belligerent–
And on the flip side, both sides can also claim: having the loyal and willing service of kingdoms generations after their initial rise to power, creating things of lasting functionality and worth, giving due notice to enemies before invasion and offering fairly reasonable terms of surrender and reparation, not discriminating on a basis of skin color, religion, species, or class– OH WAIT, THAT ONE WAS JUST MORDOR.
The actual reality of the situation is that neither side is wholly despicable or wholly trustworthy. They each have a particular aim– and that is keeping their respective dynasties in power. And we are told to believe that one side is better than the other mostly because it is being held up as a Symbol Of Good, and for me, that rings all kinds of alarm bells; especially when the text leaves so much obscured. Yes, yes, one side loves books and singing and waterfalls, and the other side looks like Hell On Toast. But Mordor has been at war for literal Ages with the entirety of the West, forced back into itself, cut off from trade and probably forced to mine its own resources, to the point of making the already sparse volcanic environment unsalvageable. Last time it had occupancy, it was on the losing end of a protracted siege, after which, the forces of Gondor razed everything to the ground!
And we never get to see Sauron’s empire in the East. We only know a couple of things about his rule there, and those are: A) he was worshiped, B) people followed him into battle generations after his previous rule, and C) the local populace really, really hated Numenorian/Gondorian rule but tolerated Sauron’s. What was THAT kingdom like? How successful and prosperous was it in its heyday? Does the East also have citadels and libraries and music? They must! They’re humans! We only see how Sauron treats his enemies (specifically the Edain and Elves), and his troops. (His orc troops, who we’re told are slaves, seem like they’ve actually got a pretty standard deal as far as foot soldiers go, and from their dialogue we can presume they won’t be forced to serve after Sauron wins the war.) This is meant to provide us with all the evidence we need to reject him as an unlawful tyrant. (Also, he doesn’t have a shiny rock.) Humanity in Real-Life Non-Fantasy Earth has done far worse things in the last century than Sauron ever did given thousands of years’ time to cause trouble. It’s not enough evidence for me to be comfortable with a Biblical condemnation of one side of what appears to be a fairly complex struggle– especially when it bears uncomfortable resemblance to historical and contemporary excuses made by western imperialists to justify the conquest of eastern territories, and the erasure of their “barbaric” cultures, due to the threat of their “spreading tyranny” and non-Christian religions.
And in fact, propagandistic language is used most excessively, by the narration to justify the author’s choice of rightful authority. …And all I can say to that is, in the words of the wise mud-farmer: “I didn’t vote for you”.
Saying ‘the enemy will always reveal himself to be a fraudulent coward and a liar despite all appearances otherwise’ is every bit an untrustworthy statement, even if it’s coming from the mouth of Gandalf or the voice of the Narrator.
Made some substantial additions to this post because I obviously haven’t exhausted my spleen yet.
Look listen this is such a Good post I love it!
I am first in line of the Sauron Shouldn’t Be Defended squad. The text is pretty clear that his motivations have decayed into petty revenge against humans and Elves, and he was never good, but rather selfish and close-minded in his ideas even when he was “trying to redeem himself”. Mordor is the way it is because he is a Bad, malignant power in the world that corrupts and/or everything around it. Morgoth 2.0. That’s all fairly clear for me. BUT The narrative against him and Mordor in Lord of The Rings is so weak in a bunch of places, up to and including the fascist rhetoric I mentioned. Tolkien struggles between depicting an evil force worthy of the terror it inspires and… a kind of cartoonishly evil place run by idiots, where Orc guards kill one another in droves over a shiny shirt. In terms of boots-on-the-ground soldiers people, Mordor and Gondor are probably not seen in terms of absolute good and absolute evil, but rather two different shades of oppression or feudal influence. One is slightly better polished than the other but still employs slaves and does the whole ancestor worship thing, despite the fact that its ancestors were Huge Dicks. It honestly reminds me of the Cold War versions of the US and USSR. Tolkien may have hated allegory but it feels like he keeps slipping into them involuntarily.
What a wonderful addition, thank you! “Two different shades of feudal oppression” and “Ancestors were Huge Dicks” sums it up very nicely. I very much agree, and frequently wonder about Tolkien’s own experiences with war and how they, and the political climate of the 30′s and 40′s, influenced his writing, even though we know he was adamant about it being a work of pure fantasy and not intended as commentary. (I think he took a similar stance on religious influence? I am now thoroughly out of my depth on this topic; I haven’t yet gotten to Letters or biographies in my reading.)
I have to confess, despite my near total agreement, you made me do some soul-searching! XD
“DO I think Sauron should be defended?” Wesley asked themselves, briefly disturbed by the potential drift of their own moral boundaries, as they hunched in front of their glowing monitor. –By all accounts, as an unemployed drain on society, I do have more time than most to spend dicking about on the internet and over-projecting onto imaginary people.
Obviously, and it shouldn’t have to be said, but this is Tumblr: as a real life human being on real life earth, I don’t condone murder, torture, enslavement, revenge-wars, deforestation, or, to a lesser extent, blood sacrifice. (I take an indifferent view on necromancy).
Furthermore, every part of my soul shrivels when I see the phrase “Good Guy Sauron”, or posts inferring that he did nothing wrong. I DEMAND he be allowed to remain a villain; both he and Melkor are antagonists, they antagonize, that is their vital and essential function in the narrative and you will have to pry that status from my cold, dead hands.
But that itself is a defensive reaction! And I do, frequently, defend my favorite villains against allegations made by their own author, for all the reasons we were just vigorously meta-ing about. ESPECIALLY when the author lays all of his personal aesthetic dislikes and biases at the feet of the Ultimate Prime Evil, thereby inferring that things like cats, spiders, and volcanoes are objectively demonic, and– more problematically– so are things like phonetic reduction and descriptive linguistics (Sauron: “Hey Tolkien, from one con-langer to another– what the hell?”), technological advancement, science, and “The East”.
I think I am willing to concede that I do think the baddies of Middle Earth deserve some kind of defense. Not for BEING the bad guys or doing bad things, but from being reduced to placeholders: dimensionless figureheads who can conveniently represent anything we disagree with.
Let us say I am for the Miltonian Defense of Sauron and Melkor; as characters with internally consistent motivations, concrete goals beyond “do bad things just because”, whose sentiments are recognizable, even sympathetic, whose victories challenge the status quo, whose very existence makes one ask vital questions about the nature of authority, and whose ultimate failures are deeply cathartic.
I don’t think Sauron is good, or defensible, I think he is Tragic, and interesting, and his positions worth investigating. The same with Melkor. I think those properties are far more valuable than just being “good” or “redeemable”, and I will absolutely defend that aspect of them against all comers.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 