camryndaytona

[camryndaytona]

I love everything about Elrond’s complicated heritage and his relationship with it. Because that duality in not only being part human and part elf (plus a little Maia) but also being both very firmly of the Finweans and raised partially by Feanorians yet also being directly of the line of Thingol and predominantly ethnically Sindar. Potentially he has a direct claim to both the thrones of Sindar and the Noldor and that’s pretty incredible considering their shared history.

What made me think about this is the foundation of Imladris, because that’s some Melian shit right there. Seriously he’s drawing from his Doriathrim heritage, never mind Luthien come again that’s Thingol’s Maia queen behaviour. And yet he doesn’t use it like his ancestors did. They tried to protect their people sure, but he didn’t draw the line at his people. Rivendell is a direct contrast to Doriath and I feel like that tells you something important about Elrond.

Because Elrond knows his family history but he also has a unique ability to sympathise with yet assess critically all the actions of his ancestors as a consequence of his mixed heritage. He can empathise with the Feanorians because he’s witnessed how much they suffered and their capacity for kindness but he’s also experienced a kinslaying from a vulnerable child’s perspective and so understands the Sindar’s anger. But as a mixed race person who speaks multiple languages including Quenya and lost a lot of homes he can also acknowledge that Thingol went too far sometimes because he knows what it’s like to be different, to be living somewhere where your cultural identity is treated as something you can change or fix.

So we see that he learnt from their mistakes to try and do the best he could to be welcoming to other people regardless of anything else, by outright doing the opposite to Thingol. He also seems to have learnt similar lessons from his experiences with the Feanorians in his wisdom regarding the ring’s corruption and ‘I bind you to no oath.’

[camryndaytona]

The alternative titles for The Silmarillion

My first though when I reads the silmarillion : FEANOR NOOOO!!!

My though, after I finished it : WHAT THE FUCK?!

[camryndaytona]

Y’know from the way people talked about it I was surprised that the Silmarillion was only 300 pages long but now that I’m reading it it’s like. Oh it’s 300 pages long but every page causes you 7 different crises and after reading 10 of them you have to go lie down for a few hours

[camryndaytona]

How Glorfindel living under Elrond in Imladris is often presented: “I, Glorfindel, am sworn in service to Turgon, and therefore will swear fealty to you, Elrond, his great-grandson and heir on these shores, for that is reasonable and normal.

How I imagine it: “Hi, I’m Glorfindel, I’m your bodyguard. I know you didn’t order a bodyguard. You could send me away, but before you do, I need you to understand: Your grandmother Idril came to see me before I set sail for Middle Earth. And. Um. Let’s just say if anything happens to you before she gets to meet you? She will hunt me to the ends of of Arda. Nowhere would be safe, do you understand? I’m pretty sure they let Tuor stay in Valinor as collateral against Idril wrecking the Valar for sending her son into battle against a giant dragon. If I return to Valinor without you my life is forfeit. Please let me stay. I am in danger.

[camryndaytona]

Maedhros: I don’t have emotions

Narrator: He did in fact have many emotions

Caranthir: Well, I hate you all

Narrator: He did not in fact hate anyone

Celegorm and Curufin: We have a great idea

Narrator: They did not ever in fact have any great ideas

Maedhros: (sigh) Maglor can you stop singing commentaries from the balcony

Maglor: The great minstrel of the Nolder would not in fact be silenced

[camryndaytona]

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

[camryndaytona]

was real busy this week so no time to draw, but i had some little chibi heads lying around that i didnt have a real use for so i wanted to try my hand at some character relationship charts 😌 i used to really love reading them when they would be compiled for old jrpg or visual novel games i was into, so i thought it'd be fun to explore some finwean dynamics i personally tend to lean on in my fics n comic wooo

[camryndaytona]

[camryndaytona]

I’m sure everyone else got on this bandwagon but I just had to

[camryndaytona]

High King Finwë: killed by morgoth

High King Feanor: mortally wounded by several balrogs

High King Maedhros: willingly burned alive

High King Fingolfin: stomped to death in a 1v1 with morgoth

High King Fingon: got his head cleaved open by balrogs

(Okay, you get the point).

High King Gil-Galad: in the event of my death, Elrond, I crown you H—

Elrond: —hotel manager haha awesome

[camryndaytona]

unfortunately the truth is i read the silmarillion at a very formative moment of my life and i will make that everyone's problem

[camryndaytona]

One of my favorite little things in the silmarillion is how jirt very passively aggressively uses “it came into his thought/mind” when someone has a very stupid idea.

Basically “I have no fucking idea how this imbecile came to the conclusion in his tiny little brain that this would be a good idea but HERE WE ARE”

[camryndaytona]

I guess I’m making this a thing now

[camryndaytona]

Idk if this has been done before but it haunted me

[camryndaytona]

[camryndaytona]

hardcore silmarillion fans are like. the terrifying and incomprehensible creatures at the bottom of the deep ocean that is the tolkien fandom

[camryndaytona]

tolkien fans: "omg you HAVE to read the silmarillion so you can know about my poor little baby blorbo finwenduwë"

the blorbo in question: