vickysaurus

[vickysaurus]

#vine #haven't even seen some of these #cw: spiders

[vickysaurus]

I am being personally attacked by the person hoarding the second book of this series at my library.

#gideon nav #harrowhark #the locked tomb

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He's Zinging!!

#chicken #phasianid #galliform #bird #handsome little man

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Titan Luz my beloved

#luz noceda #the owl house #titan luz

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[vickysaurus]

Peaceful Tyrants.

#t. rex #tyrannosaur #theropod #dinosaur #cretaceous #paleoart

[vickysaurus]

"This Will Matter"

7x8.5", ink, watercolor, colored pencil. 2024.

#microraptor #dromaeosaur #theropod #dinosaur #cretaceous #paleoart

[vickysaurus]

THEY'RE GIRLFRIENDS

#the owl house #lumity #luz noceda #amity blight #weak nerd arms no more

[vickysaurus]

One of the things that’s really struck me while rereading the Lord of the Rings–knowing much more about Tolkien than I did the last time I read it–is how individual a story it is.

We tend to think of it as a genre story now, I think–because it’s so good, and so unprecedented, that Tolkien accidentally inspired a whole new fantasy culture, which is kind of hilarious. Wanting to “write like Tolkien,” I think, is generally seen as “writing an Epic Fantasy Universe with invented races and geography and history and languages, world-saving quests and dragons and kings.” But… But…

Here’s the thing. I don’t think those elements are at all what make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so good. Because I’m realizing, as I did not realize when I was a kid, that Tolkien didn’t use those elements because they’re somehow inherently better than other things. He used them purely because they were what he liked and what he knew.

The Shire exists because he was an Englishman who partially grew up in, and loved, the British countryside, and Hobbits are born out of his very English, very traditionalist values. Tom Bombadil was one of his kids’ toys that he had already invented stories about and then incorporated into Middle-Earth. He wrote about elves and dwarves because he knew elves and dwarves from the old literature/mythology that he’d made his career. The Rohirrim are an expression of the ancient cultures he studied. There are a half-dozen invented languages in Middle-Earth because he was a linguist. The themes of war and loss and corruption were important to him, and were things he knew intimately, because of the point in history during which he lived; and all the morality of the stories, the grace and humility and hope-in-despair, was an expression of his Catholic faith. 

J. R. R. Tolkien created an incredible, beautiful, unparalleled world not specifically by writing about elves and dwarves and linguistics, but by embracing all of his strengths and loves and all the things he best understood, and writing about them with all of his skill and talent. The fact that those things happened to be elves and dwarves and linguistics is what makes Middle-Earth Middle-Earth; but it is not what makes Middle-Earth good.

What makes it good is that every element that went into it was an element J. R. R. Tolkien knew and loved and understood. He brought it out of his scholarship and hobbies and life experience and ideals, and he wrote the story no one else could have written… And did it so well that other people have been trying to write it ever since.

So… I think, if we really want to write like Tolkien (as I do), we shouldn’t specifically be trying to write like linguists, or historical experts, or veterans, or or or… We should try to write like people who’ve gathered all their favorite and most important things together, and are playing with the stuff those things are made of just for the joy of it. We need to write like ourselves.

#the lord of the rings #he just wanted to make up his own languages and tell bedtime stories to his kid #and it all snowballed from there

[vickysaurus]

The spouse is getting curious about tumblr

#tumblr #yes that is a likely possibility

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#half-orc #lgbtq

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this video is so fucking funny im gonna throw up

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Parasaurolophus is terrible at keeping plants!

Art by me.

#parasaurolophus #hadrosaur #ornithopod #dinosaur #cretaceous #paleoart

[vickysaurus]

Do you think Sinosauropteryx and Microraptor would have been cottage core and Goth girlfriends? The fact that scientists know almost exactly what they looked like means Microraptor is a confirmed goth, and Sinosauropteryx is a confirmed cottage-core lady.

So the question is, will you be the Microraptor to my Sinosauropteryx? 🥰

#microraptor #sinosauropteryx #dromaeosaur #compsognathid #theropod #dinosaur #cretaceous #paleoart

[vickysaurus]

Hello, bees!~

#jester #critical role #bee #cw: bugs

[vickysaurus]

Love is in the Air: Psittacosaurus edition

#psittacosaurus #ceratopsian #dinosaur #cretaceous #paleoart

[vickysaurus]

I have a new favourite NPC

#neuvillette #cloud retainer #genshin impact #i laughed so hard when neuvillette mentioned the buy ten get half off sale