berrysphase
Winding numbers
mostly sad elves with occasional les misérables, interspersed with keysmashing about nirvana in fire. Currently and unexpectedly losing my mind about the old guard, sometimes reblogs to not-scythian. I also like: science, history, dwj, and books about faraway places. Here are some things I've written. What's with all these frogs? The Nirvana in Fire liveblog.
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One of the 50 sketches I did to find a design for Fëanor.
We have sworn, and not lightly. This oath we will keep. We are threatened with many evils, and treason not least; but one thing is not said: that we shall suffer from cowardice, from cravens or the fear of cravens. Therefore I say that we will go on, and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.“
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more tolkien guys: glorfindel, tinfang warble, celegorm (and huan), and radagast
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i know everyone (including me) loves the teatro comunale di bologna posters but i feel like we need to talk about the don giovanni one. they understand the assignment, which is 'this guy has to look like a trust fund grade-A SHITHEAD'. truly incredible
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IMPROVED AESTHETIC: SUNNY ACADEMIA. Well-funded, well-maintained public higher ed. Up-to-date, energy-efficient facilities, thoughtful in design, which make extensive use of daylight, circulate air astonishingly well and are for-real 100-percent accessible. A full spectrum of degrees across all fields of study, plus professional programs, FREE. Minimal intrigue and next to no angst on relaxed campuses awash in friendly communal green space. On-site daycare and afterschool at no cost for children of students, faculty and staff. Thriving unions. Administrators whose heads aren't up their asses.
BE ADVISED: MOODBOARDS AND RELATED SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT MUST BE BROUGHT INTO COMPLIANCE NO LATER THAN 7/31/24.
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Finrod and Sauron battle
commissions are open!
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A Patreon request of Coronabeth and Judith as Miss Piggy and Kermit. This one really got a laugh out of me, and it was fantastic to draw.
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Source
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three rings for the elven-kings under the sky
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Bob the Wheal
(Rodhocetus)
Patreon • Ko-fi • Facebook • Twitter • Prints & Merch
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every opera production would be made funnier/possibly better if you had one of the characters give a powerpoint presentation
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I just found this aaaaaancient thing I made by photoshopping a medieval drawing. It has a certain charm, no?
Now excuse me, I must judge who has the best tights.
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Reading Tolkien’s annotated translation of Beowulf, and learning all kinds of things about LOTR and the Silm from it!
First:
Leave here your warlike shields [from Beowulf]
[Tolkien’s commentary; bold mine:] Note the prohibition of weapons or accoutrements of battle in the hall. To walk in with spear and shield was like walking in nowadays with your hat on. The basis of these rules was of course fear and prudence among the ever-present dangers of a heroic age, but they were made part of the ritual, of good manners. Compare the prohibition against drawing a sword in the officers’ mess. Swords of course also were dangerous; but they were evidently regarded as part of a knight’s attire, and he would not in any case be willing to lay aside his sword, a thing of great cost and often an heirloom.
This gives me some perspective around Tolkien’s probable intended tone for the moment in Meduseld in The Two Towers where Aragon strongly protests against being told to leave Andúril (a sword of very great value and ancientry, and very much an heirloom) with the door-warden. From a contemporary perspective it’s easy to read it as Aragorn being unnecessarily prideful and combative, but this passage strongly indicates that Tolkien intends it to be Théoden who is being unreasonable in that event, an indication - along with many others in the scene, prior to Gandalf dislodging Saruman’s influence - that Théoden is being discourteous and behaving in a manner unworthy of a king who is recieving heroes offering aid. (The fact of Meduseld being a ‘golden hall’ like famous Heorot in Beowulf may be deliberate to strengthen the parallel.)
Second (immediately following the above commentary):
But against this danger [from swords] very severe laws existed protecting the ‘peace’ of a king’s hall. It was death in Scandanavia to cause a brawl in the king’s hall. Among the laws of the West Saxon king Ine is found: ‘If any man fight in the king’s house, he shall forfeit all his estate, and it shall be for the king to judge whether he be put to death or not.’
This adds context to the incident in the story of Túrin in The Silmarillion where Saeros taunts Túrin in Menegroth and Túrin responds by throwing a heavy drinking-vessel at him and injuring him (it’s indicated the injury is serious, so I’d take it along the lines of him giving him a broken nose and knocking out some teeth.) It is stated in at least some versions of the story that death is the punishment for drawing weapons in the king’s hall, in line with the historical customs mentioned here. This gives a further emphasis that what actually happens - Túrin is not punished at all and Mablung strongly reprimands Saeros for provoking him - illustrates that Túrin is, Saeros’ behaviour notwithstanding, in very high favour in Menegroth. (Saeros as the king’s counsellor is also in roughly the same position as Unferth in Beowulf, who taunts the titular character - Beowulf responds heatedly but without violence. Tolkien may be setting up a deliberate contrast here.)
Third:
The word hádor is an adjective meaning ‘clear, bright’…it is almost always found in reference to the sky (or the sun or stars). But that association is in description of brightness…
This was one a lightbulb moment: oh, in the name of Hador Goldenhead (the ancestor of Húrin, Túrin, and Tuor in The Silmarillion), ‘Goldenhead’ isn’t an additional name/epessë so much as it’s a glossed translation of ‘Hador’! The guy with bright, golden hair.
Fourth: Going back to the Rohirrim - Edoras, the name of their capital city/royal court, is basically just the Old English for ‘courts’:
under was very frequently used in describing position within, or movement to within, a confined space, especially of enclosures or prisons, ‘within four walls’. Cf. in under eoderas (eoderas being the outer fences of the courts), ‘in amid the courts’….‘eoder’ means both ‘fence (protection)’ and ‘fenced enclosure, a court’.
I’m also learning a lot about Beowulf - Tolkien’s notes are clarifying a lot of tone and nuances, not to mention the political/diplomatic relationships between the different kingdoms, which were confusing me - but it’s amazing how much it reveals about ways that Tolkien’s knowledge informed his legendarium!
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Why are rain frogs so round? What's /inside/ of them around such an itty bitty skeleton?
So it turns out this is a really interesting question.
The first thing we must be aware of is that rainfrogs as we see them in videos of them squeaking are not quite the same shape as they are when at rest:
[x]
But you are quite right, they are very round. This is exemplified by the skeletal photo you refer to:
[X]
So what are we seeing?
Well, firstly, note that the body cavity in these frogs actually envelops the femurs, such that only the tibiofibula (fused in frogs) and the tarsals and metatarsals are outside the body. The arms are quite similarly enveloped, but a bit of the humerus does extend outside the body cavity too. This predisposes them to a rounder body shape.
Next, note the ilia - the U-shaped bone in the pelvic region. These in some breviceptid frogs are synostotically fused with the sacrum - that is to say, they are bound by bone-based connections to the bow-shaped vertebra at their tips. This whole joint seems to be quite smooth, and as a consequence, the back of the frog is quite smooth. The other thing we can see here is that the urostyle (i.e. the frog version of a coccyx) juts quite far beyond the ischium and pubis. This extends the body cavity beyond the hips. Note also that the pelvic girdle seems to be largely below the spine, rather than the typical position for frogs behind it and continuous with it. This makes the legs sit below the spine, rather than at its end, enhnacing the vertical roundness of the animal.
Next, let’s talk some soft tissue. Now, I’m not as familiar with soft-tissue in frogs as I am their skeletons, so you’ll have to bear with me a bit (rawr). Beddard (1908!!) studied the soft tissue of Breviceps verrucosus Rapp 1842. It seems that the majority of the body of these frogs is actually muscle. Beddard noted that muscles join the leg at the knee that extend into the body cavity, such that the inclusion of the thigh in the body cavity is further accentuated by musculature. The rectus abdominalis muscle is unusually large, extending from the lower abdomen up and around the sides of the body. Indeed, this large size appears to be the pattern with all of the major muscles, though in the throat the typical arrangement of large and small muscles is somewhat reversed. On the lateral side of the head, there is a substance that is not muscle, but appears to be loose tissue in which sits what is apparently the thymus gland.
There is a very large gap between the end of the urostyle and the anus (one fifth of the total length of the frog), in which there are almost no muscles, save for the one surrounding the lower cloaca. On either side of this area, between the posterior-most muscles of the thigh, lie two large ‘lymph-hearts’, as described by Beddard. These are between one quarter and one third of the total length of the frog. A further lypmh-sac sits between these lymph-hearts and the skin of the femoral region, and they are thus probably analogous to the femoral lymph-sacs of other frogs.
I find it interesting that Beddard (1908) did not mention any glandular formations in the dorsal region. As is evidence from many images (see below), these frogs are able to secrete a white, sticky, noxious substance from their skin (which they actually have to use during amplexus, as the male is too small relative to the female to mount her properly, and so he sticks himself to her with his glandular glue… kinky).
[x]
These glands do not apparently take up a great deal of the cutaneous tissue, and so I suppose are of no consequence to the size of the frog, especially relative to its enormous muscles.
The diet of these frogs consists almost exclusively of hymenopterans and isopterans (ants and termites). Neither of these insect groups are particularly fatty, so it is little surprise that their bodies appear to contain no large fat deposits - fatty bodies extend from the gonads up to the lungs and heart, but these comprise only a tiny fraction of the frog’s mass, and don’t contribute to the round shape. Instead, their bodies are extremely muscular, allowing them to be adept burrowers, ideal for their fossorial lifestyle.
So TL;DR: rain frogs are little balls of muscle (maybe the largest muscle mass relative to body mass of any vertebrate? science just doesn’t know).
Ref:
Beddard, F.E. 1908. On the Musculature and other Points in the Anatomy of the Engystomatid Frog, Breviceps verrucosus. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1908:11-41 [x]
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*So little known you had to buy a shitty/ancient edition just to own it. I’m considering Dogsbody, Fire and Hemlock, and Tale of Time City “well-known” by this rubric because they had recent reprint editions accessible in many US bookstores/Amazon, which is why I left them out!
#how can you make me choose between those first three >:(#impossible choice#dwj#gonna say oh power of three wasn't on this as an excuse to hit the last button instead of choosing
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Finished at last: Fëanor, light of creation and fire of destruction.
(Animated and static versions)
21x30cms, pencils, acrylics; and digital colouring for the flamey business.
Prints and shiny things here.
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Pls tell me your reasons in the tags!
#this is fascinating to me#i always got the impression charmed life was the runaway fave#(mine is lives of christopher chant)#honorable mention for magicians of caprona#dwj
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