“Fantasy authors don’t know how long a thousand years is!!!!!! Knock a zewo off the end!!!!!!!111!!!1” Did you know that it’s never too late to learn whimsy and joy
And it’s doubly ridiculous when people apply it to Lord of the Rings. Sure, a lot of fantasy does it for the Vibes – which is a perfectly valid reason to do it that does not invite any criticism actually – but in LotR there is a specific reason why Gondor has existed for four thousand years and hasn’t had an industrial revolution and it’s because Tolkien was extremely aware of and actively making a point about the large scale ecological harm brought about by large scale industry and technological progress for the sake of progress. Most of Tolkien’s cultures are in a position where they could have kickstarted an industrial revolution whenever, but never did because they value trees and rivers and nature and natural beauty more than the small advantages granted by wide-scale production. And they did keep developing and advancing in some ways. Gondor canonically has a cure for cancer. Like Gondor’s medical science is so much more advanced than IRL medical science. They didn’t stop developing, they just developed differently and with different values. You know who’s having an industrial revolution? Saruman. Discussion questions: what do we think Professor Tolkien’s opinion on the industrial revolution is? Do we think that most of his cultures not having had one was perhaps an intentional choice driven by one of the core themes of his work? Are we going to examine at all our own preconceived notions that an industrial revolution is some kind of inevitable natural occurence, like puberty but for society?
You know who ELSE decided against an industrial revolution and megapolises because they valued the trees and the land more than “progress”? Turtle Island. There’s evidence that many peoples moved toward living in larger and larger settlements and then just… decided to stop doing that, at some point, and go back to smaller settlements. The Comanche were the first people to put every single tribe member on horseback and fully adopt a lifestyle of constant migration. That was a choice.
Everyone across Turtle Island had complex relationships of trade and migration and shared space at different times, taking turns with various locations. That’s why on Native-Land.ca you see so much overlapping of various peoples.
And you know who else was like that? The Celts! The Celtic trading routes were THE largest and most complex in Europe. They built wooden roads strong enough to carry large carts over wetland, and their trade network went all the way to the silk road! That means they could get their goods halfway around the world. All without being a huge empire–they were a bunch of groups interconnected by common cultural ties, but they were not one single nation. We just call them The Celts bc we have very little to know what they called themselves, as the Romans genocided the fuck out of them (and everyone else around Rome–but none more than the Celts, who had gold–which Rome did not have).
There’s countless other civs that I don’t know much about that lasted for thousands of years without European industry. Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Polynesia, Ancient Egypt, the many Australian Aboriginal peoples… Just because one dinky little monotheistic death cult hasn’t lasted more than a couple thousand years doesn’t mean SHIT, jackson. XD
Oh wow so me saying “no government documentation should ever include a gender marker for any reason” has been right all along. For exactly the reason I stated when people were giving me shit for not supporting x markers on documents.
my fellow warm weather haters and summer depression sufferers: we’ve made it. its nearly over we’re nearly free another year of increasing highs survived our beautiful cold weather is coming gray skies and cool temperatures will save us!!! As for the rest of you….well you had your fun. good luck.
Tumblr has got to be one of the webbed sites of all time because sometimes you log on and it seems like the entire site has gotten really into stick figure juggling and you just kind of have to shrug and accept that that’s part of the furniture now
