frobisherw

https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/785687629491486720

Arwen is a fave so I was definitely planning to do her! :D

Rivendel to me is Gothic with big G and certainly High Middle Ages, so Arwen's dress is mostly just an interpretation of a bliaut. Her hair and jewelry are mostly though Minoan and 15th century Italy inspired, mostly because I those hair and jewelry are sort of similar in aesthetic and that aesthetic is very ethereal to me. And they use a lot of jewels, which is imo fitting for Noldors.

https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/785687629491486720

https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/785678920793161728

That’s very kind of you, and I’m sorry that I don’t have books to hand. It’s such a challenging area to think about and you have my sympathy!

Nine is around the developmental age where we’re told that the opinions of children’s peers start mattering more to them, when constructing their personality, than their family’s, with this absorption apparently peaking around age 15 before they start looking for external influences/ actively choosing parental influences to discard (although this is fluid, and kind of citation-needed.) anyway, all models are flawed but some are useful. The idea is that it’s a natural, inevitable and welcome part of growth to start favouring other people’s opinions far more highly than your parents’. This is where a lot of scariness starts, because you have a lot less reassurance that you can do your actual legal and ethical duty (looking after your kid).

And while lots of people on the internet will instinctively take the side of the 9-year-old, and say that one should not exercise any guidance over their mental landscape at all, and should let them form their own opinions, with the good judgment that they have apparently developed magically - the entire point of parenting is to help a young person build good judgment, and it does not happen magically. If you don’t help them build their own judgment, children tend to absorb the Default Culture around them; which is composed of whatever blend of commercialism, gender essentialism, and emotional illiteracy is prevalent in the brain of the most controlling trashbag parent who sends THEIR kid to school to bully everyone else.

So parents do have to be the grownup.

• It could be worth working on this with the parents of their best friends, or with their school (our school does a lot of Online Safeguarding Assemblies). It could be worth asking a cool young friend of the family to have a chat.
• If they’re already interested in online material, online courses or videos aimed at their age might be more interesting and seem more up-to-date than a book. The internet has certainly moved on from “never tell your age in a chat room” and kids will be very aware of that.
• A sneaky way for parents to recalibrate the influence of - well, influencers - is to get the kids involved in absorbing in-person activities, like Scouts, horses, rock climbing, etc. Giving the kid an absorbing new facet of identity, and a peer group who reward each other for achievement, often fills the “I want approval from OUTSIDE MY GROUP, I want REAL approval from THE INTERNET” cup. Of course, this is often a very expensive option, depending on the interests; however, I am a judgement free zone for that, and am of the opinion that this is what money is for.
• It could be worth finding out what content the kid is watching, and sees themselves producing, and stress that CONTENT is the point, not that there is a camera (you’re not giving them a camera) and an audience (there will not actually be an audience). My 8-year-old is pretty into stop motion and makes a lot of small films with Lego (that somehow never end up online).
• It’s very possible that if you drill down, your kid would find this need entirely scratched by recording themselves playing Minecraft, spending 6 days learning enough video editing to produce a small clip of them exploding a pig, which you will have to watch 345 times and put on a WhatsApp group chat for them, and that will be entirely the end of it.
• Honestly, kids working out that they get pretty much zero views, and that influencer culture is entirely algorithmic, is probably going to be a sufficient bummer to deter kids from posting more than one thing in the future.

I wish you the best of luck finding resources and people are of course welcome to share any that they found helpful.

https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/785678920793161728

https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/785676525435518976

attheedgeofthecreek:

“I love it here! I love my life here.” “Well, I’m glad because I love it too.”

Raffles S1.E13 “The Old Flame”

It’s a shame Bunny was born 100 years too early for

https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/785676525435518976

https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/785674369485668352

weirdstrangeandawful:

Very early during the covid lockdown, my flute ensemble won a competition that pivoted from traditional performance to stitched audio/video at the last minute (it was our first year as an ensemble too). We used the award money to commission a composer to write a piece inspired by our city. It has a tonne of rivers so the piece was inspired by it. When we stitched the video we wanted water sounds and I lived on a literal riverbank so was assigned the task of recording some. I did that but that is also where the goose photos I posted yesterday come from!

Here’s some of the best goose photos from that day. Based on behaviour, I think the first five are female (I suspect just one photogenic individual but maybe two). Last three are the boys.

And some very inquisitive and badly photographed mallards for @elodieunderglass:

Thank you so much!

https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/785674369485668352