Tuesday Evening Culture Track

Space Marines, Arnolfini, LOTR, and more.

Current rainy view from my desk in my office.

It’s a rare, gloriously gloomy Tuesday evening here in Dallas and it’s drizzled all day. Here are a few odds and ends on my digital desktop/headspace:

I preordered Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 and couldn't be more excited for a new title, having built out every class in both Vermintide and Darktide. It’s one of the last few remaining non-woke titles out there. Yes, I preordered it so I could start playing it four days early because I’m a grown woman and I do what I want.

I love co-op games because it forces people to work together and you see some of who a person really is rather than how they want you to see them. Custom skins can’t hide bad strategy. In our house we enjoy playing together as a family and can connect no matter where everyone is at a given time.

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The Renaissance and the Dutch Masters: This amazing thread on one of my favorite paintings, Jan van Eyck's amazing portrait (Arnolfini Portrait, 1434) of Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife Costanza:

Is this not glorious?

Long interpreted as a wedding portrait, a new theory suggests it’s actually a tribute of Giovanni’s enduring love and loyalty. The portrait was finished a year after Constanza’s death making him a widow who reportedly never remarried; further, note the dark clothing, the single candle above Giovanni and extinguished candle with just wax drippings above Costanza. The other details have long fascinated me: the expensive fur lining of Costanza’s cape reportedly required the belly fur of 2,000 red squirrels; Giovanni’s black rattan Jamiroquai hat; the ubiquitous convex mirror (in which the artist himself and a second person is represented) which appeared in so many paintings of the Dutch masters. Arnolfini was a wealthy textiles merchant, which makes sense that the portrait is set in Bruges, a trading hub for textiles.

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An interactive LOTR map that showcases the latest “Rings of Power” series by Amazon, and the previous journeys from Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and the previous “Lord of the Rings” series.

I watched the first season of Amazon’s series and was unimpressed. Morfydd Clark is capable enough as Galadriel — the manifestation of which we were all spoiled by Cate Blanchett’s performance — but the rushed story, omission of Galadriel’s husband, children (significant developments to her character arc considering what befalls her daughter Celebrían at the hands of orcs). That Galadriel is a wife and mother and a powerful elven fighter (physically fighting in Middle Earth’s Second Age, but not earlier) is what makes her special because canonically, her femininity isn’t rejected for the mediocre version of “empowerment” sold by modern feminists, it enhances her power. It is another facet of her being that makes her such a phenomenal character. Tolkien describes elven women as similar in agility and strength to elven men and their childbearing years are much shorter than what humans can imagine. The woke want to erase that and recast her as a quasi-androgynous fighter who comes alive in her heart whenever Sauron looks her way (the intimation in Amazon’s latest season is simply ridiculous); the risk to this is an anti-woke response that would overcorrect and recast her without any of her ferocity of spirit and personality, her dominance as a noble elf of famed lineage, a supernatural shield maiden, and reduce her to Éowyn status (no offense to Éowyn).

I may not finish the new season of this series. The story is all so rushed, I think you do at least need an understanding of “The Silmarillion” to follow the story line as it skips over huge chunks of plot while hurrying to the next benchmark, which makes parts of it pure cringe (the dwarf shanties sung to the mountains skips over purpose and history and reduces a cool power to a mere footnote). The score is nice. I’m unconcerned with forced “diverse” hiring if it doesn’t alter the story from source material. It’s a fictional world, if you can create a cosmos from song you can do anything in it.

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Cathedral windows compared to musical notes:

"Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music." - Goethe

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