Paper Telephone.

[Thinlómien]

Sorry guys, technical troubles, I feel like hurling my laptop out of the window right now. I'm going to take a little break and try a little later today...

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Sorry guys, technical troubles, I feel like hurling my laptop out of the window right now. I'm going to take a little break and try a little later today...

Nooo!

This was to be my lunch break entertainment.

[Thinlómien]

One day, Thinlómien was walking in the Barrow-Downs, singing a well-known tune as she went:

From the Gate of Kings the North Wind rides, and past the roaring falls.

"I never realised how little sense that line makes," Kath muttered when she heard the song through her window. "I'm gonna illustrate why."



A sudden gust of wind snatched the drawing from her hands, and it landed on Pitchwife's yard. "Hmm," he said. "Looks like

Shadowfax contemplates going a-boating come autumn.

"Really?" asked TheGreatElvenWarrior over the fence that separated their yards. "No, that's not it. That would look like this:"



As a prank, they decided to drop the drawing in A Little Green's little green mailbox. She thought what it was about was:

Tired of galloping, Shadowfax dreams of an alternative means of transport.

Her thought was picked up by Oddwen's roaming psychic abilities (yes, the abilities were roaming, don't question me) that visualised it as follows:

[Thinlómien]

Legate of Amon Lanc had a peek inside her head and disapproved. He muttered:

It is easy to feel like you're free and the hero of all Middle-Earth when it's your animal companion who has to do all the hard work.

satansaloser2005 thought this was such a profound thought that she decided to illustrate it for posterity:



A few centuries later, her drawing was in a museum. The curator, Rune Son of Bjarne, claimed that the piece portrays the scene from The Lay of Leithian where:

Unfortunately the only one to answer Luthien's call for help was a rodent armed to the teeth, and so she remained in a state of mild discomfort.

Sadly, the local newspaper got the rights to publish the citation but not the artwork, so their in house illustrator Nogrod had to improvise:



Barandiun was reading the newspaper next morning. Or more like, looking at the pictures, as "reading is for idiots who don't understand pictures". They thought what they saw was:

Person in a dress and long hair sits at a low tree in a discussion with a rodent warrior.

They wrote (ironically, they had nothing against writing) the thought in their diary, which was later that night taken with all their other property when Huinesoron burgled their house. Struck by the poetic quote, the burglar doodled this in their sketchbook:

[Thinlómien]

Galadriel55 was running an art class for burglars. She was the mesmerised by the piece that portrayed - as she would tell everyone who would listen - the principle that

As a rule the Rohirrim did not consort with fell creatures, but the princess Eowyn was wont to go off alone to study the fiendish and warlike sprites known as the holbytla.

The local grocer Formendacil had heard this a million times already. As a protest, he put this sign on his counter, hoping to silence the chatty customer the next time she'd come around:



Obviously, this was the talk in the neighbourhood for quite a while, as wights are almost as bad gossipmongers as hobbits are. Urwen even called her non-wighty cousin just to tell about the sign that said:

An overlord decided that there would be no ponies or books allowed.

Wights are immortal. Therefore, Lommy was still around, now working for the wight secret service. She intercepted the dubious phone call, and made notes in hieroglyphs that looked like this:



"Bad agent!" exclaimed her boss Kath. "You just scribbled your notes on top of an authentic William Blake painting! What does that even say?

Saruman of many colours sat ringed by flame, berating the naked book-bearer. "I've already got a book, fool. Now get on your horse and leave!"

Their coworker Pitchwife heard the exchange, and he couldn't shake the mental image, so he went home and drew this:

[Thinlómien]

Even though a few hundred years had passed, TGEW was still nosy about her neighbour's affairs. She went for coffee with a friend, and told her how her weird neighbour was drawing a picture where

Saruman of Many Colours directs his naked hobbit slave to show him the book of horses.

Her friend, Greenie, didn't believe the story. So she sneaked into her friend's neighbour's backyard, and snapped a picture of what was going on inside the house:



Scandalised herself, she sold the picture to the local newspaper. The editor in chief, the psychic Oddwen, published it with the caption:

As he is borne away in chains to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, Tiny David casts one last gaze upon his favorite possession, the Tan Book of Horsemarch.

Meanwhile on the other side of the 'downs, there was a very bored wight named Legate who was making a collage of newspaper clippings. This caption, he thought, went magnificently with a picture he may or may not have made himself in the long centuries of his wightish life:



Sally, who still thought he was a very profound thinker even though she had had a few centuries more to observe him, bought the collage from him, cut out this particular piece and framed it on her wall. She liked to tell her guests it depicted a scene where

The ring wraiths carry a well-articulated statue to their lair.

"That's not well-articulated!" protested Rune when he visited, taking a pen and scribbling on a napkin. "This would be well-articulated!"

[Thinlómien]

Since the hostess was a thrifty wight, the same napkin was later used by another visitor, Nogrod. He was very puzzled why his napkin should have a picture of something along the lines of

After decades of waiting, the Witch-King was finally able to add the statue of the Last Fallen King into his collection.

Another guest, Barandiun, heard him talking, and later had very vivid dreams. Inside their head it looked like this:



Huinesoron had meanwhile graduated from burgling houses to catching dreams. This, they noted in their notebook, had been a dream that told them that:

The Witch-King never had learned that the Black Breath didn't work on statues.

Their former art teacher Galadriel was still trying pester them to make art. "You should draw that! Something like this!"



Sadly, her example picture was rejected and left to slowly rot on the barrow floor. When Formendacil came by it yet again some centuries later, in 2020, he thought it was a very timely illustration. "Look at this," he muttered. "As if the barrow-wights predicted that

The Witch-King was frustrated in his designs once the Stone-Trolls started to flatten the curve of the Black Breath's spread by wearing masks during the day.

THE END

Thanks everyone for playing!

[Thinlómien]

I see I'm still having technical trouble. Currently trying to fix it...

[Thinlómien]

Annnnd problem solved! Sorry for the mess, everyone, but this was terrible to sort out. It was so much easier in the good old days of photobucket and everybody's devices having a nicely low resolution that fits an ancient forum like the 'downs...

A recommendation for fellow mods in the 2020s:

1. The sooner you accept you will have to manually* resize every image you get, the easier your life is. (* I actually ran the files through a resizing website as a bulk upload, but still. I made everything 800px wide, but perhaps even less would have been better, at least for the vertical ones.)

2. Google is evil. Drive and photos don't work with the forum code. Use Imgur.

[Nogrod]

Some real masterpieces (both visual and verbal)!

I had quite forgotten, how talented lot we have here.


Special kudos to Lommy for putting this up and battling through the incompatibilities of the old site and new technology.


It was interesting also, how the horse kept on reappearing time and again.

[Lhunardawen]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Some real masterpieces (both visual and verbal)!

I had quite forgotten, how talented lot we have here.

Hear, hear.

It's unfathomable how, in the end, the entire chain managed to come around into current events!

[Huinesoron]

(Tech support note: I don't know if you know, but Imgur can provide you with resized versions of your image. You can get the different-sized thumbnails by adding t, m, l, or h to the image link, between the image number and the .png/.jpg/whatever. Examples: the first image in tiny, medium, large, and huge.)

It's beautiful... it's so beautiful... *.*

I'm fascinated by the fact that we started with the Argonath and somehow wound up back at statues. The hobbit also popped in and out a few times, and as Nog says, that horse...

Thanks, Lommy! This was great fun.

hS

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

(Tech support note: I don't know if you know, but Imgur can provide you with resized versions of your image. You can get the different-sized thumbnails by adding t, m, l, or h to the image link, between the image number and the .png/.jpg/whatever. Examples: the first image in tiny, medium, large, and huge.)

Nope, I did not know that! However the last two links don't work for me. Quite a good illustration how complicated this can be.

Yeah, I'm curious about how there were certain recurring elements, and I really love basically all the pictures and sentences.

I am laughing at the saga of poor Shadowfax (brilliant sentences and pictures there), and quite fascinated how he turned first into a rodent and then into a hobbit. Pitchwife's piece of art might just be my favourite, but I also love Galadriel's which she apologetically admitted she scrambled together in five minutes. Clearly both approaches work.

Also why do nazgûl and wizards always pop up in Paper Telephone even if they were not in the first sentence??

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Also why do nazgûl and wizards always pop up in Paper Telephone even if they were not in the first sentence??

Clearly it's a thing! At least there wasn't the phantom (I think that alternated with the nazgûl anyway).

But anyway, something amazing! Great pictures - some absolute masterpieces, and sentences too, and there was a great variety! Thanks for modding and all the work, Lommy! And thanks everyone for participating! This was so much fun!

[Galadriel55]

I second everybody who has complimented the artwork and creative sentences. I loved the flow of the PT, and I really enjoyed all the beautiful works of art made by all of you. It is gorgeous Tolkien art (with dubious content ).

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Also why do nazgûl and wizards always pop up in Paper Telephone even if they were not in the first sentence??

At least we avoided Gollum this time!

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Pitchwife's piece of art might just be my favourite,

I agree, there was perhaps four or five pictures of extremely high quality, but Pitchwife truly blew me away.

I loved the starting caption, well done Kath for getting the ball rolling in proper fashion.

Of the captions, especially Greenie's was amazing.