The Truth Resists Simplicity

33/she/her/soft-punk

[lady-halibuts-chambers]

[guiltfactory]

BAD NEWS: it will not be the same forever

GOOD NEWS: it will not be the same forever

[zoesupreme]

we're for real gonna be telling stories about this man for centuries

[zoesupreme]

yall I feel like I'm floating right now

[brightlotusmoon]

[tardis-shenanigans]

Now with the knowledge that tumblr is full of American Doctor Who fans I come to give you a present,

ALL Doctor Who episodes, both new who and old who are on Internet Archive!

Along with copies of various Doctor Who books and magazines as well as ALL the Torchwood magazines and both yearbooks!!

Here’s the link to all the episodes:

Doctor Who : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The Doctor, a mysterious traveller in space and time, travels in his ship, the TARDIS. The TARDIS can take him and his companions anywhere i

[biglawbear]

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

[biglawbear]

You have to understand. I watched the movies maybe once as a kid when they came out twenty years ago. I've somehow avoided learning like anything about these books my entire life. Literally everything about these books was a complete unknown and surprise to me. Totally blank slate going on. I barely even knew how it ended.

Holy shit.

[biglawbear]

Frodo didn't complete his task. Sam literally carried him up Mount Doom. And when he got to the end, he couldn't throw the Ring away.

But for Gollum biting it off with his finger, it wouldn't have been destroyed.

So Frodo's journey saved the world nonetheless.

And it broke him.

It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer live in the Shire or live in Middle-Earth. He wasn't of the world anymore. He had to go to the Undying Lands.

He took on the task that no one else would. He saved the world. Everyone got a happy ending. Aragorn became King, Sam rebuilt the Shire, Merry and Pippin became heroes. They all lived in renown.

But Frodo had the hardest task of all. No one else would do it. A simple hobbit who came by the Ring by chance. Not a King, not an immortal. Not a wizard. No power save his will and his friends. And he did it and saved everyone.

And he never got to rest. He never got to remain in peace. The task destroyed him. It was too much.

But there was no other way. Nobody but a simple hobbit could bear the ring all the way to Mount Doom and resist its power so long. Not a man, not an elf, not a wizard; they would have succumbed. Gandalf knew this, which was why he chose the hobbits in all his designs.

It's amazing that one of the precedent setting works in the fantasy genre holds up so well because it subverts what ultimately became the genre's core tropes. The hero was not the King, or a chosen one. In fact, the hero not being the King was a key point that allowed Aragorn to distract Sauron and allow the task in the first place. The hero was someone unassuming but courageous, who did the thing because no one else would, even though it was just by chance he came upon it.

But Frodo couldn't resist the Ring completely. He wasn't superior to anyone else in that way. And in the end it left him broken. The burden crushed him. No one else could do it, and in the end, he couldn't either. He wasn't so special that he was invulnerable.

I'm not okay. Holy fuck you guys.

[biglawbear]

It's been a week and I'm still not over this, I'll never get over this.

Something that I've been thinking about, as I struggle with depression and anxiety and *another vague gesture at everything* is that LOTR does not criticize Frodo for being broken. It does not shame him or deny him what he needs.

The task was too much and it broke him and that's okay. His friends nonetheless take care of him and let him go with understanding. The book doesn't treat it as a bad thing.

This seems to be a theme throughout the books. The characters rest and heal. They spend time recovering in Rivendell, Fangorn, Lorien, Ithilien. It's treated as good and necessary. They don't heroically endure endless torment from the second they set out until they're done.

And in Gondor's march from Minas Tirith to Mordor, Aragorn recognizes that some of the very few men he's taking with him don't have the heart to go to battle against the Enemy. And he says that's okay. He gives them other tasks the they can do. They hold other strategic points. They aren't shamed for not going all the way, or kicked out, or told that they aren't manly or whatever. Their limitations are recognized and respected. The task was too big and it was okay that they couldn't do it.

I don't know man. I've held on through some absolutely crazy shit. White knuckled through mental health crises when my doctors were begging me to take a break, to go to the hospital before I hurt myself. My therapist has tried to slow me down and tell me that I've been going through it and it's understandable that I am feeling some kind of way. Even one of my colleagues remarked that I've had an absolutely fucking wild career and that I've seen more as a lawyer of seven years than she has as a lawyer of forty. But I've gotten it into my head that I have to be strong, I have to be independent.

Fuck me, man, I'm currently white knuckling through life and hanging on by a fucking thread. A few weeks ago I was about an hour away from checking myself in to a mental health facility until my best friends swooped in to help me. And then I went right back to work.

And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means. And it hits me like a fucking truck.

And it says that you can't endure everything. That at some point you need to rest and heal. That if you take on too much you will break. And that all of that is okay.

How am I supposed to move on with my life after reading this?

[three--rings]

Certainly there are many messages within Lord of the Rings, but you have to think that Tolkien would have been happy that this message in particular was still being conveyed all these years later.

[islandoforder]

wait so vesper died in 2003, 23 years ago, and nancy is 51. she was 28 when she wrote that obituary. how long do you think she’d been working for the omaha sunday scoop at that point? no wonder it hit hard, a girl just a few years younger than she is, passionate and driven like she is, who never had the chance to be more. how much of nancy’s career do you think was driven by the determination that someone needs to tell the story of people who think they’ll disappear without anyone noticing, how many nights did she spend doggedly pursing a story, exhausted and upset, and pulling out that old obituary for the strength to keep pushing forwards?

[plagued-by-visions]

And they didn’t have a body. Nancy is an investigative journalist. Did she look for Vesper after she disappeared? Is that what sparked her career? Searching for a girl who vanished into thin air no body to be found. How long did she look? Do you think she looked longer than the cops? It often takes a while for a missing persons case with very little evidence to become a closed case. Nancy didn’t give up on Vesper when everyone else did.

[nivialku7]

And all of this has to be taken in the context of a Snow White bat that can turn into a human man who had sex with a human woman and then turned back into a bat inside a vending machine and disappeared for the next three and a half decades while that human woman also died in an unrelated vending machine accident.

A lot of people are defending the megalodon backflipping over a tsunami that was this season’s ending and while it was fun I feel like a lot of people are quick to forgive what is very much a recurring pattern of us finding unfathomable depth in the details of D20 only for the finale to be literal clown fuckery.

[creekfiend]

many women are excited to get old and weird, but i have great news that it's fully possible to become weird now, before you get old. just imagine the heights of weirdness you will be able to reach in fifty years if you get started now. that's what I think

[nat-20s]

You can replace [ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY] with [SCROLLING] but watch out. This sucks bad 👍

[nat-20s]

Some things about this post since getting quite a few notes:

1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!

2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.

3. I think there are times where scrolling is fine. Right now, for example, I'm being connected to a machine for two hours to donate plasma and platelets. Yes this is a brag but it is also a time where scrolling is one of the few things I can do. (Though I will probably also read or watch something on phone lol)

[wizard-council-bureaucrat]

hmmm, this seems to be some kind of curse breaking spell… be free ye reader

[wewindondowntheroad]

That post about 30 year old coming of age stories?

I’ve been thinking about it all morning. What would the plot points be for that? What makes a 30 year old coming of age story?

Old folks sound off in the comments

[lawfulgoodness]

A few ideas:

Burying a parent that never encouraged independence

Acknowledging a trauma you've spent your life ignoring

Finally opening yourself up to a truly mutual, non-transactional relationship (platonic or romantic)

Leaving a community (religious or otherwise) that has kept you from growing

[intrepidheroine]

Obtaining a diagnosis for a health condition (mental or physical) and finally getting treatment and recontextualizing your life.

Student loan forgiveness kicking in, suddenly you can afford to live. That one small change snowballs into something big.

Starting over after the end of The Big Relationship you thought would define your life. Engaging in a new hobby/social group that adds context to how small life felt in that relationship.

You find yourself with a pet you have to care for, which teaches you to care for yourself.

You take a class somewhere that unlocks skills you didn't know you had.

[dee-the-red-witch]

People are tagging it, but I'm just gonna say it.

GENDER TRANSITION.

Coming out as any stripe of queer.

The post-incarceration experience after any significant amount of time.

[brennan-lee-mother]

Simply cannot stop thinking about the fact that HJ and LaVonte are Sire and Childe and yet seem to have no hierarchy between them at all. HJ unquestionably treats LaVonte as his equal and LaVonte feels perfectly comfortable yelling at and physically assaulting HJ, both of which are kind of unthinkable under the social rules of the Camarilla. It’s LaVonte’s name first in Worthy and Wingstreet Industries. They are Sire and Childe but more importantly they are partners.

[katsparkart]

Nom nom nom….

[palukoo]

have 30 uninterrupted seconds of olivia de havilland fucking up. for her birthday <3

[dramaticpokemonpictures]

Rest in peace Akihiro Miwa (1935-2026)

I haven't seen anyone talking about this and just wanted to make a quick post on here.

Akihiro Miwa recently passed away peacefully june 20th, and was not only a drag queen and a queer icon, but also the japanese voice of Arceus in the movie Arceus and the jewel of life, as well as the witch from Howl's moving castle and Moro from Princess Mononke.

Rest in peace and thank you for the wonderfull impact you made in this world.

[omgcheckplease]

omg. Just finished penciling the first chapter of Check, Please! Year 5 🥹

[h0lyshift]

The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.

[melyzard]

Did you know that soda machines at restaurants and movie theaters spy on you? That most common new cars now record your sexual preferences and send it to the manufacturer (and also data about anyone who also gets in your car, walks by your car, and maybe happens to be within visual range of your car)? That grocery stores are trying to force customers to download an app to scan barcodes on shelves instead of putting up prices, so the app can scan the phone, decide how much that customer should be squeezed for, and adjust the price? That more and more innocent people are being sent to jail for crimes committed hundreds of miles away because an AI facial recognition algorithm spit their faces out and the cops didn't bother to do the most basic of checks?

I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.

And often, they are assholes, too.

[thememedaddy]

[389]

sorry for being intense about everything, it’ll happen again