Mistr Fuzzles

[everythingfox]

Really enjoying the scritches

[icarus-suraki]

[catchymemes]

[teaboot]

"she thinks this is bonding behavior" my friend this has BECOME your bonding behaviour

[pangur-and-grim]

pressed against the heating vent with TWO big pillows

[charl0ttan]

dog i gotta move like yesterday

[clacy2812]

Teethies <3

[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.

[spirkbitch]

They keep trying to make trek for modern sensibilities but they’re just making tos look excessively slutty

[spirkbitch]

Exhibit A

[spirkbitch]

I liked these tags but I had something to say about it

I already assumed that the dresses were a choice made by the female crew, mostly for my own sanity. They do show (very infrequently) women in tos wearing pants

And they show men wearing dresses in tng, but only ever in the background (unless you count the dress uniforms)

And obviously I like that these were included, but they were clearly a cop out decision.

“Yeah see men can wear dresses, women can wear pants. They just don’t choose to” reads as “of course I’m not sexist, women just like wearing tiny little dresses in the future”

And thinking about it from a late sixties perspective, many women did see more revealing clothes as an empowering choice to make. Men wanted women covered and modest, understated makeup, only exposed or done up for male enjoyment. Some women took that in the opposite direction and chose to wear more extravagant makeup, revealing clothing, and brighter colors. It was a progressive time, and some of the choices made in an attempt to highlight that in the show did not age well.

But at the same time, you can clearly see that some of these “progressive” points were only added in as a write off.

[anghraine]

And thinking about it from a late sixties perspective, many women did see more revealing clothes as an empowering choice to make. Men wanted women covered and modest, understated makeup, only exposed or done up for male enjoyment. Some women took that in the opposite direction and chose to wear more extravagant makeup, revealing clothing, and brighter colors.

I think it's worth emphasizing that this very genuinely is the main reason for the "sexist" miniskirts. IRL, women were often not choosing between sexy miniskirts and non-objectifying pants, but long skirts (respectable) and short skirts (rebellious). Deliberately wearing short skirts as rebellion against patriarchal control that mandated long skirts or maaaaybe loose slacks on a good day is still hardly unknown among girls/women leaving conservative communities in the USA, and was only more commonly coded that way at the time.

Sally Kellerman, the actress for Elizabeth Dehner, found the close fit of the supposedly more feminist pants uncomfortable and is often given something to hold in front of her because she was so intensely self-conscious about them. Grace Lee Whitney (Janice Rand) loathed the more "proper" initial look and worked with the (gay) costume designer, William Ware Theiss, to design a different, more daring and cool-looking aesthetic for women of the future that appealed to her personally. That was what resulted in the miniskirt uniform design. No doubt it served the objectifying tastes of various straight men involved, but literally zero of them were responsible for the design of Whitney's and Nichols's uniforms.

Not only did Nichelle Nichols not consider herself suffering from the miniskirt, she admitted later to sometimes deliberately lifting the skirt even higher at Uhura's station to show off more of her legs because she hadn't worked so hard on her body to not show them off. Meanwhile, Jill Ireland, the actress for Leila Kalomi, was nervous that she might have to wear the kinds of revealing costumes so many other TOS actresses did, and Theiss instead designed her the comfortable overalls she wears as Leila in "This Side of Paradise."

The kneejerk backlash against short skirts (in decidedly more reactionary eras of both Star Trek and US culture) led to both the large-scale disappearance of the skirts and the snide commentary on them throughout later iterations of Trek, with zero consideration of the fact that they were designed by a gay man to suit the preferences of the leading actresses at a time when they commonly represented rebellion. The Berman-era Star Trek productions tut-tutting at the old costumes while actually putting actresses in uncomfortable, form-fitting uniforms they disliked is ... uh, something else.

Even while the female Starfleet costumes shifted towards pants (and militarism) in the movies, btw, Nichelle Nichols insisted on getting to wear skirts as Uhura—because she liked them and she had little patience for 80s respectability.

[existennialmemes]

Not to sound like a decrepit, rambling corpse about it, but back in my day Word used to be a pre installed program that came with your computer, if you were running Windows.

No subscription. Just program.

On your computer. You got to use it forever and ever and never had to worry about it going away.

Because it was physically on your computer. As a program. That you actually owned. Not because you got it separately, but because it was a standard inclusion with your computer.

I'm sorry but I'll just never get over it. I remember when companies cared about their products being usable out of the box. I remember when our things belonged to us.

Old man shaking fist at cloud, wherein the cloud is the background of the Windows 98 logo.

[penny-anna]

This is how it seems to work:

Transformers Cartoon: this is Firetruck Steve he turns into a Firetruck wee woo wee woo

Transformers Comics: Firetruck Steve struggles with drug addiction due to his crushing guilt at not having saved more people from the flames

Transformers Fandom: Firetruck Steve must be held accountable for his war crimes

[penny-anna]

everyone is talking about various firetrucks guys in the comments but i just wanna illustrate how unexagerrated this is

Transformers Cartoon: this is Shockwave he's got 1 big eye for a face bcos he's a baddie

Transformers Comics: cybertron has an ancient punishment called 'empurata' which involves amputating the hands & face and replacing them with claws and a featureless mask to mark the offender forever as a criminal :)

[alixero]

I might be getting him mixed up with another cybertronian but dude is 11000% a straight up monster that calling him a war criminal would be an Injustice

[penny-anna]

You're not wrong but as per the canon where he underwent empurata he FULLY did not deserve it, he was essentially assassinated by the fascist police state for standing up for the rights of the oppressed

& then he went on to become a full on monster but in his defense in addition to the empurata they also uninstalled all his emotions

[prokopetz]

"It doesn't help your credibility to exaggerate, most employers wouldn't literally work you to death" like, I used to work in distribution. If booking a truck driver for back to back shifts until they fall asleep at the wheel, crash, and die counts as being worked to death, I have personally met employers who've worked employees to death and gotten away with a slap on the wrist. It may not be universal, but it's a hell of a lot more common than a lot of us would prefer to think.

[simplysnaps]

Death by spreadsheet is an acceptable degree of separation for most in middle management. They can sleep at night without guilt for what they've done, because the system charitably setup twelve degrees of separation between their choices and the real-world harm. But do not be fooled, their choices set that harm into motion. Without their reckless disregard for human life, the harm would not be done.

I used to work at a TV station in Ohio. On weekends, we only had an 11pm news broadcast. Not much happened on weekends, ya know? I worked Monday-Friday 9-5, but someone on the weekend shift quit, so I also had to come in at 9pm on Sat/Sun to work the 11pm news. It was brutal. I worked seven days a week, even if two of them were ~3hrs.

This was a particularly bad winter. One Saturday, we had a level 2 snow emergency: That means you should only travel if you absolutely must. Like, it's not uncommon for cops to pull you over in level 2 emergencies to ask where you're going and why. It is genuinely dangerous to drive in that much snow.

I told my boss as much, how I almost crashed on the way home at 12:30am after a news broadcast. I told him I would need to call off if there were a snow emergency again during a night snow.

He told me, point blank, "If you ever call me about the goddamn snow, I will take it as a call of resignation."

And that was that! The very next Saturday, snow fell again. It was a level 2, but would become level 3 by sunup. Level 3 means driving is literally illegal except for ambulances and snow plows. I stared out the window, watching the snow, and I had to make a choice.

"Will I die for this? Will I kill myself to keep this job?" I made $11/hr.

Yes, managers work you to death. That's their job.

[aspiringsorceress]

Every single labor protection is written in the blood of those who were literally worked to death, and business owners and profiteers would claw those protections back with glee if they could. They will squeeze every red cent from your body if they are allowed, and write off your death for an insurance payout that they'll try to pocket for themselves while hiring your replacement for half the pay they gave to you.

[npc-dude-art]

Oh no the old man yaoi got me. They Compel me. Also KitKatt is such a fucking cute ship name

Teor Pridesire is really testing the limits of my art skills tho

[junk-junk-junction]

「The Art of Shin Godzilla」 ✖️ 画：鶴田謙二 「ジ・アート・オブ・シン・ゴジラ」 (©TOHO CO.LTD.) 2016年12月30日初版

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

I will never understand how normalized it is to put cameras in your home now. I can recognize some scenarios where it makes sense- if I had a stalker for example, but like. It would have to be That Big for me to consider it. People today use it to tell their kids it's time to stop playing video games and do homework like. Like?? I do not understand how you don't understand how harmful it is to raise kids with the sense they're always being watched like why does anyone under normal circumstances invite this into their home

[wizardarchetypes]

saw a video recently, recorded by a camera in a child's bedroom, of a toddler reading her favorite book after bed time. her mom went in and told her it was time to sleep, and she said, 'but i just love reading so much.' her mom laughed indulgently and told her to sleep once the book was finished. she agreed, but before the video ended, she said, 'you're so silly for watching me!'

she was smiling when she said it, but i found that one sentence so abysmal. that toddler knew her mom didn't just happen to come and check on her. she understands that there is a camera in her room by which her mom (and as far as she might comprehend, any adult) can access her in her private space, in her private time, at all times.

can you imagine? never on your own. can't sleep? too bad. you're a child and the grown ups are watching you. lie in bed in the dark. pretend to sleep. behave.

it's 10 pm and the rest of the house is enjoying winding down after a long day. your parents don't need to worry about putting on a professional face like they do at work. your older siblings get to be themselves instead of who they have to be at school. everyone gets to relax. but not you.

it's 10 pm, and you're three years old, and you must continue to do everything right, because they are watching you.

oh, and when you don't behave, if it's cute enough, your mother will post footage of you in your bedroom for millions of strangers to watch!

[actualized-animal]

Did You Learn?

you can lie on the floor in your home and the Soft Baby who lives there will approach you. this will increase your chance of contact with Nose Wet by 75%

[ororium-z]

Happy Pride!

[rootbeergoddess]

Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions

[thesaltofcarthage]

I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.

[harpsi-corpse]

The cards see all.

[oldpaintings]

Jeune femme de dos by Delphin Enjolras (French, 1857--1945)