agenda? in this economy?

hey i'm rog. he/they. was @thenileguard. i'm gonna rub my trans autistic hands all over your faves. icon courtesy of @basementqueer19, header from @asphyxiatedredherring

[a-very-distinctive-blog]

You know. the robot bodies.

[spoiledmilks]

i really like this area

so i painted it

[andhumanslovedstories]

I’m worried when it comes to fictional characters and the impact their stories made upon me, the dead wife haunting my narrative is Natasha Romanoff. My once beloved, now fraught who I was in the process of divorcing but first we went on one last trip to see if we could save our marriage, during which we for some reason made the choice to visit Dead Woman Cliff (The Cliff For Killing Women) and well. You can imagine how this complicated the grieving process. Why do we even have that cliff.

[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.

[cowboysoupbowl]

women 🤠❤️

[viralfrog]

[lannister-ing]

I regret to inform you that it has officially been 15 years since A Dance with Dragons was released

[ofchaosgoddess]

help I’m having ideas beyond my available free time

[nothereforthedrama]

help I'm having ideas beyond my available energy levels

[scavengre]

i wanted to show some appreciation for one of my favorite works on the archive, Our Worst Creatures! beautiful piece i think more people should read. i love charlotte balfour so so much.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

The thing about the "all evil fictional women from myth and legend are misunderstood and in reality their story was retold to make them evil because men were afraid of their power" trend is that it's low-key also misogynistic to assume women are incapable of being terrible people purely due to being women.

[faemorrigan]

im realizing very fast that people do not in fact know that sometimes things in stories suck on purpose and it sucking is the point

[faemorrigan]

"this story is misogynistic!!"

>looks inside

>about the pressures of societal misogyny and how its bad

[vaders-georg]

in my head the star wars equivalent of tswift is some human woman named tay’lor spiff or something and her stans are losing their minds over theories that she’s secretly a jedi singing about the horrors of war, even though she’s from a neutral system that hasn’t seen so much as a moral panic in 50 years

[vaders-georg]

the theories get even more egregious during the imperial era, with people straight up thinking she joined the rebellion in secret and is loading her songs with subliminal rebel propaganda. their main piece of evidence for this is if you play a certain song backwards, it sounds like she’s saying “freedom” in shyriiwook. the fans get really defensive if you point out she’s performed at the yearly empire day celebration thrice now and her family historically owned ewok slaves

[vaders-georg]

i regret to inform both you beautiful people that this isn’t going to go how you think it will

[vaders-georg]

spiff fans (also known as “spiffies”) insist that the two decommissioned venator-class destroyers spiff purchased, the bad blood and the reputation, are for diplomatic purposes that benefit the rebellion. jedi’lors have concocted theories that she served on both ships during the clone wars and was respectful of every clone that served there, despite her courtship of a gravball player that thrice advocated against the clone veterans being granted natural citizenship

[unabashed-unbothered-deactivate]

🪐chirodactylmanisagatewaydrug Follow •••

all goofing aside I don't understand the urge to reimagine Tay'lor Allisoarn Spiff as a secret Jedi fighting for the rebellion when the rebel alliance is literally like overflowing with women fighting the empire. Gara and Ke'Cha and Mileu and Halcey are right there. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't like Taylor but why would you hang all your hopes of taking down the empire on her

🤖 thedroidteer-andthegarbagecompactor Follow

Isn't Lady Gara a force sensitive?

🪐chirodactylmanisagatewaydrug Follow

Hence why I put her in the list of famous force using women who are in the rebel alliance?

(okay ignore the fact I've put an image in here but this is ops icon)

🪐chirodactylmanisagatewaydrug Follow

#im sure op has this post muted by now but Ur icon is so real op

The icon is because of this post

👤Eelinrmalice-deactivated201X023

btw to just clarify for anyone who sees this reblog of this post

op is basically saying something along the lines of "yea ik tay'lor spiff is a jedi but like. why is she y'all's only force using rebel icon when there are all these other force users in the rebellion???"

i might have worded this badly but hopefully i got the main point across

🪐chirodactylmanisagatewaydrug Follow

Hi OP here I most CERTAINLY DID NOT SAY TAY'LOR SPIFF IS A JEDI???

(based on this post)

[vaders-georg]

[thegeekylady52]

you wouldn't believe who showed up in today's Jango Fett comic issue

(Jango Fett #4 by Ethan Sacks and Luke Ross)

[vaders-georg]

head in my hands. she looks so much like the design i made too

[vaders-georg]

how are u falling for hypothetical propaganda

[vaders-georg]

happy 100k to this post. this awful awful post

[doriangraysrockcollection]

i must say, i am a huge fan of when a book is in the middle of a very exciting plot containing many interesting problems when out of nowhere for a few pages it's like, "hey by the way, real quick, here's a detailed explanation of the city's water filtration system! i'm telling you this for a reason and you should worry about it. anyway! haha okay back to the plot" and you just get to be Scared for a while

[doriangraysrockcollection]

i am kissing you on the mouth right now

you are the only person who understands me. you and the person who tagged a series of unfortunate events

[demilypyro]

how dare a work challenge me. you think I can't understand your little metaphors and allegories? fuck you I totally can. give me that book. oh what the fuck this thing is full of words

[wickedsick]

[fanonical]

genuinely, i think watching live theatre can improve your media literacy so much

like people who look at doctor who and are like 'lol the effects are so rubbish'

maybe watch a stage play where there's no backdrops and half the characters are played by the same three guys in different hats and maybe you will calm down

[doeishhabits]

arthur is definitely the little spoon no doubt 🦬🦌

[veirven]