I promise I'm human

they/them transmasc disaster Constantly obsessed with new things but my love for Tolkien prevails

[fromthemouthofkings]

A group of far-future linguists and archeologists suddenly *poof* into existence in front of me. One is holding a tablet. "What is the difference between 'red sauce' and 'tomato sauce?'" they ask me. "The distinction is not clear in extant texts from this time and place."

"Uh, they're the same thing," I tell them. "Who are you?"

"Yes!" the being with the tablet exclaims.

One of the other researchers groans. "No! My thesis...months of writing wasted..." One of the others comforts them.

"Now, what is this object for?" The first researcher holds up a discolored, dinged-up plastic object. It's clearly been buried in the ground for quite some time, but the two holes and the scuffed plastic window are distinctive.

"That's a cassette tape. You record music with it."

"Interesting, interesting." The being enters something on the tablet.

"How are you speaking English?"

"Sophisticated translation technology," one of the researchers confides. "We are students of your society. From the future."

"What does this pictogram represent?" The researcher with the tablet turns it around so that the screen faces me.

It's the eggplant emoji.

"Sex," I say. "Why do you need to ask me this if you can time travel or whatever? Can't you just go wherever you want to go and look around and see how these things are being used?"

The beings shift guiltily and look at each other. "Technically, travel to times and places prior the advent of time travel is strictly prohibited. Paradoxes, you know."

"Oh."

"We must be get back before our advisor returns to the lab. Just don't tell anyone you saw us, alright? The space-time continuity depends on it. Can you do that?"

"Uh, sure, I guess?"

One of them pats me on the head. "And don't go to Mars."

"Okay. Wait, why? Is it dangerous?"

"No. Just not worth it."

The group disappears in a shimmering light.

The cassette clatters to the sidewalk behind them.

Out of befuddlement, mainly, I pick it up. It's clearly old, discolored and scuffed, but it still has tape in it.

I carry the tape around in my pocket for a while. The curiosity builds. I want to know what's on that tape. I don't have a cassette player anymore, so I go to Goodwill and pick up the first one I can find, praying that it still works. I plug it in. It turns on.

I slide the tape inside. It's dirty, but it still seems to be in decent shape. I snap the player closed and hit play. The wheels begin to turn. I hold my breath.

A familiar tune starts up. A wobbly voice comes out of the machine.

We're no strangers to love

[1percentcharge]

Pirate jokes

[fictionalred]

where's @nmbs-sncb-official i miss @nmbs-sncb-official

[nmbs-sncb-official]

Apologies, we had a delay because folks were wandering around the tracks

[fictionalred]

[layaart]

anticipating an exponential increase in murderbot misgendering so I drew something about it

[goodbyevanny]

Why did need God to intervene if they could’ve written a new book of life like Aziraphale started doing with the blank book? Crowley and Aziraphale could have written a new universe and continued to watch over it as the ONLY angel and demon.

[goodbyevanny]

I just think that the versions with all the trauma, suffering and history deserved a happy ending. I don’t think the take away should be that the only way to get a happy ending is for those things to have never happened to you.

[neverkilledanyone]

I really feel like this is just like Supernatural all over again...

[rocksandboulders]

I really thought that Aziraphale and Crowley were going to rewrite the Book of Life.

I really thought they were going to become the Illustrator and Author.

I really thought that's why all the books in the shop were made blank.

I really thought God wasn't going to actually exist in a true form, and instead be a kind of omnipresent power of creation.

I really thought that they were going to have their forced-proximity-making-up-with-each-other as they were required to work together to write the new Book of Life.

I really thought that they were going to choose *their* humanity and not a new one.

I really thought they would still be themselves at the end.

I really thought the moral of the story was that the humanity they had was worth protecting, and that life itself (whether mortal or otherwise) was beautiful and inherently important.

I really thought this story was about a love that transcends.

I understand the path they took. However. I do think it missed the mark on what the show was really trying to say.

[alphacentaurinebula]

The destruction of the entire universe and every soul in it is a truly depressing ending. Just because God replaced it with another universe that looked similar doesn't change anything - this is Job and his children all over again. Job doesn't want new children, and neither do I.

[halondrus]

[cutecipher]

can you put that thing on a leash?

[halondrus]

ok

[great-and-small]

Need y’all to know that in the 1970’s a letter to the editor was published in Daily Telegraph where the author offhandedly used the phrase “Tolkien-like gloom” to describe an area with barren trees and JRRT himself wrote back an incensed rebuttal at the use of his name in a context that suggested anything negative about trees.

[great-and-small]

“I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying ‘gloom’, especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies”

He was like how dare you sir I am the biggest tree fan out there

[nerianasims]

A tree tried to eat the hobbits. Tom Bombadil had to save them. There's Mirkwood, "The Forest of Great Fear." I'm on the side of the writer of the letter to the editor.

[great-and-small]

Because Tolkien is Tolkien, he actually directly defended the actions of all his forests and trees in this same letter I’m referencing

[papaya-inspiration]

@businesstiramisu !!!!

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

This is the best thing in the entire world. Here is a transcript:

Beautiful place because trees are loved From Prof. J.R.R. TOLKIEN SIR—with reference to your leader of June 29, I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying “gloom,” especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest was hostile to two-legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machine-loving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things, but it was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story. It would be unfair to compare the Forestry Commission with Sauron because, as you observe, it is capable of repentance; but nothing it has done that is stupid compares with the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetrated by private individuals and minor official bodies. This savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing. J.R.R. TOLKIEN Merton College, Oxford

[invisiblemelonmoose]

@monstrousgourmandizingcats

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

"Old Man Willow did nothing wrong" is not the Tolkien take I expected today, but I'm here for it.

[depraveddame]

All I wanted was at least a SMIDGEN of depressed pathetic Crowley and boy did they deliver

[artbyblastweave]

Been a really long time since I've watched Daredevil but I do remember coming away from it feeling like it presented a pretty compelling internally-consistent moral justification for the vigilante thing. You're not planet-crackingly powerful, it's just that you can hear, in detail, every awful thing your neighbors are doing to each other, every night that they're doing it. You can't not know and you can't pretend not to know and when the kid tells you the next day that he just fell down the stairs you can't fall back on the provided ambiguity to absolve yourself of your responsibility to act. Semi-relatedly, you're really really good at martial arts. Start the clock

[mikkeneko]

[ambertea]

I did that job once.

[pepsimayo]

What are your pronouns and would you like to join my union

[byjove]

I never thought I would be siding with the pope’s involvement in politics and cheering him on. I will say that.

[byjove]

[spaceorphan18]

Okay I did kinda laugh when I saw this

[emmaklee]

[pourquoiwhy]

I learned a new concept

Graceful degradation is the ability of a computer, machine, electronic system or network to maintain limited functionality even when a large portion of it has been destroyed or rendered inoperative. The purpose of graceful degradation is to prevent catastrophic failure. (Tech Target, first result on the search engine)

[biglawbear]

Literal opposite of planned obsolescence. I love you graceful degradation.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Oh neat the first time I heard of the concept the guy described it to me as "catastrophic functionality".

He was talking about it in the context of designing robots that would go in and stop nuclear reactor meltdowns, something that would 100% destroy the robot, but they would be designed to keep functioning and fighting the meltdown for as long as possible. He had some designs where over 80% of the robot has died and it was functionally dragging its corpse around by its one working arm because one more minute of functionality might save thousands.

I've been having a few bad years mental health wise, and thinking about those robots a lot .

[maddie-2022]

This is also why NASA missions usually keep going so long after schedule. They are *masters* of graceful degradation, able to keep machines limping along on minimal power and after sustaining heavy damage

[ohbo-ohno]

bringing this to tumblr because a realer thing has literally never been said