Too Many Things

Various things I find funny, a good amount of Star Trek, and so on

[ostolero]

[flying-potato2]

human ears are such bullshitttttt i cant even emote with these. whats the fucking point if i cant swivel my ears in ur direction or like perk them up when i hear something interesting or point them all back when something scary happens. whats even the point

[grimoiremanifest]

situation dire. i've been saying 'huzzah', 'alas', and 'tis unironically for like a year now. harmless so far.

however. i hath noticed i now mark half of my goodbyes with 'i must away'. it's spreading

[grimoiremanifest]

Dear Lord please not this post. I promise I'm cooler than this

[lettuce-tv]

don't go into the humanities because they're unprofitable and don't go into stem cuz its getting torn apart right now and don't go into buisness because it's competetive and speculative and don't go into education because it pays like shit. Just lay on thr ground. Just lay on the ground.

[powerbottombrucespringsteen]

The thing is nobody at pride is evaluating you to determine if you’re queer enough to be there because they’re too busy thinking “it’s so hot out” and “why is this lemonade 12 dollars?”

[100493503004422]

I don't want a Career I want to Fuck Around

[dreamfarer]

And not find out. I cannot stress enough how much I do not want to find out.

[100493503004422]

I don't want a Career I want to Fuck Around

[dreamfarer]

And not find out. I cannot stress enough how much I do not want to find out.

[ambassadorquark]

what if you were like, the pope but also the president and you got kidnapped and your first course of action was to call your gay stepson who manages a dave & busters. grand nagus zek lives this every day

[ayesopod]

something terrible. echoes of past intrusions. barely discernible

[iamnotshazam]

"our son made it through the war to come of age, let's fucken party! rsvp only if you're a little bitch who's NOT coming. all y'all not dead of alcohol poisoning by morning (lmao losers) get dunkt on"

[alex51324]

Note that "carriages at (time)" would by then have been a rather old-fashioned way of indicating at about what time guests should expect a social event to end. The impression here is that things are expected to be fairly sedate until midnight, when the adults (relatives, friends-of-the-family, parents of the youth's friends, etc.) clear out, and the young people are free to get their rager on.

[rathayibacter]

you spill dr pepper on the concrete and a single perfect rose pushes up out of a crack

[brawltogethernow]

Look what my friend with no social media posted to the chat with the damning staggered timestamps of 1:11, 1:37, and 1:42 A.M.

[swagophile]

its kinda messed up that everyones so mean now. can we go to nicies world together. i would like it if we did

[clown-guitar]

[no beers in] do you think im ever going to belong somewhere

[whatwwwwwww]

[yet to even pack the bowl] do you think it'll last

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[berensreverie]

A homo neanderthalensis and a homo sapiens. Happy pride!

[magnetothemagnificent]

[id: art of a Homo sapiens man and Homo neanderthalensis man crouching by a cave wall with their hands on the wall together, among many other handprints. A fire is casting their shadows on the wall. The Homo sapiens man is laughing and reaching towards the Homo neanderthalensis man, who is looking at him and blushing. ]

[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.