everything in moderation, except when nah fuck that
@swallowtailskies
30s / UK / queer / white / anxious / probably ADHD / they/them
"It is not fair to treat people as if they are finished beings. Everyone is always becoming and unbecoming." – Kathleen Winter
Hello! I'm Sol. I talk a lot of guff, rage/laugh wildly at the world, and occasionally say profound shit. These are mostly indistinguishable.
Tagging: Feel free to ask me to tag for stuff, I'll do my best. I am tired and blessed with a busy offline life, so tagging=imperfect. No offence taken if you need to unfollow!
Content: I frequently reblog like a sleepy raccoon on meth but never intentionally reblog AI art or TERF/MAGA/fascist/racist/pseudoscience blogs - please let me know if you see that shit on my blog so I can yeet it into the fire.
Past posts: I've been on Tumblr over 15 years. Some of my past posts won't reflect my current opinions. Feel free to ask me about them! I don't usually delete/edit old posts unless I believe they're causing harm. Please tell me if you think this is the case.
Interests: Silly Little Gremlins (affectionate), disability justice, accessibility, antiracism, decolonisation, confronting whiteness, restorative justice, neurodivergence, mental health, adultism/ageism, interesctional feminism, unschooling, science (especially envsci), kindness, queerness, class politics, environmental justice, activist organising, fandom meta, nature, memes, writing, folk music & dancing, kindness.
Accountability: Always trying to be better at allyship, listening & learning. If I cause you harm (even if minor), I'd like to know. I'd appreciate it if you could do so kindly and privately - this will also be more effective as my anxiety goes wheeeeeeeee with public callouts and I often have to ignore them to protect my health.
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.
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.
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?
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.
god i’m not even through one episode of paranormal home inspectors and it rules, this lady thought she was being haunted by the wails of the restless dead but she was just listening to raccoons fuck in her attic
Fun fact a scientist who is very not spiritual or superstitious began seeing corner eye hallucinations and feeling intense fear and a presence in his lab around the same time that everyone else in the building was suddenly reporting it haunted.
Determined, he found that the “hauntings” stopped when the industrial air conditioning unit, that had just recently been installed, was turned off. We’ve found that measurable micro vibrations in a structure cause immense fear, and a feeling of a presence and corner eye hallucinations – just like when you watch a scary movie alone at night and you see things move in the corner of your eye or are afraid to go in the cellar because you’re convinced someone’s in there.
Why?
Because many members of our species built homes in and around cliffs and caves for tens of thousands of years. And it’s likely that these certain shaky vibrations give us intense fear and a need to move far away because that would have saved our lives if the cave were collapsing or unstable.
You’ll notice it’s always falling apart, dilapidated homes that are “haunted” - or very very old restored homes. These places might just be slightly structurally unsound. That’s all.
That’s infrasound, sounds that are below 20hz, or the limit of normal human hearing. Things that produce infrasound in nature include severe weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, tigers, alligators, rhinoceros; also known as things that can kill people. We developed an evolutionary sense of dread when our brains perceive sounds we cannot hear. The vibrations from infrasound can also vibrate the eye causing visual hallucinations.
You know what also causes infrasound? A LOT of machines, especially large industrial ones. There’s a reason haunted house stories started popping up in post industrialization. That scientist was Vic Tandy and he wrote about it in a the paper Ghosts in the Machines
“Vic Tandy, experimental officer and part-time lecturer in the school of international studies and law at Coventry University, along with Dr. Tony Lawrence of the University’s psychology department, wrote in 1998 a paper called “Ghosts in the Machine” for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Their research suggested that an infrasonic signal of 19 Hz might be responsible for some ghost sightings. Tandy was working late one night alone in a supposedly haunted laboratory at Warwick, when he felt very anxious and could detect a grey blob out of the corner of his eye. When Tandy turned to face the grey blob, there was nothing.The following day, Tandy was working on his fencing foil, with the handle held in a vice. Although there was nothing touching it, the blade started to vibrate wildly. Further investigation led Tandy to discover that the extractor fan in the lab was emitting a frequency of 18.98 Hz, very close to the resonant frequency of the eye given as 18 Hz by NASA. This, Tandy conjectured, was why he had seen a ghostly figure—it was, he believed, an optical illusion caused by his eyeballs resonating. The room was exactly half a wavelength in length, and the desk was in the centre, thus causing a standing wave which caused the vibration of the foil.“
just wrote 10 paragraphs to my MP asking him to push back against the EHRC's updated guidance, aka the trans bathroom bill.
Durham pride happened today. the Reform UK led council cut the funding, with the deputy leader, a gay man himself, citing "gender ideology, kids on puberty blockers, and men in women's spaces" as the reason he disapproved of pride. it went ahead thanks to group such as Durham Miner's Association fundraising (solidarity forever!) but the fact still stands that this attack on trans people hurt the entire queer community.
this new guidance hurts queer people in many ways (another example: gay and lesbian couples where one person is trans will no longer be protected as same sex couples under the Equalities Act) and of course, hurts our trans siblings the most (feeling unsure or unsafe about using public bathrooms will lead to trans people going out less. trans men are expected to either break the law or simply not go. trans people will be excluded from pools, gyms and spas that don't have mixed sex changing rooms.)
i wrote about all that, but you may have your own thoughts or relevant experiences about how this guidance has or will impact you or your loved ones. so write it. call on your MP to do the following:
Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate and a free vote on this Code.
Support any motion tabled in Parliament objecting to it.
Write to the Minister for Women and Equalities and the Prime Minister.
or, if you don't have it in you to write ten paragraphs (which is very understandable), you should still fill out this email template with your own personal touches and sign this petition, if you're british. and if you're not british, you should reblog this so your british followers can see it.
40 days. One email. Your name on the right side of history.
Launch a review into strengthening legal protections and clearer enforcement against discrimination, harassment and exclusion of trans women
don't save this for later. don't put a pin in it, planning to come back to it later. later may never come. we only have 31 days. do it now while it's on your mind. it really doesn't take long.
doubly funny that I saw a compilation of all the corporate accounts like "aw thanks elmo, we're doing well" meanwhile all the flesh and blood real human people are extremely not okay
Good to see San Antonio’s queer community saying HELL NO to Greg Abbott’s absolute fucking loser behavior. Rainbow crosswalks aren’t allowed anymore? Okay, let the LGBTQts take the whole sidewalk then, dickmunch!
Where's it made? Who brought it here? How much were they paid? Who makes it? Is it made in separate parts and put together? How much were they all paid to do this? Where do they get the materials? Who paid for that? Who brings it there? How much were they paid? Who streamlined the base materials? How much were they paid? Who gathered the base materials? Where? How much were they paid? Is it good for them? Is it good for us? Is it good for the land? Is it necessary? Is it biodegradable? How much does it hurt? Do I need it? Do I even want it?
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