[portraitoftheoddity]

The problem with having OCs is that sometimes you wanna read about your little guy being in situations but unfortunately he is YOUR little guy and no one is gonna put him in that situation but you. Tragic.

[manicpixiedckgirl]

[theaudientvoid]

There are multiple chapters that are set in hospitals where the characters are attempting to recover from injuries that never fully heal. I must once again stress that my experience in WWI was perfectly normal.

[aro-ace-from-outer-space22]

There is a giant horrible mudplain full of unrecoverable and perfectly preserved dead bodies that the characters have to walk through in a land where the air is poisoned gas, and on a compLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: WWI WAS TOTALLY FINE AND NORMAL!!

[kingercainedaddyissues]

Uh??? Tolkien did not claim that???

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead."

He talked about how WWI affected his writing all the time, he was not in denial for how it affected??? Am I missing something????

[alexseanchai]

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/2017/09/tolkien-as-war-novelist-another-way-of-dealing-with-trauma-through-writing/

what Tolkien was adamant about, which has been confusing people for several decades now, is that he wasn't writing about World War Two

[beatrice-otter]

He was also very clear that he was not writing allegory. Now, some people are not very clear on what allegory means. "Allegory" and "symbols" are not the same thing. Allegory is a type of symbolism, but there are a lot of ways of doing symbolism that aren't allegory ... and a lot of people are kind of fuzzy on that. The way allegory is most commonly used in literary and religious analysis is that there is a direct, almost 1:1 correspondence between the literary figure and what it is standing in for.

So, for example, Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of Christian salvation. It's sort of a novel? There are characters who do stuff? but also they are very one-dimensional. The main character is a guy named Christian--yes, really!--who is journeying from his hometown ("the city of destruction") to the Celestial City (heaven). There is not much subtlety to it. It is pretty much what it is. There is no slippage, no playing around with the theme, no places where the symbolism is ambiguous. John Bunyan, the author, is hitting you over the head every step of the way with the Meaning That You Are Supposed To Be Getting From The Story.

Not all allegories are that crude or simplistic; the Narnia books are also allegory for Christianity. They have a lot more subtlety to them and a lot more nuance, and there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't allegorical, but on the crucial matters there is still a 1:1 correspondence. Aslan is Jesus. He's not like Jesus, he's not a character that has some similarities to Jesus or takes themes from the stories of Jesus, he is Jesus.

Tolkien is not doing allegory. Tolkien is taking the material of his life--his faith, his experiences in WWI, his linguistic and historical knowledge, his favorite books--and using them as the building blocks of his story. The themes and imagery and symbols draw heavily from all of that, the characters and settings draw heavily from all of that, but they are too complex to be allegorical. There's a lot of symbolism! It's not allegory.

So, for example, let's take the Dead Marshes referenced above. Does the experience of walking through this muddy wasteland with corpses all around that are rotting but still look like people draw from Tolkien's WWI battlefield experience of dead bodies in the trenches? Of course it does! but there are also a lot of differences. These dead are not from the current war, they are from a previous one--they are a reminder of old conflicts, of the ways the systems and powers of the current war have not come out of nowhere, there is history here. There is meaning that is not drawn from the Somme. And they are also drawing from literary references Tolkien was familiar with--primarily William Morris. Modern readers don't get the references because we have generally not read The House of the Wolflings, but that doesn't mean that the references aren't there.

So people read Tolkien's insistence that he didn't write allegory, and take that to mean that he's saying there isn't symbolic and thematic references. And that isn't what he meant! And also, we focus so much on the thematic references to WWI and Christianity, and we miss most of the other references, which makes it seem like Tolkien's only drawing on WWI, when he's actually doing something more complex.

[boybeetles]

Anyone have more of these so I can add them to my collection

[hairy-legged-vampire-bat]

[boybeetles]

Anyone have more of these so I can add them to my collection

[hairy-legged-vampire-bat]

[mpregeminem]

Normal notification to get at 2am

why is your tumblr popup coughing up my name on its last breath

[oldmanpusspuss]

mpreg... mpreg... hard nipples and everything

[tonysopranoproskater69420]

[ceruleanheaven]

[looking at people younger than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at people older than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at myself] its over

[himynamesisnotemail]

[jame7t]

there’s a war between Sucking and Fucking

[jame7t]

you people cannot be trusted in the war room

[hotvampireadjacent]

Sweden ????

[ashketchupandfries]

So Sweden used to give random citizens control over the official @Sweden Twitter account for like a day/week/month or whatever. As you can see why, it didn’t last long

[leninthesixth]

what do you mean it didn't last long they did this for like seven years between 2011 and 2018 they didn't stop doing it because someone tweeted about cock sdfgsdfgsdfgsdf they kept doing it for four more years after this

[angelbabymikaa]

“potentially mature content” yeah that’s my pervert friend i hope it’s mature content that’s what i followed them for

[were--ralph]

Pixar movie about a dick who is too big to fit in with all the others

[which-ocs]

Which OC?

[ayeforscotland]

favorite fact about Scotland

We invented sex.

[clowned64]

bro how

[ayeforscotland]

The Microbrachius Dicki

[northernolddragon]

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

[masterbaiting]

cute nicknames to call your partner

you oxbridge twat

good lad

you r****d

right little west-winger

you fucking blue peter badge-wearing ponce

boy

christopher fucking robin

giggling streak of piss

joe 90

andy pandy

son

fucking knitted scarf

fucking balaclava

moth

an anorexic leo sayer

good sir

the beige fucking power ranger

the unbaked gingerbread man there

that fucking stick of celery

mate

cack efron

the little man in the red and yellow car

tintin’s sexy sister

my little fuckbob shitpants

bonnie langford

stick man

a quentin blake illustration

britain’s latest post-op transsexual

little boy from the secret garden

jack fucking bauer

professor brian cock

you foxy lady

charlie bucket

his ollieness

[masterbaiting]

you worthless human pop tart

pal

you lanky streak of dysentery

fuck stain

mean spirited little shithouse

[afieldinengland]

like a little prick

a fucking foie gras goose

you tit-faced geek

pathetic pasty-faced fuck-soup

computer boy

you cunt

[salmonella-destroyer-of-worlds]

Actual roman epitaph for a dog

[disgruntled-foreign-patriarch]

humans are the same

[mornington-the-crescent]

[bedlamsbard]

I’ve seen this one doing the rounds a few times (and it makes me cry every time I see it), but was curious about the original Latin text, so I did some digging: it’s a shortened version of CIL 10, 00659, a tombstone from Salernum (modern Salerno, Italy). (source; CIL is the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum).

Portaui lacrimis madidus te, nostra catella,

     Quod feci lustris laetior ante tribus.

Ergo mihi, Patrice, iam non dabis oscula mille

     Nec poteris collo grata cubare meo.

Tristis marmorea posui te sede merentem

     Et iunxi semper manib(us) ipse meis

Morib(us) argutis hominem simulare paratam,

     Perdidimus quales hei mihi delicias.

Tu, dulcis Patrice, nostras attingere mensas

    Consueras, gremio poscere blanda cibos,

Lambere tu calicem lingua rapiente solebas,

     Quem tibi saepe meae sustinuere manus,

Accipere et lassum cauda gaudente frequenter

And here’s my translation:

Wet with tears I have carried you, our little (female) dog, just as I did in happier times fifteen years earlier (lit. “three periods of five years).  For myself, Patrice, now you will not give me a thousand kisses nor will you be able to lie lovingly around/against my neck.  I have sorrowfully placed you, merit-worthy, in a marble tomb and I have joined you always to myself in death, as by your cleverness you matched a human.  Alas, we lost such pleasures for myself!  You, sweet Patrice, were accustomed to join us at our table, to beg charmingly for food (while sitting in our) laps.  You were in the habit of greedily licking our cups with your tongue, which my hands often held for you.  Frequently and joyfully (you) receive a weary one with your (wagging) tail...

tl;dr: this dog was named Patrice and was very, very loved.  (another translation with some glossing of the text.)

[red-faced-wolf-deactivated20251]

[ospreyonthemoon]

It's the fact she's joined to them in death, it's the fact that she sat in her owner's arms and ate their food. That he held the cups down for her to drink from....

Hundreds of years and we still know she was loved. We still know how she liked to sleep. All these years!! Loving dogs is the same!!!!

[thaylepo]

gonna point out too that 15 years is an INSANELY long lifespan for a dog in ancient Rome. This dog was both well loved and well cared for to have lived so long. Obvs there's going to be some statistical overlap with ancient dogs with loving epitaphs having longer lifespans, but in a world without modern vetrinary science or medicine, no canine vaccines, and no nutritionally formulated dog food, this Roman's beloved pooch exceeded even the average pet dog lifespan today.