bluewlnteroses

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me: i finally get to have all my summer free of college !!

also me calculating my next two years of college: so if i study all summer and i take a final on february i'll be able to take two more classes next semester i should start right away

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{Quotes marguaxpoetry on Instagram / Sarah Kay}

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Are you trying to kill your mother? Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

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kind of obsessed with the characterization of jayce and viktor as fundamentally good people who will also go absolutely batshit insane if you separate them because theyre also ridiculously codependent to a degree that is concerning for everybody else's wellbeing. they were literally away from each other for a couple of months and almost ended the entire world

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— fatima aamer bilal, from being unwanted is a language

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Can you tell me why Frodo is so important in lotr? Why can't someone else, anyone else, carry the ring to mordor?

but someone else could.

that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.

(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)

but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.

it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.

and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.

(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)

but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.

someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.

I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.

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Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

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imagine you’re going on an adventure with the person you love most in the whole world. but every step you take to get closer to the end drains him and there’s nothing you can do to help, not really. you can’t take the weight off his shoulders. more than anything, you want to protect him, but even that becomes more difficult with each passing day. so instead you try to comfort him. you hold his hand through the day and him through the night. he wakes up in your arms and, for a moment, forgets everything else. also gollum is there

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i love it when two adult men have a homoerotic teenage girl friendship and falling out

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Everything between Jayce and Viktor can really be traced back to their childhood inciting incidents and it’s killing me.

Jayce: a miracle saves him and his mom, forever imprinting him with the certainty that miracles do exist, they can be controlled, he can save his loved ones no matter how awful things get, if he can just be smart and bold and quick enough.

Viktor: he saw the horror of what Singed had done—of forcing a creature to live against its will, of the degradation and terror of being fundamentally changed. For a while he thought he understood Singed, when he decided that he was willing to throw away all his principles to survive his own body. But he didn’t, really. He didn’t understand. There was still a line he would not cross. He wanted to die human.

It’s fitting, then, and unspeakably tragic, that Jayce is the one who played Singed’s role in the end. Because you can’t ask Jayce to let a loved one go, when he knows there’s a miracle that can save him, the solution is right there, it will work if you will just let him try—and so he forces a change onto Viktor against his will. He traps him into the Arcane, takes apart and reassembles his body, strips him of his selfhood and humanity. All so that Viktor will live. Singed wasn’t talking about the desperation not to die—he was talking about the desperation not to lose someone you love.

And so Viktor is…changed. He lives, whether he wants to or not.

And so Jayce loses him anyway.

[bluewlnteroses]

"To have committed no crime but that of being a daughter"

- Claudia and Lestat

interview with the vampire // joan macleod, the shape of a girl // sophokles // holyaches on X // Hélène Cixous, Stigmata: Escaping Texts; from ‘Love of the Wolf’, tr. Keith Cohen // traci brimhall, Lullaby on Mount Moriah // ocean vuong, on earth we're briefly gorgeous // dhermann hesse, demian // Hélène Cixous // ethel cain, family tree // chen chen, poplar street // fatima aamer bilal, i am not a person that can be loved for a very long time // sharon olds, I wanted to be there when my father died // desireé dallagiacomo // melancholymist on tumblr // kyung-sook shin, Please Look After Mom // ocean vuong, someday I'll love ocean vuong

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holding my own face in my own hands and screaming “there is no connection without an open heart! you must be brave! you must be honest! you must be true!” in the mirror

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me writing the only person that writes fics about the rare ship i love like a desperate ex i miss youuu please update i wanna read moreeee

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on a confusing turn of events i end up watching formula 1 and enjoy it

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@lotrweek 2024 — day 2: histories and legacies ↳ aragorn + arwen and the lay of leithian

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HELLO there's news about a new spiderman movie mcu im begging you bring back harley keener

peter post nwh is in desperately need of someone who is smart and trustworthy enough to help him from time to time to deal with spiderman and also his life because he's a mess and that kid who ramdomly showed up out of nowhere at tony's funeral because he met him when he was like nine is the perfect candidate to fulfil that role me thinks