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For someone who is tired 100% of the time, I sure am bad at sleeping.

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god i wish that fucking kid didnt have such bad aim

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reblog if you need a hug

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I think a good test of how good your reading comprehension is comes from how well you can read Tolkien's stance on allegory.

A lot of people assume you can't read anything into Tolkien's work because he famously "meant nothing with it." But that's not his stance on allegory at all.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Tolkien was an ardent defender of what we now call "Death of the Author" where authorial intent is secondary to reader interpretation. He championed the strength of a story to remain relevant through resonating with people in different ways, and he actively encouraged people to take meaning from his work, not demand that they don't.

Ironically the stance that "it means nothing, Tolkien said so" is a direct contradiction to Tolkien's words, because the thing he disliked the most was the author telling people how to feel.

There are no 1:1 allegories in his work, so readings as "The Ring = Nuclear Power" are incorrect. But the Ring is Power. Power in many forms. Power that only serves the one that created it. You can probably think of a dozen things that fit that description. The Ring is not any one thing, it is many things.

We're in a time where Authorial Intent is used to win internet arguments, so Tolkien's hatred of allegory is taken to mean "There's no message, stop thinking about things" because it's the closest it gets to Authorial Intent, in spite of the fact that Authorial Intent is exactly what Tolkien hated.

He always called this "Applicability" but I find the better term is "Resonance."

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Voting day is Nov 5th! Vote early if you can 😌

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over it october. no energy november. defeated december..

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I just reada really good fic but halfway through I realized "oh shit this is really familiar.... didn't I write something like this once?" And as I kept reading I kept predicting what happened next and the further I went the more convinced I was that they'd ripped off my story-

like, copied the ENTIRE plot and re-written it, just better than I had? The characters were more fleshed-out than mine were, and the POV was more interesting, and the pace made more sense- but it was MY STORY?

So close to the end I was like "holy shit.. do I message them? Ask if my story inspired theirs? Should I be angry? Flattered?" Cause their tags and description didn't mention me AT ALL, which, sure, it's fanfiction to begin with, but if you're using my work than at least credit me as inspo, right? Just to be courteous?

But I get to the end of the final chapter, and it's not finished, and I'm kind of disappointed cause I never finished my story and I was really immersed in their version now and had been looking forwards to seeing how they tied up my loose ends- so I scroll to the bottom to leave a comment, and.

It's MY URL.

IT WAS MY STORY THE WHOLE TIME.

THE ONE *I WROTE*.

In *2013*.

And FORGOT ABOUT

BECAUSE I WAS SO INSECURE ABOUT MY SLOPPY, SHALLOW, AMETEUR WRITING

And I'm just sitting here now staring into space thinking about every shitty story I've ever written now like

IT WAS ALL GOOD?

IT WAS GOOD THIS WHOLE DAMN TIME??

I'M A GOOD WRITER?????

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nebraska miku be upon ye

(people are still doing these right???)

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If not knowing she's beautiful is what makes her beautiful, then why'd you write a fucking song with the sole purpose of telling her she's beautiful? In this essay I will

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you can pry starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' out of my cold, dead hands

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stood up too fast and now im experiencing horrors beyond my comprehension