#anyway MY POINT IS

[alightindarkplaces]

I don't think a lot of people realize how complicated the situation with Samfro really is... Sam is Frodo's employee, to start, and they are not friends, because they are not peers. They get along and they have a good relationship, as one might have with a very cool boss and an eager servant. Sam takes pride in his service and Frodo appreciates him, but he also doesn't know him very well. He underestimates Sam and sees him as well-meaning and good, but also very foolish (he is not wrong here, but he fails to see how clever Sam can be.)

Until the "conspiracy" comes out, Frodo doesn't really think about what Sam is capable of, or consider that he would act against his wishes. I think he doesn't even realize how much Sam adores him (typical Frodo behavior.) It's after they meet Gildor that Frodo first begins to really look at Sam, and maybe the first time he is impressed by him and sees that he is clever in his own right. He is very proud of him later when he points out Sam's poetry and it's clear Frodo has begun to think very highly of him.

But they are not a couple. They are still a master and his servant, and there is love between them, but it is not romance.

Flash forward to Frodo's flight from the Fellowship, when Sam almost drowns himself just to get back to Frodo. Frodo scolds him and Sam holds his ground and tells him it was cruel to leave him and that leaving him would be the same as dying. Frodo calls him "dearest of all hobbits" and this is when the relationship begins to change... Sam has disobeyed in a big way, now for the second time, and has proven that he is Frodo's friend before his servant (this is huge I can't even tell you.) This is the point when the relationship develops beyond the bounds of service and into one of peers.

They are equal in their quest, though Sam continues to refer to him as his master and carries on tending to him. This is just the way they understand things and are most comfortable and it doesn't detract from what they have built - it's a willing service given freely out of love.

But this is also the sticking point, because Frodo will always have this power over Sam, or at least, he perceives it that way, knowing Sam would literally die for him and do anything for him (except let him go into danger alone.) But this is tricky, and especially for Frodo, who understands the power dynamic and feels responsibility for Sam.

How could Frodo ask anything more of him? He can't.

From Sam's perspective, how can he ask anything of Frodo at all? He can't.

Thus, we enter the queer stalemate, where they are both in love and attracted to each other, but bound by social obligations to remain "just friends" (if you can call what they have just friends.)

As an aside, I don't believe anything they do can or should be considered strictly "gay," but these two specifically are factually in love and gay for each other, even though they don't know how to be together.

[afurtivecake]

see, in retrospect i should probably have figured out i'm ace sooner but i've always been neutral about sex that i went about my life with complete confidence that my experience was universal. once i was talking to a friend for a while about how shaming people for having a series of one-night stands is ridiculous and how it's just sex and how as a society we need to stop attaching shame to completely common human behaviours. and i said in conclusion that i would totally have a one-night stand if the desire arose. to me, that was a factual but hypothetical statement. but to them..... well, let's just say, it led to them propositioning me outright. and what did i do? i literally laughed out loud in their face. which sounds bad, but at least i didn't say what my brain was literally thinking at the time, which was, "no, silly! :) why would i want to do that?" in hindsight, that probably looked like i had talked about how i was DTF for like half an hour and then went, "not you though lolz" but i swear - in my mind it was like talking about what would i do if i were stranded out in space and someone then suggested we go and try being stranded out in space. like, dude, it was a thought experiment??? anyway, it was like 7 years after that before i figured out i've just been asexual this entire time.

[hazard-and-friends]

#wife is after a spaniel next which i will probably fall in love with#but if i had to choose where to put 12 years and multiple thousands#it wouldn't be a gundog is all i'm saying

wife has gotten home and called me out, so to clarify: the other leading contender for wife's firstdog/joint nextdog is rottweiler, and I was the one who said it should be a spaniel because we deserve a stupid dog next.

[astr0phil1a]

guys i’m literally so normal about johnny cage 😌

[one-silly-cart00nist]

Creek Week Day 3: Past [Baby Elders]

Rated G Elders of the Creek except they're 6 years old?!

Lunch packed. Shoelaces tied. Teeth brushed. 

Cape… folded on his bed for the fifth day in a row since mom wouldn’t let him wear it to school… but fine… Mr. Bunny would keep it safe. 

He was ready to embark on the new adventures of first grade! 

It’s been okay so far. Mark knew how to read and write already but his hand got clumsy sometimes, he didn’t mind practice. And he certainly didn’t mind all the praises! 

The journey to school was his least favourite. Kids from all grades living in the suburbs boarded the school bus, and while they rarely waited on the same stop, so Mark didn’t have to worry about being pushed around on his way up the two stairs, the ride itself was rather loud and unpleasantly lively at all times.

He refused to hop on the first day of school, and had his dad drive the car instead. He didn’t understand why that couldn’t work for the rest of the year—up until then, dad would drive him everywhere! It was a dumb rule, that kids have to take the bus, when the bus is so loud. 

But it’s been a week and Mark’s gotten used to the commotion. He always sits in the second row by the window, as far away from all the hustle in the back rows and entertained by the scenery. He’s memorised it by now. 

Now that he found a place of his own, maybe going to school won’t be so bad… 

That’s what he tells himself, anyway, as he steps onto the bus that day. Skips towards his favourite row. And finds it… occupied. 

Two girls a little older than him, sharing a journal between them. 

He coughs to get their attention but his voice comes out squeaky when they meet eyes as he tries to claim back his spot. “Bus seats are public property,” the one with glasses informs him. “So we can sit wherever we want.” 

Mark scoffs. “I called dibs.” 

“And so?” the other girl with pigtails raises her eyebrow in challenge.

What? Everyone knew about dibs! 

“So it belongs to me!” Mark reasons. 

“So it doesn’t,” she sticks out her tongue. She also folds her legs up, and Mark watches in horror as the dirty soles of her sparkly shoes rub his favourite seat. 

Not fair! They’re not respecting the rules! You have to play along! 

He’s about to give them a piece of his mind when he hears his name being called. “Maaark!” 

He turns, giving the two girls one last frown. 

(When he’s older, Mark is going to make sure that all kids follow game rules properly. And don’t put their dirty feet onto his stuff!)

About three rows to the back, on the opposite side of the bus (his frown deepens), sits Barry. They met yesterday over a Bring Out Your Beast duel. He talked his ears off on the way home about Pirates of the Dark Water, a cartoon they both happened to like. That instantly nominated him to a friend. 

Mark waddles towards him in defeat. Barry scoots over to let Mark occupy the window, just how he likes it. So it came to be… at least he found his new friend. If they talk about cartoons at least the bus ride will pass quickly. 

“Mark!” Barry exclaims again, hands slamming against the leather seat, as he grins from ear to ear. 

“Barry,” Mark responds with a smile of his own. 

“Daviiid!” another voice yells from the row in front of them, followed by a white bucket hat and pair of wide eyes peering at them from above the headrest. 

Oh. Yeah. Mark met David too, a few days back, during recess. They bonded over butterflies. David’s eyes were sparkling as Mark told him all the trivia he knew from books he read with his mom. Mark felt proud for amusing him. 

“I heard there will be science today!” David informs them. “I hope it’s about bugs and flowers!” 

“Or about volcanoes! They’re so cool when they go BOOM!” Barry exclaims, and slams his hands down again. Barry sure had spirit like no one else. 

“I’m pretty sure science is about building robots,” Mark says. He saw it on TV.

“Like Dexter’s laboratory!” Barry cheers, at the same time as David chants: “Powerpuff Girls!” 

The bus sizzles as the doors close and soon it starts moving—David, with feet still planted on the bus seat, holds with all his might to not tumble over. Mark and Barry giggle. His sweater paw sleeves hug the seat for leverage as he pulls himself a little higher, revealing his crooked nose and bucktoothed grin. 

“Hey! There’s three of us, we could play Powerpuff Girls!” His bucktooth makes him lisp, and Mark doesn’t understand half of what he says, but David’s eyes are sparkling with excitement, so Mark nods nevertheless. 

Someone yells at them from the front then, sit down and use the seatbelt!, and David’s head finally disappears. His voice doesn’t, though—and so the bus ride flies as the three friends chat to their hearts’ content.

[queer-reader-07]

i will call crowley “my boi” until the day i die but do not mistake that as me thinking crowley is a man.

crowley is my boi in part BECAUSE of his gender fuckery and enby-ness. i related so hard to crowley from the start (like, since reading the book kind of start). and knowing that neil thinks of crowley as gender fluid means so much to me.

and like. he messes with gender in the book and s1. like we all saw her as the nanny right? she was serving gender-fluid realness.

idk. just something about the combination of the way crowley shows love and the way they always do what’s right and the way they’re an optimist deep down and on top of it all, they’re non-binary.

it makes my non-binary heart so happy.

[navajja]

If Stolas was a horse things would have been easier

[xiaq]

Absolutely wild to me how sometimes you don't even realize the way you'd been taught to perceive things as a kid was kinda fucked up, actually, until decades later.

Example:

As a kid, I constantly lived in fear of damaging shit in my parent's house. The walls. The floors (especially the floors. The wood was beautiful. Shiny. But so easy to scratch). The cabinets.

As a sixteen-year-old, I once took my car to the dealership after work and paid a very dear sum of $250 ($10/hr cashier salary) to fix a slight scratch in the paint because I knew if my father saw it there would be hell to pay. It didn't matter that I parked far out, like I'd been taught, and someone scratched it anyway. It was my fault. I failed in my duties as a steward of my vehicle.

Every time I scratched a rim on a curb while parallel parking or got a door ding or, god forbid, didn't wash and vacuum that car every weekend, it was treated like some sort of moral failing.

Last year, when my husband and I first moved into our house, he scraped the side of our car when parking in our (Very Narrow) garage. When he told me, my first instinct was to be afraid for him. Like something terrible was going to happen to him because of this mistake. I urgently reassured him that it was okay, it was an accident, I wasn't mad. Baffled, he was like, "Yeah? I know? Like, thank you for the reassurance, but I'm only a little annoyed, I'm not upset. It's just a car." And I had to take several minutes to process that. It's...just a car.

We keep the car tidy. We maintain it. But we wash it maybe 4x a year. We only vacuum it after dirty road trips or when the dog hair starts to get annoying. It has scrapes and dings and the leather seats have stains. But that's ok. Because it's just a car.

This morning, I realized that a small rock had gotten embedded in the felt foot on one of our bar stools. Neither of us had noticed. There are now scratches on our beautiful hardwood floor. My immediate response was fear accompanied by a heavy measure of paralyzing guilt. "I'm so sorry," I told my husband, "I should have noticed. I'll figure out how to fix it, I swear. I can probably sand down that section and match the stain and--"

"Whoa, hey," he said. "It was an accident. And it's fine. Floors are going to get damaged. They're floors. We live here. There was damage in places before we even bought the house, remember? It's not a big deal. It's just a floor." Right. It's just a floor. Right.

My husband's mom is visiting and this afternoon, as I was sitting in the kitchen looking at the scratches on the floor, I offhandedly asked her if my husband had ever broken or damaged anything as a kid. "Of course," she said. Household items. A TV. A wrecked car during his teen years. I asked how she punished him.

"Why would I punish him for things like that?" she said. "They were all accidents."

Right. Of course. Right.

[goomyloid]

The remorseful player

[keymintt]

projection

[hansoeii]

A latte with lots of love!

[unsung-idiot]

don't show him modern technology; it won't end well

bonus under the cut:

[homunculus-argument]

My first language doesn't have gendered pronouns at all, but it must be a headache and a half to live in a language where you've got, like, plurals of those things. Like you're just hanging out with your amigas and then someone comes out and suddenly it's your amigos and since it's still the same people now it's anyone's business to want to know who it was who made the whole squad change pronouns.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Penelope's final gambit, you will always be famous, no matter the subtext.

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.