#i'm sorry :))

[incognitofox]

[anti-homophobia-cheese]

coming from a country with a fascist government in power and an election not too long ago, i understand your disillusionment. it's such a huge blow to not see the results we so desperately needed to see.

but you fought so hard, usamerican friends.

and you'll fight again. tomorrow.

tonight, you rest. it's been a lot.

it may not seem that way now but i promise there's hope.

[destielmemenews]

[wierdlesbian]

[midnightstar789]

No one knew what species of Oak the Old Oak on the Hill was, but it was certainly unique. A peculiar color to it ever since it first sprouted in the center of a Hobbits garden, no ax or other instrument have been able to harm the tree, nor nature itself. Fire nor flood nor shaking earth nor tordanic winds have so much as caused a single golden leaf to fall before the tree is willing to let it go. As the Men spread and the other races faded or left Arda, the tree and its legend remained.

Some say that if one rested quietly under its swaying canopy amongst the shifting shade caused by a light breeze, it would bring you scents and sounds of long gone times.

If you managed to describe the scents well enough to a local, they would tell you a tale of the beings that once gardened the area and grew something called "pipe weed".

If you also manage to hear and thus describe any sounds you may hear while resting under the Old Oak to a local, they would smile and tell of the Legend of the Lonely Mountain's Burglar.

For this oak tree has seen Ages pass it by waiting for the right time.

They say there once was a stone inscribed with markings inlaid invisibly into it at the base of the oak when it was considered young yet. Of course, now that stone is long swallowed by the base of the oak, yet on very specific nights one can see the ancient runes as though they where inscribed into the trunk of the tree instead of the stone all those many years ago. Many have tried to decipher the ancient runes but none have had much luck yet. And when the right scholar finally gets to see it and manages to translate it, they will cry.

Here lies the memory of Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, Heartsong of Bilbo Baggins and Bilbo Baggins, One of Thorin Oakenshield, Luck Wearer, Barrel Rider, Burglar of Erebor, Dwarf-Friend, Elf-Friend, and Ring Bearer. May they rest peacefully until they are called home to one another once more.

For the tree will remain until the Valar themselves relent to bring a then-no-longer lonely King and his Master Burglar home to each other and their Company once more.

What if hobbit planted plants as a way to mourn because those plants become a piece of the person or thing that they were mourning so they can still take care of them. What if Bilbo was going to plant that acorn as a mourning of his time with the company, then a mourning of his relationship with Thorin and finally it eventually became Thorin’s hobbit grave

[ingo-ingoing-ingone]

Hey, all. It's the 2 year anniversary of ABYS, and I don't think I will have an update for you. I tried, but mainly in light of the US election I don't think I can pull it off this time, I'm sorry.

More is coming, but I am pretty sure I can't force myself to finish this chapter today.

Please stay safe. I love you guys.

[wishingstarinajar]

[acourtofladydeath]

Why is it always "there you are, i've been looking for you"

and never "there you are, coward."

[aethesfaelibrarae]

(holy shit was I not expecting anyone to like that previous Mouthwashing post—but thank you, genuinely for reading it and this one)

The Mouthwashing brain worms speak to me again—let's talk about hierarchy and caste and the implications in Mouthwashing one more time.

Say what you will about Jimothy's cowardly ass: he's not an idiot. The apathy of the crew is, at least, in part maintained by the top of the ladder: Curly and Pony Express.

Curly starts the game at the top of the ladder, able to help out a guy he perceives in a rough spot with a snap of his fingers, able to control how much sugar anyone got.. Able to control the food, the medicine, the weapons. Curly isn't the sort of person to abuse his power.

But he also isn't the type to use it.

Next up is Jaundice. His second in command, his (traitorous backstabber) right hand man. We'll get back to him.

No, who come next in this hierarchy can be debated—is Daisuke for his youth and potential or is it Swansea for his seniority? It could be both, depending upon the lens of examination. When the chips are down.. Or when they're still able to make a bet?

I'm going with Swansea, simply because of the fact that both Curly and Catastrophic Jameson's headass respect him. Neither of them really correct or step in to ask about his behavior with Daisuke, Jaundiced is more than happy to leave the room alone until it stands in his way and up until the chase sequence is largely unwilling to get into physical altercation.

Daisuke is next on the rung—an intern getting his due hazing. Young, plucky, clumsy, the aimless silver spooned baby of the crew. He wants to be liked by people in the higher rungs and he trusts in their authority. To his own detriment. But for the most part, he's neither too high for the responsibility or too low to really suffer in forced silence. He's protected.

Anya is not. As the sole woman of the crew, soft-spoken, heavily pregnant and forced to entertain her abuser's delusions of grandeur with the wreckage evidence of how far he's willing to go to get rid of her, rinse his mouth of her, all around them.. She starts the game on the bottom of the ladder—ignored, talked over, dismissed. People's—Curly and Catastrophe Jim—eyes skip over her without thinking. It's easy to dismiss her. Empathy is extended to her as an afterthought. Her death an inevitable tragedy. Because either way of framing it, without access to the ax or the gun, the ship was Jimothy's way of shutting her up for good and she knows it. In my previous post, I touched on the difference between the situations that Anya and Curly find themselves and in all honesty, it's defined by who finds themself at the bottom of the rung when Mr. J finds himself a way to the top.

And who else would it be but our resident golden boy himself, Captain Enablement—I mean, Curly. Now that he's completely disabled, useless and helpless.. He finds himself in a position even worse than Anya's. Both of them taking on the brunt of Jimmy's worldview—he's gotten way more than he bargained for from Anya and besides, she was a means to an end. At the moment of the assault, she was an object, the lower rung of the perceived ladder. It wasn't his fault, just look at her—And afterwards.. Well, this whole thing could also be framed as spite. Sneaking behind the golden boy's back and "stealing his girl" or whatever, maybe he knew that he'd be caught and wanted to see something other than Curly's gentle understanding. He wants more. And in direct opposite to Anya, Curly is the center of his world. The spindle upon which Jaundice's last steadily fraying thread of sanity spins. And what an awful place it is to be. He gets front row seats to hindsight truly becoming 20/20 vision when it's a barrel of shotgun—and you're jealous of the fact that it's not aimed at you. He suffers being consumed and thus consuming himself. Looking into why didn't Jimothy just cut up any of the others is a fascinating exercise. By the time he starts eating Curly, this is not the first time he's imagined Curly in the place of food—of nourishment. He imagines him in the place of cake—even the way that he cuts a part of Curly's leg is reminiscent of the way that Curly cuts into the cake. (yes, what the heck Curls but then again, gelatin probably feels weird to cut). Eating someone is often a taboo form of intimacy in media like Preacher's Daughter by Ethel Cain or Tokyo Ghoul..Listen. There's a reason why vore is popular.—it's the most violent type of intimacy.

It's the only type of intimacy Jimmy engages with on screen and yet—There's an equally fascinating intimacy in consuming yourself. And even that is ruined.. Being forced to eat your bile-covered offal again and again and again.. A memory that would scar on its own. But. With the implications of this being the one type of intimacy that Jimmy feels comfortable sharing combined with what the game says about rape culture have "good" men protect and enable their friends.. There's another angle of their friendship there.

Jimmy loves Curly as much as he hates him. He wants him to suffer. He wants him to live. He wants him dead. Who is saying I hope this hurts?

The hierarchy traps them in so many ways—and the first time we see it for what it is is with Curly. Not Jimmy. From Curly's perspective, we see him unfocused and exhausted and Anya offers him a helping ear and he can't accept it. He's the Captain. He can't be seen asking his subordinate for help. Jimmy was removed from the hierarchy in Curly's eyes. Maybe even at the same spot. Co-captains. Two peas in a pod—except one is a festering open wound and the other has his eyes tightly closed, quietly muttering he can fix it if he just gets a little bit more time.. Can't tell the difference between who's who?

Top or bottom of the hierarchy—awful and isolating for two men who claim to take responsibility. Both have some level of inferiority complex—a complex that I'd argue is the becoming the bread and butter of modern day society but is steadily starting to show the signs of where it's been baked into the perceptions of being a man—there is the fear of someone bigger, better and more capable of you.. But there's also that small quiet part that gets told men don't cry that desperately, desperately, wants to have no choice. Almost takes comfort in the idea of someone better than you.

And everyone in between their rungs gets crushed as collateral.

In a caste made by white supremacy, white able-bodied young men who meet societal standards for being in their prime are at the top. Old enough to know better, young enough to play stupid have potential. Just look at all our promising young rapists men with their whole lives ahead of them.

On a ship like the Tulpar, that hierarchy gets a necessary edge—the Captain is the most useful person aboard the ship, the most needed. The man of the proverbial house. The co-captain is like being called vice president—made only as important as the person in that role can make it. Otherwise it's a hollow consolation prize. And Jimothy can't work an honest day in his life. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Then would be the nurse but.. It's a feminine job, a pink collar job through and through. If Anya had been a man, the jokes would have been targeted at her masculinity but as she is a woman, the role and her usefulness to the crew are invisible necessities. The quiet labor and genius that keeps great men going. I think people underestimate how much work goes into even passing the N-CLEX to become an RN. Anya was trying to get into medical school—she studied the human body extensively and in all honesty, the way that I've read it is (especially with the context clues of her being overlooked continuously) she just wasn't important enough to help out. Medical textbooks are expensive on their own and tests can be upwards of 2,000 dollars (my sources: my mom had to take the N-CLEX 3 times when I was much younger and the financial strain was ridiculous especially if you want to get in on a study group).. And Anya clearly worked for that goal. You don't throw that kind of money at anything else but the goal—the one you could just swear would make it all worth it. Maybe if she was Doctor Anya, the crew would've treated her better.. Her usefulness cemented and people would question how such a nervous woman made it through medical school.. Maybe it would have made Jimmy worse. There's nothing hollow about being a doctor after all.

But Anya is Anya and so Swansea, the mechanic is useful. He keeps the ship going and Daisuke in line. Bitter Knowledge and the Dog Days of Youth.

Wasted Potential (double entendre) and Boundless, Wasting Potential.

Immediately useful and eager to be useful.

Then there's Post-Crash Curly. And I must stress, your usefulness is not your value as a person. But then again, where would ableism find its footing save for such a sad hierarchy? And let's call a spade a spade, once Curly loses his ability to interact with the world as he once did, his skin literally peeled open to expose the soft inner flesh to the cruelty of the world, his small bit of usefulness as a Captain gone.. Most people on the ship act accordingly. Daisuke and Swansea, their places on the ladder's rung unchanged fairly quickly become enured to Curly's cries of pain. Anya, the closest to the his newfound rung.. Continues to care for him, unable to free him as he was unable to free her. Jimmy is all too happy to grind his boot in Curly's face as many times as he can. Until he feels better.

But he won't. He can't.

The game touches on the haves vs the have-nots a lot as well as the creeping sense of human work becoming obsolete, that body horror in being made useless by your own complicity but where it absolutely shines in Jimmy and Swansea—especially Swansea's final speech—is the messaging about the never-ending demand for more, for greener pastures leaving you hollow and bitter. Curly seemed well-aware of Swansea's thought process and leaves him be but internally agrees and fears that ending if he stays in the Captaincy for too much longer.

And that's where I think Jimmy really thinks it was a win-win for him and Curly. He truly doesn't think of the pain that Curly must find himself in, worsened by the constant beatings and continual medical assault. He doesn't think about it as anything more than Curly being a nuisance. One more way that Curly just didn't trust him not to fuck up his eyes eternally trapped in the cold hate and fear as he watches Jimmy proceed to ruin the one thing he took pride in as the metaphorical man of the house: keeping the crew safe.

Jimmy thinks of himself as the son who stayed faithful, worked himself to the bone, only to receive scraps while his undeserving brother is celebrated and lauded.

Within the hierarchy, the system is only as "good" as who remains on top. And "good" people, blindly faithful and eternally forgiving, aren't ruthless enough to stay up there for long.

Jimmy's not a good person but he's not stupid. And he's very ruthless. While there may have been somewhat of a hierarchical situation before he joined the crew, it's clear from his conversations with Anya, Curly valued a more lateral role system as he felt trapped in Pony Express's all-consuming ladder over Jimmy's rigid rungs of better and worse.

But over and over, he isolated the crew to their sectors. Over and over, he demeaned Anya, insulted her and Curly. Leaned into the insults of Daisuke. Left Swansea alone for the most part.

Anya, as much as it pains me to admit this, could have worked with Swansea earlier. But would that have worked? What about Daisuke—the younger version of Curly's eternal optimistic "I've never seen the dead pixel" attitude? The isolation absolutely worked. There's no imagining a world in which it doesn't work unless you imagine the crew as better than they are.

And that's just one more tragedy we can't rinse out of mouths with mouthwash.

[the-aroace-artist]

Is this anything

[dragon-ashes1485]

Hello, I'm here to give you Elrond feels :)

Was listening to Faith's Song (top left) and Cosmic Love (bottom right) and the ROP brain went "ELROND."

[spacefrog1984]

(one dad joke deserves another)

And how about a nice butte?! Just take a look at these and tell me you're not interested in geology. I love big buttes and I cannot lie!

I LOVE CLEAVAGE! #SHOWMEYOURCLEAVAGE

[lejoursobre]

Global warming is wild isn't it? I mean? Warm and salty raindrops 24/7? specifically in Soho???

(I physically can't draw angst sorry I did my best here)

[letsbealone-together]

[ghostie-juice]

I guess you could say he's... super sleepy

[xena-lilac-winters]

I could not vote as I did not meet requirements to do so. However, I wish I could. I wish I were more involved in politics, and now I see why people were so desperate for Harris to win. I'm sorry I could not vote, and I'm sorry she did not win.

On another note, I'm absolutely disgusted with my parents (strong Republicans, yes I'm still under their roof). As someone who's only come out to my mom with my identity, this disgusts me, not to mention that women are losing their rights that they've worked hard to gain.

Like @intimidating-fettuccine and @partycoffin said, stay safe, get IUDS and birth control (if you so wish) while you can, and I'm sorry I couldn't make a difference.

This post is coming from me in my space of panic and resignation that I have been in all day, but I just. I felt the need to say anything at all.

Please do what you can to survive. This week, for the next few years, maybe forever. Please do what you can to survive. We cannot give up, we have to remain unified and continue supporting each other. That is all we can do. I don’t know what the future will look like, but we should be prepared to handle anything.

If you are like me, a female, I wish you so much support. With the rights we are about to lose, please keep yourself safe. Look into birth control if you can, especially IUDs or implants, I’ve been doing that myself. Please only surround yourself with people that you know are trustworthy. I’ve seen lots of women saying they’re going to be joining the South Korean 4B movement (not dating, having sex with, marrying, or having children with men), and honestly I encourage it. Even if you’d like to be a mother, it’s not safe anymore. If something goes wrong with your wanted pregnancy, there’s an incredibly high likelihood that you will not be able to receive care. That is a horrific reality, but it’s something we need to be aware of. If you are in a safe, loving relationship I am incredibly happy for you and I wish you the best. If you are not, or if you are single, do whatever you can to get to a safe place, please.

To any of my LGBT+ followers, please remain safe. Please, please, please be careful, with what you say, with who you talk to, with how you present yourself. I can’t even imagine how terrifying things might become, but I don’t want any of you to be ashamed, to stop being who you are. Just please be safe in how you do so. I wish you all so much luck and love because you all deserve to be free to express yourselves, to live as who you are in freedom and not be so heavily judged and prosecuted and punished. Please have safe spaces, and safe people to surround yourself with if you can. This blog will ALWAYS be a safe and inclusive space for you. I see you, and I accept you, and I support you so much. Please take care.

My support goes out to everyone who is about to be effected, because it is about to be more than just women and LGBT+ members, but I wanted to touch on those two specifically because they are the ones closest to me. I love you all. I’m sorry that this is how things turned out, but we need to keep going. We need to stay strong. We need to keep fighting and surviving because they want us to give in and we can’t do that. It might get incredibly tough next year, in the next four years or even longer, but you cannot give them the satisfaction. You have to outlive them, to prove to them that you can survive and that you deserve to be here.

I don’t particularly care if anyone thinks I’m being dramatic about this and I’m not trying to fearmonger. I don’t want anyone to be scared, but I can’t hide the fact that I’m scared. That I don’t know how things are going to look moving forward. But I care about each and every one of you.

Continue living with airport rules right now (doing whatever it takes to get to your destination of the future). He’s not in there yet. We are still safe right now. Please do what you can to prepare and to steel yourself for any outcome. But, for the next couple weeks, please just take care of yourselves. Indulge in activities you love, eat food you love, sleep as much as you can, take care of yourself as much as you can. You are not alone in this. Everyone that voted for her, we are all in this together. We cannot forget that.

I love you all so much. Please be safe. Know that you are not alone. Be strong, and be proud of what you fought for and who you are. You deserve to be here, and you deserve to be who you are.