#or rather lotr gets it from the Bible i should say

[thebirdandhersong]

The men in The Chosen are openly grieving and rejoicing and allowed to feel and express tenderness and grief and remorse and compassion and love and it is very refreshing and surprising to see what this website calls Lord of the Rings masculinity in a show actually

[imbringingexyback]

Trans ask-thingy

I should have really seen this coming when I made @a-chilleus​ do all the questions earlier :’)

1. what is your gender? nonbinary, transmasc. I would say male but the lack of fucks I give about having a dick makes me question it

2. what are your pronouns? He/him or they/them. He/him mainly as its easier for people to use

3. what is your gender presentation like? In a word. Gay. I love dungarees but also mostly wear super skinny jeans & floral/very jazzy shirts. I love rainbows & stripey tops as well as crop tops & cut-off vests. I don’t really wear any jewellery other than my ear piercings, ‘the one ring’ from LOTR that my Dad made & the flag bracelets I made (Trans, ace & gay)

4. what is your Gender Euphoria Outfit? Not sure really but a t-shirt/shirt that is loose enough to hide my hips & not feel uncomfortable but fitted enough to show off my frame. Probably black skinny jeans & one of my many floral shirts with my glittery gold brogues

5. what makes you feel validated? Being called the right pronouns, people seeing my as male/non-binary without any doubt about my identity (e.g. my housemate treating me just like she does her other male friends automatically because she forgets people see me as ‘female’, or people saying they could never see me as female). Also, people not being surprised by my femininity when inhabiting queer spaces as I’m just a camp guy

6. top five favorite parts of your body (n why you love them)? I like my hair as it was really blond but I like it now it’s dyed red & its still soft & fluffy. I like my freckles because they constantly multiply & are cute af. I like my eyes because they’re electric blue & so detailed with flecks of greyer blue. I like my collarbones as I like fiddling with them. Finally, I like my neck because although I want a deeper voice & stuff my neck looks cool in pictures sometimes.

7. favorite trans meme/bit of trans humor? I also like the very common trans names like @a-chilleus​ said. Me & my housemate have a joke where I loudly (& in a panicked tone) go “where is my dick?!!!” & act like i’m frantically looking for it because it makes us laugh. I just like most trans memes because they’re relatable and cis people don’t get them

8. how did you pick your name? Can’t really remember other than it being between Elliot & Robin & then me realising I really didn’t like Elliot cause its close to my deadname. I don’t really like Robin either so now I need to find a new one

9. what does your name mean? apparently it means ‘fame-bright’ & is of French & German origin

10. do you have any trans pride merch? I like it being called ‘merch’ like we’re a band! I have a trans-flag woven bracelet I made, a trans flag, a number of gender-related t-shirts including the Stonewall one & ‘Gender does not define a dragon’ & a fuck tonne of pronoun badges & pin/enamel badges

11. recent happy trans moment? Meeting Esme (@a-chilleus​) & talking trans stuff with them whilst on camp & then just like hinting to our friends Gareth &Lizzy that I was a raging tran by showing them pictures where I have a trans flag around me & being in the men’s changing-room with them. Like honestly that was so freeing cause we got to educate our (very accepting) cis friends on some memes & hard shit & I got to overshare so much 😉

12. favorite trans headcanon? Trans Peter Parker. It makes so much sense to me & I’d love the representation.

13. favorite canon trans character? Non-binary Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens) is fully cannon as they’re angels & I’m still in love with it! Jake in Tales of the City is an awesome trans character too & I love him

14. favorite trans blog(s)/trans blogger(s)? definitely @a-chilleus​ because they have the same interests as me, @born2jasper​ because Jasper is my best buddy at uni & when he does blog it’s cool shit

15. favorite trans celebrity? Oh my. Fox Fisher does amazing work for trans activism & they’re a cutie. Elliot Fletcher I’ve been a fan of since he was regularly on a trans youtube channel & now hes been in TV shows & repping the trans community. Laverne Cox of course. Indya Moore for their no-shit attitude.

16. song that gives you Big Trans Feels? Wrabel- The Village, is literally about being trans & having no-one in your family accept you but it being “something wrong with the village” rather than it being about you being wrong. It was written after Trump did all the shit things to trans people. Literally the line “it’s a lie though, burying disciples, one page of the bible isn’t worth a life” makes me cry cause of all the trans people who feel like there is no light at the end of the tunnel for them. The music video left me sad but it’s an amazing song

17. something you wish you could tell your younger self? You’re not broken, & your friends have your back & will accept and love for who you are, not who you pretend to be. Society is gonna fuck you up but you’re stronger than you think

18. what would your Ideal Fashion Look be?

i mean i’m living my idea fashion look tbh

19. (how) does your gender relate to your sexuality? Just makes me gayer but I’m still ace so…

20. do you have a comfort item? Blankets mostly at uni cause I snuggle under them/with them cause that helps my sensory overload calm down. Big comfy jumpers are good for when I feel like hiding my body

21. what makes you feel euphoric? When strangers call me ‘he’, when dogs like me, when I’m accepted into a new group as ‘one of the lads’. When I look more masc face-wise (if that makes sense)

22. what genre of media would you love to see more trans characters in? all genre’s tbh as there is a lack in every genre. But definitely fantasy & action. I’d love to see a bad guy get slapped with a packer to distract them because the trans hero had nothing else to throw :’)

23. claim something as trans culture. Walking around going ‘masc masc masc’ or ‘lads lads lads’ is trans culture

24. give some love to your trans friends/mutuals (alt: give some love to the trans community in general) I’ve tagged the ones I know mostly but to every trans person who sees this. YOU’VE DOING SO GREAT, YOU LOOK GREAT, YOU’RE VOICE IS WONDERFUL. YOU ARE SIMPLY KILLING IT!!

25. what’s your favorite part of being trans? Tbh the memes are pretty solid. But honestly, it’s the community you find in each other when you need It, it’s the joy of finding out someone else you know is trans, it’s the celebration of the little &big things together. I especially enjoy knowing there are people that get why I have to triple check that I’m flat before going anywhere, the cis friends who will go into men’s bathrooms with me to scope them out & just the re-defined masculinity & femininity.

[elrondsscribe]

Elves, Theology, and Me, a baby Bible student.

Okay. Well. Theology, Christian-talk, Bible talk, and Tolkien’s elves all have their part in this post. Religious freak alert and boring alert. 

Also, some rather personal faith issues I’ve been thinking through a lot lately. Bible bashers and Bible thumpers equally beware.

Still here? Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

What most people don’t remember about Christianity is that it is 1) a hugely diverse and varied tradition and 2) a very old tradition. I don’t know of too many faiths still kicking around in the world today that are as old and as diverse as Christianity, other than Judaism (older) and Islam (a bit younger). So when I talk about having grown up Christian, I may not be or ever have been the kind that you immediately picture when you hear the word - or then again, I might have.

When I say I grew up Christian, what I specifically mean is that I grew up in a Protestant, evangelical, fundamentalist-ish faith community. The way we talked about the gospel is a bit like a sales proposal, probably because nearly all of my pastors’ six brothers were salesmen. Problem: We’re all sinners, including you, and we all deserve eternal torment in hell for our sin. Also, God is perfect and can’t tolerate sin. (Therefore, God can’t go tolerating you in your sin.) Solution: Jesus took (y)our punishment and God’s wrath, so we (you) have a way out of eternal torment. Call to Action: Now choose Jesus, turn to God, verbally admit and renounce your sin, and when you die you’ll get to go to Heaven, not Hell.

{And oh yeah, in the meantime, while you’re still alive and waiting to go to Heaven, make sure you’re Livin’ Right. No drinking, no smoking, no nightclubs, no miniskirts, and for the love of God, no sex outside of (heterosexual, one-to-one, legally and church-ly sanctioned) marriage. Also give your tithes.}

Thing is, I’m also a Tolkien fan. Seriousness level 4-4.5 out of 5. I can’t speak any Elvish languages, and I can’t quote chapters from Unfinished Tales or a volume of the History of Middle-Earth from memory, but I’m fairly familiar with Tolkien’s Arda-related writings outside of just the Hobbit and LOTR. And when I was thinking about how to put together my combined Tolkien and (eventually) MCU universe to write fanfiction in, the insertion of the gospel as I’d always understood it felt very specieist: only a small selection of a certain species, Men, out of all of Tolkien’s peoples were actually Iluvatar’s children and set to experience eternal bliss . . . and the rest were all eventually going to burn?

Yikes. I didn’t want to create a fictional universe like that. (The fact that, minus the Elves and Hobbits and Dwarves, I was actually living in a world like that wasn’t lost on me - I just didn’t have the liberty to explore that.)

Also, Tolkien’s whole world just has such a very pre-Christian feel (it was created to be a mythology, what can I say), and I wasn’t sure how I felt about forcing (modern) post-Christian assumptions on a pre-Christian framework.

(I know it’s a weird sort of thing to do, applying theology to a fictional universe you’re borrowing to write crossover fanfiction in, but hey, welcome to my world. I warned you it’d be weird.)

My first year of college - Christian college - really took me for a ride. You see, in Christian college, you’re asked to take a minimum of two courses in which - get ready for it - you read the Bible in an academic setting (shock! horror! Whoever would have guessed!). And when that happens, you find yourself confronted with the uncomfortable fact that 1) the Bible doesn’t really read like the inerrant textbook/rulebook that it’s often assumed to be, and 2) we as modern readers have the tendency to bring a lot of assumptions to the text and read in a lot of shit that ain’t actually on the page.

After a number of shocks on some issues that I won’t go into now, I got home for the summer and started to fall into the Kindle Sample sinkhole (similar to the YouTube sinkhole). I started peeking into books on theology and ethics that showed me that, at the very least, I wasn’t alone in my new, murkier, less solid and more mysterious mode of Christianity. And what should I happen to fall into but Christian Universalism (Rob Bell’s Love Wins made universalist doctrine popular; the church history he give in it is inaccurate, but it’s still worth a go if you want an easy read to introduce you to the topic). Universalism, or All-Encompassing Divine Love, seemed to mesh much more naturally with a world wherein pre-Christian sensibilities carried the day.

Universalists don’t tend to talk about a transcendent God who is “high above the heavens,” but about a God whose glory they see reflected in the people around them, whom they enjoy in nature’s beauty, and whom they mimic in being creative and productive. It all feels very right in a Tolkienesque world (and really any fictional universe that prizes life and love in the end, MCU included).

More so than “turn or burn” and “heaven/hell after you die” anyway.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that my changing theology, and my newfound passion for biblical studies, are directly affecting both my ‘real-world’ sensibilities and my fanfic writing. And the way I interact with Tolkien’s universe in general.

Not that I think for a second that Tolkien was a universalist - heavens no! He just created a mythological world in which Divine Love really fits.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” - Saint Julian of Norwich, approx. 14th century.

. . . well, I told you this would be weird.

[brunhielda]

Just saying, if you love LOTR for it’s sweet tender men, time to check out The Chosen for same reasons.

The men in The Chosen are openly grieving and rejoicing and allowed to feel and express tenderness and grief and remorse and compassion and love and it is very refreshing and surprising to see what this website calls Lord of the Rings masculinity in a show actually