#this is from the archives

[mightnotfeelrealbutitsok]

just quickly imagining if Bilbo died instead of Thorin

Here is a broken king. Kings aren’t supposed to be broken, not ones who have toiled and led to regain their kingship, and teetered on the brink of insanity for the sake of it, then fought unfathomable battles. But here is a broken king of that kind. His followers sometimes think there was more king in him before he claimed his title, when he was empowered by embitterment and ambition and he fearlessly sought what his ancestors had lost. He found it but it seems there was a cost. All the wealth of golden halls and the joy of feasts and songs and the pride of the mountain can’t counter it.

He sits on his throne and there’s something vacant in his face. Some believe it’s the Arkenstone; who could be a true king without it? They blame him for leaving his quest half-completed and not taking back that one key article. There was uproar when it went down into the tombs. Why surrender something so hard won? It glimmers useless in the cavernous grey of those deep chambers, while the king keeps his convictionless eyes. Maybe it was a sacrifice of some sort, to honour his forefathers by sharing in their loss. He did not want to be greater than his own father who was made by his own strength, not the stone.

Something else was buried, though few dwarves remember. The stone doesn’t lie unclaimed in the tombs, rather it adorns a certain coffin, laid grandly upon a certain chest. It is strange for such a creature to be valued, not one of their own kind. He is exceptionally small in stature, looking somewhat rough and dirty, but beardless, and wearing alien, unkempt clothes. A hobbit, it is said, and it is a race hardly heard of in the lonely mountain. The one connection between this poor being and the tradition of the tombs it rests in is a coat of chainmail it still wears, since before its death. Mithril is of the highest value amongst the dwarves and yet this precious coat is abandoned down under the floors, left with its brief owner. It is unfortunate that the coat didn’t offered the desired protection; the metal was impenetrable, but the flesh of the neck where the orc struck was none the better for it.

What kind of lines can be drawn between a buried outsider and the distant ways of a king? He wanders his halls with something weighing on him, and in his eyes there can be seen glimpses of a desperation, a wish that he was not there. He is powerful but he has gone quiet. There is the sense that something was cut out of him and he lives with the chronic pain of absence. Few know he loved the hobbit and can’t live with himself for having lost him.

[forestgirlpoems]

I used to wonder what went wrong was it something I did that drove you away

cried many tears about my fears I couldn't stand the way you looked at me confused and miserable and always fighting something I couldn't see

until I knew

it was never about me it was about you and your selfish desires and your broken heart and your sad fucking reality

it was never about us

it was I who created a fantasy that I lived clinging to you like to a corpse that is still warm

because I wanted it to be real I wanted to have my happy ending just this once I wanted to have it all

[dyke-ass-fujoshi]

How I found out about trump getting shot

[mangozic]

my dead goth son and his friendly neighborhood personified concept of insanity

[artemisdesari-blog]

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[queerstudiesnatural]

funny how celebrities will raise $26M for a fashion institute but can't be bothered to mobilise even a fraction of that energy and money to help the people being tortured and killed in an unapologetic genocide as we speak. love that for society. what a moment for The Culture.

[lokorum]

jon needs a door and i need a fucking break from this weather uhhh

music from the..floor?? ♪┏(・o･)┛♪

[anchovy]

Me in a random tag: weeeeee this is so fun!! I love looking at all the cool art and posts wow.

An 18+ untagged self insert reader fic that involves multiple kinks, is thousands of words long, and isn’t under a read more:

[ultramarinaa]

No takesies backsies

[zipper-neck]

You know the fic is going to be great when 😈

[nikoisme]

Hear me out. Somewhere Else but it's medieval england with a certain guy

[pumpkinhrat]

part 2 here

[mangozic]

the wettest of cats

[samble-moved]

post itself

false flags

trans/adjacent tags

accessibility features

tumblr live post (thanks for the link, @problemnyatic)

flashing / strobing / lights

unblockable flashing ad

buying ad free

staff @/macmanx guilt trip

list of staff + more issues

[wojtekaneko]

That's how it went