#will create again when i can

[theheartlandsblog]

our ancestors survived concentration camps and police raids and pogroms and slavery and genocides. we can do this - we shouldn't have to, but we can.

nothing but love today and nothing but love forever.

[astearisms]

fionna and cake drawings before and after watching the episodes so far. it’s nostalgic and somehow cathartic and poignant and relatable and—it just started

[celestial-artisan]

Velvette: Breathe, darling, just breathe. Vox, sobbing: I've done nothing with my life! I'm a failure! Alastor: Well that's never bothered you before.

[mask131]

I am re-reading the Silmarillion, and something strikes me. The women of Tolkien's world have been talked about TO DEATH especially with all the recurring debates surrounding the Rings of Power series.

As we all know, Tolkien was not a "feminist" in the modern sense of the word. He had a very male-centric point of view and appreciation of the world, he had male-driven and male-centered stories, and actual women characters were sparse and rare. There are only five really big female characters in "The Lord of the Rings" - the quintet of Galadriel, Eowyn, Goldberry, Lobelia and Shelob. [No, don't talk to me about Arwen, she only really was a character in the movies, in the book she's just there in the appendix and she was literaly an afterthought of Tolkien to act as Eowyn's romantic double...]

Consider this. Galadriel, Eowyn, Goldberry, Lobelia and Shelob. This tells you everything you need to know about Tolkien's women, in good and bad.

The Silmarillion has the same motif of having a lot of female characters, only for most of them to be just footnotes, secondary characters with no lines, under-developped one-liners... with in a contrast a handful of super-cool, super-badass, complex and developed heroines at the center of the plot.

Aka, on the bad side, when listing the Valar, while Tolkien gives an interesting personality, great domains and cool attributes to all the male ones, half of the female ones are just... there. And do one stuff. And never appear again. I mean come on... Vana and Nessa? Estë and Vairë were done dirty... That's the actual type of "non-feminism" Tolkien has. It isn't about him hating women or trying to be offensive in his depictions - it is about him just, not putting as much thought, effort and care into his female characters as his male ones, a bit the same way he creates the vast expanses of the East and South of Middle-Earth and then never bothers actually developing more of it or seeking to tell tales of it - but that's for another discussion about Tolkien's "racism". Here we talk about women.

But here's the thing, aka the good side... When Tolkien does find the time and care to develop and flesh out a female character, by Iluvatar he goes all out! Again, we are back on what I said earlier: the women of Lord of the Rings can be counted on one hand... but these fingers are Galadriel, Eowyn and Shelob, so you can't claim he isnt writing powerful, important or uninterestng female characters. Which leads me to my original remark - as usual I get driven away in digressions of all sorts and kinds.

Have you ever noticed that Melkor's greatest enemies, the ones he fears the most, and his most effective foes... are women? Tolkien might not like to put them front and center of his tales, and he might have been a man of the early 20th century England in culture and mind, but boy does he has something to say about how women are actually the first enemies of the literal embodiment of evil and destruction! I mean think about it. Varda of the Stars, and Yavanna of the trees. Nienna has her ambiguous relationship to him - her tears work against him, and yet without her plea for him he likely would not have been released from the dungeons of Mandos. You have Melian with her Girdle, and Luthien with her Hound. And of course most of all Arien, guardian of the Sun, not only one of the rare fire spirits that Melkor couldn't corrupt (despite him basically ruling over all fire), but that frightens him so much he keeps hiding away and doesn't even dare to attack her... [I also reblogged some times ago a post praising the brilliance of Tolkien keeping the old European sun-moon motifs but switching the genders. The weaker, inconsistant, lustful, whimsical, disorderly, untrustworthy Moon is now a male principle, while the steady, dangerous, strong, powerful and beautiful Sun is a woman.]

It is actually REALLY easy to do a feminist retelling of Tolkien's work. Melkor doesn't fear Manwë as much as Varda. Aulë's works and servants get corrupted by Melkor, while Yavanna's do not. Melian and Luthien actively works against him. He friggin' pisses himself when the Woman of the Sun shows up. Sure, there are some evil female characters that serve him down the line and are relegated to the "obscure footnotes and undescribed secondary characters" zone - Thuringwethil the vampire or queen Beruthiel. I coul also dropped deleted characters from early drafts, like the ogress Fluithuin. But among them stands Ungoliant... THE only true female big bad on the dark side of Arda. THE badass, nightmarish, creepy eldritch abomination. And who ends up double-crossing Melkor, almost KILLING him, and again making him basically shit in his pants - as Varda and Arien do.

The first enemies of Morgoth are not the Valar, or the Maiar, or the Elves... It's women.

[chocobje]

Would you guys mind if I start posting small quick doodles of my DWFR AU.. Sometimes I tend to just mindlessly doodle but they're not significant lore stuff.. Mostly me messing around or just scrapped concepts.

Same goes for ramble posts(with no art), don't wanna clutter my blog too much for the sake of people scrolling lol.

[reblogbinge]

The right talk about wanting to uphold american values and last I heard the main ones are community and justice for all......and yet

[asukachii]

GojoGeto 👕

(I don’t like putting watermarks so, PLEASE, if you want to post these gifs somewhere GIVE CREDITS!)

[kimtaegis]

LILACS BY THE SEA a music collection curated for @cordiallyfuturedwight Lilacs (Kayla) Playlist • Sea (Seokjin) Playlist song notes

cr. mahoneysuga, rawpixel, bts-trans, Diana Zviedrienė

[kindaasrikal]

Do you think Cole used to help Nya with feeling comfortable in her own skin again and feeling flesh and bones, as well as acting alive again, whilst also helping her keep her form and be more conscious and sure of it after merging with the sea, simply because he gets it?

Ghost Cole you will not be forgotten.

[theotherbuckley]

Just a reminder that people can write whatever they like! If you don’t like it don’t read it! It’s so simple. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s bad. It’s fanFICTION. Which people do for free. If you don’t like it don’t interact. You can ever block or mute them!! But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. As long as they’re tagged correctly they’re giving you the tag you need to decide if you don’t want to read it.

[hypertranced]

ppl who think season 2 of arcane was nuanced are really funny to me actually

[tomurakii]

I like bloodweave. Okay. But I DON'T like the version of them in fanfic where Astarion is a dick and Gale is like. Whining and pleading for him to be emotionally vulnerable (or just. Nice to him) prior to the relationship being established. Because that is just not accurate. Gale needs the player to express interest in him during his weave-teaching scene before he even considers hitting on them properly. Gale is entirely resigned to his fate and needs someone else to pull him away from it. Gale only starts being sweet and romantic and devoted after you accept his love confession and give him hope for the future. Gale says fuck all and then slinks away to cry privately if you break up with him.

Like he isn't chasing after people lmao. He isn't dropping to his knees and crying about anything much less this dickhead he met a week ago. He is overwhelmingly passive about literally everything personal to him up to and including his own death (provided there are no casualties/there is a good reason) until after the player expresses that they care about him. Astarion is not doing that in any of these fics.

Like Gale is friendly and a dork and doesn't wanna get murdered but he fully has a suicide plan. He thought the artefacts would help him survive but he didn't believe he'd ever truly live again. If Gale confessed and Astarion said/did like one (1) mean thing afterward Gale's romance is closed off forever. He's wandering into the forest to cry. He's killing himself immediately. His fragile ego and self worth can't take it. You have to understand that when we joke about him being pathetic it's not bc he's like. Sopping wet and chasing people down and begging for a scrap of attention. It's because he craves affection but would literally rather die than ask or even hope for it until someone else forces that hope back into his serotonin-deficient tadpole brain.

[denkisauce]

(bnha manga ending spoilers)

what was the point

what was the point

what was the point

WHAT WAS THE POINT

WHAT WAS THE POINT

WHAT WAS THE POINT 😭😭

what was the pointtttt

[greatestjubilee]

bleh

[cobra-creampuff]

the fact that they made it illegal to make ads louder than programs on tv in 2010 but haven't updated it to apply the same regulation to streaming. who do i have to call.

[sforzesco]

TRY AGAIN LATER

it's like. well. its several things.

(Plutarch's Crassus, trans. Warner)

and also this

(ibid.)

that compliment sounds like an insult, baby.

anyway, there's a fun kind of eroticism in being given everything, in taking things that aren't yours without any real consequence, in climbing towards becoming a Roman Alexander, only for one man to deny you, over and over and over again, at every turn. Sulla tried, Crassus did it better. who would put a butcher in their place? who else knows you well enough to do it? who else can match you step for step like this? doesn't it feel like a kind of intimacy, a kind of—

it's also about the 'even sulla kissed my sword/so you want me on my knees too?' innuendo was too good to pass up. that was actually the first line I wrote, I figured out the rest of this to justify making a comic with it

and finally! the sword line is referencing/playing off of Lucan's Pharsalia a little bit because it fucks hard

(Lucan's Pharsalia, trans. Jane Wilson Joyce)

EDIT: oh, and that's a public domain anatomical illustration of a heart. you know how it is with love and hate.