#with a small caveat

[air3d3lalm3na]

All of this is true, yes. He wrote a beautiful, compassionate epic that embraced the hardship and ugliness that leads to yet-to-be-named trauma/PTSD. But…describing people as “broken” is such a scarlet letter to put on someone, as though any of us are like objects that break, and this kind of language is often like a permanent stigmatizing mark. We’re not “broken”, we’re human and this is all healthy and normal reaction to pain. And yes, we can seek peace as he did in the end, and heal. A broken item can’t.

The more despair I endure in life, the more I love Frodo. I'm just. I'm so glad that Tolkien wrote him like that. He was a hero and it broke him. He was given too much to carry. The circumstances were dire, everyone was doing the best they could, and Frodo tried so hard, for such a good cause, and he...broke. And the narrative has pity for him, the characters show him kindness. Even after victory, his hurts did not heal, and it isn't considered his fault. He must go to the undying lands, to seek out peace there. In universe, he is forgiven for being human - don't be pedantic - and his great torment is recognized. He fell. He could not have done it alone. He is still a hero.

And, I think that's important.

[autogeneratedkahootnickname]

Hey Tumblr how are we doing tonight

[bunnyboy-juice]

bunny butt: shiny edition ✨

[op is a femme dyke, he/ze/bun pronouns]

[bucktommyscones]

Okay in honor of the potential 8x06 date, BuckTommy? Would they do costumes on Halloween? If so, separate or couples? What would they be?

Oooooh. I think Buck would have to promise Tommy an assortment of sexual favors to get him to dress up, but Buck would be all for that too of course.

It would have to be a couple's costume. Buck wouldn't allow anything less. He gets the clipboard out and they head to like ten Party Cities to find the perfect one and Tommy drives to every single one because Evan's excited and he's so adorable about it.

All right, I'm writing a ficlet about this. Sorry.

****

"All of them are terrible," Evan laments, looking at the array of couple's costumes at the fifth Party City they've been to in two days. Tommy can't quite believe he's spent most of his 48 off looking for Halloween costumes, but he supposes that's what happen when you're in love with a total dork.

"Hey," Evan pokes him in the shoulder. "Are you listening to me?"

"There aren't any good couple's costumes and it's very homophobic," Tommy says and Evan's face brightens like it always does when Tommy makes it clear that, despite the occasional craziness, Tommy always listens to him.

Evan throws his hands up. "Exactly. I'm sorry I dragged you around like this," he says miserably. "I just can't find anything that will be good enough to go to dinner at Micelli's on Halloween."

"Baby," Tommy says gently. "Why do you want to go there so badly? There are a hundred different restaurants in LA we could go to for Halloween."

Evan shrugs. "Because it's our six-month anniversary. And that date was going really well, before I, you know, was an idiot-"

"Hey," Tommy chides. "Don't talk about my boyfriend like that."

Evan rolls his eyes but has a fond grin rolling the corners of his lips up. "Okay, okay. But anyway. I don't know, I guess I want to turn it into a good memory instead of a supremely awkward one."

Tommy has to kiss him about that, so he does. "You're very sweet. Come on, let's go home and put Bridgerton on and comb through Pinterest some more. We'll find something."

Evan narrows his eyes at him. "For someone that didn't even want to do this, you're being very supportive about it."

"Yeah, well, I love a dork. What can you do?"

Evan does exactly what Tommy had hoped he would do: he laughs and snags Tommy's hand, turning to head to the front door of the store.

"I love you too. Okay, Bridgerton it is....wait!"

Tommy almost bumps into his back. "What?"

Evan turns to him again. "Bridgerton! Oh my God, babe, you're a genius!"

"We're going to go as two of the guys from Bridgerton, aren't we?"

Evan grabs his face and smacks a kiss to his mouth. "Yep! Let's go thrifting for costumes?"

Tommy sighs. "Lead on, Benedict."

[dailymanners]

When planning hang outs with your friends or acquaintances, try to be considerate of other's budgets. Unless you're positive someone can comfortably afford something, don't invite friends and acquaintances to expensive places or events unless you're offering to pay for them.

Often if someone is struggling financially, they already feel self conscious about it, and inviting them to places and events they can't afford can be embarrassing and make them feel worse about their financial situation.

It's also not a good feeling to be excluded from hanging out with your friends because you can't afford to.

So if you know your friend or acquaintance is struggling, invite them to places that are cheap or free, or offer to pay for them.

In some places, social decorum used to dictate that whoever invited is supposed to pay, so if you invited friends to go to a cafe or bar you were supposed to pay for their drinks. That's typically not expected anymore in most places, so depending on where you live, you don't have to stress about not being able to invite friends out for coffee or drinks if you're unable to afford paying for someone else.

However, if you can afford it, it's still a kind and polite gesture to offer to pay for your friends if you were the one who invited them out. Especially because you're less likely to hurt the pride of a financially struggling friend if you insist you're only paying for them because it's good social decorum that whoever invited is the one who should pay.

[cilil]

Something Neat About: Silmarillion Edition

So I had this idea a while ago to make a sort of mini series on this blog where I pick one Silm character for each installment and share something I like/find cool/neat/interesting about them (further additions from fans are also encouraged and appreciated!).

I like a wide array of characters in this amazing world for various reasons and keep discovering new faves - not least thanks to fellow fans who make posts explaining lore/appreciating their blorbos/analyzing meta - but I don't always get around to voicing my appreciation for them.

Now, I don't feel like going down an alphabetical list or through a category, so please comment/tag your blorbos, your faves, characters you want to hear about ^^

[francesderwent]

when you send out your wedding invitations, they say to expect a twenty percent attrition rate.

what they don’t tell you is it’s not the twenty percent you think it will be. not the cousins you haven’t spoken to since you were both thirteen, not the old roommate living in a new country. it’s the friends who took long drives with you, who heard your most humiliating secrets, who shaped your music taste and your fashion sense and for fragile and overlapping periods of life were the closest friends you had in the world. the same girls whose weddings you attended not quite a decade ago, whose weddings you were in, whose weddings you made speeches at.

you would’ve moved heaven and earth to be there for them when they got married. you did. you took train after train to get to the bridal shower and then got back on a train that same day because you couldn’t afford to take the weekend off. you rubbed elbows with groomsmen, ghosts from your college days you’d never wanted to see again. you took your life into your hands carpooling with a Milanese priest; he told you the whole plot of Arrival on the highway. you bought pastel dresses as instructed and paid to have them tailored. you missed school and missed out on your own short vacations and never, ever got a plus one. but the curse of being the last single friend is they just didn’t have the opportunity to show up for you the way you showed up for them. you knew they would do the same for you, and when it’s your turn, they will.

except when your wedding does come around, seven years later, it’s still not quite your turn. because you can move heaven and earth to show up for your friends when you’re single and they’re the loves of your life. but by the time you’re ready to go to the altar their lives are already full of other loves—they have husbands and toddlers and babies, responsibilities and difficulties and balancing acts that you still can’t understand. they can’t drop everything to show up for you, because what they’d be dropping is infinitely more worthwhile than all the things you dropped.

you keep getting told to ignore the feeling that you’re falling behind, told there’s no mandatory timeline for when you should hit milestones. there might not be a timeline, but it feels like there is a time limit. once you pass the time limit you can still achieve things. but people won’t care the same way. they send you a sweet text congratulating you. then they send you their regrets, and say you’ll have to catch up when it all blows over.

in the end, your attrition rate is higher than twenty percent.

are you finding out who your friends are? you hope not.

[pancakeke]

in the era of internet where forums reigned supreme in terms of socializing, it was not uncommon for trolls to do rickroll-style misleading links that actually directed to explicit porn or shock images. there were even sites that masked obviously undesirable urls with generated urls containing domains/text that looked totally innocuous. this way the troll's targets couldn't hover their cursors over a link and know what type of page they would actually walk into.

I think this scared a lot of young people into not clicking links and instead immediately distrusting any users trying to direct them offsite. also people made sure links actually contained what was claimed before sharing them.

I'm saying this because I think those trolls inadvertantly did the internet huge service by making people question the intent of anyone supposedly providing information (though not exactly question the legitimacy of info when a link actually directed to info, that's a whole other can of worms). since no one wanted to see a guy's entire open asshole all the time, they checked account creation dates, inspected urls, went out and looked for the same info on their own, etc. before believing someone's intent was genuine.

while the trolls' behavior was obviously super inappropriate, anecdotally it seemed to improve the critical thought in online idiots who only learn and change their behavior when an issue affects them personally lol

[janederscore]

*voice of the complainer* not to be that bitch but its exceptionally hard not to feel alienated constantly by internet-centric trans culture, in particular bc the loudest voices in the room typically have the easiest access to life-changing medical care. like i dunno its just all pretty bleak and depressing when you're getting close to the two decade mark of being out and only having been able to scrape together hrt for a couple of short periods ever

[captainshyguy]

[pacing] no but actually what did they put in close wars maul to make him so hot like what was that

[gailynovelry]

Two things can be true at once. Firstly, it's not "cringe" or shallow of you to like popular media properties. Secondly, deriving all of your media intake from well-known mega franchises will cause you to miss a wealth of excellent stories from the indie scene.

[chloecherrysip]

Every time Mario is visibly concerned/worried about Luigi in the trailers/TV spots/sneak peeks/etc shown so far.

[dyrewrites]

I dunno why I feel the need to say it, but I do, so you get to see it;

So long as you're not hurting anyone (that didn't explicitly ask to be hurt), I don't care what you do or who you are, or what you believe.

No matter how weird or dumb or completely insane it may be, so long as no one's getting hurt (again, that doesn't want to be), I don't see it as an issue.

Make yourself happy. However you can. You only get so many years, they might as well be ones you mostly enjoy.

[aintitfierce]

squints so the original fic does not end Happily for vanya since he's in the role of antagonist for it and it seemed to fit to have him foiled in his plans, especially since he kinda tricks haru and the bureau into helping him in the first place hhfiihaeye

but for the story proper, i'm thinking about making it so that he actually succeeds at the tasks and gets what he's been working toward all this time. considering all he does to obtain it, with him as the protagonist of the story now (albeit still pretty Grey in the moral categories lmao) it might be more Satisfying to give him a win in the end

[andromeda3116]

It’s an older fic of yours but Such Selfish Prayers is a great work that inspired me to be a better person and to have healthy boundaries, could probably say it was definitely at the start of my healing journey

I am so glad to hear that, truly. such selfish prayers is probably the most important fic I've ever written, which came as a bit of a surprise, because, as I've said before, I started it simply out of frustration with how Katara was treated in canon. I never expected to change anyone's life with it, and it's been very humbling to realize that my words have touched thousands of people. I've gotten many comments saying how readers were inspired by it, or given hope in a dark time, or even that it made them realize they wanted to pursue a different career. That it started your healing process kind of brings tears to my eyes, I'm so glad that I was able to help you.

One of the things I put into that fic was my own recent break-up and how I was processing it myself -- how do you deal with someone you love but can't be with? Who -- if you were to stay with them -- would be holding you back? And they loved you and they didn't mean to harm you but they were still wrong for you in ways you don't know how to say? Even more, he had reached out to me in what I thought -- as Katara did -- an attempt to become friends again, but was actually an attempt to get back together. The line, "I thought he was ready to be friends again, I was ready to be friends again," was a direct quote from a text I sent a friend that day, after an incredibly uncomfortable lunch date. I had to tell him that the door was closed, and wouldn't be opening again, and it hurt. That sense of "I wish I could make this be right for us just so I could stop hurting you, but I cannot choose you over me" came from a very personal place.

A lot of that fic is from that kind of personal place, like I said in the author's note of chapter 4. And it's very much idealistic in a way that -- I will freely admit -- isn't entirely realistic. Or, it wouldn't be that simple. (Ultimately, he and I could not be friends again.) But I wrote the world I wanted to see, wanted to make possible. Believing that things can change for the better, that we can stand up for what we believe in and build a better world, even if it's tedious and crawling two steps forward, one step back the whole damn way, even if it takes all our lives and more, we can make a better world and even if we ourselves don't see it, it matters so much because we can build the foundation of that and it will last and grow -- believing that this is all possible is the first step to making it be possible.

That hope and belief may, in the real world, simply be a small candle in the swallowing darkness, but it's a stubborn one and as long as we don't let it go out, it will light the way and someday -- someday -- the light will spread.

I didn't set out to write a story about that candle, but in the end I found I had, and the fact that it's spread to thousands -- and been read (or at least clicked on) by 170,000 people (170,000, it blows my mind) -- has swept me away and, in a way, kept my own candle burning. I may be small and helpless against the tides of everything happening in the world around me, but my words have inspired and helped and strengthened thousands of people. We give each other strength and hope through these awful times, and that hope and togetherness are the things that can change the world.

So, thank you for this. I am so, so happy that I have helped you, and so, so proud of you for going on your healing journey and learning to set your boundaries, it's important and hard and worth it and scary, and I am absolutely rooting for you the whole way.