why do people think victorian orphans were like. the peak of sheltered pure innocence
“imagine feeding mountain dew to a victorian orphan” they’d probably appreciate the pick-me-up before their shift as junior osha violator at the accident factory
“imagine showing a victorian orphan vtubers” they’d say “this is boring i wanna watch public executions”
Cooking horror game where you play as a cook working in the galley of a ship in the 1800s. There’s some kind of supernatural nautical horror story going on in the background but you barely notice this because you spend all day cooking in the galley.
As the game goes on you have to cook for fewer and fewer people but their orders–and the ingredients they bring you–become increasingly unhinged
you have to stay alive. you’re going to be such a beautiful middle aged freak. young freaks will see you in the street and know that things can be okay.
I made it. I made it. I made it!!!!
I am old enough to be a parent to a college-aged kid. I made it. It sucked. It was hard. I lost parts of my self I may never get back. But I made it.
You can make it too. You DON’T have to change who you are. You might have to hide things from time to time, but I want you to know that it shouldn’t be about shame. It’s about protecting those beautiful parts of yourself from harm and having the joy of them robbed from you. It doesn’t make you any “less”. Eventually all of those ‘secrets’ will be like spring bulbs. Beautiful bursts of color and life just waiting for a good, safe, warm day. You just gotta hold on.
You can make it. One day you’ll be an old weirdo with creaking, crunching, knees. You will live long enough to see your own crow’s feet. You’ll stop caring about what other people think and honestly other people will stop caring about what you do. Eventually you get the “adultier adult” pass, and barely anyone gives you a second look. And if they talk shit you’ve got decades of practice under your belt and you can verbally eviscerate them for it. You can make it.
I got gray hair!!! I never thought I would. I love every one of the little wiry motherfuckers. I made it. You can make it.
I don’t think the fandom talks enough about how traumatizing the mines of Moria must’ve been for the hobbits.
And I’m not referring to Gandalf’s death (this is actually quite discussed), that’s “oh no, they’ve killed grandpa”.
I’m talking about the members of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield they’ve found dead. The hobbits grew up listening to the tales of their adventure and their extraordinary deeds.
He’s your neighbourhood psychopathic genius, a skilled sorcerer whose allegiance was realigned once (to his true alignment imo) and then never since waivered.
Unlike Morgoth, who was more straightforward in his execution, Sauron’s style is insidious, and in a sense more horrific for how slow and personal his tactics can be. His temper is such that he can play the long game, even play at being weak in order to earn trust or make his enemies complacent, and then next thing you know he has an old friend’s corpse up as a war banner, or he has sunk a once great island down the Sea.
He bred the Orcs. Tolkien played with different version of the origin of Orcs, but what I like best is the version where they were corrupted Men, maybe even Elves, and although they were Melkor’s idea, it was Sauron who had the ability, patience and tenacity to make the idea come to fruition.
He built cults. Do you know what cults are like? How they draw people in, what they make people believe, what they get people to do? From an outsider looking in it must have looked truly bizarre, but Sauron was able to turn a powerful nation against the Valar and painted Morgoth as the true god. Eru Ilúvatar was denied as a false god, and the Valar made to be liars. There were blood sacrifices, human sacrifices—all for a religion Sauron invented, but was so successful that, once Númenor was gone, Sauron brought the cult with him to Middle-earth.
He was called The Necromancer. What made him garner the title? Who gave it to him, and what had they seen? Surely the Nazgûl were not the first of their kind, not when the Nine were already so well-made. What manner of experimentation had Sauron done in order to make them, and what did the “failures” look like? What knowledge did he use to corrupt and circumvent the Gift of Ilúvatar, which gave Men free will and death, allowing their spirits to transcend Arda? And yet the Nazgûl were unable to die, and as wraiths they also lost their free will, bound to Sauron and the call of the Ring.
He corrupted kings. He corrupted his own kind. Curumo could not have been the only one, and we know Curumo was a powerful Maia in his own right, the leader of the Istari. Sauron played mind games with the best of people, and won. His ability to seduce even the most powerful beings and get them in his service was unparalleled.
Now imagine being a native of Mordor and witnessing the poisoning of the lands. And then an age later, imagine being from one of the villages around Rhovanion and experiencing the slow haunting of Amon Lanc. At least the Eldar could see Sauron and his agents; none of the Men can do so. What defense did the common Man have against such insidious evil? There must only have been odd sensations, a dread settling in, dreams that lure them in before turning into nightmares.
the beautiful thing about ADHD is it can take you down many paths. within minutes you might go from checking if there’s any holidays soon to discovering a national holiday to raise awareness for a little known disease and then suddenly you’re spending your morning down a wikipedia rabbithole and you’re rapidly experiencing the joys of learning and connecting the pieces of the universe together and entering a higher state of enlightened being. or at least having fun.
the horrible thing about ADHD is all that’s nothing but a useless distraction from your REAL purpose in life: being a capitalist drone
I’m reading the lord of the rings and I’m once again amazed at how… good most characters are. Like, they are genuinely good people. They are a bunch of kindhearted, gracious, caring people, coming together under adverse circumstances and trying to figure things out and find a solution and support each other through it all. Like Frodo and Sam meet Faramir and Faramir is a bit suspicious at first and kind of implies Frodo may be a spy, and then when he hears his story and he’s like Frodo, I pressed you so hard at first. Forgive me! It was unwise in such an hour and place. And this blows.my.mind. He wasn’t even particularly mean or threatening to him in the beginning, he’s just such a kind, considerate man, recognizing the kindness and honesty of another man. And they’re all like that. Even Gollum starts slowly changing (for a short while) when he encounters Frodo because that’s the thing about kindness and humility and grace, they are contagious. They transform people, even a creature like Gollum cannot be immune to that. Like, you may consider all this simple and basic and I get it but, hear me out. It is quite rare to see that in modern media and it is also pretty difficult to pull off in a way that is not corny and simplistic. It is mind blowing that you actually don’t have to present the entire palette of human cruelty and vice in order to tell a compelling story, contrary to popular belief. Lotr does the exact opposite, and it is just beautiful and it warms my heart. Especially taking into consideration tolkien’s pretty grim growing-up experience, him being a double orphan without a home, raised between an orphanage and a priest and having no family apart from his brother and then the war and then he almost dies and then he’s poor as hell and then a second war and it all makes sense somehow. He writes to his wife who is also an orphan two days before the marriage “the next few years will bring us joy and content and love and sweetness such as could not be if we hadn’t first been two homeless children and had found one another after long waiting” and, yes, yes! The love and sweetness just radiate from his work, the entire lotr series is a little radiant bubble of hope and love and grace that he imagined in his head to deal with a dismal reality and then he just gave that to the world, and isn’t that what imagination and art is all about after all?
I’m rereading it now too (only my 2nd time) and you are exactly right. It’s such a beautiful, hopeful story. I’m really tired of the anti-hero and so many morally grey characters in so much of modern media. That can be interesting but too much of it can be depressing. It’s nice to have a story where people are sincerely good.
