on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich - Tumblr blog

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

So we all know that Tumblr is US-centric. But to what degree? (and can we skew the results of this poll by posting it at a time where they should be asleep?)

Reblog to increase sample size!

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

i got more

lesbian and gay man who are best friends

lesbian and gay man from some time when gay relationships were illegal, who get married for y'know, safety reasons and just live together and have their own relationships in secret and nobody suspects a thing

person A is weird-looking but charismatic and funny, and person B is really hot but also the most pathetic cringefail person you've ever seen

symbiotic relationships. i got no specifics for this i just like them generally

academic rivals who don't actually know anything and instead of competing for cleverness by telling each other facts and figures, they compete for cleverness by telling each other total bullshit. like "what do you mean 12 + 7 is 62? obviously the answer is 4!"

"my gender is no" x "my gender is yes"

detective x assistant who is secretly committing the crimes

king x jester

overconfident and oblivious detective x assistant who is very obviously committing the crimes but the detective still has no idea

relationship dynamics i like (can be romantic, platonic, or whatever the fuck you want!)

old lesbians

edgelord who never swears x ray of sunshine who swears like a sailor

Hawaiian shirt-wearer x goth

Hawaiian shirt-wearer x punk

Hawaiian shirt-wearer x goth x punk

built like a brick shithouse x could fit in their pocket

old lesbians who take the piss and bitch about everyone else (see also: genderswapped waldorf and statler from the muppets)

flamboyant villain x punching-bag sidekick

low-empathy unenthusiastic autistic x empathetic and excitable autistic

dad friend and older brother friend

the loveliest person you've ever met x grumpy old bastard (and they are madly in love with each other)

"oh my god i can't believe we're in love!" (affectionate) x "oh my god i can't believe we're in love." (derogatory)

old lesbians who do silly old lady things together like knitting clothes for their grandchildren and going to bingo

old lesbians who are trying to "relive their youth" so they do silly young lady things together, like going dancing and riding rollercoasters

old lesbians who commit crimes together. get caught graffitiing "janice <3 carol" on buildings at least once a week

"i want another divorce"

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

bail funds for pro-palestine activists

a15 bail and legal defense fund (supporting community members criminalized in the us for solidarity with palestine)

university of texas at austin students bail fund venmo @ psc_atx (livestream)

columbia students bail fund venmo @ bcabolitioncollective

as of april 15 ct dissenters (new york and connecticut) need bail funs for arrested activists: zelle: ctpalestinesolidaritycoalition@gmail.com cashapp: $BristolAntiRacism (use "april gift" in your memo so contributions can be tracked)

the palestine legal defense fund supports acitvists across the united states

palestine legal defence also supplies free legal support for activists

the national bail fund network may update with local bail fund efforts as events continue to unfold

this list is updated as of 24 april 10pm EST. i'll try to update as i find further bail funds and legal supports: if you know of other funds or if information shared here is incorrect, please reblog with updated info (+ a timestamp) so people can give and access support.

palestine will be free, solidarity forever 🍉 🇵🇸

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

Master doc that contains different resources and support for many countries including Palestine, Congo, Haiti, Hawai’i, etc ((op is underneath the link))

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

that's not pirates that's just british people

playing pirates during sex got me saying shit, “show me yer willy” and “blow in the hole”

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

Frodo should've just, like, ate the ring. That probably would've helped with the horrors

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

How did Theatre Kids become the most popular people in my school. Like how the fuck did Theatre Kids get to the top of the pecking order. And why are they now the ruling class that think they're better than everyone.

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

ONE HOUR AGO: greg abbott, who i have the great displeasure of calling my governor, is calling for the expulsion and jailing of ut austin students exercising their first amendment right to freedom of speech an assembly. every single motherfucker on the right soooo concerned about the first amendment seems to be creaming their pants over college students being brutalized and arrested for protesting. its fucking reprehensible.

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

the stuff going on at columbia campus rn is genuinely incredible

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

Why is Tolkien so charitable regarding Frodo's missteps? After all, Tolkien conveniently and entirely blames all of Frodo's missteps regarding his handling of the ring on the ring itself.  "I do not think Frodo's was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum -- impossible, I should have said, for anyone to resist."- JRR Tolkien. One can't imagine him saying anything remotely like this about the others who tried to take the ring. It's only Frodo's actions that Tolkien excuses by saying that anyone in Frodo's position would have done the same thing.

"one can't imagine him saying anything remotely like this about the others who tried to take the ring"

great way to tell everyone that you have no imagination.

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

throwback to the time my childhood best friend told me she was autistic and i couldn't believe it because my first thought was "how can you be autistic? you're just like me."

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

accidentally fell for a scam message earlier lol stay safe out there

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

For @flynniecat

Pippi Longstocking's autistic-coding explained

She has basically no idea what is and isn't considered normal (granted, this is partly because she grew up at sea, but also just seems to be who she is as a person) and subsequently does a lot of things that other people think are strange

She talks a lot, usually when she's not supposed to, and sometimes says complete nonsense, like when she tells that ridiculous made-up story to the little girl in Chapter Five

She takes things literally, also demonstrated in Chapter Five, when the girl says, "Surely you don't mean that you've seen a man walk past here with big ears like that?" and Pippi says, "I've never seen anyone walk with his ears. Everyone I know walks with his feet."

She wears big shoes so that she can stim, i.e. wiggle her toes! (I do that too)

She also sleeps with her feet uncovered so she can wiggle her toes

She misunderstands other people's emotions, for example in Chapter Ten when she says to two boys, "You look so sad. Do you have a stomach ache?" when they're literally in a burning building

When she has coffee with the ladies in Chapter Nine, she tries so hard to join in with the ladies that she ends up completely dominating the conversation, infodumping about her grandmother's maid. There's also a bit where she throws sugar on the floor and then steps on it with bare feet, because according to Pippi, "nothing feels better" than walking on sugar. (Sensory-seeking? I think so.)

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

this is a niche one but instead of "they would not fuckin say that" it's "they would not fucking use American sign language".

ASL is not the only sign language. two british characters in your fanfiction would not be using ASL. England in fact has its own kind of sign language, BSL, that forms a sign family with many other sign languages around the world.

ASL isn't even the original member of its sign family, it comes from french sign language. do you know sign languages aren't related to spoken languages? that's an important one! it's not a direct 1:1 with people speaking English around the world. people in other countries don't learn ASL just in case they run into an usamerican or Canadian (who do often use it)

i know the entire world is the USA or whatever and sign languages do sometimes borrow from ASL for signs they don't have, but please be aware that there are other sign languages and families in the world that are not in fact ASL.

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

So I'm having thoughts about LOTR. Specifically the ending. And the fanfiction that rewrites the ending. Bear with me.

So we all know that LOTR ends with Frodo leaving Middle Earth and going to the Undying Lands, right. And we all know that he does this because all the events of the story have had such an impact on him that they've left him quite traumatised and not really able to live life the way he used to. And we can probably all guess that this is a reflection of how Tolkien may have thought about his trauma after fighting in the First World War.

The ending makes sense considering the time the book was written, because in the 1940's and 50's, people didn't know as much about mental health and disability as they do now, and there weren't as many ways to help people manage disabilities other than institutionalising them or like. Giving them cocaine or something idk. So it's reasonable to assume that because Tolkien didn't see many ways that people could live with disabilities and be happy, he couldn't write them into LOTR and instead basically just put Frodo in Middle Earth's equivalent of Heaven and said "there you go, you're all better now".

I like this as a sort of tragic ending. I mean, you can't deny that someone being so drastically changed by an experience means they can't enjoy the things they grew up with is pretty tragic. The ending does make sense. But I kind of hate it.

I don't think it was written badly or anything, and I'm not trying to dismiss Tolkien's experiences that influenced this ending. My issue with it is that, when you look at it through a modern lens, it has vaguely ableist connotations. Specifically the idea that disabled people (Frodo) can't live full lives and be happy in the real world (Middle Earth) and can therefore only be happy when they're "cured" or when they die and go to Heaven (the Undying Lands).

Now obviously LOTR is an old book and it's important to consider the time it was created when analysing it, as you would do with any other piece of classic literature. A lot of old books have some outdated language and concepts in them, simply because that was normal back then. And until very recently, we probably wouldn't have thought the ending of LOTR was in any way problematic. And it might not have been, because it's not really the fact that Tolkien wrote that ending that's an issue; it's the fact that the way the world worked back then made it near impossible to even think about any other ending.

Since the book was written, though, there have been a lot of advancements in science and research into disabilities, and there are now much more effective ways to treat and manage them. There's medication and therapy for physical and mental issues, and there are lots of accommodations that we can and should put in place to make life easier for everyone. Back in the 1940's, Tolkien wouldn't have had these things, and therefore didn't consider them to be options when writing about what happens to Frodo at the end of the story. But now, we do have them, and it's this progress that has discredited the idea that disabled people can't be happy in the real world, and subsequently made LOTR's ending seem outdated by today's standards.

Now this is where the fanfiction comes in.

LOTR readers these days, who are aware of the progress we've made as a society and the new ways people view and treat minorities, often write fanfiction that puts things into Tolkien's universe that wouldn't have otherwise been there because of when the books were written, from openly queer characters to characters living good, happy lives with disabilities. And I think this is a good thing and it's really nice to see, especially in regards to Frodo's disability. I like seeing people work out how he might accommodate himself in the world of Middle Earth, and how the other characters would help him with that. I like that sometimes people have to get creative when figuring out how he would cope with trauma and chronic pain, because obviously Middle Earth doesn't have a lot of the things we have in the real world.

I like that we can finally give Frodo a chance to recover in a more realistic way than just sending him to the afterlife. I like that we can finally allow him to live.

A lot of Tolkien purists complain about new adaptations and fanfiction because "it's not what Tolkien wrote so he wouldn't like it". First of all, why do we still care about the opinions of a man who's been dead for over fifty years? What are you going to do, summon his ghost to haunt all the fanfic writers? Hold a seance to find out exactly what he thinks? Good luck with that.

Second of all, I honestly believe this is something he would approve of. He went on living after the First World War, but he didn't get to live with the disability accommodations we have today. And because he didn't, neither did Frodo. We can't give Tolkien the life many disabled people have now, but we can give it to his tragic hero. We can make his story a little less tragic. And if Tolkien was here now, of all the tropes we're using in LOTR fanfiction, it wouldn't surprise me if "Frodo stays in the Shire" is one he could get behind.