I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.
And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.
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Personally, I think Bilbo was pretty awful at processing his trauma (and the ring certainly did not help)
Bilbo quietly lived next his grief for years but never looked directly at it. He sent the mithril shirt to the mathom house. He watered down his story until it was something palatable for children—and what’s more, made himself as much of a bit player in it as he could get away with. Yes, he was still kind and generous and clever because he’s Bilbo, but he was probably also terribly lonely, surrounded by people who could never understand what he went through and what he saw. The only ones who could are thousands of miles away inside a mountain he refuses to visit because, again, he can’t look his grief in the eye.
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#ok it’s giving girl dad wearing his daughter’s handmade necklace special for him into work 🥺🥺😩😩
couldn’t stop thinking about this tag of mine, wrote a little smth about it 🥰
The stomping footfalls racing down the hall behind him could only be those of a toddler. Daniel turns and squats just in time for his tiny blonde projectile of a child to come barreling into his chest. The force sends Daniel falling back onto his butt with a surprised oof, his daughter giggling delightedly in his lap.
“Hey, Ellie-bug,” Daniel smiles. “Daddy’s gotta go to work, remember how we talked about it and you promised to be a big girl?” He brushes a strand of hair away from her mouth where it’s gotten stuck in a little smear of jam leftover from her breakfast. Daniel had shown Max how to make it just the way she likes—the pancake batter shaped in the silicone star mold, the silly faces drawn in jelly and jam.
Ellie’s head bobs up and down dutifully, but she makes no move to get up.
Max appears from the kitchen then, looking like a man who’s been fighting a losing battle with the second pancake. There’s a splatter of thick batter on his white t-shirt. He’s holding the spatula like it’s offended him somehow. Daniel looks at him over their daughter’s head, and loves him fiercely.
“She is of course the biggest girl,” Max says. Ellie grins proudly. “Why don’t you give Daddy your present now, then we will finish your pancakes.”
Daniel watches her grey-blue eyes light up like she’s just now remembering why she came running at him in the first place. She reaches a chubby hand into the bib pocket on her overalls, embroidered Enchanté script stretching as she roots around and produces a string of brightly-colored plastic beads. She holds it out to him expectantly.
Daniel takes the strand delicately in hand, wraps it around the backs of his fingers and rotates his wrist to get a good look. It’s a necklace, probably more of a choker given its relatively small circumference, the fat pony beads the only real indication it was made by a child. The powder pink and fuchsia beads are separated by interspersed pearlescent white orbs and clear sparkly stars. Smack in the center is a single number bead, a glittery pink three.
“Jeepers, did you make this for me? It’s beautiful!” Daniel says, and means it. He’s already been wanting to talk to his team about adding a jewelry collection to a future drop, and what better inspiration?
Ellie nods excitedly. “Papa helped me do a…,” she pauses, squints and tilts her little head, searching for the word, “…a pattern!”
“We made it the other day, while you were out with Blake,” Max chimes in. “For good luck.” He sounds almost bashful, like maybe it wasn’t their daughter’s idea in the first place. Daniel’s heart is so swollen it’s threatening to leak out through the gaps in his ribcage.
“How’d I get so lucky, huh?” Daniel muses, softly, mostly to himself. He stretches the elastic over his head, feels the smooth plastic three settle in the hollow of his throat. His pulse thrums evenly against it, grounding.
He flashes his biggest smile at his family. “How do I look?”
“Pretty, Daddy!” Ellie throws herself forward again, wrapping her arms around Daniel’s neck. It leaves him locking eyes with Max, who’s gazing down at the two of them like nothing else in the universe exists. Daniel can never quite get used to that look—still feels butterflies dancing up the back of his throat, his stomach dropped into a glorious freefall.
“Beautiful, Daniel,” Max says, reverent. “Always.”
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Bruce, looking over his newspaper when Dick enters the kitchen, shouting at Dami to finish getting ready: "You two going somewhere?"
Dick, stuffing stolen cookies into his mouth: "I'm just letting Dami practice driving some more before the test."
Bruce: "He's a little young for a license, isn't he?"
Dick, laughing: "B, he's fiftee--?
Bruce, laughing slightly hysterically as he loudly stands up: "Exactly, he's just a child, practically a baby still, can barely even see over the dash, it's a stupid idea Dick. I'm going to the Batcave."
Dick:...
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