But Also With The Whole Realtor Thing, The NAR Is High Key A Cartel And It Has Been Proven In A Court

When men lash out at women and children with incel killing sprees and school shootings, it's accepted as a fact of life that everyone is supposed to just deal with.

But when they lash out at cops and CEOs, it's terrorism. One is considered too many.

i wish there was an easier way to tell the difference between an "if it sucks hit da bricks" situation and a "sometimes being an adult means doing things that you dont wanna" situation

One thing about the Jackson films that bothers me deeply is that they are uncritically upheld as being full of "positive masculinity." Excuse me? This is the series that has Faramir ordering his men to beat Gollum, Aragorn cutting off the Mouth's head, & Gandalf beating up Denethor on multiple occasions (& kicking him into the pyre!). Sam's meanness toward Gollum, while understandable, is never questioned as it is in the book. Frodo is delusional to pity Gollum. Killing is fun, & mercy is silly.

Belatedly, I do agree. I get that the Anglophone media landscape can feel so saturated by absurdly reductive representations of masculinity that what the films do inherit from Tolkien in terms of emotional expression, friendship etc can feel revolutionary. But the films make a lot of minor and major adjustments to transform the story's visions of masculinity to something more conventional and particularly more violent in a way that is often endorsed by the narrative, or at least framed as an understandable if unfortunate exigency of war.

I once pointed out that Aragorn killing the Mouth of Sauron, an ambassador—however distasteful—is something that essentially operates on the worst kind of superhero logic, a sort of good vs evil righteousness-justifies-the-means thing. It's really glaring when based on a book where the character closest to the author is like "it's one thing, however regrettable, to fight to the death to defend ourselves and our people, but morally, evil deeds beyond self-defense cannot be justified by a righteous cause, not even lying to an orc."

Tolkien's version of the Mouth is an evil Númenórean sorcerer who, while he cannot really contend with Aragorn in a battle of wills, is nevertheless a person of the same kind and general capabilities who chose to serve Sauron. The way that the films use design to literally dehumanize the Mouth, to wholly distance him from the heroes he's literally akin to, and justify straight-up killing him although he poses no personal threat, because he's ugly and evil and (evilly) taunting them so they're mad and it's cool—yeah. It's not really that far removed from Gandalf clobbering Denethor being framed as a bit comedic and a bit cathartic, and seems part of a pervasive ethos of the films that seems to have completely fallen out of discussion of them.

I think we especially see this with the handling of not just my main faves, but Frodo, who really suffers in this more conventionally masculine framework. I often felt like the films want the real protagonists to be Aragorn and (to an extent) Sam, and Frodo feels a bit like dead weight from fairly early on. Adorable dead weight, but still, Tolkien's Frodo especially feels like a challenge to this kind of narrative ethos that the films are just not really up to handling.

It's not that everything about masculinity in the films is Terrible Actually, but I do think there are some unfortunate patterns like the ones you mention. And I'm constantly being recommended videos and posts about Aragorn (or others, but mostly Aragorn) as this unproblematic ideal of masculinity where I'm just ... yeah, no. He is interesting to me, including in the context of masculinity specifically, but I absolutely cannot buy the ideal positive masculinity thing.

therapist: cunt dracula is not real and cannot fuck you.

cunt dracula:

Cursed cats!

I got art block what should I do

The Steven Universe fandom might be “cringe” and “bad” but imagine a fandom so bad that a bunch of fandom members had ran a scheme to say “if you pay us money, your blorbo will know you’re valid” and the fandom permanently split over a 95 paragraph callout post of these people.

Is transitioning even worth it? i see so many posts every day talking about how being a trans woman in todays society is utter hell. I kind of feel like a girl but I could live without it, yknow? i don't need it in order to be happy. It would be nice but it would be so much effort just to be pelted with a barrage of misery every day from vitriolic bigots.

idk im just feeling kinda hopeless abt the whole thing :(

it is more worth it than you can possibly imagine

she’s right