LOTR + Ask a Manager: Part 4

Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 here!

As someone who was recently in Fukui, this isn't even scratching the surface of how mad the town is for dinosaurs.

For example, here is the outside of the train station:

If you thought that they were only outside the station, think again!

The last dinosaur has a crab, because the region is known for seafood.

You can even buy coffee emblazoned with dinosaurs!

And that's not even getting into how you get to the nearby Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. Behold, the Dino-Liner:

And if you're like, man I don't know how the museum will top all of these dinosaurs, boy do I have news for you.

And then you get to the cafe:

But, eventually, it was time to head back to the train station...on the dino bus.

don't you dare hide this in the tags

…Lizzy

#this is so freaking funny (itspileofgoodthings)

#adaptations really do often underplay how much#pride and prejudice#darcy’s ‘unexpected’ proposal#is basically the ‘did you just flirt with me’ ‘have been for the past [few months] but thanks for noticing’ meme#like this scene#or the one where Lizzy and him are ALONE in the Collins’ house talking about women marrying and moving far from home#& he’s trying to suss out whether she’d be cool with marrying him and living far away from her own home#and she is like ‘well obviously it’s fine if you have enough money to afford the travel’ and he’s like ‘oh?!? and uhhh…#you’re not super attached to your home yourself are you? like you’d be fine with not constantly visiting [your weird embarrassing family]?’#SHE IS SO CLUELESS

This is why I always say that Pride & Prejudice is not Enemies To Lovers.

Elizabeth is in a one-sided-enemies to lovers story. The book from Elizabeth’s point of view: Darcy: [compliments her] Elizabeth: This man is insulting me. Darcy: [gets up his nerve and asks her to dance after she makes a big deal of liking dancing] Elizabeth: He is trying to make me feel uncomfortable! Darcy: [tries to make conversation about something he thinks she is interested in] Elizabeth: I’m not sure what his angle is, but it must be awful since he said that one unflattering thing about me to his friend in a conversation I eavesdropped on! And also, hot!George says he’s an ass, so clearly him being nice to me must be nefarious!!!

Darcy, meanwhile, is over here in all his awkwardness thinking he’s doing a really good job of flirting with the girl he likes. He’s doing so well. It’s actually working! At first it seemed too good to be true, but she’s saying all the right things! She’s telling him how to meet up with her so they can spend time together! She’s putting up with his awful aunt and still lets him visit her despite all of that! He’s done it! He’s got the girl! He’s planning their wedding because he’s getting an A in romance, you guys.

hello my name is Very tiny flying insect i see you’ve got an uncovered beverage outdoors. Can i fall into it and kill myself please please please please please please please please please please

There was a pool 🏊‍♂️ for skeletens 💀 only.

Our favorite Halloween tradition: reading the book my brother wrote when he was ten.

The Haunted House

Once a witch in a spooky house. She was mean. She never shares a thing. Chapter 1

The house was haunted, very haunted. A person named Tommy went in the house and saw a real baseball in there. When he got the ball everything

was baseball supplies coming mad. When he got out, he forgot the ball. He went inside to get it. Then a huge ball came down the stairs. Tommy ran as fast as he could.

Chapter 2 There was a pool for skeletons only. The witch gets shake. And, her broom got dust. That

Broom always gets dust every single hour a week. And the skeleton sleep in the pool every midnight, They have an alarm

clock. They wake up in morning at 5:00 AM, In the evening, the broom and the witch go to bed.

Chapter 3 The witch wakes up at 3:00 AM, the broom wakes up at 2:00AM

A sign said, "Beware"

it's because the bear wouldn't kill me just for being a woman. the bear doesn't kill me for fun. the bear can be shouted at, and will leave me alone. the bear won't make a tiktok complaining about how i crossed to the other side of the path when i saw him coming. if a bear kills me, it's just being a bear: it cannot understand logic. it is not acting out of malice - just fear or hunger.

bell hooks once wrote about how porches might be the only outside space left for women - it is still the domain of the house while it is also outside-but-safe. when i am in the woods, i am in the bear's home, and he has a right to defend his property. outside spaces - anywhere at night, certain parks in the day - those are often implicitly "owned" by men. i cannot explain the feeling of knowing when you have entered a man's "territory." you walk into a place and just know you are in their space. you get a sick sense - you're in danger.

the other day a group of about 8 men were fooling around in the woods while i walked my dog. i had to go around, take the extra 3 miles just to avoid them. it's okay, i like walking. this wasn't even a #feminism moment. it was just a tuesday.

what a plain and easy question. only one of the situations is seen as a tragic accident. i would rather die and have a park bench erected in my honor rather than have my family questioned about why they let me, an adult, walk in the woods in the first place when i should really be at home in the kitchen.

i worked in retail and food service. i have had women say and do absolutely heinous and abusive things to me - not because i was a woman, but because i was there, and they were angry. the way men treated me when angry was different - it was because i was a woman. you can always feel the difference, how there's an undertone of i'd hurt you worse if i could get away with it. i keep seeing people try to cite stupid statistics. why is there always a strange rage whenever women agree on things? like men can argue their way out of our lived experiences? it isn't a buzzfeed quiz - which of these traumas are you? 10 super cute ways not to fear strange men.

i have actually (thrice!) seen a bear in the wild, by the way. i died each time, obviously, and am a ghost writing to you. (it was scary but completely and utterly fine). the second encounter was a black bear with her cub. she looked at me like - do we have to do this or are we good? my dog was busy sniffing a bush, completely nonreactive. i felt like i was in a sitcom: feminist poet reacts - does she actually mean she'd choose the bear? my only thought was - she's so beautiful. her paws are massive.

and there's a part of me that feels the rage spinning out in a corner. why do we have to come up with quippy little comments in order to teach men empathy. would you rather die in a car accident or due to a mugging? and would you rather your house burn down due to an electrical fire or due to arson? gee willikers - it's almost like we're human people, and want to risk the accident versus the intention.

i would rather my last thought be oh shit, a bear rather than i'm a person too. why doesn't that matter? why don't you care?

high school is soo funny in hindsight. the entire time you're there thinking it's the most important period of your life and then the second you're out you're like well that was fucking stupid

I had a dream that Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli were solving a murder mystery in a giant mansion. Legolas kept eating popcorn.

Part II

Actually the portrait of Charles is red to represent enthusiasm, energy, determination, passion, strength, leadership, and love. It doesn't matter that it looks like he's walking through fountains of blood spilled by the British empire! Some of you people need to learn color theory

i was WAITING for this post

tumblr coming across the painting:

Im a woman of simple needs i see faramir on my screen i like it

love shakespeare. did a hamlet run tonight, looked someone dead in the eye to say “am i a coward?” during a speech and the fucker shrugged and nodded

we literally ruined society when we invented the fourth wall. let’s bring back call and response. heckling, even. fuck you hamlet you dumb piece of shit kill your uncle or shut up

"When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side… there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.”

And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period."

Oskar Eustis on ArtBeat Nation

I was in the front row of a Hamlet performance where the "Am I a coward?" was directed at me and I, being a no-impulse-control gremlin, hollered back "Yes!!" (they'd primed us ahead of time that audience interaction was encouraged). Hamlet got right up in my face as he kept talking and just kept going until I gently pushed him back; I forget what line it was on when it happened but he took the direction of the push and reeled away across the stage.

This meant that I had marked myself as someone willing to be fucked with, and so during the graveyard scene later he approached me again. "Here hung those lips that I have kissed--" he booped my mouth with the skull's "-- I know not how oft."

I have stories related to me from those at Blackfriars, the American Shakespeare Center (they play in a replica of the original Blackfriars, with modern safety conventions like lightbulbs in the chandeliers, but a great dedication to the way structure shaped the original work in the original Blackfriars. Their house is only about 45 ft deep (roughly 15 m I think), which is about the max distance two sighted people can be from each other and still make eye contact. They play with the stage and house equally lit, they talk to the audience, they enter from the audience, they whip up crowds from within the audience. It’s fantastic. But anyway, on to the stories.)

Miranda Otto spitting facts about Aragorn in the Two Towers cast commentary

Bonus: 

This thing from 2014 is my legacy. It’s got an insane number of notes and it still gets reblogs and likes everyday. I see people tagging it as #aclassic and I’ve met people in real life showing it to me not knowing I did it.

I was looking at it and realised that today, after 10 years I’d have done it the other way round.

I haven’t been in the Tolkien fandom for literally all of these 10 years so I don’t know if it’s been done already but here’s my updated version.

It’s…much funnier to me now lmao