all tolkien related fanfiction is deeply chaotic just in very different ways. like.
the hobbit movies fic authors: due to personal reasons, i will be ignoring everything tolkien ever said about his universe. any elf can choose to be mortal, background regardless. the valar are completely benevolent and directly involved in the affairs of middle earth in the 3rd age. thorin and bilbo are together in the afterlife. try me, bitch.
silmarillion fic authors: this is pwp but i did 8 hours of research to make sure it is canon compliant. it is based on a throwaway line from something john tolkien scribbled on the back of a receipt in 1947. every character mentioned will be dead or eternally damned within a day of this taking place. they are also distantly related and hate each other.
Okay but seriously folks - as often as I joke about this movie stirs my loins and as weirdly popular as this text post got a while back, I wanna rap with you all about why the George of the Jungle remake is a pretty important piece of cinema.
It’s literally the only movie I can think of that is based completely around the unheard of “FEMALE gaze.” Granted, while I’m a huge movie buff I’ve not seen every movie ever made. But even so, even if there’s another example of the “female gaze” in cinema that has escaped me it’s still damn impressive that a kids movie from 1997 based on a Jay Ward cartoon from the 60’s managed to turn gender representation in media on it’s fucking ass!
First things first, let’s look at our leading lady and love interest - Ursula, played by Leslie Mann.
Let me just say that while Leslie Mann is adorable and a talented actress, she does look a little less conventional and a little more plain compared to the bombshells that Hollywood likes to churn out. Leslie, in comparison, looks much more like a real women you’d meet on the street. She dresses pretty conservatively and plain throughout the film ; Wearing outfits that are more functional than fashionable for trekking through the jungle, pulling her hair back and so forth. Not that if she was dolled up and more scantily clad it would give her character any less integrity, but can we appreciate how RARE that is in the male dominated industry of film? Just think about all the roads a film about a woman in the jungle COULD have taken but didn’t - no scenes with her clothes strategically ripped or anything! You can say this is a kids movie, intended for children and that’s why the sensuality of the female lead is so downplayed but there are PLENTY of kids movies that handle women in a very objectifying and sexualized manner despite the target audience is pre-pubescent. Like, a disgusting amount. So I don’t think “it’s a kids movie” is why the film doesn’t take ANY, let alone EVERY, opportunity to showcase the main female character’s sex appeal…
…especially considering the sex appeal of the film rests squarely on the well defined shoulders of our male lead, George of the Jungle played by Brendan Fraser in the best god damn shape of his life!
*Homer Simpson Drooling Noises*
Whenever members of the reddit community try to compare the sexualization of women in fiction to the design of characters such as Batman and Superman, I always want to just sit them down and show them this movie. Because THIS is what the female sexual fantasy looks like, and Batman and Superman are male power-fantasies. Look at him - his big blue eyes, his soft hair, his lean, chiseled physique built for dexterity rather than power. He’s wild and free, but gentle. It’s like he fell right out of that steamy romance novel your mom tried to hide from you growing up.
Hell, the whole plot seems to be designed around how damn hot he is! First, for the majority of the film, he wears only a small strip of cloth to cover the dick balls and ass. Everything else is FAIR GAME to drool over for 40 minutes. Then, after he meets Ursula she takes him with her to San Francisco just so we can enjoy him in a well-tailored suit (as seen in the gif set), running around in an open and billowy shirt along side horses while Ursula and all of her friends literally crowd around and make sexual comments about him, and my personal favorite, ditch the loincloth entirely and have him walk around naked while covering his man-bits with various objects while one of Ursula’s very lucky friends oogles him and makes a joke along the lines of “So THAT’S why they call him the ‘KING of the Jungle’…”
And yes, it’s also a very cute and funny little movie. Out of all the movies based on Jay Ward cartoons, it was the most faithful to the fast-paced humor and wit of the original source material (yes even the new Peabody and Sherman movie which honestly I thought was too cutesy-poo.) But that’s not why this movie is popular with the gay community or why we all became women in 1997. It’s just really cool that there’s a film out there where the sensuality of the female form takes a back seat for the oiled up, chiseled, physique of Brendan Fraser (in his prime that is)
One thing to add: in the scene mentioned above where the ladies are watching him in the billowy shirt running with the horses, it pans back to about 50 feet away to two guys in suits at this party looking at the women and one of the guys says, “Man, what is it with women and horses?” So not only does this movie highlight the female gaze, but it blatantly points out that western male sensibilities don’t have a clue what actually appeals to women.
as mentioned above, he looks built for dexterity rather than power, but he’s still a 6+ foot tall extremely muscular man, and not once are you worried for Ursula when he’s with her
let’s take a look at his rival - Lyle is a cravat-wearing trust-fund kid (who, interestingly, is into Ursula’s fortune more than her, which kind of makes this a gender-swapped gold-digger thing too). He’s blonde and Ursula’s mom LOVES him. He’s more uncomfortable and less prepared to cope with the jungle than Ursula is, in his pastels and shiny shoes.
But he talks over Ursula, insists he knows what’s best for her, ignores her autonomy. In spite of the fact that Lyle Van de Groot is a rich, educated, social climber who cares deeply about his clothing and appearances he is a point-by-point checklist of unhealthy masculinity in a way that beefy, inarticulate, uneducated George could never be. Ursula is off on her own doing her own thing and Lyle hires two FUCKING POACHERS to track her down in the middle of the jungle while she’s working (or on vacation? It’s never made clear because he interrupts her before she can explain why she went on the expedition). Lyle ignores the local guides, claiming his experience with a bridge in Maui means the bridge they’re on is safe - which leads to a significant injury for one of the guides. He then tells Ursula the guides are conspiring against him, trying to make himself and his poachers seem safe and the Africans who make up the rest of their party seem dangerous.
Check that body language! A post above points out that we’re never worried about Ursula when she’s around George. That’s because Lyle talks to her like this. Look at his aggressive lean! Look at him literally looking down at her! She’s tilted away from him in the least threatening position possible and he’s so aggressive about whatever point he’s making. When he finds her after he pushed her toward a damned lion he kisses her and she pushes him away. Want a textbook example of gaslighting? Here you go: she says “don’t get all smoochy with me! I remember what happened with that lion” and he responds “What are you talking about? I was fighting that lion the whole time - you were just so terrified you don’t remember.” Then he shoots George! And then he kidnaps Ursula and attempts to force her into marriage!
Now look at how George and Ursula interact (slightly NSFW):
Even though he’s a big strong dude and he thinks he’s doing what’s okay he lets her set the tone for their interactions. He accepts that he’s out of his wheelhouse and even if he doesn’t understand it he does what she says is culturally appropriate. He learns from her! He listens to her! Compare Lyle leaning into Ursula above to this image of George and Ursula talking:
He’s listening to her, all of his attention is on on her, but he’s totally nonthreatening. His torso is turned toward her but he’s not invading her space, his hands are clasped, he’s smiling, and she’s the one leaning into him. Look at that smile she has, look how happy she is to be listened to. Her posture in both images is vulnerable but in this one with George she’s vulnerable because she has chosen to share with him instead of because she feels threatened.
When George rescues Ursula from Lyle at the end of the film it isn’t a typical damsel situation - George doesn’t have a knock-down-drag-out fight with Lyle, he swings into a tree and offers Ursula a hand so she can reach up and save herself (and before he does it he acknowledges how much it’s going to hurt and *whimpers* and looks human and scared). And you’ve gotta remember that George rescues everybody. It’s not just Ursula - he also rescues a parasailer and gets shot rescuing Shep and Ape. He just likes helping, dammit!
AND this movie offers a perfect counter to the “nice guy” thing - Ursula starts engaged to a jerk who her mom thinks is a “nice guy” the moves on to actual nice man George who isn’t *just* nice - he’s also patient, listens to her, has his own skills and talents, is okay with being goofy, has his own social circle and isn’t totally dependent on Ursula, and looks amazing. Ursula doesn’t go with George just because he’s a *nice* guy who rescued her from an asshole, Ursula goes with George because he’s an interesting, fun person who is supportive of her different way of being an interesting, fun person. AND he’s emotionally available. Google image search George of the jungle and see how many smiles you can find, see how many open looks of confusion there are, see how much sadness you can see in George’s face. Now look for images of Lyle. His two expressions are a smirk and cartoonish fear. I know this is a cartoonish kid’s movie, but it is SO powerful that the hero shares his emotions while the villain masks every emotion but fear. Lyle doesn’t want to open up, he doesn’t want to be vulnerable, he wants CONTROL. George wants to learn, to protect people he cares about, to explore new places, to laugh when he’s happy and to be sad when he’s sad, and that he does that while being a broad-shouldered, physically powerful dude who is NOT totally self-involved is just…
Like, look, I didn’t sign on to tumblr dot com for George of the Jungle discourse, but I’m just now realizing that this movie may have done the most for destroying my conception of stoic masculinity and gender roles as a child.
We used to sit for hours in middle school and do this. That’s cool it’s still up and running.
samwichcha7
Yo i was just wondering the other day if this is still a thing
witchy-priestess
Has an app. A bunch of categories and difficult levels. I just searched ‘UN freerice’ in the Play store. You can also make groups to compete with friends 😊
duskingtide
Reminder that FreeRice operates on ad revenue! If you are using the website, make sure your adblockers are disabled, or no revenue will be generated from your answered questions!
Not just the autobus hijack but ALSO the impassioned speech to the crowd at the Martyr’s Memorial that followed afterwards (FËANOR IS THAT YOU?)
Tolkien performing Sheridan’s The Rivals with his buddies in school, with Tolkien playing Mrs Malaprop, “excellent in every way and not least so in make-up“ according to the school newspaper
Tolkien debuting at his school’s Debating Society with a motion “supporting the objects and tactics of the suffragettes“
Tolkien being a brutal rugby player because he made up for his lack of size and strength with absolute ruthlessness
Tolkien doing a “fair imitation of a frenzied Bacchic dance” while wearing nothing but a sheet and sandals after his graduation ceremony at King Edward’s School
Tolkien getting arrested when the police got involved in a town-vs-gown scuffle because he was small and scrawny
Tolkien being invited to do a special lecture at the Essay Club in 1920 but then not knowing what to talk about so he talked about the Fall of Gondolin, with the poor minute-keeper spending a week in the Bodleian to find out what the heck Gondolin was
In general, Tolkien’s awful procrastination habits
Tolkien attempting to put the Silmarillion together for publication but playing round after round of Patience/ Solitaire instead
Tolkien joining a group of students on a stag night after trying to convince the groom-to-be that he was just a random plumber who knew a lot about medievalism, then proceeding to drink them all under the table.
# my favourite part about this post # is that nowhere does it say to reblog this # but we’re all reblogging it # because if we have to suffer # so do other writers
Hi everyone, this is my personal campaign to help fund my partner’s legal defense against his former employer.
My partner is a dog-walker, has been for years. He agreed to join his business of about 20 clients with his former employer’s because she planed to open a dog daycare last year. He resigned a last month over professional differences, and the fact that her daycare STILL doesn’t have an opening date.
His former employer had him sign an “non-compete” clause that says he can’t work within a certain radius of the daycare for 2 years. According to the lawyer my partner is working with, that clause shouldn’t apply to clients he personally brought into the company. We’re hoping his former employer doesn’t have much of a case. But it’s gonna take at least $8,000 to prove that.
Please give this a click and a share, even if you can’t donate. I promise I included lots of cute pictures of dogs.
this morning NASA abandoned their mars rover Opportunity (aka Oppy) because it (she) got hit by a storm on Mars and it knocked her camera and wheels out and her last words to the team were “my battery is low and it is getting cold”. I know she’s a machine but I’m devastated. Oppy is the one who discovered water on Mars. RIP oppy ily space baby
myhomework-is-onfire
they didn’t abandon her!! they tried eight months to reach her!!!! as their last farewell to her yesterday they played her “I’ll be seeing you” by Billie Holiday:
It’s on Spotify, it’s called “Opportunity, wake up!“
This is what’s great about NASA and it’s what’s great about people. These are world-class engineers. When they sent a rover to another planet they could have easily looked at it as just another scientific tool. But people don’t do that. We can and will get emotionally attached to the most inanimate of objects. We can and will anthropomorphize anything. And frankly Opportunity’s camera mast looks like a little face with eyes and everything, so why not?
So they started calling it her.
They nicknamed her Oppy.
They told her to take a selfie not long ago.
After 15 years of Oppy flipping the double bird to her original 90 day life expectancy, when a planet-spanning dust storm finally knocked her out and she stopped responding to the engineer’s wake-up messages, they started playing music for her.
And after 8 months and almost 1000 unanswered wake-up messages, when it was finally clear that Oppy was never going to wake up, the last thing these world-class NASA engineers did for their little rover on another planet
Shout out to the time they returned a $100,000 donation because the donor– months after making the donation– wanted a guarantee that the money wouldn’t be used to support transgender girls.
You can always tell when it’s a man writing a description because they focus oddly on the breasts. There will always be something about breasts and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read historical or fantasy fiction and they talk about “her breasts hanging freely under her tunic” or what the fuck ever and it’s like…women don’t do that? We don’t describe ourselves by saying “I have blonde hair and blue eyes and my breasts hang freely under my tunic”.
I kind of feel like we should counter by awkwardly mentioning all male character’s balls in their description. It’s kind of in the same vein.
Lin-Manuel Miranda is a legend, and he’s absolutely right.
And I really feel like there are parts of fandom that don’t get or don’t believe this, and I think that’s troubling. I’ve seen arguments that people shouldn’t have dark fantasies, or that bad impulses in themselves make a bad person. I’ve seen so much shaming over thoughts.
And if you get to a point where it’s bad to have dark thoughts and it’s bad to wonder what something would be like and it’s bad to put yourself in the shoes of anyone who isn’t “pure”, if fiction is no longer a realm where you can confront and explore, but an ongoing test of moral purity… well, maybe not everyone’s brain works like mine, but I feel like that takes away something incredibly important to being human.
A little over 8 years ago, a friend of mine, L (name redacted) was hit by her scum-bucket boyfriend. It wasn’t the first time he’d hit her, but it was the first time he’d hit her in front of her best friend J. (name also redacted.) J objected to the abuse, you might say she objected violently to the abuse (which is one of the reasons why the names are redacted even if the statute of limitations should be up.)
After scum-bucket had fled the scene, J decided that L needed some more support, so she called every women she knew. Everyone available showed up to L’s apartment with weapons and booze. Imagine if you will, around 30 women stuffed into a one-bedroom apartment comforting L and passing around the drinks when someone spots scum-bucket’s car pulling into the parking lot.
It was decided that a few ladies would stay in the apartment with L while the rest of us when downstairs to confront scum-bucket and prevent him from entering the building.
Now all of us ladies at that time happened to belong to the same theater group that specialized in swashbuckling plays, lots of sword fights and the like. So, when I say we brought weapons, I mean we brought things like broadswords, battleaxes, crossbows, rapiers and like.
So, scum-bucket gets out of his car and starts walking across the parking lot only to spot 25 or so heavily armed women marching out of the building, raising their weapons and charging at him while screeching like furies.
Scum-bucket had a pretty good sense of self-preservation and the sight of us was inspiring. He ran back to the car and peeled out of the parking light like the hounds of hell were at his heels and I suppose we were.
Anyhow, L never heard from him again. Eventually, she and J started dating and they’ll have been married for 5 years next September.
I hate this, because almost no one knows it. No one tells kids with curly hair how to actually take care of their hair.
You can’t treat curly hair like straight hair and expect the same results! You can’t! It doesn’t work! Curly hair gets its own routine!
Okay, look, here’s the deal.
Your curls are… curls. They are MEANT to go together into a GROUP. They are not like straight hair which just hands out in one big… thing. Curls have groups.
By BRUSHING it, you are splitting those good-curl groups into separate strands, which, on their own, are STILL trying their goddamned best to curl, but now that they are away from their friends, they are only clinging haphazardly to each other as best as they can and creating tangles!
Here’s what brushed curly hair looks like:
Here’s what well-treated curly hair that has CURL-FRIENDS is supposed to look like (curl size may vary):
See how the curl is NOT only one strand of hair? It’s a whole group!
You know how you get those nice curls?
STOP BRUSHING.Give your curls back their curl-friends!
Okay, here’s the deal - you sit down. You look at this chart. Figure out your type of curl. (guesstimate)
And now you go to this website and you read about what curly hair actually needs to thrive, and you change your routine, and you promise me that you will NEVER disappoint your curls like that again!!!!
Basics:
1) Curly hair is damaged by heat, lack of moisture, and sulfates in shampoo.
- No blowdrying - use a cotton towel or t-shirt to scrunch your hair and get extra moisture out, and allow to air-dry
- Turn down the shower temp while washing hair. I mean it.
- Try to find a better shampoo.
2) Curly hair NEEDS moisture, and it NEEDS leave-in conditioner.
- Use lots of conditioner.
- Use leave-in conditioner
- Try to use water spray over chemical setting sprays.
3) Curly hair does not need to be brushed, only combed with a wide-tooth comb.
- Comb the hair through with your fingers while in the shower and detangle while you have conditioner in.
- Comb again with a wide-toothed comb after the shower if needed
- If you need to, use a twist of some sort to keep hair out of the way, but don’t squeeze it too much - give it room to breathe!
More tips from smarter people probably exist but that’s the basic stuff.
I've always said I had wavy hair, because it's not properly curly, but it's not straight so I didn't know what to call it. Apparently I am a mix of 2a and 2b, BC lord does my hair ever frizz when I brush it.
Which is primarily why I've stopped brushing. Comb only, and only occasionally. Usually I can get by with finger combing it.
What Native people say about the use of sage: you can use sage, but you cannot smudge as nothing you are doing (waving sage around) is actually smudging. Smudging is a ceremony and you are, we promise, not smudging. Please buy sage from either us, or someone who sources the sage from us. White sage may not be considered endangered by the US government but corperate sourcing is making it difficult for us to source sage for our own religious purposes. Let alone to sell it.
What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.
Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.
1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.
2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.
3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.
All of this is true. I’m white so hopefully this is okay to add, but–as someone who lives in an area with a lot of Native tribes and reservations, it’s also good form to expand #1 to include Native-made crafts. Don’t buy “Native-inspired.” None of that money goes to the tribe from whom the idea was probably stolen. You want Native clothing, jewelry, or housewares, you can probably buy them from a real actual tribe somewhere near you. (The Arizona Botanical Gardens has this really cool thing where, if you’re buying a Native craft, there’s a little tag on it that actually tells you the name of the person who made it and what tribe they’re from, so you know where your money is going.) You’ll have better quality, an actual accurate piece, and the tribe or council will definitely put that money to good use.
hey staff why did all the adult artists get banned but I’m still surrounded by pornbots and terrible harem fantasy game ads with crying abused women in them, I know the answer is MONEY I just really wanted to bring it up and acknowledge how fucked that is
For Him, For Me (7/?, 41934 words)
Pairing: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Rating: Teen
Tags: Temporary Character Death, Magical Bilbo Baggins, Thorin is a Softie
Summary: In which Bilbo is a Child of Yavanna, with blood and knowledge of long passed times. After traveling Middle Earth for thousands of years, he settles back down in his roots… until a wizard comes along, that is.
—
Hey all! I have officially rewritten this fic into present tense and edited it thoroughly (as well as had it beta read by the extraordinary @telltalelily) so I can continue it. If you read it before, I highly recommend rereading it from the beginning!
If you enjoyed this at all, please reblog this so others can too! Thank you!
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