love can really save people, and i’m not talking about romantic love. i’m talking about platonic, wholesome, unselfish love that demands nothing in return other than that person’s safety, happiness, and well-being. love for the sake of love. i think this kind of love is wonderful.
I’ve seen a lot of videos going around of urban-dwelling critters coming to humans for help with various problems, ranging from boxes stuck on their heads to young trapped down a storm drain, and it’s gotten me to thinking:
On the one hand, it’s kind of fascinating that they know to do that.
On the other hand, setting any questions of how this sort of behaviour must have arisen aside for the nonce, does it ever strike you how weird it is that we’ve got a whole collection of prey species whose basic problem-solving script ends with the step “if all else fails, go bother one of the local apex predators and maybe they’ll fix the problem for no reason”?
well, come to think of it, we’re at the top of the food chain but we almost exclusively hunt and kill prey out in the country.
raccoons and possums and foxes and crows all succeed in an urban environment because they’re opportunistic and observant. and almost none of them would have observed us pounce on one of their species and then start eating it, you know? a lot of them would have observed that we scream and chase them out of wherever we don’t want them to be, but other animals are territorial too. but there’s a number of situations where humans feed whoever’s bold enough to take them up on the offer, and we do tend to pull garbage off of other animals as soon as they slow down enough for us to catch. ‘a human got me but nothing bad happened’ is a much more frequent thing than ‘a human got me and tried to eat me’.
anyway like, we’re masters of our environment, we make weird shit happen all the time, we have lots of great food and sometimes we share, and we almost never eat someone. it makes sense for urban animals, over the last century or so, to just keep an eye out for opportunities to use us, and to pass the habit on to their kids.
It really is a weird, funny thing. Like yeah, technically they’re predators, and they get pretty screamy, especially if you try to take any of their stuff… but given the chance it seems like they’d rather help us out and sometimes they’ll just randomly give you food, so???
I mean, I guess in fairytales and myths we’ve got our fair share of stories about dangerous people/creatures who might well kill you or otherwise ruin your life, but to whom people nonetheless turn for help in desperate circumstances. So it’s not like the perspective is exactly a foreign thing to our own mindset, really… It’s just that, y’know, we can’t actually go make a deal with the faeries when there’s something we can’t figure out.
(Which brings me to an interesting thought about the ubiquitous rule about never eating the faery food lest you find yourself forever unsatisfied with anything in the human world – and the potential parallels to the dangers of feeding wildlife human food lest they become addicted and too tame and dependent to be safe for either themselves or us. Hmm.)
Okay, but that last bit with the Fae…makes almost perfect sense.
Of the stories I’ve read, the food of the Fae, its origins and effects, are often strange and/or obscure.- Just like our food to most animals.
The Fae are strange beings that seem to know weird things that give them power or an edge over us.- Just like us to animals.
The Fae work and live by strange rules also often nonsensical or obscure to us.- Just like us to animals.
The Fae can easily obtain vast amounts of things we consider rare/precious/desireable, and have no problem with dishing it out wantonly for no other reason than amusement.- Just like us to animals.
The Fae sometimes are amused by having us around, but only on their terms and IF it amuses/intrigues them.- Just like us to animals.
GUYS, I SENSE A PATTERN….
-they have arcane social conventions and the punishment for not paying the correct respects right is banishment, if you’re lucky, and death if you’re not.
-they have wild and unexpected parties where you’d least expect to find them, but if you’re bold enough to entertain them they’ll feed you and caress you and play with you all night.
-time runs strangely in their realm. their homes are summerlands: warm and bright, no matter the season. there is always fruit on their tables. but not everyone who comes in from the cold is let back out again.
-their games are cruel and complex and unfair, but if you can beat them by their own rules you will access riches beyond imagining.
-sometimes they just fucking fuck with you, the fuckheads.
-they will absolutely steal your children away. when your children return— if they ever do— they will come back strange. they will know things they shouldn’t. they won’t know things that they should. your strange children might survive, might even prosper, might take wives and husbands and have children of their own. but they will always be marked by their time away from your world.
-the price for pissing them off is always death. sometimes just you. sometimes your whole community.
-if you are very good, and very smart, and very brave, they will grant your wish.
My eyes just got wider and wider the further down I read.
look b*tch if youre just sitting n rotting in your familys 10th century crypt and im fighting off giant spiders with nothing but my wits and a shortsword you dont need your bones for anything but i sure do so whats the problem
If I see one more fucking guilt tripping ‘why are you sleeping on X’ posts about net neutrality, the tax bill, healthcare, the judiciary, Sinclair broadcasting or ANYTHING ELSE I’m gonna walk off a pier
Because honestly, what are you doing? What is your goal? People are angry, and scared, and feel hopeless, and your plan to get them to protest is to make them feel guilty for being angry and scared and feeling hopeless. That’s not fucking motivating, it’s crushing.
‘but I put in good info in that post too!’ Yah, but you made everyone reading it feel like shit first so now instead of feeling like ‘wow this is fucked up and it’s hard but here’s a tool I can use to do my part’ ppl think ‘everything is useless and I’m a bad person god I can’t believe how fucked we are there’s no hope anyway’ and then! Not only do some of us fall into the spiral of self loathing so hard we can’t protest, the content we do send out is flat, it doesn’t provide any sort of reinforcement, but it sets up activism in the same purity culture that’s debilitating to long-term engagement. It builds up our apathy, it makes protesting *that much harder* because no one is perfect and no one can protest 24/7, no one can corner every single issue, we will quite simply die if we do.
You gotta build people up. Shit is fucked, we all know that! We don’t need the reminders! Just give us the tools and point the direction and Build. People. Up.
We’ve all seen films in which someone sinks or melts in lava. But really, friends, this is a fantasy.
If you had the misfortune to fall into lava, you wouldn’t sink far. Molten rock is denser than you. Even logs float when they topple into floes, so you’d be like a cork in a sea of molasses. It’s also much hotter than any living creature. It would partially cool and congeal around a human body, just as it does around trees in its path.
Flesh bakes rather than melting. Stay in a floe too long and you’ll turn to a cinder. But volcanic fume inhalation might kill you before you could die from burns.
Yes, lava is serious business. It should never be disrespected. But it doesn’t always mean instant death. Two researchers have stepped into active floes and been rescued. Both lived and retained the use of their legs. Read more about real lava here: When Geologists Step Too Close.
On another note, I didn’t much like Peter Jackson’s decision to show the death of Gollum. Tolkien didn’t subject us to Gollum’s last moments. He fell and was gone. This choice was both more chilling and more merciful, and a lot less cartoony.
^____ THIS.
And goddamnit, the Sammath Naur was not a convenient sight-seeing walkway for ring-bearers. It was Sauron’s own road to his FORGE, and Sam and Frodo walked down it and into the shuddering mountain in the dark, probably amidst the vast, over-sized, and eerily quieted mechanisms, unlit except by the sudden and occasional streamers of lava shooting like streamers from the distant chasm that transected the path.
I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE SEEN THE FORGE, MR. JACKSON. ;__; I AM UNHAPPY THAT I DID NOT GET TO LOOK UPON THE ANVILS AND FURNACES OF A FALLEN MAIA. Instead I got Pride Rock inside a volcano. Ah, what could have been.
YES OH MY GOD YES ALL OF THESE THINGS. AND WHY NOT THE FORGE. CAN YOU IMAGINE SEEING THE SURFACES SAURON’S HANDS TOUCHED AS HE WORKED HIS GREAT CRAFT AND POURED HIMSELF INTO HIS RING
small aside: I totally picture Sauron finishing his Ring and then toppling to the floor, suddenly slow and deprived of some essential part of his being, suddenly bereft of the might of his Maiar nature for a few moments, feeling the rasp and strife of air filling his lungs by slow and uncertain pressure differential; and then, weak and gasping, sick from the taste of bitter mortality filling his mouth like some brash liquor, reaching to take the golden Ring from its perch– piercing the wheel with his finger, skin meeting hot metal– and feeling all of himself again, only now flavored with molten gold, only now the faintest hair’s-breadth from his skin.
I imagine him unsettled, beginning the first stirrings of the longing that would drive him for the rest of his days; I imagine him trembling with fear and the few seconds’ knowledge of the weakness of flesh; I imagine how even the sweetness of power would never again surmount the knowledge of how easily, how simply, he could be separated from himself.
mood: feeling like an invincible creature of speed and freedom while going 5 mph over the speed limit on the highway while angry actually-fast drivers pointedly merge to get around you
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