Beauty in the apertures of pain

Merry: confused awe

Frodo: confused awe

Sam: confused awe

Pippin: finally i’m getting the respect i deserve from these peasants 

so accurate i am choking on my carrot. this is making me giggle harder than it should. I love Pippin so much.

I don’t think there will come time when I’m not reblogging this. Sorry guys. 

no no no you guys don’t understand, Pippin is someone really important in the Shire! The books don’t talk about it a lot, and the movies won’t touch that stuff with a bargepole, but Pippin will be inheriting land rights to about a quarter of the Shire. He’s second in line to becoming military leader of all Hobbits. His dad is currently in charge of that stuff, but he’s completely aware of it, and educated for it, and that’s why he’s such an over privileged little shit in the books.

I thought it was a shame the movies didn’t talk about class differences in the Shire. Also puts M&P stealing food in an uglier light.

To be fair, at the time of the Party, Pippin would have been 12, which puts it back into a more acceptable light.  And they’re stealing food from Bilbo, a wealthy and eccentric family member, which again makes things a bit different.

But yes, when they call Pippin Ernil i Perrianath - Prince of the Halflings - they are actually completely spot on.

And when Pippin tells Bergil “my father farms the land around Tuckborough” he’s deliberately downplaying his class so that he can greet the boy as an equal rather than a superior.  It’s Pippin’s most adult moment in the series.  Bergil is engaging in a status contest which Pippin can totally win - but instead chooses not to compete.  Pippin is a gilded and spoiled lordling in the Shire, but he becomes a Man of Gondor.

Yeah, to add a bit of unnecessary trivia/level of preciseness, Frodo is the oldest of the four; he was born in 2968, was (obviously) 33 at the time of the Party, and so he’s 51 here. Sam’s second-oldest; born in 2980, he was 21 when Bilbo left and is 39 at this point. Merry’s two years younger than Sam, making him 18 or 19 in 3001, when the Party took place, and Pippin was born in 2990, so he was actually 10 or 11 during the Party, and during this scene they’re ~37 and ~29, respectively.

So yeah, Pippin’s the youngest by a lot. Plus, taking hobbit aging into account, he really is still in the equivalent of his teens; remember the Party was half to celebrate Frodo’s coming-of-age at 33, and Pippin’s around twenty years younger than Frodo. 

This fucked me up. I didn’t read the books and in the movie it was shown like Frodo took off with the ring like 2 days after Bilbo’s gone away, but it was 17 years after that. OMFG.

Also worth noting that “Merry and Pippin stealing food” isn’t in the book - raiding Farmer Maggot’s fields, specifically the mushrooms, is something Frodo used to do when he was a kid, before his parents died and he moved to Hobbiton to live with Bilbo. Frodo’s still afraid of Maggot’s guard dogs, but the farmer himself is sympathetic and helpful when he finds Frodo & Co. cutting through his field.

And this is specifically invoked in the books at the Council of Elrond, where Elrond argues against Pippin in particular going, because  he is so young. He’s okay with Merry going but wants to keep Pippin in Rivendell. Elrond has serious misgivings against sending an early-teenager off to face the Shadow, and given what happens to Pippin in The Two Towers, he was not wrong.

@cyrefinns

@cyrefinns

This is just so great. I just–I can’t.

Merry is also a prince of sorts - his father is Master of Buckland, which is the semi-autonomous boundary community between the Brandywine river and the Old Forest (never, alas, discussed in the movies). Merry and Pippin are friends in the books in part because they’re of relatively equal status and in part because they’re cousins (like all nobs, Shire nobs mostly marry each other).

However, the books also clearly make Merry the Responsible One, even though he’s only been a full adult for four years. (Think early 20s in human terms.) Merry buys and prepares the house at Crickhollow. Merry figures out the secret of the ring before Bilbo even gives it to Frodo, but Merry keeps Bilbo’s secret. Merry convinces Sam to spy on Frodo. Merry explains that they’re all joining Frodo on the Quest, whether Frodo wants them to or not. Merry cautions about the Old Forest and doesn’t go down to drink in the taproom at the Prancing Pony.

So in the books, Merry isn’t Pippin’s partner in pranks - instead, Merry and Pippin spend all their time together on the Quest because Merry’s looking after his younger cousin. Can you imagine what his mother would say if he came home without Pippin? Merry can, and that’s why he takes some pretty absurd personal risks during the books to make sure that doesn’t happen. Like, he literally rides into battle on the back of someone else’s horse, in disguise, because Pippin is probably somewhere in that battle.

Merry is 99%* common sense unless Pippin is involved, and then he is 100% save/rescue/protect/support Pippin. The character growth and maturation we see in Merry in the movies isn’t in the books; instead he has almost the exact opposite arc of becoming an extreme risk-taker, driven by his protective instincts.

(*The other 1% stabbed a ringwraith in the calf that one time, but we can argue that this was due to a natural expansion of Merry’s protective instincts toward Eowyn, with whom he’d bonded quite a lot recently, and toward Theoden, who he deeply respected as being kind of like his dad.)

bonus kleenex moment:

when pippin finds merry stumbling half-blind and sick through the streets of Minas Tirith after killing the Ringwraith, he tells Merry “Poor old fellow! I’ll look after you,” half-carries him to the healing halls, and is worried sick about him until he can finally get Aragorn in to give him medicine.

It’s the first time in the story that Pippin  has looked after Merry, instead of the other way around.

It shows that Pippin has grown up, that he can protect the people who always protected him.

This is also why it’s awesome when they finally come back to the Shire, and Saruman’s made a right mess of things, and it’s Merry and Pippin that kick ass and take names. They’re the closest things the Shire has to princes and military leaders, and they’ve just had adventures that make this look like a minor action. Frodo’s tired, and Sam’s just worried about Frodo, and Merry and Pippin are like hold my pint, I got this.

The literally silent women protagonist leaves a super bad taste in my mouth.

She’s deaf and speaks with sign language, she’s not a silent woman. Like, can we agree that deaf representation in media is important? Can we agree that ASL representation in media is important? This is an adult-oriented romance/sci-fi movie where the female lead is a deaf woman. How can you act like this isn’t significant? The last gif has a deaf woman in the 60s standing up to an aggressive man and telling him to go fuck himself. 

This movie is doing something that has probably never been done before. But hey, she can’t talk “normally” like a hearing woman and that’s bad, so go off I guess.

From the trailer it looks like she’s mute, not deaf. So I’m gonna add that on an artistic level, the mute protagonist is also probably a direct homage to the fairy tale of The Little Mermaid.

I saw a quote somewhere from Octavia Spencer, saying that she thinks one of the best things about this movie is that, since the two romantic leads are mute, much of the dialogue in the movie is spoken by a black woman and a closeted gay man, two people whose voices would have been silenced in real life by 1960s society.

“I was 15, sitting in a 55-cent balcony seat at the Shubert Theater on Broadway when I heard those words and saw the face of Katharine Hepburn live for the first time. It was The Philadelphia Story. I knew then that she was different. She is that rare creature, her voice immediately bringing to mind her astonishing face. She is a member of that club of very few actresses who at their sound are totally identifiable. An immediate vision… Katharine Hepburn that afternoon made me glad to be alive—and sure that being an actress was the only goal in life.” Lauren Bacall

i just learned that mosquitoes pee on u after sucking ur blood what if vampires did the same thing

do you take constructive criticism?

what part of my implication that there might be vampires into pissplay requires criticism

well, i mean... they’re already into one bodily fluid... *drags cigarette* why not... *shrugs casually* 

also, if you have a problem with the p*ss and not the actual vital fluid that maintains your existence then, i hate to break it to you, but you’re the one with the issue here.

Glenn Miller // Moonlight Serenade

When I was a kid my Nana used to play this song all the time, first flitting around her home keeping track of too many grandchildren and too many pots on the stove, then sitting quietly in her chair reading or working on a crossword with one of those blue pens with an eraser in the cap.

It’s the only song I remember hearing at her funeral. There were others, even others by Glenn Miller, but this is the only one I can remember. I was twelve. I remember sitting in a chair sandwiched between two of my cousins, humming along with this song while looking at the poster board we’d crammed full of photos, and seeing a photo of my Nana and Pop standing together under a tree sometime in the 1940s. That was the first time it hit me that this was probably the music she fell in love to. Immediately I pictured that young couple in the photo holding each other close and swaying to the music. I pictured them dancing to this song and making promises about the life they’d share when he came back from the war. All he had to do was come back.

And he did.

I know she played other music, but this song was heavy in the rotation and I can’t help but feel it was theirs. Now every time I hear it, I picture them dancing.

He passed away twenty years before she did. Twenty years. Eight or so years before I was born. Once, I remember hearing a recording on a little old 45 - a message he’d sent to her. I only heard it once and it was the only time I ever heard his voice. She had a few of those old records, and letters they’d written back and forth. She destroyed them all. She said those messages and letters were only meant for the two of them and she didn’t want anyone else to have them after she was gone.

Twenty years she lived without him.

But his name was the last thing she said out loud before she died.

Found it. 1941.

Oh my god... Okay... I’m crying. You can’t just add this heart wrenching, poignant personal anecdote to ‘my’ post and expect me NOT to get emotional and rb :’))

This is so beautiful, thank you so much for sharing, darling <<33

Tea leaves collected from Boston harbor the morning after the Boston Tea Party. 

Label reads:

“Tea that was gathered up on the Shore of Dorchester Neck on the morning after the destruction of the three Cargos at Boston December 17, 1773.”

i’m so pleased that this means someone during the event was like “yeah this is probably gonna be historically interesting” and just ran out there with, like, what, a net? some cloth? fishing around in the fucking bay to collect tea to put in a bottle? you go, buddy

Good job, anonymous 18th century person.  Your commitment to historic preservation pleases me.

SHAKESPEARE WROTE THAT ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE.

HIS THEATER WAS CALLED THE GLOBE.

NOT ONLY WAS THAT LINE PHILOSOPHICAL AND DEEP,

BUT IT WAS ALSO A FUCKING PUN.

ALSO REMEMBER THE FAMOUS LINE FROM ROMEO & JULIET: "A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD SMELL AS SWEET" THE RIVAL THEATRE WAS CALLED THE ROSE AND THEY HAD A SEWAGE PROBLEM NOT JUST A BEAUTIFUL LINE BUT ALSO A PUN AND WILLY SHAKES THROWING SHADE

willy shakes

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to say. I know other posts have been made about it but it still astounds me how few people are aware of the sheer amount of scatological jokes/references, thinly veiled cunnilingus and fellatio jokes/references, puns, etc etc etc ad infinitum in his work. This man [or group of men/people, whichever theory you ascribe to] was an absolute lascivious literary loon... and he's worshiped/idolised throughout the world as this titular venerable literary/theatrical figure. And... well, minus the venerable part, he was. He was a bloody ridiculous, silly, mischievous, and oft louche brilliant buffoon.

Frida Kahlo. Henry Ford Hospital (La Cama Volando), 1932. Oil on canvas.

In Henry Ford Hospital, Kahlo deals directly with her own mortality and her inability to have children. Kahlo dealt directly with death her entire life. At the age of three the Mexican Revolution started, bringing her up in a world fraught with gunfights and banditos. At six years old, she was struck down by polio, which left one leg thinner than the other. She also witnessed many street fights between Mexican revolutionaries while studying in college. Finally, when she was 18, she was involved in a tragic bus accident, which left many people dead. Kahlo was injured so seriously that she suffered severe pain for the rest of her life, and she was never able to have a child with her husband, Diego Rivera. 

Ok, I don’t normally do this, but I felt compelled to address something, so… here goes.

You could have left it at ‘have a child’, period. Frida is known to have been very sexually liberated, having many relationships and affairs with people of a variety of sexual orientations, so the automatic inclusion of ‘with her husband' sounds as if you're presuming to know the mind, wants, desires, etc of this multifaceted woman. Not only that, but the heartache and tragedy that this woman endured and transformed into her inimitable work is somehow demeaned by this presumption. Whomever with and whenever and however she may have wanted a child, she was physically incapable of bearing one. And that is a tragedy, as well as being an abiding source of grief for her. But she ultimately endured, and gave us some of the best art ever created. Which is, and should have been, what this caption conveyed, if it took into account her autonomy and orientation, and were truly empathetic.

*whispers* You can be mature and respectful and still have a dirty sense of humour.

*murmurs* You can curse a lot and still be highly intelligent with a massive vocabulary.

Langston Hughes

Poem, “Good Morning Revolution.” Published in 1932.

Just…wow. I mean…goosebumps all over my body every time I read this. When he wrote "you’re the best friend I ever had," as if the commitment to change through collective power among the powerless is something that breathes life too…I just…I get a little emotional. That’s all. Whew.

(via gradientlair)