i believe you can always get back to yourself. you can always soften into being again. no matter how long you might be stuck in a pattern of unhappiness, of being jaded, of feeling guarded from the world in some way. there is always a path back. give yourself a chance to find it.

I want a story about a king whose son is prophesied to kill him so the king is like “whatever what am I supposed to do, kill my own kid wtf is wrong with you” so he just raises him as normal, doesn’t even tell him about the prophecy, and instead of some convoluted twist of events that leads to the king’s murder the son grows up and when the king is very old and dying and in excruciating pain the kid is just like alright I'mma put him out of his misery.

The version of you right now is deserving of love. Not you two years ago when you had more of your shit together, or the five years later version where you’ll surely be thriving. The version of you right now. The one that might just be okay, or is really struggling, or is bored and unproductive. That version deserves love. Having trouble accepting this is fine, but actively denying it is not. Your value is intrinsic, and finding confidence in that is mandatory.

I’ve gotten to Rohan Proper and I KNEW it was coming but I didn’t know exactly when or how and just. Wow okay the fact that it’s Aragorn who knows The Wanderer, and translates it… oh my fucking god. Of course Aragorn knows this one, the way he knows Beren & Luthien. Of course Aragorn on-the-spot translates The Wanderer. Beautifully. With some poetic license, but it is p much one century on and no one cares, everyone loves “Where now the horse and the rider”.

(I suspect THIS piece of early medieval lore is more widely known, but if you’ve never read this actual facts real life poem The Wanderer (aka the Lament of Rohirrim) in full — Aragorn just quotes an extract near the end — I highly recommend it. Literally everyone loves The Wanderer. Translating Beowulf sucks and I hate it. Translating The Wanderer feels like reading Lord of the Rings. And not just because it is… in LOTR).

Rutgers translations are always a little more fun and lively; Roy Liuzza’s translation is maybe my top choice. And of course the original Old English is great stuff. I mean, “Swa cweath eardstappa”?? Aragornnnn

Liuzza’s translation, the OG Old English, and Tolkien’s version (he added some stuff, and mixed in a few themes from later lines):

Also FYI the reason I knew it was coming is because my Old English teacher’s great joy was assigning her class this section of The Wanderer for a warm-up translation at the start of class, and then and sit back watching as the realization tore violently through the ranks.

(for the purposes of this poll, there is no monkey's paw situation: the chore you pick stays the same level of difficulty/grossness/etc. as it normally is for you, and you only have to do it as often as you want to. the chores you don't pick are magically done for you exactly the way you'd want them to be, just with zero effort on your part.)

I know adverbs are controversial, but "said softly" means something different than "whispered" and this is the hill I will die on.

frying things in oil is great because not only do you get a delicious crispy object that's sure to satisfy, but you get to imagine how your sudden and violent oil-related death would get reported in the news every time the oil starts screaming

it's so strange to me when people act weird abt folks who worship a lot of gods. like do we need to go over what polytheism means or

A genuine question, did the word "devotee" just up and vanish from language while I wasn't looking?

Linguistic drift is totally a thing, but I'm deeply confused and more than a little baffled at "godspouse" becoming the term used for any oath or close relationship to a deity.

Maybe it's because I've been doing this particular form of mysticism for over a decade, but when I was getting started it was Very Clear (on what resources were out there,) that this was a marriage in a literal sense. It was also stressed that you (general you) can have a relationship with a god that's just as deep (or deeper) than marriage and not be oathed to them at all.

You are a villain famous for “killing” heroes. In reality, heroes come to you to fake their deaths.

Potentially slightly spicy take: full respect for bodily autonomy means respecting the right for people to, assuming they do so knowingly and while informed, consent to putting themselves in situations where they cannot easily, readily or even at all withdraw that consent once given - and this includes during sex.

I have sometimes seen ostensibly sex positive people opine that it is impossible to consent to chemsex even if consent is granted while sober, because not being sober in the moment means that you don't have the capacity to withdraw consent, and the ability to withdraw consent is required for sexual consent to be valid. There are many thinkpieces online, some by academics, expounding this opinion.

While this might make sense for the default case where nothing to the contrary has been specifically negotiated, it is completely incompatible with several understandings of consent and bodily autonomy we routinely apply in non-sexual contexts, where it is understood that of course someone can choose, if they so wish, to put themselves in a situation that they cannot immediately extricate themselves from.

If you choose to get on a roller coaster, you can't unbuckle yourself from the ride once it's in motion, even if you're really scared and want it to stop. Does this mean that you didn't really have the capacity to choose to get on the ride? Of course not. It's a risk you can choose to take.

If you're getting an elective surgery, consent cannot be withdrawn once the doctors put you under. Does that mean that all surgery is implicitly a violation? Of course not. People have the autonomy to put process that will affect their bodies into motion.

Most contracts cannot be reneged upon once signed. The agreement is legally binding. Does that mean that nobody can consent to sign such a contract? No, if you understand what you're agreeing to, you are empowered to make that choice, and the law and society recognize this.

If you decide to scale a rockface while mountaineering, you can't renege on that decision half way up the rock face. Does that mean that you can't consent to attempt the climb? That anyone who sells you gear is complicit in enabling your self-assault? No! This is obviously absurd.

Sex is not some alien domain with a separate, inscrutible rubric; like everything else in life, it's just an activity that people can choose to engage in, and that includes them having the autonomy to make the decision to undertake a certain amount of personal risk.

To take a more common example, BDSM implicitly understands this in a lot of contexts. You can consent to being tied up and gagged if this is pre-negotiated as a scene; once you are tied up and gagged, even if you have some signal, the ropes cannot be untied immediately. This is known and agreed to before the scene commences, because, again, bodily autonomy includes the right to put yourself in situations you can't immediately leave. And yet this baldfacedly contradicts a naive absolutist interpretation of "consent must always be revokable". There are, of course, some people who genuinely believe that such BDSM scenes can never truly be consented to; we call them radfems and swerfs and rightfully shun their wrong and harmful opinions in sex positive spaces as they deny bodily autonomy.

But some people do not take this idea to its conclusion, and carve out clumsy exceptions for activities they personally deem too extreme or risky. I'm here to tell you, respectfully, that it is none of your business, and that you cannot leave exceptions or carveouts in personal bodily autonomy, even if you think it's for the person's own good. (Every conservative opponent of bodily autonomy thinks that their strictures are for the person's own good! That is missing the point!).

So yes, that means that the somnophilia fetishist can consent to letting their partner feel them up while they're asleep. That means that the cnc fetishist can negotiate a scene where they are bound and gagged and not given a chance to say no. And yes, that means that somebody can agree while sober to have sex with their partner while they are drunk.

Bodily autonomy means respecting the right of people to make those decisions, and not vilifying their partners for taking them at their word when the negotiation was in good faith and where there is no reason to believe they didn't understand what they were agreeing to.

yes babe the sex was great but i never finished talking about vampires so i think we need to get back to that

yeah sorry for giving you those weird new kinks. do you want me to make it worse

i love fur, i love leather, i love wool, i love long lasting materials without plastic in them that will decompose and go back into the ecosystem after serving me well for several decades.

zany to me how these um actually nihilists like to pretend that "um actually love/friendship/cooperation/kindness isn't real bc we evolved that way to benefit ourselves as a species..." um YES? that's also where tool use comes from? that's where cooking comes from? am i supposed to think social bonds & tool use & cooking aren't "real" because they evolved over time instead of appearing fully formed from the ether?

sorry u can't enjoy things. im a superior being twirling a fork in my bowl of delicious noodles whilst staring in adoration at the world

shoutout to slow growers, late bloomers, people whose plans got derailed by circumstances beyond their control or their own choices, people who never had a plan to begin with, people who have had to start over when theyre too old to feel like theyre supposed to be where they are, people who cant pretend theyre built for the environment theyre in, and everyone who's not living the life they thought they would. im proud of you for making it this far and i hope you keep going until youre happy ♡

Do you ever find yourself in the presence of your deity and feel like "I was literally born to love you. All these years of life and evolution have allowed me to find you and i don't know how to deal with that." it's too big for my body