Jetainia

the960writers

biglawbear

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

biglawbear

You have to understand. I watched the movies maybe once as a kid when they came out twenty years ago. I've somehow avoided learning like anything about these books my entire life. Literally everything about these books was a complete unknown and surprise to me. Totally blank slate going on. I barely even knew how it ended.

Holy shit.

biglawbear

Frodo didn't complete his task. Sam literally carried him up Mount Doom. And when he got to the end, he couldn't throw the Ring away.

But for Gollum biting it off with his finger, it wouldn't have been destroyed.

So Frodo's journey saved the world nonetheless.

And it broke him.

It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer live in the Shire or live in Middle-Earth. He wasn't of the world anymore. He had to go to the Undying Lands.

He took on the task that no one else would. He saved the world. Everyone got a happy ending. Aragorn became King, Sam rebuilt the Shire, Merry and Pippin became heroes. They all lived in renown.

But Frodo had the hardest task of all. No one else would do it. A simple hobbit who came by the Ring by chance. Not a King, not an immortal. Not a wizard. No power save his will and his friends. And he did it and saved everyone.

And he never got to rest. He never got to remain in peace. The task destroyed him. It was too much.

But there was no other way. Nobody but a simple hobbit could bear the ring all the way to Mount Doom and resist its power so long. Not a man, not an elf, not a wizard; they would have succumbed. Gandalf knew this, which was why he chose the hobbits in all his designs.

It's amazing that one of the precedent setting works in the fantasy genre holds up so well because it subverts what ultimately became the genre's core tropes. The hero was not the King, or a chosen one. In fact, the hero not being the King was a key point that allowed Aragorn to distract Sauron and allow the task in the first place. The hero was someone unassuming but courageous, who did the thing because no one else would, even though it was just by chance he came upon it.

But Frodo couldn't resist the Ring completely. He wasn't superior to anyone else in that way. And in the end it left him broken. The burden crushed him. No one else could do it, and in the end, he couldn't either. He wasn't so special that he was invulnerable.

I'm not okay. Holy fuck you guys.

biglawbear

It's been a week and I'm still not over this, I'll never get over this.

Something that I've been thinking about, as I struggle with depression and anxiety and *another vague gesture at everything* is that LOTR does not criticize Frodo for being broken. It does not shame him or deny him what he needs.

The task was too much and it broke him and that's okay. His friends nonetheless take care of him and let him go with understanding. The book doesn't treat it as a bad thing.

This seems to be a theme throughout the books. The characters rest and heal. They spend time recovering in Rivendell, Fangorn, Lorien, Ithilien. It's treated as good and necessary. They don't heroically endure endless torment from the second they set out until they're done.

And in Gondor's march from Minas Tirith to Mordor, Aragorn recognizes that some of the very few men he's taking with him don't have the heart to go to battle against the Enemy. And he says that's okay. He gives them other tasks the they can do. They hold other strategic points. They aren't shamed for not going all the way, or kicked out, or told that they aren't manly or whatever. Their limitations are recognized and respected. The task was too big and it was okay that they couldn't do it.

I don't know man. I've held on through some absolutely crazy shit. White knuckled through mental health crises when my doctors were begging me to take a break, to go to the hospital before I hurt myself. My therapist has tried to slow me down and tell me that I've been going through it and it's understandable that I am feeling some kind of way. Even one of my colleagues remarked that I've had an absolutely fucking wild career and that I've seen more as a lawyer of seven years than she has as a lawyer of forty. But I've gotten it into my head that I have to be strong, I have to be independent.

Fuck me, man, I'm currently white knuckling through life and hanging on by a fucking thread. A few weeks ago I was about an hour away from checking myself in to a mental health facility until my best friends swooped in to help me. And then I went right back to work.

And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means. And it hits me like a fucking truck.

And it says that you can't endure everything. That at some point you need to rest and heal. That if you take on too much you will break. And that all of that is okay.

How am I supposed to move on with my life after reading this?

three--rings

Certainly there are many messages within Lord of the Rings, but you have to think that Tolkien would have been happy that this message in particular was still being conveyed all these years later.

forzandopod

wheelchairoftheseus

how manual wheelchair users move (explainer for non-users)

frequently when i’m out and about with someone walking, they can’t anticipate what path i will take and therefore they’re in my way pretty frequently. this is fine! i can politely ask them to step to the side. but it makes me think about how little non-wheelchair users understand the way wheelchair users move. as someone who used to walk everywhere, it was an adjustment period for me to figure out how to navigate the world in a chair. here are some things that didn’t occur to me so that you don’t cut off your friend right as they’re building momentum to go up a ramp 😆

for context, i use an active manual chair. the world is very different in a power chair. even among active manual chair users, there is a huge diversity in physicality and strategies for getting around. this is a general guide that i think will apply to most manual wheelchair users. i’m starting super basic and getting more complicated as i go.

———

1. manual wheelchairs are a momentum game. it is very easy to maintain speed and direction. but speeding up, slowing down, or turning, is hard. one thing this affects is if we’re on a wavy sidewalk or other twisty-turny walkway, that is a pain in the ass and i am taking as straight a path as i can.

a wavy sidewalk through grass along the side of the road. there is a red arrow showing a straight path down the middle.

2. wheelchair users also have to pay attention to the slope and condition of the pavement, so our path somewhere will be different than yours, even if we’re taking the same route to the same place. for example, i usually have to go down slopes straight, not diagonally, to avoid tipping over sideways. one area this affects is crosswalks. many intersections have one curb cut for both roads you could cross, which means i will go down curb cuts to a crosswalk as if i am aiming for the middle of the intersection.

a city intersection with crosswalks. there is one curb cut to go straight or right. there is a blue bent arrow that goes down the curb cut, across the crosswalk, and up the curb cut on the other side. there is also an orange arrow that is straight across the crosswalk.

your path in orange, mine in blue. to you it seems indirect, but to me it’s the path of least resistance.

i also will be building speed in the second half of the crosswalk. this is a much easier way to tackle a ramp. if i approach with momentum, i won’t have to drag myself up the slope once i get to it.

3. building momentum and maintaining it is only half of the job. the other half is stopping. manual wheelchairs cannot stop on a dime if they’re moving with any kind of speed. if i tried to stop immediately when going downhill, i would fly out of the chair. so don’t walk right into the path of a wheelchair in motion and then stop! i will have to turn to the side very quickly and hope i don’t tip. i can’t tell you how often parents pushing strollers will stop their stroller directly in my path and then get offended when i am alarmed and turn sharply to avoid hitting their child. from their perspective, i was being careless and going “too fast.” in reality, normal walking speed takes a few feet to slow down from and stop.

4. in terms of slope. see this street in san francisco?

a picture looking down a steep road in san francisco. there are sidewalks with trees, and parked cars on one side. several arrows have been drawn zig-zagging down the middle of the street, ignoring the sidewalks.

i can’t go down this street, it’s way too steep. i would give myself friction burns on my palms trying to control my speed. if i was in a situation where there was no avoiding this street, like in an emergency, i would be breaking my straight-slope rule and zig-zagging in the middle of the road.

this would require several zig-zags back and forth, more than the four that i drew. i also could not go up this road other than with this method. up or down, i risk tipping over sideways if i’m not careful.

4. in a similar vein, consider terrain. slopes with grass or carpet take huge amounts of energy to get up. this grassy hill isn’t insurmountable, but it would take me like thirty minutes to get up there. honestly i would probably go backwards, because it’s easier to pull yourself up a slope than push yourself.

a small hill with a mown lawn and some trees, presumably in a park.

other types of terrain can be completely immobilizing, though. this decorative gravel pathway is beautiful, and inaccessible to me. my casters (front wheels) simply will not go through that.

a gravel pathway through a garden. it is interspersed with flagstone and has wood edges.

5. in terms of walkways and obstacles. if there’s a deep gap in the pavement lined up the way i’m going, and it’s, say, an inch wide, that is an obstacle for me. my casters are one inch wide, and my back wheels are an inch and a half. i’ll get stuck in it like a train on a track.

a flagstone path through a front yard with an awkward gap in the middle where the edges of the flagstones all line up. it's maybe an inch wide and a half inch deep, and there's dirt on the bottom. an arrow shows a path next to it that avoids the obstacle.

i have to straddle this, even if it means being too close to the middle of the sidewalk and preventing us from walking side by side.

similarly, if a crack is greater than an inch high, i’m gonna wheelie over it. at two inches, i have to. a wheelie may require a change in speed, either faster or slower depending on the person.

a large crack in a sidewalk. the two sides of the crack are still touching, but the far side is maybe an inch and a half higher.

i have 4 inch casters, so a lip as little as 2 inches will stop me in my tracks. a lip as little as one inch, hit with any speed, can knock my casters out of square. casters can get knocked out of alignment pretty easily depending on the chair. i’d rather not have to pull out an allen wrench and a level, so i’m gonna wheelie.

the bottom half of a wheelchair, shown from the side. the front wheel is at a diagonal from the floor. it clearly can't roll this way.

this happened when i hit about a 1.5” lip on a pavement crack when i was going downhill at maybe 3mph.

6. putting it all together. see how diagonal this crack is?

a large, raised crack in a sidewalk, clearly being pushed up by the root of a tree next to it. the sidewalk approaches an intersection, where it is blocked by a trash can.

this is another situation where i have to go straight relative to the slope. because that crack is wide, it will probably also require a wheelie. if i tried to approach that straight relative to the sidewalk, my left caster would get up the slope, i’d wheelie, then my right caster would land in the crack. i have to go this way.

the same image, now with red arrows showing a path that begins on the right of the crosswalk, crosses the crack diagonally, and ends on the left side of the crosswalk.

(also lol at the trash can blocking the curb cut)

these are just a few things to keep in mind when walking about with a wheelchair user! ofc the best strategy always is just to listen when someone asks you to move out of their way 😆 but i think being able to anticipate movement a little better will help it seem less random. feel free to ask any questions!

deez-no-relation

transmechanicus

6 hour workday maximum i’m not kidding, if it can’t be done in that timeframe it doesn’t need doing.

vmprblood

this doesn't apply to jobs like childcare

transmechanicus

If i worked in childcare and my 6 hours were up i would start putting babies in ziploc bags and shipping them to Turkmenistan listed as endangered fruits and vegetables

reasonablywittyatbest

Ok but actually this exactly refers to jobs like children care, it applies to doctors, etc, because see not everyone has to have thier six hours at the same time, you can still have shifts, you can still have 24 hour stores, its just that no one will be working more than six hours.

emberphoenixisgoingtolivee

would like to add, this also means more disabled people could work. because an 8 hour working day plus travelling just isn't feasible for a lot of us but 6 hours is far more doable, especially if the timing is flexible!

blackestglass

pjeckleburg

i hate the "we should only have queer actors playing queer characters" argument for several reasons. but what annoys me the most is that people who argue this straight up don't realize that it's illegal to ask someone about their sexuality in relation to a job interview. like an audition. i don't think breaking anti-discrimination laws to screen people's sexualities to determine their employment is the woke take you think it is.

pjeckleburg

and just. setting that aside. if you're saying "we should only have queer actors playing queer characters" you're saying that queer people must be publicly out to play a queer character. even if that actor and that character have the same sexuality. that actor has to disclose that to the whole world. again. i don't think demanding queer people to out themselves in order to engage with a queer acting role is doing anyone any good.

pjeckleburg

head in hands. it's acting. it's playing make believe. i don't care if the actress playing a lesbian character has kissed a woman before. i care if she's good at pretending she has.

fan-enby-anonymous

milquetoaast

source

flamingwell

dajo42

using "what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament" to mean "yeah i made an embarrassing reference but you understood it which is also embarrassing" is very funny to me

computationalcalculator

my favorite part is that absolutely nobody says this except here. so if you use it in public, it's a dead giveaway that you spent the last ten years on tumblr. but then again, they recognized it, which means they were at the devil's sacrament

idontgettechnology

I tested this theory in the wild the other day at work. I was on a call with my department lead and a few other folks and I replied to an email the DL had sent me, thinking that, because he was on this call, he wouldn't notice when I sent it and would not catch me multitasking.

However, he replied to said email within five minutes, asking a question that required an answer. So I answered and was like "Also, I was going to apologize for answering emails during this call, but I see we're both here at the Devil's Sacrament, so I don't think an apology is necessary."

I watched him read that on screen and try not to laugh. And then at the end of the call as everyone started saying goodbye, he goes, "Hey, MJ, I meant to tell you. I like your shoelaces."

And I looked straight into my camera, stone cold serious, and said, "Thanks. I stole them from the president."

And the rest of the team was like, "What...the fuck...?" before he abruptly ended the call for everyone.

So now my DL and I know this about each other. He could be any one of us.

libraryogre

At a certain point, the appropriate response to "What were you doing at the devil's sacrament" becomes "stealing shoelaces from the president."

sensiblereblogifposts

Reblog if you were stealing shoelaces from the President

mothnem

Well what ELSE were we supposed to do at the devil's sacrament????

drowningbydegrees

I used to be president of a company and made a devil's sacrament joke in a company-wide meeting without really thinking about it. On the one hand, the number of people who got it made me feel less like I'd stuck my foot in my mouth. On the other hand, I was the boss of everyone in that meeting and that... sure was a thing we all had to know about each other for the rest of eternity.

flamingwell

nerdicornthetrekkie

gamechangershow

Sorry but it's not complete without...

seananmcguire

kaity--did

We're spending a couple weeks in the upstate of New York with my parents and boy howdy are they being reintroduced into deals in a very big and aggressive way

kaity--did

"PAPA YOU HAVE TO RESPECT THE DEALS!!"

kaity--did

Oh Papa you fool you absolute fool

Papa shook the cross road demons hand and said "yeah okay sure deal" thinking she would forget - but the Deals Warlock never forgets and she's here to collect.

6.5 hours later and tiny hand is outstretched and saying "Papa you made a DEAL let's go to the pool"

And away they toddle, a 5 year old patron and the foolish man who sold his soul

kaity--did

THE WARLOCK WILL ALWAYS COLLECT PAPA YOU MUST HEED THIS WARNING (please note this man has not been in a body of water bigger then a puddle in 15 years)

kaity--did

My mom: can you ask your dad to come out here and fix the pool filter

Me: (walks a friggen mile up to the house to relay the message)

My dad: unfortunately I can not because I did make a deal with your daughter that I am holding my end up of right now and I am frankly kinda scared of her

the-haiku-bot

My mom: can you ask

your dad to come out here and

fix the pool filter

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

the960writers

How to support podfic & podficcers!

greedydancer

I’ve seen a few “Here’s how to support writers” posts, so here’s one for your friendly neighbourhood podfic people!

Podfic is more well-known these days, but in case you haven’t come across it: think of it as fan-made audiobooks for fic.

If you like podfic and would like to help the people who make it make more of it, here are a few easy tips and tricks:

How to support podficcers as a writer:

Post a permission statement somewhere public! That can be your AO3 profile, your tumblr bio, the tags of your works… Preferably all of the above! You don’t have to give “Blanket Permission,” it can be an “ask first but I’ll probably say yes” or an “leave a comment and I will decide on a case-by-case basis” statement. Or even a “Blanket no” statement, which will spare the podficcers the time and energy to track you down and ask you, only to be told no thank you. If you want to be asked, though, make sure you specify an up-to-date way to contact you.

Share the podfic! If someone makes podfic of your work, the most helpful thing you can do as a writer is share it: accept the related work notification and add the “podfic & podficced works” tag on AO3, but especially share the link on Twitter, reblog the podficcer’s post, etc. You don’t have to rec the podfic or even listen if you don’t want to-it’s not expected of you! You don’t have to say anything but “Look, this exists!” Your audience as a writer is almost always much bigger than the podficcer’s own audience, so by sharing the post with your followers, you will help increase the podfic’s visibility and chances of getting feedback, which in turn will probably motivate the podficcer or inspire other podficcers to record more of your stories/your fandom.

How to support podficcers as a listener:

Give feedback! If you think writers get little reward for their efforts, oh boy do I have news for you about podficcers. There’s a bunch of reasons why it’s logistically harder to leave feedback on podfic (we’ve all downloaded and listened to something & then… forgot to come back….), and readers sometimes don’t know what to say. If you’re looking for inspiration or a place to start, here are some ideas for leaving podfic feedback: Podfic Feedback Toolbox by KLB, and some useful vocabulary to comment on podfic by yue_ix. Feedback on podfic is so rare that I guarantee you that every single kudos notification, comment, tweet, squeeing tags on a reblog, ask or nice AO3 bookmark is cherished forever.

Share the podfic and/or rec it! Maybe new people will be intrigued and give it a try, which will increase the demand, which will motivate your current podficcers and attract new ones, you know the drill.

In general, the more podfic-positive and responsive a fandom, the more podficcers will be attracted to it. So if you love podfic and would like there to be more… You know what you have to do :p

And if you’re new to the idea of podfic and don’t know where to start: There are more than 22,000 on AO3 right now, in a multitude of fandoms, ratings, lengths, voices and styles. You can usually stream them right on the page, and you can always download them to listen to later. It’s never been easier to have a fluffy ficlet keep you company while you do the dishes or to have someone tell you your favourite AU as a bedtime story.

And that’s it for me! Please share this post and feel free to add your own tips or ask questions if you have any. :D Thank you for reading!

Jetainia

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

how manual wheelchair users move (explainer for non-users)

How to support podfic & podficcers!