Don't Let Your Dreams Be Dreams

Marcy: it's okay just go to sleep without me.

 "The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."

I don’t think it was even 6 months later that he contracted trench fever and was sent home. 

His entire command was wiped out in one charge shortly after, the majority of a whole countryside’s youths slaughtered while he survived. Youths who were brave and steadfast, but thought of as lesser than their superior officers while still being the ones carrying the actual battle. Youths who deserved fellowship, respect, and above all to go home and dance with their own Rosie.

But there is a soldier in Lord of the Rings who does not come back, and I don’t mean Boromir.

I mean the being who was a common hobbit, but who became corrupted by darkness and poison, who’s face is described in ways reminiscent of a gas mask.

The soldier who doesn’t come home, who is poisoned by gas and stress and insanity.

Aragorn's entire arc isn't to be the steadfast hero saving the day, it's to hold the line in terror and horror and blood while the overlooked folk are the people who save the world. And then, what makes him a king, is not his skill in battle, but his healing hands.

Which then ties into both Eowyn and Faramir's arcs. Eowyn goes into healing not because she's a weak and meek woman, but because war is horrible and saving lives is better than taking them. Aragorn is glorified within the text for his healing, and so is Eowyn.

Also, tying into the common man thing, in the movies it's Faramir but in the books it's SAMWISE who questions what brings a man so far from home to fight in a war and if he is really so different.

LOTR is anti-war propaganda.

When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.

To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”

So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.

It’s important, though, to understand that during the fallow period, no nutrients are removed from that ground, and nothing is expected of it. Whatever the land grows then, it keeps, and it gets tilled back in or decomposes in place, to return its energy to the earth.

We’re not allowed, in our current society, to just let our minds be fallow for a bit, to produce nothing for export, to make nothing that can be sold. But it’s part of good land stewardship, to give every field time when it doesn’t need to give you anything back. 

Captain America is a war criminal, Winter soldier is an assassin and Hawkeye murdered people in endgame.

Hamlet as a D&D paladin.

The superiority of ‘gritty’ books is steeped in misogyny. ‘Happy’ books are obviously for women and children who need to be protected from the horrors of the world that can only been properly understood and appreciated by the Vastly Superior Intellect and Life Experience of Men. Men want real books where people suffer and die! It’s more real! The realism!!!! It’s REALLER! Like. Can we just. not. Realer =/= intrinsically better. 

People read books for different reasons. All those reasons are legitimate. Someone reading a good romance book is the same as someone reading a good crime thriller or a good YA fantasy. If it’s for fiction, it’s for enjoyment, and no genre of book is superior. 

If you’re reading the fluffiest piece of domestic fucking fluff that’s cavity-inducing and makes you make muffled screaming sounds over the unbearable cute, your enjoyment is just as intellectually valid as John Smith reading Game of Thrones or some political thriller.