:: valar morghulis :: the things i do for love ::

People in the LOTR fandom don’t attack Tolkien fans because they wish they’d had Tom Bombardil in the movies. And yet every time there’s some serious and fact-based discussion about how problematic some of D&D’s choices are, there are always people going “Well then why are you watching?” or “Shut up they’re different mediums they can’t do X”. 

It’s just an easy way to shut down critics, at this point. Because at the end of the day, the Tom Bombardil comparison I made is a very mild comparison. Most LOTR/Tolkien people agree that it would have been anticlimatic and weird to have Tom in the movies, in spite of how fascinating he is in the book. 

But what would the Tolkien people say if Peter Jackson had decided to make Faramir take the ring? Or Eowyn be graphically sexually assaulted by Grima? Or cut Galadriel’s involvement in the story to profit Celeborn’s character?

Stop, Breathe & Think

I’m sure I’ve seen a post about this before but nevermind. I’ve been using app for a little while and it’s available to download for free on iOS and Android as well as being available online. I highly recommend it and thought it may be helpful for others to know about it.

It’s a guided meditation app that allows you to input how you’re feeling mentally, physically and emotionally and then brings up suggestions for meditations.

It’s been so useful for me as I often have trouble relaxing and slowing down. All the meditations are brilliant and the woman who talks you through them has a lovely voice. The meditations are different time lengths so even if you only have a couple of minutes to spare you can still listen to one to unwind.

I did not put it on Amazon for sale. Someone stole the material and published it, using my author name and their actual name. I have already contacted Amazon and the publishing company, and I will be pursuing legal action against the person who listed it. Please don’t purchase it.

goddamn enOUGH with this trend of people believing that tony doesn’t own up to his mistakes and take accountability. stop using headcanons and personal interpretations to color what is canon and what isn’t. age of ultron tells us that the twins were 7 were they died, meaning that the use of stark weapons in their parents’ deaths was just under 20 years ago. tony found out about gulmira and the illegal arms dealing of his company with the ten rings in 2008. this was 7 years ago. whatever happened in sokovia preceded afghanistan and gulmira. that’s just simple maths for you. it wasn’t until afghanistan that tony had his eyes opened. and what did he do? he tore down his company, risked his life and was nearly murdered so he could have the chance to change stark industries, to fix his past mistakes and to ensure he his company would never produce weapons again.

when tony says “this was never my life” in aou after pietro points to the illegally obtained black market missiles he has literally been fighting for the past decade of his life to make up for his mistakes and his ignorance of stark industries’ illegal dealings. he has never willingly or intentionally sold illegal weapons to arms dealers or terrorists or people that used these weapons for the sole purpose of fear tactics and murder. the moment he stood up before the world press and shut down SI’s weapons manufacturing effectively immediately, the man who was responsible for illegal arms dealing at stark industries attempted to have him killed. and before that, had him kidnapped and held for torture.

ignorance ≠ innocence and his hands are by no means clean. those are his mistakes to carry with him and to remember but when his eyes were opened tony stark saw. and he saw a future where he didn’t build things blew people up, a future where he and his company could do better and more for the world and the people living in it then just creating death and destruction. i am sick and fucking tired of meta posts and the hoards of people ignoring the entirety of canon that is tony stark doing everything humanly possible to stop his weapons from hurting innocent people again. since iron man 1, he has thrown himself into clean energy and sustainability, into medical technology and development, into every facet of innovation and pushing the boundaries of what humankind can achieve with their minds, into donning on an iron suit he built with his bare hands to save people, into outfitting his team with the best possible protection and gear he can create so they can stay safe whilst also saving people.

tony stark is not perfect nor infallible. his is human. his past is marked by those mistakes, but it is NOT a fucking supervillain origin story. he is a character that demonstrates the ability to make mistakes and learn from them, to atone, to fix what he fucked up. if that’s somehow too unbelievable, if being allowed to change and evolve from your former self is something you find too cynical to accept that’s on you. what kind of world would it be if all of the worst mistakes we ever made were held against us for the rest of our lives in spite of any and all attempts to atone. because that’s how it is for tony stark. and despite the numbers of people telling him he can’t and waiting for him to fail, he picks himself back up, he owns up to the mistake and builds anew from the ground up. and continues to risk his life all the time, just a human with a brilliant mind and metal suit, protecting and saving people to make up for his past bit by bit.

I’m stressing this because crying over these “every day” events is not common for men in media. This is particularly important for Matt, who’s portrayed fairly traditionally masculine - physically strong and mentally stoic, reserved in his emotions. But yet, he cries when he’s fighting with his friend. And the narrative validates both his and Foggy’s crying. The scene is full of pathos and their fight is one of the more painful scenes on a fairly gruesome show. They’re expressing their feelings and talking it out and crying, and they’re not weak or any less badass for it. They are simply human for doing so.