SparklyPurpleRock

just saw an entire thread of people sincerely describing a content creator's pattern of posting a large amount of content and then taking breaks as "obviously grooming her audience" via "love bombing and ghosting" which i think could have been a really exciting innovation during the steven universe discourse era of tumblr

you deserve a life you aren’t constantly recovering from

it's 2014. everyone is doing the als ice bucket challenge. ilya rozanov is nominated for the ice bucket challenge. in true asshole fashion, once he completes his own video he nominates shane hollander to do the challenge next. shane hollander must complete the ice bucket challenge. he decides to film the challenge after practice, wearing a light gray compression shirt, shorts, and a backwards ball cap, with hayden and jj throwing the water on him. ilya rozanov watches the video, thinking it will be funny. he has never regretted his life choices more as he is forced to witness an already sweaty shane "jock" hollander become drenched in water, shirt clinging to his body even more, head shaking off the excess water with a grin, staring at the camera like he just knew ilya would be watching. it is like something out of ilya's - literally - wet dreams. he downloads the video to his phone. he makes another very large donation to the als association.

You know that whatever character did those problematic things isn't like. Real, right?

You are aware that a fictional character is just a rhetorical construct designed to fulfill a narrative/thematic purpose right? That their actions are written by an author who wants to use them to explore complex ideas and moral gray areas within the safe confines of fiction right? That they aren't a real person who has killed real people right?

you think Frodo ever had a talk with Bilbo after the destruction of the ring, about how his adventure was so much different than Bilbo’s, and how he wishes he had a quest like Bilbo’s, one fun and full of wonder. And Bilbo just smiles and says that Frodo is confusing Bilbo’s adventure with Bilbo’s stories. Frodo sort of laughs awkwardly, thinking Bilbo’s joking. But Frodo slowly realizes how real the separation between the quest and the way he tells it is over time. When people ask him about it, he only ever wants to tell the good parts, the ones where the good guys win and there’s beauty and wonder. He doesn’t want to tell how struggled under the burden of the ring, he doesn’t want to tell about how he failed, he even feels somewhat ashamed when he writes it in his book. And maybe then he rethinks Bilbo’s stories, and wonders if they were maybe not quite as fun as he made them out to be when he told them. And if his uncle had been silently struggling all these years, just as Frodo was doing now.