say what you want about woobifying villains, but i think tragic backstories and redemption via love are staples for good reason. we want to believe that people are fundamentally good, just hardened by a harsh world. that suffering earns you a happy ending. because then it means something, then pain isn’t just senseless and futile.
people don’t ‘excuse’ the actions of villains because they just don’t take those actions seriously. i think it’s a kind of projection – we forgive them because we want to forgive ourselves, and we look for the good in them because we want to see that in the world, even in people who have wronged and hurt us. because earth is a goddamn terrifying place if other humans really are evil, if they’re really monsters.
and idk, i just think it’s kind of beautiful that we all want to believe that the scariest mass-murdering motherfucker alive can be brought down by something as pure and innocent as love. that love is the answer, not violence. i don’t think that’s cheap or ‘problematic’ or a bad influence. i think it’s human, and profoundly optimistic in a way that few people are brave enough to be.
If I didn’t hold the hope that love could make a difference, my world would be cold and bleak.
People who ONLY ever like “pure, cinnamon roll” characters and try to buff away every flaw and every morally grey dimension and reduce stories to pure heroes and pure villains give me the creeps, because it seems to me like those are people who refuse to acknowledge their own capability to do terrible things, the inevitable fact that they have done things that hurt others in the past and will do so again (because that IS inevitable if you interact with other humans), who never question themselves, who think incredibly harsh standards of judgment are just fine because of course THEY would never need forgiveness or mercy.
THOSE are the people who are most likely to stomp on your face with a boot while being utterly convinced they’re doing the right thing and you deserve it. And they will never admit they were wrong and they’ll never apologize, because only bad people do bad things, and of course they’re not a bad person, so if they did it, it must have been good.
Give me friends who are honest about their own capacity to harm, who know where their own darkness lies, and can see it played out in characters good, bad, and – best of all, somewhere in between. Who understand when to rage, when to forgive, and when to just walk away. Who understand that other people, just like them, are ever-changing bundles of contradictions. Those are people I feel I can trust.
^This last comment. I’ve been thinking about this, and it’s not just that “every villain is a hero in their own mind.” I think it’s that act of making oneself into a hero in one’s own mind, of giving up self-criticism and clinging to an identity that’s based being Good, that opens the door for a person to do truly horrible things to other people. I honestly wonder whether philosophies or faiths where good is a thing you ARE rather than a thing you DO are more prone toward instigating violence in the name of said philosophy.
Skipping back up a few points in this discussion: this is the underlying logic of a whole set of medieval saints lives. The prostitute saints (who are usually depicted as promiscuous beyond financial concerns – yeah, you have to accept the premise that sexuality is bad and chastity is good, but a fair chunk of the audience WOULD have). The set of incestuous saints who not only committed incest but a whole smorgasbord of acts of sexual and other violence before being DRAMATICALLY REDEEMED.
The logic here is: look at how depraved and evil St Whosiface was and yet STILL REDEEMED. May St Whosiface bless me because I too am problematic and yet hope for REDEMPTION. Etc. Some of the St Whosifaces started out good and got too cocky in their own virtue, and consequently were brought low. Some of them started out depraved and got worse, or were born to depraved parents, and so on. These stories revel in the evilness of the protagonist but also bathe him or her in pathos, the better to deliver an emotional payoff when they are finally REDEEMED.
You find these tropes bleeding out into non-saints stories, too – Sir Gowther was a very bad knight, a very bad knight indeed, and is consquently cursed to live ass a dog and undergo various humilations until, as a dog, he defends his master and thus is able to ascend to Good Knighthood by the power of Homosocial Bonding. Yes really. That’s a thing.
There’s a psychological thingumy going on here, and it’s not new.
I’m passionate about my work and enjoy it immensely. It is incredible to work hands-on with original documents day to day, ensuring their survival into the future and communing with the hands and minds that created those documents and held them before yours. You find the doodles of a bored young scribe in the margins of an illuminated Medieval Psalter…pocket diaries kept by soldiers in the trenches of WW1…letters from scorned lovers…thumb prints on seals. Your heart beats just a little faster at those moments.
The other aspect of the job that delights me is that, as an Archivist, I work to Make Things Neat. That is very satisfying to me. You really need to be a tidy person, in both your physical surroundings and in your own mind, to be an Archivist, as you need to run a tight ship and keep everything in order. It’s not always easy when you’re dealing with huge volumes of material, but it’s a beautiful thing to make order out of chaos. Quite often people deposit large quantities of documents in a right old mess. It also helps if you love stationary and enjoy packaging things nicely! Brass paperclips, acid-free boxes and unbleached cotton tape are the tools of the trade, and there’s a purity to that aesthetic that calms my soul.
To get a place on one of the Masters courses in Archiving, you need an undergraduate degree (mine was in Ancient and Medieval History, but other subjects are acceptable so long as you can prove you genuinely love History) and some work experience in the sector to prove your commitment. Back when I was applying for the Masters, they required a year of experience, paid or unpaid, but I think they’re less strict on that now. I literally wrote to all the Archives I could physically get to and asked for experience, and went to a variety of placements through the year, some paid and some unpaid.
The Archives Masters are available at a handful of universities across the U.K., and I went to UCL. I’d definitely recommend it. My qualification was in Archives and Records Management which means I’m also qualified as a Records Manager, but the title and content of the Masters courses vary. After you complete the course and qualify, you can apply for professional level positions.
I now work in a Local Government (County) Archive which means I curate the historical records of a specific geographical area. Day to day, my work is very varied and involves a range of activities. Typical tasks are:
-taking in records from members of the public who wish to deposit them with us
-accessioning those records which means assigning reference codes, packaging and quick-listing them
-cataloguing them which means a more in-depth study of their origin, context and content
-publishing catalogues in hard copy and online via our electronic software
-contributing articles/blog posts/preparing catalogues for our website
-I do a lot of the social media work for my workplace so I organise content for that to go up on a daily basis. I’ve set up Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and it’s good to see our following grow on our various channels.
-Ingesting catalogues and scanned images of the documents in them, into our digital preservation software. Archivists also need to be technologically savvy these days; I have a digital strongroom that mirrors my physical one. Digital archives are archives too! #equality 😉
-managing volunteers, which means organising projects for them and supervising/assisting with those. Plus baking them cake at least twice a year to say thank you!
-dealing with enquiries from the public via telephone, face to face, letter and email, which requires research skills
-trouble-shooting! For example, inevitably, with miles and miles and miles of archives, occasionally a sheet of paper here or there is misplaced and finding it is A Thing!
-copyright enquiries. If people want to publish images from our archives, we have to research ownership of both the documents and their copyright. It’s complicated! Copyright is something we’re trained on whilst qualifying.
-work experience students come and go throughout the year, as-like you-they want to know more about what I do and need pre-course experience.
-preservation work. I work with a conservator but I’m in charge of the preservation of our archives. It’s like this: the conservator is the surgeon and I’m the GP. He does the surgery where needed but I ensure the daily comfort of my ‘patients’!
-exhibitions. These are always going on in branch as well as for special events, to which we bring travelling exhibitions with us.
-outreach, which can mean many things but a key example would be giving talks to groups who want to learn more about the Archive or about a specific element of local history. Can be scary but it’s also fun to share your passion and tell people all about the Precious Things you look after.
I could go on but this is already way too long and I think this is enough detail to give you a taster! Good luck if you decide to go into Archives as a career, it’s fab 💕
Okay, so we’re often led to believe that spiders = the Dark Lords, especially in LOTR, where its like “lol yea spiders just hang around Mordor” and in lore for the Hobbit, too, where its like “lol Necromancer’s land is riddled with em”
but… does he even fuckin’ like the spiders???
We never see him use them. They’re just AROUND. In the shadows. Trailing him, picking on his Orcs as much as anyone else. I mean, he seems to like Shelob? But that doesn’t necessarily mean he likes all the others… Or is this just like… Him being all “fuck it I’m tired of existence, I’ll align myself to the spiders, too… cause you knnow what they threw my master in the Void and drowned me”
I’ve always assumed that since Ungoliant isn’t a creation of Melkor, her brood aren’t even really allies of the Dark Forces. I’ve always seen them as their own faction.
… Spiders keep wanting to be friends with the Dark Forces, and the Dark Forces keep going “EEEW why do you have so many LEGS,” and getting a broom.
Back in the day I think Mr. Melkor-Arachnophobe-Bauglir swore off spiders but realized that little could be done about them and he certainly wasn’t going to try. It’s an interesting implication that the spiders in Middle-Earth are Ungoliant’s spawn- all spiders? were there regular tiny spiders or is every single spider a descendant of Ungoliant that just kept shrinking through time (as is a pattern in ME, sort of everything settling from the Ainulindale aka Big Bang and the universe going from high energy to low energy) until we get modern day lil spiders that are mostly harmless but still hold a tiny bit of TIMELESS VOID ETERNAL DARKNESS in them lmao
Mairon, while more ambitious on that front than Melkor, having not had a near-death experience with one fifty times bigger than your body, still didn’t want to oppose them. It seemed he bartered with Shelob, who canonically was living in Mordor long before Mairon settled there. He managed to strike a deal and keep her happy, and good thing because he wasn’t really in any position to tell her no. How’s about, you do your thing and I do my thing, and if it suits you maybe eat any intruders? Try not to eat my orcs? No? You’ll eat what you want? O-ok, s-sure, that sounds good. Great talk.
While it’s not a coincidence evil spiders and dark lords are found in close proximity, do not mistake correlation for causation! The spiders like the darkness the dark lords made, and occasionally just by doing what they do, prove an asset to Sauron. But no alliances were formed. It’s an uneasy coexistence.
I find it funny that even the dark sides of fantasy don’t like spiders
I think this is how the the sides of Lotr are
The “good” side :Dwarves, Elves, Man, Ents, and Hobbits (and valar)
The “bad” side :Orcs, Morgoth, Sauron, Balrogs, Vampires, Goblins, Ogres, Trolls, Werewolves, monstrous etc. creatures no longer around
The Spider side :Ungoliant, Shelob, all spiders (eat everyone and everything)
Kids. Teenagers. As someone staring 40 in the face lemme tell you a thing.
You are going to be horrified and embarrassed at some point by the shit you are doing now.
And you are going to wish with all your might you’d done more of it.
You’re gonna wish you had more selfies, more photos, more videos being dumb with your friends. You’re going to wish you’d had your hair even higher or your shoes even sparklier.
Go. Document the shit out of your ridiculous life. Fuck trends but if you wanna be trendy, go all in. Fuck in-groups and subcultures but if one sings to you, do it all. Be exactly as cool or punk rock or goth or fandom or country or hardcore or hip hop or whatever, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Just don’t hurt people. That’s the only thing you’ll ever genuinely live to regret.
yep. what they said.
i’m 44 now, and i’ve lived a hell of a life. lived it full-tilt, balls to the wall, pedal to the metal. made a lot of noise. things i regret:
not wearing my knee braces religiously after i tore up my knees playing soccer, so the damage became permanent
not taking a gap year before college
being kind of a dick to some people i dated
not being more involved in my little brother’s life as he became independent
things i don’t for one second regret:
being noisy
taking up space
experimenting
traveling
wearing weird shit
making friends with every rando
going to rock shows even when i was broke
generally being a human explosion
one big reason why i’m so contented with my life now, being the mellow local bear dad in my cozy small town world, is because i kicked out the jams when i was young and held nothing back. i kinda feel like i’ve earned my chill.
I’d like to believe that the reason that the Amazons have the most EXTRA fighting style in existence is because they’re a warrior people with no war to fight so instead of just doing basic training like normal people, Antiope is like, “And now I’m going to teach you how to BACKFLIP off of a MOVING HORSE,” because they have to fill their time somehow.
You never realize how fuckin’ bright white is on a computer screen until you’ve had f.lux for a while, and suddenly disable it.
Do your eyes a favor: Get f.lux. It adapts your computer screen to the time of day in your area, and it puts a lot less strain on your eyes. If you do a lot of work from your computer–drawing, writing, etc.–it is a godsend. I was hesitant when someone first recommended it to me, but now I couldn’t do without it. Considering my tumblr dashboard theme, I’d probably be damn near blind by now if I didn’t have f.lux.
It also makes it less difficult to sleep after looking at your screen because it neutralizes the blue of the screen!
Holy shit I just installed this program and it’s been thirty seconds and my eyes ALREADY feel better.
for android phones, there’s also twilight. be nice to your eyes!
With the most recent update of iOS (9.3), Apple has included a similar feature called NightShift.
just moving along like everyone else 