At Work There Used To Be A Sign On A Few Things That Would Say Like "if This Bubbles, Run For Your Life"

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

Ok, so if Eowyn wants to die in battle to avoid a worse fate at the hands of the enemy, why is it so easy to miss that??? Why does Tolkien misdirect us?

I could write a whole essay on Tolkien’s love of understatement, of meaningful silence, of “glimpses of untold stories,” but let’s focus on Eowyn for now.

Tolkien creates a suffocating bubble of silence around Eowyn. It’s brilliant and horrible and I love it and I hate it.

Faramir tells Eowyn what he thinks about her motives: “You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn…. But when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle.” And Eowyn doesn’t correct him! She just looks at him silently. And she declares her love for him during this scene.

Eowyn is often described as “frozen” or “cold,” and it’s clear that she has to hide her true feelings a lot of the time. Tolkien REALLY hits us over the head with the silencing of Eowyn in the Houses of Healing, when all the men are staring at her unconscious body and wondering why she was so unhappy. Eomer is positive that her crush on Aragorn was the problem; Aragorn doesn’t want to take the blame. Finally Gandalf speaks up:

“My friend, you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, being born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours.”

And then he says this:

“My lord, if your sister’s love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips, you might have heard even such things as these escape them. But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”

Gandalf has just made the most openly feminist statement in the novel (aside from Eowyn and her “burned in the house” speech), but he follows it by saying that Eowyn has private thoughts that he cannot or will not explain. It is up to the men to decide if they want to know more. Eomer is deeply struck by Gandalf’s words and silently rethinks his entire life with Eowyn.

And then Aragorn has a truly infuriating bros-before-hoes moment: he breaks the uncomfortable silence by reassuring Eomer that yeah, maybe Eowyn’s crush on him was actually the problem after all. Just a minute earlier, he had denied responsibility for Eowyn’s despair. But he hates to see his friend, his brother in arms, feeling shamed. So he jumps in to rescue Eomer from his negative emotions. And Eowyn is RIGHT THERE, silent and unable to defend herself.

We already know that Aragorn is reluctant to know more about Eowyn’s problems. During their confrontation in Dunharrow, Aragorn dodges all of Eowyn’s attempts to make him see her point of view.

“A time may come soon,” said he, “when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.”

And she answered: “All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honor, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.”

“What do you fear, lady?” he asked.

Neither Aragorn nor Eowyn want to talk about what will happen to her if the enemy wins; this is why there is so much misdirection about Eowyn’s motives! Aragorn glosses over the atrocities that are likely to happen and tells Eowyn she can have a heroic last stand, as a treat. Eowyn is infuriated by his poetic vagueness and spits out this horrifying image of being burned alive—but then she fiercely insists that she is a warrior and fears neither pain nor death. She doesn’t want to perform feminine vulnerability to get Aragorn to listen to her. Eowyn is proud and dignified, which makes it especially painful when she resorts to kneeling and begging Aragorn to let her fight. As she tells Faramir, she desires no man’s pity.

I have to give a shoutout to @balrogballs, who has written about this subject extensively:

The cultural fantasy of the female victim of violence often traps women in an unyielding present tense, positioning them as symbols of sentimentality. These women are objectified and become sites of social intervention, their suffering the focal point of external pity and mourning. The narrative demands their pain be witnessed, but rarely offers a way forward, reducing them to objects for emotional consumption rather than subjects of their own story.

This is exactly what Eowyn is trying to avoid. She wants to be remembered as a hero, not a victim.

Tolkien embroiders this theme very cunningly by having Faramir give Eowyn a cloak that belonged to his mother, Finduilas, who died when he was five. Faramir thinks the cloak is “fitting for the beauty and sadness of Eowyn,” which has a deeper meaning that he probably does not intend. Finduilas is also the name of an elf maiden from the Silmarillion, who was captured by orcs and killed with a spear. In Tolkien’s work, both Finduilases exist mainly to provide tragic backstories for male protagonists. Oh, and Arwen’s name was originally Finduilas as well. To be a Finduilas is to be beautiful and passive, and to die tragically. A fate that Eowyn rages against.

(The Finduilas thing becomes even more absurdly cryptic when you recall that only Tolkien knew about the tragic connotation of the name at the time LotR was published. But he did this kind of thing!!! Recall Elrond and his warning against oaths.)

I have always wondered why Eowyn didn’t challenge Faramir when he informed her that she was suicidal because of Aragorn. Perhaps she simply wanted to put the whole nightmare behind her.

But the most painful silence, to me, involves Theoden. Gandalf reveals that Wormtongue was planning to rape Eowyn, and Theoden says nothing. Eomer grabs his sword and has to be restrained from killing Wormtongue, but Theoden actually offers Wormtongue a second chance to prove his loyalty:

"Do you hear this, Wormtongue?" said Theoden. "This is your choice: to ride with me to war, and let us see in battle whether you are true; or to go now, whither you will. But then, if ever we meet again, I shall not be merciful."

This betrayal of Eowyn happens so fast that it is easy to miss. None of the characters comment on it, and the narrative moves on. There’s something horribly realistic about a powerful man with a beloved image casually offering a second chance to a sexual predator and everyone, including the reader, being unable to process what is happening.

The silences in Eowyn’s story come from the male characters and from Eowyn herself. Theoden and Aragorn want to avoid talking about the type of violence that threatens her, and they ignore her desires. Eowyn doesn’t want to be trauma porn; she resents having to explain herself. And this silence offers readers the freedom to empathize with her, like Eomer, or to fall back on sexist explanations, like Aragorn.

Delicious and dragons

After much introspection and soul searching I've turned over a new leaf and have decided to continue making poison swamps 😌

why do we even have legal genders anyway. maybe we should not have those

Dancing in front of Matisse in the Hermitage

Photo by Sergei Podgorkov, 1970

Darcy in his letter being like, "I suppose if you say so, your sister might have actually loved Bingley. I'm not sure though, it seems unlikely. I did look very hard at her for like, whole minutes at the ball. But whatever, it's already done and I still think I was right. Because your family sucks."

been getting really into rockhounding lately and the subreddits are great

DONT use glasses, youll become dependent on them to see!!!! #WARONDRUGS #OVERPRESCRIPTION #CORRECTIVELENSADDICTION