Katiaswift - Nobody Ever Talks About Little Chungus :/

I am being eaten but very gently and politely

Attention Tolkien Fans!

I am excited to announce that lotrart is nearing 2,000 posts! This has gotten so much bigger than I ever could have anticipated and I'm so happy that people love this collection of fanart as much as I do.

With that in mind, this is one for the tags! If you're interested in rediscovering some of the most breathtaking, <100-note art posts from Tumblr's byegone era, please come and join me! I may be busy, but my queue is busier. this is a bold-faced lie I will reblog art from any Tolkien-adjacent anything if you send it to me - the original LotR trilogy, the Peter Jackson films, The Silmarillion my beloved, Rings of Power, and anything else you can think of - so please reach out to drop me links to your favourite art and artists! My mission is to get as much old stuff recirculating as I possibly can.

yeah no guys i can't do sunday. yeah its gonna be 3 years since destiel confession. yeah its gonna be all day

I don't do a lot of reblogging, but after reading through the entire thread, there was one thing that really got to me... about halfway down Page 13, SA user "Kramer" has a truly prophetic take:

"Not to belittle the signifigance of these events, but you do realize that this means a whole slew of "anti terrorist" and probably "anti violence" laws will be passed through congress. Any "anti terrorist" laws will be given almost a blank check to do what is necessary. I'd be surprised if in 6 months you'll be able to make a domestic call without it being monitored. That's the way terrorism works. It's not the attack that hurts most people. A couple of hundred people die -- every death is tragic, but the truth is the real tragedy will be the loss of freedoms for the survivors."

How unbelievably dead-on; "I'd be surprised if in 6 months you'll be able to make a domestic call without it being monitored." I wonder where they are now, what they're doing and what they think of the state of the world 22 years later... any other predictions for us, Cassandra Kramer?

I reblogged it earlier but I'm glad the Something Awful Forums 9/11 thread was archived because it's an incredibly important slice of internet history. For the record I think 9/11 was thousands of personal tragedies for the direct victims of the attacks but one big national farce that led to America's ongoing slide into fascism, and the nationalism and remembrance around it is a joke especially in the wake of the same amount of deaths every fucking day in the US during the height of coronavirus.

Nevertheless I think it's important that if you do not remember because you were too young or just didn't exist on Sept 11, 2001 to read the Something Awful 9/11 forums to get an idea of what the internet was like at the moment when America changed to 24 hour news cycles and renewed hyper-nationalism not seen since WWII.

This all happened before Twitter, Facebook, before Discord. Before smart phones. Before most people had cell phones. When a lot of people still had dial-up internet, even. Some people in the thread were relying on radio because internet and TV weren't keeping up.

It was a live event of internet denizens reacting to the biggest national event (and among the biggest international events) of the past 25 years. It was also a slice of what the internet was like at the turn of the millennium. Not only that, but people accurately calling out who was responsible, and what would result before the attacks even finished.

Keep in mind that the links that follow contain images of the event, lots of Islamophobia, people calling for the Middle East to be nuked, people blaming Palestine, casual racist and homophobic language (this was Something Awful after all), etc etc. They preserved the first 17 pages which spanned about 24 hours during the events. It's the origin of the "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR" screenshot.

Links under the fold. I've also annotated the pages with notes regarding the timeline and any posts of interest. Note the thread was preserved in Pacific Time even though the page says times are Eastern. That's incorrect. Post timestamps are 3 hours behind Eastern Time, which is the time zone where the attacks occurred:

Page 1 - Note the first post was edited to include images of the second attack. The thread started after the first plane hit. Second plane hitting the WTC happens here too.

Page 2 - Poster accurately calling out Bin Laden was responsible at 9:14 AM EST

Page 3 - "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR"

Page 4

Page 5 - First official acknowledgement it was a terrorist attack.

Page 6 - Pentagon hit

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9 - Commercial flights grounded by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)

Page 10 - First mention of towers collapsing at end of page

Page 11 - More reactions to collapse of first tower. People thinking it was a bomb or yet another plane. Rumors about a fourth plane just missing the White House (these are false and predate the actual 4th plane crash by minutes)

Page 12

Page 13 - By this point there's just rampant speculation about more bombs at the WTC, the US Capitol building being hit, etc (all false). Remember this is all just people reacting to TV news and radio and the rumor mill via phone, AIM, IRC, and maybe text messages.

Page 14 - By this point internet news sites are overwhelmed

Page 15 - Second tower collapses. First acknowledgement of the fourth plane that crashed in PA.

Page 16 - There's an abrupt time jump in the threads, I think it was the result of admins pruning the activity or the SA forums going down. This page starts on 9/12 even though it is page 16. American flag signatures and ribbons start appearing.

Page 17

when i say i like hiking, i don’t mean “eight mile backpacking trip with special gear and an emergency beacon” sort of hiking, i mean a three mile loop to go look at pretty things and then a huge brunch after.

Oh neat! My off-brand Spotify Wrapped is here!

Wow, that's a lot of hours of music!

I'm sure I'm not about to get roasted by my own taste, right?

...right?

PHX at sunset, 31 January 2025

Heaven

is a Korean barbecue on a busy Saturday night.

When I make it there at last

After walking a long way on roads unknown

You will take my hand and we will stand in line

together.

My best friend died today.

There are so many things I could say about him - that when I was afraid of the police after an incident he drove my car for months, that he lovingly insisted I try different foods until my tastes expanded, that we built my desktop computer together - but my mind is consumed by one thing.

When my wife and I went to visit him for the last time in late September, at one point I asked him what he was going to do with his writing. It was something we'd had in common from the very beginning; though the things we each wrote were very different, writing felt like breathing for both of us. We didn't share our work often, but the fact that we loved doing it was a fundamental facet of our friendship.

He told me that he hadn't really thought about what he was going to do with his work. Probably let it die with him, he said. And I looked him in the eyes, and said fuck it inside my head, and asked, "Would you let me read it?"

"It's all smut," he said.

I raised one challenging eyebrow. Do you even know me?

"...fair enough," he conceded, and then added, "but it's bad smut."

I raised the other eyebrow.

He laughed. "Yeah, fair enough. If you want it, you can have it."

"It's not like you'll be around to be embarrassed," I pointed out, and he laughed again. It had hurt to watch, because laughing made him cough. But I was getting used to it.

I watched him sort through all the documents and put them in the right folders. "Wow," he said after a bit, "I didn't realise I had eleven whole chapters of this one."

I leaned in, fascinated. "What's this one about?"

He frowned a little. "It's kind of like a fanfic? But not really. Sort of like... how Fifty Shades of Grey is to Twilight. It is, but it's more than that."

"Ah, yes, sort of a fanfic, how terrible," I said.

"...fair enough," he said.

When I got back to the hotel that night, I backed those files up in three places. I gazed at their names in fascination but didn't open them.

I am the curator of my best friend's writing. Every document he breathed life into, I can hold in my hands. Today I will open the chapters one by one, and read every word he wrote. I had never expected to be someone's fannish next of kin (and though much of his work is original, I think this still counts), but I am grateful, so grateful, for the honour.

In the days and weeks (and months, and years) to come, I will read his words over and over and marvel at his beautiful (dirty) mind. I will come to love his characters and his scenarios, and perhaps one day I will remix some of them. Breathe new life into pieces of his worlds even though he is no longer around to do it for himself.

I should be devastated. And I know that I will be, from time to time. I will be devastated and I will be angry and I will regret, so deeply, that we did not have more time. But for now in this moment I am honoured, honoured to have this piece of him still warm and breathing in my hands. I am uplifted by the works of art (no matter how bad they may or may not be) that I hold. Nothing could have ever been more precious.

I love you so deeply, Yang. Thank you for being mine, though our time together was shorter than I ever could have wanted or anticipated.

And thank you for trusting me.