Latest Posts by raysreads - Page 7

Hi hello the old guard have been playing DnD since it became a thing, they just think it's really fun, Andy ALWAYS names her characters Quynh or Lykon and no one can stop her, Booker has refused to play a bard so far but Joe is wearing him down, and Joe ALWAYS DMs. He's good at math, story telling, improv, AND accents. Nicky tries to kiss up to him on his characters behalf all the damn time, but in this and only this Joe is a stone cold fox who doesn't play favorities.

They've had one campaign going since the start, they've all had at least 6 characters, Andy's had nine, and Joe just keeps expanding the world. Quynh (who has been watching via Booker for 3 decades) is so excited to join the party. Nile makes her first druid a few weeks after Merrick's, and Booker is only allowed to call them for weekly sessions.

Modern AU where Joe is a secret agent who keeps thinking about backer Nicky because during a very dangerous mission he had to hide in Nicky’s bakery and the other, after seeing him with a knife in his hand and a gun in the back pocket of his pants, only said: “Please do this outside of my shop.” No “What are are you doing with a gun?”, or “Please don’t kill me.” Joe can’t stop replaying in his mind Nicky’s blue eyes looking back at him levelly as he said he didn’t want murder in his establishment. Nicky must be insane, he decides.

He goes back to the bakery and becomes a silent regular (Nile thinks he’s trying to woo Nicky by staring at him very hard) until he snaps and asks: “Would you have been ok with me killing someone outside of your bakery???” And Nicky, hands still covered in flour because it’s 5am and Joe is there, part of the fam by now, says: “First of all, you didn’t kill that man. You preferred keeping your knife with you for self defence and kept the gun in your pocket. You also seemed very nice and good with kids, so I thought you must have good reasons for running away from that man. I figured if I was wrong and you were a bad person you would have killed me anyway, the blood on the wall would have been my last problem. And you did listen. I heard you hit the man in the back alley and it was a good punch. Is he still alive?”

Joe blinks. Is this how Quỳnh felt when Andy told her what her real job was? Like meeting an entirely new, very intriguing type of human being? “He is in jail. He’ll stay there for a long time.”

“Okay,” Nicky nods. “So you won’t bring crime or violence to my establishment?” He asks again. His accent jumps out when he’s hiding that he’s nervous. He looks.. hopeful, Joe decides. Very interested in Joe’s answer.

“I’ll try to clean my shoes from the blood next time.”

Nicky slowly smiles. It’s like watching a new type of natural phenomenon occur in front of his eyes for the first time. Incomprehensible, awe-inspiring, overall beautiful.

“You guys are so weird,” Sebastien says. He’s the regular coming to the bakery at 6am every day and Joe suspects he’s a hacker wanted in more than 26 countries. That, or he’s B00ker’s law abiding doppelgänger. Nicky never fails to have some croissants ready for Sebastien.

“Good luck with your big job,” Nicky tells Sebastien as he hands him the baked goods. “Just don’t use the shop’s wi-fi, last time was a nightmare.”

Joe wants to study Nicky with a microscope. (Or kiss him. Or both.)

Old Guard microfic #3

Nile slid up to the table across from Nicky, palms smacking the wood loudly as she leaned forward. “So, Christmas.”

Nicky didn’t even look up from his work. “You’ll have more fun with Andy.”

“Andy?” Nile asked dubiously.

“Mhm.”

“The Andy who scoffs at organized religion because she used to be worshipped as a god, that Andy?”

“The very same.”

“Not that I think you’re lying but you understand why I’m skeptical, right?”

Nicky took a breath and looked up at her, leaning on one elbow. “Andy is a pragmatic hedonist who’s spent lifetimes in the far north—midwinter and solstice celebrations of all sorts are burned into her soul as times for hot food, strong drink, and good company kept around the fire. I, meanwhile, am semi-lapsed medieval clergy with a bone to pick with God.”

Nile blinked a couple times. “…point taken. How’s Booker?”

“Depressed but readily motivated by mulled wine and fonder of festive chintz than he likes to let on.”

“Cool, thanks.”

I love the idea that everyone who meets them assumes Nicky is the calming force for Joe, who can come across hot-headed.

But Joe more readily shows his anger because he has a healthier relationship with it. He knows how to let it out in bursts, how to feel anger and not let it consume him. We have it confirmed in Tales Through Time — Joe knows how to process anger and let go of vengeance in a way that Nicky struggles with.

Nicky may overflow with a kindness the world is not worthy of, but when he sees a terrible injustice? When something pushes him over the edge? He’s the scariest and deadliest motherfucker of the entire team, no question.

Joe is the real calming force in their relationship. God help anyone who incites Nicky’s wrath when Joe isn’t there to pull him back.

Based on an idea @thediktatortot and I workshopped in the tags of this post. Enjoy Tommy, Steve, Eddie and Billy being trapped in a room together!

Part 2 here!

                                                               *

The world was hell bent on making Steve Harrington suffer. He was sure of it, dead-set, knew it in his soul.

Why else would he have gotten trapped in the high school teacher’s lounge with Eddie Munson, Tommy Hagan, and Billy Hargrove of all people?

“–you didn’t skip gym every fuckin’ year then maybe you could have kept up, freak.” Tommy hissed at Eddie, his teeth gritted as he leaned against the door a demodog was currently trying to knock down.

“Oh yeah cause tackle fucking football really prepares you for the goddamn apocalypse!” Eddie snarled back, marring the effect a little by tripping over his feet as he brought over a chair to prop against the door.

“Shut the fuck up!” Billy growled at them both, “‘M tryin’ to fuckin’ focus!”

Keep reading

For those of you not watching along at home, Steve Harrington actually did not bite the head off of a demobat. I know Eddie references Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat when he's talking about what Steve did, but Steve didn't do that. The bats were too large for him to have done that.

What Steve DID do was sink his teeth into the long, serrated tail a demobat had around his neck, causing it to release him from its stranglehold as it tries to escape him. What he DID do is grab it by that serrated tail - because he's not trapped in upside down with them, they're trapped in here with him - and swing it in an arc to bash its head against the ground 3 times before he stepped on one side of it and pulled on its tail until he fully just ripped the thing in half.

Then he spat the blood from the tail out of his mouth and looked around for the next one.

It goes far beyond biting a monster's head off. He fuckin' obliterated it. With his literally bare hands and feet, he was not even wearing shoes. Or a shirt. I feel like it's important we all understand he wasn't even feral enough for head biting. He was just fed up with being fed on, and was not going to take any chances.

Broke college student tip:

Learn to love cooking. Like get into it. Enjoy it. Get excited to cook. Why? When you learn to cook and enjoy it you'll save money. Lots of money. And you'll be eating better, healthier food too.

For example. I'm eating seafood and veggie pasta right now with a white wine cream sauce. In a restaurant, this would be a fancy meal, costing $20 or so for a small portion. Literally cost me like $5 or so in ingredients to make. And like 20 minutes to cook. And I made enough for lunch AND dinner. When you know how to cook you can make cheap foods taste amazing.

Here's some advice how to make this easier:

Buy frozen things. Frozen veggies, frozen fruits, frozen meats, etc. Frozen lasts longer and saves you money and stress.

Have basic herbs and spices on hand. Salt, pepper (red, black, and white), thyme, rosemary, basil, garlic powder, onion powder, turmeric, bay leaf (chopped is best), cinnamon, paprika, cumin, and sage are my most commonly used ones!

Common recipe ingredients to keep on hand: pasta, rice, lemon/lime juice, garlic, onion, white wine, frozen veggies, potatoes, frozen meats, sugar, butter, pasta sauces, tomatoes, eggs, soda/pineapple juice/beer (great for marinades or cooking meat).

Frozen things when stored properly can be stored for a couple months and portioned out making quick meals easy!

Learn flavor profiles. Citrus, basil, rosemary, butter, salt, garlic, and onion are all fairly universal in their uses while things like cumin and turmeric have a stronger, earlier flavor and are great for stews, curries, pastas, soups, and sauces!

Learn to shop. If it's non-perishable and bogo, get it! Bogo (buy one get one) is basically half off and now you have two things for when you need it! Walmart brand pasta is like $0.98 a box. You can also get a bag of frozen extra small shrimp at Walmart for like $5 and there's about 50 in a bag. Shop non-perishable items by weight (price per ounce) and perishables by size.

Pasta sauce can be put in the freezer and if stored well can keep for like 3 months!

Sauté your veggies! They taste so good that way!!! A little butter, garlic, rosemary, and onion. Sprinkle with salt after and viola!

It's easy to fall into a food rut, so treat yourself every now and then with something different or challenge yourself by limiting yourself to 5 ingredients or something to make you exercise your skills.

Make your own barbecue sauce. It's so fun! All you need is molasses, ketchup, brown sugar, and whatever you want to customize it. I usually put honey and bourbon in mine.

Go on pinterest and find easy recipes! The great thing about a recipe is every single one you see is customizable and was made to the cooker's preference. You don't like mushrooms? Don't put them in and add something earthy and unami like turmeric or sumac in its place.

Tofu is easier than you think.

Rice is very filling and goes with most everything.

Keep fresh herbs fresh by putting them in water. You might even root and grow your own!

Frozen fruits are amazing for marinades or more "tropical" tasting recipes. Frozen citrus and pineapple are great for making a citrus chicken and rice! Just defrost in a bowl and then add the chicken to the bowl.

Tortillas are amazing and keep for a while in the fridge.

Print out recipes and keep them in a binder so you make notes and changes directly on the paper!

i put “All I Want for Christmas is You” through a MIDI converter, and then back through an mp3 converter

the result is this garbage

“…food and love - which is of course the same thing.”

Daniel J. Miller, “The Touch of Love - It Is Everything” / this post / “Joe Pera Shows You How To Pack A Lunch Box” (2020) / a text from my sister / A. A. Milne / @chennai-expression / Chef (2014) dir. Jon Favreau / Sam Sifton, “What to Cook Right Now” (New York Times) / Alan Alda

ok satellites are all alone up there just searching for everything and anything and it’s so beautiful and I hope they aren’t lonely

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis // @i-wrotethisforme // Jorge Louis Berges // @smokeinsilence //@viridianmasquerade //Jorge Louis Berges // @honeytuesday // Kaveh Akbar // F. Scott Fitzgerald // AKR //Olivie Blake, from “Alone With You in the Ether” // Kaveh Akbar, Pilgrimage

– Ariel Dimitri, Instagram account "dimoetry"

[TEXT ID: I cook rice the way my mother taught me when I was ten years old. I peel my apples before I eat them because that's how my father did it. I watch movies differently now because a friend I haven't seen in four years once told me that every scene could have an implied message, and I enjoy hearing some of 'the father's jokes' just because he used to tell me the whole way home. There are songs I can't listen to anymore because they remind me of the people I used to love. We are somehow a little part of everyone we have met in our life, and even if they leave, there are some pieces of them that are still inside us; as a home, a lesson, or maybe a story worth telling- it's kind of our choice now. END ID]

I have three modes of reading

Dont read

Read a 500 page book in a day

Read only fanfiction until my eyeballs drop out of my skull from exhaustion

The Breakfast Club - John Bender

READ ONLY IF YOU WATCHED THE MOVIE.

If you’re a fan of the movie, grab a snack, this is gonna take a while…

Can some people please take a minute to remember this movie was released in 1985, so that was 37 years ago. The attitude was different back then, literally everything was different, even people’s mindset. So when you want to judge a film, think about the time of release, and how life used to be at that time. I’m so glad this movie was released before social media. Also, some people in the comments section are talking like these characters were meant to be perfect, which is the exact opposite of the idea behind the film, remember they are just kids! It’s all about the struggles of teenagers, not adults.

The Breakfast Club’s confession scene is one of the movie’s most pivotal and revealing, and it was also surprisingly UNSCRIPTED by the film’s cast. How powerful and amazing is that. The Director John Hughes left the confession scene largely unscripted, aiming for authenticity that was less likely to occur naturally if the actors simply delivered lines. While other small parts of the film (such as Bender’s unfinished “blonde woman” joke, and the “I forgot my pencil’’ line) were also improvised, it is incredible that the actors were able to successfully ad-lib such an important scene. Even the ICONIC one where Bender puts his fist up into the air as he walks across a football field with the quintessential Simple Minds’ track “Don’t You Forget About Me” blaring offscreen, originally, Hughes wanted Judd Nelson to walk across the field while the sunset showed brilliant behind him. Without Hughes’ direction, Nelson thrusted his fist into the air, and everybody, including Hughes, marveled at this stunningly natural improvised and fitting character choice. The ending has since become a beloved and unforgettable piece of moviemaking that is often referenced in pop culture, films, and television shows. It truly gives me chills every single time. 

I wanna get real deep into my favorite of the bunch; John Bender (Played by Judd Nelson), who despite having conflicts with his own abusive father and even the school’s strict principal, is a fearless leader who’s willing to stop at nothing until things are settled just the way he imagined them. In a way they looked to him as the leader sometimes later in the film. He carries a knife because he’s scared that at any point anyone could be a threat and he has to keep up his guard. Also, The scene in the closet with Vernon shows his vulnerability.  Vernon locks bender in and threatens to hurt him physically is such a raw and emotional scene for me, because it showcases that bender clearly isn’t the person he’s trying to be, but that it’s rather a front to avoid getting hurt. in that scene, Vernon has severely misjudged bender’s character and confronts him with violence, just like bender’s father. bender doesn’t fight back, because he’s in a position of weakness. Vernon is a grown adult, towering over him and using his power to push bender down. again, just like bender’s father. His whole life he’s been at the mercy of an abusive father so he feels the need to protect himself. Judd Nelson in describing Bender’s character he said “He’s always angry and bitter for the way he was treated in school and at home his entire life, that’s why he spends most of his time trying to pull the other people down to his level, this level where he feels they’ve put him.”

Bender was in detention for pulling a false fire alarm, it feels like he wanted to get the detention. I feel like the reason Bender kept getting Saturdays was because it meant less time at home with his father. It was an escape. I don’t agree with his attitude of course, and I’m not justifying any of his actions, but I can understand his trauma and what all of his manners are coming from. After all, he’s a powerful character. 

Even if he leans towards the dark side, he’s so vulnerable, but super intelligent, witty, articulate, verbally adept, quick on his feet, extremely capable, and if you noticed when he talks, he has expensive vocabulary, with the best comebacks ever. 

I really loved the scene where he gets himself caught by Vernon in order to get the rest detainees from getting in more trouble kinda proves he’s more that an arrogant kid with a devil may care attitude. He was a selfless guy who was willing to take the proverbial bullet for others. Remember the part when Claire told Allison and Brian if they came up to her in school she would ignore them, Bender was so angry and told her “You know how shitty this is to do to someone.” Also. when he told her that “you can’t stand up to your friends and tell them that you’re gonna like who you wanna like.” That was great point, that popular kids only cares about people’s opinion. He hated that. Behind his hoody, bad boy persona, he cares about friendship, and i think there’s more to him than his exterior.

About the way he was a jerk to Claire (especially the confession scene), I hated it but it’s pretty obvious that he liked her from the start. He was mean to her, but in the film they’re showing how Bender is a vulnerable 16 years old kid who’s afraid of rejection, that’s why he’s taking this method with a girl he’s assuming he would never get. He is used to being treated as worthless, that he rejects everyone before they can reject him, that’s why through bitterness and rudeness according to him, he’s protecting himself. He’s rude especially to Claire because he cares about being rejected by her, it’s possible that to him even having then hate him is better than having then not think of him at all. He’s not justified, but maybe understood. He describes himself as “A freak” when he was talking to Claire, it’s in the deleted scenes of the movie, and that’s probably why deep down all he wanted to be accepted. Don’t forget he’s a victim of abuse, he just needed someone to believe in him, and that was obvious in the closet scene when Vernon he wanted him to become violent, even threatened him, John looked paralyzed and scared, he was reminded of his father, beating him, burning him with his cigar… the realization in his eyes that there’s no escaping from the abuse was sad. The movie wanted to show the damaged, abused, scared kid, a typical teen who just wanted to be accepted, and how he would deal with everything and everyone around him.  All I know is this movie is really deep.

I always like to analysis any characters that I like before giving my judgment. I remember as a teenager I liked Bender as the rebellious, bad boy, and sarcastic guy! But growing up, and when you get old enough, after watching the movie over and over again, my idea of this character changed to see him on a deeper level. You realize that Bender is the most important character. He’s the one that broke the conformity and he made them all see each other for who they really are.

Judd Nelson made an iconic character, despite his flaws. People still dress up as John Bender for Halloween, to this day. He might’ve invented the ‘bad boy/young criminal’ character in Hollywood. I read a comment once, and i couldn’t get it out of my head, it says “If Judd Nelson had died after making this film, he would have been regarded as a modern day James Dean.” I couldn’t agree more.

People are forgetting that this movie teaches that every generation are raised by the one before, it means they are responsible for teaching their kids what’s right and what’s wrong. They don’t realize it’s people like them that make them the way they are currently.

The Breakfast Club is a timeless masterpiece. It’s the one movie they could never remake. Great decade. Best music. Best movies. 

I think I wrote an essay, mainly about Bender, because he was the most complicated, important, and damaged character. Sorry, that was really long, but I was re-watching this iconic movie, and i wanted to share my opinion. All of this, just my personal opinion, and my own point of view.

Check this interview with Judd, you’ll be surprised of how intelligent, charismatic, witty and well-spoken he is:

—> Behind the scenes with Judd Nelson https://youtu.be/gsrGzXrmyU8

please bring back 2014 indie pop (i could care less that a few of these songs were pre or post the 2014 era if the song fits it fits)

cecelia and the satellite by andrew mcmahon in the wilderness

i wanna get better by bleachers

cigarette daydreams by cage the elephant

ways to go by grouplove

girls by the 1975

miracle mile by cold war kids

take a walk by passion pit

little talks by of monsters and men

tongue tied by grouplove

midnight city by m83

undercover martyn by two door cinema club

i can talk by two door cinema club

young blood by the naked and famous

kids by mgmt

1901 by phoenix

young folks by peter bjorn and john

daylight by matt & kim

animal by neon trees

stolen dance by milky chance

out of my league by fitz and the tantrums

talk too much by coin

greek tragedy by the wombats

chocolate by the 1975

anna sun by walk the moon

everybody talks by neon trees

what you know by two door cinema club

dancing on glass by st lucia

FEEL FREE TO READ THE PART AT THE TOP WHERE I SAY ITS NOT ALL FROM 2014 THANKS!

Supernatural stills: ↳ 1x06: Skin [2/5]

Genuine Zodiac Signs

Unused Printer Ink Cartridge: January 20 – February 18

Stain of Unknown Origin: February 19 – March 20

Wooden Stool from my Grandma’s House: March 21 – April 19

Cast Iron Cornbread Pan : April 20 – May 20

0.5 lb of Sushi Grade Salmon: May 21 – June 20

Small Green Pencil Sharpener: June 21 – July 22

Block of Velveeta Cheese: July 23 – August 22

Pair of Dirty Leather Gloves: August 23 – September 22

Bar of Unscented Hand Soap: September 23 – October 22

Guy Fieri’s Sunglasses: October 23 – November 21

Thoroughly Squeezed Tube of Toothpaste: November 22 – December 21

Mostly Empty Takeout Container: December 22 – January 19

‘Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o'clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.“

— Anthony Bourdain

Miss ya Tony.

From Anthony Bourdain:

Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal, and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people—we sure employ a lot of them.

Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, and look after our children.

As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs.”

But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as a prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do.

We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.

So, why don’t we love Mexico?

We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires.

Whether it’s dress up like fools and get passed-out drunk and sunburned on spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.

In the service of our appetites, we spend billions and billions of dollars each year on Mexican drugs—while at the same time spending billions and billions more trying to prevent those drugs from reaching us.

The effect on our society is everywhere to be seen. Whether it’s kids nodding off and overdosing in small town Vermont, gang violence in L.A., burned out neighborhoods in Detroit—it’s there to see.

What we don’t see, however, haven’t really noticed, and don’t seem to much care about, is the 80,000 dead in Mexico, just in the past few years—mostly innocent victims. Eighty thousand families who’ve been touched directly by the so-called “War On Drugs”.

Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace.

Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for gorgeousness.

It's archeological sites—the remnants of great empires, unrivaled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over tortilla chips. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply “bro food” at halftime.

It is in fact, old—older even than the great cuisines of Europe, and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. A true mole sauce, for instance, can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet, if we paid attention.

The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the new generation—many of whom have trained in the kitchens of America and Europe—have returned home to take Mexican food to new and thrilling heights.

It’s a country I feel particularly attached to and grateful for. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, and was there—and on the case—when the cooks like me, with backgrounds like mine, ran away to go skiing or surfing or simply flaked. I have been fortunate to track where some of those cooks come from, to go back home with them.

To small towns populated mostly by women—where in the evening, families gather at the town’s phone kiosk, waiting for calls from their husbands, sons and brothers who have left to work in our kitchens in the cities of the North.

I have been fortunate enough to see where that affinity for cooking comes from, to experience moms and grandmothers preparing many delicious things, with pride and real love, passing that food made by hand from their hands to mine.

In years of making television in Mexico, it’s one of the places we, as a crew, are happiest when the day’s work is over. We’ll gather around a street stall and order soft tacos with fresh, bright, delicious salsas, drink cold Mexican beer, sip smoky mezcals, and listen with moist eyes to sentimental songs from street musicians. We will look around and remark, for the hundredth time, what an extraordinary place this is.

Untitled.

i made a comic in google slides for some ungodly reason

Okay, but really, natural necromancer Stiles would've been so funny.

The Sheriff's success file is actually larger than his failure file because Stiles can just ask dead people who killed them and he can sense where the unburied corpses are so the number of missing persons goes down, too. And that's why he drags Scott out to the Preserve to look for Laura's body bc that's his 'job.'

I can't decide if he'd be besties with Lydia as another being of death magic, or if they'd have a kind of frenemies thing bc Lydia feels the constant need to Scream around him, and Stiles constantly gets a headache from all that goddamn racket.

He would be bros with Peter, tho bc, "you're the first reanimated person I've met that I didn't I raise myself! :D"

Peter: "I'm sorry, what the fuck did you just say?"

Also, he's learned nothing from Jurassic Park.

Stiles: Did you know that most dinosaur skeletons are actually plaster casts?

Scott: Did you learn that from the Internet?

Stiles: Nope, just a lot of very disappointing trips to the museum.

The thing I love most about the LOTR films is their ability to do storytelling without words. 

Many of my favorite moments in the trilogy are ones that have no dialogue. Wordless storytelling is the one thing the films do that the original books can’t, because books Have to use words.

I argue the vast majority of the films’ depth comes through things that AREN’T the dialogue. So much of the storytelling in LOTR is done through the music, cinematography, visual effects, character/costume designs, prop designs, environment designs, performances, and so on and so on. So some of the most powerful moments in the films are the ones that have minimal/no dialogue  – like the moments after Gandalf’s death, or  the lighting of the beacons, or Boromir dying as he defends Merry and Pippin, or the moment when Frodo wakes up after being rescued from Mount Doom and sees Sam in the doorway, the hobbits in the Green Dragon after their quest ends…..I could go on and on and on. And people joke about how Lord of the Rings is “50 percent landscape shots to pretty music”, because it IS, but I argue those landscape shots are so important and emotional and symbolic and evocative! They convey so much about the world, and the characters, and the tone!  I’ve written essays on it here and here and here –

 One of my favorite moments in the trilogy is the destruction of the Ring. I love how it captures this feeling of like…. relief beyond words. 

There’s just so much beautiful wordless storytelling! The way Sauron’s tower collapses to the musical leitmotif we first heard playing gently at the crossroads when Sam saw the fallen king statue and said “look– the King has got a crown again.” The way that, after Mount Doom explodes, the soundtrack transitions into the musical leitmotif that we last heard at Gandalf’s death.  The elvish in the soundtrack. ;_: And I love Gandalf’s reactions in this scene….the entire trilogy he’s been racked with guilt over “(sending) Frodo to his death.” The villains recognize and torment him over this: Saruman saying “Gandalf does not hesitate to sacrifice those closest to him, those he professes to love” while Gandalf has no response. And then we see that Frodo did it, he actually made it, and Gandalf breaks into tears…;_; and without a single line of dialogue you know exactly what this means for him. I’ve already written an overlong essay on how I love the general “watercolor painting” aesthetic of the films, and I want to add that I love the way the visual effects for Mordor’s collapse are designed– the way broken tower of Barad-Dur BURSTS outward, like a spirit is leaving it– and how initially it seems triumphant until you realize that Mordor is falling apart with Frodo and Sam still trapped there. And then all of the Fellowship breaks down. ;_; And so many scenes in the films are like this….Frodo crawling up the slopes of Mount Doom to a warped broken version of the Shire leitmotif. Eowyn standing on the edge of the Golden Hall as the flag of Rohan symbolically flutters away, and the Rohan theme plays on the Hardanger Fiddle. Frodo waking up in Rivendell and walking out of his room for the first time as the Rivendell leitmotif plays, autumn leaves falling all around him, then reuniting Bilbo to a mature sad verison of the Shire leitmotif. When Gandalf dies, the soundtrack in that scene is the only one in the films where the vocals aren’t in elvish/dwarvish– it’s just cries of pain, wordless grief. 

And I know that’s Basic Film Theory– the vast majority of things viewers will take away are the things that aren’t in the script– but Lord of the Rings does it so well! 

Every element has so much love and care put into it. Every artist gets to add something to the story.

And I don’t actually think it’s because “every artist on Lord of the Rings was uniquely talented in a way no artists have been before or since.”  I actually have….really mixed feelings on LOTR as a franchise, both because there’s so much in them that I think was objectively Bad and wrong (like the horrible lack of diversity/racist use of coding.)But the reason there are so many strong moments in Lord of the Rings despite its inarguable flaws was because the films had an extended pre-production time that a lot of movies don’t get. Howard Shore was given years to work on the soundtrack rather than months. The visual artists were treated like storytellers in their own right.  The difference between the Hobbit and LOTR trilogies wasn’t talent or money– it was time.  

And the problem with a film industry where everyone is trying to churn out as much Content as possible is that time is something you can’t really buy.

You know what I would have liked to see in The Hobbit movies? Aragorn as a child, just chilling in Rivendell.

He’s like, what, five, when The Hobbit begins? I would have loved to see him living in Rivendell, and then spotting Bilbo and getting *so excited* to see another child because every other person there is an elf who is like, 1000 years old AT LEAST and “Elrond finally brought someone to hang out with me!”

And Bilbo never bothers to tell him that “actually, I’m a 50 year old hobbit, I just never got taller than you” and when Aragorn asked him to play, he just says “sure”. And suddenly a child is teaching him how to spar and use a sword, and Bilbo is teaching a 5 year old how to blow special smoke rings and appreciate different types of pipe weed.

I like to imagine it’s during this time that Bilbo writes the verses for Aragorn, the “Not all those who wander are lost” lines. Except it’s not meant to be epic, he makes it up as like, a nursery rhyme to make Aragorn GO TO SLEEP so Bilbo can go ice his injuries from learning to spar. And the verses just stuck with Aragorn and spread for the next 80 years until suddenly everyone is reciting them to him and he has to fight back the Pavlovian yawn he gets every time he hears them.

I think this is also why he’s so attached to Frodo. Not only does he have an affinity for hobbits, but Bilbo has been his Best Friend since he was a kid, and he knows if he lets anything happen to Frodo, Bilbo will never forgive him.

when people talk about writing ‘the next Lord of the Rings’ they think it’s all about the wars and the languages and the histories, and Aragorn brooding in the corner of an inn and the Balrog roaring in Moria and the ruins of Isengard, and that’s how we got Game of Thrones and several dozen cheap fantasy knock-offs every year, not to mention whatever nonsense the Amazon show is going to produce

but Tolkien’s wars and languages and histories stemmed from his love of creating - of words and history and mythos - and that love infuses into everything he writes, and if you miss that then there’s no way in hell you can replicate it

and the people who want to write the next Lord of the Rings because they want to write the next epic don’t get that the story is about the hobbits’ soft and simple lives and Bilbo’s poetry and Sam’s love language being food and Eowyn discovering hope after depression and Gandalf making fireworks for hobbits even if he is a literal angelic being, and Aragorn weeping over Boromir’s body and Theoden’s kindness to Merry, and Beregond betraying his most prized orders to save Faramir, and the unlikely friendship between Gandalf and Pippin, and the even unlikelier friendship between Legolas and Gimli, and Sam and Frodo singing to each other in Mordor, and Boromir sacrificing himself for the hobbits, and Sam’s simple love for Rosie, and the restoration of the Shire, and the friendship of the Fellowship surviving down through the ages, and peace after war and hope in darkness, and the love between a gardener and a gentleman pacifist being literally the only thing that saves Middle Earth

and that is why people who try to recreate Lord of the Rings by starting with war always get it wrong. you have to start with the love, or it’s nothing: just another empty history

One thing I feel people miss about lord of the rings is that it’s sort of……….post-apocalyptic?

Like– the world already ended, a long time ago, and the characters are surrounded by the ruins of dead countries. They spend most of their time journeying through places that are either abandoned (Moria) soon to be abandoned (Rivendell/Lorien) or half-destroyed and falling into decay (Rohan/Gondor.) The villains are creatures that Used to be Human; I feel like Lotr’s orcs/ringwraiths have more in common with zombies than they do with DnD-style orcs, because they’re a state that “normal” people enter when they’re corrupted by a supernatural force.

Even the Shire is surrounded by ruins– the ruins of watchtowers, the ruins of the old Northern Kingdom, the ruined city near the Grey Havens. The people around there have an idiom “when the king comes back” that means the same thing as an idiom like “when pigs fly”–  “when a completely ridiculous improbable thing happens.” They’re so used to the disintegrated state of the world that the idea of a central government is fairy-tale-like and bizarre. They have their little mayors and thains; they don’t need anything else.

So yeah! I see people try to “modern-real-world- au” versions of Hobbiton by making it “a peaceful suburb” but to me, a modern au version of Hobbiton would be more like…….

You are a hobbit.

You don’t know much history, but you understand that there were Wars a long time ago that destroyed a great amount of life on earth.

You live in a little hole in the ground. You don’t know that long ago these holes used to be called “bunkers;” you decorate them with flowers.

When you want to say that something won’t happen, you’ll sarcastically say things “lol yeah SURE that will happen! And tomorrow pigs will fly, Parliament will come back into session, there will be a president in the White House, there will be a prime minister making speeches, and diplomats will intercede between all of them! ha! XD”

If you journey even a little outside of your home, you’ll find the ruins of old cities and skyscrapers. There are messages in the ruins that are written in languages you don’t speak. Human beings used to live here; they don’t anymore.

And you’re not supposed to leave the Shire because sometimes you’ll meet the things that used to be human, but aren’t anymore.

The more despair I endure in life, the more I love Frodo. I'm just. I'm so glad that Tolkien wrote him like that. He was a hero and it broke him. He was given too much to carry. The circumstances were dire, everyone was doing the best they could, and Frodo tried so hard, for such a good cause, and he...broke. And the narrative has pity for him, the characters show him kindness. Even after victory, his hurts did not heal, and it isn't considered his fault. He must go to the undying lands, to seek out peace there. In universe, he is forgiven for being human - don't be pedantic - and his great torment is recognized. He fell. He could not have done it alone. He is still a hero.

And, I think that's important.

I do genuinely believe that the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (and arguably the Zelda franchise as a whole, though i myself have played literally none of these games) is closer to fitting the description of ‘Tolkien-esque Fantasy’ than most other movies/shows/games/books etc that claim that label

Like, compare this post by tumblr user wufflesvetinari, which makes an important point about Tolkien’s worldbuilding, and also lives in my head rent free:

and then these quotes from Jacob Geller’s “Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda”

and his conclusions about the messages in Zelda games are thematically very similar to the through-lines about friendship and love in LOTR, and what a lot of authors miss about what makes a fantasy story personal and memorable:

“A world without joy and humor isn’t a compelling world to fight for” is exactly why there are so many pieces of fantasy media out there that just feel like carbon copies of each other (i’ve seen many posts that explain this better than I can though I can’t find any specific ones at the moment, just know that I didn’t invent this thesis). You’ve got the cool swords, you’ve got the wizards and the spells and the battles, but first and foremost you need the LOVE.