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Latest Posts by tarume - Page 5
Peter Jackson on casting Frodo
“Frodo was a very, very important character in the movies. But he’s also a very difficult character to play and to cast. […] We were convinced that Frodo is gonna be an English actor, ’cause we wanted the Hobbits to basically be English as Tolkien really wrote them. So, we went to London and we started auditioning.
We couldn’t think of any actor to play Frodo. We had nobody in mind. We thought it would be unknown English actor, a young kid. We were in London auditioning for about a month and we’ve probably seen three hundred Frodos. There were two or three that were okay, but nothing magical, you know. ’Cause Frodo had to be magical. Every time the casting room door opened and some nervous young actor would come in, we were saying, ‘is this gonna be Frodo?’ And you sort of know within ten seconds that it wasn’t really Frodo. It was a worry, but we were plugging on.
And then our casting director said to us one day, ‘A package’s just come in the mail. It’s from Elijah Wood’. It was a video tape, a VHS tape. I had heard Elijah’s name, but I’ve never seen a film he’d done. I actually had no face for Elijah, I didn’t know how he looked like.
So, we put the video tape in. Elijah was in LA and heard that we were in London and we’re not gonna come to LA. He really wanted to get this role. So, he hired a dialect coach to teach him accent, he’d gone to the local costume-hire, got some cheesy kind of Hobbit costume on. He’d gone into the trees somewhere behind his house with a friend, and he just videotaped his own audition. He didn’t have our script, so he was reading from the book, he was doing Frodo parts from the book.
I just put this video tape in, and literally, not having known who Elijah Wood was really, I just thought, ‘he’s wonderful, he’s absolutely great’. And so, Elijah cast himself”.
(x)
Good morning to those who wish people a good morning, those who mean that it is a good morning whether anyone wants it or not, those who feel good this morning, those who feel it is a morning to be good on, those who suppose they mean all of these at once when they say good morning, those smoking a pipe of tobacco out of doors in the morning, and those who never thought they’d see the day they’d be good-morninged by Belladonna Took’s son.
I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that
can you guys take my uquiz
hmmm
I’m glad Maes Hughes died.
He’s a fan favorite character and I enjoy him a lot too, but I think fundamentally he’s a character who has to die. His role in the narrative is to haunt it.
I might be even more of a weirdo because I enjoy his manga characterization over his Brotherhood or ‘03 portrayal, but I love the idea of Hughes being someone the Elric brothers barely know - someone we, the audience, barely see.
Until he dies.
Because suddenly he’s everywhere. He was Roy’s friend and Armstrong’s superior officer and Winry’s acquaintance and Elicia’s father - and he was the soldier both Ed and Al knew, but didn’t actually know, that got killed because of them anyway.
In the manga Winry stays at Hughes’ place, but Ed and Al enter his house for the first time after they found out he died. For them, it’s not about losing a friend (though I am sure they liked him just fine) because that story is already Roy’s - for them it’s about realizing that this plot they’ve involved themselves in kills people that aren’t actually directly involved at all to begin with. It makes sense for their allies and friends and loved-ones to be targeted by the antagonists - but a soldier who mostly joined in because he was at the right (or wrong) place at the right (wrong) time? That’s not supposed to happen. And that’s what makes Hughes’ death so hard on them.
(and poor Elicia - abandoned children without their fathers were always a weakness of Ed’s)
But Roy? Yeah… he suffers. From the moment of Hughes’ dead on, Roy is haunted by it. By him. His best friend follows him everywhere. We see it in the way Roy only involves himself in the plot because Hughes figured something out and Roy is desperate for answers. He hunts down the homunculi to save this country, sure, but mostly so he can burn his best friend’s murderer to the ground. When Riza talks about winning against the Führer and their military dictatorship, she talks about all of them, not a hint of revenge coloring her vision - but Roy? It is telling that it isn’t a greater ideal that makes him torture Envy, but the agony of his best friend’s death.
The thing that almost breaks Roy is Maes.
No.
It’s Maes’ memory haunting the narrative.
And isn’t that beautiful?
The tragedy of it all, the horror, and the realization that Roy Mustang never really recovered from the War, that his friends are the only think keeping him in one piece, the fact that Roy Mustang is a Hero and a Monster and a fallible human capable of love.
Maes Hughes has to die to remind all of us of what Roy Mustang is capable of: love, loyalty, devotion…. and the slaughter and torture of numerous people.
His ghost is haunting the narrative - and for that I love him.
With @staff 's recent post saying 1/4 of this site is LGBTQ going around, I'd like to see what the actual demographic is
So!
Please reblog for bigger sample size!
And also remember he was too old to adopt in Tennessee because he was 18. This is mentioned in the movie, the book, and his memoir.
Remember The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock? The movie showed how a kid who had an extremely rough upbringing got help from the family of a school friend, found success in football and ultimately ended up being adopted by the family. Turns out he was never adopted.
Michael Oher says that he was tricked by the Tuohy family into signing documents that made them his conservators. Since he was already 18 at the time the family told him, “that it means pretty much the exact same thing as 'adoptive parents,' but that the laws were just written in a way that took [his] age into account.”
Oher also says that papers were signed so that his story and likeness were given away for free to use in The Blind Side. He also never got a single royalty check for the hugely successful, Oscar nominated film in the 14 years since its release.
(Babylon Bee)
If only in the states we had price transparency!!! If you knew what the cost was upfront you could price shop! But there's no way to really streamline that process with insurance companies involved. Yet. We're getting closer. But even with the flaws, I'd rather pay for what I need when I need it instead of giving my money to the government to manage anything.
National Healthcare
I get it. I do. I was raised in a country with socialized healthcare. The ERs took care of all my acute childhood injuries, fractures, injuries from a car accident, etc. It seemed perfect. As a child.
Someone very close to me back in the UK told me yesterday that she stopped by a 95 year old's house the evening prior to check on him (she's a pastor and he attends her church).
He was collapsed on the floor, suffering with pneumonia and had fallen. She couldn't move him alone and the 999 dispatch (911) told her not to in case he was injured from the fall (pretty likely given his age).
She called the emergency line early evening. And the ambulance arrived at 5am.
There were only 10 rigs running the entire county that night due to government budget cuts. A 95 year old with pneumonia lay on the floor with his pastor holding his hand for nearly 12 hours, waiting on care.
I have family members who had to move across the country for better chronic care, family members sent home with sepsis, given wrong instructions that led to devastating consequences, who have shelled out of pocket for private care on TOP of their extensive taxes that go to the NHS.
My friends who are *doctors* in the NHS have gone on strike more than once to protest for living wages and hours that aren't dangerous. Don't get me started on the overworked nurses.
I have also worked within the US's only government run healthcare. And there are huge problems within it's system, still! (And amazing people who are really trying, too)
Stop thinking the same issues that we have with the current system won't arise. Understaffing, opioid crises, medical mistakes, high costs of chronic care.
Stop thinking that government budget cuts (that can and will happen) won't affect care.
Stop thinking that taxes won't rise across the board.
Stop thinking healthcare for all is a magic remedy.
I am an American, and an immigrant, and my healthcare here has been routinely phenomenal. There are issues everywhere. Please don't vote for someone who promises a magic solution.
did you guys know that octoroks appear in every zelda title except Twilight Princess
I bet Yonobu isn't in the cart because he's out front spinning
Jump in the cadillac, princess
One more month!
the next time someone wants to argue about "what is a woman", i'll just send them this post honestly
Or, better idea. Ask for the Medical policy or criteria they use to make the decision. It's not people behind a curtain making decisions on a whim. They make a set of criteria that need to be met for the service to be covered and it's publicly available to your doctor and you.
Just an FYI for those in the US with insurance issues
We only get 3 months of decent weather in Washington and you can't take August away from me. It is summer. Agree or fight me. :)
It's sad, because the most down to earth people tend to be outdoorsmen. Hunters, fishers, campers, hikers, ect. All have a good relationship with nature and respect for maintaining it while thinking "climate change" is a bunch of hoopla. Everyone has a critique for the forest service and the braindead politicians making environmental decisions they don't understand, but it's not a political movement. Maybe it should be.
I don't like the stupid boomer insult, but everything else is spot on. Honestly, real environmentalism--things like conservation, supporting zoos, and limiting pollution--is something the right has a really big opportunity to be leaders on. Every aspect of environmentalism is infected by the climate cult. I've talked about it before, but you can't donate to any environmental cause without there being a good possibility that your money is going to go towards lobbying politicians to ban air conditioning or instituting a gas tax. Even things like zoos are infected. Every zoo I've been to in the last 5 years has listed climate change as one of the biggest--if not the biggest--reasons why species or their habitats are endangered. Every single natural disaster is blamed on climate change.
And all of this is possible only because the right ceded the entire environmental protection movement not just to the left, but to the craziest of the crazies. People who attack whaling boats and put spikes in trees to loggers get maimed when their chainsaws strike them. The environmental terrorists are the face of environmentalism. But at least in the past the slightly less crazy ones would publicly distance themselves from the ones actually committing terrorism, even if their efforts were lukewarm. These days, the World Is In Crisis! It's the Climate Emergency! The future of humanity and the planet are literally at stake, so nothing is too extreme in the face of extinction.
We really need some right wing environmental groups. Groups that recognize the need to preserve and cherish our land and wildlife, but who also understand economic and developmental reality, along with energy needs. Groups that will actually do things like fighting beach erosion or repopulating species or rebuilding habitats that were destroyed in natural disasters, not shutting down pipelines because oil makes them mad, or seizing people's private property because there's a puddle that's just big enough to qualify as a regulated body of water on their land. I know it's a fever dream at this point, but I really do think the environmental left has gotten so crazy and so insufferable that there's a real chance to move in and make those issues our own.
There's the ghost of a child playing above Bludhaven
He's a short little thing, who glows and waves around a little sword. Sometimes he has a ship, sometimes he doesn't.
The kid keeps saying that it only fits that Bludhaven be his haunt, because it has "blud" in it and his name is "Youngblood".
Also he has declared Nightwing to be his nemesis.
Nightwing loves it; he gets to have at least one day a week that's just goofing off with a kid who can't be hurt by any of his regular villains. Their "fights" are more like play dates, if he's being honest, and Youngblood is a good kid.
Sometimes he's swinging from the sails of the kids ghost ship, dodging "ecto blasts", other times he's "teaming up" with Youngblood and "sword fights" another spectral Hero, called Phantom.
Generally, they all have a good time.
Until one day, he stumbles across some men in white suits actually managing to hurt the ghost child.
That day, the GIW learns that the most violent Robin wasn't the second one, but the first.
You know what’s interesting?
Dick didn’t set out to murder Zucco with the intent of being a killer. He viewed it as an unfortunate byproduct of his actions.
His real goal was to “purge the world of criminals” because “darkness needs light.”
Do you realize how unhinged that sounds? It means Robin wasn’t created from anger. It was created from the messed up psyche of a child who realized at 8 years old that the entire world needs something better than what it was given and so he went out and became it.
I cant properly explain how insane that is. It’s like putting the logic of the Joker inside the mind of child but turning it for good. Everything is falling into place now. That is why the Joker hates Dick-he is the one Robin the man couldn’t break. Literally COULDN’T because when he’s facing Dick, he’s facing the version of himself that would have existed if he had put himself to good. That was would break HIM.
Imagine spending the better part of your life doing your utmost worst to show Batman that people and the system are inherently evil only to have him fall head over cowl for a version of yourself to completely invalidate your reason for existing. How psychotic would you turn when you realize you have nothing to prove?
This also explains why Dick is so well adjusted and sociable in a way that Bruce and the others aren’t.
Bruce loses it when he loses his children, he thinks it’s a failure of his abilities and doubts his life’s work.
Jason loses it when he thinks he’s been replaced because his reason for being is having someone care for him.
Tim loses it when he comes to a dead-end. He feels helpless and lost when he doesn’t know the next move because his reason for being is being able to solve what’s wrong.
Damian loses it when he feels abandoned. He feels hurt and broken because he’s a child who wants to be loved.
The reason Dick was the perfect choice for Dark Crisis and to become the dawn of DCU is because his sole reason for being is to be the light.
That is why Bruce refused to destroy a planet when Superman asked him too. That is why Dick was the only person in the universe who could control the Darkness infecting him when even Deathstroke lost his mind to it. That is why the evil Justice League chose Dick of every one to kill-to make a point.
This is why he’s looked up to by major heroes such as Superman, Wonderwoman, the Titans, the children, the villains, and the civilians.
This is why Harvey Dent called Robin Dick “Batman’s secret weapon.”
Although anger was the baseline emotion, Dick doesn’t have anger issues because:
Robin wasn’t created for revenge. It was created with the intention of building a world so unrealistically good, that the level of the vision Richard Grayson was aiming for and set the standards for- is so terrifyingly inconceivable.
And that-is why he is a happy, feral, monster.
I'm so tired of people saying that the Prince from Snow White is a creep for kissing Snow White when he thought she was dead.
People act as if he put his tongue down her throat while she looks like a regular corpse.
Maybe I'm just more comfortable with death because of my upbringing.
There's a European tradition that you would kiss dead people goodbye. You would also wait with a dying person because dying alone was one of the most horrible ways to die.
In Poland, you would spend three days with the dead body of your relative in the house so family and friends have time to say goodbyes. We even have pictures of family members in coffins, so we could remember them.
Yeah, it's a very post-modern, historically, culturally-small-minded way to look at it.
Specifically in this movie (which is a fairy tale's fairy tale) people just...totally ignore the scene where The Prince is introduced.
Seriously and truthfully, BECAUSE the Prince only takes action in three scenes of the movie, you HAVE to take all three of them very very seriously. Because thats all there is to know about him. That's how fairy tales work: lots of information hiding under very brief, simple snippets of information. It's called nuance.
Anyway.
The Prince kisses Snow White as a culmination of their promised love for each other.
First scene he's in, he falls in love with her because of her obvious purity and he overhears her longing for someone to love her. Then she runs away because she's not sure of him, and doesn't know him. But he sings his part of the song, which is all about how he has just one heart to give, one devotion to spend, and he's choosing to give it and spend it on her if she'll have him.
And she will have him. How do we know? She sends a kiss to him on the dove. That's how the exchange ends; that's how she responds, and that's why he leaves satisfied. It's their engagement scene. They're promising their hearts to each other.
Fast-forward, the Queen messes up what might have been the natural follow-through of that engagement which is marriage by trying to kill Snow White, she's living in the woods, but she won't forget the Prince and wholeheartedly believes he'll come find her.
And the very next thing we hear about him is that he keeps his promise. He's got one heart, one love, one devotion, and it's promised to Snow White, and he will not stop searching for her. When he finds her, he's returning her kiss from their engagement scene. He thinks she's dead, but he has to finish his quest anyway. This is him, trying to keep his promise even if she's dead; he's trying to fulfill the exchange they had when they saw each other last.
It's ridiculous to assume that she needed to be awake and alive to give permission for him to kiss her; it's ignorant of the whole relationship, symbolic and literal, between these two fairy tale characters. She already sent him her kiss and her heart; he already promised to claim it; he's fulfilling the promise in that scene.
Crazy postmodern people, don't know how to take in a story. Not everything gets to have your socio-cultural lens imposed upon it.
“Oh yeah, Babs and Tim are the computer geniuses,” any one of the other Batkids say as they hack into the Pentagon for the third time that week.
“Oh yeah, Dick’s the nice, happy one,” one of the other Batkids say while Nightwing walks off whistling from where he left fourteen assassins unconscious and bleeding in an alley.
Arwen and Aragorn🌟 INPRNT
Concerning Juliet’s age
I find a big stumbling block that comes with teaching Romeo and Juliet is explaining Juliet’s age. Juliet is 13 - more precisely, she’s just on the cusp of turning 14. Though it’s not stated explicitly, Romeo is implied to be a teenager just a few years older than her - perhaps 15 or 16. Most people dismiss Juliet’s age by saying “that was normal back then” or “that’s just how it was.” This is fundamentally untrue, and I will explain why.
In Elizabethan England, girls could legally marry at 12 (boys at 14) but only with their father’s permission. However, it was normal for girls to marry after 18 (more commonly in early to mid twenties) and for boys to marry after 21 (more commonly in mid to late twenties). But at 14, a girl could legally marry without papa’s consent. Of course, in doing so she ran the risk of being disowned and left destitute, which is why it was so critical for a young man to obtain the father’s goodwill and permission first. Therein lies the reason why we are repeatedly told that Juliet is about to turn 14 in under 2 weeks. This was a critical turning point in her life.
In modern terms, this would be the equivalent of the law in many countries which states children can marry at 16 with their parents’ permission, or at 18 to whomever they choose - but we see it as pretty weird if someone marries at 16. They’re still a kid, we think to ourselves - why would their parents agree to this?
This is exactly the attitude we should take when we look at Romeo and Juliet’s clandestine marriage. Today it would be like two 16 year olds marrying in secret. This is NOT normal and would NOT have been received without a raised eyebrow from the audience. Modern audiences AND Elizabethan audiences both look at this and think THEY. ARE. KIDS.
Critically, it is also not normal for fathers to force daughters into marriage at this time. Lord Capulet initially makes a point of telling Juliet’s suitor Paris that “my will to her consent is but a part.” He tells Paris he wants to wait a few years before he lets Juliet marry, and informs him to woo her in the meantime. Obtaining the lady’s consent was of CRITICAL importance. It’s why so many of Shakespeare’s plays have such dazzling, well-matched lovers in them, and why men who try to force daughters to marry against their will seldom prosper. You had to let the lady make her own choice. Why?
Put simply, for her health. It was considered a scientific fact that a woman’s health was largely, if not solely, dependant on her womb. Once she reached menarche in her teenage years, it was important to see her fitted with a compatible sexual partner. (For aristocratic girls, who were healthier and enjoyed better diets, menarche generally occurred in the early teens rather than the later teens, as was more normal at the time). The womb was thought to need heat, pleasure, and conception if the woman was to flourish. Catholics might consider virginity a fit state for women, but the reformed English church thought it was borderline unhealthy - sex and marriage was sometimes even prescribed as a medical treatment. A neglected wife or widow could become sick from lack of (pleasurable) sex. Marrying an unfit sexual partner or an older man threatened to put a girl’s health at risk. An unsatisfied woman, made ill by her womb as a result - was a threat to the family unit and the stability of society as a whole. A satisfying sex life with a good husband meant a womb that had the heat it needed to thrive, and by extension a happy and healthy woman.
In Shakespeare’s plays, sexual compatibility between lovers manifests on the stage in wordplay. In Much Ado About Nothing, sparks fly as Benedick and Beatrice quarrel and banter, in comparison to the silence that pervades the relationship between Hero and Claudio, which sours very quickly. Compare to R+J - Lord Capulet tells Paris to woo Juliet, but the two do not communicate. But when Romeo and Juliet meet, their first speech takes the form of a sonnet. They might be young and foolish, but they are in love. Their speech betrays it.
Juliet, on the cusp of 14, would have been recognised as a girl who had reached a legal and biological turning point. Her sexual awakening was upon her, though she cares very little about marriage until she meets the man she loves. They talk, and he wins her wholehearted, unambiguous and enthusiastic consent - all excellent grounds for a relationship, if only she weren’t so young.
When Tybalt dies and Romeo is banished, Lord Capulet undergoes a monstrous change from doting father to tyrannical patriarch. Juilet’s consent has to take a back seat to the issue of securing the Capulet house. He needs to win back the prince’s favour and stabilise his family after the murder of his nephew. Juliet’s marriage to Paris is the best way to make that happen. Fathers didn’t ordinarily throw their daughters around the room to make them marry. Among the nobility, it was sometimes a sad fact that girls were simply expected to agree with their fathers’ choices. They might be coerced with threats of being disowned. But for the VAST majority of people in England - basically everyone non-aristocratic - the idea of forcing a daughter that young to marry would have been received with disgust. And even among the nobility it was only used as a last resort, when the welfare of the family was at stake. Note that aristocratic boys were often in the same position, and would also be coerced into advantageous marriages for the good of the family.
tl;dr:
Q. Was it normal for girls to marry at 13?
A. Hell no!
Q. Was it legal for girls to marry at 13?
A. Not without dad’s consent - Friar Lawrence performs this dodgy ceremony only because he believes it might bring peace between the houses.
Q. Was it normal for fathers to force girls into marriage?
A. Not at this time in England. In noble families, daughters were expected to conform to their parents wishes, but a girl’s consent was encouraged, and the importance of compatibility was recognised.
Q. How should we explain Juliet’s age in modern terms?
A. A modern Juliet would be a 17 year old girl who’s close to turning 18. We all agree that girls should marry whomever they love, but not at 17, right? We’d say she’s still a kid and needs to wait a bit before rushing into this marriage. We acknowledge that she’d be experiencing her sexual awakening, but marrying at this age is odd - she’s still a child and legally neither her nor Romeo should be marrying without parental permission.
Q. Would Elizabethans have seen Juliet as a child?
A. YES. The force of this tragedy comes from the youth of the lovers. The Montagues and Capulets have created such a hateful, violent and dangerous world for their kids to grow up in that the pangs of teenage passion are enough to destroy the future of their houses. Something as simple as two kids falling in love is enough to lead to tragedy. That is the crux of the story and it should not be glossed over - Shakespeare made Juliet 13 going on 14 for a reason.
14 days to crab day
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Reblog if you're comfortable receiving crabs on Crab Day (July 29th) so all your beloved followers know who they can comfortably crab on crab day (July 29th) without feeling nervous about crabbing someone 9n Crab Day (July 29th).
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If Crab Day 2023 goes down as the thing that Saved Tumblr, I will laugh forever. Literally. I'll be dying in my bed at 97 and be like "AH REMEMBER THE CRABS" and laugh myself into Heaven.
Crab Day!!!
Where:
Here on Tumblr!!
What:
Buy crabs!
Why:
As we now know, Tumblr is $30 million dollars in debt. Oops. Tumblr has announced some major (and unpopular) changes to the site in their attempt to get back above water. The alternative is that Tumblr ceases to exist. But maybe we can change that...
How:
There are 327 million unique tumblr visits per month, and almost 500 million active accounts. If 10 million unique users (or less, if we bought more than one) bought or gifted Crabs from the Tumblr store, we could knock out Tumblr's debt easily. Buy crabs!
When:
July 29, 2023 is Crab Day, running through August 5 (for anyone who can't log on that day) as Crab Week!
Who:
Everyone!! If you truly can't afford to participate with a $3 crab, (or other item from the shop) post crab memes!
Time for Tumblr users to rise again and surprise everyone...
"okay boomer"
People definitely shout this??
Okay so I did some research, very basic research, on the user base of tumblr and how many of us there are.
There are at least 300 million unique visitors worldwide on this site. Over 500 million blogs.
Listen. Tumblr is $30 million in debt. This is Super easy for us to solve.
If each user gifts one blog crabs, which costs slightly over $3, that would be roughly $600 million at least. Far more than enough to get Tumblr out of the red zone.
If we want tumblr to stay afloat and not change something as integral about their operating system, we need to show them they can be profitable without reducing themselves to common social media sites. What we have here is special. It is different. We are the social media site people run to when theirs collapses and for good reason.
If we want this to work, we have to make it work. We can even make it into a game. Just how long can we outlast the other social media sites?
RB for the largest sample size this site has ever seen