new question being asked from the little bubble I live in! do y’all do “fend for yourself” nights in which there isn’t a meal cooked for the whole household so you have to look in the cabinets and make your own meal (or get takeout if you can) and as the title says, fend for yourself? my friend just informed me that a lady she mentioned doing this too seemed horrified and now I’m curious on like how common it is to have fend for yourself nights for everyone!
i feel like a lot of discourse between aro people and alloromatic people is caused just by a conflict of personal definitions of the word love.
when aro people claim that people can do monstrous things out of love, we’re defining love as a strong, passionate, care for someone or something. when people retaliate that a monstrous or abusive thing cannot be done out of love, or it’s not love anymore, they’re defining love as something more pure, a strictly positive and harmless affection.
when loveless aros say they don’t feel love, they’re most often defining love as an intense, deeply affectionate care for specifically a Person, when people retaliate that Liking Anything Ever is actually love, they’re defining love as Any feeling of positivity (though let’s be real that’s never been rooted in personal definition it’s just malicious feigned ignorance)
what i’m saying is that aro people would have to deal with a lot less bullshit if you all could just sit the fuck down and accept the concept that love is a super nebulous word that almost Everyone has a different definition for
one of the most tragic things is that i cant find my notes from my worldbuilding class which was like the second best class ive ever taken in my life. but i can remember a lot.
one thing i think is especially relevant right now is the “haha jonathan is an idiot because he doesn’t listen to the peasants” is a very modern reaction and reading. him ignoring the peasants was done verydeliberately by bram stoker because, odds are, the people reading it at the time wouldn’t have believed the peasants either. they’re playing up the belief a lot of englishmen have that they are better than the dumb little locals, and that’s something stoker assumed the reader would believe as well. the suspense that something terrible was coming, but it was obfuscated by the fact that the “dumb” locals could just be being “superstitious” (read: having a different religion).
there’s a perpetual “west” against the “east” that stoker is utilizing that organizes dracula – the West symbolizes enlightenment, science, reason, trains, nobility, whiteness, modernity, democracy, virgin marriages and the East is magic, superstition, cruelty, slavery, regression, sexual perversion, madness, despotism, harems and suffocating unchanging tradition.
dracula was written in a period of decline for the british empire – a lot of people were feeling self reflection and guilt. a very popular genre in britain at the time was “invasion literature,” or “reverse colonization,” where the people who were conquered take back over or spread back to the “home” country. dracula is a reverse colonization, where he would invade the “civilized” western world and – gasp, shock, horror – change them into people like him, destroying the Racial Purity of the west. that is a large part of why dracula was scary to people at the time.
(there is an alternative reading, that dracula is meant to represent the british themselves, and it is just written as if its a reverse colonialization; dracula steals babies, murders women (imperial genocide), and has a lust for blood (conquering, war), he talks about how wonderful his race is, he’s the “ultimate” race bc he’s stronger, faster, more charismatic, immortal… dracula is scary bc it forces the british to see themselves as the villain. i find this less compelling because a lot of the words used to describe dracula are antisemetic stereotypes and he is specifically made to be from the east and “taking on” the british ideals to “trick them”)
there are aspects of the novel that support both of these readings, like any reading of anything can be supported. i think, when reading dracula, keeping in mind all of the very dangerous stereotypes is really important, especially with how they are used to indicate things are “scary.”
i love doing apologism for fictional characters. yes he killed people and ruined everything but thats ok bc i like him and hes my little baby. so who cares
LOVE character regression. love when characters get hurt and revert to their old ways as a way to deflect, cope, and recuperate. love when they get scared to make a difficult decision. love when it takes time and effort. it’s going to be worth so much more when they get better.
is anyone else like……. exhausted? just way too tired? mentally and physically? and you look at other people your age who seem to be doing fine and you feel so dysfunctional and broken because normal adult tasks and responsibilities just feel way too overwhelming and you can’t cope and
I think that at some point after reincarnating in Valinor, Celebrimbor should get married and have a child. I want the sparkiest family line in Arda to continue. I’m specifically imagining a scene like,
[Name TBD], tired but smiling, holding her newborn daughter: Her name is Curufinwen.
Celebrimbor, buzzing with Brand New Dad! energy but permanently conscious of his family’s legacy: Are you sure? That’s kind of…loaded…
[Name TBD], experiencing a brief prophetic vision of her daughter launching an intercontinental ballistic missile at an incoming giant void spider in Dagor Dagorath: I’m sure.
(Curufinwen grows up to be a merely decent smith, by her family’s standards, but she excels at calculations mathematical, mechanical, and chemical. She is the greatest engineer and explosives expert the Eldar ever know. Many years after Curufin is released from Mandos and just a week or two after Fëanor is, multiple exciting new lights and explosions have already emanated from the area of Tirion occupied mostly by those called the New Jewel-Smiths. Mandos is heard to say to Manwë, “I fear I have erred once more in my judgement. I did not sufficiently consider the effect of there now being four of them.”)
#celebrimbor’s wife is vanyar bc i think it’ll be funny for feanor to deal with that#she’s a moral philosopher and respected within the third age reformation movement as a quiet but steady pillar of the#‘the valar and indeed eru himself should be worshipped IF they truly deserve it’#but she’s mostly interested in figuring out how one defines ‘deserving’ such a thing - what IS ‘goodness’ anyway? what defines moral action?#(is my faceclaim for her eleanor thegoodplace? …maybe)#she and celebrimbor meet at a party where they’re both avoiding relatives and bond over wishing everyone would hold their beliefs less#loudly and aggressively. just bc you’d be WILLING to fight multiple vala in a parking lot doesn’t mean you need to make a big deal of it!#(obv nobody tells feanor about this. he has to learn to be polite to her WITHOUT knowing about the casual heresy)#when they get married celebrimbor makes her a ring. it’s a perfectly nice ring - nothing special#flawlessly crafted ofc and it suits her perfectly. emphasizes everything beautiful about her#but not so grandly that anyone would think to covet it. the ring itself is a little plain even (ok it’s probably mithril but)#maybe the fact that it suits /her/ so perfectly is part of why no one particularly would think to want it themselves? everyone sees it and#is like 'oh yes that suits her. kinda plain but [quietly] so is she’ some might add 'it’s nice that celebrimbor is making rings again’#unrelatedly this ring holds enough power to take out most maiar in 1v1 combat and could sturn a valar long enough for her to get away#the few sharp-eyed enough to notice /that/ are VERY impressed (and a little uneasy about the skill of feanor’s line; as they should be)#celebrimbor is in charge of hte 'is this powerful magical object adviseable to make’ committee so -@tanoraqui
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