ok but the reason Caesar was stabbed was that the growing power of his cult of personality was so extreme as to be considered a threat to democracy. stabbing was the political solution they came up with, and this fills me with longing and nostalgia
i’m not saying it worked, mind you, or that stabbing is the fix-all to decaying democratic norms, but we’re still mocking Caesar’s ghost two-thousand-and-change-years-later and i think that’s beautiful
Due to a typo, your local store/mall/etc. put out a request for an appearance by Satan instead of Santa. He follows through with the request.
He shows up and reads through the entire job contract, notes the spelling ‘Santa’ and just corrects each one with a red pen. He eyes the mall representative, who is sweating bullets, but says nothing about the fact that the contracts he’s making are with children, or that they don’t involve souls of any kind. He signs on the bottom line in a strange, bony quill. There’s a strange red flash, and the mall rep is super reluctant to ask. Or touch the contract.
Satan wears the red suit and the hat and the boots, if awkwardly (those cloven hooves, don'tchaknow).
The elves stand well away, but he’s hardly bothered by that, casually waiting on a throne that’s far more cheerful and composed of significantly less bone than the one he’s used to.
The children are hesitant at first, until a little girl marches up, sans-parents, and plops herself on his knee, looking up at him with the set jaw of someone who isn’t interested in this farce.
“I want a pony,” she says with a roll of her eyes. She’s no more than nine. He arches an eyebrow
“Do you?” he asks. She scoffs.
“Tch, no, but you’re just a man in a suit, it’s not like you can’t get me what I want.”
He smiles at her assertiveness and steeples his fingers, careful not to jostle her from her perch.
“Try me.”
She narrows her eyes at him, studying his inscrutable face before folding her arms.
“There’s a bully at my school, and I want him to go away,” she said. His eyebrow arched a little higher and he tilted his head.
“And if I do this, I believe the standard contract is that you will be a ‘good girl’ and behave appropriately towards your most favored parent?’ he replied. The child rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, sure,” she says. He nods and holds out his hand, which curls around hers entirely when she puts hers out.
“It will be done.”
After that, the children are a lot less hesitant, although several adults attempt to leave. Several hundred bargains are made. For toys. For new family. For present family to suffer. For puppies. And kittens. For understanding. For acceptance.
He declines anything borne of pettiness - of momentary squabbles between jealous children - and redirects them towards more productive desires.
He turns away anyone over the age of eighteen, though several adults attempt to approach. Later they are plagued with horrible nightmares.
At the end of each day, he returns to the underworld and assembles teams of demons, handing out assignments to each of them, to be researched heavily and then executed the night of December 24th. The demons are confused, but do as they’re told, because the dark lord’s edicts are undeniable. His secretary gives him an odd look, but Satan is immune to searching looks, and says nothing, just retires to his room, gets up in the morning, has his coffee, and returns to the mall, donning the suit and heading for the chair.
At the end of the week, he has made more than a thousand deals. The demon hordes are scurrying back and forth between hell and the physical plane.
There are many confused parents, come Christmas morning. Some find themselves with various pets they don’t remember registering for. Others with children. Others still find that their children have undergone some sort of personality shift, to the delight of their siblings.
The first girl is bitter in her heart as she opens gifts, until a letter is personally delivered by a strange mailman, detailing the removal of a teacher from the school she attends. She reads and rereads the letter after her parents finish with it, heart beating strangely lighter in her chest. Her parents are bemused and delighted about the hugs she gives them, and about the enthusiasm with which she ravages her other presents.
They are far less bemused by the black, hellfire-maned pony that is left on their doorstep, a tag attached to the pommel of the saddle that reads, ‘To Katie, Regards, Satan’
imagine an old motherly witch giving her children crystals to help them with their days imagine her cleansing and charging them with protection imagine her charming their notebooks with memory retention spells imagine her using magickal herbs in chicken noodle soup around flu season imagine witch moms
Of all the reactions to a certain upcoming series, I am finding the most troubling is people who have not even read a syllable of Tolkien’s writings coming out of the woodwork and pretending to be serious fans.
You probably all know the type. The blogs suddenly sharing and creating posts on characters from The SilmarillionandBeren and Luthien. Characters they hadn’t even heard of and never mentioned 6 or even 3 months ago. You’re not going to tell me they’ve read all of the above in 6 weeks and are suddenly discussing these stories like old timers.
Some might say “you should be glad these people are engaging with Tolkien fandom!” but I am not. I am not because Tolkien’s works are not like Marvel or Star Wars. This is not some television franchise which anyone can step into, and which Disney can make endless cash grab spin- offs for.
This was the life’s work of J.R.R Tolkien and his son. A labour of love into which which he invested years and millions of words. For which he created several langauges and an entire history.
He deserves at least enough respect for people to actually readone of his works. At very, very least The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings. It doesn’t take much time or effort, and will probably be well worth it.
Furthermore, reading them helps avoid icky and creepy ships such as Legolas with Aragorn post-Hobbit. A time when Aragorn was approximately 10 years old, or Celebrimbor with the guy who tortured him to death.
Or people trying to sound clever and funny by remarking on the age gap between Eowyn and Aragorn in TTT being “weird” whilst being unaware that Arwen is 2700 years old.
So please, for the love of The One, Illuvatar himself, please stop engaging with these stories and characters because you think they’re cool on the basis of some post you saw on social media, or because you are pumped for a future TV show.
Engage with them as the creator intended. As Tolkien intended.
The actual characters, cultures and peoples. Not fandom’s version of them, and certainly not Amazon’s.
I’ m afraid I believe in transmedia storytelling, but I agree with you in this: a work of years and years deserves respect. Thank you for the tag, mellon.
Historically speaking, the primary function of the two Jackson film trilogies in the Tolkien fanworks fandom was to drive fans to the books. In 2015 and 2020, I ran the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey; in both data sets, less than 1% of participants used only the films as sources for their fic. (In 2015, this was directly after the third Hobbitfilm, when one would expect fandom engagement around the films to be at a high.) Yet there is ample evidence that many of those same writers entered the fandom because of the film. Almost half of authors in the 2020 survey responded that they started writing Tolkien-based fic because of the films, and over half felt “encouraged” to write fic because of the films. Yet if you graph out the sources people use by the years they have been in the fandom, you see that, the longer people remain in the fandom, the more books they read and use in their fic.
The tl;dr: media adaptations bring fans to Tolkien and Tolkien fanfic specifically. The books are why they stay.
Indiana Jones. Great character, hates Nazis. Punches and kills his way through them. Still loved by all.
Everyone loves Batman! Doesn’t like Nazis.
Wonder Woman, showing people how it’s done.
Even the villains don’t tolerate Nazis!
Like, the Joker is seen as one of the most notorious villains in the DC-verse, and he just is about to beat the shit out of the Red Skull.
More examples:
And just the sheer amount of times Captain America, literally a character to signify the freedom of the US of fucking A, has punched Nazis is bordering the line of excessive.
So all of this media ranging from different decades and companies have all endorsed Nazi punching. However, as soon as this happens:
Everyone loses their shit! “Violence begets violence!” “That isn’t the way to do it” “How dare he attack that man!” “Don’t put out fire with fire!” “You’re just as bad as them if you’re violent!”
But here’s the thing. It interrupts their platform. It shows that they are not invincible. It shows that they are not protected. It shows that they are going to be held accountable for their spouts of hate disguised as freedom of speech. It shows that there are consequences for their words.
I’m not saying that I’m going to seek out Nazis just to punch them, but I’m not going to stop anyone who’s doing it either.
Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Either way, we should be punching more Nazis.
