The thing about Tumblr that probably makes me saddest is the underlying assumption that women past a certain age (which seems to be about 25?) stop having any sort of outside interests beyond family/career/kids. Like, y’all are always so shocked that grown women have lives and can fangirl as hard as we did as teenagers.
It makes me sad not because it makes me feel old (although it does), but because these younger women are constricting their own lives–they fully expect that this will happen to them someday. Y’all deserve better. Y’all deserve to EXPECT better.
And worse than that, the idea that there’s something WRONG with a grown woman who has other interests.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
One of the biggest things I realized growing up?
It doesn’t happen.
You expect somehow you will change when you are finally An Adult™. You’ll stop enjoying the things you enjoy now for something more “adult” or “mature.” You’ll FEEL like an adult and not like a child anymore. You’ll feel comfortable and secure and not scared and unsure and confused. You expect you will feel like you have your shit together.
But I can tell you that it doesn’t happen. You’ll still feel like the “you” you were at 15 or 17 or 19.
You just have these…things to deal with. Like rent. And insurance.
You have a job either because a) you like it or b) it keeps the lights and internet on.
You’ll look up from fangirling one day and realize “Shit. I am twenty eight years old. That’s almost 30!”Or maybe it will be that you look down at the small child clasped around your legs and realize “That is my child. I have a child. A human being child.” Or maybe it will be that you have to negotiate your budget around con tickets AND a mortgage payment.
Growing up isn’t a thing that happens.
It’s a realization that it doesn’t happen.
Holy shit, y’all. There are some AMAZING responses to this post. Yes, everything alwayshometomarvel says. All that.
Feeling like I wasn’t ‘adult’ enough fucked me up for years. I would cry at night and feel like a total piece of shit because I was married with a kid, and yet I still did ‘not adult’ things–I played MMOs, I cosplayed and went to conventions, I drew fan art and wrote fan fic. I kept waiting for the day that I would wake up and realize that what I really needed to be doing was the laundry, cleaning the house, making dinner every night, etc. Basically, be the ‘perfect’ wife and mother.
And somewhere between then and now, I somehow managed to tell myself…fuck it. I AM an adult. I go to work every day and pay the bills and help raise my son and take care of the house. I do legit adult things. AND I play MMOs, go to conventions, and participate in fandom. And THAT’S OKAY. I’m 32 years old now and finally at peace with that part of myself. (Having a supportive husband and kid doesn’t hurt either!)
All of this is such truth. Believing these things about growing up, and especially about being over 25? Really made it hard for me when I turned 30.
I was literally suicidal on my 30th birthday. I spent the whole day in tears. I felt like I had died and my life was now worthless and small and never going to be hopeful or full of promise or fun again. I felt like killing myself on my birthday because I bought into this lie that somewhere after your mid-twenties, you diminish as a woman because the only thing that made you alive and shiny was your youth.
I’m 31 now and I’m done with that shit. I’m over it. I don’t care if you think I’m too old for something. If I’m an old lady in Tumblr terms, then I’m past the legal age where I’m obligated to care what you think.
So, I’m telling you girls out there right now who are in your teens and twenties, get rid of this idea of what older women are “supposed” to look like. Get rid of this idea that “soccer moms” don’t play video games or that all women over 25 should be married and contemplating kids. Get rid of the idea that fanfic and fandom and fun things are for “kids.”
Mostly, get rid of this notion that the only thing really valuable about you is your youth. Youth is part of life, but it’s not the most valuable or beautiful or exciting time of your life. I like my life at 30 about 1000% than I did at 15, 18, 20, even 25.
on her deathbed, my grandmother pulled my mom close to her and said, “i don’t feel old. i don’t know how i’m supposed to feel. but inside, i still feel seventeen.” when I was a teenager, I used to think that story was sad; sad and strange somehow, like she’d been frozen in time. but now that i am a woman in my thirties, I understand. I understand her. I am a grown woman in the ways that matter. I listen to myself more, trust my experience more. but inside? I still feel the joy and rage and mess; I am still changing. we’re not frozen in time. we are just still growing.
the more we acknowledge that modern “adulthood” is largely a concept designed to sell vacuums and sedans, and not an arbitrary total overhaul of self at age 35, the more we can admit our ongoing capacity– no, our ongoing NEED for play and playfulness and exploration. those are childish things we should never have to put away.
Finally! Here’s my contribution to the Valor Anthology, “Bride of the Rose Beast”. Valor is a book I’m still so happy and honored to be a part of, and you can still get the 300+ page ebook HERE for $5! Enjoy!
Shout out to @determamfidd, because I’ve been planning on catching up with Sansukh for quiet a some time already (I have commintemment problems okay), but now I hear the ends of tails that Dis wil die soon, and… I haven’t even read the fic in over a year… and I’m a wreck already…
WHOA NO NO NO
others have been speculating about Dis a lot over the last few days, is all!!! I can hand-on-heart say that I have no plans for Dis to cark it any time real soon. There’s things she has to see and do first.
Oh she fought it. With everything she was, she fought it, even as the years slipped and slid away. Her memory remained perfect, crystalline in its clarity – and therein lay the great cruelty of it. Only a few short days to know him, a few short and terrible days – but she was doomed to remember them as though they had happened only moments ago.
All her efforts were defeated by the perfect, pitiless precision of Elven memory.
(She told herself, I will not be one of those tragic Elf-maids, wasting away to nothing all for lost love.)
(She told herself, I am a warrior and a Captain and a guard, I am a Silvan Elf of the Greenwood.)
(She told herself, I will fight. I will fight.)
(She told herself, when did I allow my pain to become greater than myself?)
(She told herself, I should like to see a Fire-moon.)
She fought her grief. Oh she fought it. She took her knives and her bow, and sought out evil and struck it down. Even as her grief ate away at her (a worm in the core of an apple) she cleaned whole swathes of the Forest of the spiders. She opened up the trees to the starlight, took down the webs of shadow.
She took her bow and her knives and crossed into the plains south of the great forest, and there she made slow stealthy war upon the Orcs’ outposts. She fought them, and she fought her grief, and she fought them, and she fought her grief.
(She told herself, I will fight.)
(She did not say, until I cannot.)
She rarely returned to the Elvenking’s Halls over the years.
Legolas watched her with worried eyes. Thranduil’s eyes were far too knowing – and sad.
She grew spare and pinched, her eyes dulled. Not even the stars sang in her ears now, and their light could be seen through her flesh.
She took her knives and her bow, and strapped a sword to her back. Evil still stood untouched in the south. She had felt it, seeping cold and foul, cloaked in shadows once more. She could not stand by. This was her fight.
(Her grief was now a chain around her neck, around her arms and chest, strangling her tight, trapping her entirely – but oh how she fought it.)
(This was her fight.)
She crept away, as was her custom. Legolas watched her steal away with worried eyes. In the spaces between her steps, he knew and became aware of what she meant to do. And he took her hand and wept.
“I will go with you,” he said.
She smiled at him, gently, gently. “No. Your fight will come.”
He wept as she kissed his brow, and wept still as she melted away into the trees for the final time: an ephemera under moon and bough.
She fought, oh how she fought. Within and without she waged her war. Fought the dragging of her steps, fought her perfect memory, fought the distance and the shadows and the sluggish beating of her heart.
Her sword still fitted smoothly in her palm, and there was evil before her. The citadel was reeking, it glowed with malice. She charged, and it scattered before her blade. The darkness itself quailed before her: blood-child, star-child, dying Elf with righteous battle in her heart and grief in her veins and a stone in her hand.
The Hill of Sorcery wrapped itself around her, like the chain of her sorrow. And with her sword in hand, she struck a last blow at the foot of the tower with all her fading strength. This was her fight.
She would never see a fire-moon.
The tower was black at the core, rotted through. Orcs and worse screamed in terror as she brought the northern tower down upon them. She could not move fast enough, not anymore.
The great slabs fell, one by one, and pinned her under the dark earth. Her hand held a sword. Her hand held a stone. There was no song of starlight, no whisper of wind or tree. Her chains tightened.
(She told herself, I know what it means, now.)
(She told herself, it is memory, precious and pure.)
idk, Nonnie. I’ve mentioned before that Mahal re-embodies his Dwarves in the Halls (there are a few answered asks regarding that, actually, if you check my ‘dwarves’ tag or ‘headcanony things’ tag). It’s a bit of a system, tbh, the way it has worked out. I’ll break it down, step by step, and see if that sparks any ideas…
Dwarf – Made by Mahal
Dwarf – Dies, is sent to Mandos’ Halls.
(canon bit: we know that the Dwarves believe that their halls of waiting, whilst still a part of Mandos’ domain, are set aside from other people’s halls. There they are looked after by Mahal until Dagor Dagorath, whoop)
Dwarf – in Halls, is re-made by Mahal in their eternal body (this guy takes a warranty seriously)
Previously, I have mused that perhaps those Dwarves who are truly awful souls, who are corrupted beyond help and are truly irredeemable, would not have been re-made by Mahal. Not sure where their fea goes. Perhaps Morgoth in Space has an Evil Dwarf Army, beyond the Door of Night?
well, sorry camp nano, i strayed and wrote some more Merilin/Selga. this shit gets pretty gore-y and generally dark; i’ve also done my best to combine the supernatural/charmed universes and stay true to the characters. i tried to keep the emotional fallout of everything these three are going to go through (that’s some thing that always bugged me in charmed).
Aw Yiss 