after a lifetime of hearing about aragorn but not reading the books or watching the movies, genuinely nothing could have prepared me for his actual introduction. the hobbits picked this man out of a dumpster. he is a textbook softspoken angst prince and he is covered in dirt and he probably smells so bad. he’s the coolest man alive and is so casual about it. his number one skill is Knowing Where They Are and his number two skill is Having A Horrible Destiny That Torments Him. tolkien got it in one i’m afraid aragorn son of arathorn you are the guy of all time
The thing about Aragorn is that he’s actually a really stock fantasy character, but he’s usually done as an angsty teenager. The rejection of the heroic destiny and overcoming that is usually an expression of adolescent or young adult anxiety, or a narratively performative rejection of authority to demonstrate one’s worthiness. It’s a story about coming into the world from a place of powerlessness to a place of immense responsibility. It’s a coming of age story.
Aragorn isn’t a teenager. Hell he’s not even middle-aged by typical human standards, he is old enough to have watched every single human in his life grow old and die. And he grapples everyday with having lived through that side of immortality and knowing that if he doesn’t condemn the elf he loves to a mortal death, that she will one day experience that about him. Aragorn isn’t even moving from a position of not having responsibility to a position of responsibility, he’s out there as a Ranger getting. shit. done. This guy charges all nine ring wraiths with a torch and a mundane blade because that is his godsdamn job description.
Aragorn isn’t a kid growing up. He’s the veteran World War I officer coming back for World War II.
There’s no lesson to be learned in that. There’s no moral about accepting responsibility even, he already did that in his role as a Ranger. Even as he rejected the kingship, he never rejected responsibility, he just did it in the way he thought he was best suited to and he was damn good at it. His story is just that of a person who has earned their rest a thousand times over, who is still serving his community anyway, being tasked with enduring a whole new set of trials. Not because he needs to learn something from it, not really. Had Sauron not been coming back and corrupted Denethor, it would have been a fine call to make.
Honestly, even his decision to love with Arwen isn’t even really narratively aligned with it. Him taking the crown is an act of selflessness, but asking an elf to love him is incredibly selfish. His decision to seek in the time he has is in a way polar opposite to his decision pick up the burden of leadership. It’s not part of his grand narrative lesson, it’s just a guy figuring out shit about his personal life even as the world falls apart.
But that’s the thing, the world did fall apart. The great war came back, and so it’s back onto the front lines for Aragorn. He volunteers, because the kids need him.
Which I think is what makes his story so incredibly moving, and is the source of the something that so many of his analogues in other stories lack. The world and its story isn’t built around teaching him a lesson. He’s just … a guy in it. An amazing one, who is desperately needed, but the conflict isn’t for him. The world isn’t ending so an audience can experience grappling with responsibility vicariously.
It’s just talking saying that this is what a great person looks like. The world has those.
And because he doesn’t have to hit specific beats of growth, he’s allowed to just be a complex and well developed person when he enters the story. So we get this good person, a great person, and he’s incredibly fleshed out. So he doesn’t just end up being an archetype of greatness, he ends up being a person who is great. But he’s also not a character you’re supposed to identify with, that’s not the purpose of his humanity, those would be the hobbits. Lord of the Rings doesn’t say you’re supposed to aspire to be Aragorn who becomes a king, it says you’re supposed to aspire to be the poor bastards in over their heads who get to go home.
What it says about Aragorn is that when shit gets rough, when things are at their worst? There will be people who are equal to it. That when everything is lost and the best you have left is a suicidal delaying action, there will be someone who can make you believe that it’s all worth it.
It’s not always true. The young lads all come home in this story too, and that’s certainly not what happened for Tolkien. But it’s a dream about what should be.
I hate to be all “cis good” on main, but if it weren’t for the cis queer women that welcomed me into womanhood idk where I would be
Shout-out to cis queer women that welcome trans women because that was genuinely a foundational part of developing confidence in my femininity
There’s this huge media storm that, even when it’s supposed to be “trans positive” still paints this atmosphere of separation between trans and cis women. This has been the opposite of my experience. I’m grateful for the solidarity between all women <3
There are gonna be young cis women who are gonna delight in helping you find out what sort of clothes you wanna wear, how to look after your skin and hair, helping you on the path to learning the difference between like, what you feel you *should* present like vs what is actually comfortable and authentically you.
There are going to be menopausal cis mums who are on the same brand of estrogen patch as you who are gonna join you in griping about getting them to stick and swapping tips for when you get dispensed the big patches but your dose is half that.
There are going to be infertile cis women who share your pain and anger at the concept that ‘able to bear children’ is seen as the only 'real’ way to be a woman.
There are gonna be intersex cis women who understand what it’s like to have your body’s default state not line up with societal expectations.
There are gonna be queer cis women who will stand with you at Pride, who will welcome you to our family, our community.
I want to reblog this a thousand times. I’ve seen all of this, and it is so beautiful and pure and we all need it for survival. I love women, I love the solidarity we all have, and I love what we can all do for each other <3
The notes on this post are a set of the most beautiful stories I’ve heard about welcoming and solidarity between all women, cis and trans.
Please keep sharing these. They truly are a joy, and are giving me a lot of hope <3
reblogged this earlier but actually have something to add. the barely 20 year old cis girl who came up to me in the train station to ask me if she could stand with me. who told me all her friends left and she felt nervous waiting alone. who waited with me and told me to get home safe as we got on the train together. the fact that you felt like I was a safe and kind woman you could lean on a little?
Probably the single most affirming social experience I’ve had with a stranger. The fact you chose me of everyone in the train station means you saw me in a crowd and picked me out and said “That’s a girl’s girl.”
Shout out to the group of middle aged cis moms I met at the liquor store when I was looking for wine. The one that said “oh honey, you just wiped off your makeup.” And gestured at her upper lip after I wiped the sweat off my face with a handkerchief from my purse.
I was having a lot of dysphoria about my upper lip hair suddenly having color to it (medicine side effect it seems). So I was internally wondering if they’d ostracize me since they’d clocked me.
One of the women goes “oh it’s okay, I have PCOS too. Don’t let it bother you.” And suddenly I’ve got 3 women chatting with me and lamenting how they have to “shave almost every day at this point” and just cackling. The store worker joined in, saying she plucks constantly, and her “transgender friend has to shave 2 or more times a day!”. They all had these genuine reactions and “oh no, poor girl” and other comments.
I felt included. I never mentioned that I was transgender.. I just carried on, they helped me pick out wines, gave me some tips on undertones for makeup to cover facial hair stubble, and I got the shop worker to pull out some elderflower liqueur to add to a small sample of a Pinot Grigio (and got more people to try it and add it to their rotation. Seriously, try it sometime. It’s incredible).
The random solidarity and genuine reactions I’ve received from other women has been very validating and honestly so welcome.
I actually have one for this. I work in food service, and I was working in that industry for… Almost a decade before I came out. And I came out at age 27, didn’t start HRT until I was 28. Despite the sheer size of the city I live in, a not insignificant portion of the industry knows who I am. And so when I get a new job, I usually have to come out a few times.
I had had this job for a couple of months, and while I was working I was told we had a stage coming in later to see how they fit in. I say great and go on my break. When I come back, the potential hire is there… And she’s a coworker from a couple jobs ago (like two or three years previous). We both slowly point at each other and go “Aren’t you… ?” Before laughing and reintroducing ourselves. I go “Sooo I’m a girl now,” and she laughs and tells me “Yeah I can tell.” We spend some time catching up, and we work great together, and she gets hired.
A few days later I tell her I’m jealous of her bandana — you need something to cover your hair at work, and I’d been using a baseball cap, but I felt it made me look really masculine, even after several years of HRT — and she immediately pulls out a spare and shows me how to wear it. I still love the selfie I took that day, I was beaming. And from there it was very clear she just… accepted me as one of the girls. She’d tell me about men being shitty to her, and about the consistent misogyny we face, and even helped me at a sapphic night at a bar. It was just… Instant solidarity. It was amazing. We’re still friends today.
I used to run Gender Euphoria Hour at a local convention, where people would bring makeup and nail polish and trans tape and all kinds of stuff and you could come get your nails done or your chest taped for the weekend.
And a cis woman friend of mine said, “Oh, I can help! I’ve got some stuff I can share!”
Friends, let me tell you. She rolled up on her mobility device with someone behind her, pushing a bellman’s cart STACKED HIGH with makeup organizers. Nail polish, makeup, hair accouterments, and a bunch of the makeup was sample size stuff she had accumulated and was shoving at people to take home if it worked for them.
there should be more romance repulsed characters. there should be more aro characters in general but i deserve characters who would rather throw themselves off a skyscraper than be in a romantic relationship
Elrond as viewed by Númenoreans is hilarious. Aristocracy is one thing, and their long kept histories and direct descent from the elves.
But someone lowborn - still educated, still familiar with the stories. Faithful or not. Lifespan lower than the upper class, but longer than other humans - but that doesn’t matter - thousands of years is a long time. The Roman Empire was more recent than this guy.
Because imagine the founder of your nation and its first king, who was told to have been born as the son of a bird and a star, lived to be 500, and who died 2000 years ago. Just. Has a sibling. Who is still running around. You can go visit him. You can! He’s very friendly. He wrote the medical book your healers study from. He updates it religiously every other decade. You don’t hear from him often because he lives fairly secluded from society and seems to prefer a quiet life but every few hundred years something batshit insane happens and he’s right there. At the center of things. Pretending to be a background character, as if Sauron didn’t look warily at him expecting him to turn into another Lúthien incident. Maybe he’s shy?
You are a sailor. You meet him on one of your journeys to Middle Earth.
He’s not shy. He’s just crown-phobic. He looks like every single painting of Tar-Minyatur you’ve seen. He glitters under starlight. Literally. His parents are a bird and a star and you keep forgetting that’s not a metaphor. Everyone is in love with him. He sings to the birds. He has had a slowburn one-sided romance going on for the past 1000 years. His crush has yet to find out but the king is running a betting pool.
if you are still looking for requests, and if this idea tickles your fancy, I would be super thrilled to see a 45 (Nightmares) with a found family of Elrond, Erestor and Glorfindel together raising Elladan, Elrohir and Arwen in Rivendell after Celebrían is gone... and not only the little ones have the nightmares. Thank you!! <3
“We’re not children anymore,” Elladan growled, pacing the length of Arwen’s room. “We—we should be out there, killing orcs, making sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else—”
“They’re hurting, too,” Arwen said quietly, but her eyes were like flint and she sharpened her knife to a point more deadly than strictly necessary.
“That doesn’t mean Atto can keep us here—”
“And if we run off and leave him alone?” Elrohir interrupted. “If Glorfindel has to chase us down again? What good will that do?”
“He’s not our father,” Elladan snapped.
“He might as well be,” Arwen muttered. “Our real father is too paralyzed by nightmares to parent us. He’s a shell of himself since Naneth left…”
“And so are we!” Elrohir exclaimed. “Look at us—bickering and insulting each other and hiding from the people who care about us—is this what Naneth would want? And don’t try and tell me you don’t have nightmares too! We can all see into each other’s dreams, you know!”
Elladan flinched. “And you’re so good at comforting your poor little twin when you’re babbling about monsters in the dark—”
“That’s why Glorfindel and Erestor are so cloying,” Elrohir hissed. “Because they’re the only ones who aren’t taken by nightmares. And great Valar, why are we all acting as if Naneth is dead? We shall see her again someday! And even if she were dead, Glorfindel is proof enough of rebirth!”
His siblings fell silent; Elrohir was not prone to outbursts and they listened when he lost his cool.
Elrohir took a shaky breath. “All I’m saying is—Glorfindel is trying to take care of us. Erestor is taking care of Atto. All of us are hurting, them too, but Naneth left to heal—she would want us to heal, too.”
“I suppose we can start by letting Glorfindel overfeed us.” Arwen sighed. “If this is to be the shape of our family now…so be it.”
