It’s aro week, and even though I still don’t feel like I fully have a handle on what aromanticism is, I do get the impression that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings fit well with it? because all the main character’s most important and most central relationships aren’t romantic ones.
Bilbo is considered odd (“queer”, even) in the Shire for being a lifelong bachelor; his close relationships are with dwarven and elven friends, and with his adopted son Frodo. Frodo shows no romantic interest in anyone; his close relationships are with Sam, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, and later Aragorn. And the later relationship with Frodo, Sam, and Sam’s wife Rosie all living in Bag End - which is specifically proposed by Frodo - seems like it fits the definition of queerplatonic? Whether or not you see Legolas and Gimli as a couple, their closest relationship is clearly with each other. Merry and Pippin also seem pretty clearly the most important people in each others’ lives, and remain close with their friends in Rohan and Gondor even after returning to the Shire. Boromir’s almost canonically aroace, going by the appendices. The close friendships between Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are prominent, while the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen is relegated to an appendix. Most members of the Fellowship (6/9) do not get married or ‘fall in love’ in any traditional sense (and of the remaining three, one - Pippin - is only noted briefly in an appendix). The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings both have the characters’ relationships with each other - and the importance of valuing and cherishing those, not possessions or power - at their heart, and almost all of those relationships are non-romantic ones.
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Thinking about Earth 42 Rio literally breaks my heart everytime.
Imagine being left almost absolutely alone in the new cruel world that falls into pieces in synch with your life.
Imagine having a 15-year-old teenage son as the only courage to exist, to keep looking forward. The only family that remains.
Imagine seeing him silently going through a thunderstorm, seeing his inner spark slowly dying out in a spare of several hours — and understanding you can't do anything. Anything more that you're already doing.
Imagine being tired. Constantly tired, and yet having no thoughts about getting a rest because you're the reason this family still staying afloat.
Imagine having a free evening only few times a week, perhaps only one time. Imagine feeling time literally going through your fingers because 24 hours in a day is simply not enough.
Imagine understanding your kid is not actually feeling better. Because you're not feeling better either, because sometimes time doesn't heal.
Imagine understanding that you're both smiling and joking around with other even If it seems like you won't have any power to move the next second because this family moments are so special and you both want them to remain sincere.
Imagine saying that you're ready to talk about anything, anything that he'll say If he wants to share his problems. Imagine seeing him nod and then don't tell you nothing except for rants about "ComicsCon" and school grades.
Imagine being worried about your child to the point it literally hurst without having an opportunity to just let all his struggles away. When all you can do is working and repeating the same sentence over and over again — "You can always talk to me If something worries you" — because you're his mother. You're not gonna push on him, you don't want to make everything worse.
Imagine understanding his pain because it pains for you exactly the same. Because nothing is the same anymore and will never be.
Because sometimes time doesn't heal.
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It's so emotionally powerful to me that we don't hear any interactions between Minkowski and Eiffel in the finale between the scene when she tries to send him back on the Sol and the scene where she witnesses him losing his memories. That's more than an hour in the middle of the finale with no direct interaction between these two central characters whose dynamic is a core element of the show. For me, this makes both of those dramatic scenes even more moving, because they feel juxtaposed in a way they might not otherwise be if there was a Minkowski & Eiffel interaction inbetween them.
As the Sol prepares to launch, Minkowski tells Eiffel goodbye and she knows it could be the last time she speaks to him. She thinks she might never see him again, but at least he'll be safe. She thinks he might never forgive her for that choice, but at least he will have made it through this.
But his stubborn desperation to fight alongside the rest of the crew defies all her plans to protect him. And the next time she speaks to him - after she's been shot in the stomach during her attempts to reach him, after she's continued to look for him even as she's bleeding out - he is injured in a way she would never have expected. When she first sees him hooked up to Pryce's machine, maybe she thinks for a moment that he's unharmed, that they might all make it through this the way she hoped. Then she learns that his memories are already slipping away from him.
There's her desperate attempt to protect him at all costs, and then there's a life-altering harm that she couldn't protect him from, which she witnesses. Between these two moments, there aren't any scenes with both characters in together to bridge that gap. There's Eiffel yelling "Goddammit, Renée, DON'T DO THIS!", and then there's him telling her "It was an honor to serve under you, Sir." There's him pleading with her and then there's him forgiving her. There's Minkowski saying "Go home, Eiffel. Hug your daughter.[...] Goodbye, Doug.", and there's the desperate heartbroken way she says Eiffel's name after the memory wipe has gone through. There's two very different kinds of goodbyes.
And then, afterwards, there's two very different kinds of introductions.
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Broke: it takes Crowley a long time in s3 to actually take his sunglasses off again
Woke: Aziraphale is actually the one to remove them
Bespoke: s3 starts and he's just. Already not wearing then. He's too apathetic to the goings on around him to bother with his usual armor. He's already been stabbed in the heart back and it didn't protect him, so why even try.
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Sometimes I think about Dominik Koudelka's assistant who takes Minkowski's call in Ep43 Persuasion...
In the moment, dismissing the voice on the other end of the phone feels like the right thing to do. She can't just put any random person who calls through to Mr. Koudelka immediately; if she did, there would be no point in him having an assistant at all. And when that random caller is claiming to be Mr. Koudelka's dead wife, of course it would be wrong to subject him to that. (Cont. below cut)
She's seen Mr. Koudelka in the denial stage of grief, if only from a professional distance. She knows that the only time he took off after he heard the news was the day of his wife's funeral. She knows he started working days so long it was a wonder he got any sleep at all. She's heard rumours that he tried to insist that The Times' coverage of the shuttle crash ought to use the word 'allegedly' more. Apparently he ignored every sensitively-worded inquiry about whether he wanted to have any input on his wife's obituary.
Mr. Koudelka certainly doesn't need some cruel joke reopening emotional wounds. It's better not to mention it to him. His assistant knows that she did the right thing.
Or at least, she thinks she did. But she still can't stop thinking about that voice on the other end of phone, its desperation, its sense of urgency, its bizarre impossible claim.
So maybe she finds herself looking up Renée Minkowski, just to set her mind at ease. And there's surprisingly little information out there, but she eventually finds a clip of an interview from just before the launch of the Hephaestus mission. And that's when her stomach drops. She recognises the voice in the video. It's the same voice as the one she heard on the end of the phone. She's sure it's the same voice.
And what is she supposed to do then? Go to her boss and tell him that his wife is alive? Tell him that she lost him potentially his one chance to talk to his presumed dead wife? Admit that she didn't tell him about that call straight away? She's got no proof, just her memory. What if she's wrong about it being the same voice? Maybe it was a good impersonator, or a technological trick, or the power of suggestion. Is telling him the truth worth risking her job for? Is it worth risking giving false hope to a widower who has only just begun to move on? What if he doesn't believe her? What if he does?
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