Straight dudes are their own worst enemies when it comes to getting laid.
Like, i know so many girls who are down for something more casual and who actually have really low standards that boil down to “treat me like a person, not a talking fleshlight”. And dudes refuse to even meet those standards!
Like, you know how many times I’ve been talking to a guy and I’ve already decided that when we hang out I’d down to mess around, only for the guy to start talking super graphically or send me a picture of his dick–and then literally all desire I had for him went out the windows.
Like dudes are so obsessed with sex that theyre scaring almost-certain sex partners away because they refuse to act like human beings capable of rational thought.
Bring thing this back to add an example:
I started talking to a guy on tinder. He was funny, flirty and super nice even though he wasn’t really my type. Most importantly, he was completely respectful. He managed to let me know he thought I was attractive, and that he was interested in me, without ever saying anything gross, asking for pictures or asking for sex. We met up for drinks and talked for hours and I realized I was more attracted to him than I initially thought . Not only did I sleep with him on the first date, but I’ve hooked up with him multiple times after that. The first time, he didn’t make any assumptions. We hung out, started making out and then he asked me if I wanted to stay the night. That was it. He STILL has never asked me for a nude, or sent me some overtly sexual message or picture.
But SOMEHOOOW I still want to have sex with him.
Conversely, I started talking to another guy on tinder today. On our FIRST conversation, he has mentioned my boobs 3 times, invited me over to “watch a movie” (he added the quotes, not me), suggested a fwb set up and just asked for nudes.
GUESS WHO ISN’T GONNA GET IN MY PANTS.
I try so hard to tell them.
Trash men are out here getting advice from other trash men so they don’t know how to act. 🙄
But… But why are they incapable of learning from bad experience after bad experience?
BECAUSE PERVASIVE CULTURAL SEXISM HAS TAUGHT THEM THAT THE PROBLEM IS YOU.
THINK ABOUT THE MOVIES. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU SEEN A GUY PROTAGONIST BEHAVE CONSISTENTLY OBNOXIOUSLY TOWARDS HIS LOVE INTEREST AND STILL END UP GETTING THE ROMANTIC PAYOUT? PROBABLY A LOT. (EVEN MOVIES I OTHERWISE LIKE, SUCH AS GOTG2, DO THIS.) THE MODEL IS, ESSENTIALLY, THAT WOMEN ARE LIKE SLOT MACHINES WHERE YOU PUT INTERACTION IN AND EVENTUALLY THE WHEELS COME UP “SEX”, REGARDLESS OF THE NATURE OR QUALITY OF THAT INTERACTION. ANY WOMAN WITH WHOM THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN IS ASSUMED TO BE BROKEN IN SOME WAY.
(”THE FRIENDZONE” IS BASED ON A VARIATION ON THE SAME MODEL, IN WHICH YOU PUT IN A PERIOD OF NON-SHITTINESS AND ARE “”“SUPPOSED””” TO GET SEX AS A PAYOUT.)
Thought about “Humans are space orcs/space fae”. There was a line talking about how theres a human working on a ship but no-ones entirely sure if they’re meant to be there, but they didn’t want to like offend the terrifying space orc.
What if the “drifter” archetype continues into space? Like maybe we negotiated for free travel with one of our allies, but because humans come from a death world and are terrfiying, and because humans can be oblivious, we just assume we can board on any ship going anywhere, nbd?
like not as stowaways. we’re not hiding. Like those wolves and wild dogs in russia that use the railways. Are YOU going to tell a wolf they shouldn’t be riding the train?!? Thought not.
Captain Diii did not become aware of the… problem until her ship was a full half-cycle out from the resupply station. She was halfway through a standard sweep of the ship, to be sure it was all in good order, when she came across a sort of cocoon constructed of light, sturdy fabric strung up in the end of service corridor alpha. It was not blocking access to anything of even minor importance, it simply was not meant to be there. It had no use she could discern, but it had no place aboard Captain Diii’s ship.
“What is the purpose of this?” Captain Diii asked the young technician assigned to the sector.
Their mood-spots cycled to anxiety-orange as their feet shuffled in discomfort. “The human called it her ‘hammock’ and said it would be out of the way there?”
A human. On Captain Diii’s ship. Her spots flashed from fear to anger to consternation and settled on worry. This had never before happened to her. She’d only been captain for two annuals, and she operated so far from any of the major travel hubs she had hoped she would not have to deal with this.
The problem had started after the war. The terrifying human ‘marines’ had been key to repelling the Kkoin invaders, with their wild recklessness and near-indestructibility. They had put an end to the war very quickly, and the terms of alliance in exchange for this service had been seen as extremely generous. They asked for transportation, mainly, since human FTL drives still lagged behind galactic standard. It had been assumed that by this they meant transporting goods and perhaps colonists by arrangement, but the wording had been ambiguous in translation.
That did happen, but in addition humans would simply… step onto ships going where they wanted to go. And stay. Who would dare contradict a human? Any one of them could turn deadly at a moment’s notice. Their hardiness and ferocity was legend. As of yet, no way of repelling them had been 100% effective. Their comfort range was massive, so keeping a ship hot or cold did not help. Scents designed to be maximally unpleasant to the human sensory array dissuaded some, but others would simply laugh and joke about them as they boarded anyway. It seemed they could acclimate to even the most noxious of scents within a few cycles.
Some humans would uproot their entire families and head for another planet, seemingly on a whim. Other humans would then go visit these families, and go back home, or not. Some humans traveled from planet to planet and station to station to satisfy their near-endless curiosity. Some traveled because to travel and see new things gave them pleasure, and then returned to their homes seemingly refreshed.
Such a strange species.
Captain Diii had been certain she had assigned someone to guard the ship and tell any hopeful humans that there was no space for them if they tried to board. Captain Diii did not have any facilities for humans aboard her ship. She hurried to the nearest communication pod and signaled for her second in command, Taa, to join her.
Taa already had anxiety flashing on her mood spots when she arrived.
“Taa, were you not assigned to inform humans that there was no space?” Captain Diii asked.
“I did, Captain!” Taa protested. “But she answered that she did not need much and walked right past me! What could I do?”
“And where is she now?” Diii asked.
“The kitchens. She… she said she wanted to be added to the duty roster, and that she enjoyed food preparation?”
That was another thing about the humans. They almost all wanted to work on the ships they boarded. Often they threw duty schedules into disarray by simply volunteering themselves to do tasks. At least this one seemed to know to ask the officer in charge of duties.
Diii found the human in the kitchens, as expected. She was very tall and thin for her type, of the morph ‘all bones’, if Diii was remembering the mandatory human-culture lessons that had been recently been added to ships-captain certification classes. She seemed to lack the jiggling bits that were so disconcerting on some humans. She did not reek of artificial fragrances as some humans did, instead scented pleasantly of human natural musk. Her head-covering stands, ‘hair’, was a friendly violet. Diii was certain this was not a natural coloration for the species. Her loose cloth coverings were earthy browns and creams, reminiscent of a child’s camouflage.
The human turned to look at Captain Diii, and showed her white-bone teeth in the body language ‘smile’, a gesture of friendliness and pleasure. Now that she was turned, Diii could see that half of the human’s head was shaved, and an array of electronics were installed directly in her skull. It was testament to their extraordinary healing powers that augmenting themselves with inorganic parts was commonplace in human culture. The humans had the technology to make their implants invisible, but some chose to make them visible because it looked ‘bad posterior’, which was somehow a good thing and aesthetically pleasing to them?
The human’s implants lit up, showing the exact blue of happiness, as she straightened up to give the human ‘salute’–a greeting to a superior. “Captain Diii? It’s good to meet you. I’m Elizabeth, but you can call me Zizi.”
Captain Diii could not help but be somewhat charmed. She must have the latest language-translation chip, Zizi’s speech was near perfect, and that she had something that functioned nearly like mood-spots was comforting. Her chosen name, as well, was easy to pronounce and nonthreateningly low-status.
“A greeting, Zizi,” Captain Diii answered carefully. “May I inquire your purpose aboard my ship?”
“Oh, I’m just a drifter,” Zizi said. “I just love traveling, you know? I heard the moons of Sigma7 were gorgeous, so I’m working my way that-a-ways.” Zizi’s pseudo-mood spot lights switched to anticipation before cycling back to happiness. “I’ll be off your ship at the next supply depot, if I can find someone heading more that direction.”
Ah, the ‘drifter’ type. Captain Diii had heard of them. ‘ship-hoppers’. An entire sub-class of humans who wandered the galaxy simply because they did not want to do anything else. They were famously the most difficult to dissuade from boarding a ship, and most likely to board from strange ports and going strange directions. Clearly it was not Taa’s fault she had been unable to keep Zizi out, and Diii signaled brief apology toward her.
“I won’t be any trouble,” Zizi continued. “I can set my hammock up anywhere to sleep, if it’s in your way?”
“The location you have chosen is… acceptable,” Captain Diii allowed. Zizi’s hair’s constant show of friendly had her own spots heading toward that color in automatic prosocial response. It was somewhat disconcerting. “I will leave you to your work,” Captain Diii said, retreating, and Zizi smiled and threw another quick salute before turning back to the food on the stove. Her implants showed concentration and curiosity, and then Captain Diii was outside the room with her again.
She turned toward Taa, who was still concerned. “I have heard that ships with a human listed on their crew roster have a 30% lower chance of being targeted by pirates?” Taa volunteered.
“Yes, yes,” Captain Diii mused. The risk was very low to begin with, especially for a ship like hers that did not haul valuable cargo, but anything that lowered it further could not be all bad. “It is not your fault in any case, Taa. Nothing could have prevented this human from boarding.”
Taa relaxed some, and Captain Diii returned to her inspection of the ship. Then she went to the helm and transmitted her updated crew roster to the main control base, encrypted only very lightly.
It certainly would not be bad to be known to have a human aboard.
DRAGON AGE MR. AND MRS. SMITH AU OMG WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT. I mean, my brain immediately goes to Leliana/Zevran, which, no, because I broship them. BUT CAN YOU IMAGINE ROGUE!PURPLE!HAWKE/ZEVRAN Mr. and Mrs. Smith AU??? Where Zevran and Hawke meet during Hawke's first year in Kirkwall as a mercenary/smuggler and then they have this awkward long-distance courtship and and... omg IDEK, this amuses me so much though.
LISTEN YOU COULD DO THIS WITH SO MANY THINGS.
DRAGON AGE ORIGINS: IDK HOW I’D SWING IT BUT LELIANA/WARDEN? FUCK YEAH
DAII: HAWKE/ZEVRAN HELL YES
SHIT MAN LIKE HALF THE CHARACTERS IN INQUISITION ARE CANONICALLY AT LEAST SORT OF SPIES (Leliana, Bull, Varric, maybe Dorian depending on which hairs you wanted to split, and that’s just who i can think of at midnight after a glass of wine) LET’S GO PEOPLE
DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON THIS, I READ A SPY AU OF FUCKING LES MIS LAST MONTH AND THE ONLY THING THAT OCCURRED TO ME AT THE END OF A (frankly fantastic) FIC WAS “GOSH THIS WOULD BE EVEN BETTER IF IT WAS A MR & MR SMITH AU”
IF YOU’RE GOING TO WRITE A SPY AU ANYWAY WTF WHY WOULDN’T YOU
OR IF SOMETHING IS CANONICALLY A SPY THING WHY WOULDN’T YOU WRITE THIS FIC
BASICALLY WHERE IS MY MAN FROM UNCLE MR & MR SOLO AU
Anyway everyone should read it and also??? Why is there not a Mr & Mrs (or Mr & Mr/Mrs & Mrs/etc as applicable) Smith AU of every ship???? I’m disappointed in you, fandom.
me: ok edgelord we get it what if i slit my wrists right now can we please just focus
Additionally; me: *waiting for the subway* intrusive thoughts: what if you jumped me: it would cause a four hour delay while they pick your body parts out of the rails you fucking prick, can we please for once get on public transit without going through this
Also; Me: *walking along a busy road* intrusive thoughts: What if you just fell over in front of this truck? Me: It would back up traffic all fucking night and probably hurt a lot of people you prick.
Gosh. I never have thoughts like this
didnt ask but that sounds nice
Me: *walking down the stairs* Intrusive Thought: I could throw myself down these flight of stairs and leave more time for everyone else! Me: Or you end up with a broken wrist and sprain ankle you dickhead keep walking
Me: *driving on a bridge* Intrusive thoughts: I could just drive straight into that lake and finish it right now. Me: You asshole, this is a new car. Just fucking keep going like everyone else you prick.
oh my god,^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I needed this
Me: *standing at a lookout* It’s so beautiful here…
Intrusive thoughts: yeah, look at that view, you could just step out into it and you’d probably never feel the impact when you hit the ground 20m below…
Me: Bitch, don’t ruin the view for everyone else. Fucksake.
Me: *doing literally nothing*
Intrusive thoughts: What if-
Me: Can’t you just shut the fuck up and chill for once? God damn
me:*sitting in a car,staring out the window*
intrusive thoughts: you know we could so easily open the car door and jump out
me:that would cause a traffic accident buddy,lets just keep looking at shit
me: *driving behind a semi*
intrusive thoughts: if we slammed the foot on the gas-
Ever since the last Jedi trailer came out, I’ve been trying to think of Deep Good Meta to contribute to the Star Wars fandom but literally all I’ve got is:
Rey standing out in the rain. Luke asks her what she’s thinking. Rey closes her eyes. “I am going to have sex with my boyfriend in the rain,” she announces.
“Oh,” says Luke, who was maybe expecting something about feeling the flow of the Force, but he’s adaptable. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“I’m going to go ask Finn to be my boyfriend and then we are going to have sex in the rain.”
Luke nods. “A sound plan.”
Personality wise, Rey has perhaps one of the firmest chins he has ever seen, second only to his sister which is a thought Luke promptly pivots away with a Jedi master’s aptitude for resolutely not thinking about things and calling it meditation.
Rey raises her firm chin yet higher. “We’re going to do all the sex things in the rain.”
“I’m very happy for you,” Luke says with complete honesty. He’s happy for Finn as well, if a little concerned he should give the boy a head’s up. Rey grins at him. Luke doesn’t grin back but mostly because he’s still trying to be stern as a teaching technique so he doesn’t get attached.
He’s aware, by the way, that he’s failing.
Pushing that thought aside (he’s very good at that these days–it’s a very quiet island, it doesn’t offer much options for hobbies besides ignoring thoughts and brooding on them and occasionally fishing), Luke asks, “You do know what you need to know?”
“What, like how to do it?” Rey asks. She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah. Of course. Sort of. I’ve done it before, loads of times.” There’s a very thoughtful pause. “There weren’t many humans in Jakku,” she says, a little worry slipping into her voice. She furrows her brow. “But I figure humans, you know, other humans–it’s basically the same but with only the four limbs. Less slime. And no scales?” Luke gets the impression she didn’t mean that last part to be a question.
And because she’s a student, a young student, his only young student and fellow human on this island whose population has suddenly skyrocketed to four, he does not say what he’d say to a friend and peer, which is, “honey you can’t make assumptions like that, you would not BELIEVE what people with dicks have done to modify them.” Instead, because he’s a mature teacher who is frantically relearning how to be that to the hungriest student he has ever met, Luke says, “I can’t vouch for Finn’s situation. But I’m sure you’ll have a very good time.” After Luke discreetly passes her a few anatomical drawings, just to be on the safe side.
Okay so I see that Immortal Diana and Continuously Reincarnated Steve post you reblogged but if that were the case, she would have to watch him die every time.
*steeples my fingers and looks at you seriously*
Dearest darling heart, I think you have sorely mistaken my interest in this AU.
I live for the narrative of the immortal godlike being and the ongoing eternal tragedy of the deaths of their reincarnated beloved. Like, yes, I want a lot of really cute scenes of Diana curled up in bed with a dozen different incarnations of Steve. But what I really want is for her to find him in war after war (she doesn’t know if he’s drawn to her–she fights like breathing, she can’t give it up any more than she can cut her heart out of her chest–or if he’s drawn to the fight–he tried doing nothing, she remembers him telling her that) and sit at different veteran’s gravestones in each generation and fucking ache for him.
Like, yes, this is terrible. I am interested in the terribleness. I am interested in Diana who sees a golden head among the civilians as she bursts in to save Clark and Bruce’s asses–a man dressed in plain clothing who’s trying to hurry other away in front of him–and feels her heart stutter and decides that this, this will be the time they live happily together.
It’s an honest decision, at the moment she makes it. It always is, the first time she sees him.
I know it’s illegal but whenever I get antibiotics from the doctor I save a few and give them to friends or coworkers who don’t have insurance so that when cold season comes they might be able to shorten their illness
That is not good- that’s not quite how antibiotics work.
Antibiotics kill some bacteria, but don’t manage to kill other bacteria. Just like when you get a particular sickness (or a vaccination), your body can protect you from future infections, any bacteria that came into contact with the antibiotic is protected from future doses of that antibiotic. Bacteria are very virulent breeders, so they spawn more resistant bacteria.
If you take the full dose of antibiotics, your natural antibodies can deal with the cells that are resistant while the medicine kills off the bacteria that isn’t resistant. If you don’t take the full course of antibiotics, then your body has to deal with both the resistant and the non-resistant strains of bacteria, and it can become overwhelming. Also, most bacteria are able to pass on genes between still-living cells, so that previously non-resistant strains become resistant, and you have inadvertently cultivated a stronger strain of bacteria.
Furthermore, colds and the flu are viral infections, so antibiotics don’t work against them anyway. The best protection against viral infections are vaccinations, as there are not many viruses that we have developed anti-viral medication against, once you already have the disease. If there are anti-viral medications, it is even more important that you take the full dose of the medication, because anti-viral medication is even harsher against the body than antibacterial medication is.
To put it shortly: antibiotics don’t do shit for the cold. You need to take the entire bottle that is prescribed to you. People not doing that is how antibiotic resistant infections crop up. People like OP are literally why diseases like MRSA exist.
OP shouldn’t feel bad about good intentions but this is really dangerous. There’s also the risk that your friends are allergic to the specific type of antibiotics you give them.
things that a better-off person can do for their sick less-well-off friends that don’t involve breeding superbacteria through misue of antibiotics:
Buy them cold medicine
Buy them cough drops
Buy them fancy tissues with lotion
Make them too much soup to eat in one go and freeze half for later
Find them a low-cost clinic and accompany them there
Tell them you are giving them their day’s wages and they are staying home Friday/Monday and then do.
Go to their house. Wash the dishes, take out the garbage, walk the dog, scoop the cat or just plain change the whole litter box, clean the bathtub and mom voice them until they take a hot shower or steam their head.
if they have asthma or bronchitis and are out of inhaler but you have a half-full one, that is a thing you can sanitize and share.
ditto palliative prescription medication like “I have half a bottle of lidocaine gargle, you want it?” “I am bringing you the rest of my Robitussin with codeine” “here harvest some ibuprofen from my giant bottle of 1,000 ibuprofen”
I feel like some of this should have been covered in high school health class. It would do a lot to combat misuse of antibiotics. Superbacteria is really dangerous for everyone but is particularly bad for people with multiple antibiotic allergies and will lead to hospital stays for IV antibiotics of kinds they can take.
It’s really, really important to know how antibiotics work. I taught university students in an intro biology lab for two years and one of the things I really tried to emphasize was how antibiotics and antibiotic resistance works. To stress the importance I asked some variant of “how do antibiotics work” on three weekly quizzes in a row and I was still getting wrong answers at the end! Though, far fewer, thankfully.
Also, I would recommend against antibiotic soaps and whatnot, for similar reasons. Use alcohol or hand sanitizer if you want to kill bacteria. I can’t imagine there’s any bacterium in existence that’s still vulnerable to the antibiotics in those products, but just in case!
But, btw, I would like to point out that the VAST majority of antibiotic misuse is agricultural, when large factory farms pre-medicate their cattle with large and constant doses of antibiotics. The USA is particularly guilty of this, especially as it allows big ag companies to keep animals in much more crowded and unhealthy conditions than they could get away with otherwise.
Never use antibiotics for a simple cold. To much use of antibiotic can lead to the creation of resistant bacteria, and you really don’t want that when you have more serious infection.
This is the stuff they should be teaching in science classes as well as health class… Not (just) condoms the periodic table…
Um. Please make sure you and your friend have the same concentration and type of inhaler medicine before loaning one to a friend. That’s incredibly dangerous because if it’s not the same kind you could literally poison them or trigger an asthma attack. Please don’t. It’s arguably more dangerous than not taking all the antibiotics because it is powerful medication that should not be taken lightly like have you seen the giant side effect warning packet?
1st letter of my name:
2nd letter of my name:
1st letter of my mom’s name:
2nd letter of my mom’s name:
1st letter of my dad’s name:
2nd letter of my dad’s name:
My child’s name would be…
my name is naomi
my mum’s name is ruth
my dad’s name is tom
MY CHILD WOULD BE CALLED FUCKING NARUTO
Lasune. Not bad.
…So i have a friend whose name is Valerie. Her mom is Gillian. and her dad is Nathan.
so I really love your writing, and I'm invested in your longer WIPs, but please don't feel guilty for writing shorter works instead! Inspiration is a fickle thing, and anything you wind up publishing is a treat to read!
*tackles with a hug*
THANK YOU SO MUCH. Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m really invested in my longer WIPs too, but inspiration is a fickle bitch and motivation is even WORSE and I am just not hitting the right balance of the two for some reason?
IDK man I’m working on it. Thank you SO MUCH for your patience, you’re a gift.
so on the subject of stolen property, i’ve seen various arguments on this point but it is in fact true that inheriting something from a relative, when you know full well that it was stolen, does not make it yours.
this clearly goes doubly so for powerful magical artifacts, and especially for artifacts which are strongly implied to contain part of their creator’s soul!
you can talk about consequences - maybe the artifact in question has benefits for you, maybe you’re not convinced its rightful owners would use it responsibly - but talking about the consequences doesn’t erase the fact that whatever benefits you think you’re getting are achieved through wrongful means.
which is why i, too, think Frodo should have given the One Ring back to Sauron. thief.
Hahahahaha here comes the law student nerd ready to complicate your wonderful post, op.
(Really this is just pretext for me to study for my property final in a week, so thanks yeah)
Because according to the principles of common property law, the matter of who actually owns title to the One Ring becomes really complicated really fast.
Buckle up babes for the pedantic law lecture no one asked for.
The best part of this is: trust me I guarantee Tolkien knew this much about the Common Law (English mediaevalists end up knowing ridiculous amounts about both Common Law and mediaeval Catholicism whether we want to or not), and indeed if you look at the text, this was relevant to the story.
It’s part of the reason that Sauron is as terrified of Aragorn’s potential claim on the Ring as he is of Gandalf’s or Saruman’s or Galadriel’s - if not more. Because in Middle Earth this shit matters. This is a world where a broken oath will literally bind your unhappy restless soul to the earth in spite of the dictates of the literal creator of the universe (who designated humans as Passing Beyond The World when they die). This is a world where a damn oath is responsible for Everything That’s Wrong With The First And Second Ages.
Oaths, ownership, duties, rights, things owed and owing: this shit matters.
And sure Aragorn is also direct line from Lúthien, but so is Elrond, and so are Elrohir and Elladan. So is Arwen. But what none of them have that Aragorn has? Is a rightful claim to ownership of the Ring.
So much of what Aragorn spends his time in the second and third volumes doing is Establishing Claim - establishing that everything that Isildur owned, he now owns. Why? Because it means he has power that is absolutely needed. “Isildur’s Heir” isn’t a woo-woo floofy-high-concept thing: it’s a literal matter of rights, duties and authority.
When he takes the Palantír from Gandalf and uses it, his companions are aghast, but he reminds them that he has both the right and the strength to use it - and the Right is actually important. Saruman was, face to face, stronger than Aragorn (never doubt that) and Sauron completely pwned him, but Saruman had no right to the Seeing Stone, no more right than Pippin.
But the Palantíri belonged to Aragorn: he’s not only Melian’s ever-so-great-grandchild, he’s also Fingolfin’s ever-so-great-grandchild, and since the Fëonori died out with the poor Ringmaker, the only competition Aragorn could have for ownership of the Stones are Galadriel and Elrond. (And that’s only if you are going right back to the maker-rights, and ignoring the establishment of the Stones as the property of Elros’ line rather later).
It matters. It changes how power works and doesn’t work. Aragorn’s status as the Heir is in fact grounded in these ideas, which play a hugely powerful part (in fact the fight over who rightfully owns the Silmaril Beren and Lúthien brought out of the dark is part of the bloodshed that makes it so that in the end the Silmarils themselves actively reject the last two living sons of Fëanor, negating their claim). Because Aragorn is the rightful inheritor of everything Isildur ever had, he can use the Palantír. Because he is the rightful inheritor of everything Isildur ever had, he can summon the Dead. And because he is the rightful inheritor of everything Isildur ever had, he stands equal to two of the Ainur, to the oldest member of the Trees-blessed Noldorin royal house, and to his own much more powerful (straight up) relatives as a potential claimant of the Ring.
And that is why Sauron is willing to take the chance to catch Aragorn, and (he thinks) ensure his capture, rather than attacking him earlier on when there’s a chance that (even if Aragorn can’t possibly WIN) he could still escape and then bide his time before the next Ring-War and learn to use the damn thing.
But. It’s also important when it comes to Frodo.
Frodo uses the Ring twice, and lays open claim once. Both of the times he uses it are on Sméagol, both times overwheming him and in the second case cursing him (“if you ever touch me again you will be thrown into the fire”). We get both moments from Sam’s POV, where the physical reality of Frodo is replaced by an image of him as a much larger figure, alight from the inside, robed in light, and with a “wheel of fire” at his breastbone.
Frodo does not have any genetics (so to speak) more special than any other hobbit. It’s not like Aragorn vs most humans, where there’s actually a legit difference because most humans were not, at that point, descended from a Maia. Frodo’s just this guy.
The only thing that’s really special about Frodo in terms of the Ring is that, like Aragorn, he’s the other person who has a viable claim. It would, as it were, have to go to the judges to figure out whose claim is better.
And this is why in the moment that he claims the Ring, in the Mountain, Sauron is fucking terrified. It’s why he drops everything else, even the issue of trying to keep his mindless drone-fighters going, even the maintenance of his actual control of weather, of light, of whatever fight he and Gandalf have going, to get his best servants back to the Mountain now now now now.
Because Frodo having an actual rightful claim on the Ring means he can, in fact, use it. Not well, which is why Sauron can paralyse him for that moment it takes for Sméagol to strike (and carry out both Frodo’s demanded oath - “save the Precious from Him” - and his Curse - “if you touch me you will be thrown in the fire” - at once), but he could. This tiny little person is a threat to Sauron, in the heart of his own home, because he has the right to have and use this Ring.
The tricky thing about Tolkien is that whatever his flaws (and he has many), the one thing he’s never unclear of is that the concept of right and might are actually separate. Just because you are strong enough to do or take a thing doesn’t mean you have any right to do it; and just because you aren’t strong enough to enforce your right, doesn’t mean it goes away.
I just wanted to say thank you for your fantastic posts. Every day I look forward to what crazy shit you have to say. Do you think you could tell us any stories about meeting any of the Howling Commandos for the first time?
well, dumdum dougan threw a nazi at me. that’s how we met. it was mid-fight, and i was a little pissed, because i wasnt expecting an angry german to come flying at my face at that particular moment. but we were a little busy trying to stay alive at that point, so mostly i just swore at dumdum and kept fighting.
the rest of them i met in the prison camp. dumdum, gabe, and morita were all technically members of the 107th, but i didn’t really talk to them at all until we were locked up together. falsworth was part of a british parachute brigade who wound up in the same camp as we did, and dernier was part of the french resistance as a spy and explosives expert. we all got tossed in the same cell together because we were the troublemakers of the captured troops. we kept inciting chaos.
which really backfired on them. because by putting all the crazies together, they just made it easier for us to conspire.
so we stole some supplies and blew up a hydra colonel.
they did not like that.
after that we became pretty close. there’s nothing like detonating nazis to bring friends together.
“Behold the brave battalion that stands side by side, too few in number and too proud to hide.”—Caption under a picture of the Animorphs in a history book, probably (via incorrectmorpherquotes)
pristinepastel said: Hey, i know you like the first mummy, but what about the mummy returns?
I HAVE RETURNED…after like a day.
but what the people want, the people get!
RIGHT SO THE MUMMY RETURNS!
aka the only sequel that is 1000% just as good as the first one. like holy shit.
ten years later and we meet our heroes again. rick and evie are happily married, going on adventures, and evie’s dream of becoming a respected scholar has come true and they’ve made a tiny human!
the only unrealistic part being that they only had one kid, i mean they are still all over each other ten years later and you’re telling me they only had ONE kid.
okay. sure jan.
but boy o’ boy is that one kid awesome!
alex o’connell. this kid is literally:
50% evie super-klutz-genius.
50% rick screams-at-things-that-are-illogical-to-scream-at.
50% uncle jonathan’s sheer dumb luck and wit.
10% i’m really bad at math.
you get the point. HE’S GREAT. also the actor passed on harry potter because, JUST LIKE ME, the mummy 1999 was his favorite movie and he just HAD to be in the sequel. alex is just such a smart-ass little shit. that much like his mother, accidentally brings about the apocalypse by opening something he shouldn’t have:
ARDETH BAY TIME LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. he has a much bigger role in this one. GOD BLESS.(because he was supposed to die in the first one, but test audiences loved him as much as we do, so they kept his fine ass around) he still looks prettier than everyone and is still so done with white people once again.
*after almost being killed on he bus* “this was my first bus ride.” *after realizing they’re gonna make him fly again* “why can’t you people ever keep your feet on the ground?”
he’s just such an awesome A+ friend goals, because while he probably needs to go be with other medjai to prepare for battle against anubis’ army (yikes), he stays with the fam to rescue alex. it wasn’t even much of a thought for him really, rick and evie just batted their eyelashes and he was like: *sighs* “these white people are always messing my shit up, but they are my white people.”
rick: he’s still screaming at things. BUT IN DAD MODE. he’s the ultimate dad.
“you, lighten up. you, big trouble. you, get in the car.” *sweetly* “honey, what are you doing, these guys don’t use doors.” “knowing my brother-in-law, he probably deserves whatever you’re about to do to him, but this is my house and i have certain rules about snakes and dismemberment.”
evie: still a super-klutz nerd, but with C O N F I D E N C E. little baby librarian is now a honey badger of ASK ME IF I GIVE A FUCK! and also a re-incarnated princess
“no harm ever came from opening a chest.”
rick: “i swear that kid gets more and more like you every day.” evelyn: “you mean more attractive, sweet and devilishly charming?”
we meet izzy, another one of rick’s ex boyfriends, who is a much more reliable mode of transportation than previously mentioned murder buses.
imhotep: still emo. still wants to make out with his gf.
anck su namun/meela: hella good villain. she bomb af and 100% wants to take over the world. amazing. she actually has like a really cool role this time too!!! like so much screen time.
the rock…i mean the scorpion king, he’s another emo villain with goofy cgi rendering and like 4 million terrible made-for-TV spin off movies that you are lying if you haven’t watched at least one of them and felt that utter disappointment. but who cares the rock is pretty. and this was his first acting role and the reason we have him where he is today.
thank you mummy returns for giving the world actor rock johnson #blessed
normal action movie sequel romance: same guy. different girl. repeat of first movie’s romance. hehehehhehehehhEHEHEHEHHEHH.
not here bitch.
rick and evie’s love has only grown stronger. they still bicker like old ladies at bingo night. the still look at each other like they hung the moon. they’re still disgusting jonathan because they CANNOT KEEP THEIR HANDS TO THEMSELVES. one kid my ass. they still support each other and protect each other like crazy. they love each other so much and it’s so healthy and pure and there is some good in this world mr. frodo.
i will not buy flowers for a girl because flowers are stupid and worthless and they die like really fast. get a girl a rock. rocks are strong. rocks don’t die after 2 days
diamond
the word you’re looking for is diamond
Diamonds are overpriced and far too common. Hand-forge a ring. Etch a script into it. Use it to ensnare the world leaders and take over the world.
There are literally two trilogies telling you why that is a bad idea
when steve trevor says he loves diana there was a cynical part of me that was like “buddy you’ve known her for like five days how are you already in love with her” but then I realised I’d been watching the film for like two hours and I was already in love with her so FAIR PLAY STEVE I get u
A lot of the advice I got about learning to enforce my boundaries was framed as an adversarial thing. Like, ‘yes, it might upset and disappoint the people around you, but you have to learn to tell them ‘no’ anyway.’ At best, ‘good people will still like you if you enforce your boundaries’.
What I wish I’d been told is that good people will think it’s awesome that you enforce your boundaries, that there are people who will respect the hell out of you for it, that there are people who will admire you not despite you telling them no, but because of it. That most people don’t want to make you do something you don’t enjoy,and so they’ll actively be happier and more relaxed around you if they know they can trust you to decline to do things you don’t enjoy and to ask them to stop things that bother you.
It helped me a lot, personally, to stop thinking of ‘enforcing my boundaries’ as something I did for me and more as something I did to empower the people I was close with, to build a situation where they and I felt sure everything that was going on was something we all wanted.
Most advice isn’t good for everyone and this advice seems maybe bad for people in abusive situations, because sometimes you do need to learn to enforce boundaries against people who will try to violate them. But if there are other brains like me out there: your partner will be really happy you can say no to them. your friend will be really happy you change the subject when you hate it. your roommate will really appreciate that you tell them to turn down the music. most people will feel safer and more comfortable around you if they know you’ll reliably express your needs, AND they’ll feel better about voicing theirs.
Tru fax.
I had a friend tell me that they really admired me for going “hey, I love you guys, but I need to go sit in a room by myself and read for an hour”. So yes, don’t be afraid of setting your boundaries!
And for people like me, who are very very VERY bad with things like unspoken clues to the fact that someone wants me to do/not do something or whatever? It is such a relief not to have to be constantly worried that I’ll do something that will make them not want to hang out with me anymore.
I’ve lost friends because they never tried to enforce their boundaries and as a result I had no idea I was trampling right over them until they got to a point where they couldn’t handle it anymore, and it is an AWFUL SHITTY FEELING knowing you’ve done that to someone.
Please please please enforce your boundaries with me. I promise I will love you for it.
This is so, so, SO important, people.
I am both bad at enforcing my boundaries and constantly scared of stomping over other peoples. It makes me feel safer if I know you can say No to me. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that others would feel safer if they knew I could say No as well.
Coordinated effort for people to call their Senators on June 14 - Dem or GOP - to protect ACA. In general, I recommend trying local in-state offices before the DC office.
This this this.
Congress has reported that their call level has dropped to pre-election levels: a few dozen scattered calls a day.
Flood those offices. If you’re in a swing state, call to say that blocking the AHCA is important to you, and tell them why. (A sentence or two is fine: “I have a condition that wouldn’t be covered under it,” or “my sister was never able to get insurance before the ACA,” or whatever.)
If you’re in a red state, tell them you’re appalled at your senator’s voting record, and you want them to AT THE LEAST insist on a full committee review and open discussion of the AHCA - especially the costs!
If you’re in a blue state, or your senator is solidly against the AHCA, call to thank them for fighting the good fight.
The one thing I worry about is that they’ll try to push it through before the 14th.
are you an impractical footwear even when it’s incredibly inconvenient gay, a practical footwear even when it’s incredibly inappropriate gay or a clunky boots gay who inhabits both spaces at once
#this is ‘i hate shoes’ gay erasure you’re absolutely right if you are a barefoot gay you are valid
for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’
jerry is here
my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”
When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”
I was done for the day.
This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.
I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”
I did not find my husband in this way.
In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”
“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.
The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)
Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.
I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English.
When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.
“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”
“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”
Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG
My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…
I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.
That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.
Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.
I love those stories so much…
Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.
She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.
American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)
Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)
that’s hilarious
I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY
Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?
So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.
The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”
What the hell Biblical Hebrew.
Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.
^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one.
Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.
Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English. Or French. Or German. Or Italian. (He tried all of them.)
Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years). He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.
She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.
My cousin’s mother tongue is English, but she also speaks Spanish, French, and Arabic so you could say she’s pretty good with languages. She also has an extensive English vocabulary. She spent two years in Peru and spoke nothing but Spanish while she was there. For the first few hours after we picked her up from the airport, she was fine and used her crazy advanced vocabulary like she hadn’t left. But we were eating dinner and she was telling a story and said “There something on the…” she said something in Spanish. We’re like “Sorry Meg we don’t speak Spanish. She huffs and says “You know, the /thing/.” She points down and waves other hand in a flat plane. After her struggling like this for another 30 seconds my uncle is just like “Do you mean the ‘ground’, Meg?” She slammed her hand down on the table “YES!”
on the subject of Humans Are Space Orcs i keep thinking it would be funny if ‘pursuit predator’ humans got together with an ‘ambush predator’ feliform species. and like. humans enjoy walking around with their friends! and the feliforms enjoy huddling in a concealed location with their friends! and it takes all of half an hour for a human to pick up a scarf and make a sling to take their pal with them while they go grab some lunch.
our new friends are like ‘are you sure this isn’t an inconvenience’ and the humans are like ‘are you kidding we do this with terran cats whether they like it or not’
also the team-up of humans and the feliform species gives most herbivore species in the galaxy screaming nightmares because here is a mobile tower that will follow you for 16 hours straight and it’s carrying a bag full of sneaky murder like it’s a baby this is not okay
14: Are they prone to outbursts (of violence, extreme emotion… exc… )?
…shockingly, no. Not even the White Wolf was really prone to losing control of himself. Losing his temper, maybe, but Crispin was raised as a diplomat, with exceptional control over his emotions (this emotional repression may have been a contributor to his eventual snap). He has always been prone to very cold anger–Crispin has always been the type where he can hold onto his temper until the most opportune moment to release it and then flay someone alive with a totally bland expression. Like, is he an incredibly dangerous, violent, impassioned person? Yes, 100%. But those things are always released with the sort of steel-eyed calculating precision to have the maximum impact. Which is somehow more nervewracking when he’s on the ‘right’ side of things.
44: What’s one thing they wish they could do more often, but can’t?
Crispin genuinely really likes children. He’s great with them. He used to hang out at Brenneth’s smithy before everything went to hell and the kids who drifted through (Brenneth didn’t immediately kick them out and told good stories, so she was something of a hit) adored him. The kids used to call the two of them pesaruld Crispin and pelali Brenneth (big brother and big sister). Crispin would love to be able to spend more time with children.
Naturally, absolutely no one trusts him with their children.
Captain America would kick Wonder Woman's ass just sayin
As someone who loves my son Steve Rogers, I have to say that he could never kick Diana’s ass, like literally, and also he would never do that, because Steve Rogers would grow up idolising the mysterious hero from WW1, and would probably swoon if he got to meet her, would call her “ Your Majesty” unironically, until Diana has to literally punch him to make him stop, and even then, he’d call her “Ma'am” with the utmost respect, and also he’d follow her to Hell and back without blinking.
