An attempt at writing

The Dianthus System here. We do the words thing. Sometimes. Fantasy, scifi, romance, and terrible people doing terrible things. Chrys: ze/zem/zir or they/them. Decima: she/her. October: it/its or they/them. Goblin: he/him.

[the-original-b]

Here’s one good thing to come out of 2020:

Paleontologists completed a life-sized replica of Sue, the most complete T. Rex ever found.

And she is freaking GORGEOUS!

As I read more about this beauty, I found out some new details regarding things I thought I previously knew about the beast that was Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I’m going to share them with you.

First, and most obvious, her size:

This is nothing new, we all figured T. Rex was big, but I for one never stopped to consider exactly how big it was. Nobody ever really knows what to imagine when they read about something the size of a whale that walked around and ate everything it could kill. 

Speaking of eating things, I just want to remind you all that T. Rex had–by miles–the strongest bite of any terrestrial animal living or dead, somewhere around six and a half tons of force. That’s over six times greater than the current estimate of what Allosaurus was capable of, and three times what was delivered by the highest measured reading of the living title holder–the estuarine crocodile. It didn’t have to waste time swinging its head open-mouthed like Saurophaganax for a little extra oomph, or grow fancy serrated teeth like Carcharodontosaurus to cut pieces out of its prey. It opted for the simplest approach: get its mouth around something and crush it to death; imagine the full weight of an elephant on whatever was between this thing’s jaws.

“How did it find something to eat?” I hear you asking. “It can’t see something if it doesn’t move, right?”

Listen, I love Jurassic Park too, but that’s a big crock of shit.

Notice how both her eyes face forward. That gives her binocular vision (the ability to focus both eyes on one target, like you and I). More importantly it means she has impeccable depth perception due to overlapping fields of vision from each, large, eyeball. Researchers agree that T. Rex not only had incredible vision, but that it was probably better than most modern animals–including eagles, hawks, and owls–and that she could likely spot something three and a half miles away. If something that big can see that well, it doesn’t matter if you move or not, she’d be able to tell if it was an animal trying to hide or a piece of vegetation. So pray she isn’t hungry if she lays eyes on you. And even if by some miracle she didn’t see you, she’d still smell you. 

If she decided you looked tasty, you probably wouldn’t hear her coming as much as you’d feel her. Modern science indicates that T. Rex didn’t roar like in Jurassic Park, but rather bellowed or maybe even hissed like crocodilians. If she were on to you, you’d most likely feel this sense of unease creep up your spine as a low-pitched rumble in the air permeated through you. You wouldn’t know what it was or where it was coming from until you hear her footfalls. By then it’s too late–you could try to run but she’d probably catch you. There’s plenty on YouTube that reconstructs what T. Rex may have sounded like, and it’s legitimately haunting.  

To wrap all of this up, the one bit of good that came out of the cursed year that is 2020 is that this wonderful child of science and art came into the world, and reaffirmed my respect and admiration for the eight ton slab of muscle and teeth that is this magnificent creature.

…and it is nothing if not magnificent.

[the-original-b]

I honestly expected like three notes, what happened!?

[hummingyogurt]

Palaeontologists are the ones providing the data and advice but don’t give them full credit, this life-sized sculpture was created by ARTISTS, the artist team of @bluerhinostudio​

They also created this Quetzalcoatlus that made the rounds online (image credit goes to National Geographic)

As well as many more amazing sculptures and dioramas, so please check them out here on Tumblr and on Instagram

They are currently working on a new Tyrannosaurus again which will be on display in Europe (image credit goes to Blue Rhino Studio)

Please give the amazing team of Blue Rhino Studio the credit they deserve

[timetravelonion]

Not to kill the buzz but where are the feathers??

[hummingyogurt]

As it stands now, there is no evidence for or against feathers on Tyrannosaurus specifically, so either way to depict it would be equally accurate at the moment, if feathers are present they would be on the back and shoulder region as that is the only spot that doesn’t have preserved skin impressions

Below is a handful guide by Dr. Mark Witton who happens to be both a palaeontologist and an artist:

[femboi-milk]

Fun fact! Sue officially uses they/them pronouns! Scientists don’t know if they were male or female. Because of that, and as a gesture of good will to the LGBT+ community, scientists officially use they/them pronouns to refer to SUE the T-Rex!

“(Please, do not body-shame our T. rex. SUE is perfect just the way they are. And, yes, “they” is correct there—scientists don’t know if SUE was male or female, so in the spirit of scientific accuracy and LGBTQ inclusivity, we’ve transitioned to singular “they/them” pronouns instead of calling SUE “she” or “her.”)”

(Source: https://www.fieldmuseum.org/about/press/sue-t-rexs-new-suite )

[headspace-hotel]

“Please, do not body-shame our T. rex” is the funniest thing I’ve seen in at least 20 minutes

[otherwindow]

a dim and grim fantasy tavern but the drinks are very colourful and fruity with little umbrellas & curly straws

[just-antithings]

What does “just a jerk in general” equate to?

[frnkieroismydaddy]

Who the fuck is pro suicide

[just-antithings]

A lot of antis based on experience.

[dianthus-writes]

TW discussion of moral philosophy around suicide and self-harm rights, as well as digressions into personal experience with that stuff

@frnkieroismydaddy​

Might depend on how they define “pro” here? Like, suicide baiters are arguably “pro-suicide,” like Mod Hades pointed out. But I hear “pro-suicide” targeted way more at “right to die” folks.

”Right to die” is... A super complicated discourse that I’m too brain fuzz to unpack entirely right now, but like ranges from “we should not have attempting suicide be an actual criminal offense” to “we should not force medical intervention on people, even life saving intervention” to “people should be able to request medical assistance with dying peacefully”, almost always with caveats about what the prerequisites should be for that last one - from like “multi-month waiting period first” usually with something like ‘mandatory therapy’ or ‘I am imagining an actually nice government that tries to figure out why you’re suicidal and solve that first’ tacked on, to “person must have a terminal, incurable, progressive, or etc disease documented by multiple independent physicians and still be sound of mind and not coerced when they make the request.”

(I’m personally definitely at “suicide should not be a criminal offense” (and shouldn’t lose your family things like life insurance) and “we should not force any medical care on people” (though parents shouldn’t be able to refuse life-saving treatment on their children’s behalf; this comes up in “right to die” discourse btw because it’s really common for people who are intentionally starving themselves to be force fed, even before you get to ‘forced to take life-saving medication’). I have conflicting intuitions about “requesting medical assistance with dying peacefully” and tend to have a different opinion about every case I’ve heard... But I don’t think it’s immoral to want to die, or to want help dying the way you want to.)

Also see people getting accused of being “pro-suicide” for saying they’ll never (or it’s immoral to) call the cops on someone who’s suicidal. Which. Y’all.

Relatedly, you can also get called pro-self-harm without being a harasser. I wouldn’t call myself pro-self-harm, but I wouldn’t reject the label - more, pro “people have the right to control their own bodies, and this includes injuring those bodies.” (My right-to-die intuitions are also based in autonomy, tbh.)

(I also do cause-my-body-injury-on-purpose and endorse doing this and feel it’s non-harmful, in the “distinction between hurt/ pain and harm” sort of way you see wrt kink and medical discussions. Masochism is an ~obvious reason for endorsed self-injury, but like I also find pain calming and a very good + efficient stim, such that it doesn’t make sense to deny myself it because of worries about propriety, small hidden scars, or whatever.)

People also get accused of being “pro-self-harm” for engaging in harm reduction, similar to how people pushing for harm reduction for like casual sex or drug use (sex ed and condoms, free clean needles, etc) get accused of all sorts of wild shit. (Self-harm relevant harm reduction can be like education about what injuries are safer, how to prevent infection, how to prevent unintentional injury, how to slowly ramp down amount of injury...)

So, yeah, esp worded like that and with all the other DNI bullet points, nooooo real confidence that “DNI if pro-suicide” is coming from a position of being against suicide baiting.

[pancakeke]

me: *pulls into gas station* just a quick stop :)

GPS: what the FUCK did you do

[bilt2tumble]

me: *Merges onto a newly built Exit/Entrance ramp that didn’t exist 6mths ago*

GPS: Where, the FUCK, are you taking us?!?!?… Whoa-Whoa!-WHOA!!!… ok.

[pancakeke]

omg younger people may not remember this but like in 2011ish google maps sucked and didn’t know what any land besides a road was so as soon as you entered a parking lot it would yell at you over and over to get back on the road. like bro no this is where I need to be!!

[robotogato]

Apple maps tried to get me to turn onto a bridge that was above me because it thought it was an intersection.

[pancakeke]

for a while their official icon illustrated an example of this

[airmetsierra]

One time google maps told me to walk through an Air Force base and I got stopped by armed guards.

[pancakeke]

last year google maps kept yelling at me to turn around in a parking lot because I gave it the address to a store in a mall and it wanted me to drive inside the mall with my car to get there.

[grogblogging]

once i was looking for a food shop in dover & google maps told me to board the ferry to france

[dianthus-writes]

Like... A week ago? Two weeks? Anyways I was in a city I don’t usually go to, and noticed google maps was giving me some very weird directions. I started troubleshooting.

Sadly, I didn’t think to take screenshots before problem fixed (I restarted google maps a couple times, it reoriented)

But it was giving me the directions, in the order I’d take from my current location to the destination... but given as if they were the directions going in the opposite direction

Just. Listed in the right order.

So my left turn out of the parking lot was a right turn into the parking lot - how I’d get in from that direction. Then I was supposed to drive towards the parking lot, until I reached a right turn onto the road I would be currently driving on two miles away from the parking lot

Also, it wanted me to drive down the opposite side of the road I’m supposed to drive on.

Other times - also this year, this is not 2011 Google Sure Was Entertaining - it’s been convinced I was driving on the other side of a divided highway and kept telling me to do a U-turn onto the side I was on, and kept updating as I drove to tell me to U-turn behind myself (I guess it thought I was driving backwards???)

Relatedly, I am never getting into a self driving car.

[priestessshizuka-deactivated202]

posting my werewolf meme here too bc it needs to be said.

[frejann]

How do you make people fall in love with you

challenge them to a duel 

[im-someone-i-guess]

knife under their throat

[ahecktonoffandomsinoneblog]

Gun to their back

[alonlyfangirl]

Poison in their cup

[barlicgred]

Youre all horrible

[cipheramnesia]

I’m legitimately wondering if there’s any reason a neovagina has to look especially realistic since it’s not like I’m gonna be seeing it all the time and genitals aren’t super aesthetic anyway so maybe I can get a discount if the doctor doesn’t have to like perfectly craft every fold of the vulva, like it’s not gonna be particularly deep or wide for me anyway, just gimme something that’s works and is easy to clean and knock a few bucks of the price, I’m not asking for Michaelangelo’s labia or anything y'know, I appreciate maybe the doctor won’t give me teeth or tentacles down there but at the same time I’m not going to get into a relationship with someone if they feel like they gotta conduct a 120 point snatchspection just to confirm my cunt meets the fuckability codes, I’m sure as shit not pushing babies out it and there’s no reason to overcomplicate taking a wee, so why not go for something a little more aerodynamic and low rez right?

[cipheramnesia]

this is the sort of post that terfs screen capture and go apeshit over

[junemondegreen]

I don’t think Michaelangelo would be good at crafting vaginas anyway

[cipheramnesia]

You come in here, on the day of my cousin’s daughter’s aunt’s roommate’s best friend’s wedding, on this day you come to me and be funnier on my own post.

[dianthus-writes]

You: I appreciate maybe the doctor won’t give me teeth or tentacles down there 

Me: speak for yourself

[thehopelessopus]

Friendly reminder that if you ask about my OCs, you are actually doing me a huge favor.

You are:

Letting me know that my character/fic is important to you, which is so very important to me.

Making me think deeper about my character and therefore expanding his/her personality or backstory.

Making me think about my character which helps me to overcome writer’s block.

Encouraging me in my writing (which, let’s be honest, it’s a battle)

Letting me know that I am seen and that I’m not doing this for nothing.

So thank you, and don’t ever feel like you are wasting my time by asking me anything about anything.

This has been a PSA.

[mrs-silverhand]

🥺❤️

[systlin]

Another tidbit of Mando lore;

Mandalorians quickly figured out that Jedi mostly view blaster fire as “fun lightsaber practice”.

During the Mando-Jedi wars, they dealt with this in characteristically practical fashion; they used slugthrowers (aka ordinary firearms) instead, because if a Jedi tries to deflect a regular bullet, what happens is “A bunch of bullet shrapnel to the Jedi’s face.”

[systlin]

Jedi or sith; deflects blaster fire

Mando’ade, racking a shotgun; deflect this you wizard bitch

[little-miss-rasputin-pageant]

everyone: you can’t beat the jedi. they’ll just deflect your blasters

the mandalorians:

[tjdruid]

[purpl3padl0ck]

I have been looking for this

[rosslynpaladin]

Cathar vision. Long rifle. Lead projectiles. *humming to self*

[shanastoryteller]

have some queer writing tips because i’m fucking tired

i have just scrolled by yet another one of those “how to write queer characters if you’re straight” posts and they fucking exhaust me. because they’re almost always just a list of things not to do, and most of it is fucking wrong. and they always put in this caveat ‘you can do these things if you’re not straight :)’ and it makes me want to flip a table, because guess what, i don’t look up an author’s sexuality because i don’t give a fuck, and someone shouldn’t be required to out themselves in order explore certain themes. 

so let’s go through some common advice that i fucking hate, and what i, personally, would suggest instead. i am one person, and do not speak for the whole community, just like no one person of any group ever speaks for the whole community. note that i use gay as an umbrella term for not straight

bad rule: don’t have a gay character have close friends who are all straight

in my group of seven very close friends, i am the only one who’s not straight. the idea that is is unrealistic and ridiculous and means the character is a throwaway is stupid. i went to a notoriously gay school and have lived in multiple major cities, so it’s not like i lacked opportunity. it just turned out that all my really close friends are straight. it happened to me, it’s happened to others, sometimes it just happens. 

better rule: don’t have your gay character be the only gay character in the story. 

what is unrealistic is when the gay character is the only gay character. just because they don’t hang out with other gay people, and so other gay people aren’t in most of the story, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. the pretty lady at the bus stop is waiting for her girlfriend, someone’s dad is gay, two girls on a date past them in the street, the history teacher talks about his husband, they’re playing a game of spin the bottle and a girl plays on both sides because she’s attracted to multiple genders. unless part of the queer character’s story is that they feel like the only gay person on the planet, they shouldn’t be portrayed the only gay person on the planet.

bad rule: never kill gay characters

sometimes, people die. we are all so, so sick and tired of watching ourselves die on screen and in books, but the idea that we don’t die is silly. 

better rule: try and only kill gay characters in the same percentages as straight characters

i think it’s important to think in percentages rather than just numbers. the thing is if you have eleven major characters in a story, and only one of them is gay, and then you kill them and one straight character? you have killed 100% of the gay characters, and only 10% of the straight ones. 

so say you have two gay characters, and eight straight characters. if you kill one gay character, and four straight characters, you have killed 50% of the gay characters, and 50% of the straight characters. 

think about the movie mad max. there was a lot of women in that movie, and so when some women died, it didn’t feel like the end of of the world. because there were more women. in your writing, don’t let death come off as a “punishment” for being gay. if death happens, it should happen indiscriminately. so if you’re doing a dystopian novel, and lots of people are dying, but you’re killing off a much, much higher percentage of gay characters then straight, it doesn’t look great. 

this is not a perfect system, but hopefully by keeping it in mind you avoid falling into the trope where the gay characters always die. 

bad rule: don’t show problematic gay relationships, fighting within a relationship, or characters who have “too much” sex

we are not all pure uwu babies, and every time i see someone telling people to portray us this way i want to scream. we have shitty relationships, we’re shitty people, we like having sex, and some of us like having it a lot. who we’re attracted to doesn’t change the fact that we’re people, and even people with the best of intentions are far from perfect.

better rule: do not reduce characters to their faults, or to their sex lives

if all we’re told about a character is that they’re gay and in a shitty relationship, or that they’re gay and have a lot of sex, then those two things become muddled together. write well rounded characters! 

first of all, sometimes people in perfectly healthy relationships fight, or have disagreements, and accidentally hurt each other. there is nothing wrong with portraying this, because most relationships are’t one hundred percent happy and peaceful all the time. 

moving on. yes, the roommate brings home someone new every night and has loud sex with guys and gals and whoever, but they also bake pies and hate the taste of cilantro and have a boss they like and coworkers they want to fling into the sun. 

he’s too controlling, and he looks through his partner’s phone, and he gets mad when he doesn’t know where his bf is. his bf isn’t financially stable enough to leave him, but hates feeling constrained. it’s just not going to work. he’s an exec at a hedge fund, bf is a barista, he hates his job, bf loves his, they have mutual and different friends, they watch movies, and he went straight to college, and bf spent a year roadtripping instead. 

bad people are still people. don’t reduce people to bad and gay. bad and gay and a shitty boss and rich and a sore loser gives your audience more to work with, and then you haven’t drawn a clear line between gay and abusive. as long as you’re writing well rounded and complex characters to begin with, this shouldn’t be a problem. 

you should take care when portraying sensitive subjects, and do your best to portray it well. but that’s true regardless of the gender or sexuality of your characters. 

i would note that having only abusive/abused gay characters is probably not great. remember, gay people are everywhere! try and include them in small, casual ways in other parts of your story if possible. this is easier with longer fiction, but if you’re doing a shorter piece where the only characters are the couple in question, then it’s not option, and that’s okay too. just try and be careful that you’re giving people more to work with than gay and abuse. 

if you want to portray happy and pure love, that’s totally fine!! sometimes all we want is to sink into a story of happiness and comfort. but if you don’t want to write that, and want to explore darker themes, that’s okay too.

bottom line: 

giving people a list of things not to write isn’t helping them to write better. it’s just telling them not to write. 

also, don’t demand that authors out themselves to you so you can “decide” if they’re allowed to write about certain things. either something is poorly written and offensive, or it isn’t, and i don’t get to know personal and private details of people in order to decide if they’re allowed to do something. it’s none of my fucking business, or yours. 

as writers, we write about things that we’ve never experienced and will never experience. the only way to get better at things is to keep doing them. will you mess up and write something insensitive or upsetting? 

probably. 

i sure have. but the answer here is to learn how to do it better, to be more authentic in our stories, and be willing to listen and learn from people who know more than we do. 

the answer is to write more and write better, not to not write at all. 

[untitled-by]

Great points, but I wanna pull this out and show case it:

also, don’t demand that authors out themselves to you so you can “decide” if they’re allowed to write about certain things. either something is poorly written and offensive, or it isn’t, and i don’t get to know personal and private details of people in order to decide if they’re allowed to do something. it’s none of my fucking business, or yours. 

This outing of queer authors is becoming a dangerously popular take now, and it was probably inevitable with the way purity culture and 12 other kinds of discourse stack up.

There is, in the professional world, something called Personal Information or Personal Data. This is any information that can be used to ID you, but in the same vein of data that is legally no ones fucking business: no one is just entitled to the knowledge of medical history, religion, sexuality, etc of another person. DO NOT expect this of an author, artist, or any other type of creator.

There is always the grey area that should probably only be Own Voices topics only, I get that, but writing queer people AT ALL is not such territory.

And honestly, we dont need morally perfect representation. In fact “morally perfect” rep is how we got into this mess of gay tropes, because the socially accepted morally perfect gay is a “corrected” one, or a dead one, and obviously if they continued living their queer little lives they must be evil.

Taking that morality argument and flipping it and creating queer people to be perfect angels who never do anything socially unacceptable like have sex, or stand up for themselves, or stand out in anyway? isnt helping. Its just respectability politics, where depicting any queer who continues living their lives outside flipped moral standard is evil bad rep.

Its the same shit, friends, and frankly Im not interested in respectability politics as long as its standing along side the queerphobes throwing people under the busses in the name of acceptance.

My point is the same as the OPs. There is so much more to write about. There are so many more enjoyable ways to write queer characters without getting caught up in the dos and donts. There ARE “donts”, but the take away isnt “dont write.” Release the flood gates on your imagination, reach out to some beta/sensitivity readers along the way, and have fun. learn, grow, share your art.

[chroma-imp-draws]

I can't resist drawing pretty mermaid...

[deadpoetwilde]

dear god the sheer magic of being so invested in a book you just sit and read half of it feverishly without any ability to stop, just gulping down word after word like it’s water in a desert and your eyes aren’t fast enough for your mind and when you reach the last page you look up and realize you’re not decades and miles away but in the space of your own room,,,, truly unmatched by any other human experience

[tomhardysteeth]

Anyway this Twitter thread by NK Jemisin is all I care about

[dianthus-writes]

so is ur ship problematic as in bad praxis or problematic as in an infinite source of problems for literally everyone around them

[firelord-boomerang]

Zuko having a connection to the spirit world but instead of it being something deep and profound, it’s just because he spent three years pre-finding the avatar running towards the first weird magical shit he saw.

[firelord-boomerang]

Aang and Zuko journey to the Spirit World.

The Spirits: Oh look, the avatar.

The Spirits when they see Zuko: AND HE BROUGHT ZUKO WITH HIM! GUYS ZUKO’S BACK!!! EVERYONE HE’S HERE!!! ZUKO YOU BASTARD HOW ARE YOU?!

[roach-works]

iroh’s connection to the spirit world is one of sober mutual respect

zuko is the spirits’ equivalent of that one racoon who just hangs out inside a gas station on top of the slurpee machine so persistently that he’s given a namebadge and an employee cubby in the break room

[gallusrostromegalus]

My mom remarked recently that of all the things she failed to anticpate about living into the next millenium, the funniest and most confusing one is that neither my sister nor I have a single goddamn friend with a conventional name, and furthmore, she occasionally has to stop and ask “Which ‘Squid’ are we talking about again?”

[gallusrostromegalus]

What’s funny is that we have no friends with conventional names for the exact same reason, but in opposite directions. I have an online presence where I know all my friends, even the ones I’ve known for over a decade and whose house I’ve been to, as their usernames first and only, because we’re using them to keep our online and public lives separate. A lot of my friends are trans, and only out online so for their safety I have gone out of my way to avoid learning deadnames or mixing any IRL identities they haven’t expressly stated can be shared.

My sister worked as a summer camp counselor and youth educator and everyone went by fake names specifically so

1. The campers wouldn’t look them up on Facebook and see pics of the adult counselors, well, acting like adults- having a beer, complaining about dating etc.

2. Because the state she worked in had mandatory reporting laws if they even suspected abuse, and it’s a lot harder for a kid to identify you to a vengeful abusive parent if they don’t know your real name.

So my sister and her friends all have second names to keep their public and online lives separate, but this time it’s the IRL people using the second name.

Which means that, independently, we each developed a friendship with someone who goes by “Squid”.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Mom has helpfully pointed out that in addition to the Two Squids:

I know a Spider, my sister has a Tarantula and they are both in the process of getting doctorates, one in genetics the other in robotics and her brain has helpfully conflated them into a single budding mad scientitst who is building Mutant Cyborg Arachnids.

She used to be able to keep track of who knew who because I had the large international cadre, and Sister’s friends were all from the PNW.  Last year, Sister and a number of her friends moved internationally so now the Australians, Germans and Irish are starting to run together for her.

We haven’t even told her that one of my French People, “Ponds” has met and is kinda-sorta dating Sister’s International-Master’s-Degree-In-France “Frog”.  

I inherited my night-owl tendencies from my mom so sometimes she would come down, see me on the computer and ask “How are the Australians?”. My sister has since moved to Australia and likes to call in and ask “So How are the Americans?”

“Which one of you has the Porcupine again?”

This situation is FURTHER compounded by my Dad having both Theater People Who-All-Have-The-Same-Six-Names-Because-They-Were-Born-In-The-50′s-So-They-Have-To-Be-Referred-To-By-Roles-Mom-Has-Seen-Them-Play-Onstage, AND his Civil Activist Friends that got started in the 60′s when it was OK to change your name to something like “Virtue” or “Pasadena Orange Blossom” so recently “Falstaff” is in a facebook fight with “Rolling Stone” about Colorado Weed Law. 

“I couldn’t imagine trying to explain this to your grandpa.  He barely understood email.  Grandma though, she wouldn’t have blinked at two names. Probably would have suggested you have another three and attempt to defraud the IRS.”

[astriiformes]

The Fellowship gets on the topic of their ages one night and Boromir comes to the dawning realization that he has absolutely no idea how old any of his companions are supposed to be at all

[astriiformes]

Boromir, pointing at the hobbits: I don’t know how your ages work

Boromir, pointing at Legolas and Gimli: I definitely don’t know how either of your ages work

Boromir, pointing at Aragorn: I thought I knew how your age worked but apparently I was wrong

Boromir, pointing at Gandalf: I especially don’t know how your age works

Gandalf: It doesn’t, but carry on

[elidyce]

Listen I will die on this hill. I don’t care what it says in the assorted apocrypha, if you go by the Actual Text of LOTR you can make a very good argument that Boromir is the youngest member of the group. 

The hobbits are the only ones given official ages in the text, and are between fifty or fifty-one and twenty-nine. Elves and dwarves notoriously age slowly, and Gimli is the offspring of one of Bilbo’s pals, so okay, we’ve established that he’s old enough to call the hobbits young, and Bilbo confirms for them that Aragorn is Pretty Old For A Bigjobs. Gandalf is, of course, eternal.

But we are never given any context for Boromir and Faramir’s ages, except that a) they are humans and, though Sons of Gondor, not much longer lived than most Bigjobs, and b) Faramir is A QuiteYoung Man. I was absolutely convinced, when I read the books as a youngun, that Boromir, being in ‘the flower of manhood’ iirc, was probably between 25 and 30.

And it would be Freaking Hilarious, okay, for Boromir to finally get around to actually asking how old this baby-faced hobbit carrying The Ring is, and get told ‘oh, he’s only fifty, but he’s very steady for his age.’

Boromir: ?!?!?!

And then Pippin and Merry start asking everyone how old they are because this is fascinating are we all official adults here except for Pippin or what.

Boromir: …. Pippin isn’t an adult HOW OLD IS PIPPIN.

Pippin is just 29, which is why everyone calls him Pippin, it’s gonna be at least another 20 years before he can make Peregrine work. Why, how old is Boromir?

Boromir, who would rather DIE than admit to being 28 right at this moment: …. 43. 

All the others, weighing up his apparent age compared to theirs: Sure, sounds legit. 

Gandalf, who knows for certain, does not say anything because he is absolutely certain that telling Pippin that he’s older than Boromir will be an unmitigated disaster. 

[legolaslovely]

BOROMIR is the BABY???????!!!!!!!

[mirkwoodest]

Love the take that Boromir’s canon age is just him being a fucking liar.

[ruffboi-mags]

Honestly I can and WILL buy into this headcanon if only because the idea of 28yo Boromir finding out that 29yo Pippin is not even considered AN ADULT by the standards of his people and fully slapping an extra 15 years onto his age just to feel like he’s allowed to be here is the funniest fucking thing.