I don't even know

[balrogballs]

you know sometimes i feel like the perfect encapsulation of the wider tolkien fandom and its priorities, mostly outside this website but also let’s be honest some on here as well… is the fact that i have read from the vast majority of reviews of the david day companion books is that he’s incredibly lore-inaccurate and gets a lot of facts, name spellings, and timelines wrong but that the illustrations in his books are fantastic and that they’re the only reason to buy them, and then you take a look at the illustrations and they look like this:

left: ulfang, right: random haradrim soldier.

and for the second time in my life (the first being with trop, unfortunately) i find myself thinking ‘how the fuck do you make the depiction of ‘easterlings’ and ‘southrons’ somehow even worse of a racist caricature than they are canonically oh my god. anyway yeah guess they’re all correct on him being lore inaccurate at least because the last i checked ulfang was just some guy and not whatever the fuck that drawing is meant to be.

[balrogballs]

please note this isn’t some kind of stylistic quirk or whatever where everyone looks like an orc because here are the drawings of ‘normal’ men and elves 🙃

[elves-as-things-my-friends-said]

Thranduil: Listen Legolas. You cannot let anyone boss you around. You are in control of your own destiny. Now turn left here.

Legolas: he really doesn’t hear it, does he?

Tauriel: nope.

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

"bosch" doesn't sound like the name of a guy who'd make paintings like that. but when you add "hieronymus" to the mix it starts to make sense

[gebranntgebrannt]

Bosch

Hieronymus Bosch

[mckitterick]

more Hieronymus Bosch work on the Smithsonian mag website: X

[finalhorsegirl]

obsessed with this stupid shirt i found at goodwill the other day

[tyrannosaurus-sock]

[Image description: "Protons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic" printed on a shirt. /end ID]

[tragbarerpanzrabwehrkomplexfagot]

[herringherringbones]

Dragon letting off some steam on a telephone pole. The breeze must be nice up there.

[thememedaddy]

[jay-rayart]

When I was in 5th grade a girl told me that “black boys couldn’t be pretty” it took me a long time to see something worthwhile in the mirror

[foxehrobot]

You Have More Power Than You Think You Do: A Case Study In Getting Shit Done

I don't live in a walkable city.

I live in a mid-sized Texas town that only realizes that there are people who don't drive when TXDoT gives them money for active transportation infrastructure.

People constantly tell me that you just cannot walk or ride a bike in this city. It's impossible!

I do it anyway, because I firmly believe that solarpunk is a useless aesthetic if you aren't living it as best you can. We don't need technology to solve our problems we need will.

Also I do volunteer work on the political side of the local animal shelter and so I find myself at city hall several times a year and there's no bike rack.

Or rather there wasn't a bike rack.

I complained to someone, politely, informing them that I am doing this volunteer work and I don't have any safe place to lock my bike and that locking it to a handrail is inconvenient for everyone and also hideous.

A few months later a single staple-style bike rack was installed at city hall. It's not much, but I got sent a photo of someone else who got to use it before I did, clearly there was a need, if small.

Then I turned my gaze to the local grocery store, which had a bike rack, but the bike rack was terrible. It was too short for modern tire sizes, it was placed too close to the wall so one side was useless, and it was generally pretty cramped.

It took some time, but an advocate friend told me to contact the property owner instead of banging my head against the wall contacting HEB itself, and so I sent another polite complaint with a photo, explaining why it wasn't a very good bike rack and it would be really cool if we had a different one with better placement.

And about two months later, we have new staple-style racks at the grocery store, properly placed for maximum parking.

It's not a new bike lane. It's not a removal of parking minimums. It's not infill development or an active transportation advisory board.

They're just bike racks.

But that's the beauty of it. I, a person with an email address, some basic "how to be firm but polite while making an argument" skills, and a willingness to work out who to contact, fixed two problems for the local community. Trust me, I have had people wait on me to unlock my bike so they could have the "good spot." I was not the only person annoyed at the old rack.

It can be done. You're not powerless. Solarpunk doesn't have to be a wishful aesthetic.

Technology will not save us.

We have to save us.

[pret-boy]

"I wish we met sooner" is such a gentle sentiment. I love you so much I not only want you in my future, but in my past too. I want to have known you when we were small stupid kids, have held hands together as we played outside. I want to have stressed out over exams together, nudging a mug of still steaming hot chocolate against your elbow to get you to focus. I want to have told you I love you before I did anyone else. I want to have held you in my arms when all those sad memories you describe to me were still fresh wounds. I want my past to have been full of you, and full of meaningful memories with you. I want my past lives to have been spent with you, whether as two lovers, or two housecats cuddling by the fireplace on a snowy day, or two flowers that just happened to bloom on the same day, next to each other. I want to have consumed your existence and intertwined it with my own since my birth, never to be separated from you for a moment. I want to have loved you throughout it all, for all time.

[mrsterlingeverything]

Many are not familiar with what is called a diva moment. Youre about to learn

[pending-trans-action-2]

[echotunes]

(to the tone of creep by radiohead) but i'm asleep. on mypillow

[fuck-philip-banks]

[dragon-in-a-fez]

idk if I've told this story on here before but one time I was sitting at my desk at work and a random dog I'd never seen before strolled into my office and curled up at my feet. and I was like oh you are adorable but what the fuck?

then a woman knocked on the door and said "oh I'm so sorry he's a therapy dog he's trained to seek out people in severe distress"

and I was like right okay, just getting my whole life drive-by roasted by a dog then

[caught-tumbling]

I was at a restaurant one time and the dog from a nearby table kept alerting the owner and trying to get to me. Like this dog was straining against the leash so hard to get close to me. They asked if it was ok for the dog to come up to me and I said sure, I love dogs. This dog comes over and plants herself at my feet with her head shoved between my knees. Finally the owner asked me if I was ok because their service dog was trained to comfort people in distress, and that's what she's trained to do to comfort people. I was having a silent panic attack and trying to hide it but got outed by a dog. The dog did help though so that was nice

[salvadorbonaparte]

"on god's green earth" is way too fun to say even when you don't believe in god and know most of it is blue, actually

[ashlgcostumes]

Tag via @bluehairedspidey and vocabulary updated

[blankboyo]

tigers are so fun to draw

[wellsbering]

this is exactly how taako looked when he yelled "ABRACA-FUCK YOU" and shot magic brian

[manipulated-pieces]

Why is it easier and more comfortable to sit in a position that actively damages my joints than it is to just sit with okay posture. Why does my body crave its own destruction