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halflings love their new giant children

“So, Mister…GRAAAAGH Underhill-by-Sackville, is it?” “Indeed.” “You’re an Orc, but you don’t mention any clan….” “Oh, I’m culturally Hobbitish, I was adopted at a very young age. And I’m very keen on this position you have open at your trading house.” “The guard position?” “Heavens, no. I barely know which end of a sword goes into the miscreant. I am a certified accountant, and eager to make my mark in respectable society.”

lizawithazed

I once played a kobold sorcerer-rogue with this exact backstory

mithrils-hanger

even better, Tolkein Orcs seem to grow in size based on how good their diet is. thus Misty Mountain and Moria ‘goblins’ are relatively small (caves rarely provide much in the way of nourishment), Mordor orcs are a bit on the larger size, but still close to dwarf size (given that two hobbits easily blend in), while the extremely well fed Orthanc Uruk-Hai are the size of large men. Hobbits eat six meals a day, when they can get them. and love to snack in between. even the poorest are able to sustain this diet, and the rich just eat far more elaborate meals.

those adopted kids are going to grow up to be huge.

missoyashirou

A 10 foot tall green dude by the name of Arthur Brambly-Took came to my luncheon and now I’m going to have to marry him

justanotherass

that was the day dr mccoy learned that hands are erogenous zones for vulcans

seananmcguire

I was just thinking about him, so i wanted to say thank you again for Tybalt. He made me laugh today and its been a very trying year.

I am so glad to have made you laugh!

The secret of Tybalt is that he is an enormous nerd whose fandom has tragically moved on. Like, he will talk to you about Shakespeare for hours. And not in that “I am smarter than you, I am a scholar, I read important books” way. Noooooooo. He’s like, “Let me tell you about the rehearsal where he’d had a bunch of bad oysters and so he finished Lear’s monologue and then shat his pants and collapsed on the stage.” He remembers rehearsals and bad jokes and the way the original actors smelled and what it was like in the theater and he misses it so much, and he can never have it again. And somehow, while he wasn’t looking, that trash fandom he joined grew up and became something scholastic and serious, and he could probably fake his way into a professorship with the right paperwork, but he’d get fired on day three when he jumped onto a podium and started screaming about how people today have no respect for a good dick joke.

TL;DR: His life is pain and Toby is not exactly what we’d call “helping.”

batmanisagatewaydrug-deactivate

“hur dur dur orcs are just dumb and violent they have no culture” TIRED

might I recommend for your enjoyment: orcs who are responsible for most of the setting’s major medical advancements, hard-earned from having to fight for every corner of the world where they try to make a living. orcs whose stubborn will to live led to developing surgical techniques that no other species figured out without resorting to blood magic. orcs whose nomadic tendencies have given them a widespread and comprehensive knowledge of herbal remedies. orcs teaching their children basic field medicine from an early age, so any member of the group can help out in a pinch. orcs who revere the healers with steady hands and clear heads and soothing voices for the wounded.

hufflepirate

An orc midwife is out with a hunting party when they run across a group of human travelers being protected by a group of adventurers. In their fear, the adventurers instinctively attack, but the orcs aren’t here for a fight and start to retreat - until a woman in the group, also panicking, goes into premature labor and screams out that the baby is coming early. The men around her are clearly useless, and the other women in the traveling group are clustering around her and trying to get her lying down in their cart but are also too freaked out to really help.

Our Heroine takes this in at a glance, turns to the rest of the party, gets a grunt in response that tells her they’re seeing what she does, and says, “Alright, distract them.”

Orcs aren’t terribly sneaky, but the rest of the hunting party makes maximum noise on purpose, and she hunkers down in the tall grasses until her friends’ charge has drawn all the attention several feet away from her, and she slips around the back, up to the cart, with just a little rustling of grass.

There’s an adventurer left at the cart, but his eyes are locked onto the main conflict. When the women in the back of the cart shriek in surprise, he turns and shoots an arrow into her shoulder, but before he can ready a second arrow, she lunges forward and wrenches the bow out of his hands.

He pulls a dagger and some fists come flying at her, but she dodges the dagger and the fists bounce off without too much consequence, and she turns her back on the adventurer and kneels down beside the woman in labor, shoving one of the other women gently out of the way and ignoring the punch the woman lays on the side of her head.

The pregnant woman’s eyes are wide and her breath is too fast and too hard and Our Heroine smiles her most soothing smile, tusks and all, and reaches for the woman’s hand to prove she’s not attacking, and then she locks eyes with the woman and says, “It’s alright. Ugwa’s son came early and he’s a fine strong boy now. How far along are you?”

Three more blows land across her shoulders before the group takes in her words, more harmless punches, and the adventurer gets just far enough into her peripheral for her to elbow his shoulder and disrupt his second attempt at stabbing her with the dagger.

“When is the baby supposed to come?” she asks, a second time.

The pregnant woman is still panting and terrified, but there’s a woman on her other side, holding her other hand, who is looking at Our Heroine curiously. “We thought about 3 more weeks,” she said, “Maybe 2. We knew it was late to travel but-”

Our Heroine grunts softly, cutting her off, “Sometimes you have to. But that’s not so bad as it could be.” She squeezes the pregnant woman’s hand, locking eyes with her again. “You’ll be alright. Just breathe with me.”

The next thrust of the dagger stops before it reaches her, because the woman across the way grabs the adventurer’s wrist. “Stop that.”

“She’s an orc!”

Our Heroine ignores him, turning to the woman next to her, who has not punched her this time. “Find the cleanest blankets or towels you have. And water.”

The fighting is still going on, but the women around the cart drag the archer away and a little boy with the group leaves his spot in the cart, hiding behind his mother, to run to his father instead and tell him it’s ok, because the orc is helping.

The hunting party shouts over to Our Heroine to ask if things are alright and she says they are, and her friends knock out the adventurers who keep fighting, but stabilize them in the field, and the conflict slows to a stop, as they all glare each other down and wait.

It’s a long labor and a difficult one, and the sun sets and the adventurers and the orcs set up two different camp fires, several feet away from each other, but when Our Heroine barks for more light, one of the humans responds even before her own people can. When she sends her cousin out to look for herbs in the dark, one of the travelers recognizes the name and goes looking, too, and when her cousin finds it first and comes up to the cart, the woman’s sister, still holding the mother’s other hand, smiles at him.

The adventurers who had been knocked out wake up to a tense standoff, but the travelers won’t let them fight, and one of the female adventurers joins them in the cart, and it turns out she can create water, and it’s the cleanest they have, and when Our Heroine smiles at her, the woman looks embarrassed before she smiles back.

The baby is a girl, and for a moment, everything seems wrong, but then she takes a big deep breath and wails and Our Heroine yells out in celebration and the rest of the party follows suit, a chorus of howls in harmony to welcome the baby to the world, and the adventurers tense up around their weapons, but Our Heroine’s hands are gentle as she helps the pregnant woman’s sister clean the baby up and places her in her mother’s arms, and the lady adventurer lets out a holler of her own, and then the humans are cheering, too.

They’re not friends, exactly, as they part, but everyone’s alive, and the baby is clean and wrinkly and sucking at her mother’s breast, and before the orcs put out their fire and vanish into the dark, the sister stops them and asks Our Heroine’s name.

Igna’s a strange name for a human baby, but the mother takes her sister’s suggestion anyway, and as they set back out for home in the darkness, Igna’s cousin slugs her in the shoulder and she leans into the friendly jostling with a grin.

She always knew she was the best they had, but now she has proof for the rest of the tribe, if they ever decide to ask for it.

batmanisagatewaydrug-deactivate

this is better than the entire Lord of the Rings series

unpretty

how tall is bruce and thomas wayne?

in saih bruce is 6′2″ and thomas was 6′5″

unpretty

it’s an ideal height distribution tbh because then whenever bruce, as an adult, is talking about how larger-than-life his father was everyone just feels bittersweet about it because the last time he saw his father he was a tiny boy and it just seems like, “oh, bruce’s memory of his father is always trapped in this time when his dad seemed like a giant”

but no, that has nothing to do with it, bruce is being completely factually correct and thomas wayne was enormous

unpretty

(presumably this takes place not long after whatever the hell this is)

“I assume your dad’s going to be the one that looks like you,” Clark said, adjusting his glasses as he scanned the crowd beneath the mezzanine.

“Just look for the biggest guy here,” Bruce said flatly.

Clark fought a smile.

“What.”

“Nothing! Nothing.”

Bruce waited.

“It’s just—you know.”

Bruce said nothing.

“You haven’t seen him since you were twelve.”

“Correct.”

“You maybe weren’t the tallest kid.”

Bruce said nothing.

“I’m just going to look for the guy who looks like you, rather than going by relative size.”

“And you must be the fellows who were chit-chatting with my wife!” came a voice, booming and boisterous as arms were thrown around each of their shoulders. Clark jumped; Bruce flinched.

Thomas Wayne was a good two inches taller than Clark, who was himself an inch taller than Bruce. Thomas had a glass of champagne in his right hand, which he had not spilled on Clark. There was a ping-pong ball floating in it. He had a half-empty bottle of wine in his left hand, which he had not spilled on Bruce. Between the fingers of his left hand dangled a bag of red plastic cups, unopened.

No one in the ballroom was using a red plastic cup.

Thomas’ coat and the top buttons of his shirt were undone; his bowtie had not been a bow in quite some time.

“Martha wouldn’t tell me what exactly it is you were up to,” he said cheerfully, “which I can only assume means I’d hate it!” He paused, squinting at Clark. “Oh, she must have loved you.” He gave Clark a proper once-over, down to his shoes and back up again. “Were you raised on a farm or what?”

“Why does everyone keep asking—”

“Anyway,” Thomas continued, somehow managing to pound them both on the back as he disengaged despite still having his hands full. “You two go on ahead and keep not telling me what you’re doing, if you need me I’m heading downstairs to set up a game of wine pong. It’s like beer pong, but if you’re doing it right it costs several thousand dollars! And it’s good for your heart! I’d know. I’m a doctor.”

He downed his glass of champagne and caught the ball in his teeth. He then somehow managed to arrange the items in his hands such that he could shoot them both fingerguns, clicking around the ball and waggling his eyebrows.

They watched as he slid sideways down the banister.

“I apologize for doubting your memory,” Clark said finally.

“Hm.”

“I feel like this explains a lot about your sense of humor.”

“I’m not convinced that it does.”

“… does he look how you remember?” Clark ventured.

“Usually I remember the way he looked one specific summer when I was a kid,” Bruce said thoughtfully.

Clark softened, almost reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. Then he narrowed his eyes. “No.”

“Hm?”

“I know what you’re doing, and we’re not doing it.”

“You asked.”

“I recognize that look.”

“This is just what my face looks like.”

“You’re going to make me think we’re having a moment so I let my guard down for the punchline,” Clark said, “and you’re not going to say it like it’s a punchline, so when I laugh, I look like an asshole.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not allowed to laugh about this. You know I’m not.”

They were silent, the sounds of the party surrounding them from below.

“He had a horrible moustache,” Bruce said.

Clark pressed his knuckles to his mouth.

“I think my subconscious is trying to make death seem like a mercy.”

Clark made a muffled and hideous noise.

“Clark,” Diana scolded, and they turned to see her frowning as she approached. “This is a very difficult mission for Bruce, you mustn’t laugh.”

Clark threw up his hands in disgust.

“Or—wait.” Diana looked between them. “Was he doing it again?”

Clark nodded, lips pressed into a thin line.

“I think I remember this party,” Bruce said suddenly, looking out at the ballroom.

“What?” Clark and Diana asked simultaneously.

“It’s the one where that senator got thrown out of a window.” He pointed toward a commotion downstairs.

“What is your father doing?” Diana asked, leaning over a railing.

There was a crash of shattering glass, a series of screams, and scattered applause.

“Throwing a senator out of a window.”

saynotodyedflowers

#before this night is over thomas wayne will have swallowed a ping pong ball to prove a point

And he’ll insist he’ll be fine, “cause he’s a doctor” ?

unpretty

Thomas raised an eyebrow with a level of disdain achievable only by those born to great wealth, and not at all befitting a man in the middle of using a meat cleaver to cut the nozzle off a garden hose. “Oh, I think I can handle it,” he scoffed. “I went to Yale.”

vitupera

#why is it that in my fics when bruce says ‘i went to college’ it implies wacky teen movie hijinks #but when thomas says ‘i went to yale’ it just seems to imply that he’s sucked a lot of dick

It’s Very Important to me that these two tags be saved ok ok

must-be-mythtaken

Hot take: Westley is way too dramatic and Extra ™ to not be bisexual.

must-be-mythtaken

gen-is-gone

He can fence with either hand, if you catch my drift

digitaldiscipline

By this logic, which is utterly impeccable, so is Inigo.

bipolar-bubbeleh

Of course he is. That was the most flirtatious sword fight in cinematic history. You could literally cut the sexual tension with 2 swords.

happyfade

forgottencityiram

Mermaid Street, Sussex, England (2014).

sulcharae

I’ve been to this street. It’s in a town called Rye, in Sussex. The streets around there are notable for being paved in what’s called ‘boulder’ cobblestones - round instead of flat. That pub with the mermaid sign was opened in the 12th century (that’s the 1100s, y’all) and you can still eat and stay in a room there. There is something geologically interesting about Rye, in that it /used/ to be on the ocean, but it is basically one of the very few, if not the only coastal towns in england to not be suffering from erosion. Instead, the land is building up around it, bit by bit, so now the sea is more than a mile out from the original harbour. It’s all very old, very beautiful, and a little mysterious.

pettycentral

wildlifer-deactivated20220928

if this aint the cutest shit

rocktheholygrail

OOOOOOOOOOOOOH

sedraboc

one-time-i-dreamt

I was at a John Mulaney show and afterwards I managed to get in the elevator with him. It was just us and he said, “Sorry about this, I’m quite inebriated,” then he hit me over the head with a wine bottle and I passed out from the pain.

king-jarrod

Every goddamn time

spookymalfoymanor

Please tell me that there was at least one asshole Muggleborn kid who refused to call teachers professor

“Mr. Snape?”

“It’s professor Snape”

“Do you have a doctorate degree?”

“… no”

“Okay then Mr. Snape”

yumenouveau

“But squad, do you think Lupin’s a professor?”

“Did you see his elbow patches? No question”

madeforgardens

#same energy

calliopechild

Saw this on fb and had to share.

andhetakesandhetakesandhetakes

today i spent a good 45 minutes looking at food service memes on instagram

eartharchives

Scientists are genetically modifying mosquitoes in a high-security lab – and they're hoping the insects will help wipe out some of the mosquito-borne diseases that continue to plague communities worldwide.

Using the ‘molecular scissor’ editing technique CRISPR, a gene known as “doublesex” in the bugs has been altered. The gene transforms female mosquitoes, taking away their biting ability and making them infertile.

the-awkward-turt

Is anyone else ridiculously nervous about this? Wiping out something that’s so low on the food chain and plays roles in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems seems…ill-advised. There’s no way we can fully predict the ecological ramifications.

I know that the diseases spread by mosquitoes are horrible, but there have also been studies suggesting we could modify mosquitoes to make them incapable of carrying those diseases without wiping them out.

People say there would be “no significant ecological consequences”, but we really can’t possibly know that for sure. I will remind everyone that ecologists once signed off on releasing cane toads into Australia and thought it would have “no significant ecological consequences”.

oscar-feeds-cacti

So many comments from people who don’t know shit about ecology, biosecurity, or what’s going on, because they DIDNT ACTUALLY READ THE ARTICLE!

the-awkward-turt

Hey there! I do actually have a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Something that gets drummed into you in that field: Nature is extremely unpredictable and when we mess around with it we make it worse as often as we help.

And I did read the article, as well as several other pieces on the topic. I work in invertebrate conservation so I’ve been following this story for a while. I’m well aware that they are only currently planning to target Anopheles gambiae.

While the goal is to crash mosquito populations near malaria-ridden villages, there is a not insignificant chance that once it’s out in nature this gene-drive could drive An. gambiae extinct. Once these genes are out in the world they can self-perpetuate and there’s no putting them back in the box if they start having effects we don’t like. And the people behind this study seem relatively unconcerned with the possible extinction of An. gambiae.

There is one line in the linked article mentioning the possibility of replacing the wiped out mosquitoes with other members of their species that have been modified to not carry malaria, but I haven’t seen that option mentioned in some of the recent, more in-depth articles on the subject. It seems that pursuing that option has been put on the back-burner or scrapped altogether, which is a shame because that would make this situation far less concerning.

A couple of reasons why we should be nervous about this:

1) There is already talk of using this technique on the mosquitoes that carry dengue and Zika (Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus) if this is successful. And seventy mosquito species are capable of transmitting malaria (and An. gambiae itself is actually a complex of eight closely related species); are we going to wipe them all out eventually? Seventy whole species?

While using CRISPR to eliminate vectors of diseases that cause human pain and suffering is a noble cause, how long do you think it will be before this technology is being utilized for far less worthy purposes? How long before we use CRISPR as a first resort to eliminate new vector-borne diseases instead of a last resort? How long until we are using it to eliminate distasteful animals that are merely agricultural or household pests rather than disease vectors?

2) We are currently in the middle of a mass extinction event, part of which includes a terrifying decrease in insect numbers that some scientists fear may herald ecological collapse. With this backdrop, a possible trend of intentionally driving insect species extinct or crashing their population numbers is particularly disturbing.

Not to mention we are potentially wiping out a species that took millions of years to evolve, that is just as complex and unique as polar bears or whooping cranes or elephants. If the extinction of a more charismatic species were on the table, even if it were causing thousands of human deaths, don’t you think we would be more eager to find an alternate solution? Don’t you think there would be a greater priority placed on avoiding the complete extinction of An.gambiae or reintroducing malaria-free An. gambiae after wiping out the diseased ones?

The extinction of any species destabilizes an ecosystem. It also leaves a niche open, which could be replaced with something worse or something we don’t have experience dealing with.

3) It is disingenuous to say there will not be negative ecological consequences. There will almost certainly be some negative ecological consequences, though they might not be terrible or immediately obvious.

Remember mosquitoes are pollinators. Their aquatic larvae are an important food source for fish and amphibian larva and adult mosquitoes serve as prey for dragonflies, spiders, bats, and other animals. Even a study associated with Target Malaria itself has stated that when one mosquito species is eliminated or reduced the type and relative abundance of other mosquito species present in the area will likely also change.

We are basically taking a calculated risk that the positives will outweigh the negatives. We can say that seriously negative fallout is unlikely, but we absolutely cannot guarantee that there won’t be some unforeseen negative consequences.

Malaria kills around 445,000 people a year, and that is a heck of an argument for why this is worth trying. But we need to honestly discuss the fact that there are risks and that there will likely be at least some unforeseen ecological consequences even if the decrease in malaria deaths is worth it.

I do admire the diligence that Target Malaria has had in examining the possible ecological consequences of their work. I also admire their efforts to work with African communities on this matter, although there are still some African activists who are highly uncomfortable with an American/European-run group setting loose an untested and controversial new technology on African soil.

Even if we decide that this is worth trying, it should still be something that makes us nervous and wary. And this technology absolutely should remain highly controversial, because we should never get comfortable doing this kind of thing often or without serious forethought. This is a slippery slope that we need to be really careful about.

TLDR: This technology may be worth it to reduce human death from malaria, but we should still remain highly wary of intentionally crashing the numbers of/wiping out a species without exploring other options first. And we should be honest that there is a definite possibility of unintended negative consequences (even if we think they are unlikely or are worth the risk) because nature is notoriously complicated and unpredictable.

bogleech

This is the most important part. The microorganism is the issue, not the insect, and mosquitoes happen to be an ENORMOUS global biomass that every terrestrial food web evolved with.

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