The Hill I Will Die On.

Expectations of an ideal future are shaped by the shortcomings of the present

btw it is sexy and cool to uplift and admire people who have skills you wish you had without using their ability as a stick to beat yourself with. even and especially if you are jealous of them.

do me a favor and reblog this and put in the tags what time it is for you and what you're currently doing/thinking about

After years of living in the adulting world, I think I’ve come to a realization: Manners exist to guide you to good conduct even when you’re in a bad mood.

When you’re happy, when you’re feeling generous, when you’re pleased with your gift or your service or your outcome, it’s easy to be nice. It’s easy to tip the waiter well when you’ve had a good day. It’s easy to thank the teller or the clerk when you got what you wanted out of the transaction. It’s easy to smile and chit-chat with strangers on the road when you’re in a good mood.

It’s hard to tip the waiter when you didn’t enjoy your food. It’s hard to thank the clerk for their time when you’ve just been told there’s a problem with their account and they weren’t able to fix it for you. It’s hard to think of something nice to say when your aunt gave you a crappy sweater you neither need nor want. It’s hard to be nice to people when you’ve had a shitty day. It’s HARD.

That’s what manners are for. Scripts and phrases that you learn by rote to say when you can’t think of a single nice or good thing to say from your own volition. Yes, they’re scripted. Yes, the sentiment is empty. But the scripts work in every situation, and the emptiness provides a buffer between your own unhappiness and the rest of society.

Because most of the time, it’s not the waiter’s fault that the food you ordered wasn’t what you expected. It’s not the clerk’s fault that your account is overdrawn. It’s not the fault of the barista or the stranger on the subway that you got fired today or your favorite aunt died. But even when you can’t summon a smile or a cheery word, you can still have manners, because they will serve you the same in sunshine or rain.

nothing, just tolkien originally writing down the hobbit because his son christopher kept complaining that he'd change the details from night to night and then christopher later being so crucial in taking tolkien's notes and turning them into fully written novels of worldbuilding. loving someone to the point of creation and then having them help you finish the job.

Fuck this

Fuck you

Unwerewolfs your apocalypse.

Bilbo's been living in Erebor for a few years as the king's consort when he gets word from the shire that a little baby hobbit has been entrusted into his care and can you come pick up your baby cousin please so Bilbo and Thorin make the journey to Bag-end to collect little Frodo, but for various reasons (probably safety/general dwarf secrecy idk) they don't tell anyone other than Balin the reason for their journey

All this to say can you imagine the chaos that ensues when Bilbo and Thorin mysteriously disappear for months and then return with a hobbit baby with blue eyes and dark wavy hair

From the people who brought you Squid Facts, Horseshoe Crab is Calling

I don't know about you, but I need a little joy right now. Earlier this month, I was walking down the street in my neighborhood and I came upon this:

I was like "Wow. Ok. Yes I AM picking that up." I couldn't resist! What an enticing strategy!

I had to try it myself.

After kicking the idea around with a few friends, I landed on "Horseshoe Crab is calling", and we updated to the modern iOS. Maybe i should have kept the green and red, I'm not sure.

Who the hell wouldn't be intrigued by this?!

(P.S. shout out to Basic Barbie, another street artist in the city who is unapologetically femme in a predominantly male scene. We love Basic Barbie.)

The link on the bottom goes to a list of actionable things people can do to slow climate change. Very curious to see how many people visit the page.

If you would like the print file so you can get business cards printed yourself to pepper around your natural habitat, DM me. Happy to share.

June 26: Soulmates/Soulmate Marks AU

Your mark shows how old will your soulmate be when you fall in love with them. (Meaning both romantically and sexually)

For an event by @bagginshieldweek24

More headcanons after the cut. Seriously, there’s a lot, as I developed a whole idea but had no time to write a fic because of exams.

— Dwarfs come of age in around 80 y.o., having a soulmate from another race is a very rare occurrence; throughout the history of Middle-earth, there have been at most a dozen such cases, so most dwarves are unaware of this possibility. Having a mark with a number younger than the age of majority is a lifelong shame, essentially an admission of pedophilia. Unfortunately, this happens more often than having a soulmate from another race.

— Thorin spent his entire adult life, from the moment the mark appeared, wearing an extra layer of bandages under his bracers to prevent anyone from seeing the number. Fortunately, among dwarves, it is not considered inappropriate to hide the marks, as many value their privacy.

— The mark and thoughts about it were the reason why Thorin often appeared especially gloomy when the topic of romance came up.

— He truly tried to compensate for his "defectiveness" with his virtues.

— Of course, Thorin is a virgin.

— Bilbo, on the other hand, didn't think much about this; hobbits don't see anything wrong with living without their soulmate or seeing their soulmate as a friend. They are generally a loving people and don't worry about the concept of "the one and only."

— Although the topic of soulmates is considered highly romantic in hobbit literature, Bilbo was somewhat disappointed when he realized he would likely never meet his soulmate. (Hobbits are also unaware of inter-racial soulmates.)

— I tried to make young Bilbo look more like Frodo, so here he has smaller curls and a different style of shirt.

— Thorin and Bilbo both hid their marks, so when they felt an attraction to each other, especially after the Carrock, both were initially upset, thinking they weren't soulmates. Thorin, of course, was much more upset.

— During the two weeks they stayed with Beorn (yes, I'm mixing the movie and the book, what are you going to do about it? Slow burn needs time to be slow), they managed to reach the point of kissing near the river or something like that. But when Bilbo tried to unlace Thorin's tunic, Thorin stopped him and said that, unlike hobbits, for dwarves, sexual interaction is a very serious step in emotional attachment. It wouldn't be fair not to tell Bilbo what kind of monster he was getting involved with, because after seeing what Thorin had to show him, Bilbo might not even want to look him in the eye. Bilbo was honestly frustrated. (It is implied that Thorin used some term characteristic of a pedo... ahem)

— With a terrifyingly serious face, Thorin unwrapped the bandages on his wrist, and Bilbo, with a sinking heart, prepared to see a number like 5 or 12. Instead, there was a very respectable and completely normal age. Thorin turned away, not wanting to see the disappointment in the hobbit's eyes. Bilbo spent a few seconds calculating how long dwarves live and how old Thorin actually was.

— Thorin thought Bilbo wanted to shame him for having the audacity to enter into a relationship at such an age, knowing his soulmate's extremely young age. With closed eyes, he forced out that he was 195 and knew how disgusting he was because of it.

— Instead of a slap or something worse, which Thorin wouldn't have opposed, thinking any normal person had the right to treat him like that after seeing it, Bilbo reached for his own wrist and, with suspicious enthusiasm, pulled off the leather bracelet he had worn since the Shire. On the pale skin was clearly marked Thorin's age, written in dark ink with characteristic dwarvish notches.

— Some time passed in silence as they both realized that such a coincidence simply couldn't be.

— They were in for a very pleasant evening away from the company🌚🌝

— Later, when the entire company gathered by the fire, Bilbo and Thorin would come to them, holding hands, the hobbit nearly glowing with happiness in front, and a red-to-the-tips-of-his-ears Thorin slightly behind. This would be the first time anyone in the company saw Thorin without bandages, and if not for the matching age on Bilbo's wrist, now also not hidden by a bracelet, they wouldn't have believed Thorin could be normal with such a number on his skin.

— And the dwarves would realize how young Bilbo was by their standards.

— Truly, the ways of the Valar are mysterious.

— At the very end of the night, Fili would nudge Kili with his elbow and hint that since their uncle had an inter-racial mark, he might not be so angry and yell when he finds out that his brother has a four-digit number on his wrist.