#do u think that it was awkward in the group when the rest found out that shere khan hunted down and tried to kill a kid multiple times? #im not discussing the ethics of shere khan trying to kill a child or whether mowgli deserved it or not im just wondering like. #was it awkward for them #do u think tigger and hobbes text abt him and how they can’t invite him to big family bbqs anymore bc of chris and calvin? #does tony stop posting group pics that have shere khan in them bc he doesn’t want to lose his kelloggs endorsement? #tigress probably is the neutral party bc humans don’t even exist to her #is there a big drunken blowout between them one night where the tension is too strong #and shere khan yells about how ‘you don’t understand! he tied a fucking ON FIRE BRANCH to my TAIL!! i was traumatized!’ #and theyre all like ‘you don’t think he was traumatized??? you were hunting him and telling the whole jungle you were going to kill him!’ #there’s a scuffle that ends in tigress holding back shere khan and both tigger and calvin holding back tony… #eventually the latter two convince tony to leave the restaurant for some fresh air #and and shere khan breaks down and sobs that he just wants his fucking friends back while the rest of the restaurant watches in silence? #idk something to think about
top: screencap of a tweet by @linaowinmo “Diamonds are formed under pressure” And bread dough rises when you let it rest We’re all our own things. What’s motivating to you may be crippling to others.
bottom: screencap of a tumblr post by kingscrown666 There’s an old saying (I think it’s Russian): the same voiling water that softens the potato will harden the egg
you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
Romanticizing your own loneliness and turning it into a cool girl thing only works for like a few months and then it just becomes a throbbing black hole i think. Not that ive ever experienced anything like that
love is attained through embarrassing yourself by asking for it instead
ashley murphy and javier morera santos photographed performing as the sugar plum fairy and cavalier prince in the nutcracker by mena brunette of xmb photography
Broke: vulcans don’t play games, as they are illogical
Woke: vulcans absolutely play games as resting so as to recuperate after exertion is highly logical and they have a marked preference for the Terran game, chess
Third eye slaming open at 4:27am: vulcans love poker. They won’t mention it and they’ll justify it but after first contact they descended on poker like a murder of starving ravens as a unified cultural phenomenon
I don’t watch Star Trek really but “Competitive emotional suppression with probability assessment and observation skills” is the most Vulcan leisure activity I can imagine.
When people ask, “How can I tell if someone is disabled or just lazy?” I think about my parents.
My parents have known me my whole life. When they’re not actively contemptuous of me, they do seem to be somewhat aware of my general personality and character. In one of his nicer moments, my dad has called me “sweet-natured.” They can tell that when I make them a surprise breakfast or lunch that I enjoy being helpful and doing nice things for people.
They know from watching me grow up that I have always had trouble keeping my room clean, getting homework done, and keeping my desk tidy at school.
The longest I can push myself past my limits is about nine months. Then I collapse and end up less functional than I was before I pushed myself. This has been a pattern throughout my middle and high school years. I would go to public school for about a year, and then collapse and have to do the rest of my education at home. My work history follows this pattern, too.
I once sat in a therapy session with my dad to talk about the constant struggle we were having at home because he wanted me to help out more and do better in school. When he asked me why I didn’t do things, I broke down in tears, because I couldn’t explain it. “I just CAN’T. I want to, and I CAN’T.” Nobody listened.
My mom asked me why I don’t do things, and I said, “I just can’t. I sit there for hours trying to convince myself to do things, and I can’t. Move.”
And she said, “Don’t think about it, just do it,” completely missing the point.
When I got older I found words for the things I was dealing with. I got professionally diagnosed, and I’d look up information about my diagnosis and e-mail articles to my parents explaining what my disability is and why I can’t do things.
My parents have firsthand information about my character (helpful, likes doing things for others) and my history with disability (can’t consistently keep things clean, can’t manage a daily schedule). I’ve talked to them extensively about my diagnosis and given them information about it. They have known me my whole life, and I’ve always been this way. And they still, STILL choose to believe I’m just a bad person who doesn’t try and doesn’t care.
My disability isn’t invisible, people refuse to look at it.
People like problems they can yell at. They like having a target for their frustration. They don’t want to admit disability is real, because they want problems that they can either solve, or blame someone else for. And the disabled person themself is their scapegoat, someone who can’t ever opt out of their role because the disability is never going to go away.
My disability isn’t invisible, people refuse to look at it.
My disability isn’t invisible, people refuse to look at it.
My disability isn’t invisible, people refuse to look at it.
Me: “I cannot do The Thing.”
Them: “Ah well I can see where that would be a hardship for you. My, that would certainly cause problems. So to address those problems, please do The Thing. That will fix it.”
we’re reading Draculafor one of my book clubs, and I completely forgot that the book starts out as quite an enjoyable travelogue—having just passed the bar exam, Jonathan Harker is essentially on his first real business trip, and keeps making little notes to ask for recipes, or that he’ll share such-and-such about the landscape with Mina.
Ialsoforgot that Jonathan Harker has a Kodak camera (he used it to take pictures of the London estate for Dracula) which leads me to assume that the 21st century version of Jonathan Harker’s journal is actually a series of instagram posts that start getting really, really weird.
“You might remember a few months ago, there was some talk about potentially remaking The Princess Bride, and everyone was all up in arms about it. ‘Why would you remake this move? It’s the perfect movie, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah’. I have to go another way. I think The Princess Bride is maybe the most remakeable movie in history.
Don’t hate me, don’t hate me, remember the TARDIS, let me explain -
At the end of the day, The Princess Bride is not about Westley; it’s not about Buttercup; it’s not about any of the characters; it’s not even really about True Love. The Princess Bride is a story about storytelling. The main characters of the movie are not Fezzik, not Inigo, but the Grandfather and the Boy.
My proposal for a ‘kinda sequel but really really remake’ of The Princess Bride: We would start with Fred Savage, the Boy from the first take of the movie, showing up to work. He then runs into his coworker, played by Queen Latifah, and asks, ‘Hey, is your granddaughter still sick?’, and she says, ‘Yeah, I’m actually going home early today, so I can watch her tonight’.
Savage’s character then smiles, hands her a book, and says, ‘Hey, when you go, read this to her. My grandfather used to read this to me, and I loved it.’
And every directorial decision you make for the whole movie process is how that little girl imagines the story as being told by her grandmother.
God dammit I did this just for a pun but now I’m imagining this whole backstory where a wounded female goblin flees from some battle and winds up on the edges of the Shire and she’s gonna jump some Hobbit dude named Blinko Tumbrush but Blinko’s so unfailingly polite that his first reaction on seeing someone in a rough situation is to invite them in to dinner and gobbo chick is just like “… uh… ‘kay.”
And then she has dinner and it’s the best thing she’s ever eaten and even her little green brain is able to put together “If I knife this guy so I can take his stuff he can’t cook more of this” so when he asks her to stay the night she’s just like “Fuck yeah breakfast”.
And all the other Hobbits in the area are staring at this new arrival who starts begrudgingly working in the garden (she can pull out the weeds they’d normally have to hitch livestock to) and they’re all thinking “Uhhhhh that’s a fucking Goblin there, chief” except if they actually acknowledge that she’s a goblin then it’s a huge to-do and a lot of excitement and possibly there would be adventure involved in chasing her off. So they just sort of silently, collectively decide they’re going to ignore it and all go “Oh, Blinko finally found himself a lady, how nice, she must be one of the Glumbrushes from over the far side of West Farthing, I always did hear they were on the homely side, not much hair on their feet you know.”
And eventually in due time along comes Korbo Tumbrush and decently cute Hobbit baby but the biggest fucking ears you ever saw on a Hobbit and he’s a bit green and everyone is thinking “That’s a fucking half-Goblin you’ve got there, chief, you fucked a fucking Goblin, you made a baby with a damn Goblin my guy” but this would be an immensely rude thing to say to someone so they’re just like “Oh how nice, Blinko, he looks just like you, has those Glumbrush eyes though.”
And Korbo the Goblit grows up a proper little man in his waistcoat and pipe and every so often someone visits from a different part of the shire and sees this plump green dude with massive flappy pointed ears and they start to open their mouth only for a local to leap right in and go “HAHA YES THAT IS KORBO TUMBRUSH A VERY UPRIGHT HOBBIT WE ALL LOVE KORBO HE’S GLUMBRUSH ON HIS MOTHER’S SIDE (WE THINK) THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!!!” and the visitor just starts nodding along emphatically because this is clearly something that is Not Spoken Of.
I fuckin love it
I. I have to know …
Does Korbo know!? Like is the Gobit aware his momma is a goblin? Or does he just grow up like
“yup us Glumbrushes sure do look different”
He leaves home on an adventure and stumbles n a hoard of goblins marches right up like
“how do ya do fellow hobbits? You know I’m half Glumbrush myself”
Alright, so, Korbo got in a fight once.
Once.
The Tumbrushes are, as a family trade, purveyors of fine pieces of wood. Not of large amounts of lumber, for which Hobbits don’t have a particular lot of call save occasionally, but rather of particularly nice pieces suitable for the making of fine window trimmings, floors, or the occasional carved bit of artwork to be given at a fancy event. Obviously for this one doesn’t go cutting down any tree willy-nilly, and Korbo had spent most of the day out and about looking for suitable trees.
(Korbo also personally assisted in cutting them down, being rather well known as on the strong side for a Hobbit, wink wink, nudge nudge.)
Having put in a genuine hard day’s work and rather pleased with himself, Korbo retired to the local bar to have a few beers and a smoke and to partake in good company, all of whom had gotten so used to pretending there was nothing odd about him that it was almost as if there was genuinely nothing odd about him.
Until along comes Humdil Thumbletoe.
Now the Thumbletoes were what was known in the Shire as “experts on genealogy”. This might sound like quite a good thing when you consider how well-versed most Hobbits are in their family lines, until you consider that most Hobbits are already well-versed in their family lines. A Hobbit being thoroughly knowledgeable of their family tree is not much to be remarked upon, so when it is remarked upon it is more to mean that the Hobbits in question are such tremendous mooches that they have had to dive far more deeply into their bloodlines looking for more relatives to leech off of than any Hobbit would generally consider polite.
Humdil was fairly brawny as Hobbits go, which was about all you could say for him. In fact Humdil had realized that was really all that could be said for him and had become a bit of a bully. And so it was he entered the bar that night with a very put-upon third cousin twice removed (by marriage) and caught sight of Korbo for the first time.
“Why, look at that one!” he bellowed, guffawing. “He’s so ugly his mother had to have been a Goblin, ey!”
The whole bar goes quiet. Aside from the obvious abominable rudeness of this, Humdil has said the thing that is never supposed to be said, and is clearly too stupid to realize he’s right. All heads slowly turn to Korbo.
Now, it is well known that Korbo has inherited his father’s tendency to never give a single solitary hairy-toed fuck about anything. He has currently been in the running to be at least the second most chill dude to ever be born in the Shire. And indeed, right now he’s still looking perfectly calm, puffing on his pipe. He sets the pipe aside, finishes off the last of his beer, and stands up.
“Sir, we’ll be needing to step outside.”
Now Hobbits are mostly a peaceable lot, not given to wars or fighting for any old thing, but a bit of fisticuffs outside the bar is hardly unheard of. Mostly everyone is kind of nervous about this because they’re still not sure how Korbo is reacting to this whole Goblin thing. So someone takes Korbo’s jacket and Humdil’s third cousin twice removed (by marriage) grudgingly takes his, and the two square off.
Now, Humdil was a big Hobbit, it was true, but there were a few things that, being a moron who didn’t realize he was right, and who had never been outside the Shire or seen a Goblin anyway, he could not possibly know.
For one, Goblins have long, spindly arms, giving them a surprisingly good reach for their size… not abominably long, certainly not in the case of a half-Goblin, and certainly not above being concealed by the cut of a well-tailored shirt. Second, they are compact, wiry creatures, with dense muscle over their otherwise lanky forms, and given to that a Hobbit’s already greater mass and the anchoring benefit of large, wide feet, well.
The moment Humdil stepped forward and started to swing, Korbo’s fist shot out like one of Gandalf’s better rockets and struck him directly in the nose. His flight was also, for some weeks after, compared to one of Gandalf’s rockets, though not quite as far and the explosion at the end was mostly him laying on the ground cursing wetly due to all the blood streaming from his nose.
Korbo apologizes profusely to all and sundry for the disturbance, collected his jacket, and goes home. Honey is out picking mushrooms (still being of the more nocturnal persuasion after all these years), but Blinko’s sitting by the fire reading a book. Korbo sees that there’s a newspaper (full of lots of extremely important things like how the pipeweed was growing and which barrels of beer were going to be uncasked that month), so picks it up and sits down to read.
“Evening, Da.”
“Evening, son. Pleasant evening out?”
“Oh, fine. Save for I broke Humdil Thumbletoes’s nose for him.”
“Hm, hm, I see. Why did you feel the need to do that?”
“Well, he called Ma a Goblin, you see.”
Blinko slowly lowers his book, and slowly raises his head. Looks at Korbo for long moments. Raises one eyebrow a little.
“Son. You know full well your mother is a Goblin.”
“Well, yes, but he didn’t know that, and he said it as an insult anyway so it being true or not doesn’t really matter that much, does it?“
“Hm, hm. I suppose that’s true at the end of the day, isn’t it?”
Blinko goes back to reading his book. Korbo continues reading the paper.
“You could have stabbed him,” Blinko eventually notes.
“Aye, could have stabbed him,” Korbo agrees easily enough. “But it’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?”
“True, true, probably would have been a bit of a mess in the road, not very thoughtful to the community,” Blinko allows.
