Worlds cross where pen meets page

Oh this is why every gardening person I know keeps trying to give me the food they grow

That, and we love you. Homegrown produce is a love language.

Unless it's zucchini. Then it's a cry for help.

Tomato (June) - I think highly of you; treasured friend

Tomato (September) - you are a warm body that is nearby

Fresh new asparagus - romantic love

Artichoke - fondness

New rhubarb with leaves removed - flirtatious potential

Rhubarb with leaves left on - the bloom is gone

Swiss chard - I have made mistakes

Perpetual spinach - declaration of animosity between our houses

White-fleshed potato - you are a neighbor

Blue or red fleshed potato - as above, but with overtones of camaraderie/affection

Kale - you are a person who was nearby when I had kale

Raspberries - you are a person I admire

Strawberries - you are a treasure

Onion - I am confused

Young French beans or young peas - I thought of you especially

Runner beans - mild criticism; familial ties; gift from parent to child

Pumpkins - overt romantic, sexual or childhood-bestie interest; highest declaration of loyalty

Prettily coloured popping corn, I.e. glass gem - let this seal the breach between our houses

Zucchini/courgette - cry for help, resignation

Novelty pumpkins - marriage proposal

Cucumber goes with zucchini as well.

Maglor was singing a paean to the Star far to the north when something somewhere broke, and a Shadow across the world disintegrated and faded away. Maglor finished the verse, took a drink of water from his flask, and began the Noldolantë from the beginning. The full version, which ended with a single singer wandering forever on the sundered shore. He didn’t know if this was an ending or a beginning, but either way, his purpose was clear. He even wandered closer to the nearest Mannish village to be sure he was heard. They had to know. They had to know.

A few years later—a few seasons, a few millennia—the Star came for him again.

No, no, he was fairly lucid tonight—it wasn’t for him. It was never for him. “I’m sorry, Ada, I’m trying,” he murmured to his father’s ghost. “But it’s safe from evil forever.”

Fëanor scoffed and turned away, shedding flame and ash. Enraged and embittered, Maglor spat a Song of searing whips at him, until the spirit of fire remembered that he was lost in Darkness or in Mandos and left his son alone.

The Star spun and dipped and beckoned in the way that Maglor sometimes imagined, dreamed, desperately lied to himself meant that it wanted him to follow.

[keep reading on AO3]

next-day reblog with the multiple funny A/N’s I didn’t include because a) I couldn't decide which was best, and b) if you write a funny joke at the end, 90% of comments are about the joke and I didn’t want to distract from the fic

As the Hare Flees Before the Wolf

Eöl & Celegorm | T | 1.8k | @tolkiengenweek Day 3: Enemies | AO3

The light of the open plains burned in Eöl’s eyes as he urged his horse onward, heedless of the wind lashing at his face. Again and again he cursed the names of his wife and son, turning their names into a drumbeat of rage that pounded steadily with the beat of Morroch’s hooves.

Aredhel, as faithless as the rest of her kin, bending to Maeglin’s whims and treachery as soon as Eöl’s gaze was turned away from her. And Maeglin, whose hatred had festered under the eaves of Nan Elmoth, and turned into a foul, fetid malignancy.

They would be punished justly, and his servants as well for not noticing their escape. He knew now that none could be trusted.

Eöl ground the reins into his palms and dug his heels into Morroch’s sides. He focused on the ground streaming beneath the horse’s hooves, averting his gaze from the accursed sun that burned high overhead.

Thus it was that he did not notice the half-ring of Elves that stood barring his passage, until a cold voice called for him to halt, and looking up and narrowing his eyes against the light, he found himself penned.

Eöl noted the light in their eyes, bright and burning with unearthly brilliance, and he resisted the urge to spit at their feet. Noldor. And sons or followers of Fëanor no less, for they wore the eight-pointed stars of all his ilk.

As Eöl drew Morroch to a halt, one of the Elves called to him, his voice mocking.“What errand have you in these lands that one so sun-shy as you would brave the sunlight? A matter of haste, perhaps?” 

late summer / early fall thoughts

HONESTLY also like. part of combatting misinformation is just accepting that you'll fall victim to it sometimes. no-one can be an expert on every imaginable subject and most people don't have the time to factcheck every single piece of information that comes their way. the key thing IMO is responding appropriately when someone points misinfo ie not doubling down and being like 'no there's no way I could be wrong about this'.

[translates “eucatastrophe” into Quenya just because I can]

“Arandúquerma”, if you were curious

It's always weird when (some) people talk about the choice of the half-Elven as if they evolve like Pokémon upon choosing their ultimate fates.

Elros didn't become exclusively human. He chose to retain the gift of Men and to be counted among Men as far as that ultimate fate went, but he remained a half-Elf. He didn't gain a beard (even descendants as remote as Aragorn, Boromir, and Faramir can't because of Elros) or most Mannish qualities he didn't already possess and he lived half a millennium.

Elrond chose to be counted among Elves in terms of immortality, but he isn't exclusively an Elf. He's described as both Elf and Man, and as the eldest of Aragorn's people. Elrond's marriage to a full Elf produces peredhel children. Two of them are given names signifying Elf+(human)Man, names which Tolkien translated as "Elf-knight" (in Númenórean Sindarin) and "Elf-Númenórean." Elrond's sons are always distinguished from Elves in LOTR.

Arwen doesn't morph into a human woman when she swears her vows with Aragorn; she still looks like f!Elrond and ageless years afterwards, and she would be very long-lived even if you only counted her married life. She is probably the most emphatically Elvish of any peredhel, but she's still a peredhel. Elwing and Eärendil are, too. Peredhil are peredhil are peredhil.

The Serpent's Fang - Homebrew Rogue Subclass by Nines, v1.0

Not all who kill strike from the shadows. To know the body is to know life and death in equal measure.

Playing around with a pseudo-Vancian casting mechanic here. You can prepare you concoctions for the day, but you can choose whether you want to heal or to harm with them as necessary.

Another subclass for the upcoming monster-based book.

Reblog to escape containment, just curious here!!

Bag End background for my Hobbit comic adaptation

So D&D black dragons are supposed to live in swamps, right? Pretty amphibious, live in swamps, lair in...

caves. With a main entrance and a back entrance.

In swamps.

I really have trouble with the idea that there's these dragon-sized caves in an area with such a high water table, y'know? We have to go through miles of swamp to reach this lair, it's not one little boggy place in a mountain valley otherwise filled with nice caves. And the cave has to have two entrances, too? I can believe in dragons, but not this geology.

So... maybe it's not geology. Because a lair in a marshy place with exacting design specifications sounds a lot like a totally natural thing --

A beaver lodge.

So now I have this new image of black dragons industriously gnawing down giant trees to construct their mighty swamp lairs, and I am so much happier.

He's building his lodge.

To anyone worried about this eliminating the fear factor, don't worry; instead, imagine a lair full of sharp spikes formed from logs. Imagine previous, less fortunate treasure-hunters, dragonslayers, etc. being impaled on those spikes for your party to see.

That's brilliant! I'd done a dragon with shrike behavior in my game before, but it was a red dragon. I had the wrong species. We do know that black dragons like to let their food decompose a bit before tucking in. So they put in on a meat hook for a while.

Aule and Mahtan being on first name terms is so cute for some reason 🥹🥹🥹

Nautilus expedition live streams (+ their commentary) 2020 / 2021 / 2022

Strike of the Ballerinas

The fun thing about romance in Girl Genius is that because most of the couples are made up of mad scientists, all of their romantic gestures are deeply fucking weird. It’s not a Spark courtship unless date night runs the risk of townspeople fleeing from their homes in terror before coming back to chase both of you down with pitchforks and torches.

There’s just something so good about an action that in any other genre would signal someone’s descent into madness while their loved ones watch in confused horror being treated like flowers. Potential Boyfriend 1 is like “Okay, so I recognize that my foster mother ripping the loving parents your bio dad gave you to into bloody shreds was upsetting. So in order to make that up to you, I found the pieces, reanimated their corpses, and also gave them each functional reproductive systems so you can potentially have some siblings.” All of the protagonist’s Token Normal Friends are like “What the ACTUAL FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, JESUS CHRIST-” while the protagonist herself is torn between Heart Eyes and Horny Eyes because as far as she’s concerned this is the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for her. She is SWOONING.

And meanwhile the romantic rival is standing next to him complaining about how much of a cliche it is. Because he’s just as crazy as the two of them.

Nothing but villain-coded heroes all the way down.

Don’t forget that the reveal to us that he was science-necromancing Agatha’s parents was paired with, and I cannot stress this enough to people who have not read GG, Gilgamesh “son of continental Europe’s dictator” Wulfenbach threatening to personally melt England into the ocean if the British infringed upon Agatha’s freedom even slightly.

And Agatha’s parents thank him.

#i love girl genius it’s insane #also in retrospect i feel like that threat feels. slightly more proportionate than one might assume without context. #england what is your fucking problem.

Simultaneously retrospect colors it even more dramatic since his threat was to “melt” a society that is completely underwater.

#gil voice ‘we don’t need the atlantic ocean.’

This chart is amazing! Thank you so much!

Seasonal foods are regional, too. Hit up your local farmers markets and just buy what you see that looks great. I can’t speak for them all, but my local farmers markets take EBT. But also, I understand that’s not an option everywhere—just offering it as an idea.

Tags say it all: #Great photo of a less than ideal situation

Do not attempt to out-malicious-compliance the staff at the malicious compliance conference.

Some dipshit decided to pay the conference fee ($250) in quarters. He handed us a wrapped plastic bag full of loose change. "It's all there," he said with a shit-eating grin, "you can count it."

Oh buddy. We're going to count it. What were you expecting?

At about the time I got to $60, he offered to give us $300 collateral so he could get his badge and go to the conference.

No, bud. You get to watch the most dyscalculic staffer count to a thousand while all your friends go in to the breakfast and find seats for the first talk.

"Ruining someone's day" is the favorite hobby of everyone here. Why would you hand us the perfect opportunity to wreck your shit and think that was an own? Half the con is calling him "Untraceable," the other half is calling him "Quarter Boy" and nobody cares what he says his handle is.

I spent an hour counting that and made him go fetch me baggies to hold it every fifty dollars.

This ended up being a good bonus prank for me too, because when the counting was done I wrapped the bags in gaffer's tape and spent the rest of the day handing it to people very casually while saying "oh here, hold this for a sec" and then watching they weren't ready for the weight (I only did this to people I know well enough to know this wouldn't hurt them).

It's an infosec conference, so it's a weekend in a hotel full of people whose favorite thing is breaking the law and whose second favorite thing is following the letter of the law while cheerfully violating the spirit.

Thank you, that means a lot coming from you, @unyanizedcatboys

de Gournay Wallpapers

wizards thinking of clerics as hacks cause we spent years of study learning the secrets of the universe they cheated and got a god to do their magic for them

clerics thinking of wizards as hacks cause we spent years serving and cultivating a deeply personal relationship with a god they copied down some cheat codes to make stuff blow up