Writer for Book Riot and Foreword Reviews by day, writer of fiction starring queer characters by night. I write all the time, basically. Statements are my own and don't reflect my employers' views
Ok, so, as most know hobbits LOVE mushrooms, but what if they love ALL mushrooms, even the poisonous ones. What if a hobbit’s body is able to handle more of the poison and it doesn’t affect them at all. And they love it!
And then they nearly give Aragorn a heart-attack when they’re heading to Rivendell.
Pippin, just being pippin: Look, MUSHROoms!!
The other three, running at full speed: MUSHROOMS!
Aragorn, who is a skilled ranger who knows every plant, tree, and flower to survive: No those are poisonous!
Frodo, who’s mouth is stuffed full: No they’re not. We eat these all the time back in the shire.
Merry, speaking with his mouth full, spitting mushroom everywhere: Yeah, they’re definitely not poisonous. Do you want one?
Aragorn, now having an existential crisis: No, n-no. I’m good.
Sam, mumbling under his breath: Well I wasn’t gonna share anyways.
@penny-anna this seems like your kind of hobbit lore
… OKAY NO WAIT THIS IS IMPORTANT
What if that’s the reason Sam and Frodo survived in Mordor?
What if all those references to noxious fumes and tainted water and everything were completely literal? They avoided eating anything made there, but they had to keep drinking and breathing.
What if part of Mordor’s defenses was that it’s literally poisonous to any creature not specifically bred to live in those conditions? What if Faramir was so careful about warning them about drinking the water because he knew it was fatal? What if Sauron’s general lack of concern about shit going down inside his own borders (aside from treachery, which apparently happened a lot) was knowing that any Mortal Man or Elf or Whatever that wandered in was gonna be stone dead in a few days, and his desire to catch any infiltrators on the borders was to keep them alive long enough for questioning?
And then these two hobbits who have spent their entire lives merrily ingesting enough poisonous fungi for breakfast to give Shelob a stomach-ache trot into Mordor and drink the poisonous waters and breath the poisonous fumes and scratch themselves on the poisonous thorns and feel mildly unwell.
Years later Sam gets a pained note from Faramir asking him how the hell he and Frodo survived when all the water is tainted with arsenic according to the survivors of the exploratory party and Sam writes back confused ‘What’s arsenic, it tasted bad and a bit metallic, that’s all I know honestly’ and Faramir goes to rant at Aragorn about how bizarre this is and is really confused when Aragorn goes into full-on flashbacks of watching those four tiny dumbasses STUFFING DEATH CAPS INTO THEIR MOUTHS LIKE GODDAMN CANDY.
Oooooo, I like that!! And it would make sense after Boromir went on and on about how impossible it was to be able to breathe in Mordor.
marvel: ‘infinity war is the most ambitious crossover event in history’
me:
It’s true! Especially given a) the technology they had at the time to pull this off, and b) that they had characters from TWO separate companies as opposed to different characters from the same comics publisher.
So yeah, Roger Rabbit wins the ambitious crossover award, hands down. Sorry Marvel.
The agreement with Disney and Warner Bros was that they could only use their biggest characters (Mickey and Donald, Bugs and Daffy) if the other corrosponding character had the exact same amount of screentime. This is why, in the movie, Bugs and Mickey are sharing scenes, and Daffy and Donald are sharing scenes.
It’s also worth mentioning that every single animator in the industry that wasn’t already working on something was called in to work on this film. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
Didn’t they also have lawyers going through the script making sure that the number of words spoken by characters from each company totalled the exact same?
Plus Porky Pig gets the last spoken line, but Tinkerbell closes the movie.
Also worth noting they were so strict about the screentime being the same that they had to have the exact same number of frames.
Whatever you do, you are doing great in your ancestors eyes!
The makes me happy
Where’s that post talking about having the ghosts of one’s illiterate-and-starving peasant ancestors standing behind them cheering them on as they cram an entire samosa into their mouth?
This post has that energy.
Your ancestors who lived on cabbages and turnips are in awe of your wealth and your diet.
Your ancestors who toiled and labored their entire lives are joyful at your leisure time.
Your ancestors who could not read are amazed at how many pages of fanfiction you’ve written, even if all you write are false starts and drabbles.
Your ancestors whose entire artistic experience was finding a pretty rock while out hunting mammoths with a pointy stick are delirious with pride over your doodles and sketches.
However much you may feel like a failure by the standards of today, your life and accomplishments have already surpassed the wildest dreams of hundreds and thousands of your ancestors.
Sometimes to cheer myself up, I remind myself that even though I’m still living at home, my living conditions are also way better than medieval royalty. I am basically a prince. I may have to do dishes, but I also have the power of electricity, indoor plumbing, and frozen foods on my side.
This. This is the kind of positive post I’m here for.
Well when you put it that way…yeah it’s not so bad :)
Here is that post! Now with bonus Peter Capaldi reading the letter being composed in the painting that accompanies it.
Your ancestors would also be proud of all the creative ways you’ve come up with to malign and curse your enemies online. Especially if they were Zhaprosian Cossacks.
self-love is the one of the most radical things you can practice in a society that wants you to be apathetic and self-loathing. learn to LOVE yourself! you’re fucking worth it!!!
I’m cataloguing a bunch of old science fiction ebooks for work, and it turns out Star Trek is (or was) to sf writers what Law and Order was to New York actors- everyone had a few on their credits. As long as you restored status quo by the end of the book, you could write anything. Everyone did it. I saw a summary of one DS9 book about Sisko going back in time to the 1940s, becoming a science fiction writer, writing about the adventures of Captain Sisko on the DS9, and dealing with introducing a black science fiction protagonist to America.
I’ve read a decent amount of the TOS novels and I can confirm that they get up to some wild-ass shit in there. like:
Kirk spends 90% of one book as a disembodied spirit poltergeisting the Enterprise while an evil alien possesses his body
Spock gets thrown back in time, loses his memory, and spends like a year living in the 1800s under the name Ishmael. also the whole thing is a crossover with another TV show that ends with Spock turning out to be the descendant of one of the characters in that TV show and near as I can tell the entire Doylist reason for this is that said character was played by Mark Lenard
the Federation and the Klingon Empire are both vying for control over a
planet that’s rich in dilithium but the inhabitants of the planet don’t
want anything to do with either of them so they spend the entire book
trolling the shit out of both sides, which eventually involves the use
of both musical numbers and a giant pie fight
several crew members including Kirk and Chekov get turned into giant evil alien crabs by faulty teleportation gates, I absolutely am not making this up
some kind of Weird Science Thing results in an outbreak of vampirism on the Enterprise except it’s the Future so no one knows enough about vampires to make the connection except for Chekov, who spends the whole book going “you know this is just like those old vampire stories” and everyone else is like “lol yeah right whatever Chekov you so wacky”
ancient evil demons are released from an ancient evil artifact and run around possessing everybody and Spock repeatedly insists that THIS is a job for HIM and the OC WITH MYSTERIOUS POWERS AND BACKSTORY THAT JUST SHOWED UP BUT TRUST US THEY HAVE A DEEP AND MEANINGFUL CONNECTION and ONLY THEM but McCoy doggedly refuses to take the hint and spends the whole book repeatedly following them into trouble and Spock’s just like “godDAMMIT”
the Enterprise crew test a new experimental warp drive, accidentally break the universe, and meet God.
the even weirder thing is that some of them are also really good.
Having read the third one mentioned I feel you are severely underselling the delightful crackiness of How Much For Just the Planet.
* It explained how dilithium works in the style of a 50s filmstrip
* Neil Gaiman cameo
* The planet’s inhabitants would burst into song randomly; this was treated as a normal thing that was part of their society and not at all a sign this was all staged.
* A vulcan woman from another ship who was a total slob and who, it was implied, went on a disastrous date with Spock in the past.
