So I’ve been re-skimming some LotR in between looking for new books to read and Boromir mentions his brother like, three times in the Council of Elrond. And I realize it’s dramatic foreshadowing shit, but consider (modern au apparently) Boromir who just talks about his brother all the time and has so many pictures:
“Hobbits like poetry? My brother won a poetry contest in third grade!!! You know who’d love to hear more about Dwarves? My brother. Gosh, I can’t wait until we all get to Minas Tirith so I can show you all the best things about my city and you can meet my brother.”
–
“Yeah, I’ve seen Boromir, he’s a great dude,” says Eomer, “but I hear he talks about his brother a lot?”
–
“How do I know you’ve actually met my brother?” asks Faramir. “And how do you know who I am?”
“… I have seen probably a hundred pictures of you and heard the stories behind all of them,” says Frodo.
“Ah,” says Faramir, resigned. “Yeah, okay, you’ve met him.”
I’m suddenly laughing at the idea of a cliche noir detective story written in the brutally concise style of Hemingway.
A woman walked into my office. She had legs. I noticed her legs. “I have a problem. I need your help,” she said. They always said that. I knew her legs weren’t the problem. I hoped she might want my help with them anyhow.
“Can you pay?” I asked. Of course she could. Her shoes were worth more than my rent. She could pay. “I can pay,” she said. Her eyes were wet. I wondered if anything else was wet. Probably not. I am not handsome. Not since the war. She was looking at my scar. Lots of people do. Most look away. Not her. She did not look away. She looked at my scar and I looked at her legs. There were two of them. I liked that about her. I liked that a whole lot. “Will there be danger?” I asked. There always is. This city bleeds danger, then drinks it right back up again.
“I’m afraid there might be danger,” she said. She had the voice of a beautiful woman. She also had the face and body of a beautiful woman. She was beautiful.
The light from the window was striped. It made stripes on my cigarette smoke. The end of my cigarette crumbled into ash. My marriage had also crumbled into ash.
“I can handle danger,” I said. I patted the butt of my gun. My gun was a Colt. My gun and my scar were all that was left from my time as a soldier. My gun, my scar, and the nightmares. I looked her up and down. “I am good at handling things.”
The Heraldry tag is positively exploding with this news. I’m really glad someone drew it up. (he didn’t cover the arms borne in pretence in the case of a woman whose wife is an heraldic heiress, but all the more common and important stuff is covered).
This is old news by now (well, old compared to news, it’s still very new heraldically), but very interesting and deserves another reblog.
I went into a bit more detail about what the language of the rules mean here.
currently, the world’s largest single organism IS a mushroom. it’s a massive growth of honey mushrooms, growing under a forest in oregon. it takes up about 4 square miles, stretched out over 60 miles.
the caption is also true, although also completely unrelated to the (fake) picture. here are real pictures of them:
(lol)
the fossils found are called prototaxites, and there’s actually still some debate about what exactly they are- mostly because a lot of scientists simply can’t wrap their heads around the idea of giant mushrooms covering the earth. the alternate theories of what they were are lichen or rolled-up formations of moss, but giant mushrooms seems to be the leading theory.
A Middleground 