Lost in an imaginary wilderness

✧ Couples who are bad at the same things together. Neither can cook. Both are directionally challenged. They're a team of disaster and they've made peace with it.

✧ The "will they won't they" where they DO get together and then the story keeps going. Their relationship isn't the end goal, it's just... ongoing character development. They have arguments about dish soap brands. They exist.

✧ Partners who find each other's flaws genuinely endearing, not in a "I can fix him" way. Like she snorts when she laughs and he thinks it's the best sound. He's terrible at keeping plants alive and she finds it hilarious.

✧ Relationships where they're obsessed with each other but still have separate hobbies. He's not joining her book club. She's not learning about his model trains. They do their own thing and reunite for dinner to infodump about their days.

✧ Couples with completely different love languages who actually communicate about it. She shows love through acts of service. He needs words of affirmation. They have a Google calendar and they're making it work.

✧ The "grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one" but reversed. The sunshine character is the one who's secretly a little unhinged and the grumpy one is their impulse control.

✧ Long-term couples who still think each other are hot but also deeply annoying. Yes, he's attractive. Also he loads the dishwasher like a psychopath and they've had this argument for three years.

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Here's what I said:

“Free speech is a fundamental American freedom. I do not need a warning about seeing queer people, much like I do not need a warning about women, veterans, or any other group of people.”

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There are hobbits who recoil in genteel horror when some innocent little baby hobbit gardener proudly says they planted kingsfoil in the herb garden because it smells nice.

The houses of healing at Minas Tirith do not challenge the king about having it in their medicinal gardens, but they do side eye him very hard.

First: YES athelas is absolutely mint family, not just because of the good smell text clues but because Tolkien probably based it on field woundwort (Stachys arvensis) which 1) as you might guess from the name was used for treating wounds, 2) commonly grows specifically along Roman roads in the same way and for the same reason that athelas grows along Númenorean roads, and 3) is also in the mint family (but does not smell good; one can imagine Tolkien learning this lore and going okay but what if it was Better)