Nicole

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.”

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

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.

“Sir, we’ll be needing to step outside.”

But he runs into Hilda Greebrook one day in town, and she’s lost her favorite pipe, which is of course a tragedy of the highest order. It’s not unheard of for a lady to smoke, but it isn’t particularly encouraged, either, and so the general reaction is “you poor dear, perhaps it’ll turn up, hadn’t you best be getting home for luncheon?”

Korbo, however, stops to help her look for the pipe, and when it’s nowhere to be found he offers to make her another just like it, if she can tell him what precisely made it so special that it was a favorite, for after all a favorite must be distinguishable by something.

Unfortunately the thing that distinguishes it is that she got it from Gandalf and it’s quite unlike most pipes in the Shire, so recreating it is quite the task. But Korbo sets himself to it anyway, working a bit each night and handing it to Hilda daily to see if it feels quite right, and six months later he’s done it—recreated a pipe that came from the world of men, or perhaps elves, but certainly not that of hobbits.

Hilda for her part discovers Korbo quite likes to read, and though he’s from a reasonably well-to-do family—for hobbits are always in need of new toys and fancy party decorations after all—can’t get his hands on books fast enough to satisfy himself, and, well, her da’s a transcriber, someone’s got to write out the papers after all, and she’s got access to practically every book in the Shire, and ways to make copies besides.

At first people think it’s odd, a hobbit who can’t see asking to borrow books, but then they find out Korbo is involved and asking questions could lead to excitement and so they absolutely do not ask and simply offer up their histories and books of poetry and hobbit folklore (for even without want for excitement there are things it’s good to remember, and things every hobbit child should know so they, too, can grow up properly plump and staying well away from adventure), and resign themselves to never seeing their books again.

And then they find that far from their books quite disappearing, they return in fine form—albeit usually in a timeframe rather too long to be polite—but oddly quite a lot seem to have tiny bits of wood shavings in, although one wouldn’t expect it in a hobbit home? And THEN Hoptus Redbranch finds Korbo one day in his workshop, he’s just stopped by for the wood to repair a door after an unfortunate incident with attempting to remove a colony of bees and rather too much smoke for the moving of bees, and Korbo is simply. Pressing small pieces of hot iron into a very thin piece of wood, making small triangle patterns like no hobbit decoration Hoptus has ever seen, and he’s quite frequently checking into a book on his left that turns out to be one of Hoptus’ own books, and very carefully turning the pages with a cloth so as to not get oil from the hot iron all over the pages—

—and THEN, not long after the news of Korbo’s strange woodburning activities have spread across most of the Shire (and caused no small amount of consternation, because goblins are clever but so often the things they make are cruel and the cause of ever so much unpleasantness), Hilda is seen in her own garden with Korbo with a stack of these thin pieces of wood all carefully hinged together, running her fingers over carefully sanded and varnished pieces and feeling the triangles and reciting a hobbit tale.

For all those months of strangely disappeared books, Korbo has been translating Westron into an alphabet that can be read with one’s fingers, and making Hilda books, and teaching her to read them.

Were anyone from the outside to visit the Shire, they’d find a small colony of goblins thoroughly intermarried and also avoiding the usual goblin tendencies towards stabbing, so long as no one is so gauche as to insult them for being goblins.

And yet there’s a difference between “well to do” and “scandalously wealthy.”

So when, when Blinko Tumbrush recieved a letter inviting them to the Baggins residence for tea, he of course brought his wife and son along.

Now, Korbo had crossed paths with Bilbo Baggins a time or two in the market, never for much longer than the time required for Polite Conversation, and so wasn’t expecting much. Sure, everyone knew Bilbo was odd, and were willing to talk about it, since Bilbo made no effort to hide his adventures and had, on numerous occasions, commented on visiting the elves or poking around the mountains, but they were in the Shire, no adventure in sight, and so this should be a normal, proper visit between client and craftsman.

And then Bilbo opened the door, pipe in hand, took the three of them in, and said, quite out of nowhere, “Ah, Shoebiter clan.”

Honey Tumbrush, late of the Shoebiter clan of the Misty Mountains, smiled with all her teeth and replied “Dragon thief!”

Bilbo guffawed and waved them inside, offering them hospitality in the goblin tongue, with the guarantee of safety and threat of violence that implied. They had arrived in time for second breakfast, and didn’t leave until past dinner, having hammered out a contract and shared many a story.

I know a lot of people play the idea for angst (aangst?) or a darker version of the story. A sort of “ooooo the Sexy but Evil and Insane Manipulator is getting her claws into the heart of the sweet naive avatar she already almost murdered! Isn’t she so Scary and Intimidating?”, and like, it’s your fanfic, but I think that misses a lot of the potential.

Remember: Azula has no goddamn rizz. At all. And she thinks she’s the funniest person alive. A belief that Aang does not share in the slightest.

You don’t have to write her as a cruel calculating seductress, when you can write her as a Really Incredibly Cringe fourteen year old girl with no clue how to get the boy she likes to like her back, so she does the traumatised child-weapon equivalent of pulling his pigtails (hunting him down across the continent and attempting to kidnap him while daydreaming about him joining the fire nation).

Azula who joins Team Avatar because she has a crush, and tries being extra egomaniacal and evil, in an attempt to impress Aang.

Azula who gets her life saved by Aang, and now she feels the need to help him out to repay her debt, and his unwillingness to use evil means to depose her father is So Frustrating and Why Won’t This Boy Just Let Her Massacre Fire Villages For Him Aaaaaargh?!

Azula who tries her Political Mastermind schtick in order to take control of Team Avatar to save them from their own incompetence, but it just Does Not Work.

Azula who tries meditation to understand Aang better, but is so incapable of having any chill that it somehow results in civilian casualties.

Azula who tries to be the Dark Intimidating Manipulator Fire-Sifu, but Aang doesn’t find her scary at all, and just wants her to try having fun with him, and she doesn’t know how to handle this.

Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. He’s possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone who’s regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because he’s already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.

He knows now that he doesn’t have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly he’s already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.

Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.

All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! It’s just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise I’ve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monster’s plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!

Fictional small town in the middle of nowhere in real country: par for the course in any genre

Fictional major city in real country: standard fair, but it's usually clearly based on a real city

Fictional suburb of real major city in real country: strange but I can see the application

use tools

Can be taught to speak (like parrots)

Have huge brains for birds

like seriously their brain-to-body size ratio is equal to that of a chimpanzee

They vocalize anger, sadness, or happiness in response to things

they are scary smart at solving puzzles

some crows stay with their mates until one of them dies

they can remember faces

SIDENOTE HERE BECAUSE HOLY SHIT.  They did an experiment where these guys wore masks and some of them fucked with crows.  Pretty soon the crows recognized the masks = douchebag.  But the nice guys with masks they left alone.  THEN, OH WE’RE NOT DONE, NO SIR crows that WEREN’T EVEN IN THE EXPERIMENT AND NEVER SAW THE MASK BEFORE knew about mask-dudes and attacked them on sight.  THEY PASSED ON THE FUCKING INFORMATION TO THEIR CROW BUDDIES.

They remember places where crows were killed by farmers and change their migration patterns.

Every day, I would watch Buck from my window until one day I opened it and started talking to him. He was small and gangly and he couldn’t caw right. His feathers were all over the place and I felt a kinship. So I made a deal with him. I told him that if he could do it, if he could fly, then I could find the strength to get up. Well… near the end of the season, after talking with him every day, I finally saw him get out of the nest. He went to the edge of his branch, braced himself, and jumped… and just before he hit the ground, he soared back up into the sky. I cheered harder than I ever had before.

That winter, Buck left the area. I was crestfallen. I felt like I’d lost a friend. But I was so damn proud of him. 

Cut to the next spring? I’m walking up the driveway one day when suddenly I hear a sound… a broken caw. I look up, and Buck is sitting in a tree above my head. He stared at me and puffed his feathers, then hopped down in front of me and cawed again. I was so damn thrilled, and I told him how proud I was of him. He ruffled his feathers and then soared off into his old tree. 

That summer? I heard two broken caws. One from Buck… and one from his chick.

i tried to get close and take a better look and one of them dived super low and tried to attack me. so i went back in the house and chopped some sliced raw meat and tossed it at him from a distance.

a few more times later, very soon after, they could tell i was trying to help, and did not attack me. i was “allowed” to walk up close and pick him up, he couldn’t drink water properly so i had to dip my finger in a bowl and stick it in his mouth.

i did this few times a day and it went on for about a week before he disappeared, i thought he recovered and left, but he came back the next day and lands on me, and i see him around the block quite often, and he would come sit on my shoulder for a few minutes and then fly away again. i feel like i’ve adopted a son.

Well one year we had a pregnant feral cat move in and as soon as she did the crows moved out.  You could argue it was because cats prey on crows, but remember they outnumbered her at least 20 to1.  They could’ve easily driven her off.  Instead they seemed to vanish.

Fast forward a bit after mama had her kittens and you started to see one or two crows around again.  Every time they watched from the tops of trees, always watching where mama was known to den.  They never attacked though, even when the kittens were out playing.  They just watched.  For a while I thought they were waiting for a chance to attack.

And then I saw one drop food in front of the den.

They were FEEDING the little family.  And watching out for them.  The canadian geese that show up, hang out, and harass folks every year were driven off every time they got too close to the cat family.  It was amazing to watch.  This lasted until the rescuers were able to catch all the cats.  Then they moved right back home like nothing had happened.

I can get behind that

katniss: i go to a place and do a thing using a skill. also everyone hates me. oh you want to know more about myself? here are four straight paragraphs just describing food instead.

haymitch: so the baker’s in love with my best friends girl and my girlfriend’s uncle is gay and secretly dating the town window-fixer and she’s actually related to lucy gray and has beef with the mayors daughter who bullied me and her social security number is—

^Women post things like this, propositioning childbearing as an inherent flaw and challenge to women's liberation. They claim that it's either women OR children who are deserving of respect, recognition, and protection. They never stop to ask why it is never both who are worthy of it.

The result of such a limited and bigoted mindset is overwhelmingly deplorable. The child, especially before birth, is a hinderance to tolerate at best, even if the child is wanted and chosen. The woman puts up with their existence for the sake of practicality or sentimentality. At worst, children are the problem that leads to more overt forms of patriarchal oppression.

In their eyes, either the woman is destined for great things, or she must give it up entirely to give the great things to the child. Abortion then is used as an equalizer to "protect" women from the evils that would befall them as caused by children.

But what if abortion was never about liberation from oppression, but acceptance of it?

Have you forgotten that proto-feminism and first wave feminism were created and sustained by mothers? Why is it that since the second wave of modern feminism, mothers have been left behind? Abortion was legalized well before maternity leave was enforced. Birth control with horrendous side effects were forced as the only option for avoiding pregnancy, before marital rape was outlawed. Obstetric violence was accepted as the norm by childfree women who fearmonger about birth, at the expense of normalizing midwifery led care and birth justice. Why do "progressive" feminists and red pillers both see women as inferior for their childbearing potential and status? They say the same thing, just with different words and different arguments. Either a woman is liberated/too loose, or she is shackled/dutifully impregnated.

The Madonna/Whore complex is gone, and now replaced by something far more sinister: The Slave Mother/Free Woman complex. It relies on the killing of innocent children for an evil world that they had no part in creating, and on the enslavement of childbearing women who are seen as inferior for daring to utilize their non-male biology.

You cannot expect liberation for women OR children so long as you allow oppressors to pit them against each other. I was not my mother's enemy before, during, and after birth. Neither are you. If you want to know your enemy, look at the ones who immediately open handcuffs for the woman who becomes pregnant, and mocks anyone who says they shouldn't.

So long as children have to die through abortion, infant exposure, child abuse, and trafficking as linked to women's oppression, then we will continue to see women continually shackled by their own biology, by THEIR own offspring. We will continue to see the wage gap for mothers, continue to see birthing women die from medical negligence, continue to watch women be coerced into abortions they didn't want by their community, we will continue to watch as women and children are isolated from society, culture, and political influence.

Only one group benefits from this unnatural system of subjugation, and the children never had a say in that system's formation. YOU know EXACTLY who benefits from this oppression.

My "reply" to the art above is this: Both mother and child were always destined for greatness. The people who deny this equity are the ones who want you browbeaten into subjugation.

And I know damn well feminists can do better than that.

2026 update as a treat! Here's Steve 🥰

Bonus lore about my mer-matees:

they're always male (or else they'd be womanatees)

they love to work with turtles - it's their version of car culture

they're big beefy lads who give great hugs

they love to knit and work with kelp, rope, and various fibres

Communication in the Gothic, whenever it's spoken or written, is a key element for female characters because it is a form of agency that is crucial for them to survive. If they are trapped, they must escape, and to escape people from the outside of the power dynamic have to know that these ladies are trapped first without the gothic male figure finding out. Thus the need to send out something which alerts the other characters of her situation.

The way he just held the letter against the candle while smiling at Jonathan like "we both know exactly what this letter is and exactly why I'm destroying it."

A loud and beastly monster is terrifying for sure but in a scene like this, where both captor and captive know how powerless the latter is...

I literally cannot stress enough how this is the type of horror I EAT UP. I don't like gore or graphic murder or assault etc. That makes me really uncomfortable and upset.

It's this type of horror that I just LOVE. It's not the "I am actively being killed/hurt/traumatised," that gets me, it's the "I am trapped in a prison of terror and the person who's power I am under could at any moment kill/hurt/otherwise harm me and there's nothing I can do about it."

"I'm in a room with one exit and Dracula is between myself and the door. I know he's incredibly fast, incredibly strong and if he decided to hurt me there's nothing I could do about it. He also knows that I know this."