He's Trying Very Hard Not To Strangle Someone

mutuals do you have any resources for when your image is shared online without consent?

so my friend and i were pulled into one of these "pranks" done in public and filmed without our consent or rather after i specifically said i didn't want to be filmed. now the video of both of our faces in close up is going viral on tiktok, as it's been published (again, without our consent) on this 15 year old's prank channel. it now has over 4 mil views and as someone who's extremely guarded about my privacy and has never posted my image online, ever, i find this very upsetting. the dutch/european law isn't really protecting us at the moment as it is "filmed in a public space" but i know people have resources for finding/deleting things like leaked explicit images or images stolen by companies so i'm wondering if anyone has any insight on similiar situations. i hate this. as much as i am filled with resentment and would love to teach that kid a lesson, i know i should just get him to take the video down and not draw more attention to myself online. pls advise

I recently watched a rendition of Fëanor's speech to the Noldor on TikTok and I gotta say, hearing it spoken gives it so much more power than just reading it.

While reading the Silmarillion I've always thought that it was a very charismatic speech, even if Fëanor is basically asking his people to leave the only home they've known to literally fight a god. Tolkien wrote an absolute banger of a speech where just reading it already has me going "yeah, yeah that makes sense I get why the Noldor would up and leave after hearing this".

But hearing it being spoken and not only read as part of an audiobook, but actually spoken by a voice actor in an interpretation of how Fëanor would've spoken it really gave it a lot more depth that I wasn't expecting. It was very rousing, it's like your mind was silenced and all you can do is hang onto Fëanor's every word. By the time the voice actor finished the speech, I was ready to pack my bags, cross the ocean to a place I've never been to, and potentially die fighting a god. While my brain still paused at the subtle hints of manipulation (because that speech was manipulative to a degree. But I think that deserves its own post), it was mostly overridden by the 'fuck yeah let's do this' mentality.

The people who stayed back (before the Kinslaying of Alqualondë) during the Flight of the Noldor after hearing that speech are the real deal. It honestly takes strength to not get dragged in by the roaring emotions.

I was thinking about Goose from Captain Marvel/MCU and also about those various "humans are weird" posts, and something occurred to me.

So *every other* sentient race in the Marvel universe can identify a Flerkin as a terrifying Eldritch monster. Humans? Humans have one as a pet. They are utterly oblivious. And even *after* finding out it's an alien monster, Nick Fury has it hanging out in his office and/or house.

What if our obliviousness or, more specifically, our ability to be bored, that is the human superpower?

Humans can be bored by being launched into the air in a fragile tin can powered by extremely volatile fuel. We can be bored by Space in all its infinite terror and majesty.

You can just imagine the "Eldritch Monster Cleanup Crew":

Terror Beast From Beyond the Stars: COWER BEFORE MY POWER, MORTALS! I WILL DEVOUR YOUR WORLDS AND FEAST UPON YOUR SOULS!

Bob the Human: Sure thing, mate. Can you just hold still for a second?

TBfBtS: ...YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FLEEING FROM MY HORRIFYING VISAGE AND ABOMINABLE PRESENCE

Bob: You aren't that impressive. Bit ugly, yeah, but I've seen worse in downtown nightclubs.

TBfBtS: WHAT.

Bob: Just want to get on with the job, mate. My other half has a pot roast in the oven. Hold still another second so the arcane prison can get a proper hold.

TBFBTS: Noooo!!!

Bob: *dusts off hands, picks up arcane prison* Time for a cuppa.

someone told thorin to whenever he's lost in the darkness he should look for the light and then he found bilbo

See, we got this... inclination

The Galactic Coalition is no stranger to war. Every sapient race has a history filled with external conflict, and most with some internal strife as well. Even now, the Coalition is in a stalemate with the United Federation on the North-Western arm of the Galaxy, a recently cooled hot war over what the Federation call foreign meddling in internal affairs, while the Coalition claim is an abusive contractual effective enslavement of a pre-stellar civilization, which goes against the Coalition's Ethics Directorate For All Sapient Encounters.

The Humans, who managed to learn of this on their own, sparking a hushed debate about their espionage capabilities, wanted to send their own delegation to the established Neutral Zone to speak with the Federation. As a party to the Coalition governing body, they have free reign to make contact with anyone on their own terms, with the understanding such individual activity will not represent the Coalition itself.

It did not take long for the Humans to reach back to us with an inquiry:

"So like, this might just be us, but these fellas are giving us some nasty fascist vibes, ya feel me? Maybe we're wrong (though we do got a lot of experience with that), but have a look at this data we've gathered so far."

What we saw were shockingly detailed and up-close images of clearly Federation design medical and emergency disaster relief encampments. A baffling number in fact, but technically nothing that would indicate wrongful action or intent. But there were a lot of them all across the planet.

"Yeah, we only got data from right now, so do you got info on this planet and it's folk from earlier? My gut, and all these shuttles full of some kinda cargo we can't scan hyperin' away, is telling me that it's not gonna match well."

The Human, or his... gut?... (we'll have to ask them to elaborate, we thought they only had one mind?) is correct, startlingly so. We informed the Human the atmosphere was far thinner than it was merely 40 years ago, containing a third less Nitrogen and almost no trace gasses at all, save for CO2, which was at nominal levels, but the planet used to have an abundance of Helium, now almost entirely gone. If further investigation corroborates this, and perhaps other inconsistencies, this will be cause for a full open investigation and possible sanctions!

"So... can we fight them?"

The Human's question startled us from our anger, now replaced with confusion and worry. Humanity boasted the most powerful fleet in Coalition space, there was no question about it, but they are still only a singular planet with some specialist stations dotted around local space, while the Federation was composed of dozens of races across thousands of planets in a very efficient hierarchical structure, plus the true strength of their military was unknown.

This is a delicate matter and we need them to not act rashly. We have learned, however, that outright denying Humans anything leads them to desire it more, so we must adopt a new approach to each situation we wish the Humans to... not take the initiative on.

Offering the delegation leader command of our own covert investigation units, and requesting he withdraw his ships to act as emergency response and intervention forces in the area seemed to please him. He had an important task to do, and his crew busied themselves preparing for a variety of possibilities, thus making the Humans feel both needed and engaged in productive activity, preventing them from escalating the situation. For now.

We really hope this "gut" will not cause rash action.

Tactic to earn a degree? Unfortunately only possible.

Tactic to stay alive during those period?Toxic af, but still useful and that should be considered insane.

The alien should be alarming others to lower our sick standards of memorizing unbelievable amount of information that will no longer be valid in the next five years.

What would be alien's reactions to battery acid. Y'know that thing with red bull marinated sour strips, energy drink plus coffee and a minimum of five beers. Read more at your own risk.

Alien: Human, I can't find the-

Human: *currently stoned*

Alien: ... What. Are you doing?

Human: seeing God.

Alien: how many?

Human: *raises one finger.*

Alien: ... Human. If my memory serves correct. It takes twenty.

Human: try a strip.

Alien: ... *processing, before taking a sour strip.*

Human: *still stoned*

Alien: *starts coughing.* WHAT IS IN THIS?

Human: that's battery acid. Marinated in red bull, put red bull into coffee. Uhm, ooh, had a gummy. And about. Hic. Five beers?

Alien: ... How did you make the marinade?

Human: fourth book, red leather.

Alien: ... it's called uni recipes.

Human: yep.

Alien: stoner pizza?

Human: fries on pizza.

Alien: ... reduce five cans of red bull, leave to cool before marinating for a minimum of three hours. Five days at maximum, because the caffeine will break down the glucose bonds?

Human: yep. Chem students are smart!

Alien: ... That's your battery acid?

Human: I'm on car acid.

Alien: ... Two cans of reduced Red Bull, 125ml per can. Reduced to 25ml put into your choice of coffee, reduce the coffee to 10ml.... Take one edible, one battery acid and the coffee concoction. Then down five beers reduced to... Half a bottle of beer. Or around one shot of tequila.

Human: *proud of themselves.*

Alien: ... I'd be horrified if I wasn't impressed.

Human: yeah, that's how I got my degree in uhh, neurology, bio chemistry and a few more Celciuses.

Alien: ... You made a recipe book and got an associates?

Human: I actually have. 27? bachelors, just from that shelf.

Alien: ... How are you-

Human: remember when I mentioned I'd figured out a way to be high and speak somewhat normally?

Alien: ... *glances at the bookshelf*

Human: give it a minute.

Alien: these are all acedemic papers. Aren't they?

Human: 1387 recipes. Times that by the number of java files on the USB that's labelled the same as the eight number of pie.

Alien: ...

Human: there's 40567 academic papers, not including the top and bottom shelves which are dictionaries, explanations and half of them have paper which explode upon contact with oxygen.

Alien: ... Most of this case is behind glass.

Human: mhm.

Alien: How did you even do this?

Human: mixture of car acid, ADHD, tunnel vision and crunching for two months.

Alien: crunching like.

Human: forgot to sleep for two months.

Alien: ...

Human: I went to hospital for about a year because of that.

Alien: I have so many questions, but I get the feeling this ain't common?

Human: my level of insane, no. Cramming for a stupid period and doing something wonderful somehow. Yes.

Alien: you're less high now huh?

Human: *making a hangover cure.* Mhmm, woke up around the time you noticed the glass.

Alien: how are you alive?

Human: good question. I don't know.

What comes down, must go up

For the vast majority of tools, specialization is the way to go. From the smallest cooking utensils to intergalactic habitation stations, when it is designed from the core out with a specific purpose in mind, it will perform exceptionally well if you stick with the plan.

Most of Humanity does not appear to agree. Now, they certainly do have and use plenty of highly advanced tools that can only function in one way (their dinosaur research space station that recently oriented itself around a Deathworld being a prime example), but a surprising number of seemingly precision tools are used in a myriad of unconventional ways.

Like, we've seen a fork used as a makeshift holder for yarn spinning, as a fishing tool after some minor modifications (bending and tying to some string), as well as in a performance after adding these things they call googly eyes. Or the infinitely complex subatomic splitter whose sole purpose is to reduce an atom from one element to a smaller one in a non-explosive way - it uses concentrated light emitters to achieve this. One Human configured it into a tattoo device.

In fact, we suspect Humans deliberately attempt to find as many uses for a single tool as possible, even when, and sometimes because (out of spite, perhaps?), another tool that does that thing already exists.

Their spacecraft are no exception. Those behemoths might even be the focus of maximizing adaptability for as many scenarios as they can possibly think of.

For starters - ALL of them are rated for atmosphere entry and capable of FOUR TIMES Earth standard gravity lift off. Including their largest planned vessels yet - the Colony Ships. The SMALLEST design will be TWENTY EIGHT KILOMETERS LONG and average height/width of SIX KILOMETERS. And they themselves don't even know how big their biggest will be, they just said:

"Eh, whatever will feel right at the time."

As for why everything HAS to be able to land AND take off even though it literally at least triples the mass of each ship, necessitating what we view as a massive waste of resources:

"If the planet turns out to be kinda... meh, the colonists will be able to pack up and try again with the same ship. C'mon, gotta think ahead with these things."

Not only that, but we also learned most are able to SUBMERGE AND WITHSTAND A KPA OF 142'000! The military grade ones are even tougher than that! They could dip inside gas giants and not be torn apart!

Wait...

[scanning Jupiter]

Please no...

[confirmation beep]

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE! THEY'RE HIDING INSIDE A STORM!

Hello please reblog this if you're okay with people sending you random asks to get to know you better

Smaug when Bilbo and Thorin enter Erebor