that theory that the Arkenstone is a Silmaril…it’s doubly implausible, but imagine if nobody knew. If the dwarves were guarded enough of their greatest treasure that…you wouldn’t even need to hide it from that many people, honestly. Mostly a few elves, and all wizards.
and then Bilbo sidles up to Gandalf like, “Thorin and all are holed up in the Mountain, but I think they’re being nuts, so I…kind of stole the Arkenstone, I think.” And (it’s been thousands of years since the light of the trees was doused save for the precious brilliance locked away in Feanor’s gems, since oaths and blood and war that raged until the skies cracked and the earth shattered, and the little people of the Shire have no memory of it at all) he pulls out a fucking Silmaril.
Gandalf: *hurriedly glances at Thranduil. the king of Mirkwood’s eyes shine with curiosity and greed, but not recognition, nor the terrible lust that overtook Feanor and his sons. right, right, he was never in Thingol’s court while the jewel that Luthien and Beren took was there. we’re good. we’re good for now*
Gandalf: That’s, uh, nice, Bilbo. Put it away, would you?
Gandalf, telepathically(?): EMERGENCY RINGBEARERS ONLY CONFAB NOW
Gandalf: [mental image of a goddam Silmaril in hobbit hands, labelled “thisfuckingrockagain.jpg”]
Galadriel, who watched 95% of her family slaughter everyone within 100 miles for several thousand years over these things, including each other and themselves: no.
Elrond, who was very nearly one of those people slaughtered, and did watch most of his town be killed before he and his twin were kidnapped for a while: Absolutely Fucking Not.
Gandalf: Apparently fucking yes. The legendary Arkenstone-
Galadriel: You’ve got to be kidding me.
Elrond: Thorin Oakenshield has a Silmaril right now?
The seventh annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 12th March 2020.
After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a blog post summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.
If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, retweet this tweet, boost this Mastodon post, check out this post on Reddit, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks like Facebook. Every share is extremely helpful – it’s what helped us get 11,000 responses last year.
The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.
Just woke up from a scary dream where I went home but when I got there, there was another Me inside, so I was banging on the door like let me in PLEASE. And all my friends and my sister were like uuhhh?? But then the Other Me told them to hear me out, and I got inside, and we were like. We decided it didn’t matter. There could just be two of me now and that was fine.
Bad: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, but nobody picks up on it for various implausible reasons.
Good: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, and everybody “knows”, but in spite of countless people’s best efforts nobody can actually prove it.
“Literally everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine Mongoose,” said the woman sitting across from me in our candlelit dinner. “The superheroes know it. The villains know it. The guy on the street knows it. Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon know it. The Enquirer doesn’t break the mask code when they print your picture because they don’t even bother mentioning who you are. If I need to have conversations with you pretending not to know that Bruce is the ‘Goose, we’re going to be the only two people on the planet pretending that.”
My expectations for this date’s viability were starting to sink. She was saying intelligent things, and saying them with remarkable confidence and self-possession for somebody who thought she was talking to the Masculine Mongoose himself. It was impressing me and more than slightly turning me on. But the conversation had taken a turn I’d been down before, and not a promising one. “I don’t want to get into a relationship under false pretenses,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Like if I slept with you under the impression that you were just an ordinary playboy millionaire, instead of a superhero.” She sipped from her champagne glass, visibly trying not to smile.
“Look,” I said, trying to make my voice as persuasive as I could. “Just like you say, everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine Mongoose. People have believed that for eight years. And in all that time, nobody has ever managed to prove anything – never mind suggestive evidence, nobody has ever shown it for certain. Shouldn’t that give you pause?”
(5000 words. This story takes place chronologically before the first two Bruce Kent fics, but should be read afterwards.)
There was no warning. One moment I was waiting in line at the Gothic Cityville branch of the First Financial Bank to get a cashier’s check made out, trying to ignore the whispers coming from before me and behind me. Bruce Kent is very rigorous about pretending to not be the Masculine Mongoose, as everyone knows by now. Bruce Kent acts uncomfortable around people who whisper when they recognize him, just like he would if he was a normal human being who’d gotten mistaken for the Mongoose somehow. Keeping up the act at all times, yeah, that’s me all right.
The next moment, the glassed front door of the bank shattered into pieces around a woman stomping through in giant flaming power armor. She was followed shortly after by ten other goons in smaller suits of flaming power armor. When I say ‘flaming’ I don’t mean that it was decorated in red and orange, I mean that the powered suits were emitting gouts of fire from built-in spouts.
Professor Pyrofessor had somehow, God help her and both of us, managed to pick that exact moment to rob this particular bank branch.
