Finally, human transmutation
i love how Gandalf invested in Hobbits in year one and has been pushing them ever since. Thorin, i hear you need help with a breaking and entering. Can I recommend one of these little cunts? Silent as fuck, trust me. Elrond my dude i know you're skeptical but these four chucklefucks just transported a weapon of mass destruction all the way here. Theoden, you've gotta get yourself a hobbit man, I've got a spare one here. Denathor you big prick, take a hobbit - literally this is the bottom of the range but listen to him sing. Beautiful little bastard.
Me, calling in to my shift supervisor: Gooooooood morning! Are we ready for another super splendiferous day with the public?! 😀
Her: That is too much energy
Me: It iiiiiis fake!! 😀
Her: Still too much energy
Motivational partner
in almost every other children's book where the main heroine is swept away to a land of whimsy she's shown having a lovely time; braving dangers occasionally, trying to find her way home, sure, but ultimately delighting in the magic around her. meanwhile alice spends her entire time in wonderland like
https://twitter.com/coff33detective/status/1271463582312673281
“make yourselves impossible to ignore. 10,000 signatures on twitter is a lot but 10 unique personal emails is enough to derail an entire council session.”
I am whatever gender has the shortest line at the bathroom
In most cultures I am closely familiar with, "when in Rome, do as Romans do" is kind of an unspoken benchmark of how good-mannered, well-educated, and civilised you personally really are. A silent, unspoken, unseen and unacknowledged gesture that demonstrates that you were not simply trained to act appropriately in your native surroundings, but have the observance and sensibility to notice how people behave around you, and pick up on what is apparently considered the polite thing to do, and proper way to behave. It is a far better measure of having good manners than painstakingly memorising and rigoriously following some one specific book of etiquette rules.
And hilariously, this automatically categorises imperialist behavior as rude and uncivilised. Like ugh, are you seriously standing there throwing a tantrum at people who live here whose language you didn't even try to learn, about how they have not gone out of their way to learn to speak yours? How tacky and barbaric.
Random anecdote I recall hearing sometime:
There was this Thai guy who was working in Finland for a time for some reason, and was depressed about not being able to find real thai food anywhere save for cooking at home for himself. Until finally he found a thai restaurant run by a couple who didn't pull their punches for finnish clientele, and was delighted to finally have some delicious fucking food.
He was so happy about it that he told about his find to a finnish co-worker, who was mildly insulted by the Thai guy implying that finns can't handle capsaicin, and if he was given some Real Thai Spicy food, the finn might legit die. So the Thai guy offered to take him to the restaurant, and see who's right about this.
So they go and the guy orders them both the exact same dish, reassuring the owners - both in finnish and in thai - that he's not fucking around, make the two exactly the same. His so-white-that-he's-mildly-translucent companion can handle it, and if he dies he dies, their people's honour is at stake here.
So their food came and both of them got to experience each others' cultures: The finnish guy got to taste what is considered "spicy" by Thai standards, and the Thai guy got to watch how a finnish man is willing to literally rather die than admit defeat.
Rumour has it, although the King of Ithaca had returned to his shores, his throne remained empty for the better part of a year.