His Dark Materials is a franchise that tackles so many branches of physics and even creates a universe where the main course of study is experimental theology which is all about identifying and explaining dark matter while also adding dimensions to string theory, the multiverse theory, and the very concept of the human soul. At the same time, it aggressively calls out the problem with the state being controlled by the church, how people are condemned for being different and religious fearmongering stops the chance at growth both on an individual and a societal scale. It’s a franchise where the heroes of the story are two children who aren’t allowed to know the prophecy they’re a part of, who save the world unwittingly simply by doing what they believe to be right. Meanwhile, the person who thought he was the hero all along, the person who rallied an army from multiple universes to FIGHT. GOD. HIMSELF. is ultimately consumed by his own ego and forced to take a back seat when he realises he’s just one tiny piece of a much larger story that’s true heart is his own daugher. The child he abandoned, the child he didn’t know or care to know how to look after. It’s a franchise about finding love even when your biological family abandon you, it’s about looking evil in the eye and seeing your own mother, it’s about good and evil not being black and white but instead a complex and cruel mixture of both. It’s about the two worst people you know banding together at the last second to save their daughter with their final breaths. It’s about exploration and learning how to grow through experience, it’s about kindness being shared across the multiverse, exchanging stories with strangers and saving the whole world by doing something perfectly ordinary and receiving no reward.

Oh, and it’s also a franchise rich with fantasy, with giant talking polar bears, witches and ghosts, angels and daemons, and a mammal-like species from another world that travels exclusively on roller skates. 

And it fucking. rocks.

My little book club is reading His Dark Materials and daemons came up while my betrothed and I were cuddling in bed.

They said to me, “Do you think anyone’s daemon is a mosquito?”

“What? No way, that’s way too small!”

“No,” they countered, “We see beetles and butterflies, Pan turned into a little lightning bug, and a moth.”

I digested this information in silence, and then my betrothed started shaking with laughter and pitched in two different voices. “‘Where’s your daemon?’ ‘Oh, it’s a tick.’”

I let out such a guttural sound of amusement and horror that I scared the cats. I couldn’t stop laughing and repeating, “It’S a TiCk!!!”

I escalated in hilarity to choking out, “The only blood it can eat is it’s own persons! They JusT gO aRouNd with a TiCk on their face!”

“I don’t think daemons need to eat, do they?” They asked.

“IT’S A tIcK!!” I responded, tears rolling down my face, hyperventilating at the best and worst concept I’d ever imagined.

"My armor is made of sky iron, made for me. A bear's armor is his soul” -Iorek Byrinson 🐻‍❄️

I honestly feel like nobody in lotr mentions how fucking weird Legolas is. He stays up pacing the floor and singing to himself in the dead of night. He deadass stares straight into the tree line in the absolute pitch black when no one else can see anything. He yells goodbye to a river he has heard about in songs. He's so strange and not one character mentions it AT ALL. I absolutely love him.

I don't know if this was obvious to everyone else, but I just realised that one of the reasons why the Hobbit is so effective as a children's book is that while Bilbo is an adult, the skills that make him a hero are all those of a child.

By human standards he's child-sized, which makes him unobtrusive and light on his feet. He can slip by unnoticed where bigger people can't.

He's good at playing games, and even cheats (successfully!) in a way that - let's face it - is not so different to how children try to cheat at games. He's polite in a way that's fully comprehensible to children (rather than, say, being able to perform courtly manners). He's quick-witted, but the trick of keeping the trolls talking is also one that would be achievable for a child.

He doesn't have magic powers, he's not a great fighter, and he's not some kind of Chosen One. There's not much that he does that couldn't be done by a ten-year-old, but the story shows just how valuable all those skills and traits are. It's very empowering.

Hobbit Tales of Adventure. 😁🔥🔥🔥🔥

My dear Frodo by ThePyf on DeviantArt

Shire bookmarks with optional custom hobbit calligraphy (etsy link)

I've now added a red-door design too!

The bookmarks feature my original watercolour paintings printed on high-quality card. Each bookmark has space for the Tolkien quote of your choice, handwritten in hobbit lettering.

USAAF

USAAC

Ten US federal states with most serial killer victims

Speed! Supermarine Spitfire & Aston Martin

U.S. Army photo by Spc. Leo Jenkins

March 29, 2018 - U.S. Army troopers with Delta Tank Company, 6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, fire their main gun round at a target during unit gunnery, at Fort Stewart, GA. This gunnery marked the first time 2nd ABCT Troopers fired their newly received M1A1-SA Abrams Tanks since the brigade converted from a light to an armored brigade combat team. (Image created by USA Patriotism!)

(via USA Patriotism! … Patriotic Photos - Abrams Tanks Fires Main Gun)

WOW!!!

Credit :- JTBC Entertainment Artist :- @j.sankim

Source

1944 P-40N in Flying Tigers paint at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum, Addison, TX