You’re telling me there has been a Gay Island this ENTIRE TIME and I’m only just finding out about it????
WHAT
okay, but not enough people know the details on this. people at pride were upset about gay rights in australia. so they decided to sail 200 miles into the coral sea just ‘cause and put a rainbow flag on a fucking empty island out of spite. and i’m talking empty. no inhabitants. zero. it was a flat piece of land with a bit of dry grass. now it has a camp site and a post office.
they have a declaration of independence that talks a bit about gay rights and then just flat out copies the “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” part from the american declaration of independence. and here’s the best part: the founding group actually elected their emperor. he was originally going to be called the “administrator” of a republic. their website, however, says that “upon legal advice, his title was changed to that of Sovereign on the grounds that under Australian law a defacto prince trying to claim his crown cannot be charged with treason”. so they made it a kingdom and he now claims to be a descendent of edward ii.
everything about this is glorious and everyone should know about it.
Born two years before the Battle of Endor, Poe Dameron was the son of Shara Bey and Kes Dameron, who both served the Alliance to Restore the Republic in the fight against the Galactic Empire during the Galactic Civil War.
So (according to the concept art book) as the Fellowship travels deeper into Middle Earth, the places they pass through become inspired by progressively older periods of history. The farther along you are in the story, the more ancient the design influences
We begin in The Shire: which feels so familiar because, with its tea-kettles and cozy fireplaces, it’s inspired by the relatively recent era of rural England in the 1800s
But when we leave Hobbiton, we also leave that familiar 1800s-England aesthetic behind and start going farther back in time.
Bree is based on late 1600s English architecture
Rohan is even farther back, based on old anglo-saxon era architecture (400s-700s? ce)
Gondor is way back, and no longer the familiar English or Anglo-Saxon: its design comes from classical Greek and Roman architecture
And far far FAR back is Mordor. It’s a land of tents and huts: prehistoric, primitive, primeval. Cavemen times
And the heart of Mordor is a barren lifeless hellscape of volcanic rock…like a relic from the ages when the world was still being formed, and life didn’t yet exist
And then they finally reach Mount Doom, which one artist described as
“where the ring was made, which represents, in a sense, the moment of creation itself”