calling-cthulhu

[calling-cthulhu]

Shit man, this Crusade is fucked. I just saw a girl clap her hands together and say 'Juganto da parfeo' or some shit, and everyone around her evaporated, their insides just literally exploding. The camera didn't even go to her, that's how common this shit is. My ass is throwing around Roger and yo-yo tricks. I think I just heard 'Heavenly Potemkin Buster' two groups over. I gotta get the fuck outta here.

[calling-cthulhu]

WAIT NEVERMIND

God these tags

I'm never getting Hoshi to come home am I

[calling-cthulhu]

God these tags

I'm never getting Hoshi to come home am I

[calling-cthulhu]

This courier is cute, I hope they make her playable

[calling-cthulhu]

Apparently this post blessed me because the free roll of the second day decided to drop the rat on me...

*I appear before you in a suit*

Hello, fellow Doctor, it's me, Dreamer, from your dashboard, speaking to you directly from my post, or the post our mutual in law reblogged. I have come to make a clarification.

Every other banner, I make a post like this:

"Get Them"

-- cerastes.tumblr.com, 23/4/2025

Invariably, some of you will comment "why do you hate the kitty" or "noooo why are you bashing susie glitter", replacing the appropriate words and names with relevant terminology depending on who's contextually relevant.

You see, you are incorrect, and you have gravely misrepresented me.

I am not hating on Susie "Goldenglow" Glitter either narratively or mechanically, I am championing the characters that I like. I would say Goldenglow is an immensely good Caster, and will never stop being relevant in any level of play, because she has global range in one of her skills, and great expanded range in another skill with infinite duration, plus good numbers.

But, you see, I don't like her. I don't dislike her, either, I just don't vibe with her. Neutral. She Is A Character To Me. I don't hate her or dislike her. But I don't champion her.

And I won't. Or any other character that Are Just Characters To Me.

The purpose of these posts are to express love for characters I like, and possibly encourage others to try them out/roll for them if they haven't yet. These posts are Expressions Of Love, not of Hate.

Which,

is all to say,

Shut the FUCK UP about "why do you hate X", you are fixating on hate when I am thinking of love. I am the Big Love Man. I Big Love.

In the time it took you to SLANDER me and BITCH to me, you could've made a post in which you express your love for the characters you like

Next time, you'll post something you like about the character instead. Hell, you can tell ME why you like that character. You'll scribble over characters and leave the ones you champion intact. All great ideas.

I hope that makes it clear that the purpose is Love.

*clown vanishes*

[calling-cthulhu]

Okay CC, you've saved up all these months for Lappy, you even skipped Siege for this, so let's do a hundred and hope for the best. We'll start with the free ten and...

Oh.

Oh. Well. Now I just feel silly.

[calling-cthulhu]

Haven't watched either show yet, but from my friends reaction this seems to be the current vibe

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God damn it, I wasn't even planning on getting her.

WHY ARE YOU HERE.

[calling-cthulhu]

real

[calling-cthulhu]

Anyone part of the Tolkien fandom knows most of the fandom tend to be catalogued into periods of time. You have the Silmarillion fandom which are generally split into Pre-Silmaril and Post-Silmaril periods, the latter which also tends to get heavily split between which groups of Elves the writer is more sympathetic with.

Then obviously you have the late Third Age, with the War of the Ring, and the Hobbit. The Hobbit is an especially interesting case as a lot of the fandom leans almost entirely on interpreting the Jackson movies, probably to an even greater degree than The Lord of the Rings.

Then you have the Second Age, which is almost entirely Silvergifting and... That Show which I shall not discuss.

And then there's everyone else.

Early Rohan has recently seen a surge of interest with the recent movie, obviously, but unfortunately for me, a middle-Third Age-Angmar-War-to-Ruling-Stewards enthusiast, far less attention gets paid here.

Which is a shame, honestly, as there's this is an era that's positively ripe for fandom.

It's what I like to call the 'Sauronic Cold War' period, where the Dark Lord himself is present and plotting but lacks the strength to act openly and so must do what he does best, undermining his enemies, but this time without the advantage of appearing Fair. So rather than acting as an agent provocateur himself, he falls back into the role of the unseen puppetmaster with like a dozen or so plots rolling at once.

It's also a period where Gandalf is probably at his most secret agent-ish. I like to think a lot of his time was spent stomping out light-to-middleweight supernatural threats in this period, possibly set up by Sauron to throw the White Council off his tail, given that the idea of 'A Nazgûl' setting up shop in Mirkwood was considered but apparently not high priority enough on Saruman's to-do list for immediate action. This is of course also the period where Gandalf first finds the Shire.

And the North itself is just taking L after L. Arnor falls, obviously, leaving the entire region depopulated for centuries. The Witch-King doing his best Dracula impression, but somehow nobody realizes he's a Nazgûl until the very end. And if the fall of Arnor wasn't bad enough, immediately after this Khazad-dûm falls as well. This all takes place in a span of five years, bastions of the Free Peoples in the north falling one after the other, definitely one of the darkest periods in the entire Third Age.

And of course let's not leave out Gondor. If anything it's likely going through just as much hell as Arnor. Invasion after invasion, a civil war (The Kin-Strife is such an interesting event, my God), plague, staring towards the East as Mordor becomes more and more of a pit of evil but unable to discern what the source is. The biggest and most significant W for Gondor is Valacar establishing strong alliances with the Northmen, and despite the Kin-Strife this pays off big time with events eventually leading up to the foundation of Rohan years down the line.

Er, so yeah. More love for the Third Age, please!

[calling-cthulhu]

#Live pybro reaction

Pyro’s reaction to seeing Engie was all I needed, thank you.

[calling-cthulhu]

Man the worst crime of rings of power is how it rendered the silvergifting tag unreadable

[calling-cthulhu]

Bewildering to see the takes that Hera is the soos of maryland, tbh. Almost every scene of conflict involves her getting rescued and she wins like, maybe one fight by herself, while Helm physically dominates pretty much all of his scenes.

[calling-cthulhu]

It's so funny to have hated Elminster and his type for absolute ages and now ever since BG3 came out a sizable amount of Gale fans have hopped on the train too. Tickles me pink.

[calling-cthulhu]

HELL YEAH

Bagpipe please bagpipe please bagpipe please

[calling-cthulhu]

Bagpipe please bagpipe please bagpipe please

[calling-cthulhu]

I just got back from a viewing of Kenji Kamiyama's 'The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim'. Hoo boy.

I first have to admit I completely forgot this movie was going to be a thing until today, when I saw the poster on my local theatre and thought 'Fuck it, I got time'.

I must secondly admit I had no real expectations going in. I wasn't expecting to hate it, mind, nothing about it's advertising raised serious red flags like the likes of Rings of Power or Shadow of Mordor did, but neither did I expect to be particularly wowed.

Anyway, thoughts.

The movie is ultimately... fine. Not unentertaining, but it felt a bit conflicted with itself at times. You definitely feel like there's almost two movies here, one of a grounded localized conflict in Rohan, and a J.R.R. Tolkien™'s The Lord of the Rings™ movie where there's shots of recognizably iconic Middle-Earth™ things for their own sake.

The best characters are ultimately Helm himself, Wulf, and somewhat unexpectedly, a character called 'General Targg'. No really.

Hera, Daughter of Helm, unfortunately feels... stock? Like, forget the cultural warrior whining about 'Strong Female Protagonists', Hera honestly spends a shocking amount of time getting put in positions of distress and very rarely actually wins a straight fight. Unfortunately compared with fearless death-seeking Eowyn, she comes off as a bit more Disney Princess, and doesn't really change all that much as a character. She's not bad, per se, but is just serviceable, and is unfortunately surrounded by characters more interesting than her.

I admit I'm not the biggest into the Rohirrim, Gondor all the way baby, but for the most part as an adaptation of what's essentially a Tolkien sticky note, nothing about it struck me as an egregious case of 'Writer Trying To Make It Their Own'-itis, unlike certain other works I could name. If you're even slightly familiar with the events, there are no big twists or turns, the plot is incredibly straight and narrow with everything be telegraphed from a mile away. Whether this is a good or bad thing, I leave up to your personal discretion.

The biggest alteration I'd say would be the inciting incident, namely the circumstances in which Helm kills Freca. There is actually a lot in the incident that is true to the text, mind, such as Freca insulting Helm's age, who returns with jabs about his weight, but there seems to also be an attempt to justify some of Freca's marital ambitions by him claiming Helm's too influenced by Gondor as he wants to marry Hera, our protagonist, with a Gondorian prince (Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Film). Freca is... Actually right, Helm absolutely wants to marry his daughter off to Gondor. I actually kind of like this, as right away we have the contrasts between Theoden and Helm. Helm is kind of an imperious, more moral Bobby B type, very used to getting what he wants by his word alone.

And yes, he destroys Freca in a single blow... But I have to deduct points off this, because rather than the premeditated straight-up murder of the text, this is more of a formal brawl where Helm accidentally loses his temper due to Freca's insults, which honestly is kind of funny as Helm clearly expected Freca to get back up after smashing his face in.

Another change I'm not really fond of is that Freca and Wulf actually do seem to have Dunlending blood. While in Tolkien's work it's fairly easy to read as it being an unsubstantiated rumour used to discredit an influential rival, here Wulf straight admits he was discriminated against due to his ancestry, and even uses his heritage to become 'High Lord' of Dunland.

Anyway, Wulf amasses an army, including 'Variag mercenaries' who are clearly just Haradrim, but whatever, and beats Helm. I won't go too much into detail, but the battle itself isn't incredibly impressive, imo, clearly trying very hard to emulate Jackson's Return of the King.

Speaking of Wulf, marketing kind of painted the picture of a kind of badboy former childhood sweetheart of Hera turned evil. He is... not that. Very little of his childhood relationship with Hera is actually explore. Instead, Wulf instead channels more Macbeth or Captain Ahab. An incredibly bloodthirsty and ambitious warlord who is ultimately undone by a combination of hubris, lust for vengeance and a complex over his own inadequacies.

Frankly, the only reason he doesn't fall faster is thanks to, again seriously, 'General Targg', his Dunlending advisor. Not that you would be able to tell he's a Dunlending, being clean shaven and having close-cropped hair... He looks like he's just a Roman strategist plucked out of time, like an Africanus or even Caesar. His main job is to tell Wulf to please stop being dumb and take his Ws, such as when Helm straight up offers to surrender the crown for the life of his last son. Wulf for his part never actually listens, however, cumulating in him spending the last of his gold building a giant 'siege tower' (Think the Warwolf if its only job was to fall over and provide a big bridge for soldiers to march up the undefended walls of Helms Deep) and he promptly stabs Targg once the man gets fed up of Wulf being a complete failure of a king.

Lastly, my biggest criticism of the movies is probably that a lot of the Tolkien elements feel very incidental and solely there for the sake of the intellectual property. The Mumak and the 'Variag mercenaries' show up for one battle and are never mentioned again. The Watcher in the Water appears once and quickly disappears again. There's one scene with Orcs that only exists to foreshadow that Sauron is looking for rings, but it's completely irrelevant to the story proper and mostly exists so Helm can have a Batman moment saving Hera from a troll. Saruman pops up at the end to wink at the camera, and perhaps most egregiously of all, they pull a Battle of the Five Armies, where Hera rides off into the sunset after she says a wizard wishes to talk to her, who 'in the common tongue is Gandalf'. I have no idea where this is going to lead and can only pray Philippa Boyens isn't trying to make Gandalf a kind of fantasy Nick Fury who is gathering heroes from all across the land for another movie...

In terms of rating, from a bottom-barrel The Rings of Power to a lovely The Lord of the Rings Online, I rate it a Fellowship of the Ring (2002). That's a 5-6/10 for you boring people. The animation itself isn't bad, but it's not quite your name or Mononoke Hime level. It's an entertaining enough one-time watch, but I don't foresee being it much of a repeat classic like it's forefathers. Overall a decent but unambitious foray into Tolkien, which given the current competition, may not actually be an insult...