#INTERESTING WORD CHOICE………

[ssenza]

hey bioware what do you mean abominate. why was that ability called abominate. what do you mean by that.

[illsayprettyplease]

Mads: “Obviously I’m on top of the game, most of the time.” (x)

Hugh:

[mikeymadisons]

I have been changed for good.

CYNTHIA ERIVO as ELPHABA and ARIANA GRANDE as GLINDA in the WICKED: FOR GOOD (OFFICIAL TRAILER)

[pencildragons]

spreading my john gaius was māori space jesus before gideon propaganda: the unimaginably old and vast being from which he comes chose him to save all of humanity and in the end he made a sacrifice of the highest order and was made anew in glory. except he didn't actually sacrifice himself, which is a crucial point that leads me to my second theory: john gaius is evil māori space jesus

[kirkwallsquad]

i still can't believe veilguard just completely ignored the vashoth. like no one says the word, i think i read it in one codex entry, but none of the like little tutorial information bits. the text when choosing a qunari rook says that some qunari live outside the qun and that culture - which makes them not qunari. we've spent two games talking about the vashoth a lot, it was a core pillar in the iron bull's storyline, and now it's like. no vashoth, no tal-vashoth.

(in inquisition we literally had the vocabulary lesson of kossith - qunari - vashoth - tal-vashoth lol)

there used to be the split of qunari and (tal-)vashoth, but now it's qunari and antaam. which a lot of other people have rightfully criticized as being comically evil to a racist degree and i completely agree with that, in addition to their treatment being really disappointing from a lore and worldbuilding standpoint because the antaam are so interesting to me.

because not only were the antaam the army of the qunari, antaam means body which is so fucking telling of their importance to qunari society. i don't remember if veilguard ever goes into the fact that the antaam aren't just randos who got Evil, but they are the army, they were the invading force, they were the body of the qunari to extend the qun's reach.

wouldn't it be interesting to learn what qunari society thinks about the antaam? like, do they count as tal-vashoth, as deserters to them? should they be cut off or re-educated and re-integrated? and what does the loss of a large part of the army do to the qunari, who are never not at war?

veilguard misses a lot of opportunities for multiple reasons, but the treatment of the qunari and vashoth really got to me.

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

Someone asked me to expand a little on a topic that was buried down in a big chain of reblogs, so I'm doing that here--it's about the use of the archaic "thee", "thou", "thy", etc. in LOTR and what it tells you about characters’ feelings for one another. (I am NOT an expert on this, so it's just what I've picked up over time!)

Like many (most?) modern English speakers, I grew up thinking of those old forms of 2nd person address as being extra formal. I think that's because my main exposure to them was in the Bible ("thou shall not...") and why wouldn't god, speaking as the ultimate authority, be using the most formal, official voice? But it turns out that for a huge chunk of the history of the English language, "thee," "thou," and "thy" were actually the informal/casual alternatives to the formal "you", “your”, “yours”. Like tú v. usted in Spanish!

With that in mind, Tolkien was very intentional about when he peppered in a "thee" or a "thou" in his dialogue. It only happens a handful of times. Most of those are when a jerk is trying to make clear that someone else is beneath them by treating them informally. Denethor "thou"s Gandalf when he’s pissed at him. The Witch King calls Éowyn "thee" to cut her down verbally before he cuts her down physically. And the Mouth of Sauron calls Aragorn and Gandalf "thou" as a way to show them that he has the upper hand. (Big oops by all 3 of these guys!)

The other times are the opposite--it's when someone starts to use the informal/casual form as a way to show their feeling of affection for someone else. Galadriel goes with the formal "you" all through the company's days in Lórien, but by the time they leave she has really taken them to heart. So when she sends them a message via Gandalf early in the Two Towers, she uses "thee" and "thou" in her words to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli because now they're valued friends and allies. And--this is the big one, folks, that was already alluded to in my previous post--Éowyn starts aggressively "thou"ing Aragorn when she is begging him to take her along as he prepares to ride out of Dunharrow. She is very intentionally trying to communicate her feelings to him in her choice of pronoun--an "I wouldn't be calling you "thee" if I didn't love you" kind of thing. And he is just as intentionally using "you" in every single one of his responses in order to gently establish a boundary with her without having to state outright that he doesn't reciprocate her feelings. It's not until much later when her engagement to Faramir is announced that Aragorn finally busts out "I have wished thee joy ever since I first saw thee". Because now it is safe to acknowledge a relationship of closeness and familiarity with her without the risk that it will be misinterpreted. He absolutely wants to have that close, familiar relationship, but he saved it for when he knew she could accept it on his terms without getting hurt.

So, you know, like all things language-based...Tolkien made very purposeful decisions in his word choices down to a bonkers level of detail. I didn’t know about this pronoun thing until I was a whole ass adult, but that’s the joy of dealing with Tolkien. I still discover new things like this almost every time I re-read.

[orie-jai]

Yall, I think it's really telling that when Effie first appears in Sunrise on the Reaping, Haymitch calls her a newcomer on page 172.

This is after the creation of the alliance and their name. We know he's telling this story to Katniss and Peeta, so by calling her a newcomer (note: not a Newcomer with a capital N), he's saying that he trusts her and sees her as an ally despite her privilege.

Suzanne could've used any other words. New arrival, unknown person, Capitol citizen, new person. But she specifically uses newcomer, and i think that speaks to how much he ends up caring for her in the original trilogy, how the 25 years after really molded them into something even if she never really got out from under all that propaganda.

[pinkcaraz]

WHO got WHAT by WHO WHERE ??? 😭

[momentomori24]

Pardon my french here but WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS [see Nifast's whole collection he cooked so hard with all of them]

[memen18-m5r3]

I wrote some short centricide stories :D It's basically random encounter events, of random average people encountering the ideologies. You can read them in full on AO3:

link

Features 3 out of the 5 wackies, as of now (I'd like to include them all; I have some vague ideas for Homonat and the absolute zero for Transhum XD).

The artwork:

[loveridden1999]

the equator is a line that divides the earth into two distinct hemispheres and innie mark and helly meet at the equator they talked about because that moment is when he draws a clear line between helping his outie with getting gemma out but also choosing to stay for his love in this essay of severance metaphors i will-

[elizabeth-mitchells]

do we think shauna is freaking out about melissa's life because she's thinking that maybe a normal life that she would actually like was possible. that in a different world she could be the one happily married to a woman (jackie) with a daughter she liked and who liked her back. that maybe she didn't have to conform to choosing jeff and a normal boring life that hated? that she's going to kill melissa because she has what shauna doesn't?

[krotiation]

I still haven't recovered from this

[raplinenthusiasts]

BTS x Major Arcana

for @dearedwardteach 🖤 {cr. namuspromised / psd / cards}

[brucie-baby]

the thing about bruce trying to kill the joker is that people always leave it at 'superman stopped him', which is only partially true. superman does stop him but only during the assembly itself. as soon as he's inhaled all the joker gas, he says, "Batman, he's all yours."

he lets bruce have him, and he doesn't step back in until it's time to pull bruce from the water. maybe this is just because it took him a while to dispose of the gas, but i've always seen it as superman essentially giving batman permission of a sort to do what he needed to do.

maybe clark didn't know what bruce would choose - whether he would lock the joker up or put him six feet under - but he trusted bruce's judgement. maybe clark was sure of bruce's intentions, that he truly believed that bruce would do the 'right' thing. or maybe clark knew that bruce was going to kill him, and he took a step back. i don't know if we're ever told, and i don't think i want to know. i just think it's very interesting.

but bruce did fully try to kill the joker. nobody could stop him, and in the end superman didn't try to. the joker had literally been shot and the helicopter was about to explode and bruce left him there to die. the comic ends with bruce yelling to find his body, but thinking, "But I know they won't. That's how things always end with the Joker and me. Unresolved."

[evilkitten3]

one pet peeve of mine in founders-era fanfics is when madara's whole,,,, everything is solved by izuna just being there

like maybe this is just me, but i don't think izuna surviving or even coming around to the idea of a truce with the senju would've been enough to keep madara from the path he ended up on.

izuna wasn't the reason he left - he was definitely part of madara's issues, but he wasn't the why. even if izuna had stuck around, and even if that had been enough to keep the uchiha clan from losing their faith in madara, i think he would've still come to realize konoha wasn't what he'd hoped it would be.

best case scenario, i think izuna's survival might've caused madara to stick around a bit longer, but i don't think it would've lasted. honestly, even then, that might've just made the inevitable break-up between madara and hashirama even more agonizing (particularly for izuna)

it's a fun idea to play around with for sure, but frankly i don't think canon!madara could've ever been 'saved' from that path. certainly not if the hidden village system ended up getting set up in the same way.