#at what point is it a problem

[yolexxx]

Just dug a freaking collection of tsams doodles out of my school folder💀💀

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[prlssprfctn]

To this day, I think the crack-au with Jason joining Bruce Wayne alike competition for fun and accidentally winning, and this becoming a reason why the whole Batfamily finds out that Jason is alive in the first place, is the funniest version of a fix-it scenario.

[arsenicpanda]

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S (2023)

[sunderwight]

Shen Qingqiu gets hit by a rare wife plot.

And it actually is a rare one because Airplane didn't even write this one down! He toyed with the idea before ultimately dismissing it as being too controversial for the tastes of his readers, and adapting only a few of the same elements for a subsequent chapter of PIDW.

But apparently the System can pull inspiration even from the author's thoughts, especially when there's nothing to contradict the concept and even a few threads of it still to be found in the original, and somehow Shen Qingqiu runs afoul of this previously-unwritten plot bunny.

The core concept was a cuck scenario, of all things. One of the Luo Binghe's wives gets afflicted by a poison that can only be cured by dual cultivation, but specifically can't be cured by by dual cultivation with anyone who has mastery over demonic qi. Something something conflicting energies, something bullshit something. Peerless Cucumber would have ripped the chapter to shreds if it had actually made it to publication, not just for the insult of implying that Luo Binghe should let one of his wives sleep with someone else, but also because why would Luo Binghe -- able to use both kinds of cultivation -- somehow not be able to keep his demonic energies from influencing the situation just in this one case?

Well it turns out that in his specific case it's because sex gets him too worked up to keep things strictly separate, and the degree of control required to treat the affliction whilst dual cultivating is extensive enough that even a little slip-up would be fatal.

Of course, in the actual chapter of PIDW, this same plot device was altered and used to create a harem orgy where Luo Binghe oversaw several of his wives "treating" one another's "afflictions", but Shen Qingqiu just had to go and get a fatal of dose of the more severe version (he didn't realize the risk, because again, this version didn't even make it into the novel).

Anyway, of course this ends up with Shen Qingqiu trying to figure out another way to cheat death, while Luo Binghe goes through the five stages of grief before accepting that he's just going to have to let someone else fuck his husband. This leads to an argument because of course Shen Qingqiu's not going to cheat on Luo Binghe, and he's especially not going to force one of his martial siblings to sleep with him, come on now, and Luo Binghe trying not to cry tears of blood while bringing himself to explain that a fair few of Shen Qingqiu's sect siblings would be happy volunteers for this task.

Shen Qingqiu's just like, well of course you think that, for some bizarre reason you think everyone wants to sleep with me. Bias is what it is. Really it's flattering Binghe but obviously every other person we know is straight, that's just statistics, and everyone in the entire cultivation world knows that Qi Qingqi would sooner chew glass than have sex with a man!

Luo Binghe, weeping now: Shizun please. This is serious. I need you speak words that make sense in the order you're saying them.

They argue, they reach an impasse, the clock is ticking. So Luo Binghe reluctantly turns to the most reliable source of information (outside of himself) on Manipulating Shen Qingqiu to Do Things That Are in His Own Best Interests -- Shang Qinghua.

At first Shang Qinghua is like, well I'm flattered Junshang but I don't think I could shoulder the baggage of fucking Cucumber-bro for you. But then Luo Binghe is like no I need someone who is way hotter and more capable than you, if Shizun is going to fuck someone else at my behest they're going to be TOP TIER so that when I fuck him better afterwards he's really impressed with me. Liu Qingge, obviously.

Not Yue Qingyuan, Shang Qinghua asks? (He'd take the insult a little more personally but honestly he's just relieved that he's not being asked to navigate this social minefield.)

No, Luo Binghe says. He's not 100% sure he could beat Yue Qingyuan in a fight even to this day, which in his mind also translates to not being 100% sure he could do sex better than him either, so Yue Qingyuan is an emergency last resort. He's way more likely to cry on Shizun too and Shen Qingqiu is into that shit, it's too risky.

Alright, says Shang Qinghua, and he thinks about it, and then he comes up with the beautifully simple solution:

Luo Binghe has to fuck Liu Qingge first.

Because of course the crux of the issue is that even with permission, Shen Qingqiu doesn't want to cheat on Luo Binghe. But in the twisted annals of his mind, Luo Binghe himself is still entitled to a harem, even if Luo Binghe is also happily monogamous in this life. So if he shacks up with Liu Qingge first then Liu Qingge essentially joins Luo Binghe's harem, at which point if Shen Qingqiu sleeps with him it's not an affair, it's the gay version of those fanservice-y 3P scenes that the wives in PIDW did. Shang Qinghua translates the concept as best as he can to Luo Binghe, who -- though slightly dubious -- must accept that so far Shang Qinghua's wisdom hasn't steered him wrong with regards to his shizun's eccentricities.

Luo Binghe's mission: seduce Liu Qingge, or at least convince him to have sex, or possibly to lie and (convincingly!) tell Shen Qingqiu that they had sex. That last one is the longest shot so he's probably going to have to just fuck him (Luo Binghe still underestimates how willing his husband is to believe that just about anyone would have sex with him).

Shang Qinghua's mission: convince Shen Qingqiu that he owes his husband steamy threeway gay sex or something so that this plan he pulled out of his ass doesn't backfire and get him killed.

[buddiesmutslut]

no okay bc Buck losing his cool about Eddie moving to Texas -> realizes he fucked up -> solves Eddie’s problem & sublets his house.

Eddie loses his cool about Buck’s way of grieving that he doesn’t understand -> realizes he fucked up -> solves Buck’s problem of feeling disconnected from everybody by bringing Chris home & having Pepa over

[valictini]

I’ve already said it, I’ll say it again, Mal du Pays is such a visceral and clever word to describe Siffrin’s Sadness. When I first saw it in game it genuinely made me pause like. Yes, it translates to homesickness. But it has the literal word for country in it. “Country sickness”. For a guy whose core problem is that his childhood, his culture, his country is missing. One could argue it’s a twisted pun. I’m obsessed with it.

[paintedcrows]

Totally Normal Trigonometry Things

[egophiliac]

this started as a reply to someone (a million years ago) (I am so sorry) and then very quickly got out of control, as these things do. so...uhhh....here's everyone else at Playful Land!

sorry

[hyohaehyuk]

Just want to remind everyone that loustat had their 1st time on Valentines Day. Lestat the last romantic 🤭

[charmwasjess]

I actually love the characterization that while Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan truly do love each other very much and end up having a successful working partnership, they are SUCH different people, and actually, really find each other fucking annoying when you get right down to it, while still caring deeply about each other. Qui-Gon is having a stratosphere-level theoretical philosophical conversation in his head while Obi-Wan is so present and practical and funny, and then Qui-Gon's reply when he snaps out of it is like "....stay in the moment, Obi-Wan." Live Obi-Wan Reaction Face: >:o

I think about two scenes I love in Phantom Menace where the film is establishing Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's dynamic. Obi-Wan's great moment after the, uh, first attempt on their lives "you were right about one thing, Master - the negotiations were short" which is like, actually a genuinely funny observation? Qui-Gon's reaction to this? Nonexistent. We do not get a shot of Qui-Gon's expression, not even an off-camera Liam Neeson dry reluctant chuckle. NOTHING. Cut scene. Sure, this could be the fault of the scene transition, but I don't think anyone watching the scene was under the impression that Qui-Gon bellylaughed and said "good one, Padawan!" The mood is much more of Qui-Gon shaking his head, not dignifying the line with a response.

The other is Qui-Gon's "there's always a bigger fish" line after they've nearly died in another horrific way under the Naboo planet core, a scene that gives me a powerful new kind of combination of fatal levels of thalassophobia-claustrophobia. It could have easily been a "business on Cato Neimoidia" callback reference to some offscreen history together, but no. Qui-Gon just says it, incomprehensibly, while Obi-Wan scowls silently at the controls. And yet, Qui-Gon sounds contentedly amused. It's so fucking hilarious to me. He said that line for the benefit of one person in that ship: him, and he likes it.

They don't get each other's jokes, and yet, I think it's telling that they're both still making them after what, 12 years of Master Padawan partnership. They are both constantly thinking like “what are you TALKING about?” about the other one's core qualities. They both think their miscommunications are the other’s fault. It's incredibly good characterization to me, and it makes them so realistic.

[rputthebottledown]

Nelyo isn‘t very impressed with his new baby brother.

Its part III this if officially a series now!

part I & II

part IV

part V

part VI

[lizardbrainlabs]

Your interpretation of Hector talking with Bauhauzzo post-game (if you can see that happening) would be neat!!

oh the horrors of knowing no one can fix the problem except for you

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[hamletthedane]

Love that Oppenheimer is a deeply disturbing horror movie about a man forced to accept that he is, in a person, the representative manifestation of mankind’s evil in committing one of the greatest horrors of human history - LITERALLY acting as the modern Prometheus, tormented by his sins for the remainder of time. Knowing that he will never be pitied and his actions will forever be utterly unforgivable because the blood of genocide and the potential of total human annihilation will eternally drip from his hands.

But also the simultaneous indictment by the film that to blame a single person for the Manhattan Project is to refuse to accept your own capacity for great evil if the ends ever seem to justify the means, and the culpability of every member of a species that lets itself create something so unspeakably terrible.

Hate that twitter’s take on such a nuanced and brilliantly handled examination of those issues is “movie bad because protagonist not evil enough.”

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Thinking many thoughts about the fact that Ravi is a manifestation of bucks abandonment issues - in that he is essentially the ghost of Daniel - who always appears in the firehouse at moments when bucks abandonment issues are at their most pronounced.

Ravi first appears the episode after Buck finds out about Daniel in season 4 and has popped up at every critical point since - the sniper arc in 4 - at the moment when Buck is facing the possibility of losing Eddie.

He is there pretty much all the way through season 5 when Buck was facing Maddie being gone and then when Maddie returns, with Eddie leaving the 118 and breaking down.

In season 5 (defend in place) we also found out about him surviving childhood cancer and the parallels to Daniel become very obvious.

Then in season 6 he pops back up in the aftermath of bucks coma - when he’s wrestling with his own mortality and with the ghost of Daniel from his coma.

Then in season 7 he pops up during bucks bi arc - when buck is fearing Eddie’s abandonment (and his jealousy) because he’s hanging out with Tommy. Then he appears at the end of the season when Bobby is in hospital having had a heart attack. A representation of bucks fears around losing Bobby.

And now he’s turning up in season 8 when Eddie is going to be gone and buck is really having to face all of his abandonment issues - with Maddie being kidnapped, Eddie and Chris being gone and the end of his first queer relationship.

So Ravi seems to represent Bucks fears and issues rising to the surface - being consciously present and there for Buck to actually address. With Ravi disappearing again when Buck manages to rebury or repress them.