#armor discourse

[mai-komagata]

like of course sauron made galadriel's armor but also its not that a wedding dress or symbolic in a romantic sense (it's symbolic in other senses, just not in a heteronormative sense).

there are two things that define sauron above all else and that is blacksmithing and giving gifts. even before he did illusions he did that. boy goes to any city and if he can walk he finds a forge. he is a celebrimbor stan. he will limp to that forge. he has forging hyperfixation. you can't stop him from forging things. and he will give gifts, that is what he does. sure those gifts sometimes have strings attached like rings that enslave you to the unseen world but you know, he likes forging and giving things out. the world will be burning and he'll make a thing.

(like i dont want to be like the sauron reveal in season 1 was obvious -- like, i mean it *was* -- but i saw him and was like, well that boy is obsessed with blacksmithing that is sauron. he made it his entire personality. )

anyway. armor is beautiful and adorns her beautifully. Only the best for his beloved toys. He is known as the giver of gifts for a reason, he has to give her something to entice her. You cant convince her only she can destroy Sauron if she is dressed in a chiton for battle! Love bombing is step 1, and giving gifts is part of this. And it makes so much sense with Galadriel's deflection later on: he offered me an army -- well he armed his general, that was his gift to her, to make her feel that way again (at what cost?). As he should. It's a way of building that dependence and connection, to show he is not just any man and he alone can bring her renown. Giving items that are there to bring victory in battle is very Sauron.

[disclaimer--sauron is a manipulative abusive bastard and i like it as a dark manipulative ship. also he aint settling for one plaything, he loves all his toys and routinely builds them up then violates and breaks them. this is not anti galadriel x sauron just anti soulmates/anti wedding imagery/anti halbrand is different than sauron].

[elasticveins]

So random but I’m holding everyone’s hand when I say that Patroclus and Achilles didn’t look similar because everyone who’d seen Achilles before immediately knew it wasn’t him and everyone who’d hadn’t seen Achilles up close just saw the armor and thought it was bro. Literally anyone that’s seen Achilles before immediately recognizes that it’s not him. Guys please.

[armoralor]

Emily Swallow’s face when d*nbo shippers in the crowd started yelling at Katee Sackhoff for saying Bo-Katan Kryze and Din Djarin have "no romantic undertones:"

Please don’t harass actors. Katee has been humoring inappropriate questions about a fictional romance for MONTHS. She has made jokes and played along to diffused awkward fan situations; ship what you want online but please don't bother actors with it (image from a different angle of this panel).

[doshmanziari]

Something so perfectly, humorously irritating about the neat resonance between the theme of cycles and the occlusion of history in FromSoftware's games and the perpetual pattern in the playerbase of people who deem each new game or its DLC as "impossible", "unfair", a "betrayal of core principles", always forgetting that this is exactly how they behaved the last time.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

“catra only won her fights with adora because she was willing to play dirty!”

that’s true enough but that’s not the only reason.

there’s no explanation as to how catra gets slammed against a rock by adora and it doesn’t break her ribcage or give her a concussion, but adora gets scratched a few times and she’s already weak and out of breath.

there’s no explanation as to how she-ra is supposed to be this invincible hero but is easily injured and exhausted, while catra can keep fighting with no issues when she’s a catgirl with no magical powers and doesn’t even wear an armor.

and it’s crazy because GLIMMER, the “weak princess” who had to recharge her powers every so often, won against catra a lot more than she-ra the “chosen one and savior of etheria” did. glimmer was allowed to go toe to toe with catra, while adora was continuously shown to be weaker and slower than her.

[doyouwanttoseeabug]

Merlin Ship Tournament Round 1: Doomed Het

[heartcircus]

i think my issue with the new methods for leveling is it’s not necessarily farms that are making it exponentially easier it’s the exp armor . like its taking new players just a few hours to reach power level 50 whereas prior to the addition of it it took like a day if not several of Grinding to get there. it took sneeg 3 months to reach nirvana (granted he was originally going for ng2 on every skill) and roughly the same amount of time for bad, nowadays just anyone can get it purely off the exp buff the armor gives you.

[masterofthecygnetsignet]

We often see knights as their armor. By that, I mean them as a cultural symbol. They are festooned with every honor, even if we cannot discern their true moral fibre with great alacrity. A mistake even we ourselves make regarding our own.

We don't typically think of them as possessing an identity outside of the standard they bear, or literally, even the helm they doth wear.

They could feasibly look like any base wight underneath the visor and mail, and so, they are potentially a prime example of man become his mask. They are held aloft as exemplars with high rank in life yet earn such positions by near-encounters with Death, having lost the privilege of individuality and forsooth, individuation as they are often led astray by Fate.

They meld with the mask to the point of self-erasure for an ideal, to be remembered for their deeds, holy or not, never their selves or true natures but for the plating they don, symbolic of heart and mettle.

And still, they continue unflagging, almost as if they are as they’re viewed: steel shells—once dead, emptied of wills they never had to begin with, mindless automatons ringing hollow, percussive instruments of another's will enacted when bludgeoned, skewered like wretched ornament or spit-roasts when lanced through—as man, nay, beings, whose only raison d'être is to complete unending deeds of chivalry and valor, ever carrying out the bidding of their ladyloves or vassals.

This is the case I submit to you, my liege. The simple agony of being one of the world. However profane it is to confess in these such modern times, I have a soul and cannot be so carelessly replaced as our chargers o’ war have been by behemoth machines which neither grey at the withers nor chuff, forever locked onto their courses blind for they need not be blinkered. I refuse to be obsolete. I refuse to be feal duty enfleshed.

[rideroftherange]

I would argue that it makes an excellent helmet for bad guy designs and narrative purposes.

Obviously face concealing helmets are dehumanizing. Classic visual trope. But there are also metaphors to be made from the crippling over-specialization, the way it effectively blinds the wearer, it literally offers massive protection at the cost of freedom of movement.

It is always funny to me that the frogmouth helmet is chosen as one of the go-to helmets for knights.. when it would have been THE WORST combat helmet and was only and singularly used for the joust.

[sumontienne]

621 is mute so Rusty does the talking for them. but 621 isnt a timid puppydog either and they scare Rusty sometimes

Rusty: “Uh, shit — Hey, buddy, I think you forgot my partner’s pickles on their Big Mac.”

621: *absolutely fuming behind him*

[anaraaa24]

Redheads and Glory: A Little Love Letter to JKR’s Obvious Favorites

You know, it’s truly charming when an author sprinkles a bit of themselves into their characters—until the cinnamon becomes paprika and suddenly every redhead is either a tragic saint, a romantic fantasy, or a hidden MVP. Yeah, because If I were the author maybe I would do it but it turns out I didn't

Oh, Joanne. We see you. 🧣✨

Lily Evans—saintly, radiant, the girl who was too perfect to live and too pivotal to ignore. She rejected bullies, loved deeply, and died tragically. A red-haired martyr immortalized in every mirror of Erised and plot device.

Ginny Weasley—an eleven-year-old with zero personality who somehow morphed into a “cool girl” off-page. Quidditch prodigy? Check. Boys falling for her left and right? Check. Mysteriously compatible with the Chosen One despite having almost zero on-screen chemistry? Also check. A quiet background character suddenly handed heroine status by the narrative fairy? Redhead magic, clearly.

Meanwhile…

Hermione Jean Granger—brilliant, brave, and consistently described as having bad teeth and bushy hair. The girl who carried the plot like a goddamn Atlas with a library card, only to be told by fandom she “blossomed” only after the Yule Ball makeover. Huh. Raised by dentists, cursed with “ugly” teeth. Sure. Makes sense. 🤡

It’s funny how when a redhead enters the scene, the narrative seems to… soften. There's more warmth, more affection, more unearned pedestal. It’s almost like being a redhead is a cheat code for favor, depth, or plot immunity. But hey, maybe that’s what happens when the author is a redhead herself. Just a coincidence, right?

We’re not mad, really.

We just notice. 👀

It's me actually, I love all of them and I just realized something. That's why I said that. we have the right to have an opinion, right?

But truly—thank you for the world. Thank you for the lore. Thank you for giving us something so layered and vast, that even your favoritism becomes part of the analysis.

We love the magic.

We just like to stir the cauldron sometimes. 🐍📚💅

[dathomirdumpsterfire]

(credits to @matt-murdvck and @former-ly-darth for orig gifs)

[degeneracygenerator]

every time a new AC6 text post flies by my timeline it gets something fundamentally wrong that bothers me but i just. don't engage. part of this is that it's annoying to argue with people who are just enjoying a good piece of media their own way, especially when there's nothing harmful about their read of the story. the other part is that i really fucking hate the section of the fanbase that watched a lore explainer youtube video and now think they know the Game Facts. unfortunately, arguing publicly on the internet attracts those types of wildly ignorant and blindly confident dipshits, regardless of how pleasant OP is, and i don't like exposing someone to that kind of dumbass discourse when it's very much not what they asked for.

so basically, to whoever out there made a fun AC6 text post: you're wrong, but i hope you have a nice day free of internet discourse. send the discourse to me

[butwhatifidothis]

Genuinely can't understand how people can legitimately say "trying to argue that Crests are powerful and useful and writing Crests as being powerful and useful proves Edelgard right about how people wrongfully fixate on them" when Edelgard herself says she thinks she can only use her signature heavy armor because of Crests (study requests), and when she herself uses a Relic that was made specifically to be compatible with her twin Crests to use in fighting. Nearly her entire visual language as a character relies on her using her Crests, so the people trying to argue this just kinda point out how hypocritical she is lmao

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

whenever i think of the fact that in the battle of brightmoon, she-ra was wearing an armor, but the creators decided to randomly erase her armor midway through so that catra can scratch her on the back, idk whether to laugh or be concerned.

[quivern]

Honestly if anything, I really hope that Palworld makes developers realize that monster collecting games can be more than just JRPGs. I've played a whole lot of these other monster collection games that people recommend (Yo-kai Watch, Digimon, Monster Hunter Stories, Fossil Fighters, etc) and despite how much I love monster collecting games... I'm burnt out on RPGs! I want something new to the genre, and I think THAT is why Palworld appeals to me so much.

Like, what would a platformer monster collector look like? A metroidvania? A soulslike?? THIS is the door I want Palworld to open. I know GameFreak isn't threatened by this game at all, they're not gonna improve because of it. But I DO want it to inspire indie devs to think outside the box.