#built wrong and evil

[crawd-ad]

Then I’ll just eat 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."

[momentomori24]

THEY ARE SO INSUFFERABLE AND HORRIFIC AND AWFUL BUT SO AMAZING AND DORKY AND THIS PART IS SO UNFAIRLY FUNNY AND CUTE AND WHOLESOME-- PLEASE, PLEASE HAVE MORE SCREENTIME IN S2. PLEASE LET THEM TAKE OVER THE SHOW. I KNOW THEY'RE HORRIBLE PEOPLE BUT I NEED MORE OF THE VEES.

And the most important scene of them all (to me):

First of all, how is Vox doing that. Second, you just know that these two douchebags are going to bang so hard with Alastor getting his ass kicked replaying in the background after this. I hate them so much.

[justaz]

like i’ve said time and time again, i haven’t watched bbc merlin in years but i was just wondering when the first time merlin called arthur by his name to his face and im scrolling thru the transcripts on the fandom wiki (supposedly it was s1ep4 btw) and im skimming the script for all these episodes and getting angrier and angrier. gaius was wrong for all that. morgana deserved so much better. edwin muirden was valid as hell (for targeting uther AND gaius. yeah. i said it.). also kilgharrah ate with that one lil line “then turn a blind eye. that is, after all, your talent” okay lizard brain pop offff.

[beanghostprincess]

the whole "doflamingo has always been evil" thing doesn't sit right with me. idk. maybe it's because i think the environment during childhood is what shapes someone's personality, especially if there's a traumatic experience. and call me crazy, but perhaps being raised in a world full of supremacists and classists with an extreme god complex can affect your views on the world and yourself at a very early age. and perhaps i'm being a bit insane here, but, like, idk. maybe being fucking tied up and tortured and seeing everything you love burnt down to ashes while a whole town tells you you're evil for your mere existence could make you develop a hatred towards them. and, wow! maybe i'm saying something wild, but if you're taking care of your little brother and an older man tells you you're the chosen one to create a fucking mafia and he boosts your god complex to an insane, unhealthy, and almost grooming-like extent, of fucking course you're gonna end up like doflamingo.

but idk, call me crazy.

[frigginconfused]

One mental break away from doing a non-stop twitch stream until I can afford a new house

[deltamel]

rewatched The Batman (2022) tonight and i forgot how utterly huge robert pattison looks as batman in this film... i feel completely normal about it, obviously. why do you ask?

[starheirxero]

JUST WATCHED THE NEWEST TSAMS EPISODE. Y’ALL BEST LEAVE THAT POOR BOY ALONEEE 😭 CAN’T A ROBOT HAVE A HOBBY……..

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

okay but what are the three nhthcth songs tho

So it’s important to note that Songs for me don’t always have a perfect correlation or fit with lyrics matching the story and is more based on the overall Vibe somehow clicking with what I want the story to be.

1. Bad Habits by The Federal Empire

This was the original Song and it was the background for the vast majority of plot creation. I listened to it so many times that skewed my Spotify wrapped to a ridiculous degree. It specifically became the Song because of Daisy and Jon’s relationship in nhthcth.

Like, when I build a plot, there’s a lot of jumping around and figuring out how it all fits together. It’s always a fun, pleasant surprise when my brain knits together the very separate parts and tells me how we get there. Which gives me a very distorted perspective of the story, because the order I get information in tends to be very different than the order y’all get information in.

nhthcth loosely went: initial Tommy bradstaff confrontation-> daisy and Jon buddy cop adventures-> horrible devastatingly sad backstory that got us there-> ohmygodisthatDannystoker-> rest of it

Bad Habits really had sort of off the cuff, mildly ill-advised and self-destructive, chaotic dynamic I wanted between Daisy and Jon. Like, I knew I wanted them to be really messy in this, because they were supposed to live in this sort of in-between in canon characterisations for them. They’d never had the buried, but they had to be past the point of “Daisy is hunt mad and wants to kill Jon in the woods.” They had to exist in this space where neither of them had progressed to the same point as they did in season 4 to stop feeding entirely and were in this sort of half-measure where they were trying to ignore the reality of their situation and make it work as best they can—and, you know, save the world while they went.

Like, I loved them so much. They committed so many crimes. Pov you’re spooky and you get brutalised in the woods by woman who looks like she kills people for the mob and man in cardigan who looks like he died last week. They were morally ambiguous and fucking hilarious. They weren’t allowed in France anymore. Dream team buddy cop between deeply violent woman and utterly exhausted man. I was obsessed. It was so fun and zany in my head.

Then I came up with the devastatingly sad parts and devastatingly sad ended up being the tone y’all got instead of fun and zany but it was too late the Song was set. Yes, Jon’s horrible traumatic past was created while listening to this fairly upbeat song. We get One Song per story it’s the rules of my brain.

But then it became so convoluted that it ended up getting more Songs, which was unprecedented.

2. Two Birds by Regina Spektor

The second song nhthcth, and I can’t say what part of the story it belongs to because we haven’t gotten to that part yet. I will say that it is a Song that belongs to Jon & Gerry.

3. Never Forget You by Noisettes

This is actually young Jon & Gerry’s Song. I really liked the fit for them because it sounds so upbeat and energetic with lyrics that are a little bittersweet.

Like, I can’t emphasize enough that Jon and Gerry were happy together. When they ran, they were genuinely happy kids who were glad to be alive for the first time in their own memories. They loved each other, they loved each and every adventure they went on, and even though they were in a completely shit situation, it was the happiest they had ever been. And even when they lost it, that period of their lives was always a sort of light they never let go of—and never stopped trying to get back.

This Song really had the jaunty, fun vibe that I wanted Gerry and Jon to have when they ran together, and there’s this overarching yearning and bittersweet reflection that I thought echoed how it ultimately would end in them being dragged back in the most painful way possible. It sort of acknowledged that it didn’t work out the way they hoped but it doesn’t diminish the joy and love that they had before it was lost.

[gelarshiesprofruitboarder]

hi do u think*gets dragged away to The Scary Dimension*

[imthatwannabeauthor]

.

[naruthandir]

"Likening Italy to Númenor" Ok who's gonna tell her.

Pretty good article shared on twitter by a Tolkien academic I follow that, whilst short, is excellent at introducing people to the indelible connections white supremacists have to the Lord of the Rings. This exert here is literally what I've been trying to explain for years.

[lennythereviewer]

My favorite Kingdom Hearts fact is that one of the biggest plot-holes that Nomura has never been able to meaningfully retcon or write his way out, a plot-hole so big that it fundamentally breaks the very rules the series is written on...

Is the existence of Steamboat Willie

Let me explain for the uninitiated:

In Kingdom Hearts 2, there’s a small detour in the story involving Maleficent trying to invade Disney Castle, the home of King Mickey. She can’t step foot in the castle due to an artefact of pure light that wards off darkness locked in the basement.

Pete, who is working for Maleficent, opens a door into the past (Before Disney Castle, this land was known as Timeless River) and decides to remove the artifact from it’s place in time so it won’t be there to stop them from getting in.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy chase Pete into the past thanks to another magic door provided by Merlin, and through some shenanigans involving old cartoons and teaming up with Pete’s past-self, they lock the door the villains are using, and return the artefact to it’s proper place so it can exist in the present.

You with me so far? Pretty straightforward-ish time-travel plot right?

Here’s where it goes off the rails.

Time travel would go on to become a staple of Kingdom Hearts going forward and would come with a very strict set of rules over how it operates:

1. You can only travel to a point in time where a version of yourself exists

2. You basically give up your body to do so, and travel as a disembodied soul unless you have a vessel to inhabit

3. You can’t alter the past in a meaningful way, what’s going to happen will happen

4. You lose your memories of said trip once you return, but your actions could leave a lingering instinct on your other self that could influence their decisions

“Wait” you may be thinking “Why should anyone go through all those hoops? Wasn’t time travel super simple that first time?”

And you’d be totally right, because the existence of Timeless River completely renders all of these rules and restrictions meaningless. 

There is no version of Sora that existed in Timeless River before he step foot there, everyone kept their bodies, the trio and Pete were able to mess with the timeline as freely as they pleased, and they all very much remember their trip. 

Nomura has never been able to meaningfully explain this super simple, easy way of time travel and the more convoluted method co-existing other than a cheap-throwaway line from one of the villains saying that Merlin “broke the rules” 

The hilarious part about this line is that it implies that PETE of all characters is actually more powerful than the actual villain of the series, because Pete opened a door into Timeless River through sheer willpower and nostalgia for “the good old days”

But the all-knowing chess-master of a villain who had an evil plan several decades in the making with countless moving parts and contingencies to account for had to use the roundabout, more complicated method of time travel where a lot could go wrong.

Pete though? Dude just casually broke all the rules of time travel because he felt like it. He's just built different.

TL;DR: Steamboat Willie breaks Kingdom Hearts lore in half, Pete is more powerful than Master Xehanort, and I fucking love this beautiful trainwreck of a series you guys it means so much to me

I love Kingdom hearts so much.

[psalmsofpsychosis]

there's a very, very distinct difference between the "i'm a lesbian because i hate men"/"i'm gay because i hate women" people and the "i'm a lesbian because i adore women"/"i'm gay because i adore men" people, and the former are freerange halal hunt for me come this open season

[snekdood]

i never get satisfaction out of winning. i dont like making other people feel lesser than. the short lived pride i have in myself for being so good at whatever doesnt matter to me when i look over at someone whos bummed about not winning. its such an unnecessary way to stroke my own ego.

I especially hate it when my lifes on the line, that its either win or die, and even the people who want me dead I dont like feeling "better than". none of it had to come to this. but what am i supposed to do when its someone else starting shit and I have no choice? am I just supposed to let myself die bc letting someone else feel like shit, someone i hate even, still doesnt feel good? It's a choice I dont want to make, but theres nothing else I can do.

[nitw]

OKAY REAL TALK. i'm on episode 5 rn. if this keeps up the way i think it is then this show is such a fucking genius adaptation, and i never would've seen it coming

like yeah, an animated scott pilgrim series authentic to the comics and the story bryan originally wanted to tell would've been amazing too. but when you think about it, SCOTT'S story has already been told to us more than a few times now. even if the live action movie took a different turn by accident, the overall message of "well-intentioned people can still make, and should still take responsibility for, mistakes that hurt those who care about them, and indifference will only end up hurting them back" still sticks for the most part.

but it's mainly been from scott's perspective. which makes sense! he's the main character, so, obviously!! but here's the thing: ramona has ALWAYS served as a reflection of scott's issues. ngl i think this is one of the most consistent things in the entire franchise, and it's why i love ramona so much. as we dive further into her backstory we learn just how much of a wall she's built around herself, how she's afraid of trusting people, but especially that, as sympathetic as she is, she's also caused so much (unintentional) damage herself. although she's introduced as someone literally too good to be true and unreachable by scott's standards, it becomes more and more apparent how similar scott and ramona are, and so they're perfect for guiding each other towards a brighter path.

and what better way to highlight this than to flip the tables completely, putting RAMONA center stage aka making the audience intimately familiar with her immediately, making SCOTT the mysterious damsel in distress/goal at the finish line instead, driving ramona to face the 7 evil exes and making amends with them in a way scott never could???

also can i just say. HUGE SHOUTOUT to the marketing team for hiding this reveal SOOOOO well. like seriously, i was worried they were showing TOO MUCH in the trailers BUT I WAS WRONG. WE GOT PLAYED SO HARD