#props validation

[brw]

My least favourite type of internet person is the person who claims fanfic is over thousands of years old or whatever. I understand we like to joke but fanfiction is fundamentally tied to fandom culture and is a very specific way of engaging with media. Religious texts based off other religious texts is not fanfiction and it is worrying the only way you can justify your interest is by comparing the two. I promise you you don't have to reinvent the wheel to write fanfic you can just do that but we don't have to say "Shakespeare wrote fanfiction about Richard III", there was not a Richard III fandom in 1592, that was called the divine right of kings.

[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."

[remus-poopin]

Wait am I alone here?? Personally I love viewing the marauders + snape as sexist in some shape or form,, do people hate this?

[random-dragon-exe]

Creepy bug themed villains my beloved.

Some people say these villains are creepy and were scared of them as a kid. Heck, some are even still creeped out by them years later when they're older.

However, it did the opposite effect on me, because I really love them as villains. (Which I'll admit is ironic for me, I really dislike bugs and spiders)

Alao, their designs are so fucking cool. (Say what you will about Oogie being a literal sack), but they do their jobs at frightening people and the audience pretty damn well.

[your-local-femboy-bitch]

I love it when Vergil said "I am the storm" and approached all over the place.

[pastelplastic]

every time u make a post saying superman would do something important (attend Pride, attend Christmas, etc) in Gotham with the batfam rather than with his friends+family in the city he loves, an angel loses its wings

[eloiscbridgerton]

kinda fucked up that bridgerton season 3 took eloise and colin's very valid, very real grievances with penelope and turned it into "oh yeah we were just jealous of her this whole time" like... wtf was that

[fromtheseventhhell]

Seeing awful takes about Arya is even wilder knowing that people would lose their minds if we said the same things about their fave. Can you imagine if we were genuinely theorizing that Sansa's story ended with her dying, warging into a bird, and becoming a pet for one of her siblings? They would have a fit and call us all kinds of misogynistic, but they'll never explain why their logic is suddenly wrong when it's used for anyone except Arya

[qqquib]

a big thing with a lot of what dreams saying falls into stuff i’ve communicated to my therapist about. mainly being, who owes you communication in a situation like this? is it owed to him to get responses to people that don’t like him? is it owed to him communication about situations he is directly involved in from people who don’t like him? from people who don’t want to talk to him? (tommy having blocked dream)

it’s honestly so tough to say, especially with no one knowing truly what’s happened bc so much of it is private and between the CCs personally.

but it really comes down to, do these people owe dream this communication, and if not, where do you go from here?

if they do, i feel like this could all be easily avoided. let people tell dream that his actions have made them upset, and then he takes accountability and then they move on.

if they don’t, truly, they should stop talking about dream then. leave him alone, move forward and beyond that time in your life. is it fair to keep talking about him? i mean, sure, in private circles.

very tough, especially with all of this being so public. everyone should just state who they like/dislike and then not interact with people who they dislike, or keep interacting with people they do like.

[wandas-hands]

Gonna be real I literally have no idea what y’all are talking about when you say Paul and Chani have no chemistry, you must be watching a different movie series than me

[chaoticlandworlder]

Ngl the liam lawson hate is getting real tiring

[lavenderjewels]

feel so validated it was confirmed gojo killed the higher ups because I loved the page turner shock in chapter 223 of seeing the higher ups slaughtered after Gojo lightly talking to Gakuganji

[adulthumanproblem]

"Why would bigots hate asexuals, they don't even know what sex is 🙄"

Can you please just call me mentally ill? Thank you.

[streatfeild]

he‘s so…!!!!!!!

[fromtheseventhhell]

I know it's because they hate SanSan, but the fact that Stansas desperately want other characters to be attack dogs for Sansa yet ignore the Hound is hilarious

[jailedmoonshine]

y'know it's funny I'm rereading that essay I posted a couple days ago responding to that ask about radfems and i find it funny how there are still people who claim that "the elimation of gender and gender stereotypes is the goal" as if there aren't people out there who /enjoy/ performing gender, even if it's stereotypically