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Turns out the horsemen of the Apocalypse now prefer to go by Shareholder Profit, Private Equity, Corporate Personhood, and Workforce Optimization.

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HEY.

I had the most interesting dream after falling asleep switching between the latest chapter of The Horrowing and a time travel fix it in another fandom. I thought you might enjoy a brief summary?

Post fic canon Annatar, Finrod, Celebrimbor, and Frodo getting the most hilarious do over of the First Age.

Finrod and Celebrimbor got dropped in their past bodies, bc same souls. Which has Finrod JUST captured by Sauron, before any of his 10 have been munched.

Celebrimbor is of course having a surreal not quite panic attack in Nargothrond.

Annatar, well. Annatar is CHANGED. He is quite literally too different from what he once was for them to qualify as the same soul anymore. Which is gratifying. If inconvenient bc there are now TWO of him, Annatar and full on Sauron. But they're similar enough that Annatar was dropped very close to Sauron.

Frodo is an elf. Dream logic was that hobbits do not exist yet, and his soul has touches of Annatar and Aman. He looks disconcertingly like a mix of Annatar and Celebrimbor, and they are NOT thinking about that right now. Hopefully ever.

Most of the dream centered around all of them doing their best to set aside freak outs, while getting Finrod and his merry band (plus Beren) OUT of Sauron's grasp.

There was a FANTASTIC moment where on the way out, Sauron comes face to face and soul to soul with Annatar and he's just like;

Sauron: *jaw dropped fully horrified face* WHAT are YOU?!?!?

Annatar: *shoving elves behind him, nose in the air* Wouldn't YOU like to know, weather boy. *uses Song to blast him through a wall while he's distracted*

The whole thing featured 10 other elves and Beren as a baffled peanut gallery.

Meanwhile Celebrimbor is weighing the pros and cons of just- drugging his uncles and shoving them in a back room somewhere where he can bolt the door. He thinks he can maybe get Huan to help if he explains?

It was SO much fun.

(hope you have a good day!)

Oh my god. This may be the best ask I've ever gotten, for so many reasons.

The fact that your subconscious was like "Yeah if Frodo's getting a new body it looks like Annatar For Some Reason"

The image of future!Annatar getting into a fight with Sauron in front of Finrod (probably happy about this development) and Beren and the other 10 (INCREDIBLY CONFUSED)

The fact that the dream was partially centered on everybody trying not to panic, which is in fact what the Harrowing is all about for a while

Absolutely incredible.

...I feel so bad for poor Celebrimbor dealing with Nargothrond all by himself while the others are off having adventures. I hope their next stop after the rescue is to swing by and pick him up. Also, I dearly want to know what Annatar has to say to Beren on the subject of his current Luthien-and-Thingol-and-Silmarils situation.

[butlookatthestars]

the thing about the mummy movies is that you really spend most of the time thinking "wow brendan fraser's character is so cool" or "man oded fehr is so mysterious and heroic" when the fact of the matter is that these two

are the absolute most batshit insane heroes in the entire franchise

these two are intellectual loner siblings with archeology backgrounds who read and speak ancient egyptian, hire a dude directly out of prison to take them to a lost city of gold, and fight mummies literally with their bare hands. twice.

no one in these movies stands a chance against the carnahans. frankly they're lethal in how willing they are to make the absolute and most undeniably deranged decisions. jonathan pickpockets a dude on fire. evy's resurrected from the dead and immediately remembers how to use sai. they're racking shotguns from a cliff in this scene and then proceed to blow away half the antagonists.

rick and ardeth should be so lucky

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The only step we can take is the next one

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Yes, having opposed Conservative plans for surveillance of the bank accounts of benefits claimants, now they're in government Labour's ableist ghouls have decided to put these proposals back on the table.

This would basically mean anyone claiming benefits - disabled people, people in low-paid and insecure employment, pensioners - would be treated as a likely criminal. Our bank accounts would be subject to surveillance. The discriminatory and invasive nature of these proposals should be clear to anyone. Labour's bottom line is, if you're disabled, if you're elderly and in need, if you're poor, you're suspect.

If you're in the UK, please sign and share this petition. If you're not in the UK, please share it anyway for reach. We need to kick up an absolute stink about this so that Starmer's ghouls are forced to back down.

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some quick lotr studies :]

prints

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I understand why a lot of people go with the idea that the Oath of Fëanor was magically binding. The angst, the idea of being forced to do something terrible, the whole theme of why magically binding oaths are unwise because you can never know what the future might bring and how those oaths might be twisted.

But to me, it has always been a more compelling idea that it wasn't magically binding. Just a normal promise like you or I might make. Because that then just turns the story into the worst kind of sunk cost fallacy.

And you might be thinking, surely if the oath wasn't magically binding they would have stopped? But no! Because the second Kinslaying, the first time the oath turns them against other elves, is Doriath.

Imagine your Father's greatest works have been stolen by the Enemy that then killed your grandfather, then your Father, then your Uncle, and a whole host of other friends and family. You have sworn this oath to bring him down, and you gladly devote yourself to it. But then Beren and Luthien steal a Silmaril. And of course Thingol isn't going to give it back to you, but maybe Dior will be more reasonable. Maybe you try diplomacy, maybe not, but eventually you march on Doriath. And maybe you aren't even intending to hurt anyone, just to threaten, because this is your Father's greatest work, it was blessed by the Valar, they have no right to it. But a situation like that is hard to control and violence breaks out and then -

And then three of your brothers - your younger brothers - are dead. You have killed the king and queen and sacked Doriath. You have at least contributed to the deaths of two children. And you still don't have the Silmaril. Of course you can't stop. To stop now would be to admit that the Silmaril isn't worth this and it has to be worth this because three of your brothers are dead and you are a murderer and if the Silmaril isn't worth this then you've done something terrible for no reason.

So you plan for Sirion. This time it has to work so you don't mess about. You chase Elwing to the cliffs, you make sure you've captured her children so you can barter them for the Silmaril (and so they aren't accidentally killed) - and Elwing throws herself and the Silmaril off the cliff.

So now you're a kidnapper and a murderer and reviled by all your folk - and you still don't have the fucking Silmaril. But you can't stop. Because if you don't get the Silmaril all of this will be for nothing.

So you attack your own people because you're desperate now, because your brothers are dead and your father is dead, and you've crossed every line you might ever have had, and finally, finally you get it. You get the Silmaril and you're allowed to leave and finally you have it -

And it's just a fucking rock.

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"immortality sucks because all your friends die" all your friends die anyway. those we do not mourn are those who mourn us.

"immortality sucks because you forget who you are" we always forget who we are. do you remember who you were at four years of age? who you were at fourteen? "who i am" is a shadow cast on the wall.

"immortality sucks because" skill issue. skill issue. skill issue. give me your liver

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“lol Arthur Conan Doyle clearly didn’t know anything about drugs. Sherlock Holmes did cocaine but it calmed him down. That’s not how cocaine works!”

There are two options: Arthur Conan Doyle had never met someone addicted to cocaine or he met some with ADHD who was addicted to cocaine

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ok so. I've been thinking. what if leia's "thing" is that she's imperceptible in the force. like, she's so innately powerful at shielding, she's just not there. Anakin didn't know padme was having twins because he literally couldn't sense leia's presence. yoda and obi-wan were fine with bail taking leia because they couldn't perceive her thoughts, even as an infant. neither reva nor vader could penetrate her mind. she spent years in the senate alongside palpatine and he had no idea she was force sensitive. the only person who can see leia for who she really is is the one who has been there from the beginning — luke.

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Art by Leah Gardner

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Night Watch is one of Sir Terry’s most hopeless novels - and, by the same token, because of the same things, one of his most hopeful.

It’s a parody - and I use that word very loosely, because there’s really nothing funny about it - of Les Miserables. It’s about a failed revolution, and a barricade, and the people who fought and died there for nothing. Nothing changes. Politics with a capital P goes on, and even the most pure and noble of intentions only becomes food for the pit of snakes who pull the strings. The powerful remain powerful, the powerless, despite their solidarity, their desperation, their violence, their hope, remain powerless. Their little lives don’t count at all. Things continue exactly as they always have, minus a few faces in the crowd.

It is also, I think, where we see Sam Vimes at his lowest. Sure, Thud! does similar things in stripping him down, but that is under an outside influence, and he has his family to think of. He has something to fight for.

In Night Watch, though, all of that is taken away. Sam Vimes, eternal cynic, for once has Cassandraic knowledge that his cynicism is absolutely founded. He knows how this will end, and there’s no Corporal Carrot to make the world magically better around him, no Sybil and Young Sam to push through for, no city to protect. The absolute best that he can expect is to succeed, and lose that family, that future, forever. The absolute worst? He dies. Everyone he cares about here dies. And it’s all in vain.

Sam Vimes is an alcoholic. It’s something that we tend to bring up when we’re talking about how amazing he is, how much he’s overcome, but gloss over otherwise. Which is a little sad, because it’s fundamental.

Sam Vimes faced this exact dragon, years ago. Sam Vimes saw there was no way to slay it. He saw the ants eating at the heart of every hope, every effort. He saw the first man he really knew as a good and kind and just - but never passive, never weak - man die, horribly, slain for no reason but petty grudge and Politics. He saw John Keel’s garden wither and die in its bed. He saw the hope of a better, brighter Ankh-Morpork squelched, and the sacrifice of a good man wasted. He saw the world, in all of its rotting, miserable, pestilent despair, spoiling every good thing that dared show its face, its only ordering principle the slow decay of entropy.

Young Sam Vimes had no anchor. Young Sam Vimes had nothing left to turn to but the bottom of a bottle and the smelliest part of an Ankh-Morpork gutter.

Sam Vimes, as of the events of Night Watch, is back there. Not only physically temporally displaced. He has nothing. There is no reason for him to stand up, to take on the role of John Keel, to take responsibility for the barricade, to try to bring Carcer back to justice. To fight the doomed fight. There is nothing between him and finding a quiet seat at the Broken Drum, ordering himself a pint, and giving up. There is nothing between him and despair.

But he gets up anyway. He intervenes anyway. He tries to help anyway, even when he can’t believe it will make any difference. And it doesn’t, in the end.

Except that people lived who, save for the actions of John Keel, would have died. Except it quite literally meant the world to them.

And that’s where the hope is hiding, in this hopeless, bleak, despair of a book. There is no glory. There is no revolution. There is no good thing that cannot be corrupted. There is no point. Except.

The Disc turns on the ‘except’. Always has. Always will.

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Hey now, you’re an all star

listen to what I orchestrated

SoundCloud

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Feeling very "and I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye, upon that little square of blue the prisoners call the sky" at work today.

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Rest in Peace, Bernard Hill 🤍🕊

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'the human body is perfect god doesnt make mistakes' what about wisdom teeth then. huh. gonna let those bastards grow in and fuck up your jaw for god. didnt think so