souichisan

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WATCH: An Interactive Mirror Built from 450 Rotating Penguins by Daniel Rozin (video)

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I think the reason so many LOTR ripoffs fail is because they make their Aragorn analogue the main character, when the entire point of Aragorn is that he’s “the person the villains think is the main character, but is Not.”

Aragorn seems like a traditional King Arthur style hero— he has huge Main Character Energy because he’s supported by destiny, by bloodline, by all these magic artifacts and prophecies, and etc etc. Frodo and Sam are Just Some Guys. Aragorn recognizes that Sauron understandably thinks he’s the main hero of this story ….and he pretends to believe it too, spending the entire series using himself as a diversion to prevent Sauron from seeing Frodo and Sam.

Aragorn’s whole thing is that knows he seems like the Main Hero of this legend to people who don’t know better —- but he also knows that he isn’t, and that his role is just to keep Sauron’s eye on him in order to protect the people around him.

And it works! Sauron is so fixated on defeating his Legendary Destined Archenemy with Extreme Main Character Energy that he completely overlooks the two ordinary little guys who were the real threat to him all along.

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ALUCARD in CASTLEVANIA: NOCTURNE (2023)

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the death note official art is the only thing keeping me going

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I just think people write out of obligation too often.

"How do I motivate myself to write through the boring part of my story?"

"How do I make this boring scene not boring?"

Don't write it.

Don't write boring things just because you think the structure of the story demands it. I promise it doesn't need to be there.

If your characters need to have gone shopping for a later part of the story to make sense you can just have a sentence about how they went shopping and move on.

You are not obligated to write the boring parts. No matter what those parts are.

You are not obligated to make the parts of your story that you're not excited to write interesting somehow.

You can just write the fun and interesting parts and gloss over and summarize boring things.

Your audience will thank you and you will thank yourself.

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do not. respond to my doylist criticism with a watsonian explanation.

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I am consuming a media and you are going to hear about it

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There’s such a delicious enjoyment for me in scenes that are fights between two people that are so brutal because of how intimate their relationship is. They WILL bring up ancient history, they WILL stab you in all your weakest parts, and yeah most sexy of all, they WILL say things to each other they can never unsay. It’s fighting as an act of intimacy (derogatory). Evil sex scene. Nothing better

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Gender Roles & Faramir's Ultimate Triumph

How Tolkien plays with gender with Faramir and Eowyn is just so bonkers because traditionally, a woman shows her virtue through resisting sin, resisting temptation, maintaining her purity, and inspiring others to goodness, while men show their virtue through deeds and accomplishments.

Of course, for Eowyn and Faramir, this is the other way around.

Eowyn's great deed, her great triumph, is a martial feat, her destruction of the Witch King.

For all that Faramir's a skilled soldier, his two great triumphs are not in battle, in fact the defence of Osgiliath fails, but in acts of virtue, in resisting the Ring, and in healing Eowyn and inspiring her to turn towards hope and peace.

Faramir's ability, and his willingness, to take on this traditionally "feminine" role is so crucial for both their happy endings.

For Eowyn, she has not only suffered due to being barred from fighting for her country, and having freedoms deemed "masculine", but also for having the "feminine" responsibilities fall entirely on her shoulders, being forced to act as a "dry nurse" with no respite, crushing down the extent of her unhappiness and anger with her situation and her country, out of "duty" (in Gandalf's words) to Eomer and her male relations.

Understanding that Faramir will meet her in the middle, take on those emotional and caretaking duties, seek out her thoughts and feelings, (and Eomer too, hopefully, considering the words Gandalf gave him in the Houses of Healing and his own response), is integral to understanding Eowyn's happy ending.

Not only does she now have freedom to do things, to go to Rohan to help rebuild, to return to Gondor to marry Faramir, to go to Ithilien to restore it and make things grow, to heal things and fix things, at her will, instead of staying behind trying to tend things and hold things together so others can fight to put things to right, but she is also freed from the crippling duties of being the only person in her family to take on the "woman's" duty of acting as caretaker and dry nurse.

Meanwhile, for Faramir, as I have noted above his defence of Osgiliath, which, had his narrative followed the "traditionally male" route, would have have been his moment of martial victory, proved futile. Not only that, the two people he loved best, his father and brother, were lost, and lost to despair.

Faramir was the one having the dreams that brought Boromir to Rivendell, Faramir was meant to go in his stead. But he didn't, and Boromir died. Then, when it seemed Faramir was dying also, the loss of his son and the end of his bloodline was the final straw that saw Denethor succumb to despair.

However, Faramir is able to triumph, to defeat despair, on falling in love with Eowyn, and through his kindness and virtue, having her fall in love with him, thus renewing her desire to live, saving her where he failed to save Denethor and Boromir.

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"tragedies: the love was there"

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Tender things

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fuck an "intended audience" how about we normalize engaging with new and unfamiliar art pieces on their own terms

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"He would not fucking say that" but it's "He would not handle someone having a breakdown in front of him like that."

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the first law of tragedies: the end is already written and inevitable. the second law of tragedies: your actions are all your own and you can choose to get off this ride whenever you want. the third law of tragedies: we both know that you are never going to do that.

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"How can you like these very toxic and horrible characters that have done despicable and unforgivable things?" oh it's quite simple actually, this is fiction and I think with my dick.

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i think one thing that will really invariably get me to click out of a fic immediately, if i even get as far as opening it in the first place, is He Would Not Fucking Say That’s hornier cousin “he would not fucking fuck that hard or that prolifically”. like when regardless of canon personality a character enters the bedroom and immediately becomes this almost christian grey parody ultra suave dom with dubious bdsm practices and it’s like. i’m very sorry but i truly hand on heart do not think he knows how to use his dick like that

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Girl are you the Hays Code the way you consider media irredeemable if it depicts anything that strays away from the norm you're comfortable with or depicts anything morally questionable without definitively condemning it and anyone associated with it, therefore creating worse stories and content and making it difficult for people to engage with complicated issues from a nuanced and controlled perspective?