#enemies of books

[paintedcrows]

Whenever Bill sees KingOfNJ's fics through Stan's eyes he just thinks they have the same taste in fanfiction (disgusting. unthinkable) continued

[cloudabserk]

the fact that iwtv on amc managed to create an incredible compelling character such as louis out of the husk of a soul that was presented in the books is honestly amazing. tv show louis is my best friend. book louis watches paint dry for fun and i would hit him with a car.

[yourangle-yuordevil]

[Birds of a feather AU] Absolutely incapable of asking each-other out normally in every single universe <.<

[alicentswig]

the textpost is so rhaenicent fated lovers/enemies coded its crazy I had to okay

[nasirsagron]

Their growth is something that can be so personal

[timothyslucy]

TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!

[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."

[cygnus-is-tired]

Just caught up in Tiger, Tiger and I’m maybe a bit obsessed with Ludo and of course SEA SPONGES!!!!

Seriously the sea sponges were SO fun to draw

[sugbeky]

omg thats like so hot

[why-the-heck-not]

today very much wasn’t as cozy as the pictures of it, but let’s pretend it was

[aestheticbeautifulblog]

[talesofkai]

to the booklr community,

I am a refugee from booktok, however I am not new to tumblr, I’m new to booklr. Romantasy is my favorite genre, I have completed the Maasverse & I am currently rereading Fourth Wing & Iron Flame for the third time in preparation for Onyx Storm! I prefer hard cover books & clean pages & I love reading with campfire background noise. My favorite tropes are enemies to lovers & forced proximity. My reading goal for 2025 is 42 books! The next series I plan on reading is The Cruel Prince & The Stolen Heir series. I love spice in books but will read books without it too. I HATE spoilers! I will ALWAYS give a spoiler warning in any post I make & I will be careful with what I reblog as well for any friends I make on here. I want to make friends that like reading romantasy and have read books that I have read so that we can giggle and kick our feet together in the DMs while talking about our favorite books and sharing fanart (:

I hope this reaches the right people 🫶🏻

[thehobbitchronicles]

“different isn't bad; it's just not the same" — anne 🌿🪻🪺

[eve-to-adam]

"Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?" — The Cruel Prince.

Honestly, this illustration brought out the worst in me.

[fun-twisted-tales]

No hate to any shippers, I just think it’s funny meta wise

@ichiwashername-o

[daimiyamoto]

MANISH DAYAL as Ash Patel

THE WALKING DEAD: DARYL DIXON — THE BOOK OF CAROL Moulin Rouge