#he’s inane…

[vanillainwater]

The return of cyberpunk nishiki… now in HD! (And at the club)

Who is the lady? Idk, some random cyberpunk lady I guess. Point is NISHIKI GETS THE LADIES.

But no amount of ladies can fix the fact that from the neck down he’s 90% metal…. And that he’s inane… inane… in the membrane…

But who cares about that when you have DRIP!!!

[mirellapryce]

Today's stupid thought - Charles showing his parents to Edwin and Crystal, then pointing out an urn on the mantelpiece and just saying, "That's me :D"

[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."

[phoenixkaptain]

I love the relationship between Ra’s and Tim in the Red Robin run because it reads fundamentally as an unrequited crush. Between an old man who is so rich he will never spend all his wealth, a man who is considered to be charming in the same way a snake is, a man who is more powerful than the majority of other villains just on the strength of his legacy alone.

And.

A seventeen-year-old boy who has not slept in three days since the last time someone drugged him, has not showered in three weeks unless you count being thrown into a river, has not cleaned his room since he was three and his parents still payed attention to him.

And when I tell you which one has the crush on the other, that’s it, that’s the ultimate punchline, DC may never reach these peaks of comedy ever again.

[brodorokihousuke]

a story in two parts

[ddarker-dreams]

blade doesn't have the heart to say no when you ask to draw lil doodles on his bandages .............

[slutforpringles]

Sky: Was the move on George intentional, when you turned in? Max: Does it matter? Sky: I think so, to people watching. Max: Yeah? Okay, that’s great. I prefer to speak about the race.

[an-organized-confusion]

Good job shooting yourself in the foot by getting Logan started here, Roman.

Good job, buddy. /amused

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

was fooling myself thinking i could get anything done today. hello pals do any of you have DA fic recs under 10-15k???(cant do much longfic via text for eye/brain reasons, tho if theres any kind of audio version this rule does not apply)??? pls self promo me your one shots/short chapter fics. i need Distractions real bad but i don't wanna deal with AO3 random searching today :|

[anghraine]

Every time I read it, I'm amused by Elizabeth getting so distracted by Caroline Bingley's uhhh objectively enthralling attempts to flirt with Darcy that she (Elizabeth) stops reading to listen to them. And I do think it's kind of hilarious that the interaction between them absolutely confirms her opinion of not only Caroline but Darcy, even though he's not really doing anything other than getting annoyed at being continually interrupted while trying to write a letter to his sister.

[phoenixkaptain]

Reading the novelization of A New Hope already changed how I saw Luke as a character but Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is going one step further and making me question the very fundamentals thought to be obvious about Luke.

Like, Luke is, for lack of a better term, a nerd. He studied languages and cultures -

“”Yes,” Luke admitted modestly. “I used to study a lot about certain worlds, back on my uncle’s farm on Tatooine. It was my only escape, and educational as well. This,” and he indicated the creature resting a massive long arm on his head and shaking him in a friendly fashion, “is a Yuzzem.””

-he wants to study more languages and cultures-

“Empty doorways beckoned to him and he was tempted, very tempted, to enter one of the ruined structures to find out if its interior was as well preserved as the outside.

This was not, he reminded himself firmly, the time for playful exploration. Their first concern was to find a way out, not to go poking around this ancient metropolis. However wonderful it was.”

Luke wants to know about people. He wants to know about cultures and creatures and he wants to be able to communicate and…

He really just. Is a great Jedi. He jumps between Leia and danger and he befriends the Yuzzem the prison guards thought would kill him and he wants to explore the creepy abandoned ruins of a civilization long past and he uses Anakin’s lightsaber underwater to cut the stem of a lilypad they use as a boat and he comments that the rock formations are almost too beautiful to cut down and he knows how to work Imperial explosives and

He’s a Jedi, man. He’s a Jedi. He’s been a Jedi this whole time, before any of us even knew what that actually meant.

[graham--folger]

can someone explain to me why im tearing up over the description for trimax vol 10 on amazon calling wolfwood "the protector of our story's hero". like that's six words why am i in shambles

[baeshijima]

3.2 PATCH NOTES !!

REDEEM CODES

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REDEEM HERE

BANNERS

phase one : castorice, fugue, jiaoqiu, acheron

phase two : anaxa, dr ratio

QUESTS

main story: through the petals in the land of repose

new mission type: finality (this specific quest for this update is a complementary piece to the penacony main storyline to fill in missing pieces - the inheritance war, a second storyline for the stellaron hunters, ipc, masked fools, and other factions + true ending of white night)

MAPS

styxia

dawncloud

EVENTS

seal slammers + pet reward "bubbles"

morning starlight

star rail world (2nd anniv event) + new 4* light cone

2 year anniv events

top-up bonus reset + rewards for certain amounts of oneiric shards

MISC

new boss: pollux

auto salvage function

"tidal bounty" update

"as i've written" update

concert

anniv animated short

FREE LIMITED RUAN MEI OR LUOCHA OR STANDARD CHARACTER (the tokens used are permanent but the limited characters will change, so u can either claim luocha or ruan mei during this period or save the tokens for possible future limited characters !!)

CUSTOMISABLE PITY POOL (choose up to 7 to be in the 50/50 loss pool; seele, blade, fu xuan in the first batch of possible limited to lose 50/50 to)

new limited light cones added to exchange shop (no time limit)

silver wolf, blade, kafka, jingliu will receive buffs

ANOTHER FREE UNKNOWN 5* THIS YEAR

animations to be included in future main storyline (kind of like hi3 ???)

new myriad celestias

POSSIBLE HINT TO MARCH AND DAN HENG NEW FORMS ????

[wyrddogs]

In other news, I have a one-week-old greyhound puppy sleeping inside my sweatshirt. He is warm and soft.

How is your morning going?

[triaelf9]

FYI for folks who want to follow someone for dragon age stuff without the petty drama and discourse, I'm here, this is the account for you XD

If you know me, you know what I mean when I say petty. tldr not all dragon age discourse is petty, but my space will be CHILL