#i mean twitter literally

[thesorrowoflizards]

i am BEGGING twitter to stop showing me doctor and clara content. begging. please. please please please. what do i have to do

[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."

[dykedvonte]

Its really interesting that Jimmy’s chair is the one tilted away from the screen in this shot:

It’s indicative of how his and Jimmy’s dynamic was. He’s not staring ahead at the screen, he’s not paying attention to what they are doing. Curly is the only one looking forward. Jimmy quite literally couldn’t see the responsibility Curly had or was doing. Jimmy likely slacked off and avoided most of his duties. I mean the one time we know he pilots the Tulpar he steers it wrong and loses the team 4000 credits. Even in the positions they held objectively, Curly was always taking responsibility for Jimmy. Not to mention the “We can fix this” and only one chair at attention. Jimmy never had intentions to fix anything, throughout the game, throughout his entire relationship with Curly. Curly always fixed it? Why would it be any different here?

If he even took the slightest bit of responsibility, he would’ve stayed in the cockpit to see his plan through. In the end Curly did what Jimmy always expected him to do for him and took responsibility. Did what he always did and took responsibility at the wrong time…

[clouvu]

Genshin catgirl yuri on the brain

[cozylittleartblog]

when valve has enough money to buy god, but they let bots ruin their game for 5 years and dox people 🤖🔫 #FIXTF2

everyone who signs this 100k+ petition will have their name printed and sent to valve HQ. this shit is unacceptable.

[mx-nada]

they r qpps to me

[royalarchivist]

Fit: It's Friday, where's Pac? Where's Pac? You know, I mean- I- I just– I'm just– I'm just wondering what... why he's not on right now, you know? [Stammers] I- I- I- like, I mean- it- it's– How are we supposed to be Morning Crew if we don't have the full Morning Crew? You know? [Reading Chat] Yeah, that dude asleep!

Fit: Pac is– He's getting his beauty sleep right now, much like Ramon. Not that he– not that he needs beauty sleep. Don't misconstrue my words.

[pseudophan]

i love that we get special treatment on the rpf pills because even though they’re an actual couple which would normally get them disqualified we were just so batshit insane for so long that they let us stay anyway

it's sooo funny watching people try to submit other actual couples and getting rejected cause they don't qualify meanwhile phan is both on the list and recognised as an actual couple by the host of the poll. it's only right though like even if they'd been a confirmed couple for 20 years at this point they would still be one of perhaps a handful of quintessential rpf pairings of all time

i'm still botting the fuck out of the form btw and will probably continue to do so until it closes. i feel like we can't actually win it because some fandoms just have a lot of people willing to bot it non stop like this but idk maybe no one goes as hard as some did last year.. i just want a respectable placing at least. but ideally i do want to win it honestly mostly because people are gonna be so mad if the one actual couple win the whole thingshchdncbfjf

[sergle]

what I was talking abt earlier. we have fully looped back around and away from feminism, societally, whereas before it was very Feminism 101 to acknowledge that many parts of existing as a woman in a misogynistic society are painful and upsetting. not that being a woman is Inherently Negative in a bubble. but that living on this earth, in the conditions we're living in, is hostile to women. and that gender is a performance. that many of the Staples Of Femininity as accepted by society are things that you have to create and perform and mold artificially and aren't inherent, that COMPLAINING about day to day difficulties of existing as a woman is something that you're allowed to do. acknowledging these basic, again, feminism 101 things, that something tied to womanhood is more time consuming or more expensive or more dangerous Because Of The Problems. does not CREATE the problems. that when women complain about having to perform femininity, they are not, in fact, oppressing themselves. the call does not come from inside the fucking house. saying that you HAVE suffered does not fucking equate that you believe you SHOULD have suffered.

like I could talk about this for hours. how braindead and one-dimensional the Takes are getting. "being a woman is looking in the mirror and going fuck yeah i'm a woman" damn. I guess any negative experiences you have by living in a misogynistic world... are your fault if you are anything but positive? "you don't actually want liberation" we've fully gone back to telling feminists "you WANT to be oppressed" when anything negative about our society is pointed out. it's not real until I say it out loud, I guess, and then I'm actually the one who caused it. if anybody expresses any unhappiness with how they're treated or the status quo or the language and culture surrounding womanhood and femininity. they've created it, right that second. they invented it just now. it wasn't a problem before somebody complained, right? also trans women aren't braindead zombies who just follow the flow of whatever cis women around them say. I am pretty fucking sure they are very much aware of pain, and are MORE than aware of the swirling torrent of misogyny and standards of femininity than anybody else. actually. and I am pretty sure someone complaining on tumblr that being a woman means always putting on a performance is going to make someone change their mind about transitioning. also "performing femininity" as a necessity to being treated well as a woman is not fucking NEWS to your Local Trans Woman. I AM PRETTY SURE SHE GETS THE CONCEPT. using trans women as a scapegoat for this braindead perspective on gender politics is spineless, meritless, and pathetic.

[dnpbeats]

besties... a passenger princess is not the same thing as a pillow princess,,,, what do u think the power part of power bottom means

[infernaleikon]

Forever thinking about that one obikin commission you said on X you got from the magnificent artist skynobi. Will you ever share it with us wretched and needful fellow obikin souls?

Like a Christmas present for us poor beggars 🥺

it's so sweet that you remembered that. every few days i myself remember i have it and go stare at it for a bit. and because you asked so nicely, here it is. artist, as you said, is the wonderful @skynobi

[shatter-song]

[naomistares]

even though rejoice mini comic #1 ended up doing really well on twitter, i'll use tumblr to post updates occasionally ! (twitter makes me nervous)

2nd mini comic is looking to be 19 pages (but ill probably make it 20... i hate odd pages). i have finals rn but i am gods most efficient machine watch me finish this mid finals.

it's a quite linear and silly, takes place 5 ish years before main comic events. kind of meaningless to all but me, but its the type of thing that's funny to look back at once you know more.

that is all, will probably take a few more weeks... but i'm enjoying working on this one way more! there r some cool panels in there

[infinite-beginnings]

My George video!!!

In case you were curious about the latest book he has read and his go to hype song.

Also DBDA Fandom, we have a job to do now 😅

I also shared with him that I lost my grandfather to Parkinson's Disease recently and he had some really really sweet words to share (I didn't include that part of the video but I just wanted everyone to know how kind and thoughtful he is)

[bbyboybucket]

I’m completely mind blown, wtf is going with fans that they’re FAT-SHAMING Bucky/Seb Stan after the thunderbolts trailer? Like bro looks gooddd, and that is a farrrrr cry from fat. Tf are y’all hating on him for that’s so ???

[hkthatgffan]

If you're following this account on Bluesky thinking it's Alex Hirsch, it's NOT him and Alex has confirmed it!

The account was already pretty sus, given it misspelled his name in the handle and the fact that if Alex himself had joined Bluesky, he would've said so by now. It was pretty clear it was a fake page but now we got confirmation from Alex Hirsch himself that it's not him.

A lot of people including Dana Terrace and some big names in the GF fandom are following that page. However, there's a popular extension that automatically follows Bluesky accounts of people you follow on Twitter. So, it likely was that what many who follow it used and it misinterpreted that account as being Alex's...hence why it caused so many people to follow that imposter account.

If you are following that page, unfollow it now and report it!

The fake account's handle is alexhirsh.bsky.social