#i wanted to find something...anything...
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
lonesomedreamer · 3 months ago
Text
“The Rings of Power” Liveblog: Udûn (Episode 6)
Or: how does this episode have by far the highest rating of the season on IMDb?!
Starting with the Orcs again. No thanks. I just don’t find the supposed mystery of Adar’s identity very compelling.
“Where is he? What happened to Sauron?” Speaking of mysteries, they were never even remotely subtle about Sauron’s in-show identity, were they?
Some obvious CG/hokey stunts ensue…the construction of buildings in Middle-earth must be really shoddy, because the tower crumbles almost instantly and was apparently held together by some ropes??
Nothing about the Southlanders’ plan is explained/clarified in any way. They’re going back to their village to “make [it] ready,” but ready for what? A siege? (As if.)
Galadriel offers Isildur some wise-sounding words about the value of humility. But she certainly isn’t speaking from her own lived experience…
“You have the look of your father.” This must have been written before any roles were cast: the actor who plays Isildur looks nothing like the one playing Elendil! Funnily enough, he does resemble Bronwyn and especially Theo, but I’m sure that’s just coincidence.
The Southlanders were feeling hopeless/powerless enough to surrender to the Orcs literally one day earlier, or did I imagine that??
This (slightly paraphrased) Tolkien quote about passing Shadow is beautiful and moving…except it doesn’t make sense to put it in Bronwyn’s mouth. It doesn’t sound like the kind of language we’ve heard these villagers use. Besides, it’s not a line of dialogue in the book.
“It is believed that one of the Valar watches over growing things.” Her name is Yavanna, and you should say that!
This scene with Arondir and Bronwyn looks good, and it would be touching if I was actually interested in their underbaked romance.
Tumblr media
I can’t tell if this scene is ripping off the Jackson movies, Game of Thrones, or both, but either way it feels…low-stakes. The scale isn’t there. Why do the Orcs care so much about this one village? Are these the only free humans left in the Southlands? If so, they should be easy to subjugate. If not, and without Sauron, what’s their significance?
This scene is going on forever, AND it’s become unwatchable grimdark nonsense with some added eye gore/horror to revolt me, specifically.
The actors, Bronwyn and Theo in particular, are giving it their all. It’s not their fault that I’m not remotely invested in what happens to them.
Tumblr media
How tf does time work on this show? When did the Númenórean forces land? How close is this village to the coast? And how many horses did they bring with them on their three little ships?!?
How did they know to come to this village? Is this Halbrand’s home? (iirc he’s supposed to have amnesia or something, so he wouldn’t even know!) I have to ask again: is this the only village in the Southlands???
Tumblr media
Horrendous costume design. I award them zero points.
Isildur told Galadriel that he’s stablehand! But now he has his own armor, weapons, and a horse and is being given orders on the battlefield by the queen herself…?
“The item he possesses: he must not escape with it.” Adar: immediately escapes with it.
Halbrand asks Adar if he remembers him, because they almost could not be broadcasting his [Halbrand’s] identity any louder.
Their half-assed explanation of the Orcs’ origin story is maybe the only worthwhile thing to come out of this episode so far…(checks watch) 47 minutes in.
“I killed Sauron.” Too bad you can’t kill a Maiar (see example A: Gandalf) the way you can a normal person. Galadriel should know that.
“We are all creations of the One…the same as you.” This is great philosophy in, say, Star Trek, but in Tolkien’s universe it’s…not true? Elves and Men are the Children of Ilúvatar (Eru, lit. “the One”), while Orcs were created by Morgoth out of spite and envy as a mockery of the Elves. They’re the product of torture and evil magic. Ilúvatar reprimanded Aulë for making the Dwarves, and he made them out of love! The writers want me to feel sympathy for their horror movie monster Orcs because, idk…they have names?
“Your kind was a mistake, made in mockery.” The thing is, she isn’t wrong.
Galadriel is pretty spiteful and bloodthirsty herself. If only they’d made ambition her driving force. Less “relatable,” maybe, but so much truer to the character.
Love that all these villagers just accept the first decent-looking dude who claims to be their “true king” with no questions asked. Very Monty Python of them.
Tumblr media
Reverse Excalibur, but make it evil and able to operate a giant Rube Goldberg machine! How stupid.
Tumblr media
They could have just made a show about Elendil, the fall of Númenor, and the Last Alliance. It probably would’ve been better, and there would be more of his face.
Tumblr media
“The look of his father,” apparently.
Mount Doom origin story? Incredibly dumb. So dumb. No one asked for or needed this.
The Good:
Some very pretty landscape shots
Galadriel’s chain mail is sparkly and aesthetically pleasing
They almost made me feel something re: Theo and Bronwyn.
An explanation of Orc origins at last (though I’m unsure why the show treated that as some big mystery in the first place)
Decent to good acting for the most part
The Bad:
Did we just…forget the rest of the show existed? No Lindon? No Khazad-dûm? Not even any Harfoots??? Even though I’m still mad about the idiotic mithril subplot, at least the Elves and Dwarves make the show feel fantastical and Tolkien-adjacent. To me this was dark, depressing, and unlovely—tonally, a Two Towers kind of episode but without any of the whimsy/charm that cut through the book’s gloom. A discount, low-effort GOT.
The battle scene went on forever. It was hard to see anything, unpleasant to watch what little you could see, and it all felt kind of meaningless.
To expand on that: this whole episode was UGLY. Especially for a show whose biggest redeeming feature is its lush visuals.
Either tell us Halbrand is [redacted] already or try to mislead us. Don’t just keep winking awkwardly at us!
The overall writing has serious problems. Too many things are convenient, inconsistent, contradictory, totally illogical, and/or explained either poorly or not at all. A lot of this could be alleviated by having more episodes to explore/develop the story and characters more thoroughly…some of it’s plain old bad writing, though.
Why are they earnestly trying to make us sympathize with Orcs via Adar while also making the Orcs…like that?
My already-teetering suspension of disbelief toppled out of a window watching this one. The unbelievable speed of the Numenoreans’ travel—both by sea and land—combined with the whole “evil Sauron sword-hilt that destroys a dam and starts a chain reaction that activates Mount Doom and destroys the Southlands” thing and the fake-out ending (half of the MCs seeming to be consumed by pyroclastic flow)… Someone shared a Tolkien quote that perfectly sums up the problem with this:
The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.
So yeah…this feels like a bad Game of Thrones episode—and apparently that’s what people want, because it has rave reviews compared to the other seven. But this show claims to be Tolkien-inspired, and imo it should therefore aspire to emulate Tolkien’s style more than it does Martin’s. This was not Tolkien. If this episode is your particular cup of tea—which is fine!—your fantasy is probably in another castle.
4 notes · View notes
inkskinned · 2 years ago
Text
probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
#this is true#writeblr#warm up#relatedly for some reason one of our Favorite Jokes#amongst the Siblings#is like - ''this is so good u will love it''#while we are reacting to something we OBVIOUSLY find viscerally disgusting#like we will be actively retching and be like ''nooooo it's so good''#to the point that i sometimes get nervous if someone outside my family is like oh u should try it its good#(obvi we never force each other to eat anything. we are all just curious birds and#like. we're GONNA try the new thing.)#edit to answer why we had so much vanilla:#my mom is a very good cook and we LOVE to bake. so she just had a lot of staples in the house.#it's one of those things that's like. have u ever continuously thought ''ah i should get butter im probably out''#even tho u are not out of butter. so u end up with like 5 years of butter.#my mom would do that in a costco but like with vanilla extract#to be fair we WERE always using WAY TOO MUCH bc we were kids#so like she was right to stock up#ps. yes we were VERY sick after this lol i just didn't want to include it in the post in case ppl had an ick about that#u can tell it's real bc we knew "oh no we fucked up that's too much vanilla to waste'' but our reaction was to just. keep drinking it#> sibling understanding that vanilla extract isn't free > knowledge mother doesnt mind if we use it for milkshakes#> sibling choice to maybe get in a loophole of ''not wasting it'' if we drink it bc that's the same as using it (not throwing it out)#listen bud i was like 13 and my sister was like 9#when my mom discovered this we. got in. A LOT. of trouble. a lot of it. a LOT of it.#3rd edit bc i guess it isn't clear - i am 1 of my brother's 2 little sisters#i am the middle child#out of all the ways i have had to explain a post before being like ''did u forget a middle child can happen'' is my favorite
63K notes · View notes
morganbritton132 · 7 months ago
Text
Eddie, posting to Tiktok at three in the morning: I think it’s perfectly okay if you’re a restless sleeper or you sleepwalk. That’s fine. I just think you should have goals…that’s not leaving my house.
Eddie: That makes it sound like I kidnapped someone. I didn’t. It’s just… My husband has been walking around in a circle for the last fifteen minutes
Eddie: And I want to go to bed but I can’t until he does because he has this bad habit of escaping and ending up at a hospital…or the woods.
Eddie: And yeah, I’m glad he’s not trying to break my ribs or- *flinches in surprise when a hand is suddenly shoved in front of his face*
Eddie, eyes flickering off screen: …yes?
Steve, after a long pause: Six dollar
Eddie, who adores sleeptalking Steve: For what?
Steve: Book fair
Eddie: …I have never wanted to live in your brain more than I do right now.
2K notes · View notes
ciderjacks · 6 months ago
Text
despite Laios low self esteem making him think that if he’d been eaten, Chilchuck and Marcille wouldn’t have helped Falin,
theres a small part of me that thinks the reason Chilchuck stayed with the party and went back in the dungeon in the first place was because he didn’t want to leave Laios alone. That Laios was moreso the reason he stayed.
#dungeon meshi#chilaios#OK SORRY. THE DEMONS. I REALLY DID NOT WANT TO LIKE THIS PAIRING. I DIDNT. BUT. HHH. FHFHJFJV. I FEEL CRAZY. LET ME EXPLAIN.#Pre canon it seems Laios is the person Chilchuck is really the closest to#He gets along with Namari and they are probably way better as buddies than he and Laios but#He and Laios seem *closer*#If that makes sense#Laios calls him his first name enough and without any issue or hesitation from Chilchuck#That I sort of inagine its not like. A misunderstanding. Laios is on a first name basis with him for a reason.#He also worries probably more than anyone about Laios#And his biggest criticism of him is that hes “reckless”#he’s comfortable around Laios in a very specific way and so is Laios around him#and in the series he shows many times that he’ll risk his life to protect Laios#Like staying with him to confront the elves because he was worried Laios would say something stupid#Hes the first one to run up to him when Falin punches him#I mean I think he was also going back for Falin like its not like I think he doesn’t care about her or anything#He clearly does#But I don’t know if he’d have gone back if Laios hadn’t#And if Laios had been eaten I think he wouldn’t have even had to be convinced by Falin#I also think Marcille would’ve gone back for him but probably more bc Falin was going back#Like sort of a reversed thing#AGAIN not that I don’t think she cared about Laios at the beginning either#But she before the story she was mostly Falin’s friend who knew Laios through Falin#She only really got to know him when Falin got eaten and they had to do a team building exercise#Though now I sort of want to see an actually reversed scenario#Bc we also know that Chilchuck is sort of uncomfortable around Falin (said in relationship chart)#So I would love to see them be forced into a team building exercise to find a person they both love the way Laios and Marcille were
1K notes · View notes
laurellala · 11 days ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Fun fact! This was the real tipping point that made Edgeworth run away after AA1, they just couldn't show it on screen because they didn't have the rights to Chappell Roan's music <3
(A spiritual successor to my "Hot to Go" joke from this post. Image description under the cut below)
[Image ID: a four page black and white comic of characters from ace attorney.
The Judge stands solemnly at his podium holding a gavel "Mr. Miles Edgeworth, you are on trial for the murder of blah blah blah..."
A cheerful Maya Fey leans over to Miles Edgeworth, who is staring straight ahead and looking very concerned
Maya: "Psst! Mr. Edgeworth! If you win your trial, can I show you Chappell Roan?
Miles: "What the hell, sure." Internally he thinks "Oh God I am going to jail"
A box saying "later" in the top corner of the next panel marks the passage of time.
The Judge smiles as he says "I declare you... Not Guilty!"
We see a full body shot of Maya dancing excitedly while Miles looks on, emotionless
Maya: YIPPEE omg you're going to LOVE this
Miles internally thinks "oh no, the consequences of my actions.
We see Miles standing in between Phoenix Wright and Maya looking apprehensive. Maya beams in excitement, while Nick puts a reassuring hand on Miles' shoulder
Miles: Alright, so what is this exactly?
Nick: She's a pop musician Maya really likes
Maya: You promised you'd let me show you, and it's legally binding because you said it in a court room!
Miles: That is not how the law works Ms. Fey
Maya: Shh just listen!
We see a panel of Miles' pensive face concentrating as he listens to "Hot to Go". He thinks to himself "hm".
Another panel zoomed in more. His pensive expression has grown more tense/confused as he listens to "Red Wine Supernova". he again thinks to himself "Hm" in a larger thought bubble.
We zoom out again to see Nick, Miles, and Maya standing together again. Miles stares forward blankly, eyebrows raised. Maya excitedly leans in.
Maya: Ok, that's her whole discography. So! What did you think?
Nick looks at him, waiting for his response
We get a panel of Miles, looking bewildered. He starts to speak "I..."
We cut again to see the three of them standing together.
Miles: I... don't think I like women?
Miles looks shocked and confused. Nick is bent over laughing, using a hand on Miles's shoulder to support himself. Maya looks outraged and appalled!
Maya: MR. EDGEWORTH! Just because you don' like her musi it doesn't give you an excuse to be sexist!
We see a panel of Miles looking stressed and confused. He leans his head on one of his hands, which messes up his hair, showing how he isn't his normal put together self.
Miles: I should rephrase that. What I mean is, Ms. Roan is clearly VERY assured in her feelings towards women. I was... unaware that anyone felt that strongly. I thought we all viewed these things with a vague sense of distaste and unease but collectively ignored it. Like how we do with climate change.
We zoom out again to see the three of them. Miles stands in the middle looking deeply uncomfortable and lost in thought, vibrating with unease. Nick and Maya exchange deeply concerned glances across from him.
With lingering unease, Miles begins to walk away.
Miles: Well, I should be going then. Goodnight.
Nick hesitantly raises a finger to point out an inaccuracy in that statement
Nick: It's four in the afternoon-
he gets interrupted by Miles who repeats firmly: I said Goodnight
Nick looks in the direction Miles walked off in.
Nick: ...He'll be ok, right?
Maya reassures him: Of cours Nick! I mean, what's the worst that can happen?
Jump cut to a closeup of Nick's hand holding Miles' letter which reads Miles Edgeworth chooses death in all caps. Then, below in smaller font, it says Also femininomenon was really good, thanks.
We see a panel of Nick glaring wordlessly at Maya as he holds the letter in his hand. Maya leans against the wall and looks away, whistling, trying to look innocent to avoid blame.
As a bonus, we also have a page that takes place a year later. Miles and Nick stand talking. Miles looks calmer now, and Nick smiles encouragingly.
Miles: In my time in Europe, I've been examining myself and my approach to law. Ultimately, the most important focus must be justice. We owe it to ourselves and to the people we serve
Nick: Wow, that's really inspiring Edgeworth. And, uh, hows the... the other thing going?
We get a zoomed in panel of Miles glaring menacingly at a suddenly nervous Nick
Jumping out again, Miles turns his back to Nick as he continues to talk
Miles: So as I was saying, justice is truly so important...
Nick nervously rubs the back of his neck wearing an awkward expression as he sweats nervously. He thinks to himself internally "Ooookay then, clearly still working through some things there"
/.End ID]
#Miles can handle horrifying truths about the death of his father and the nature of his guardian#but he draws the line at questioning his sexuality!#also. serious moment for a second#I think we focus a lot on moments of queer discovery stemming from attraction to the same sex#like that being the moment of panicked “oh no I'm different”. Which makes sense and is valid!#But I think it's also compelling to explore the opposite but similar twist in your gut that is:#oh my god I don't feel anything in this situation where others do. oh no something something is wrong with me#and this is something that gay and lesbian people have in common with ace and aro people!#I feel such tenderness and kinship to everyone who has been in that situation#and it's why i will never understand why aspec folks are pitted against gay or lesbian representation#we are drawn to the same characters bc we had such similar experiences and isn't that lovely that we can find solace in media?#so NO FIGHTING. We should all be BEST FRIENDS. my brothers in arms. I'd die for you.#all that is to SAY: I personally read edgeworth as asexual and like demiromantic/gay.#but YOU can read him as just gay in this comic if you want <3#Also. i just thought it would be funny if it took a lesbian to make him realize he didn't like women#I think he would have no clue how to react to chappell roan. Same vibe as giving a victorian orphan a baja blast and a crunchwrap supreme#ok sorry shutting up now#ace attorney#ace attorney comic#ace attorney trilogy#gyakuten saiban#phoenix wright#naruhodo ryuichi#miles edgeworth#mitsurugi reiji#maya fey#ayasato mayoi
508 notes · View notes
umblrspectrum · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
my text disappeared here when i posted. what happened
542 notes · View notes
egophiliac · 11 months ago
Note
CROWLEY SSR THOUGHTS
there is zero basis for this, but I can't get this thought of my head
Tumblr media
I don't know why I decided to draw it this way
#art#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland spoilers#twisted wonderland episode 7 spoilers#twisted wonderland book 7 spoilers#(these will be relevant in a moment)#this isn't going to happen. but WHAT IF.#anyway i didn't get him (damnit birdman come home) so i had to look up his story#and let me tell you friends my findings were SHOCKING#crowley canonically likes vegetables which means that the crowley is revaan theory = BUSTED#crowley is sailor venus = CONFIRMED#(i know 'whip of love' is a saying but that's where my mind always goes)#DISCLAIMER: this is (mostly) a joke please continue to hold whatever theories and headcanons you want#but look. c'mon. look over here at this whiteboard i've covered in red yarn.#revaan being a picky eater has come up multiple times and there is an entire whole bit about how much he hated jerky and refused to eat it#and now they've made a point of talking about how crowley will eat almost anything and loOoOoves wild game meat especially#it's SO stupid but i can't help but read way too much into it#(this is tumblr if you don't want to see incredibly stupid overanalysis of anime guys then why are you HERE)#and i gotta hold on to something because otherwise whenever malleus and crowley are onscreen together i just keep going 'same hair color...#unless this is like. some kind of deep cover thing.#lilia doesn't recognize him because he saw him eat a green bean once and revaan would NEVER#crowley's secret is safe for another day#(serious hat on: i do think they're probably connected in some way)#(but there's something deeper going on that we're just not clued into yet that will hopefully explain things)#man forget revaan what if crowley whips off his mask and it turns out he was meleanor this whole time#wait hold on meleanor loves jerky. IT ALL FITS...
3K notes · View notes
always-a-king-or-queen · 5 months ago
Text
The ache will go away, eventually. 
That was what the Professor told them, the day they got back. When they tumbled from the wardrobe in a heap of tangled limbs, and found that the world had been torn from under their feet with all the kindness of a serpent. 
They picked themselves off of the floorboards with smiles plastered on child faces, and sat with the Professor in his study drinking cup after cup of tea. 
But the smiles were fake. The tea was like ash on their tongues. And when they went to bed that night, none of them could sleep in beds that were too foreign, in bodies that had not been their own for years. Instead they grouped into one room and sat on the floor and whispered, late into the night. 
When morning came, Mrs. Macready discovered the four of them asleep in Peter and Edmund’s bedroom, tangled in a heap of pillows and blankets with their arms looped across one another. They woke a few moments after her entry and seemed confused, lost even, staring around the room with pale faces, eyes raking over each framed painting on the wall and across every bit of furniture as if it was foreign to them. “Come to breakfast,” Mrs. Macready said as she turned to go, but inside she wondered. 
For the children’s faces had held the same sadness that she saw sometimes in the Professor’s. A yearning, a shock, a numbness, as if their very hearts had been ripped from their chests.
At breakfast Lucy sat huddled between her brothers, wrapped in a shawl that was much too big for her as she warmed her hands around a mug of hot chocolate. Edmund fidgeted in his seat and kept reaching up to his hair as if to feel for something that was no longer there. Susan pushed her food idly around on her plate with her fork and hummed a strange melody under her breath. And Peter folded his hands beneath his chin and stared at the wall with eyes that seemed much too old for his face. 
It chilled Mrs. Macready to see their silence, their strangeness, when only yesterday they had been running all over the house, pounding through the halls, shouting and laughing in the bedrooms. It was as if something, something terrible and mysterious and lengthy, had occurred yesterday, but surely that could not be. 
She remarked upon it to the Professor, but he only smiled sadly at her and shook his head. “They’ll be all right,” he said, but she wasn’t so sure. 
They seemed so lost. 
Lucy disappeared into one of the rooms later that day, a room that Mrs. Macready knew was bare save for an old wardrobe of the professor’s. She couldn’t imagine what the child would want to go in there for, but children were strange and perhaps she was just playing some game. When Lucy came out again a few minutes later, sobbing and stumbling back down the hall with her hair askew, Mrs. Macready tried to console her, but Lucy found no comfort in her arms. “It wasn’t there,” she kept saying, inconsolable, and wouldn’t stop crying until her siblings came and gathered her in their arms and said in soothing voices, “Perhaps we’ll go back someday, Lu.” 
Go back where, Mrs. Macready wondered? She stepped into the room Lucy had been in later on in the evening and looked around, but there was nothing but dust and an empty space where coats used to hang in the wardrobe. The children must have taken them recently and forgotten to return them, not that it really mattered. They were so old and musty and the Professor had probably forgotten them long ago. But what could have made the child cry so? Try as she might, Mrs. Macready could find no answer, and she left the room dissatisfied and covered in dust. 
Lucy and Edmund and Peter and Susan took tea in the Professor’s room again that night, and the next, and the next, and the next. They slept in Peter and Edmund’s room, then Susan and Lucy’s, then Peter and Edmund’s again and so on, swapping every night till Mrs. Macready wondered how they could possibly get any sleep. The floor couldn’t be comfortable, but it was where she found them, morning after morning. 
Each morning they looked sadder than before, and breakfast was silent. Each afternoon Lucy went into the room with the wardrobe, carrying a little lion figurine Edmund had carved her, and came out crying a little while later. And then one day she didn’t, and went wandering in the woods and fields around the Professor’s house instead. She came back with grassy fingers and a scratch on one cheek and a crown of flowers on her head, but she seemed content. Happy, even. Mrs. Macready heard her singing to herself in a language she’d never heard before as Lucy skipped past her in the hall, leaving flower petals on the floor in her wake. Mrs. Macready couldn’t bring herself to tell the child to pick them up, and instead just left them where they were. 
More days and nights went by. One day it was Peter who went into the room with the wardrobe, bringing with him an old cloak of the Professor’s, and he was gone for quite a while. Thirty or forty minutes, Mrs. Macready would guess. When he came out, his shoulders were straighter and his chin lifted higher, but tears were dried upon his cheeks and his eyes were frightening. Noble and fierce, like the eyes of a king. The cloak still hung about his shoulders and made him seem almost like an adult. 
Peter never went into the wardrobe room again, but Susan did, a few weeks later. She took a dried flower crown inside with her and sat in there at least an hour, and when she came out her hair was so elaborately braided that Mrs. Macready wondered where on earth she had learned it. The flower crown was perched atop her head as she went back down the hall, and she walked so gracefully that she seemed to be floating on the air itself. In spite of her red eyes, she smiled, and seemed content to wander the mansion afterwards, reading or sketching or making delicate jewelry out of little pebbles and dried flowers Lucy brought her from the woods. 
More weeks went by. The children still took tea in the Professor’s study on occasion, but not as often as before. Lucy now went on her daily walks outdoors, and sometimes Peter or Susan, or both of them at once, accompanied her. Edmund stayed upstairs for the most part, reading or writing, keeping quiet and looking paler and sadder by the day. 
Finally he, too, went into the wardrobe room. 
He stayed for hours, hours upon hours. He took nothing in save for a wooden sword he had carved from a stick Lucy brought him from outside, and he didn’t come out again. The shadows lengthened across the hall and the sun sank lower in the sky and finally Mrs. Macready made herself speak quietly to Peter as the boy came out of the Professor’s study. “Your brother has been gone for hours,” she told him crisply, but she was privately alarmed, because Peter’s face shifted into panic and he disappeared upstairs without a word. 
Mrs. Macready followed him silently after around thirty minutes and pressed an ear to the door of the wardrobe room. Voices drifted from beyond. Edmund’s and Peter’s, yes, but she could also hear the soft tones of Lucy and Susan. 
“Why did he send us back?” Edmund was saying. It sounded as if he had been crying.  
Mrs. Macready couldn’t catch the answer, but when the siblings trickled out of the room an hour later, Edmund’s wooden sword was missing, and the flower crown Susan had been wearing lately was gone, and Peter no longer had his old cloak, and Lucy wasn’t carrying her lion figurine, and the four of them had clasped hands and sad, but smiling, faces. 
Mrs. Macready slipped into the room once they were gone and opened the wardrobe, and there at the bottom were the sword and the crown and the cloak and the lion. An offering of sorts, almost, or perhaps just items left there for future use, for whenever they next went into the wardrobe room.  
But they never did, and one day they were gone for good, off home, and the mansion was silent again. And it had been a long time since that morning that Mrs. Macready had found them all piled together in one bedroom, but ever since then they hadn’t quite been children, and she wanted to know why.
She climbed the steps again to the floor of the house where the old wardrobe was, and then went into the room and crossed the floor to the opposite wall. 
When she pulled the wardrobe door open, the four items the Pevensie children had left inside of it were missing. 
And just for a moment, it seemed to her that a cool gust of air brushed her face, coming from the darkness beyond where the missing coats used to hang.
573 notes · View notes
anghraine · 4 months ago
Text
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."
705 notes · View notes
aseuki · 24 days ago
Text
Tumblr media
His gorgeous beefcake charm and funny tactical boba holster have captivated me
274 notes · View notes
mecachrome · 7 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
then vs. now
941 notes · View notes
ohitslen · 1 year ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Twitter doodles!
(close ups for the first one below and a small extra as well :D)
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
801 notes · View notes
anime-potato-san · 27 days ago
Text
I SEE ONE MORE FIC OR BLURB OR WHATEVER DEPECTING ARKHAM JASON AS MEAN, ABUSIVE, OR PRACTICALLY ASSULTING THE READER, I'M GOING TO FUCKING SNAP!
MY MAN IS NOT LIKE THAT.
He is traumatized and not going through a good time, but he is shown to actually care about his men, even when he's harsh on them. And do people forget how he treated Barbara? Think about it: after everything Jason went through, would he really treat the person he loves like shit and abuse them?
NO, HE WOULD NOT.
202 notes · View notes
slavhew · 5 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
And I just have to tell you that I
Love you so much these days,
#homestuck#dirk strider#bgd#brain ghost dirk#jake english#dirkjake#hs2#homestuck^2#homestuck 2#hsbc#homestuck beyond canon#homestuck epilogues#candy epilogue#admin draws#fanart#i cant even pretend im normal about my own art or this song im sorry#im tryna think of something to say abour this and i keep thinking about the lyrics and i GRGRHHHHFHFJG#i dunno man. i love plastic beach. i cant say anything here that is not gallbladder-achingly cheesy#but just. i dont know.#jake keeping a little bit of dirk in his heart all those years. even if bgd is 'all' jake hes still in the memory he carries#when i listen i find myself stuck between which singer/verse should be jake and which should be dirk. but the answer is simple#theyre both both.#jake thinks hes the one singing abour getting abandoned. but really hes the one losing himself in the substance#and dirk. dirk is the one watching him lose himself. but since hes just a part of jake. yeah.#'i have to tell you that i love you so much these days' both as something jake is saying to dirk and what jake wishes dirk was there to say#hes so alone in that reality. even if he might not admit and go so far as to imagine dirk saying it. its something that deep down#he aches to hear. the man who has deemed himself unlovable and incapable of love. he still wants to hear it despite himself#he still wants to say it despite nnot being able to bring himself to even process that emotion#sigh. see what happens. i cant talk aboht it bc a single line turns intoTHIS
268 notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.
#for klavier because it's not as direct it's about how we never see him actually wearing lipstick? even though apollo literally attends#a concert of his which is where you'd most expect him to wear makeup. but apparently he just doesnt. or at least not in public#klavier gavin#kristoph gavin#i feel like there are several ways you can read into it. the misogyny/toxic masculinity one is really obvious clearly with kristoph's#singling out of men specifically and klavier's (probably accidental?) condescending manner of calling women 'fraulein' plus his general#mildly patronising attitude towards many of the women in the game (also probably unintentional)#(i think he's trying to be charming and it's coming off wrong to some of them. like ema. and me.)#but i feel like there's also maybe an element of... inherent perfecfionism to it? like both of these products are conventionally beautifyin#products and kristoph while he is open to showing people he uses nail polish specifically chooses one that's clear and missable unless you#see him apply it. he also feels the need to justify his use of it and specifically spell it out as something he chooses to do rather than#needs to do even though duh. that should be obvious.#idk there's just something about his seeming need to take control of that narrative that i find interesting. his need to spin it into a#'there's nothing wrong with my nails but I had the foresight to see that even the smallest parts of my appearance should be kept immaculate#and it's a choice i'm making to refine an already adequate part of my personage /not/ to cover some unsightly defect.' the need to emphasis#that specifically is so. hm. and with klavier i could see it being a case of him liking makeup liking the pops of colour yet being unwillin#to admit to it because he's afraid that other people might see it as him being dissatisfied with his own appearance regardless of if he is#or isn't. or even just perceiving colourful makeup as being unseemly because it's so overt and unnatural.#like i can see this as them both viewing 'real' beauty to be that which is inherent to a person and seemingly effortless#thus somehow negating the beauty which one achieves through cosmetics or other external means.#and if you want to use external means to achieve beauty or neatness or whatever then your only valid options are those which blend into you#natural state. like clear nail polish. or really awful spray tan.#i feel like klavier's less confined by these ideas (if they hold merit at all) considering he actually owns coloured lipstick and he wears#jewellery (admittedly quite 'masculine' jewellery no gems or pearls or anything like that but jewellery nonetheless) but i think it just#makes it more interesting that he doesnt seem quite able to cross the line anyway. like it's that ingrained into his system.#anyway that's all i've got. you guys should tell me what you think too#annotations
257 notes · View notes
sandflakedraws · 6 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
blessed day of days i remembered that i can post wips
pictured: a man having a good time
252 notes · View notes