#people that use their characters like tools

[8-evil-annoying-catboys]

i keep finding myself wondering.. why did she open the drawer where the gun case was hidden? i’ve seen people say it was a mercy to curly, so that maybe he could open it to use it for a quick and less painful way out, or defend himself if jim broke in.. but i can’t really believe that. she’s a nurse. she knows curly can’t even really move, let alone move with the coordination and dexterity required to open the gun case, get the gun out from it, and actually use it on anyone. plus, while jim obviously doesn’t have a lot of reservations about hurting curly, i think she knows he wouldn’t kill him, because if he would, why wouldn’t he have already done it? so i don’t think it’s for his potential self-defence.

could it be.. that she’s taunting him? here’s this case. we both already know that there’s a gun inside it. you can’t open the case. i can’t open the case. you can’t use it to defend yourself anymore. neither can i, because i never could. the same goes for hurting yourself, you can’t do that with it any more than i could, even though you’re in so much pain now that there’s no way it could hurt much more with the gun. you can’t even tell me how to unlock the case, even if you wanted me to have it now that you know so much more than you did before, back when i wished you’d have let me take it. of course, knowing you never would, i hid it. it’s been here the whole time, literally right under you, and you never knew. and, to top it off, i’m proving to you that i never would have used the gun on myself, because watch how easily i can do the same thing with tools that were directly entrusted to me, because of the nature of my job. and you’re going to watch, because.. what else can you do? you can’t even turn your head to look away.

but then, anya is so gentle, that seems like it might be out of character for her. and like, maybe the situation just got to her that bad that she’s acting this different, and i can’t really wrap my head around another possible reason, but i keep fixating on that. why did she open the drawer? like, maybe she was going to try and brute force her way into it, guessing codes at random until it opened, and she became impatient and took the pills? maybe, after taking the pills, she started to feel bad for curly since she locked him up in the room with her and she tried to open the case and give him one last act of mercy, but died before she could succeed? maybe she figured that jim would find his way in no matter what, and since her own safety was no longer at risk since she’d die anyway, she left it so he could go through with a mercy killing, trying to leave him with no option other than to step up to the plate and take responsibility as the new captain for putting curly out of his misery? maybe she thought that since swansea had the utility axe, he would be the one to break into medical and would be smart enough to brute force his way into the gun case, and take out this maniacal, incompetent tyrant of a self-imposed leader, saving daisuke and possibly himself, and putting curly out of his misery?

ultimately, we obviously can’t get a concrete answer from canon.. but does that mean i’ll stop wondering about it? no, it actually means i will never stop thinking about it.

i need everyone to understand the poetry of curly turning a blind eye to anya’s suffering only to be robbed of his autonomy and voice as she was and then forced to observe jimmy’s crimes and the abuse of his own body

[utilitycaster]

sort of an offshoot of that post about video game characters but I think I've mentioned before the third person v. first person split in D&D, namely, do you say "I attack it with my scimitar" or "Drizzt attacks with his scimitar". This is a well-known thing in TTRPGs, I'm sure you can find more intelligent discussion about it, but it's come up for me specifically in that a lot of old-school D&D players skew hard towards third person and often they are less interested in actual play, because they see D&D as a narrative tool. There's no self-inserts; they are narrating the exploits of a guy they made. And so the parasocial elements (which are not necessarily bad, it just depends, and that's another post) have no appeal, and even things like accents don't really.

I don't think third person vs. first person necessarily means "not a self insert vs. self insert." I switch between the two and often use first person. But I don't feel like any D&D character I've played is a self-insert. They have aspects of me, sure, because of course they do, I need to be able to play them and try to think like them, but I think in a game where death and failure are really possible and where you must collaborate and where your options are rather limited - because even in D&D, they are limited by the type of game it is - it's actually vital to separate yourself out from your character.

It comes down to something I've said a lot about so many things in fiction (but yeah, this does bleed into real life): are you able to accept a character who is not like you? Are you able to accept a character who might make wildly different choices than you would? Is your capacity to empathize or see a character as a person limited by them specifically hitting some demographic or philosophical targets you have constructed? Can you, even in a low risk, fictional environment, let yourself be different from how you are.

this seems very silly but I think I may have alluded to Justin McElroy talking about not being able to play fat characters in most games, and so he often just plays characters who do not look a thing like him. He often plays as a woman of color. (I don't recall where this came up? I think it might have been on an ancient polygon video or maybe commentary on one of the TAZ seasons? I'd love to find it again). And I think that's actually really great that this was his instinct. I don't want to diminish the importance of RPGs and TTRPGs for self-discovery; obviously it's been a place for many people to explore gender and sexuality, especially, and I do not want to take away the ability for someone to play as a woman in a game before you feel like you can live as a woman publicly in real life (and notably my issues with the BG3 and Inquisition player characters are not ones of gender/sex/race, ie, I think it is personality and background that might need to be more pre-determined). But yeah, if you cannot connect with characters who aren't like you that's a problem, and it does feel a little frustrating that we know that centering a self-insert OC type makes for a worse story and people still want that.

I've always been intrigued by pre-made sheets in TTRPGs where you are limited in some way, not in a dumb "oh my god you can't play a druid bc I'm a weird vindictive dude mad that your nature magic beats my weaponry" way but just as an exploration of having to walk a mile in other people's shoes and to be a person other than one that you created to exist within your comfort zone. Because a lot of people aren't Justin, and do play themselves or as close to it as they can, regardless of what is happening around them, and I think that is a mistake.

[nauseaspecters]

i don't enjoy the fandom depiction of chuuya being the 'second choice' character trope all his life.

unedited rambling under the cut. i'll structure my text posts better when it's not 4am

he's experienced and underwent through a lot of situationd of abandonment and betrayal, with unreciprocated attachments, definitely.

for the sheep, although they were almost like his family, since they were all he knew for 8 years, they viewed him as a weapon and a tool. stormbringer elaborates and adds complexity to this later but as a basis, it was true that they viewed this young teenager (chuuya) as more of an indispensably strong weapon to protect their survival, yet dispensable as a human if chuuya were to 'fall' to the other side. so much so that they jump to the chance to stab him (literally.) it's true chuuya does experience varying levels of not feeling he is doing enough.

however, to dwindle his character trope down to being "the other woman" type trope or the "constant second choice" is a misunderstanding of not only his character, but the characters around him as well. i see this seen most with dazai, mori, kouyou and the sheep.

in the case regarding dazai: chuuya is often labelled as the second choice to oda, and sometimes people use it as a point to pity chuuya in. however, it should be considered that chuuya and oda, and what they meant to dazai, cannot be compared. their relationships and significance to dazai were not in the same realm, and to think of it as "dazai chose oda over chuuya" ignores all the other factors as to what their relationship is built on. also, dazai choosing to leave the pm is not choosing oda over chuuya, it's hardly even related to chuuya, and especially not some decisive battle. it was dazai who was impacted by his dying friend's wishes and words, and he left for many reasons. ugh i will speak forever so i'll make that a different post. TLDR: chuuya is not the second choice to 'oda'

in the case regarding kouyou: i don't see this as commonly and i'm honestly a sucker for chuuya angst, but i don't think it's also right to think of chuuya as a second choice to kyouka in terms of kouyou's affection/care. firstly, kyouka is a young girl, and kouyou identifies herself in kyouka, with a deeper attachment of obsessive protection and instillment of what kouyou experienced. since kouyou was hurt by trying to reach the 'light', and she sees that same self in kyouka, kouyou shields kyouka in an unhealthy manner and isolates her from what she think will ultimately fail her. chuuya is a boy and from what we know, kouyou most likely does not see chuuya in the same style of projection and reflection. she's set to mentor chuuya in a very professional PM standpoint, and most likely does not form that deeper neurotic attachment that she has to kyouka. yes, chuuya calls her ane-san, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily also the closest. so to say that chuuya is the second choice to kyouka is strange, as it's not even a choice. chuuya is not in the picture for the type of internal bond that kouyou feels towards kyouka.

some additional stuff bdcause im rambling:

there's some weird extreme perceptions of kouyou as either someone that doesn't care about chuuya and a very close older-sister like doting on chuuya (the latter being a popular interpretation). i think kouyou cares to some extent, yeah. i think a lot of the pm that interact more extensively cares about each other to some extent. however, we do need to remember this is in the context of the PM. it's an inherently toxic and unstable environment, rooted in , well, Crime and power dynamics. kouyou was probably not the perfect mentor to chuuya, and nor are they some close healthy protective sibling-type dynamic either. the PM is rooted in abuse and a dark environment, it's unrealistic to think that a relationship we barely see much of is sunshine and rainbows.

ps: also sometimes it's not the matter of being a second choice he is just not a choice. as sad as that may sound.

[weaselandfriends]

What makes prose good unto itself (and not just as a delivery mechanism for plot/character)? Despite being an English major I never really grokked this, beyond basic advice like "use significant images."

I would break down prose quality into two major parts, each of which is very broad and can be achieved in many different ways.

Part 1: Is it good aesthetically?

This is very simple. Does the prose sound good? This is usually achieved via a lot of high school English test terms, stuff like assonance, consonance, alliteration, rhyme (internal or not), meter, repetition, etc. but can also be a factor of syntax and word choice: "dismal" is generally a more evocative word than "bad," for instance, though given context one of those words might sound better than the other. Bad is shorter, harsher, more abrupt, compared to dismal which has the S and L sounds that glide. Dismal also sounds more British, which comes with its own array of connotations that can affect how the reader reacts to the word. Compare "I pray you burn in the flames of eternal damnation" to "I hope you die in a fiery death."

Punctuation, sentence length, sentence structure all make some kind of change to the way a sentence reads. Parentheticals, abrupt stops, sentence fragments. They influence the aesthetic experience of reading the text, and the best prose wields all these tools (and more) strategically to create the greatest aesthetic impact. If someone is specifically trying to make their prose unobtrusive to the semantic content of plot and character being conveyed, they are surrendering aesthetic control.

Part 2: Does it contribute meaning?

It's one thing to craft a beautiful sentence, but if it's beautiful simply for the sake of being beautiful it can often come across as needlessly indulgent. (The purple prose criticism, though in my experience most truly purple prose is aesthetically bad.) The best prose is also contributing to the meaning of the work through its aesthetics. The most obvious way this is done is through tone. Tone is how a story feels, and in many ways is far more important to a work than plot or character. A horror story has a certain tone. A comedy has a certain tone. To an extent tone can be conveyed via plot (i.e., a story where people are murdered will innately have a different tone than one in which they are not), but most of the heavy lifting on this front is done by the prose: a dark, oppressive atmosphere will put a reader on edge, even before someone is slashed in the attic.

Beyond tone, prose can provide insight into character (especially in free-indirect discourse, AKA close third person, which is extremely popular in contemporary literature) or theme. Symbolism, metaphor, various other literary devices can be used to this effect, or even simply more mundane elements like sentence length. Cormac McCarthy wrote two novels about brutal, violent journeys through utter waste lands - Blood Meridian and The Road - but the vast differences in the prose of those two novels make starkly different statements about what that violence means. Blood Meridian being a work of excess, of hedonism, while The Road is a work of restraint, of emptiness, of lack. And this is even with both works doing many of the same of McCarthy's goofball punctuation gimmicks.

I don't think anything I said here is very deep or difficult to grasp, and in other artistic mediums correlated concepts are taken for granted. In film, if you want to convey information in the easiest-to-understand method, then just do shot-reverse shot as two characters talk. It's simple, basic, and if what the characters are saying is interesting, nobody will notice. But the best films use blocking, dynamic camera angles, and varied shot length and composition to subtly make statements about character, setting, tone, and theme, while also simply looking more aesthetically pleasing. That's what prose can do for a work of literature. And the truly best prose stylists, the people pushing the boundaries of what can be done with language, will come up with prose compositions that I would never even expect.

[feyspeaker]

Hi!! I’m not sure if you have already answered this, I tried to scroll through as much as I could to check lol But how clean are your sketches before you paint them? I know some people leave them as loose can be and some clean them up and even outline. So I was just wondering! :)

Hi there! Usually rather hideous so I do not share much. I use a mixed media approach to my painting, so to "sketch" I will sometimes use a mixture of 3D (I like to use Blender but I probably use it like a gorilla lol) and photobashed elements. I will build scenes kind of like a collage instead of traditional sketching first, then I will color correct them to fit together- usually I use 3D to build lighting reference. Then I run everything through a lot of filters to bring everything together better (I like to gaussian blur, then the posterize and palette knife filters in Photoshop, I've been using the oil paint filter for my vintage BG3 portraits haha) then I sketch over it more traditionally. Either I go straight into painting or I do this in black and white more recently, if I do that I add color later. The B&W process is a lot less chaotic so I've been enjoying that a lot more recently. both ways allow me to tweak character's likenesses and more importantly add in details like clothing/hair/elements like that so I'm not painting blind.

I have a lot of background in Photoshop like, for editing photography so I take a non-traditional approach to digital art. (if there even is one) It's a lot more akin to the way concept artists put together pieces, however I take them a few steps further to, hopefully, obfuscate the beginning a bit more. I love concept art but I do think a lot of it looks stiff or clearly photobashed, which I don't love the look of. A few years ago I started messing with this process as it felt like a lot of my beefy Photoshop knowledge was being wasted while I was focusing on more stylized works using Rebelle 5.

Honestly, my sketching process is the ugliest thing known to mankind and I am very self conscious about it, so I don't share a lot. It's not aesthetically pleasing, it just looks like I have no idea what I'm doing lol. I might share some about my Frankenstein process on Patreon at some point.

I believe very strongly in using the tools you have available as an artist, especially in this hellscape where AI abominations are at every corner and the pressure to create as fast as you can looms over you constantly as an artist. There are so many cool and weird ways to make art, ESPECIALLY with your computer, that there's really no excuse to use AI slop. I'd take my weirdo collage approach any day over asking some machine to poop out "art" for me.

[sonicjustbecause]

A small pet peeve on current Shadow

(Nothing serious, but it disappoints me a bit).

I often stress about Shadow being left handed. It was very clear in Sjhadow 205 and sonic 2006. You could read it in his profile back then.

Attentive left handed Sonic fans also noticed how Shadow literally moves like a leftie even without having anything in his hands. Not just wielding weapons or the shepter to seal Mephiles with his left hand. Even his body language and his postures - the way he crosses his arms - were typical of left handed people

Clear also from ShTH artworks (no mistake, cosnsistently left handed).

And this ended up in the game too.

Then this came:

And that was, metaphorically, the chain that tied Shadow's (and several other characters) left hand behind his back.

Because people though righties can't adapt, then, rather than let you choose, just 'fixed' characters such as Shadow or Link.

The Wiimote is gone now, so, why not going back to the origins?

Unfortunately evidently, somebody though that because 'Shadow was not cool enough' (Trying to mimic Iizuka's style)

'As the ultimate lifefeorm, Shadow is not tied to things such as right handedness or left handedness. It depends by the situation.

- Before misunderstanding, since people often don't pay attention to what they read I underline is just my assumtion and Iizuka never said anything! -

The italic quoote was said by VEI-6 Vesuvius attempting to imitate Iizuka!

In Dark Beginnings and in Shadow Generation, Shadow is ambidextrous.

right...

In the third episode of Dark Beginnings he only uses his left.

Left

Left handed body language - he looks at his left first, the right later.

right...

And so on...

I saw the same issue on Sonic.

Personally I think making a character ambidextrous is lazy, most of the time. Simply because most people just not care to those details, so they slap body language and tools where is convenient for the scene. To me, it removes character relatability/life (And I'm saying this as somebody who can use both hands for most things, including the usage of scissors). I can give only two example of ambidextrous character done right:

Your avatar from Skyrim. when you equip the weapons, you can choose wich hand he or she will use to wield the sword and which one will use for the shield at your please, without any setting. To make things even cooler, you use the right side of your controller for the right hand and the left side of your controller for the left, with your actual right and your actual left. Customization in real time. Is great.

This character from Soul Calibur, Siegfried. He switch from right to left handed stance with a spontaneity that feels just right. Is beautiful.

For those two there is a purpose. most is lack of care for the details.

Why I like Shadow being a lefty?

Left handedness is peculiar and if some character is meant to be cool, that's a nice and harmless detail (the character will not turn into a Mary Sue). Is not to common and if not overdone (and isn't) it adds a layer of realism and relatability.

Is also all in Shadow's name. Among all meanings there is 'reflection of'. Since most people are right handed, of course a reflection is most of the time left handed.

[bisclavret]

what SICKO wrote the last scenes between gwaine and merlin is what i want to know. because even lancelot's last episode with merlin - which had to have been intentionally gay-coded since it's obvious the man is grappling with his feelings for merlin morphing from platonic to explicitly romantic - is still subtext because he doesn't have the tools to healthily express his feelings so he goes for the biggest romantic gesture he can think of: sacrificing his life to save a loved one. the writers also make sure to root this gesture back to gwen by adding a scene where she's inadvertently asking him to make that sacrifice first, so although it's very obvious that it's more for merlin than for gwen that lancelot dies for, she is there to add some plausible deniability, thus keeping his sexuality within the realms of subtext.

i don't want to delve too deeply into arthur's last scenes with merlin as there is both so much to unpack about what they mean to each other and there is also somehow nothing left to say that hasn't been said before. my point is just that there's so much at stake that if the viewer doesn't want to deal with the romantic subtext between them they can hang onto the 38 other dynamics merlin and arthur have represented to each other that the writers spent 5 years plastering on top of the gay subtext. basically, while the romance feels textual emotionally-speaking, it isn't "canon".

i don't mean to say that any relationship is better than another (even though i obviously have a preference) but that in gwaine's final scenes with merlin there's just no subtext anymore. his becomes the most explicit expression of romantic love towards merlin, and therefore the most explicit acknowledgment of homosexual love and the existence of queer people on the show:

it starts out with merlin suggesting that gwaine saved a girl from the saxons and then looked after her because he has a more than platonic interest in her, and they show us that merlin is right - gwaine and the girl eira slept together - even as gwaine half-heartedly denies any interest (which, why even deny it? merlin saw them holding hands! unless the lie is part of the point). then in that very same scene and directly after this exchange, merlin needs rescuing from the saxons, calls after gwaine, and gwaine performs the exact same role for him that he performed for eira: he saves him from the saxons and looks after him (for as long as merlin lets him).

the parallel between merlin and eira with such quick cause and effect (it literally all happens within the same minute) is where the shift from subtext to text becomes undeniable. yes, there have been other moments on the show where a character's affections towards two different genders are beat-for-beat the same, but, again, there has always been plausible deniability. in this case the parallel is meant to be taken at face value: the core point of it is to show us how gwaine expresses his attraction.

then, the dialogue they chose to bookend this scene with takes it a few steps further by functioning as a textual love confession to merlin himself: the scene opens with gwaine thanking merlin for everything he did for eira, and merlin saying that there is no need to thank him as it was the least he could do. a minute later, after merlin thanks gwaine for protecting him from the saxons as both merlin and the show just concluded gwaine did for eira for romantic reasons (even as he denied it by outright lying), gwaine parrots what merlin said when gwaine thanked him: no need to thank me, merlin, it's the least i could do.

but this comes off as the opposite of dismissive: in fact, this echoing of merlin's words is meant to jolt both merlin and the audience. by saying this right after saving merlin from the saxons, gwaine has now intentionally pointed merlin's attention towards the explicitly romantic parallel between himself and eira. gwaine is directly implying he just did for merlin what merlin correctly deduced he did for a woman because he desired her sexually and romantically, and he is using merlin's own words to challenge him into seeing past the initial flimsy lie that there is nothing between them. and what's behind the lie, of course, is that gwaine has done all of this and more because he desires merlin sexually and romantically. the camera even lingers on merlin, allowing him and the viewer to absorb what just happened. that for as long as we have known gwaine, his motivations have always boiled down to "i want to be there for merlin". and now both the audience and merlin finally know for sure what was motivating him the entire time.

what's more, by using merlin's own dismissive words, gwaine also implicates merlin's penchant for repression and denial and never allowing himself to be given credit where it's due. this unfortunately never properly gets dismantled on the show, but this moment shows that gwaine knows merlin well enough to know that he goes above and beyond for people, and that merlin's reasons for this ring as false to gwaine's ears as gwaine's reasons for saving damsels do to merlin. it also bittersweetly implies that gwaine has accepted that these are the platonic, repressed terms on which he can have a relationship with merlin. but i think the way in which he explicitly points all of this out to merlin is meant to imply that he isn't entirely happy about having to accept that. or, to circle back to eira, that merlin seems to be cheering for him to enter a heterosexual relationship when gwaine would clearly rather be with him.

what's additionally interesting to me about this is that this is one of the only scenes on this show that touch on same gender attraction that isn't using magic as a metaphor - because merlin doesn't have magic at the moment, yes, but also because gwaine is the more active character in this sequence, and he's an adventure hero, so he simply fights the bad guy to protect the person he loves. there is no metaphor to wrap this in, so he just gets to explicitly state his bisexuality. in the next scene, the very last one he and merlin share, it all becomes about magic again, which is both representative of merlin's sexuality and the show's "plausible deniability" approach to gay-coding, and so neither gwaine or merlin are permitted to acknowledge it. also, and this is for another post altogether, but all things point to "gwaine knew". not least because he gets to come out as queer without the complications of the magic-as-gay-metaphor which in turn emboldens him to ask merlin for the truth as directly as the metaphor-suffocated narrative will allow it.

tldr gwaine textually and canonically expresses and then confesses his feelings to merlin in a shockingly well-written and layered scene which makes gwaine the most explicitly queer character on bbc merlin and it's entirely because he exists outside the magic-as-gay-metaphor plot while loving someone who embodies that entire metaphor and it's crazy to me that we don't talk about this more. once again i ask what SICKO wrote this and where were they for the entire rest of this fucking show

tldrtldr at least gwaine is bi. its like i always say. at least gwaine is bi. at the end of the day. gwaine is bi. dont cry ok? gwaine is bi. at the end of the day. gwaine is bi. when all else fails. gwaine is bi. we'll always have. gwaine is bi

[s30620]

Chapter 57: Scary Dudes at School

Music and rhythm based explanations are great imo. Most people listen to music, and some even play instruments. It's a big part of our lives and using it as a tool to help visualize/explain combat abilities is very useful. Thank you Turbo Granny, I can't wait to see her play the piano in anime form!

I also like the classical music composers as bobblehead/chibi characters, it makes them look kinda cute lol.

[gale-gentlepenguin]

There are two types of writers

1. The ones that use their characters to drive the plot

2. The ones who let their characters tell them what they do in the plot.

And the difference in writing of these two shows.

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[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."

[emile-hides]

I cannot believe no one’s gifed POV Ramattra tilting your chin up with his staff yet. Must I do everything around here.

[fatedroses]

Zenos viator Galvus and him trying to deal with actually feeling things for once (Even if he doesn't really understand how to handle the comfort he receives from others for it)

I am also giving this man a dad that actually cares, because this brainworm have gotten me and there is no saving me from them.

[msnihilist]

Once again, no, you were not groomed by proshipping. You were groomed by someone using proshipping.

My groomer used a pairing that I already liked to desensitize me to sexual interactions, and it was a completely normal and popular pairing. To this day, I still don't like it. It's completely okay to not like or even hate those things that your groomer used against you.

It's not okay to demonize an entire group of people or lump the ideology itself in with a terrible experience that you had. Your trauma does not make you infallible.

It is not the fault of the content you were shown that you got groomed. Groomers will use anything. They are bad people. The content you were shown is neutral.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

POOR GABRIEL MONTEZ! YOU NEVER SAW THIS COMING DID YOU? ALL YOU WANTED WAS POWER. SECURITY. SAFETY. & THATS EXACTLY WHAT YOU GOT! JUST IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR BODY. LETS JUST HOPE NO ONE FUCKS THIS UP. LETS JUST HOPE YOU WONT HAVE TO CLEAN UP THE MESS.

[whump-in-the-closet]

losing my mind over characters who’s hands learn to take what they need. with a paper heart until the ink spilled. they become bitter, brimming with regret. a smile that never reaches their eyes and a laugh that never rings. they snatch and crawl and those hands are bloodstained. they sit with their head between their knees in an alley then pick themselves up, leaving their heart behind. they slowly but surely become what destroyed them.