#sorry y'all this one is sad

[zenithpng]

Briefly, he pleads with the universe. He begs the stars to take him. Please, he thinks, just let me join you today. He pleads silently with the stars and planets and himself and even with the witch. He begs with himself to work faster. He begs with the void of space to take him home.

But not with a god. Never with a god.

If god is real, Shiro will maim them just as he has maimed arena opponents. He will fight until blood stains his teeth and fingernails, until those holy eyes are glassy and unseeing, until god pleads with Shiro just as he has pleaded with the stars today.

Or, Shiro's lost year and its aftermath.

[2aceofspades]

TW: Blood/Injury, Implied Death

_______________________________________________

With you

Lil one-shot I guess...??

_______________________________________________

After the dust cleared, it was dead silent. The air was thick with moisture from the dark clouds looming above them all. Someone, probably Raphael, yelled out something Two didn't quite process, his ears still ringing as his vision slowly cleared.

A faint blue glow flickered in the near distance, not too far from where Two was slumped on the ground. More muffled shouts rang out as Two attempted to collect himself, staggering to his feet and trudging over to the source of-

No.

Just the image alone was enough to bring Two collapsing back to his knees. Stupid, he thought.

"H-hey..." One's weak voice just barely got through to Two, snapping him right out of his thoughts.

He stared down at the dimming blue glow, watching it flicker and fade in and out. How the hell are you still here, breathing?

His thoughts became flooded in his head, even more so as he felt his arms cradle his brother's near-lifeless body.

"Did we win?"

Two felt his jaw clench at One's question, feeling frighteningly close to grinding his teeth until they were flat.

Did we win?

The question echoed in Two’s head, as if that would better help him process this moment. In any other instance, he would have deflected and scoffed at such an empty, meaningless question. Did it matter? he thought as he titled his head up, looking around briefly at the wasteland that surrounded them. It was over, that much was apparent.

"Yes,” he huffed, looking down at his brother in his arms as he continued, “Now, shut it and save your strength. Your heart-"

"I know," One croaked out in between a few sputtering breaths, interrupting Two in more ways than one. Two tried to ignore the cast-off of blood coming from his brother's mouth, despising the sickening feeling settling in his stomach as it hit his chin. One smiled weakly up at his brother, his eyes dull and unfocused.

How dare you, Two thought to himself.

His eyes flickered from One's exposed heart, bleeding out and hardly beating, and back to his brother’s face. His brother looked beaten, bloody...broken. It wasn't a look he saw from him often, if at all. It was that damn smile that he watched waver as One's heart beat softer and softer. What cruel irony, Two couldn't help but think, a metaphorical expression brought to life by his stupid, thoughtless, idiotic brother.

Two could still fix this. Even as he held his brother tighter against his own plastron and felt his shirt get soaked by the horrid mix of blood and empyrean; he thought to himself how he'd be the one to fix this.

There was no other choice left.

“Good…” One let out the softest of chuckles, “…we…we can s-start over.”

Something in Two’s own chest faltered, even just briefly. It was enough to shut out the feeling of One’s pathetic coughs and wheezes against him. He watched how One's eyes dulled further, his gaze wandering away from Two's face.

Starting over? That wasn’t ever an option, not one that Two had ever weighed in his mind. He wasn’t sure if that was even an option now. After everything he had done, everything he sacrificed, worked for…his brother still wanted to burn it, bury everything down and out of Two’s reach. One wanted this win, he wanted the impossible.

“Impossible…” Two muttered under his breath.

He heard yet another faint chuckle. And then the dense silence that followed.

_______________________________________________

~bonus doodles~

(':

[diathadevil]

Day 7 - Scatter

His biggest fear.

(Bonus doodle underneath because I felt bad for Fakir so I ended up making this into a dream sequence comic :'] )

[werevyote]

Growing up in a human society and world, now you're an adult but you feel a sense of loss because you never grew up as yourself, as your 'type. Nostalgic for something you never had, sense of sadness for a childhood you never got to experience

[poeteunoia]

"grief is just love with no place to go"

(jamie anderson)

"i this hope grief stays with me because it's all the unexpressed love that i never got to tell her..."

(andrew garfield)

Credits: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Notes on Grief / C.S Lewis: A Grief Observed / Shannon Barry quote via @academia-aesthetics / Fleabag 2016 / Jamie Anderson quote / One Day 2024 / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun / Little Women 2019 / Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry / WandaVision 2021 / Andrew Garfield quote / Ocean Vuong quote, source / Up 2009 / Lang Leav: September Love via @academia-aesthetics / "the grief is never ending but so is the love" monkey meme / commemorative bench plaque in Central Park, New York, photo:© Neva Micheva / Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love / Glennon Doyle Leyton: Love warrior / Hotel Del Luna 2019 / Heidi Priebe: As Long As There Is Love, There Will Be Grief

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s3 episode 22 thoughts

this episode was SO good. it was funny, it was heartfelt, and it was entertaining. but- and i'm sure you fans who have seen the show before know- something happened that is making me cry.

yes, actual tears! boy, there must be some real serious astrology stuff going on in the world, for actual tears are down my cheeks, something that almost never happens to me in movie and film watching experiences, and this episode did it to me. i usually just get a bit misty and that's the extent of it- even in one breath! but man. apparently i have a weakness.

sigh. we shall get into it, like we do.

reading the episode description: it's loch ness monster-like creature time!! i’ve been eyeballing this episode for a while, it sounds really interesting. a lake trip!! a trip to the lake!! 

we begin, and it is frog time!!! time for a frog!!! an endangered frog!!! dr. farraday is fighting for their rights. oh, he just used the term “frog holocaust” in his talk to this dr. bailey fellow, which is something. serious frog beef going down between these professors, for dr. bailey does not think that dr. farraday's research proves that humans are responsible for the fate of the frogs! how infuriating.

dr. bailey is going back to his car but lost “his beeper” so he’s looking by the lake for it. OH! his beeper meant a pager. i know what a pager is!!!! do not think i am uneducated!!! just never heard it called as such.

he finds the beeper but he is EATEN. by a BEAST!!! while a frog watches. 

if only this was the fate that all people who deny the need to protect the environment met! eaten by a lake beast! how much more just this planet would be...

intro time. and the first time i watched an episode and i heard the theme i started laughing hysterically because i didn’t realize that noise was the x files theme; i had just thought it was a well-known spooky noise used in vines and stuff and then. everything clicked into place. and it was soooo funny. anyway.

road trip to georgia!!!! WITH THE DOGGY!!! mulder calls it “a thing” SO RUDE????

“you wake me up on a saturday morning, tell me to be ready in five minutes, my mother is out of town, all of the dog-sitters are booked, and you know how i feel about kennels” <- help i’m CRYINGGGGG tell him how you feel!!!!

(love that they have already had a conversation on the morality of kennels before)

((but also truly what did he expect 😭😭 and he did all this on a SATURDAY!!!! she ought to have been way meaner!!!))

so he made her leave town with the puppy on a SATURDAY for a missing person’s case… omg do they even get paid overtime???

also mulder is lost which is soooo funny because WHY is he perpetually behind the wheel... he doesn’t have any sense of direction!!!

he makes a stupid pun about the killer being “large” and she straight up asks what he’s leaving out LMAOOO

(he points to a billboard advertising “big blue, the southern serpent) <- “oh, tell me you’re not serious” LMAOOOO

so they’re going to talk to dr. farraday and i think it’s so cute that scully is in some more casual-y clothes. anyway, they’re going over the serious frog beef between him and the victim. farraday does NOT miss dr. bailey’s loser ass... ijbol!!! why should he give a damn for one man when so many species are going extinct!

farraday said “has anyone ever told you two you have a great problem coming to the point?” after mulder asks if any native species attacked humans... lmao he is rude as hell!!!

AND ASKING ABOUT BIG BLUE MADE THINGS WORSE!!! now farraday is going on about how if anything requires real thinking people turn to UFOs and whatnot which is like.... um okay rest assured that if someone is gonna think it’s gonna be mulder. he's gonna think about any and all explanations on a sliding scale of plausibility.

LMAO mulder is being sassy right back while scully screams with her eyes. farraday gets even more pissed and leaves… honestly i’m sorry about the frog population king, but you’re not really winning any friends with influence to help you lobby on behalf of the frogs. or winning any friends at all. 

so mulder and scully and the doggy go to a bait and tackle shop, and the sight of them sharing an umbrella with a dog on a leash healed something in me, something i didn’t know was in need of healing but it was. and they’re reciting the different creatures that live in lakes- apparently scully read about cryptids as a kid!!!! 

she says they’re folk tales and he says “well, how many folktales do you know that can eat a boy scout leader and a biologist?” and she looks soooo annoyed. but then they go in, and he is a proper gentleman and shakes off the umbrella 

at the shop they see a “scale from big blue” and scully says it looks like “a carapace, something from a beetle” which again reminds us that she WAS studying bugs in bio, thank you very much!!

they’re chatting with the dude that sold mulder a map, and he’s talking about his own experience with the creature while wearing a hat that says “show us your bobbers” which is crazy, but we keep going. he claims he heard a cow get eaten by big blue as a kid. and in walks an alleged expert, ansel… whose daddy’s cow was eaten way back then!

ansel is buying more film to someday achieve his dream of catching a picture of the beast and scully looks deeply pained in the background lmaoooo i love her 

someone is putting a worm on a hook in order to fish on the lake. a big one bites!!! a real big one. OH! it’s actually a human body. the fisherman goes and gets the dude from the tackle shop and by proxy our agents.

OH! there is only half a body. they’re bickering on what could have eaten half of a human body while hiding together under an umbrella, and it’s really cute but where is the dog?

the tackle shop man is out in the swampy part near the lake wearing dino-shaped boots to try and make some convincing tracks LMAO. king of the hustle. but something approached him as he gets stuck in the mud!!!! and he is dragged into the dark lake with only a dino boot left behind!

apparently his name was ted. rip ted and your bobber hat and funny boots.

mulder seems to believe that the tracks are legit and tells scully and the dog to watch where they’re walking as to not disturb them (and the dog is named queequeg i’m gonna CRY!!!) 

the sheriff is OFFENDED by mulder’s suggestion to close the lake, because clearly this is just a bunch of drunk people falling overboard!! and then getting run over!! well if that happens as frequently as you seem to think it does, we need to do something regardless of if any beasts are involved.

scully is not buying that the tracks are from a real creature because they did not leave very deep impressions. but the dog yanks her away!!! he’s off investigating the dino boot! the prints may be a hoax, but the blood on the shoe is very real!

cut to some stoners on the lake talking about hallucinogenic toads. he holds a local frog and licks it. but someone interrupts his toad licking session coming back to the surface from a scuba dive?

oh no!! scuba dude is pulled by some sort of creature!!! and his head is removed from his body. well that is not good.

time to locate the head. both of our agents are in fun little jackets, and still bickering over what went down.

ansel the big blue photographer is serenading his camera, preparing for the perfect shot, which he has set up by filling an inner tube with meat. something bubbles beneath it. BUT NO!! it skips the meat on the tube and goes right for him!!!!! he snaps a picture as it gets him!! three attacks in one day!!!!

mulder asks the sheriff again to CLOSE DOWN THE LAKE and he again refuses. scully says it’s inconclusive still, which is echoing the dr. bailey saying about the fate of the frogs being inconclusive!

the sheriff falls in, and out there he brushes into something big. he immediately proclaims that the lake shall be closed down, calls state police, AND wildlife fish and game. well okay that gets results i guess.

they’re examining the photos from ansel, and mulder things that this blurry thing COULD be a tooth. it is very funny.

AWWW the dog needs to go for a walk, and mulder offers to go with her :,) she lifts up her jacket to show her gun, says she’ll be fine, and smiles. STOP I LOVE THEM SO MUCH?????

why is this episode making me emotional with their little lake visit. also something bad is definitely going to happen now. she says goodnight :,)

aww the dog is MAD and she’s talking to him in that kind of voice you reserve for a little creature... but he wants to go into the woods!!

no!!! he runs too fast!!! NO!!!!! WHERE DID HE GO???? HE ISN’T ON THE LEASH????

NO. I CAN’T BEAR TO WATCH SCULLY LOSE HER DOG…. 

oh my gosh, she is sitting in the chair, holding his collar in grief…. she is literally spaced out into another dimension mourning her little friend and mulder is rambling about the lake…. i want to slap him… NOOOO. she asks him to repeat himself because she was so out of it…

(if this doesn’t end with a dog reunion i will drop this dumbass show. BET.)

mulder asks if she can drive a boat. psh can she drive a boat? it’s natural to her bloodline.

she is piloting the boat and he’s telling her where to go, and she’s braver than me because if i lost my dog at this moment i think i would need two weeks to begin to even SORT of get a grasp on reality. 

“i know the difference between expectation and hope. seek and ye shall find, scully” <- this is a genuinely fantastic line said by mulder, but i’m still in dog mourning so we can go analyze that later 

map facts with scully :)

until the monster comes STRAIGHT AT THEM!! i like how she kept asking “what is that, mulder?” because it reminded me of when she kept asking mulder to get the bugs off of her in darkness falls… like the blind hope/faith/desperation that he would hold the answers and have a solution… ohhhgghh

big crash into the boat!!! it is leaking and she picks up the radio and calls a distress signal (another natural feature to a scully) but the boat is FILLING with water!!

mulder gets some life jackets for them and they barely get them on in time as the boat sinks. whew! a conveniently placed rock for them to perch upon is nearby!!!

but there goes the $500 deposit :( 

mulder says to swim and she is GAGGED “in which direction?!” lmaoooo

mulder is unsettled by how dark it is, because you forget these things in a city… and scully says you forget a lot of things in a city; her father taught her to respect nature, because it has no respect for you. or your dog, i guess :(

they both pull out their guns as they hear splashing!!!! mulder whispers that it was big blue, but scully asks “so what if it was?” <- NOOO you took her dog and her deposit, you’ve broken her spirit!!!

mulder says he wants to know because it could revolutionize science, and so many of the things they chase are intangible, but it’s a creature within the confines of a lake, it should be right HERE- and she isn't buying it for a second

she says she saw HIS FUTURE in ansel’s photographs, a man listening only to himself and seeing nonsense; she can’t figure out his motives, and things are approaching angst levels on this rock in the middle of nowhere, but SOMETHING APPROACHES!!!!

it’s a duck. okay so it could be worse!!! he says he’s still tempted to fire and she slams into him LMAOOO 

sleepover on the rock. “hey scully, do you think you could ever cannibalize someone?” <- LDHDMDNSMDNSBBDNSND I’M GENUINELY YELLING LMAOOOOOOO HOLD ON. hold on i need a minute to handle all that. (she gives a thoughtful and scientific response) <- that’s Them. that is their dynamic right there.

“you’ve lost some weight recently, haven’t you?” “yeah i have, thanks for-“ (glare of realization) LMAOOOOOOOO WHAT EVEN IS THIS EPISODE

“poor queequeg” she says, and i’m gonna CRY. but mulder has a better response now to her grief instead of just babbling on about the lake, asks why she chose that name. she shares that was the name of the harpoonist in moby dick, which her father used to read to her from.

and as she says this, she realizes how much mulder is like ahab, “so consumed by your personal vengeance against life, whether it be it’s inherent cruelties or it’s mysteries, that everything takes on a warped significance to fit your megalomaniacal cosmology” <- the words of a girl who was REALLY into a book as a kid and is also experiencing near-death levels of hypothermia and grief

LMAOOOOO HIS RESPONSE IS “scully, are you coming onto me?” yes. now kiss on the rock.

and she keeps going, talking about how his search for the Truth will take down everything he loves, just as it did for Ahab.

OH! he starts talking about how he always wished for a peg leg, even as a kid, and it first it seems like another of his many jokes but he says it’s because maybe then it’s enough to Persist despite the difficulty; without, “you’re actually expected to make something of your life- achieve something, earn a raise, wear a necktie” so perhaps he is the ANTITHESIS of ahab, for with a peg leg he may be more pleased! 

woah. that got deep. i’ll be gnawing on that one for a bit.

THEY BOTH QUOTE A LINE FROM THE BOOK AT THE SAME TIME... STOP I’M GONNA SOB?????

but a splashing approaches… and they draw their guns…. CUT TO A COMMERCIAL BREAK!!!!

it’s dr. farraday??? he says he hopes he’s not INTERRUPTING anything!!! wait so was the shore right there the whole time LMAOOO (silent walk of shame to the shore) BAHAHA

so what is this dude doing out here?? obviously it’s frog science! he’s been breeding the frogs to get their numbers back up. 

mulder is thinking…. if there are fewer frogs for a dinosaur to eat… it would have no choice but to turn to different food sources! (cutscene to serious arguing between mulder and dr. farraday whilst scully watches)

sheriff rolls up!!! another person had their arm bit off, and so he has thirty boats searching that area. but mulder says we have to search THIS cove, where the frogs have been going missing!! he blatantly refuses.

what if it was her little dog that bit the dude’s arm off…

scully politely asks for him to send a few men over and immediately gets results LMAOOO he quietly mumbles “thanks”

but a distant scream is heard!!! it’s dr. farraday!!! they run and find him!! something grabbed his leg and was shaking it. his leg is messed up really bad so scully is tying a tourniquet, and mulder’s running off after the mystery creature…. no self preservation instincts….

so he’s off with a gun and a flashlight chasing the human eating beast…. only to find some frogs. but something is approaching him?? quickly!!! and he’s firing his gun!!!

into a GATOR??? not a fancy lake beast!!

he’s staring out into the water… claiming to be fine. but he said he wanted the monster to be real, that he saw hope in such a possibility. she says there is still hope, that people want to believe, which is why the stories have endured for so long. 

GASP! the minute they leave, we see a big sea beast…

i’m literally so torn because i was CONVINCED the dog was going to come back 😭😭😭 and this episode was so good but WHY did they have to throw that in there… like i can’t even make an objective analysis of how this went because i’m so sad. WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?!?!

“oh juni there have been lots of human people that die in this series” which i mourned for too! but. i have felt the pain of losing a beloved and innocent creature and i do not wish for it to return and being reminded of its inevitably is not something i wish upon anyone MUCH less dana scully, who has already suffered in mythological levels.

really though, the episode was good. it was genuinely fantastic. it just clearly hit a bit of a nerve with me so i'm not going to do a thoughtful wrap up in the manner i like to think i usually do. but here are the things i liked, beyond the whole aesthetic and mood: bickering, umbrella sharing, scully at the helm, joint quoting of moby dick, deep introspection in the form of projecting onto book characters, cannibalism debates, outlandish creature as a monster of the week, rock sleepover, and fighting over frogs

[butwhatifidothis]

It really is strange how Edelstans simultaneously dig hard into people that don't agree with their specific interpretation of 3H to the point of being happy they manage to drive those people away... and be so upset and baffled that people become generally disinterested/actively hostile towards 3H content.

If folks get repeatedly driven out of a fandom, and that group of people repeatedly calls anyone who disagrees with their specific interpretation of 3H stupid/illiterate/"acting in bad faith"/sexist/racist/homophobic/etc., and it is repeatedly done by a group of people who insist that 3H's fandom problem is a "both sides" thing, with all of this being dragged into spaces that have nothing to do with 3H, well... obviously people are then going to start to dislike interacting with either 3H in general or its fandom in particular?

Edelstans are the ones spreading the idea that 3H's fandom in totality is shit. They keep trying to make their hands look cleaner than they are by claiming that everyone else's hands are just dirty as/even dirtier than theirs. Of course people who are unaware of everything are going to then assume that everyone's hands are dirty, thus making people not exactly want to shake hands with anyone.

Like, really now. What did they think was going to happen when they directly go after fanartists/fanfic writers who create/say things that go against the Approved Edelstan Status Quo, to the point that a non-zero amount of these creators just up and leave social media entirely? Or after they nitpick every single Disapproved Post and then lie about the post's OP? Or after it becomes a consistent pattern that people who even remotely disagree with Edelstans' opinions are always, without fail, buried with insulting and harassing anons? Or after they're shown time and time again to defend their worst actors with "well their/our victims deserved it because they said a 3H opinion we didn't agree with"? Or when they say that everyone does this shit in 3H's fandom except for them (which is either not believed because it's demonstrably untrue or is actually believed and now those people think the overwhelming majority of 3H's fandom is filled with shit)? Or when they drag 3H discourse into literally actually everything no matter how unrelated?

That with less fandom creators within the fandom space they'd get more content? That harassing and insulting people and accusing them of being this-and-that bigot is going to magically "correct" their minds into seeing The One Truth about 3H? That people are going to just look over all the shit they did just because they allocate the blame of their action on all of 3H's fandom? That people would like 3H more if they constantly remind people of the inarguable worst thing to come from 3H? That this would help 3H's general perception?

Fuckin' no, of course that's just going to make everyone fuck off from 3H. And would you look at that, a shit ton of people have fucked off from 3H since everything has been swept under a "well it'sth a bolth thides ithue tho what can ya do?" rug. And it's been swept under that rug by pretty much the only people who are pulling this shit, who then get shocked - utterly gobsmacked! - that that made them look bad too. That crying "both sides!" included themselves too and not just the people they've been harassing. That saying that the entire fandom is bad everywhere made the entire fandom look bad everywhere.

If Edelstans are really so upset that no one talks about 3H positively anymore, then maybe they should stop being the reason no one likes 3H anymore. Just a thought

[crossbackpoke-check]

Why I Am Not Coming In To Work Today [abridged], Jess Zimmerman

part one | part two

[mad-hunts]

[lonesomedreamer]

“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.

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.

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???

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.

Reverse Excalibur, but make it evil and able to operate a giant Rube Goldberg machine! How stupid.

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.

“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.

[im-no-jedi]

Get to know me tag game

79‘s edition

//Rules// copy this post and answer the questions below + tag people you would like to see at 79‘s!

thank you for tagging me @sunshinesdaydream!! I'm gonna have fun with this 😁

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So, imagine that all of us are living on Coruscant during the Clone Wars. Obviously we would all be going to 79’s, right? Now I’m wondering what everyone is gonna wear the first time you’re going? What kind of drinks do you order? What will you be doing? Who will you be flirting with?

What to wear: ok so I don't have a full body picture of it, but this is what my top, jewelry, and makeup would look like:

now just picture that, but with my usual short red hair, as seen below:

I would also wear some black leggings and black boots to match✨

What to order: a mocktail of some sort, I don't do alcohol LOL. something akin to a pina colada or anything with caf in it. I'll take a spike of space Kahlua if they have it 😜

What to do: I absolutely would not be by myself, so I'd mostly be hanging out with whatever friends I came along with. I'd join in on any dancing though 😁

Who to woo: I'm not someone who approaches other people, especially if I find them attractive... and being surrounded by a bunch of handsome soldiers, hoo boy... buuuuut I would definitely have my eyes on certain ones. especially if there were a group of unusual looking Clones that stand out from the rest 😉 I could see myself getting fixated on the one with half a skull tattooed on his face, going back and forth between questioning his aesthetic choices and being completely overwhelmed by how handsome he is. he and I both seem to be reacting the same way to the environment, not really doing much besides interacting with friends. during an unscheduled dance party break though, we somehow end up dancing next to each other, and I'm completely blown away by how good he is. to my surprise, he's equally impressed with my dancing, and we end up casually getting to know each other while moving across the dance floor. I get exhausted way before he does, and he offers to buy me a drink so I don't pass out. turns out he also doesn't drink that much alcohol, and I introduce him to my favorite mocktails. we continue to chat the night away, just the two of us; it seems as though our respective friend groups have decided to leave us alone for unknown reasons. we end up having more in common than we initially thought. even if nothing romantic comes about from the experience, we at least each garnered a new friend... although lbr, romance is most certainly in the future 😋

@clonethirstingisreal I know you wanted to see my version, so here it is!✨

and I'll tag @photogirl894 @jedi-hawkins @probadbatch @anxiouspineapple99 and @lightwise if they wanna join!✨

[anothercomplaint]

So i will get real on this lovely platform that has seen me through so many passions throughout the years.

I am now finally feeling the sadness, but I realize what I'm mourning is the death of my childhood. Other things have happened this year to reinforce this feeling.

I was so wide-eyed, innocent and positive when I was twelve. All I needed to be fully happy was to be a fan of One Direction. I had such great times.

I was so unaware of the true horrors that life contains. The bad times then, feel silly now. And the true horrors I had lived, I didn't process (still haven't).

However, time has passed, and I've lived through some more horrible things. Life is not as pink, bright, cheerful and filled with fun and music as it felt back then. Real shit happens.

What breaks my heart is that I was not scared of anything back then. And I am so scared now. And I don't want to become the cynical, cold and closed off person that I feel like I'm becoming. But it seems like being open and happy most likely means that horrible hurt and pain is around the corner. You have to pay for it.

Again, this is not really about Liam. I have had one of the best, and worst years of my life.

However, his death is making me think about this stuff, again, because it feels like the death of my childhood. I am sad.

[quietlyblooms]

honestly speaking, the idea of going back to my dorverold multimuse stresses me out bc i think i would just want to start over? and make rin the main muse like i always should have done, but i dunno. it felt like work trying to get people invested in her before, and i just!! don't particularly want to deal with that again. which is sad to say, but it is what it is. i'm happy enough being able to just incorporate aspects of that lore into chiyo's modern fantasy verses for now. maybe in the future i'll commit to putting in the work for rin and her story.

[necrotic-nephilim]

What's your favourite batclan member and which one is your favourite to write?

ooooh, fun question!! as for favorite character, probably Helena Bertinelli. i am unwell about her. a couple years ago i was like "i don't know Huntress too well, I'll just read all the Huntress comics can't be that hard" and i did and since then she has lived rent-free in my mind. i never shut up about her and i have successfully convinced multiple people to be Huntress fans. if anyone ever wants Huntress comic recs, thoughts on who i ship her with, explanations of Helena Bertinelli vs Helena Wayne, i am your guy.

if we went with like, characters who are the more accepted main Batfam members, i'd have to say the basic answer of Tim Drake. he's just. he's my guy man idk what it is. a lot of facts about me are eerily similar to Tim so i'm blaming it on that. Red Robin (2009) altered my brain chemistry in ways i've yet to fix. a lot of my favorite Batfam arcs and storylines tend to involve him, and i think he's had a *lot* of really cool storylines. personally a big fan of A Lonely Place of Living, which as far as Rebirth goes, a pretty solid TIm story. i love Tim so dearly.

a close third favorite is Jean-Paul Valley, who also exists now as a more exterior Batfam member, but he's everything to me. Catholic guilt and dissociative identity disorder in one guy? sign me up i love him.

as for who's my favorite to write: once again probably Tim, just because i can confidently say i know him the most and i find exploring his flaws from his POV to be really fun. he's kind of an ass and can be ego-centric, but that's what makes him fun. i also love writing Jason, just because there's a self-awareness that a well-written Jason Todd has that's so fun to explore. also i pride myself in knowing i can write Jason better than Scott Lobdell can. which to be fair isn't a high bar, but given he has changed Jason for the worse and it took use like a decade to be free of his writing, i think i'm allowed it. i also really like writing Cass! i don't know if i can say i have as strong of a grasp on her as i do Jason or Tim, but she's such a complex character to write and i enjoy giving her a lot of dimension solely to combat her existing as a prop in most fanfic.

[legionofpotatoes]

gareth edwards 🤝 david cage

total inability to grasp the function of AI as a metaphor in sci fi storytelling as well as an overall lack of sensitivity towards geopolitical allegory within their childlike both-sides wankery that is too poorly removed from real-life aesthetics to be taken at face value

[fluxedbuds]

o boy new life series cant wait to Stop Watching As Soon As Someone Permadies