#targeted tv

[spockvarietyhour]

The Experience ™️

[bluecrocss]

Adult PJO fans: "I can't relate to her if she doesn't look like me" "this is disrespectful to book!Annabeth" "I can't see her as the same character if she's black" "blonde, white women are soooo underrepresented in media. No one else can understand 😫"

Meanwhile, the actual demographic the show and books are for:

(@/walkersriptide_ on TikTok)

-

Caveats in the tags.

[angelfishcake]

I need everyone to see this

[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."

[tinglingpeter]

LEO WOODALL in Prime Target (2025)

[dirtbagdefender]

[lovecolibri]

Brennan: *narrating* ...and third he gave him a sword named Wavebreaker.

Aabria: *gasp* SHUT UP! sorrysorrysorry

🤣🤣🤣 I love when the cast has the exact same reaction I do. What an exciting moment!

[begging-4-footnotes-in-the-story]

Taylor buying 1989 at Target in 2014.

[sergle]

I'm listening to a lot of Maintenance Phase (bc I love it) and this comes up sometimes, so I'll just be sat here thinking about how common it is for little kids to grow up watching their moms and other women in their life jump from diet to diet. Just as ambient background noise in your childhood, the adults around you obsess over calories aloud, express guilt over eating enjoyable food, frame exercise as a form of punishment for eating, and so on.

[padmestrilogy]

i saw the tv glow (2024) dir. jane schoenbrun / revenge of the sith (2005) / rots novelization, matthew stover / "i saw the tv glow's ending is full of hope", emily st. james / rots first draft / return of the jedi (1983)

[deimcs]

You were born amidst the Dalish elves: noble wanderers who refuse to join the society of humans that subjugated their homeland so long ago. The Dalish travel the land in tightly knit clans, struggling to maintain their half-forgotten lore in a human world that fears and despises them. You spend your time hunting with your clan-mate Tamlen in the forests, and as is sometimes the case, your quarry is not always the local wildlife…

[spockvarietyhour]

Fallout "The Target"

[fleursfairies]

when ur favs are twinning with ur other favs

[waltybrainrot]

part 2 of me trying to sell a niche (queer) norwegian show with no official translations to y'all :D

here are some screenshots from season 2 warning: this ventures into spoiler territory

mathias (w/sara) saving his mans too late

he likes to grab erik + this looks like a love triangle LMAO

i screamed.

mathias meeting his mom to erik's horror LMAO + bonus mathias holding the door for him

find someone who looks at you the way mathias looks at erik

THIS LOOKS LIKE A DATE.

just two bros fishin' and arguin'

but they made out up so it's fine

mathias in his bunad + erik in a suit ahhh

tumblr is being mean and saying i added too many photos so i gotta make a part 3 i'm so sorry ;-;

[noel-fielding-web-page]

[x] [x] [x] [x]

[hrefna-the-raven]

The hunt

Fallout masterlist - main masterlist

Cooper Howard/The Ghoul x reader

Summary: you were sent to retrieve a precious item, but so was the most notorious bounty hunter in the Wasteland...

(this happens before Cooper ended up in that grave)

Words: 1143

Warnings: swearing

Notes: I had a female reader in mind while reading this but it turned out to be quite neutral so I guess it could be read a gender-neutral as well 😊

Chapter 1 - The plan

The blistering sun burned down on the dusty South Californian wasteland as he entered the ruins of a long deserted town. Tugging his cowboy hat lower to shield his eyes from the blinding sunshine, he instinctively reached for his revolver, drawing it from its holster as he sauntered towards you.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?", he asked with a grin, aiming his gun at you.

You had spotted him the moment he entered the ruins, but hiding was never your style. Your curiosity got the better of you, eager to finally meet the ghoulish bounty hunter whose reputation preceded him. Lifting your gaze from his gun to meet his eyes, you rose to your feet, a mischievous smirk painted across your lips.

"A beautiful face, a wicked sense of humour that provides for good company and", picked up the shotgun propped against the adjacent wall, "a loaded gun if you decide on becoming a problem."

He raised an eyebrow, eyeing the shotgun before returning your smirk.

"Now, ain't that a welcome you could take as a compliment and a warning. Well, you can rest easy, darlin’. I ain't lookin’ to turn this into a bloodbath."

"Neither do I. Would be a shame to rid this world of the legendary Cooper Howard.", you winked at him as you put your gun back.

The ghoul chuckled, holstered his revolver, and tipped his hat while taking a step closer to you.

"Now ain't you a charmer? And one who's done their homework as well."

"Oh when a pre-war celebrity as dashing as you becomes the most renowned bounty hunter of this unforgiving wasteland, one simply must take a closer look."

"Don't go makin' an ol' ghoul blush with your pretty words", he teased.

"As if one could see the blush on that red skin of yours", you chuckled, "so what brings the most feared bounty hunter to this lost place?"

You were intrigued by this man out of time. He lived in the pre-war era, a world that was so different from the one you were born into, wandering around for two decades while he was forced to watch the world crumble and slowly rebuild itself, for better or worse. It begged the question what all this would do to a human's sanity and yet he didn't strike you as mad, quite on the contrary, he possessed something that you'd describe as old world charm paired in a deadly combination with one of the sharpest minds. His expression took on a slightly more serious edge, his gaze fixing to the edge of the ruins.

"Well, I’ve been tracking a caravan, you see. They’re supposed to be passing through these parts sometime soon. I’m looking for a specific item they’re carrying and since this ain't exactly a common route, I'd bet my wrinkly ass you're here for the exact same reason."

"What a coincidence", you laughed, taking out your flask, unscrewing the lid, "that item wouldn't happen to be a crate full of well preserved bottles of the finest pre-war whiskey?"

You took a sip and tapped the space beside you on the wall, gesturing for him to join you before extending the flask towards him. He nodded appreciatively as he accepted it. You were clearly a hunter just like him but your kindness caught him off guard, it was a rare occurrence in the harsh reality of the Wasteland, especially among gunslingers. To him you seemed like a rare but quite intriguing specimen, beauty and charm in a passionate tango with deadly cunning, a single dionaea muscipula thriving in the desert and he was the fly irresistibly drawn to it. This was exactly why he usually kept his distance from others but around you his resolve seemed to crumble, enchanted by the brightness and beauty of your soul.

"Quite the coincidence indeed", the Ghoul murmured, "I wonder how you by this information? If I'd had to guess I'd say that prick Dom Pedro hired one too many for this job."

"Given my additional instructions to kill a certain ghoul should he happen to cross my path, I'd say you're spot on. So what shall we do about this?", you asked, turning towards him, away from the gun as you kept your hands on your lap.

You pokered high on this one, knowing damn well it was a huge risk to admit your instructions to eliminate him while having no intent to do so, it made you vulnerable in front of the Wasteland's most fearsome bounty hunter.

Cooper lit a cigarette, a faint glow casting an eerie glow on his ghoulish face as he puffed on it, studying you with a combination of intrigue and admiration. You had made no move to actually fulfill that part of your contract, another thing that intrigued him about you, another contrast to every other bloodthirsty fucker he met in fucked up ruined world and maybe this was exactly what he needed.

"Well now, ain't that a question for the ages. The way I see it, we got three choices here. First, we could settle this like every other idiot in the trade and see who's left standin'. Second, we could team up and increase our chances of snatchin' that shipment, shared profit of course. Or third...", he took a long drag on his cigarette before throwing it to the ground.

"We get the item, return to dear old Dom and fuck him up gloriously", you offered with a mischievous grin.

Cooper's smile widened as he nodded in agreement. He'd risk a lot but not shooting you straight away but there was this feeling, buried deep down within him that urged him to trust you, a faint notion of the same tingling he had felt so long ago, back when his skin was still smooth and life was less complicated.

"Now you're talkin' my language. Ain't nothin' more exciting than a well-executed betrayal. Besides ol' Dom deserves what's comin' for him. So what do you say? You in?", he asked, extending his hand towards you, his eyes locked on yours.

"Hell yeah", you chuckled and shook his hand, "pleasure doin' business with you, Howard."

The way his name fell from your lips stirred something within him. For over two decades, nobody had called him by his real name, everywhere he went he always simply the ghoul, the notorious mercenary who drifted from place to place, leaving chaos and bloodshed in his wake. However you were the very first person in a long time who seemed to see something different in him and the fearless yet teasing way you talked to him had this undeniable hint of respect, dancing around the borders of genuine affection. He sighed and got up as the sounds of chatters in the distance rang to his ears.

“Our target's approaching, let's get goin'.”

Chapter 2 - The bounty

Feel free to reblog if you enjoyed the story 😊