#you can see it in post split

[demodraws0606]

Would I be shot to death if I said TPOT is better at writing certain emotional/serious moments than Inanimate Insanity (though it is on a case by case basis).

[bluuscreen]

on being a hero and the irrational guilt that comes with being imperfect — part 1/2

part 2 | headcanon/au being referenced

[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."

[licorishh]

no way she's alive ?? yea those mental health breaks because social media makes people suck are wild huh

[rocketbirdie]

NEURON ACTIVATION

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF sticker club stickers for March!!

[lemongogo]

viktor prev 🤖

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance - Symphony of Sorcery

[can-of-slorgs]

I'm personally blaming @starbiology and everyone who has reblogged or commented the other piece for this.

Bonus comic featuring my grundo:

[moe-broey]

My homunculus

Hashtag my homunculus

[starstruckodysseys]

new york needs the lanie woodward experience (TM)

[jackfuckingtwist]

oxventure wyrdwood as bastille songs! (oxventure)

wyrdwood as a group: daniel in the den | blue sky & the painter cressida: the silence lug: pompeii willowfine: get home robin & morven: the draw robin: icarus morven: sleepsong

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

deeply niche but like a decade ago there was an epistolary radio show called warhorses of letters which was actual genuine horse yaoi just thought you should know xoxoxo

You're telling just *now* that there exists a BBC radio show adaption of an epistolary novel about two gay warhorses in the Napoleonic era, who are on opposite sizes of the battlefield? Based on the real horses of the war generals?

[atopvisenyashill]

wait i saw @kingcunny saying that hotd should have started earlier and now i’m thinking about what a MISS it was to not start the series with the second quarrel actually. especially considering how the dance ends (and how umm. fun having rhaenyra getting eaten by a dragon is gonna be when the casuals finally see it), it would be interesting to start at a moment where the Targaryens are at the height of their power and yet you can see exactly why it all came crashing down.

the royal couple are living separately. the crown prince is dead, and his daughter has been passed over, alienating one of the strongest allies of the targaryens. there’s a royal wedding but it’s whack as hell and can’t even be consummated. the king is bugging his septa daughter to go gaslight the queen into coming back home but all she does is fly a lap around the capital to flip jaehaerys and viserys off and then fucks back off to dragonstone.

just a full season following the way jaehaerys’ reign crumples in on itself, leading up to the great council and viserys being chosen again as heir. i get not wanting to cover jae's early years because you could probably end an aegon’s conquest show at jaehaerys & alysanne’s wedding or somewhereabouts bc obviously an aegon's conquest show is going to cover the sons of the dragon. but like When Else would we just cover The Long Reign, when most of it is relevant to the history directly preceding or after it. But if you put Viserys, Aegon II, and Rhaenyra in the context of Jaehaerys, Alysanne, and Rhaenys' history over fighting over the throne, you can see more clearly that the rot doesn't actually start with Viserys (or with, as I've seen more than a few people say, the Targaryens marrying non Valyrians) it starts at the very foundations of the dynasty with Jaehaerys usurping his own sister and nieces and then clawing back any power they could ever be given to ensure it's never taken away from him again, except all he does is ensure that every single woman in his house will be so desperate and scared of facing the same fates as their foremothers that they're willing to set their own house on fire to avoid the endings he forced on every woman in his life.

[nyupuun]

Satellite's Shooting Star (Dragon)

continuation of this (technically)

[chiimeramanticore]

waow