decisions and revisions

DIEGO LUNA as CASSIAN ANDOR in Andor, Season 2 first look

hope isn’t something you just have, it’s something you sink your teeth into like an animal so it doesn’t get away

I am obsessed with the fact that the Veilguard all gathers round to watch Solas's saddest memories and then dissects them like it's an episode of Desperate Housewives. 10/10 no notes, exactly what he deserves.

a woman alone will download pdfs. two women together will send links and articles. three or more women? that’s a library

corporate ppl are always like “i hate email comms they cause so many delays” but those people are fools. i crave communication delays. i hit send on an email and then immediately shoot a prayer up to the heavens that the response may take 2-3 days. let’s slow everything down just a bit thank you.

this is the most productive workforce in history and im just doing my part to dial that back a tad

recognising your parent's mannerisms in yourself and physically feeling psychic damage occur

Discworld is an interesting beast in the age of ACAB. Like, the city watch books are a story about police and the way in which a good police force can help and protect people. Which would make it copoganda. And I'm not going to say that the City Watch books are completely free of copoganda, but they also do something interesting that fairly few stories about heroic police officers do, and I think it has a lot to do with Samuel Vimes. A lot of copoganda stories like, say, Brooklyn 99, are perfectly capable of portraying cops as cruel, bigoted, and greedy, but our central cast of characters are portrayed as good people who want to help their communities. The result is that the bad cops are portrayed as an aberration, while most cops can be assumed to be good people doing a tough job because they want to help protect people from the nebulous evil forces of "Crime". The police are considered to be naturally heroic. Pratchett does something very interesting, which is provide us with Vimes' perspective, and present us with an Unnaturally heroic police force. In Ahnk-Morpork, the natural state of the watch is a gang with extra paperwork. It's the place for people who, at best, just want a steady paycheck and at worst want an excuse to hit people with a truncheon. Rather than be an army defending people from the forces of Crime, the Watch is described as a sort of sleight-of-hand, big burly watchmen in shiny uniforms don't stand around in-case a Crime happens in their vicinity, they stand around to remind people that The Law exists and has teeth. The Watchmen are people, when danger rears it's head, their instinct is to hide and get out of the way. When faced with authority, their instinct is to bow to it out of fear of what it might do to them if they don't. Carrot is a genuine Hero, but his natural heroism is presented as an aberration. Normal Cops don't act like Carrot does. The fact that the Watch ends up acting like a Heroic Police Force is largely due to the leadership of Sam Vimes, but Vimes himself is a microcosm of the Watch. The base state of Sam Vimes would be an alchoholic bully of an officer, one who beats people until they confess to anything because that makes his job easier. Vimes The Hero is a homunculous, an artificial being created by Sam Vimes fighting back all those instincts and FORCING himself to behave as his conscience dictates. Vimes doesn't take bribes or let his officers do the same because, damnit, that sort of thing shouldn't happen, even if doing so would make things a lot easier. Vimes doesn't run towards sounds of screaming because he WANTS to, he forces himself to do so because somebody needs to. It's best summed up in Thud “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Your Grace.” “I know that one,” said Vimes. “Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr. Pessimal.” “Ah, but who watches you, Your Grace?” said the inspector with a brief little smile. “I do that, too. All the time,” said Vimes. “Believe me.”

In the hands of another writer, or another series, this exchange would be weirdly dismissive. To whom should the police be accountable to? Themselves, shut up and trust us. But from Vimes, it's a different story. Vimes DOES constantly watch himself, and he doesn't trust that bastard, he's known him his entire life. The Heroic Police are not a natural state, they're an ideal, and ahnk-morpork only gets anywhere close. Vimes is constantly struggling against his own instincts to take shortcuts, to let things slide, but he forces himself to live up to that ideal and the Watch follows his example. Discworld doesn't propose any solutions to the problems with policing in the real world. We don't have a Sam Vimes to run the NYPD and force them to behave. We don't have a Carrot Ironfounderson. But it's at least a story about detectives and police that I can read without feeling like I'm being sold propaganda about the Thin Blue Line.

Bilbo barely passed Old Took's record lifespan after having a supernaturally-life-extending ring for 60 years. which begs a question. what the hell did Old Took do

I have a theory that somewhere back up the line gandalf fucked a took. This sounds like complete crack but hear me out. The tooks are rumored to have “fairy blood” which in LOTR terms means either elves or maia. There is an ancestor who’s unusually tall and many of them are noted to live unusually long lives unless they meet with illness or injury, same as the numenorians did. They don’t hve extra pointy ears and elves don’t have a special interest in the line. But who DOES have a special interest in looking after tooks (and bilbo who is a took on his mother’s side/his adopted son frodo)? Gandalf. That dude is ALWAYS fussing over some silly little guy. He regularly brought the old took birthday presents.

Back in the day some bold hobbitess decided to climb that old man and ever since then gandalf has been looking after his line of tiny crazy bastards and no one will convince me otherwise.

ABIGAIL (2024) dir. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett

#married

OSCAR ISAAC as POE DAMERON in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015)

dropped the walrus vs fairy question on a group of psychologists today and not only did the majority agree the walrus would be more surprising, the one with the strongest background in research responded to the ‘but fairies aren’t real’ argument with “are your beliefs so inflexible that you’ve never considered you might be wrong about what’s real and what’s not?” and honestly i haven’t recovered

honestly you know what goals

collection of posts for a very specific dynamic

@madnessofthespirits