I 100% believe when they filmed the roller rink fight the duffers straight up showed Finn & Noah the rain fight and said "You remember this? Do it again."
There's no way the two scenes match up so perfectly without them having to be directed to mirror the rain fight. Like it's not even Mike and Will's positions, it's the facial expressions, the hand movements, the delivery.
Every single thing match's up perfectly and it's driving me crazy
(I highly recommend looking at any TikTok edit of these two scenes together, the whole parallel jumps out so much and in an angsty way, it's fun)
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can I ask how being a bi lesbian (or. however you specifically describe it works) works? is it like. lesbian romantic but bisexual, or the other way around, or...? i don't know if that's a respectful way to ask ;-; i'm just. not very knowledgeable on this.
personally im just mostly homoromantic but bisexual and just have a strong sapphic lean in general and also labels are made up and i get to be silly with them if i want to
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Returning to an old conversation about magic in LotR, something occurred to me the other day: Sting was a far more effective weapon against Shelob than Sam's sword, slicing through multiple of her webs with a single sweep and cutting into her belly without much apparent effort from Sam. The text is a bit unclear for the brief portion of the fight when Sam is using two swords, but it seems to me that the only wound Sam's own sword scores against her is against one of her eyes: "The shining sword bit upon her foot and shore away the claw. Sam sprang in, inside the arches of her legs, and with a quick upthrust of his other hand stabbed at the clustered eyes upon her lowered head." While both swords could potentially be shining, Sting is established to be glowing at this point due to the proximity of the orcs in the tower, so I'm inclined to believe that the shining sword here is Sting, the one that chops off the end of one of her legs no problem, while the other one strikes against her eye, established two paragraphs later to be her softest spot.
Now Frodo attributes this potency against Shelob to the sword's origins. "There were webs of horror in the dark ravines of Beleriand where it was forged." And basically this pans out, Gondolin, where Sting was made, was not too far from Ered Gorgoroth, where Ungoliant and her spawn (including, most likely, Shelob herself) lived until Beleriand fell. The logic here, is, perhaps, similar to the reasoning for why Frodo and Merry's barrow-blades were so potent against the Witch-king, having adopted a portion of their makers' loathing for a particular enemy. And there is indeed evidence enough for this: the first spider Bilbo encounters in Mirkwood "evidently was not used to things that carried such stings at their sides, or it would have hurried away quicker." This spider lived not too far from the Elvenking's halls, surely it had been attacked with weapons before, which does call up an idea of there being something especially terrible to it about this particular sword. (Though this spider is also inarguably quite inept and possibly stupid; no shade to Bilbo but losing a fight to a mostly-tied-up enemy that can't see in the dark and has never before fought anything more dangerous than a particularly stubborn door-to-door salesman doesn't exactly reflect well on its capabilities.)
But I think Sting had another enchantment on it, and one a great deal more recent, and possibly even more direct: the enchantment of its name.
Bilbo takes a sword from a troll-hoard, puts it on his belt and under his jacket, and then proceeds to carry it around for months without thinking about it at all -- until, that is, he finds himself face to face with a giant spider, a giant spider who, as is made clear in the text, was one of Shelob's own descendants: "Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Duath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood (emphasis mine)."
So Bilbo takes his sword and makes his first kill, and what we witness next is a Moment by any definition: "Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves of of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath."
Then Bilbo names the sword, and he names it Sting, calling to mind the thought of a fly that can fight off a spider, a tiny creature coming out on top in a fight with a fierce predator. And then he sets off and uses his newly minted sword to rescue his friends from giant spiders. And though he uses the sword again in his adventure, it is never such a great moment, and indeed he ends up missing a great deal of the battle where it would have been most useful, leaving this incident with the spiders as not only his first use of the weapon, but his most significant -- as The Hobbit is meant to be adapted from his memoirs, certainly the only one he felt important enough to write about.
And for sixty years Sting laid quiet in the Shire, hanging over Bilbo's mantle, where he told stories about it to his nieces and nephews and cousins and anyone else who would listen, and doubtless the story he kept circling back to was the one about the great spiders and the christening of his sword, and even if nobody believed it, a bit of a legend grew about it, and whatever deeds, if any, it was involved in before it found its way to the troll's hoard were forgotten, and it became the Sting, the sword that was used to defend friends from Shelob's brood.
I hardly need to point out the power inherent in names and the naming of things and people in Tolkien's work.
And then, seventy-eight years after its christening, Sting finds itself in another spider's lair, the grandmother or great-grandmother of that first spider that earned it its name -- and this is what it is, now. This is its entire identity, insomuch as a sword can have one of those. I think that over seventy-eight years Bilbo quite inadvertently but also quite effectively wove an enchantment against Shelob and her ilk on that sword, never knowing how much it would matter in the end. Indeed, I would put forth that there was no other weapon in contemporary Middle-earth that would have been such a bitter sting to Shelob; similar enchantments, perhaps, could be found in Thranduil's halls from his people's long struggle against the spiders there, but on a blade from Gondolin, which shared a mountain range with the land where Ungoliant herself lived for a time? And Glamdring and Orcrist would have inherited those properties alongside Sting, but they had a legacy of goblin slaying, not spider slaying.
So, quite by accident, Frodo and Sam walked into Shelob's lair with the best possible chance of escaping her.
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even if i didnt love botw as much as i do, totk drives me nuts bc, similarly to pokemon, this series is so SO SO full of potential, they have so many games they can pull from, theres so many themes, characters and worldbuilding thats just left to rot, you dont need to connect anything with a chain to old titles, you dont need to bring back any things that already had their ending, but PLEASE harness at least a fraction of all this!!!! and they just refuse to do it beyond shallow references
totk jsut drives it all home to me, bc this isnt just the next game in the franchise, but a DIRECT SEQUEL no 10 years apart from botw, yet they cant even, they REFUSE to even keep the continuity with its OWN lore it established in botw together, and that, i think, is what truly makes me so insane (derogatory) about totk
it PROVES they do not care, they dont care to build on anything of the lore of old titles beyond references in form of amiibos or whatever, they dont even care to make a sequel to their most successful game in the franchise coherent with its own lore
botw established a captivating detailed world full of potential, while lacking in active storytelling, it had environmental storytelling, characters and ideas that were the perfect ground to build on-
and then they do away with it bc idk .. they want you to build mechs and make videos of it that go viral and thats all they care about or something
shiekah tech? forget that existed
character being the character you know? act as if you are seeing them for the first time just like they are
lame story? dont think about that just be distracted by the epic presentation of it
lore the previous title established? forget that, all that matters is what is here and now
beloved character from old games beign brought back? hes a new guy and has no background and no lore and just sits waiting for you at the end to have a flashy fight with
references from old titles and their lore? just here for nostalgie bait, dont you remember? you LOVE this series, now give me 70 bucks for a glorified DLC that ruins what you loved about the series and makes you realize that nothign matters and nothing is interesting anymore
you are supposed to take it all at face value, to not think about anything, to see a character say something and just go with it, and forget it the second its over, be distracted by good music and pretty visuals, but dont think about, dont think about anything but what is directly said to you like you have no critical thinking skills, forget there was a game before this one, only the one you play matters, empty your skull and dont let yourself feel anything but what the game tells you to feel
if they dont even care to make the sequel to their most successful game actually build on the previous title, dont even care to keep their continuity of two games supposedly directly happening one after the other in tact- maybe they never cared, and all the meaning we thought we saw them build into their games was all accidental and meaningless
and that is absolutely soul crushing for fans like me to discover
its a game.
its not a story, its not a world, its not themes, its not characters, its not lore.
its a product made to make you pay money, not to make you think about anything.
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I want more people to make Nü Wa also Wukong’s mom because she also created him in one of the myths and if that’s the route we’re going for no fucking wonder he’s got so many issues
But I also fear that if Season 5 does this they’re all going to go “of course he has mommy issues” like ok he was also groomed, forced to partake in a fight he didn’t even want to do, is actually doing great as a mentor and is a somewhat good role model to Xiaotian and has taught him how to be controlled and capable and is clearly proud of him and has been effectively trying to change as a person
But sure let’s focus on the mommy issues and not the serious aspect of how Nü Wa not only did this again but also is no different from the other people in Heaven who do nothing for the mortals and immortals that have suffered because of their lack of care towards them and only imprison or attack them because they… attack Heaven directly.
Demon Bull King and Sun Wukong hold no grudges because they were victims of a very weird and messed up system; I hope Erlang gets punched in the face by them both
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seen someone say it but it’s so poignant that izzy spends the entirety of episode 4 lashing out, screaming at the ship and at his own reflection. his anger and frustration comes out violently and he puts no effort into filtering it. he’s a drunk mess and doesn’t care to stifle his anger, if he even could. he’s used to feeling hurt and then lashing out. it’s normal for him to be hit and then go hit someone else about it. it’s normal for him to feel like shit and then go shout at someone about it. he can do that blackout drunk, and doesn’t even need another person around to do it
but when he’s gifted the leg, and suddenly given something to be actively happy about, he has to stifle his reaction. he suddenly has to choke back his emotion, and the words don’t even form. he can only shake and cry and keep himself as hushed as possible, literally clamping down with his hand to keep them restrained
anger is something he’s comfortable displaying even when intoxicated. but, even when intoxicated, bittersweet tears are something he feels he needs to literally hold in. anger is acceptable, anger is normal, anger is something he knows how to deal with. feelings of camaraderie, the sting of love like alcohol in a wound— he doesn’t know how to deal with it, nor is he comfortable sitting with it. it’s never been something he was allowed to embrace, and it’s still not something he even knows how to
sorta like if you keep getting hurt, your skin will scab and callous and you’ll get used to the feeling of that pain. it becomes normal and your body adapts to become tougher and more resilient. only problem with knowing how to power through wounds like that is that when it’s time to clean them, to wash them with alcohol to disinfect, it stings like something you’ve never felt. something deeper and sharper that your skin isn’t used to, something actively counteracting the way your body has adapted to repeated offenses. once you’ve felt enough scratches in your skin, the alcohol of healing hurts worse than yet another countless scratch
my poor guy has never ever healed from anything that’s happened to him, he’s always just powered through and calloused himself for the sake of efficiency. only realizing now that you can only power through with dirty open wounds so long before they start to fester and rot. poor guy doesn’t even know what healing feels like and he’s never been allowed to know. any previous attempts might’ve earned him “fuckin’ lightweight” and “if you can’t do it, someone else will” so even healing feels like something he has to stifle and keep quiet
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