why are you people even here?

I SEND THE SWARM I SEND THE HORDE THUS SAITH THE LORD

⁽ᵒⁿᶜᵉ ᴵ ᶜᵃˡˡᵉᵈ ʸᵒᵘ ᵇʳᵒᵗʰᵉʳ, ᵒⁿᶜᵉ ᴵ ᵗʰᵒᵘᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜʰᵃⁿᶜᵉ ᵗᵒ ᵐᵃᵏᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ˡᵃᵘᵍʰ ʷᵃˢ ᵃˡˡ ᴵ ᵉᵛᵉʳ ʷᵃⁿᵗᵉᵈ⁾

I SEND THE THUNDER FROM THE SKY I SEND THE FIRE RAINING DOWN

⁽ᵃⁿᵈ ⁿᵒʷ ᴵ ʷᶦˢʰ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᴳᵒᵈ ʰᵃᵈ ᶜʰᵒˢᵉ ᵃⁿᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ⁻⁻ ˢᵉʳᵛᶦⁿᵍ ᵃˢ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᶠᵒᵉ ᵒⁿ ʰᶦˢ ᵇᵉʰᵃˡᶠ ᶦˢ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵃˢᵗ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵍ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᴵ ʷᵃⁿᵗᵉᵈ⁾

I SEND A HAIL OF BURNING ICE ON EVERY FIELD ON EVERY TOWN

THIS – WAS – MY – HOME

all this pain and devastation, how it tortures me inside, all the innocent who suffer from your stubbornness and pride

I SEND THE LOCUSTS ON A WIND SUCH AS THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN ON EVERY LEAF ON EVERY STALK UNTIL THERE’S NOTHING LEFT OF  G R E E N

I SEND MY SCOURGE I SEND MY SWORD

THUS  SAITH  THE   L O R D

you who I called brother, why must you call down another blow?

I SEND MY SCOURGE I SEND MY SWORD

LET MY PEOPLE GO

⁽ᵗʰᵘˢ ˢᵃᶦᵗʰ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵒʳᵈ ᵗʰᵘˢ ˢᵃᶦᵗʰ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵒʳᵈ⁾

you who I called brother, how could you have come to hate me so? is this what you wanted? ⁽ᴵ ˢᵉⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ˢʷᵃʳᵐ ᴵ ˢᵉⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ʰᵒʳᵈᵉ⁾ then let my heart be hardened, and never mind how high the cost may grow, this will still be so –

I will never let your people go

⁽ᵗʰᵘˢ ˢᵃᶦᵗʰ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵒʳᵈ ᵗʰᵘˢ ˢᵃᶦᵗʰ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵒʳᵈ⁾

I   W  I  L  L   N O T L E T  Y O U R

MY PEOPLE

Daniel Jackson

Evie

Milo Thatch

Indiana Jones

Laura Croft (sorta)

Benjamin Gates

easy mode: Gimli (makes a lot of noise himself, very easy to sneak up on)

medium mode: Boromir (challenging enough to be great fun)

hard more: Aragorn (VERY attentive to his surroundings)

Legolas: *sitting around minding his own business*

Frodo: *two inches from his ear* hi Legolas what’s up

Legolas: ANDAGNDOAHGDLKHNKDLFHLKFDANGLKFDAGN????? *backflips to his feet in confusion*

*cue the rest of the fellowship losing their fucking minds*

a picnic of hobbits

Why did Gandalf randomly decide that a plump gentle-hobbit was the right person to be a burglar for an adventuring party? It seems like wizardly eccentricity, until you realize Bilbo’s got a racial bonus to Stealth of like +20. Why does he get the Ring? In text, it’s partly coincidence, but also - which party member do you give your Ring of Invisibility to? The Rogue with a crazy Stealth bonus, of course. Bilbo uses his Stealth, boosted by the Ring, constantly, and the dwarves would have been dead a dozen times over without it. He’s able to get the Ring in the first place because he stealthed out of the middle of a horde of goblins. Then he’s sneaking up inches from trolls, secretly living inside the elves’ freakin palace (with Legolas) for months, rescuing a whole pack of dwarves from under the elves’ noses, regularly pick-pocketing people including elves, sneaking past a dragon, sneaking to deliver the Arkenstone.

Then we follow up into Lord of the Rings. Gandalf’s now bred up a second-generation Rogue. Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry have that same massive racial Stealth bonus, and Frodo also has been raised by an adventurer. He speaks Elvish fluently, he’s friends with dwarves, he studies maps obsessively. Then he inherits Bilbo’s Stealth-boosting magic item - now upgraded to cursed McGuffin. When Gandalf decides it’s time, he collects Frodo and assembles a party. Their goal isn’t to march into Mordor, or to battle the Boss: it’s to sneak through enemy lines, past an entire army (or two).

The humans, elf, dwarf, and wizard angel keep drawing too much attention and getting them attacked (plus admittedly Pippin, the low-WIS darling), so eventually Frodo and Sam ditch them and head off on a pure stealth run. They can’t use the Ring of Invisibility anymore, but fortunately Galadriel gave them another Stealth-boosting magic item, the cloaks. They sneak halfway across Middle-Earth, past armies, through miles and miles of enemy territory, while being hunted by every evil being on the planet, particularly a literal giant All-Seeing Eye. Not to mention the Palantiri, extremely powerful divination items which are being actively used by three different groups of enemies/competitors.

The other main canonical Hobbit power is that they’re “very hardy folk”, meaning they have incredibly high resistance to various things from poison to mental influence. So they can survive the literally poisonous air and water of Mordor, which was designed to kill every species but orcs. And they can survive close contact with the Ring for decades or centuries, not only physically but also maintaining some degree of mental independence, when any other race would succumb in minutes to hours. (Note the most “powerful” characters - Elrond, Galadriel, the literal angel Gandalf - refuse to even touch the Ring, as do the most morally sound, Aragorn and Faramir.)

Why did Gandalf choose a minor member of the country gentry, the size of a toddler, with no combat training, to save Middle-Earth? Because absolutely no other creature on the planet could have done the task. Frodo was all but created as a weapon against Sauron. He, and he alone (with Sam), was capable of saving Middle-Earth.

Me:

M*A*S*H rewatch: 2x02 - ‘5 O’Clock Charlie’

Eleven on the other hand is the exact opposite. People think he’s a puppy in a fez. They’re wrong. He is not happy and joyful. He’s careless. He is having adventures while ruining lives and killing people. He is the man who forgets. He has forgotten the pain he felt after what he did and now is so comfortable killing.

He doesn’t remember Nine. Nine, the Doctor with depression. Nine, the Doctor who fell in love with an nineteen year old shop girl who didn’t need a magic back story to be special. Nine, the Doctor who went and saved his friends without killing. Nine, the Doctor who chose to lose instead of causing loss.

TORTELLINI CAPRESE PASTA SALAD

Sausage Tortellini Soup

Cheese Tortellini with Butter, Mushrooms, and Crispy Sage

Chicken Pesto Tortellini

TORTELLINI MINESTRONE

Creamy Tortellini Minestrone

PESTO CHICKEN TORTELLINI SOUP

SLOW COOKER TOMATO TORTELLINI SOUP RECIPE

Cheesy Tortellini Casserole

Pan Fried Tortellini

Creamy Tomato Basil Tortellini Recipe

Spicy Three Cheese Pumpkin Tortellini Bake

TORTELLINI WITH SPINACH AND SUN-DRIED TOMATOES IN A GARLIC-PARMESAN CREAM SAUCE

Easy 6 Ingredient One Pot Tortellini Primavera Soup

More tortellini here!

Follow for recipes

I think stories that attempt to create redeemed characters like Zuko often focus too much on the terrible circumstances surrounding the character in order to garner sympathy, rather than focusing on the character themself. We feel bad for the character for having to go through such horrifying trials, but we do not develop a sense of true understanding or connection with the character. In short, we pity them, but we do not empathize with them.

With Zuko, they didn’t just give him a characterization centered around “woe is me,” and then throw in a shoddy redemption arc at the end of it all. They revealed him to the audience, showing us what he could be, and won us over to his side little by little. And when his redemption finally came, it was not in ignorance of the crimes done to him as a child, but because he’d finally come to recognize that those crimes did not dictate who he could become as a person.