#kungfunurse

Furthermore, a few inklings of wavering determination to destroy SQX by forcing his original fate back upon him or forcing his brother to kill SQX doesn’t make him good boyfriend material!

idk I mean I understand ship and let ship but I don’t GET it. He Xuan is a villain. He never shows anything but selfish hatred and self-righteous victimhood towards SQX. Regardless of whether Shi Wudu deserves his end, regardless of whether SQX (who had no knowledge or choice in any of it) deserves to suffer likewise - these are not the actions of a caring person! Am I missing something cultural that my western sensibilities are overlooking? Or maybe is this a kink that I’m just not recognizing? I just don’t understand why this pairing is so popular ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's a compelling ship when it's about angst and betrayal and struggling against realizing everything you knew was a lie (Shi Qingxuan's perspective) or realizing that the person who benefited the most from your entire life being destroyed and all your loved ones killed is also someone who in any other situation could have inspired your genuine loyalty and affections (He Xuan's perspective). But because fandom loves boring and unoriginal archetypes, it becomes "what angst? what internal conflicts? love conquers all!"

i must confess it's been so long since i read a wimsey in which sir impey was present that i had fully forgotten his existence. so naturally i researched the matter, and i am happy to report that medievalist lucy allen, at least, agrees with you:

‘”Sir Impey Biggs is the handsomest man in England, and no woman will ever care twopence for him.” He was, in fact, thirty-eight, and a bachelor, and was celebrated for his rhetoric and his suave but pitiless dissection of hostile witnesses. The breeding of canaries was his unexpected hobby, and besides their song he could appreciate no music but revue airs.’

The Dowager Duchess is, as readers of Sayers will know, not always the most reliable or systematic observer, but she does have a much-cited talent for understanding people, and for hitting on the crucial detail. And here, she’s speaking in fluent code. Biggs is a ‘confirmed bachelor’. The music he appreciates is ‘revue airs’ – that is, the currency of the Music Halls, which often featured cross-dressing acts and innuendo-laden songs.

Allen also mentions that "canary" was evidently cockney rhyming slang for gay ("fairy"), but is suspicious of the claim, and i second her suspicion. it's floating attribution-less around the internet--always a bad sign--and i checked the copy of the OED i have access to and there's no mention of it (but it's fairly dated). would love to hear if @morethanslightly can turn up anything more concrete with her much better sources.

But Hobbits? Did they spontaneously generate from cabbage patches? Also, while we're at it, what about Goblins? Are they some sort of offshoot of Orcs?

Hi!

Hobbits are an offshoot of Men/the Atani, though I don't think we're ever told when they first appeared as a distinct people (certainly in the distant past by the time of LOTR).

The orc backstory is also complex, btw—the "corrupted Elves" idea is only one among many origin stories that Tolkien considered to try and make sense of the orcs as people vs the orcs as invariably evil and hostile foes. It's the one that was used in the published Silmarillion so it's very popular, but that was an editorial decision rather than a clear, final decision of Tolkien's own (somewhat like the idea of Gil-galad as son of Fingon—a brief and ephemeral idea on JRRT's end, but mistakenly semi-canonized by Christopher Tolkien in the published Silmarillion only for him to acknowledge the mistake later).

Anyway! The hobbits' origins are mysterious even to as ancient a being as Treebeard, and he doesn't decide to classify them with Men in his personal list. But in a broad sense they belong to the Secondborn.

AW ORANGE BABIES.

[ID: Three images of fluffy orange tabby cats; in the first one is lying on some silky fabric with a ball of yarn, and in the second two cat butts with tails are visible behind some blinds in a window. In the third a cat is lying on its back with front paws stretched over its head, displaying a very fluffy belly.]

I do enjoy a spot of true crime now and again although lately I've moved away from direct true crime media and more into analysis of it, which feels a little less exploitative. Some true crime reporting can genuinely be useful and informative and keep a dialogue open about victimhood, policing, the carceral state, and such, but it's a fine line to walk.

I had thought that we'd pretty much laid to rest the idea that Hauptmann had anything to do with the Lindbergh kidnapping, since the evidence used against him was I think mainly shit made up by reporters after the fact, but when I googled to see I found it's still very much under debate. I don't think there's any denying that Haputmann was brutally railroaded, but that doesn't necessarily mean he didn't do it.

I don't think Hauptmann did it simply because he was such an easy target, but I haven't done a deep enough dive on this case to have formed a strong opinion. The newer a theory of the crime is, the wilder it tends to be, so I'm skeptical of some of these "Lindbergh did it himself" theories, but they do at least point up what a weird fashy eugenicist Lindbergh was, and I think more people should know about that. (One of the more popular but rather unfounded theories is that the child was disabled in some way and Lindbergh killed him rather than admit he or his wife had "faulty" genes.)

Oh man I can’t even begin to imagine how worrying that must have been. I definitely did not even begin to start on that train of thought, partially because it’s less “blue” that leads me to think Allura and more “braids,” but probably mostly because of just Worry and Awe at all the rest of the fun creepy world building going on. (Plus sleppy from the tension of the fight :b)

hmm, difference between "a new step in her character arc" and "end of her character arc", i think

like, he's done it before, yeah, but the important thing to note there - episode 85 was FAR from the end of scanlan's character arc. if anything it was the beginning, he'd been holding stuff back and letting them fester for so long it all came to a head at once, and he left, saying some horrible things to his friends on the way out

but he needed to leave, because he needed time away from them. he needed to spend time with kaylie, to treat her as a person and not as an ideal. he needed to figure out who he was and what he wanted, when he wasn't throwing himself at death and danger over and over again just because he could

and then scanlan came back. because he figured out those things, and he came back to apologise to vox machina for the horrible things he said, and he realised he missed them, and his off-screen arc about responsibility turned into an on-screen arc about responsibility when we got into the endgame, and scanlan and ioun

tary is far closer to a "do the character arc and be done" character, because he was only in like 15 episodes, 4-5 of which were based on him. they found out who he was and what he wanted, there was a plot twist that made him confront it, they did, and he stayed behind. but it's a lot easier to do that on characters that haven't been around that long

sam's spent nearly three years as veth. she may go home to her family next episode, and stay for a bit, i'm honestly not sure. but like scanlan, her arc is far from over. she got what she was seeking, but she changed along the way, she can't go back to just being a normal housewife anymore, and we've seen that. it's what's causing her such internal conflict, she knows she has a responsibility to her family, but what about what she wants? what if what she wants are two conflicting things? who even is she anymore? and who was she, before?

she hasn't answered those questions. this isn't where her arc ends, it's where it gets interesting. i think going home for a while would do her good, because that's what she's afraid of and holding herself back from right now. that's something she needs to experience again, and get a sense for what she wants in her life, from a better perspective than she has currently. but if sam has a backup character, we're not changing over for good. veth is not being folded away neat and tidy, she's just changing boxes to see what happens, and there's gonna be a lot of mess and unfinished business either way. this is a natural turning point, but not a natural end