Fellas, What's More Painful? Being Stabbed Or This Scene?

yr locked in a room alone with three adult men but you feel perfectly safe. who are they

People are always hating on Hugo Weaving's Elrond for not being atractive enough or looking too old for an elf but

He pulled off playing a younger, dashing, more physically active version of his character really well in the Hobbit while he was actually like 20 years older LMAO

People can hate on my man Hugo but he was the only one who genuinely looked younger and more handsome somehow, all the others looked visibly older, even Cate who is so beautiful and aged extremely will did look older than in LOTR but he didn't. I need some respect for him

they won't tell you this in therapy but sometimes the best way to stop catastrophizing/anxiety is to interrupt your spiraling with "girl what the hell are you talking about"

I bring a "deep love doesn't have to be romantic" to rook and spite relationship discussions

I think the Ghorman Front rebels are a tragic and brutally important exploration of individualism in resistance movements. The thing is, multiple characters from Cassian to Vel and Cinta warn them and us about the Front's approach to rebellion, about their lack of broader thinking and their unwillingness to follow orders. They're caught up in the righteousness of their cause and the terrible wrongs done to them by the Empire, they yearn to be saviours against injustice and specifically the injustice that the Empire has inflicted on them...and they can't see beyond that, beyond their own individual experiences of pain and their own individual desire to resist.

It's important to say here that the pain and injustice which fascism inflicts upon people is real, that in the story the characters' experiences with the cruelty and brutality of the Empire are legitimate and immediate for them. But particularly when it comes to the struggle for liberation (and that's not even getting into collective liberation), I think the Ghorman Front rebels are a painful example of what happens when personal experience becomes your entire movement.

It's true, outsiders may not know what exactly what the people of Ghorman have been through. The horrors of the Tarkin massacre, the individual paths and motivations that led each of them to the struggle. But the issue is that that's where the Ghorman rebels have stopped. They can't connect their very real suffering and concerns to the broader suffering and the broader struggle across the galaxy. Their focus is only ever on their own immediate experience- and so they're disappointed, even offended when people like Cassian and Vel and Cinta warn them that their plan is flawed or that they need to follow orders from people who better understand how the enemy works. It doesn't fit into their idea of rebellion - something out of a heroic story, maybe, where a daring group of local guerillas take on a much larger foe through their commitment to a righteous and personal cause. It hasn't crossed their minds that the Empire has put down many rebellions across the galaxy before, that they themselves are not particularly special or unique in cause or tactics or even suffering.

Or maybe it has crossed their minds, and they think they will be the exception. Isn't that how homegrown rebellions win? They know their home in a way that outsiders never will and they have the support of many of their fellow Ghormans and a strong belief in their cause, aren't those the qualities that make or break a successful revolution?

Season 2 so far has explored what it takes and what it costs to resist fascism. Arc 1 showed us one way resistance movements stumble and dissolve through infighting. In Arc 2, we meet characters who are (mostly) united in cause and leadership - the Ghorman Front, the Partisans, Luthen's network. And within this unity is the immense personal pain experienced by every single person as a result of their involvement in the fight. Characters attempt to cope with this cost in different ways, from substance use to reckless behaviour to lashing out.

Without condemnation (because trauma affects people in many ways), what I think we see with the Ghorman Front rebels is that they've retreated in on themselves. Perhaps once, they were a more collective movement - the hotel bellboy tells Cassian that many people showed up to the protest prior to the Tarkin massacre believing in the power and safety of so many people united together. But now, it's centred on the individual. They are going to show the rest of Ghorman that the Empire is lying. They mean to fight an armed struggle because they aren't spineless. Why should they follow orders, especially those of outsiders who don't know what they've been through, what they live with? It's a struggle entirely focused on the self, on their own feelings perhaps of conviction and guilt and powerlessness.

So they ignore advice that their course of action raises many questions. So they ignore orders to leave their weapons and stay in their assigned positions. So the wheel of tragedy turns and they accomplish their goal of stealing the weapons but at a terrible cost. One that will go with them for the rest of their lives and they will never be able to make up.

“what’s your dream job” im so glad you asked. picture this. i am the lone employee of a strange and mysterious tchotchke/bookshop in the middle of nowhere, full of fun and interesting things that i am allowed to take for the low low price of free of charge. i get one, exceedingly interesting, customer per hour. i work no more than twenty hours a week and am salaried 3 million dollars

High King Gil-Galad dying a virgin is tragic

I need my man Elendil to take one for the team right there on the battlefield

now everyone say thank you star wars for hiring Diego Luna, winner of the Worlds Saddest and Most Haunted Big Brown Eyes award, to play Cassian Andor

Vic Michaelis is to Sam Reich what Ally Beardsley is to Brennan Lee Mulligan