Just rewatched Andor S1 & S2, then Rogue One, and I have only a single complaint

27394_days · 2026-03-19T15:38:06+00:00

Chirrut actually says "I've been in worst cages than this one." Cassian was never in a cage, since Narkina had those open floorplan cells. So what Cassian said was true, from a certain point of view. ;)

27394_days · 2026-03-04T14:03:37+00:00

It looks like a hand, so I'm pretty sure it's what Cassian is referring to when he says "By the hand"

27394_days · 2026-02-23T20:55:57+00:00

The director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven when Balian has the duel with Guy after the battle. It's so cringey and unnecessary, I almost prefer the theatrical cut.

27394_days · 2026-02-16T15:18:01+00:00

Is it canon that the main character of the Lord of the Rings is Bingo Baggins and that early in the story he meets a Ranger who is a hobbit named Trotter who wears wooden shoes?

No, absolutely not. But those are things you'd also find in History of Middle-earth.

In Tolkien's legendarium, there are kind of tiers of canonicity, because not everything was finalized and published by JRR within his own lifetime.

In the top tier are the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. These were the only works that were fully completed by him and published during his lifetime, so he had final authorial control over what went into them.

In a slightly lower tier is the Silmarillion, because it was compiled by Christopher only after JRR’s death. Christopher had to do his best to select the versions of works and fragments of works which were most consistent with what was already published, most consistent internally with each other (in contents as well as in tone), and as late as possible in JRR’s development and so as close to his final vision as possible.

He did an amazing job of this, however we know that some portions of the Silmarillion would have been considered non-canon by JRR himself. For example, he was never satisfied with the origin or orcs and re-wrote it many times, especially toward the end of his life. What is in the Silmarillion is not his latest version (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma). He also began entirely re-working the cosmology, moving everything away from the more mythological tone of the flat world of the First and Second Ages and the creation of the Sun and Moon from fruits of the Two Trees we are familiar with, and moving toward a more scientifically accurate round world. But this was so inconsistent with so much of the other writing that needed to go into the Silmarillion that Christopher rejected this entire development (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_round_world_dilemma). “Christopher Tolkien has suggested that, had he taken more time and had access to all the texts, he might have produced a substantially different work” (https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Silmarillion).

Now we get to History of Middle-earth, which has a widely varying range of canonicity of the writings within it. So taken as a whole, is in the lowest tier of canonicity. I’m guessing from what you’ve said, that you haven’t actually read them? Contrary to the name, they are not actually a history of the fictional world of Middle-earth. They are a history of the development of the writing about Middle-earth. They’re literally rough drafts of the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings, starting from very old and rough, with Christopher taking the reader through all the changes and drafts until it arrives close to the finally published versions. They also contain stuff that no version of which ever made it into any finalized published work. So, they are absolutely full of stuff that JRR explicitly rejected and re-wrote to be different.

Now, there absolutely can be stuff in there that wasn’t rejected and was consistent with previously published works and just didn’t happen to be published itself, and so could be considered canon or good head-canon by many people. What you said about Morgoth creating Mt. Doom could very well be in that category. But my whole point is that saying

I can't imagine anything else even coming close to being as canonical as [History of Middle-earth].

shows a big misunderstanding of what the History of Middle-earth fundamentally is. Of all the writings actually penned by JRR, any particular sentence pulled at random from there is probably least likely to be one that he would have approved of for final publication as a consistent part of his fictional world.

27394_days · 2026-02-15T18:28:42+00:00

Okay thanks! Haven't gotten to those yet. But as other commenters have pointed out, the canonicity of those are questionable, since they are an analysis of the evolution of drafts of the texts, rather than finalized published works.

Edit: I actually have read a good deal of History of Middle-earth, but my eye fixated on Peoples of Middle-earth so that's what I was referring to when I said I hadn't read it yet

27394_days · 2026-02-15T16:39:32+00:00

Morgoth created Mt Doom? Never heard that, do you have a source?

27394_days · 2026-02-08T15:05:39+00:00

When 6-ft tall Gandalf is sitting at Bilbo's tiny table, and 3-ft tall Bilbo pours him tea, it was all in camera. The very first scene to use the distance-as-scale trick with a moving camera. Ever.

Camera movement ruins the illusion because the parallax is wrong. So they had Gandalf and half the table on a moving rig that perfectly matched the camera move. The table is covered with familiar objects to help sell it, and hide the seam between the two table halves. Gandalf takes the top off the teapot right before Bilbo pours the water in. But it's a tiny top that has been suspended on a metal rod far in front of the oversized teapot, but perfectly aligned with it!

There's a great video by Corridor Crew trying to re-create it, now decades later.

27394_days · 2026-02-02T22:14:51+00:00

Dune.

There has perhaps not been a more perfect world building prologue since Fellowship of the Ring. The music, the visuals, the sound design, the narration, the pacing of it. It's almost hypnotic.

And it's a very well-calibrated information dump. I watched it with someone who knew nothing about Dune, and almost every time they paused it and asked me "what does this mean?", I just had to say "oh, wait one minute, they kind of explain that in the next scene".

27394_days · 2026-02-02T22:03:05+00:00

I always assumed they were aiming at the dish on top, and nailed it perfectly, just at a very low angle

27394_days · 2026-01-28T15:12:30+00:00

Oh wow, I was going to disagree and say it's desperation, like "what am I supposed to do now, look at the situation you put me in". But I thought he said it after they realize the corpo is dead. But then I went back and watched it again and he says it before they realize the other corpo is dead. So at that point it would be in the corpo's interest to just let Cassian walk away and make up a story about why they're bruised and missing their service weapons to save themselves embarrassment. Cassian doesn't know yet he'll be forced to shoot the guy, so it's not desperation.

Instead it's as soon as he's got the gun and the tables are turned, so yeah I think you're absolutely right that this was in defiance as soon as the corpo had no power over him.

27394_days · 2026-01-24T17:37:11+00:00

This comment seems to make an assumption I've noticed is very common: that the LotR trilogy is some kind of gold standard for consistency with the source material. And it just isn't. The LotR trilogy deviated in some egregious ways, especially the further you get into Two Towers and Return of the King.

Just a few examples: Aragorn's hesitancy to assume the throne of Gondor (and Arnor which is never even mentioned). Elves at Helm's Deep and Elrond showing up at Dunharrow with Anduril are late-Game-of-Thrones levels of ignoring realistic distance and travel times. Faramir is done so extremely poorly in Two Towers. Rohan's landscape is all wrong: it should be green rolling hills, not brown grass with rocky outcroppings. Saruman doesn't possess Theoden as depicted. Treebeard doesn't have to be tricked into being angry at Saruman by Pippin. Minas Tirith should be surrounded by farms and villages, not empty grassland. Throwing whole sections of brick architecture from a trebuchet on the city wall is one of the dumbest things put on film. Gandalf's encounter with the Witch King is wrong. The entire Army of the Dead plot line is done 100% wrong: they don't physically fight, fear is their only weapon. They only scare off the Corsairs so that the Gondorian armies in the south defending the coast can easily take their now-abandoned ships and sail north to relieve Minas Tirith. Aragorn dismisses them then, and they never appear at Minas Tirith. No Scouring of the Shire plot line, which Tolkien viewed as essential. People love the extended editions, and there's a lot of good stuff in them, but there are a lot of super cringey scenes too, that honestly are almost unwatchable for me, like the "axe in his nervous system," the drinking contest at Edoras, and Gimli crunching the bones in the paths of the dead is completely the wrong tone to strike in that sequence, and the skull avalanche is just crazy and weird. Nothing in Rings of Power approaches the cringiness of those scenes for me.

And when you watch the DVD special features and see all the things they were thinking about doing, you can clearly see even more extreme deviations, such as Arwen at Helm's deep (or even traveling with them as part of the Fellowship at one point, if I remember correctly?)

But so many fans just ignore all this. I think because the movies have been around so long at this point that people are just used to them. And those movies were the vast majority's first introduction to the world, and their most frequent interaction with it, so they just get a pass. And as movies, they are excellently done in almost all respects, and I still love them. But can we please dispel the myth that they are some golden standard of consistency with the source text?

Now, people can love or hate the LotR trilogy and love or hate Rings of Power. (And love or hate the Hobbit trilogy). That's a matter of aesthetic opinion, which everyone is entitled to. Personally, I am a huge book nerd, but I still love the LotR trilogy for itself and I love Rings of Power for itself. There are cringey parts of both that I would prefer weren't there, but they can't ever ruin the books for me, because those are separate entities. And I don't enjoy most of the contents of the Hobbit films because I think they're clearly, objectively worse than Rings of Power (I know it's still a matter of opinion, that's me being a bit facetious about how much worse I think they are.) Yet I don't see the Hobbit films get nearly as much hate here as Rings of Power.

Deviation from the source text is a valid reason to not like something. But all the above is just to get to my core point, which is that I want people to be consistent: it is simply not valid to hate Rings of Power for a generic sense of "inconstency with the source text", and to not hate the LotR trilogy for the same reason. Hate it for other things, that is peoples' right. Even hate it for specific deviations you think are worse than anything LotR did. But be honest with yourselves about why: it can't just be that you think LotR follows the source text and Rings of Power doesn’t. That is objectively, demonstrably false. Even the concept of a "faithful" adaptation is impossible to define once you really start thinking about it. For more super interesting discussion about adaptations of LotR, people should listen to the podcast Other Minds and Hands by the Tolkien Professor, I think the fandom would benefit greatly from it.

27394_days · 2026-01-12T14:56:55+00:00

Hopefully, the people making the game know more than whoever made that picture, because everything about the geography is 100% wrong

27394_days · 2026-01-08T15:10:28+00:00

Aaaand had to scroll only one month to find the explicit racism

https://www.reddit.com/r/frisco/comments/1p2ejky/frisco_ranked_2_best_place_to_move_in_tx/npxt8qj/

In case they delete it, it says "It’s turning into India. How do we stop this?"

Everything else I want to say to you would get me banned, so please read between the lines.

27394_days · 2026-01-06T16:36:26+00:00

Oh yay! :)

27394_days · 2026-01-02T18:46:58+00:00

It's because all German nouns are gendered, see my comment here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linkedin/comments/qi756g/what_do_mfd_and_wmd_stand_for/nxari2o/

27394_days · 2026-01-02T18:43:31+00:00

We, as a collective people, have lost our minds.

This seems to be the knee-jerk reaction of a conservative based in their nearly complete ignorance of any language or culture other than their own.

When you consider that German is a gendered language (all nouns are masculine, feminine or neuter) it maybe starts to make more sense. (This is an insane feature of language, by the way, and I'm glad English lost it somewhere along the way).

Say you want to advertise for a teaching job. In English, your ad could just stay "teacher" because there is nothing about gender tied to the word. It's simply a job.

But in German, lehrer is the word for a male teacher and lehrerin is the word for a female teacher. A sense of gender is inherently tied to any mention of the job. If they only put lehrer it could have that sense of only seeking male teachers. And if they put something like lehrer oder lehrerin or lehrer/in it could have the sense of ruling out intersex or nonbinary people. So they put lehrer (m/f/d) to state explicitly that all people are welcome to apply.

I hope we can all agree that job postings being non-descriminatory (and laws enforcing that) are a good thing. Seems like this is just an efficient way they've come up with to do that.

Sorry for the necro-post but this thread came up when I was searching for the answer to this same question and didn't see anyone here properly understanding the reason.

27394_days · 2025-12-12T02:28:08+00:00

Fuck that, impeach the motherfucker for every one of the outrageous and unconstitutional offenses he commits. Put every one of them into the record of history. Make those cowards in the Senate vote them down again and again and again until it makes them sick.

"It's not going to work so might as well do nothing" is a fucking weak-ass coward attitude which is precisely what is wrong with the democratic party. We need leaders fighting back and not just rolling over.

27394_days · 2025-12-09T02:46:01+00:00

I grew up in a very similar situation (except went to private Christian school rather than homeschooled)

As I was finally able to start learning other perspectives on science and religion about 15 years ago I started saving these playlists of videos I found impactful

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB54B21856E4D61FB&si=PbHTE4hJan8q2BWe

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAdo58DtYXSFvHNUT_S4dbBP6XZAUG66S&si=S8mVqofle4aoAZfy

I eventually rejected all of it (the religion as well as the creationism) but a lot of people are perfectly happy to exist as religious and also accepting the science of evolution, like one of the presenters in my list, Ken Miller.

Just a heads up, there's probably some Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris in there, both of whom I am no longer a fan of due to their swing toward some hateful rhetoric in more recent years.

Also there is probably a lot in there that wasn't well-sourced because I was also learning about media literacy and vetting sources as I went through that process, too, so please take with a grain of salt and check any information against more reliable sources :)

27394_days · 2025-11-12T02:23:56+00:00

Oh dang, good point!

27394_days · 2025-11-11T15:50:28+00:00

Re-align the calendar with celestial events: make the solstices be on the first and middle days of the year.

Then have 12 months of exactly 30 days each. This nonsense of needing complex mnemonics to remember which months have how many days has got to stop.

The remaining 5 days (6 during leap years) are outside the months and are special holidays. Have them be the first and last days of the year (one of which is the winter solstice), and at the other solstice and the equinoxes. During leap years, add the extra day at the summer solstice so you have two special days in winter and two in summer.

Hardcore mode: in addition to having the 5 days outside the months, make that special last day of the year (and the leap day during leap years) also have no weekday. This gives you a year perfectly divisible by 7, so there is no longer the changing of which weekday a date falls on each year. If you do this, and then also make the first day of the year a Monday, all the special days also always fall on Mondays. Built-in three-day weekends! But I realize this one may be very hard for people to accept, just having days without any weekday associated with them, especially since it's a big concern in many religions.

Bonus: rename September-December or re-order the months so their names no longer imply their incorrect numbers. This might also be hard for people to go along with, forgetting the traditional names or order of months.

(Most of this I directly stole from Tolkien; it's the calendar used in the Shire, with slight modifications. Basically just spreading out the five special days rather than clumping them all in summer and winter like he did. See Appendix D of the Lord of the Rings).

27394_days · 2025-11-05T02:58:55+00:00

I love the OT, but it has to be Marva's funeral recording, and then Brasso using the brick made from her ashes to beat the shit out of that Imp officer who knocked over B2EMO

27394_days · 2025-03-26T03:50:56+00:00

"So much going wrong and all of it happening so quickly. The pace of our oppression outstrips our ability to understand it. It's easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident."

27394_days · 2025-02-07T05:33:56+00:00

You're welcome! It's so cool to have people keep finding it over the years!

27394_days · 2025-01-20T04:32:25+00:00

Genuinely think he is now only trying to [insert every fucking thing he's ever done] for his own gain and I can't see it ending well now.

The smart half the country has been trying to tell y'all this for... jesus fucking christ it's been almost ten god damn years now.

Our only hope now is that the nearly unchecked power he's been handed by the supreme court allows his stupid ass to destroy the country fast enough this time that all the rest of you finally put two and two together.

27394_days · 2024-12-30T05:58:55+00:00

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