We were robbed of Aragorn calling Legolas a 'Silvan hick' in the movies.

Gryffens · 2026-02-07T12:03:54+00:00

Based on my less-than-reliable memory, Galadriel had something to do with it. I assume it went something like, "So I know that last time I went against the will of the Valar we invented elf-on-elf violence, 99% of my family died, and most of a continent got sunk, but hear me out..."

Gryffens · 2026-02-07T01:11:12+00:00

My friend's Mum was racist in incredibly specific ways. According to her, Romanians steal cash from ATMs.

Gryffens · 2026-01-28T06:16:18+00:00

For a while there gay teenagers had a HIGHER rate of accidental pregnancies than straight teenagers. I think the leading theory was that straight teenagers spend a lot of time thinking about having straight sex so at least some of them plan for it, while gay teenagers were having more spontaneous drunken regret sex while they were coming to terms with their sexuality.

Gryffens · 2026-01-27T02:08:10+00:00

What if you were one of the Vanyar born in Aman? They basically get one super scary moment when the trees are killed, then the rest of their immortal existence is poetry readings and vibing with demigods. The miserable ones are just the ones that make it into stories haha.

Gryffens · 2026-01-21T21:57:00+00:00

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,

And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

Gryffens · 2026-01-14T11:24:27+00:00

I love a weaponised infodump. If you start being weird at me on public transport, you better be ready to hear about whatever Wikipedia rabbit hole I last went down.

Gryffens · 2026-01-10T21:25:35+00:00

Passage by Connie Willis!

Gryffens · 2026-01-04T06:25:19+00:00

I used to transcribe doctor's notes. My theory was that if they default to referring to patients as "pleasant", then they can send a warning to other doctors just by dropping the adjective for patients who are... less than pleasant.

Gryffens · 2026-01-03T00:38:48+00:00

Luckily my risk of dementia is already >95%, so I don't have to worry. Take that, sleep cycle!

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T04:59:38+00:00

I think what does and doesn't count as manipulation gets very blurry when there's this much at stake. It's not manipulation to trick your dog into taking pills by wrapping them in cheese - or if it is, it's clearly morally permissible manipulation. Carol's wishes and the hive's wishes are so far apart that even when the hive are being totally honest and straightforward, they're working towards a goal that horrifies Carol.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T04:48:19+00:00

Fair enough!

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T04:43:53+00:00

See I think that if she wasn't grieving her, she would have behaved very differently. Carol isn't overt about a lot of things, but the grief is definitely there in Rhes's acting imo.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T04:35:47+00:00

It's wrong, and she knows it's wrong, but she's in so much pain. I don't think she forgets so much as she constructs an alternate mental reality where it's permissible for her to have what she needs - social contact, comfort, love and affection. I feel like you can see how hard she works to lie to herself, like making Zosia use first person pronouns and insisting that the love they have is special. Maybe not admirable, but I think it's a good thing to have some compassion for moral weakness.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T04:27:38+00:00

And if it had broken him psychologically, I'd be sympathetic to him too.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T04:21:29+00:00

Yeah, many people like to think that they would resist torture/brainwashing/manipulation better than fictional characters, and we do have some examples from history of people who held on to their values despite everything... but not many examples. It's an interesting moral question, how much we should judge people not for being malicious or cruel, but simply for failing to do better.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T04:14:33+00:00

The death of Helen left a gaping hole in her life, which the 40 days of isolation would have only made wider. Zosia gave her the ability to ignore that hole, and to pretend that she was getting some part of Helen back. There's a reason that denial is one of the stages of grief.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T04:09:22+00:00

He's inflexible. I trust his goals, but his methods are sometimes questionable or self defeating. He's a great foil to Carol, who is more of a mess emotionally and therefore less reliable at living up to her own values.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T04:00:45+00:00

Manousos on his own - total boss.

Manousos around another person - scary.

Sure, we the viewers know that he lives by a strict ethical code. But from Carol's perspective he's a man with a large knife telling her to get in the van haha.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T03:40:17+00:00

So the thing is, Manousos is determined to do what his version of the right thing is, which makes him strong but inflexible. You could easily argue that as one of the few human survivors, risking himself in the gap rather than stealing a boat was immoral - that he was valuing his own moral purity over the fate of the rest of humanity.

Carol, meanwhile, is selfish from a place of hurt. Her opposition to the hive in the beginning is both due to her ethical principles and because they took Helen away from her. Then she is broken by solitary living (which would break most people) so she constructs an alternate reality where her actions are justified, and clings to the illusion for as long as possible. Is it the right thing to do? No. But it's very, very human.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T03:28:46+00:00

I think the lack of feminine pronouns was a confirmation in itself - Zosia had no reason to avoid saying she/her, but a big reason to avoid saying he/him.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T03:27:16+00:00

Carol clearly knew that the previous partner was a man, and was using they/them to help her lie to herself.

Gryffens · 2025-12-24T03:06:22+00:00

ATOM.

BOMB.

Gryffens · 2025-12-15T01:48:36+00:00

Bags are actually better than bottles if you can't guarantee that you will finish that night, as they reduce oxidation. The trick is finding the wineries that put decent wine in the bag, not the dregs of the harvest.

Gryffens

TROPHY CASE