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Dear God indeed! He shall not be mocked now any more than in the days of Constantine and Theodosius the Great, it would seem. May many more false self-appointed prophets follow Powell into an early grave over the coming months and years.

Scene 1, Episode 1 of S2: Galadriel, at that point in the Second Age still a resident of Ost-in-Edhil, wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Her husband Celeborn and/or their daughter Celebrían ask her what's the matter. "Oh nothing dear, I just had the most terrible nightmare..."

Seriously though, the entire first season is unsalvageable and there's no point trying to build anything atop such a ramshackle '''''foundation'''''. But retooling so hard as to ignore it all and do a second season about a totally different story still won't matter if they don't get rid of the actual source of all their problems, ie. the Cult of Social Justice and its determination to shit all over Tolkien's work as part of a broader offensive against Western civilization in its entirety.

There's a full render of the new Ashley on the Resident Evil wiki, it's definitely just leggings under her usual skirt. She also still has her turtleneck and takes off the jacket at some point, per the last scene in Capcom's newest trailer.

Ironically in their efforts to whitewash the leading Princess & Queen, HOTD's writers have made it so neither of them get to do much (or any really) manipulating - taking away their agency and making them much more boring characters than they were in the source material. If anything Rhaenyra and especially Alicent are now constantly being manipulated by the men around them, while doing almost nothing on their own, whereas Book-Rhaenyra was plenty proactive at combating threats to her claim and Book-Alicent was basically the co-leader of the Green faction.

A woman, POC and dragon rider fighting for Rhaenyra? Definitely going to be made the saintliest figure in this show. The only question is whether the show's demonization of Daemon will mean they'll actually have him die at the Gods' Eye or if they'll let him live just so Nettles can keep him around for a happy ending.

Thing is, Rhaenyra getting fat is actually a minor plot point from the source material. Her stepmother Alicent Hightower gives birth to her four half-siblings and is almost a decade older than her, but stays slender and graceful into middle age. Rhaenyra, who had lost her own beauty by the age of twenty, resents Alicent for being both luckier & putting more effort into her appearance, to the point where it's literally one of several reasons why the two hated each other canonically.

Can't have Princess Champagne Feminist envy another woman for her looks or have any physical imperfection of her own though (and for all the bleating about how fat is beautiful nowadays, I suppose Sarah Hess & company don't truly believe that themselves after all), so not only has Rhaenyra been changed into someone who doesn't care about her stepmom's looks, but she's now portrayed by a more slender actress as well.

Long story short, I've seen the clip from the end of the latest House of the Dragon episode where Rhaenys, a member of the royal House Targaryen, bursts out of prison with her dragon and kills hundreds of civilians with said dragon's tail-whip and damage to the building they're in. She has the court of rival Targaryens who have just usurped the throne dead to rights, but doesn't have her dragon roast them on the spot even though doing so would have prevented a civil war. Despite getting things completely ass-backward (murdering scores of peasants who have done nothing and would have contributed nothing to the story is fine, wiping out the enemy leadership apparently isn't) Sarah Hess, one of the writers for the episode, says this is supposed to be a girlboss moment for her.

Also the show has gone out of its way to turn its female leads into saints, even if doing so takes away their agency & everything that makes them interesting, while demonizing the men. Which is to be expected given how heavily the marketing got into the anti-patriarchy, grrrl power angle but that doesn't make it any less hilariously bad. If you care about spoilers, best stop reading here.

Alicent Hightower, the Queen in Green:

• Book version: Ambitious, scheming and ruthless matriarch from the second most powerful house in the Reach (itself the second largest and the most heavily populated of the Seven Kingdoms) who has plotted for years to put her son Aegon on the Iron Throne. Her motivation actually makes sense though: he's her son, and by all the laws and traditions of Westeros, he should have succeeded his father - the only reason he doesn't is because said father, Viserys, insists on making his firstborn daughter (Alicent's stepdaughter) his heir in contravention to all said laws. Knows damn well people are going to have to die to make this happen and is fine with it.

• Show version: Hapless puppet of her dad, the Hand of the King (prime minister) Otto Hightower. Doesn't actively plot to enthrone her son Aegon and is surprised that Otto would move to make him king, after she literally tells him that King Viserys told her he wanted Aegon to inherit on his deathbed (she misheard and he was deliriously referring to a prophecy he had previously told his daughter Rhaenyra). Gives footjobs to a shady dude, Larys Strong, for barely relevant information even though she's the Queen and could've just bossed him around. Terrified of bloodshed and doesn't seem to know that launching a coup immediately after the king's death might require her faction to kill their enemies' sympathizers at court or lead to a broader civil war.

Rhaenyra, the Princess in Black:

• Book version: Heiress to the Iron Throne as her father Viserys' eldest daughter and only surviving issue of his first wife. Spoiled, selfish brat who revels in her status (which combined with her daddy's permissiveness means she can do whatever and whoever she wants) and ruthlessly protects it against all threats. After cucking her gay husband and spawning three obvious bastard sons who she tries to pretend are legitimate, she has her uncle-in-law executed and fed to her dragon for pointing out that they're bastards and wanting his family's traditional lordship to not pass on to said bastards. Knows damn well people might try to snatch away her crown and is fine with killing them in a war for it. Also, she hit the wall hard and resents her stepmom Alicent for still being slender & beautiful after four pregnancies while she herself has gotten fat and complacent.

• Show version: Still a spoiled, selfish brat who revels in the privilege of being Crown Princess and passing her obvious bastards off as legitimate heirs but she's supposed to be the good guy now. Her uncle-husband Daemon murders the troublesome uncle-in-law without any prompting for her and she doesn't feed his remains to her dragon, but instead seems shocked at it and generally seems scared of the prospect of violence to defend her claim. Thinks of the Iron Throne as a responsibility forced upon her by her dad rather than something she thinks would be fun to rule from with absolute power and zero accountability. Also, as Hess says, she isn't fat and resentful of Alicent (who puts more work into her appearance) on the show.

Aegon Targaryen, the Green King:

• Book version: Lazy, irresponsible, fat slob who doesn't particularly want to be king but is pushed into it by his mother Alicent. Nevertheless cares for his kids, being told that Rhaenyra will have to have them eliminated to secure her hold on the Iron Throne is what convinces him to seize the throne for himself. Very friendly with his pet dragon Sunfyre, said to be the most majestic-looking dragon to ever live.

• Show version: A pedophilic rapist who also watches underground gladiator matches pitting kids against one another, including at least one of his own bastard children. Doesn't seem to care about his own kids, legitimate or otherwise. Sunfyre barely appears this season.

Daemon Targaryen, the Rogue Prince:

• Book version: Brutal, ruthless asshole suspected of murdering his first wife to shack up with Rhaenyra. Engages in purges and wars all the time, in general he loves and revels in bloodshed. Will carry out the Black faction's worst atrocities at his niece-wife's command without question and with a good deal of sadistic enjoyment.

• Show version: Basically the same except now he, and he alone, is responsible for atrocities like killing his brother-in-law (Rhaenyra's uncle by marriage) for questioning the paternity of Rhaenyra's oldest children. Definitely murdered his first wife, no ambiguity to it at all. They also cut out sympathetic moments for him, like when he comforts his own eldest daughters at their mother's (his second wife's) funeral, to make him look as evil as possible.

But then again, Rhaenyra is basically the champagne feminist incarnate just as Daenerys was the ultimate SJW in the main series. She's an immensely privileged and spoiled princess by birth, fat, petty, a bitch even to people whose help she badly needs, uses others for her pleasure without a thought for their feelings or their very lives (her first lover is Criston Cole, a Kingsguard - whose oath means he will be gelded or executed if they catch him with her), has no problem using feminism to advance herself while throwing lower-ranking women under the bus for her own convenience, and becomes a sadistic tyrant and baby-murderer in a hurry once the war proper starts but is clearly rotten to the core long before. Little wonder the writer may see herself in her and tries to make her look better.

White paramilitary fighter singlehandedly routs criminal black militia who have launched an unprovoked attack to destroy his way of life and take all that he holds dear with cover from the corrupt powers-that-be, 2022 (colorized).

A competent re movie, not a Mary Sue that does matrix king fu or whatever that Netflix show was.

This exactly. There may be a bunch of Paul Anderson movies and a Netflix show bearing the Resident Evil title, but not once has there been a single movie that's actually Resident Evil (not even just based on the first game).

Personally I think Grandia 2 would be an awesome series done competently. Or a unique Persona series based on 4.

This reminds me, something based on Shin Megami Tensei could be really interesting if I ever got reason to trust that the creators could approach religion & occult stuff in a remotely respectful and competent manner.

Islam is right about the alphabet soup crowd.

Makes me laugh when I hear that HOTD is far superior to Rangs of Powah and deserves a watch, even from normally decent sources like Nerdrotic or Critical Drinker. The former is true in the sense that dying by falling off a 100-story skyscraper's rooftop at least marginally beats getting a terminal case of cancer; and as for the latter, no way.

I have refused to touch anything ASOIAF since it became clear that Gurm was never, ever going to finish his story and hearing things like this, or how the very next episode apparently had a 10-year time skip (as made fairly obvious by the lead actresses changing) and doesn't explain the metric fucktons of plot/character development that must've happened in that missing decade, certainly goes a long way to making me feel vindicated.

For real. While Tolkien was an unapologetic right-winger and pretty much described himself as a monarchist of a feudalist/localist bent (which definitely sets him well to the right of the entirety of the modern political spectrum), his works were so undeniably awesome that they achieved record popularity with the entire political spectrum. Back in the day the hippies loved LOTR as much as their law-and-order opponents did and certainly as much as Meloni or the Royal Stuart Society do now, which is hilarious because Tolkien - being a devout Catholic - had nothing but contempt for them to the point of almost disowning his life's work after finding out said hippies were throwing Hobbit-themed weddings.

Not coincidentally, Red China got their longstanding drug problem under control by fighting their own War on Drugs with the intent to win rather than enrich their own intelligence agency and destroy social cohesion: instant death penalty for dealers, forced rehab for their millions upon millions of addicts, instant death penalty for anyone who relapses, and replacing opium poppies with other crops. They just know damn well from their own history how effective hooking their rivals' peoples to drugs can be.

Yes, this quite obviously tracks from Biden's call to arms like two weeks ago and the long, long history of Cultural Marxist radicalization that's been going on for decades but has really stepped up since Trump started running for presidency.

There are pockets of woke fucks in every red state, Montana and Idaho and Kansas (for example) are hardly immune either.

Clearly they haven't had enough after Kyle Rittenhouse singlehandedly prevailed at the Battle of Kenosha, had the book thrown at him and then still managed to win in court thanks to a preponderance of video evidence, though even so it came down to the wire. This shit won't stop until vigilantes not only put this creature and his ilk in the ground, but also refuse to turn themselves in and either melt away or outright shoot back when the regime inevitably sends its jackboots in to arrest them for having eliminated some of their useful idiots.

I'm old enough to remember the absolutely deranged, vitriolic hatred for Bush and how he was Literally Confederate Crusader Hitler who got off on the tears of innocent Iraqis and liked to wash his meals of brown baby flesh with equal-parts oil and blood, before he became the principled and 'truly compassionate conservative' elder statesman & moderate bulwark against Orange Man's populism who is also a great painter that he is to the very same libs who thought he was the absolute worst barely a decade ago.

I now sincerely hope to live long enough to see at least one figurehead of the right turn out to be exactly as 'bad' as the NPC programming guild that we call 'the media' proclaim, and that they have so thoroughly burned their credibility to the ground by then that nobody will give a shit when he actually starts throwing them out of helicopters, cleaning out ghettoes the Mongol way, stacking LGBTQP+++ skulls into pyramids along the National Mall, etc.

The Dahomey were one of the most important contributors to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and literally founded their entire economy & culture on slavery, to boot. They tried to diversify said economy to exploit the palm oil trade under British pressure, but gave up because that didn't make them nearly as much money as the slave trade did. The guy played by John Boyega in The Woman King, Ghezo, literally gained power in a coup supported by a Brazilian slave trader, Francisco Felix de Sousa, who he rewarded by putting him in charge of a major Dahomey port. And the slaves they could neither sell nor use to work on their own plantations, they butchered in yearly human sacrifice rituals.

Oh, and they started BOTH of the wars with France which led to their kingdom's destruction by launching slaving raids on French protectorates (rival tribes that had basically become French vassals, precisely for protection from this sort of bullshit). Twice, in the span of two years. Really, West African countries should be sending the French yearly gift baskets for liberating them from the Dahomey's baleful presence.

I've seen people try to defend The Woman King by going 'whatabout Braveheart or The Patriot or 300' but 1) on top of being more entertaining, none of those other movies tried to pretend to be historically accurate or to have a relevant sociopolitical message and 2) 300 in particular is an in-universe case of 'unreliable narrator' (it's a story being told by David Wenham's character to hype up his fellow Spartans before the Battle of Plataea).

As well, The Woman King is on a whole other level as far as its historical negationism (I don't think 'inaccuracy' or 'revisionism' are strong enough words for what Viola Davis & company are trying to get away with here) compared to those other flicks goes. It's like a movie starring the SS as heroes who were attacked by the French and fought to free Alsatian Germans from French death camps, or the Soviets as heroes who had to fight the Winter War in self-defense after the baby-eating Finns shot first - oh wait, the latter is literally the Soviet account of what started the Winter War.

The Taliban had already been inching into the former Northern Alliance strongholds which had previously never fallen to them, long before 2021. Perhaps if the Coalition had been a bit more insistent about not tolerating rampant corruption and habitual child rape among the warlords it called allies and partners, this wouldn't have happened, but then if the Coalition did that it may never have found anyone to work with in Afghanistan.

Oh well. I'm quite content not to be sending any form of contribution, either in the blood of my countrymen or my own tax dollars, to prop up a wholly unrepresentative regime of child-raping warlords who exist primarily to give cover to massive human & drug trafficking rings and deny Globohomo's geopolitical enemies strategically positioned territory. It is no surprise to me that the most backward Islamic parts of the world, which consistently demonstrate a high willingness to kill basically anyone who remotely violates the tenets of Islam in any fashion from adultery to blasphemy to apostasy, would want to live under backward Islamist regimes. That isn't something I believe any more Western blood or gold should be spent on withholding, especially when it's obvious that doing so would mandate an indefinite commitment from us.

Defeating globohomo at home and securing our borders (by which I mean the lands of and waters around the Americas) should be our geopolitical priority, not waging forever wars in wastelands on the other side of the planet where the people have already violently resisted the approach of civilization for centuries. To paraphrase the words of the Emperor Honorius to the Romano-British after they propped up a chain of usurpers against him, perhaps the rest of the world ought to start looking to their own defenses.

Also, none of this changes the reality that Tom Nichols is a disgusting chickenhawk who cheerleads for wars and shames others for daring to not want to go die in them or fill his weapon-manufacturing friends' pockets with their money even though he's never been a soldier, any sort of REMF, or probably even ever held a gun in anger once in his life.

Tom Nichols is one of several blood-crazed psychopathic neocons who was screaming his lungs out for more blood, always more blood, all the way to the filthy finish line of America's disastrous twenty-year project in Afghanistan, at which point he denounced the entire American population as cowards for not sending more soldiers to die there for the glory & wealth of the CIA and military-industrial complex. Incidentally he has never served a day in any branch of the US military himself, not that this has stopped him from somehow becoming a professor of strategy at the Naval War College.

How this demon in human skin and his cohorts still have a job, much less a job where they can spit and hurl insults at a far better man than themselves, is beyond me. Were I an advisor to DeSantis, I'd be telling the good governor to respond by shipping no small number of homeless and mutilated veterans of the War on Terror to Nichols' doorstep, so he can explain why his eagerness to get them killed was only exceeded by his eagerness to drop them like hot potatoes when they returned maimed from the war he spent 20 years cheerleading for to their faces.

If anything I'd say the flowers provide the final touch of parodic perfection. Like flowers (and one mask?) surmounting a demonic wendigo, so too do the wokies use rhetoric about 'empathy', 'equity', 'public safety' and 'providing necessary redress for past wrongs' to try to make their manifestly evil agenda just palatable enough that normies will nod along and remain blind rather than open their eyes and recoil in horror at what they're really trying to accomplish.

Well, happily there are some pretty fitting successors to the LOTR quote at the end there, for if and when things turn around; Antifa is routed once and for all; and Portland (and America's other cities) are able to regain their glory & luster.

Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king's head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. Look, Sam!' he cried, startled into speech. Look! The king has got a crown again!' The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed. 'They cannot conquer for ever!' said Frodo.

Then Aragorn set trumpeters at each of the four roads that ran into the ring of trees, and they blew a great fanfare, and the heralds cried aloud: 'The Lords of Gondor have returned and all this land that is theirs they take back.' The hideous orc-head that was set upon the carven figure was cast down and broken in pieces, and the old king's head was raised and set in its place once more, still crowned with white and golden flowers: and men laboured to wash and pare away all the foul scrawls that orcs had put upon the stone.

Portland and Seattle (also the home of CHAZ) are Antifa Central, absolutely overrun with homeless drug-slinging ancom tranny race-traitors who despise whites probably even more than any non-academia black or Jew ever does. If ever a city needs a good Day of the Rope to cleanse itself of such degenerates, it's definitely those two, possibly even more-so than places like LA and NYC.

That's canonically Lúthien, I suppose because Tolkien was into brunettes and married one IRL.

Hopefully this clip of the scene with Morfydd Clark's, uh, questionable emoting hasn't been taken down by the time I post it.

Really, the Elves' entire First Age history after Morgoth swipes the Silmarils & helps Ungoliant destroy the Two Trees is nothing to be proud of. They (in particular the Sons of Fëanor and Maeglin) absolutely screw with each other almost as badly as Morgoth screws with them, none of the glorious victories they won early on nor the kingdoms they establish last, and in the end they can't even leave any trace of their glory except a few relics like the Elfstone of Gondolin, because they've been so thoroughly fucked by then that they need the Valar to step in to unfuck things - and they had to sink Beleriand in the process of defeating Morgoth.

Which makes it hilarious when the intro's got Galadriel dropping a very proud and literal 'We resisted' while talking about the Elven response to Morgoth's deeds in Valinor. Complete with the Oath of Fëanor and the Noldor sailing to Middle-earth being shown on screen. Like - would you care to elaborate on what that Oath entailed and its consequences over the next five or so centuries, Guyladriel? Or how the Noldor got all those ships in the first place?