In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
The text is not ambiguous. Balrogs don’t have wings.
I can’t believe people still argue over whether or not Balrogs have wings when the text unambiguously says they do. You can have wings and also have a shadow that looks like wings.
His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. ...suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall...Like two vast wings but then he explicitly says its wings were spread, clearly stating it has wings. To be the most generous you could try to say the wings are made of shadows, but based on the text they’re clearly still wings.
Yes, Balrogs have wings.
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the Jackson adaptations also explicitly said that Arwen carried Frodo across the ford of Bruinen, that Eowyn was at Helm’s Deep, that Saruman died at Isengard, that Faramir took Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath as prisoners, that Pippin was the one who lit the beacon of Amon Dîn, that the hobbits returned to the Shire and it was more or less the same as they left it, and many other things that explicitly do not happen in the books. should we take all those as canonical too?
#sharkey-was-just-a-fever-dream
he establishes a simile in one sentence and reuses it further on. common writing trick.
Exactly. Writing the entirety of “shadows like two vast wings” twice would have been awkward for no reason. (Or it should be no reason, but apparently some people are incapable of understanding metaphor.)
Balrogs - and I shouldn’t even have to say this - don’t have wings.
It would not have been awkward, it would have been describing what heeamt had he meant that. Seems some people are incapable of understanding that these are magical beings who’s bodies may not be entirely made of material that we would expect.
Balrogs - and I shouldn’t even have to say this - dohave wings.
Everything about the creature is shadow, fire, and ash. So if his shadow extends like wings, then they’re wings, as shadow is literally part of a Balrog’s body.
He says they have wings. As I said, if you want to take that they are made of shadows you can, but they have wings.
not in the passage you quoted, no. i know he was meticulous about translation notes, is there anything in those?
Did you read it? Explicitly says they have wings.
In that same passage we also get “Gandalf flew down the stairs”. Explicit, unambiguous evidence that Gandalfs have wings.
are you still talking about the quote? because tolkien does that all throughout the books. he establishes that a thing is “like” something else, then refers to it by that other thing as shorthand for the sake of tone. or are you suggesting that “from wall to wall” is literal as well?
I don’t have an opinion on the matter. I’m much more into the worldbuilding and languages than the books themselves, though I’ve of course read and enjoyed them.
Yes you do. Your opinion is the right one, that you don’t like getting attacked by panthers.
Balrogs have wings because how can you expect to go caving without fried chicken? And what’s the best part of the fried chicken? The skin. And what has the most chicken skin? The wings. Not fake boneless chicken nublet basket shit restaurant wings, real wings. So smart ol Balrog goes around trading drumsticks for wings. Of course he’s got wings. Quid. Pro. Quo.
Completely forgot an even better example. Is FT8 ruining ham radio? Think of FT8 like a glorified ping using modem noises. You pipe those modem noises over a radio and someone pings you back with a signal report, and that’s it. There are many people who want to have more substantive conversations and think FT8 is automating the fun out of the hobby. Others argue that the people using FT8 aren’t the type to want to ragchew anyway, so they can hang out in their little corner and leave the rest of the bands clear for those who do want to chat.
That being said, one can probably find similar arguments when phone came into mainstream, and then again when the FCC eliminated the Morse requirements. The truth is it’s all ham radio, and any arguments to the contrary are rejected outright.
To even get on any of the digital modes, not only must one have the licenses, radio, and antenna, they must also know how to pair the computer up to it to get it to function while also understanding atmospherics.
That being said, one can probably find similar arguments when phone came into mainstream
Speaking as someone who only got licensed in 2019 with almost zero exposure to the hobby prior, I get where this attitude comes from. Back in the day a new mode meant new (expensive) equipment which also took up space (the cost in terms of square-footage for a shack and antennas is overlooked IMO). Whereas now most things can be accomplished with a computer and sound card.
Also, ham radio for the most part is only fun when other people are doing it too. I love Hellschreiber but nobody else does, so I rarely get any contacts using Hell. I can see CW guys bemoaning the folks who moved from CW to FT8 because they only used CW because it’s tolerant of low power or sub-optimal antennas, and FT8 was built with that scenario in mind.
On the other side ham radio is supposed to be about experimentation and trying new stuff. That’s one of thee reasons given by the FCC for allocating spectrum for ham use. So of course new shiny modes are going to come up all the time, if they don’t then the hobby is failing.
A fantastic point I hadn’t considered, new gear taking up more space. I would also try Hell but for the same issue you mentioned. I did SSTV a bit which is kind of neat.
I’ve tried JT65 a bunch on HF with no luck.
In Blade Runner, whether or not Deckard is a Replicant.
I still play a little old school Doom and earlier this year the creator of one of the main engines people use (GZDoom) got some flak for using some AI in his coding, causing a lot of people to switch over to a fork (UZDoom).
I don’t miss many things about the old site but the niche communities are one of them. If anyone wants to dive into years of minutiae covering everything from big drama to slap fights you should check out
https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/Exactly how planes fly. I studied a bit of fluid dynamics in grad school and my professor was adamant that any explanation is incomplete without discussion of boundary layers.
In short the explanation was a couple things. The first is how ping pong balls generate lift with translation and rotation (or vorticity). Its basically the shape of the wing that helps with vorticity (this is what generates the pressure difference above and below the wing). The second is that you need laminar flow over the wing for vorticity to take place, and this is achieved when a thin layer of turbulent air surrounds it, the boundary layer. It moves the stagnation points towards the back (encouraging laminar flow) and reducing drag.
The same process is the reason golf balls have dimples on them, to help form a turbulent boundary layer, moving the stagnation pounts, reducing drag and allowing the ball to go further.
“Tripping the boundary layer” can be achieved by increasing speed on the runway, a strong head wind, rough spots on the wing, or how you might see windsurfers pump their sail, or someone pumping on a hydrofoil board in the water.
Programming and Linux. Oh boy, what to pick…
Terminal text editors: VIM vs Emacs is the main debate there. (There are others but these are ones people argue the most about)
Linux Distros: Arch, Debian, Mint, CachyOS, …
Init Systems: Systemd vs OpenRC. Honestly, probably the most toxic debate on this list.
Programming Languages: Python, Shell, but the heated one is C vs Rust
A non-exhaustive list of ones I couldn’t think of a category for:
- Tiling vs Floating Window Managers
- Chromium vs Gecko-based browsers
- Bash vs Zsh vs Fish
I love computers and Linux, but man, the amount of toxic in-fighting and gatekeeping is a real turnoff. Just use what you want. At the end of the day, we are all nerds doing what we love.
And heaven forbid you actually prefer Windows
actually prefer Windows
I don’t understand. I recognize the words, but in that order, they make no sense.
Microsoft’s helping our case by blasting their own foot all the time, fortunately.
Nobody prefers Windows. Some people used to prefer the software suites exclusive to Windows.
I prefer Windows. Every experience I’ve had with Linux has been a nightmare.
Nobodymost people on Lemmy don’t prefers Windows. FTFYLinux users need to stop assuming everyone is wrong for needing things that Linux can’t do at all or doesn’t do well. I need accessibility. Linux doesn’t do it well. Over a decade and a half of trying to make it work has proven that. Some people need Adobe or MS Office (even though many may not like it), and Linux doesn’t do that at all. They’re not wrong, their needs differ from yours.
And it doesn’t matter whose “fault” it is. Apple fanboys do this, too. If an OS doesn’t offer something you need, that’s where the conversation ends. They don’t care what internal politics at the vendor or lack of community interest by Linux devs or whatever lead to the thing they need not working. All they care about is that it doesn’t work.
And no, they’re not going to take night classes to get a comp-sci degree so they can code the drivers that their peripheral needs.
“What’s that, you need a claw hammer but I gave you a ball peen hammer? Pfffft, just become a blacksmith and forge your own hammerhead, it’s not THAT hard.” --Every Linux user
neovim, opensuse tumbleweed, idk, idk, floating, gecko, bash
my experience is limited tho, and im not strongly opinionated
i like the vi/vim/neovim editor control scheme, not tried much else, nano seems ok too from my occasional use of it
i use opensuse tumbleweed because its rolling release but still pretty stable and installation is easy but allows a lot of customizing, many other distros are good for many other things too, fedora popos and mint are great easy desktops, debian and nixos are great for servers, arch gentoo void nixos and artix are great desktops for nerds, etc. the bad ones are ubuntu (canonical is weird and corporate and makes bad decisions), manjaro (the devs are incompetent), and omarchy (it preinstalls nonfree software (including nordvpn (ew)), ai, and more nonfree software (including chatgpt (even more ai ew) and twitter))(as you might be able to tell i really hate it, its just an installer for some moron’s desktop setup, thats what nixos is for you fucking twat, and its crappily opinionated with crappy opinions)
ive only used systemd distros (opensuse, ubuntu, fedora, debian, raspbian) so idk whether systemd alternatives are better, i just know that systemd is pretty bad in many ways
and im not that much of a programmer, but pretty much all languages are good and useful (except that javascript is useful but not good)
i like floating wms (i use kde plasma) because tiling is a bit annoying (sometimes i want a window to be a particular shape) and because tiling is usually in wms that are not des, ive tried sway and hyprland and the mostly keyboard based control was nice but it not being a de that provides all of that useful stuff was annoying
gecko is better because its more libre, the corporation behind it is dedicated to libre rather than being one of the world’s biggest and evilest megacorps, and it incorporates more pro privacy design. i use librewolf. gecko is poorly separated from firefox tho so im quite hopeful for servo engine now that ladybird is vibe coded slop being rewritten in rust by the cult
i like bash because its the typical well known linux shell that many online resources are about
I am team…
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Nano
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Arch
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Systemd, I don’t see what the fuss is about that TBH
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I don’t wanna even touch that one lol
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I like the carousel kind of things like Karousel or Niri
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Gecko (Librewolf, Floorp etc.)
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Zsh
But yeah I agree, everyone should just do what they want. Having lots of options is one of my favourite things about Linux.
heretic! the only dogmatically correct setup is
- helix
- fedora
- systemd
- rust
- whatever fits your workflow
- gecko
- nushell
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Thats not a debate in LoTR Fandom. Debate would imply one side has a leg to stand on. No wings.
Miniature painting: True metallic Vs non metallic metal.
Should you paint the metal parts of your minis in metallic paint (containing small amounts of pica and/or aluminium to give it a reflective shimmer), or is it better to use non metallic paints and paint the shimmer and reflections to give the illusion of being metallic?
Personally I prefer TMM, because it’s basically the same techniques but if you fuck it up a bit it doesn’t end up looking terrible like NMM, and while NMM looks great in photos I find TMM looks better in real life, which is where I enjoy my minis. NMM definitely requires more skill, but I don’t think the results are worth it unless you’re entering competitions.
There’s two in my hobbies.
First is in DnD. I’m going to ignore the obvious version wars but a lot of people debate who is and isn’t fan of DnD. A lot of people just watch Critical Role or Dimension 20. Some in the community say that doesn’t count and you’re not a fan unless you actually play.
My take is everyone is welcome, and if all you do is watch then I’ll just talk about storytelling with you and discuss mechanics with someone else.
The other big one is Chinese fountain pens that clearly mimic more well known brands. Are they good pens? Should they be shunned? Does it matter since most of the brands haven’t made the specific model in ages? So much back and forth.
My take here is some people will never have the money for a Pelikan M1000 and those who do are going to go for which writes better. There’s only so many ways a tube can be made unique.
Some in the community say that doesn’t count and you’re not a fan unless you actually play.
yeah because if there’s anything the nerd community needs more of it’s bullying
I mean, I never said the argument was a good one. Just it’s one I hear all the time.
I think the lack of personal time to pursue fulfilling hobbies and the general difficulty of finding a group of 4-8 players who have the sane consistent schedule is the primary bar of entry. The base rules of 5e are free, and anyone can download a dice rolling app for free. And barring that, pirating DnD books is stupid easy.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a game you can’t always play. If that was the bar of entry, then everyone’s uncle who is super hyped about the Superbowl isn’t a football fan.
The other big one is Chinese fountain pens that clearly mimic more well known brands.
Patent on the Pilot Vanishing Point as far as I can tell has expired and that Majohn (Moonman) and Jinhao have made cheaper versions.
VPs are still bloody expensive for me and I don’t want to gamble and see if I like it for that much money (and try to sell i t off if I don’t like it).
Turns out I like retractable fountain pens but the jinhaos and majohn one I suppose isn’t as well made and dry out quickly. From a bunch of reviews I’ve consumed they could be as good at not drying out but for the cheap price it’s a QC issue.
So now what? Throw away perfectly fine cheap pens just to get the real one?
But on the flip side, I have tried a Lamy 2000 and I love it and I know there are blatant copies and homages from the Chinese brands and I won’t get them.
Hobbies are just weird.
But at the end of the day, I think the cheap brands should he celebrated even copies because it’s a good entryway to the hobby. If a pen hasn’t been produced for decades, then someone else made new copies or homages, then I don’t blame anyone wanting those instead of having to hunt for vintage pens and hoping to restore it (by themselves or sending it to someone).
There’s only so many ways a tube can be made unique.
Sure. But it’s not just about the tube. It’s mostly about the ball.
At last - China learns how to make a ballpoint pen
That’s from 2017. Until then, China had to rely on importing the little steel balls from Switzerland despite making 80% of the world’s pens.
There’s no ball in fountain pens though which is what I’m talking about.
Oh right. Well, it’s still quite a cool fact. I’m not really into pens.
systemd is fine for some
I happen to be a fan of The Amazing Digital Circus, and for a brief time I did participate in the fandom, and here’s just one of many, many examples of what this fandom does to itself.
Someone came up with the idea that one of the characters is trans…based on absolutely zero facts from the show itself, anything said or implied by the creative team…nothing more than their own oddball imagination. Which immediately split the fandom into very rabid camps on this non-issue. And you’d think the show’s creator explicitly stating that no, this character is not in fact trans, wound settle it? Lol nope.
Shouldn’t surprise me that a show with the subtext of mental illness would attract mentally ill people, but man this fandom will pick a fight with anyone.
Thanks, just watched the pilot and it looks really good. Which character did people think was trans and why?
Jax. And there is no why.
See, a sizable percentage of this fandom are maladjusted woker-than-thou 12 year olds who develop parasocial relationships with fictional characters, and adults with similar personality profiles. That’s where it came from. Lurk in some of the fandom spaces and you’ll see behaviors similar to this. Some of these people even picked a fight with the show’s creator over who the main characters are. She’s had to come forward more than once to collectively tell people to settle the fuck down.
That being said, I’m happy you watched the pilot. Enjoy the next seven episodes - there’s some great character and plot/lore development and even though there’s only one episode left, there’s still a lot left to reveal. The most exciting part of this is that Glitch, an independent animation studio, managed to secure a worldwide theatrical release for the final episode (which will actually be episodes 8 and 9 combined for a full-length feature film run) in early June. This is unheard of for an independent studio. They’ve been doing their best to keep the fandom up to date on how they’re securing venues, and enlightening us all on the massive shitstorm of red tape you have to navigate to accomplish this.
And of course the fandom had to scream at everyone about that too lol. 🙄
Yeah… honestly, I feel awful for Gooseworx. They were trying to tell a serious story, and they succeeded. It is a serious story, and it is a good one. Unfortunately, they have to wade through a sea of the survivors of 21st century cultural and societal damage.
Markiplier broke the wall, and Glitch is shoving its foot through the crack. In a few years, indie makers will be in the movies. Let Hollywood tremble, mwahaha!
I’d have guessed Zooble because of the whole changeable body parts thing…
And that’s what makes it even more absurd. You’ve already got a nonbinary character who represents body dysmorphia, but nope, let’s start this fight over a completely different character.
Yeah, Jax is insane, I would have also guessed Zooble with same reason as you said.
Jaaaax??? He’s like the token normie straight guy LMAO
Zooble is literally right there… idg these “headcanons” a lot. Why not invest in shows that already have representation or write your separate AU fanfics? Forcing representation seems like an egregious thing to maintain inside a fandom space when shows like Helluva Boss already have clean cut representation without any mysticism, so why not gravitate towards those fandoms instead?
Sometimes I wonder if fandoms like these engage in a sort of purposeful gatekeeping because they want a larger queer majority for the space than actually exists. I can see how it would be tempting to retcon a character like Jax, for all intents and purposes the sole young straight cismale character, and then it suddenly becomes a lot easier to achieve that. But it’s not a very healthy thing to do by any means.
You know what I think happened? A while back someone posted a fan drawing of Jax in a maid outfit, which got a lot of attention. Later in the show there’s a scene where the rest of the gang “vote” to put Jax in a maid outfit just to piss him off. And I really think those two oddly-coincidental events melted some people’s brains.
Also I’ve noticed with the less mature folks, they can’t separate their fanfics/ships/whatever from the actual story being told. And this is what we get.
TADC is probably the only good thing to have come out of Glitch Productions since SMG4 got enshittified to become more “advertiser friendly.” But part of the reason I haven’t gotten into it is the fandom.
I don’t like how half the fandom sexualizes Pomni; especially against the creators’ wishes.
Afaik, Zooble’s the only canonically trans character. I mean, the nightmare segment of ep8 was VERY obviously about their severe dysphoria, as well as their couch therapy gag with Caine. Hell, their whole body design was Caine’s pretty lame attempt at alleviating their dysphoria by giving them dysmorphia instead.
Tbh, I was very pleasantly surprised by how seriously they took depicting actual computer science. There is a world of difference between Kinger with the bucket on his head missing a keystroke and this shit.
“Should lizard people women have breasts?”
Only if they’re mammals that happen to look reptilian.
Haha excellent
Warhammer cheated and only created Lizardmen that magically come from spawning pools. Anything else is a distraction from the great plan.
I suppose it depends on whether lizard people are humanoid reptiles or repiloid mammals, or maybe something completely different.
Easy, depends on the tone. If it’s supposed to be grounded and realistic with speculative evolution elements- probably not.
If it’s rule of cool, yeah sure.
l’ll just say that if I, as a worldbuilder, were creating a race of lizardfolk they would not have mammary glands. They would also not be too anthropomorphic. It would ruin the reason I like coming up with alien races, to solve ergonomics problems that their unique anatomy and lifestyle present.
Are larp arrows supposed to have a flat foam tip, or a rounded foam tip?
Either side will claim the other had blinded a dozen of their friends, impaled their cattle and poisoned the well!
Hmm, if both side claim the other blinded their friend, than perhaps both are capable of blinding friends. The obvious solution is to have no friends.
In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
Never knew about this debate, but IMO the text is not ambiguous:
suddenly drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall
That’s very literal. Looking into the subject it seems that people think those are metaphorical wings, but I don’t see anything near that phrase that justifies thinking it’s metaphorical.
But also, at the end of the day, it’s a moot debate. Balrogs are Maiar, them having wings or not is as important as the color of the shoes of some other character, they’re spiritual beings that adopt some physical form, which they can change at will.
In that same passage we also get that “Gandalf flew down the stairs”. Literal, unambiguous evidence that Gandalfs have wings.
there’s another shouting match in the comments about this already, and i’m of the opinion that he establishes the wings as a simile earlier with “shadows like wings”. so i agree that it’s not ambiguous but in the other direction.
Shadow like wings doesn’t mean he doesn’t also has wings. And if he had shadow wings before how does he spread them afterwards?. Also, Tolkien is not one to hold adjectives, if he had meant shadow wings he would probably have written shadow wings. I read that more like he had shadow wings and later opened his real wings.
In any case, like I said also, it’s mostly a moot discussion, might as well discuss the color of Frodo’s shoes in that scene.
it’s an interesting discussion for the sake of understanding how people read. like, when i read “shadows like wings”, i see a cloak of darkness surrounding the beast. and when those “wings” are spread “wall to wall” in an enormous cavern, i see the beast magically snuffing out all light.
might as well discuss the color of Frodo’s shoes in that scene
He didn’t have any…
