One of the most masculine things you can do is to serve others, particularly your wife and kids. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Modern storytelling has a villain problem: it doesn't want to make them evil. Villains have become so sympathetic that we're not even sure if they are supposed to be the "real heroes", according to the author. But some recent stories buck this trend. They say "No. Our villains are evil. And evil must be destroyed." Killing demons is awesome, actually.

Only 20 more years until he's the same age as the man he played on screen.

I need you all to understand something. Demons are demons. Orcs are orcs. Monsters are monsters. They’re not stand-ins for anything. They’re not allegories for anyone. They do not represent anything other than perhaps an embodiment of evil. Stop being weird.

Several reasons: 1) Tolkien’s life experiences were far broader and deeper than most people these days. He fought in World War I and was a professor of philology at Oxford. 2) He didn’t have any aspirations to make a living writing books. He obviously already had his job; The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were things he did because he liked them. So he was free to spend decades discovering Middle-earth rather than being forced to meet a deadline because if you don’t publish a book every year or two, publishers get mad (as is the case today). 3) Most authors today simply don’t have Tolkien’s moral character or courage. This point probably derives point number 1. 4) Someone has to be the GOAT.

In this article, the author admits to watching all of THREE MINUTES of Bluey and judging based off of whatever those three minutes contained (he doesn't even say). As a Christian father who has seen almost every episode of Bluey, let me say this: Bandit is an amazing father. He is willing to play with his daughters in a loving way, yet that by no means diminishes his masculinity. Heck, the ways in which he plays with them are quite stereotypically masculine. Watch "Yoga Ball" for an example. Also, he very clearly is the provider and the head of the household. There's a whole episode about how he has to travel for work and Bingo having a hard time with missing him. Then you have "The Sign", where he is charged with making the big decisions regarding his family's future. Playing games with your children is not "turning fathers into mothers". If anything, dads have (and always have had) more time and energy to play with their kids when not working, because they're not exhausted and touched out from having to wrangle the kids all day long. If you're going to criticize a popular show, maybe take some time to ACTUALLY WATCH IT.

My kids all get a book at bedtime. They are 6, 4, and 2, so the younger kids typically pick picture books while my oldest prefers me to read him books about bugs or sports or some other topic. That’s great. I want them to read what they want to read. But I also want to make sure they’re exposed to quality literature even before they may be ready for it. We listened the Hobbit audio book a while back, and now we’re on to this beauty. Read books to your kids.

I’m finally playing Skyrim for the first time. Give me advice.

“So your client is one of the city’s richest men?” “Yes” “And you think he is secretly a vigilante who spends his night beating criminals with his bear hands?” “That’s right, Dave.” “And your plan is to blackmail this man?”

I’m not even halfway through this book, but I can confidently recommend it wholeheartedly. It’s absolutely fantastic. I will most certainly be referencing it in practically every future video on LotR.

In the midst of a tale about monsters and magic, Geralt stops to ruminate on how his mother’s ability to murder him before his birth is a “holy and irrefutable right.” Yeah, I’m done with this garbage.

"We don't need to go to war." Yes you do. You're an orc. You fight. It's literally the only thing you know how to do.

The shift in Hollywood's ability to write good female characters over the past 20 years is absolutely incredible. And by incredible, I mean it's incredible how they managed to unlearn everything about good character writing. Take Katara, from Avatar: The Last Airbender. She starts out passionate, driven, and eager. She wants to learn waterbending, but is held back by the simple fact that she has no one to teach her the art. As the story progresses, her motivation drives her (sometimes rashly) to pursue knowledge of waterbending and to practice harder than Aang. When Aang outpaces her learning due to his natural talent, this irritates Katara to no end, but she resolves to keep practicing no matter how far behind she may be. The audience is given a sense of progress. We can see Katara's skill (her external arc) and her perseverance (her internal arc) increasing as Book 1 wears on. When the Boomerang Gaang finally reaches the north pole and Katara is ultimately accepted into the training class, her established drive catapults her past Aang in terms of skill. Not only is this good, consistent writing, but it is also a good message: hard work is more important than natural talent. And then we have Rey... Is there even anything worth saying? Sure, she has a few brief "training" scenes, but there is no sense of progress for the character. Whenever the plot needs her to do a thing, she can just... do it. How? Shut up. People like to say Rey is a self-insert or a power fantasy, and maybe she was, but mostly I think she's just the result of poor planning. No one had any real idea where the character was going, and so she simply hopped from one point to the other, gaining whatever power the scene required, with no sense of progression and thus no satisfying payoff when she pulled off whatever new move the story required of her this time. But Disney thought it wouldn't matter because she checked the box of "strong female lead" and that would somehow be enough for fans. It wasn't.

In "On Fairy Stories", Tolkien talks about how the happy ending is essential to the genre of fantasy. I don't think we largely believe this, anymore... but we should.

So apparently I've gained like 500 followers in the last few days because I said "demons are bad, actually" and then a lot of people proceeded to run defense for them... Anyway, hello there! I'm Sam, a Catholic father of four (as of right now), YouTuber/video essayist, and fledgling fantasy author. I tweet about whatever strikes my fancy, but mostly storytelling, family, faith, and whatever I find amusing. I don't get mad and I don't argue on the internet. Nice to meet you!

Why would I entrust myself to a beast when I have two sturdy legs and can sprint for 6 whole seconds?

Man, I’d go to Chipotle so much if they had a tank parked out front.

Lmao at the idea that “new is inherently good”. Absolute brainrot.

Denethor is such a fantastic character because we can tell that he was once a great and noble man, but has been broken by years of strife, war, and then finally the death of his son. He's not a good man, by the end, but who among us could say we would have done better?

The amount of quote tweets I’ve seen dunking on people calling my original tweet racist is just wonderful.

And go OUTSIDE?!? Are you insane, man?!?

No dungeons or dragons detected

I’ve written 27,000 words in the last 11.5 days. This meme is the only thing I have keeping me going.

He wasn't beaten by a Hobbit. He was beaten by Eru himself.

I provide for my family. I have a corporate job that pays the bills, plus a YouTube channel that helps us save more for retirement, give more, and put money away for the kids. Between those two endeavors, I work 60+ hours a week. My wife, who does not have a job, works WAY more than I do. She cares for our four kids all day long: feeding, dressing, bathing, home schooling, etc... She also does all the various household chores, a good share of the yardwork, and also somehow finds time to read my scripts and tell me when I say something dumb. Oh and she gets up in the middle of the night to feed the baby. Don't let anyone tell you that being a stay at home mom is easy or leisurely. But also, don't let anyone tell you it's not incredibly meaningful and worthwhile. At the end of the day, humans are made for work. Good work. Work that bears good fruit. But work, nonetheless. I cannot adequately express how grateful I am for the tremendous amount of good work that my wife does on a daily basis. I do tell her all this, by the way, just in case you were wondering.

Despite its flaws, Return of the King remains the greatest movie ever made. Certainly not the most perfect, but undoubtedly the best.

This poster that my wife found for the Pony Express is absolutely unhinged.

Tolkien diagnosed the problem with “kids stories” almost 80 years ago. “It is true that the age of childhood-sentiment has produced some delightful books (especially charming, however, to adults) of the fairy kind or near to it; but it has also produced a dreadful undergrowth of stories written or adapted to what was or is conceived to be the measure of children's minds and needs. The old stories are mollified or bowdlerised, instead of beine reserved; the imitations are often merely silly…” from On Fairy Stories.

Can both Catholics and Protestants stop with the petty cat fights? I’d much prefer we unite to crush postmodern secularism. Then we can return to arguing about Mariology and Eucharistic theology. Respectfully, of course.

"You will be satisfied by working for a company that doesn't care about you."

Star Wars fans don't skew left. Vocal, terminally-online Star Wars fans skew left.

So "booktok" and "bookstagram" are basically 100% women, right? Are there any men out in those spaces who talk about, you know, actually good books? Cause I'm feeling a desire to infiltrate booktok and get men reading fiction again.

I’m playing with a controller out of necessity, and I hate aiming with it, so I think I might actually avoid this fate.

Christian movies generally suck because they don’t care enough about the movie part. Modern Hollywood has the same problem. They lead with their “message” and the actual story is secondary. Do you want to convert your audience to your worldview? You need to care more about your craft for its own sake.

“Dress for the job you want.” Me:

"It's just a made-up story, bro" is one of the lowest-effort, lamest, most thoughtless comments I've ever seen on my channel. If you don't understand the transformative power of fiction, I pity you.

We're capturing a command post! We've captured a command post! We're losing a command post! We've lost a command post! We're capturing a command post! We've captured a command post! We're losing a command post! We've lost a command post! We're capturing a command post! We've captured a command post! We're losing a command post! We've lost a command post!

This movie took me by total surprise. Well cast, well written, hilarious, full of clever DnD references (most of which went over my head at the time). Just a delightful movie.

The tricky beauty of games like Doom or stories like Frieren is that they present evil in a form that can be physically destroyed. The demons are creatures we can see and blow away at the end of a shotgun or staff. The evil is still tempting, despite their obvious malice. The demons offer power, or they deceive and misguide. It only takes one person giving in to this evil to cause great calamity. If only things were so simple and obvious in our own lives. We long to be able to blast evil into tiny bits, but that evil is most often found within our own hearts. “Yes!” we exclaim, as the digital demons meet their deserved end, “Begone, spawn of hellfire!” If only eradicating our own pride, selfishness, and impatience were half as easy. Demons on screen are easy to recognize (or so I thought), but our own vices and sins… not so much. Still, my hope is that such stories inspire us to seek out and destroy evil wherever it exists, beginning with that to which we still cling.

The world IS black and white. Deal with it.

Abortion is the worst atrocity humans have committed and it's not remotely close.

He would’ve hated the Jackson trilogy. Not that they’re bad. They’re incredible. But Tolkien would’ve hated them. Tolkien was famously kind of a curmudgeon. He would absolutely DESPISE RoP

Orcs don’t represent anything other than evil’s lack of ability to truly create.

That's weird, I looked through my entire script and couldn't find a single reference to any real-world ethnic group. I'm just over here talking about fictional demons (and on occasion, real ones), and apparently that warrants accusations of racism. This isn't even a straw man. You had to buy the land and plant the field too.

Update: I have fallen.

You mean you don't think arming all the bombs while they were still inside the ship was a good idea?

Most kids shows are abysmal these days. Why? Because they don't actually care about telling a story. They are, at best, a moral lesson like "share" told via dumbed-down dialogue and absolutely brain-dead characters. Bluey is the exception. Bluey is so good, especially when kids are little. But once they are a little older (7 or so), kids need good stories. They need to be challenged. They need to confront evil and see virtue in action. This is why Avatar: The Last Airbender remains so successful and beloved. It is a simple story about kids saving the world, but each character is given depth that would put most dramas written for "adults" to shame. You can revisit ATLA time and time again and get something new out of it every time. It doesn't try to subvert expectations or buck traditional storytelling norms. The creators weren't interested in proving how smart or clever they were. They just wanted to tell a good story about hope, balance, being true to oneself, and the ever-present possibility of redemption. And few stories have ever surpassed it. All this from a show made to be digestible by 7 year old children. As it should be. Watch Avatar with your kids. You'll probably like it more than they will.

Absolutely wild that the statement “Evil exists and you should destroy it” is controversial, but here we are. Thanks for nothing, postmodernism.

If someone "drove you to cheat", then you are unspeakably weak.

This is a major problem with modern media. Executives want “thing with established fanbase” because it’s a safety blanket. But writers, shock and surprise, want to write, not just copy and paste. So they “make it their own”. It’s almost always worse *coughhalocough* and it’s practically guaranteed to anger fans who liked the original. Nobody wins. Except the YouTubers who make a living crapping on this stuff.

Here's how the convo went in the "writers' room": "People love this line from Lord of the Rings. We have to include it in our show!" "Okay." No further thought went into it.

Protesting says "My opinion is more important than whatever is going on here." When the "whatever is going on here" happens to be the Sacrifice of the Mass and the presence of God himself... you might want to think about sitting down. Or kneeling.

Introducing my kids to Clone Wars. They just heard: “We’re just clones, sir. We’re meant to be expendable.” “Not to me.” This show goes so hard.

Men, your hobbies and passions don’t have to fit under the same umbrella. You can enjoy weightlifting and video games. You can watch sports and write poetry. You can (and should) read fantasy novels and also study history and philosophy.

My apologies for doubly cursing your timeline but… no. I can’t say with any amount of certainty that “gamers” DON’T want what is essentially soft-core porn, but I can absolutely say that they SHOULDN’T want it. Why not? Any number of reasons, really. I could go on at length about the destructively reductionist nature of pornography, but perhaps the takeaway should be simply this: making something that appeals to our base instincts by appealing via over-exaggerated sexual characteristics is incredibly EASY. On the flip side, creating truly beautiful art is difficult. Characters can and should be beautiful, but that beauty should mostly exist in their stories. Their looks are secondary, though not entirely unimportant. Any idiot can make pornography, and many do. I want the games I play to be true works of art by people who genuinely love the thing they made.

People are mad about this? Get a grip. This is basic common sense.

I am now "On Fairy Stories" pilled and will do everything I can to ensure my fantasy story ends in a eucatastrophic manner.

My wife: "So, I was reading the flaws of your protagonist... and they all kind of sound like my flaws." Me: *checks local hotel rates*

Masculine = Virtuous Feminine = Virtuous Masculine =/= Feminine People are not math equations.

You should play video games. You should watch movies. You should read books. You should work out. You should learn to cook. You should have a hobby. Find the beauty in all aspects of life.

How I feel after throwing a tweet about killing demons into the void and never bothering to check the insane replies.

Audiences hate bad writing, not strong women.

Things that I do that are good for my mental health (not ranked in order of importance): 1) Walks in the woods 2) Working out/playing sports 3) Reading fiction 4) Reading non-fiction 5) Killing bugs/demons/aliens in video games 6) Spend time with my wife 7) Spend time with my kids 8) Spend time with Jesus 9) Remember that it is only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer.

Modern Hollywood loves themes related to "moral complexity", but largely lacks the ability to actually write said themes properly. The Acolyte failed for any number of reasons, but right from the start it was doomed to fail because its creators wanted, above all else, to undermine the established morality of Star Wars. Now, you can portray the Jedi - especially individual Jedi - as morally complex or compromised. That's fine. But The Acolyte wrote them as... stupid. Whiny. Inept. And it pretended the witches were somehow better than the Jedi just... because. Despite ALL the evidence to the contrary. You know, the evidence the SHOW ITSELF gave us. In the end, the Acolyte had nothing to say. It wanted to meld black and white into shades of gray, but all it accomplished was a sense of absolute confusion. Andor, by contrast, stuck to the established morality of Star Wars. Which, you know, is just objective morality. But it showed men on the wrong side trying to do good, and men on the right side knowingly doing evil. Andor understood that man is a complex creature, capable of both great virtue and despicable evil, regardless of his organizational alignment. It is morally complex without falling into shapeless, vision-less "gray". My only real complaint about the depiction of morality in Andor is that it seems to say winning the fight isn't possible without undermining your own morality. Luthen certainly believes so. This isn't totally coherent with the philosophy of the original trilogy, and that's why I don't really want Tony Gilroy in charge of mainstream Star Wars projects. He's a student of history, clearly, but human history is a bit too... bleak for Star Wars. I know people suck. I want stories like Star Wars to show us the heights to which we should aspire.

If Microsoft Word tries to make me be "more concise" in my writing one more time, I am going to use its own thesaurus to find the longest and most archaic synonym for every adjective and adverb I ever put into my book for the rest of time. Sorry, future readers. I had to do it.

Oh she wants a kid in the books too. She hates that she's infertile. But, according to Geralt (and assumedly Sapkowski), it's only valued because she wants it.

Look, I may not like you, and you may not like me, but I need you to know something… Viggo Mortensen broke his toe when he kicked the Uruk-Hai helmet. His scream of agony was real.

My kids have watched the Disney animated Robin Hood three days in a row now. They don’t make movies like they used to.

I haven't even begun properly writing my novel yet, having spent the last couple of months outlining plot and character arcs and doing worldbuilding. Despite not yet putting words on (digital) paper, I've learned a lot. 1) I'm really going to suck at this. At first. 2) The real challenge will be taking my terrible first draft and turning it into a second draft that is moderately less terrible. 3) I need to read more. And not just fiction. I need to be a better student of history, culture, and philosophy in order to be a better writer. I want to avoid getting all my inspiration from other fiction. 4) This is really freaking cool. Telling stories is awesome, and more people should do it.

It's odd to me that any Christian men think fiction is useless or a waste of time. Bro, what do you think Parables are? Our Lord himself used fictional stories to teach and enlighten. Why should we not, too?

Did you hear that, women of the world? You too are free to analyze spreadsheets full of pointless data! It is not only men who can hoist smelly cans full of poopy diapers into garbage trucks! No one can stop you from becoming a Navy SEAL! (except biology, but let's not worry about that now) Isn't that great?

“It is a fairly common belief” has got to be the most useless collection of words in the English language.

Yeah that’s the best argument I’ve heard for smoking a pipe or cigar. It makes you stop for an hour, forcing you to take time to think and converse

Gm gentlehobbits. This is what we’re fighting for.

I would put it where Sauron could never find it. That box in my basement with a thousand cables and cords that “I’ll need again someday.”

r/changemyview *knows absolutely no one will argue with them* Yeah, that checks out.

A thousand times over

Loyalty by itself is not inherently virtuous. Loyalty to what is good, true, and beautiful? Well, that's one of the greatest virtues to which a man can aspire.

A warning to all future fathers out there. This is your doom. You cannot escape it. Dread it, run from it, it arrives all the same. You WILL wander around the house turning off lights. You WILL mutter about saving electricity under your breath. You WILL have absolutely zero effect on anyone’s habits. I’m sorry.

Reminder: audiences hate bad writing, not strong women.

Everything has to compete with the thing that came before. Nothing is allowed to stand on its own merits. It has to be "better" than the objectively superior version that proceeded it.

Kids are awesome. That is all.

Remember everyone: The Witch King ran away because he knew Gandalf would kick his ass and the Rohirrim arriving was a convenient reason to save face. And he still lost.

You should (ideally) get married in your early twenties. Obviously that's not possible for everyone, but it's a bad idea to delay marriage once you're committed.

Surely there's a balance to be struck between whatever the hell is on the left and the soft-core porn on the right.

Yes, you should admire your wife.

The only *sword* that could kill him

Many such cases

What Tolkien understood, and what modern Hollywood doesn’t, is that stories are not a vessel for your “message” but should instead seek to elucidate truths and encourage good morals in us by “exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments.”

The movie Return of the King should have been at least 5 hours long. And a full 45 minutes of that should have been spent in the Houses of Healing.

One of the most ridiculous takes I get in my comments is that Kratos in the 2018 and 2022 games is "emasculated" or "a cuck" or "soy" or whatever meaningless term the hivemind has latched on to lately. Most recently, I see comments about "his wife's son," which just makes me think these commenters have not played the game. Because it's quite clear that Atreus is, in fact, Kratos' son. It's a pretty big plot point that Atreus is half god, and that Kratos' refusal to tell his son the truth is what has been causing Atreus' persistent illness. Anyway, there's this apparent line of thought that if you are not a rage-induced murder machine who "doesn't take anybody's shit", you are nothing but a soft little baby. And, maybe it's just me, but I like it when characters mature. Maybe men shouldn't lash out in anger the moment says something insulting. After all, if the mere words of another force you to act in a violent manner, who is really the powerful one in that situation? Who is really in control? Yeah, Kratos in the new games is far more patient and gentle than his former self. He's far from the pinnacle of those virtues, but he's a lot closer than he used to be. That's a good thing. That's a more manly thing. So no, Kratos didn't get emasculated. Quite the opposite. In the original trilogy - which I am not bashing, by the way - he is essentially a petulant boy, whose desperate need for personal glory had dire consequences, and who could not stop himself from taking vengeance on those who had wronged him, no matter what it cost both him, and his entire nation. Kratos literally caused the destruction of all of Greece. So yeah, I think I'm okay with him toning down the temperature a little bit.

We need to stop making shows about serial killers.

Sokka from ATLA has one of the best character arcs with regards to maturity that I've ever seen. He starts out courageous, loyal, and with a strong sense of duty. And he never loses that. But his virtues become enhanced and honed as he grows in humility and prudence. In a world where most of the main characters can wield the very forces of nature to defeat their enemies, Sokka is just... some guy. But he becomes more than that. Sokka never gains bending powers, will never be as good in a fight as Aang, Katara, or Toph. And that's good. This is a message kids need to hear: you are limited. You can't do everything you ever dreamt of. But you are given certain gifts, gifts that no one else was given, and it is your duty to use them in a way that no one else can. For Sokka, those gifts were innovation, creativity, and leadership. All present at the beginning of the story, and by the end he has learned how to put them to use for the good of all. Link to my video on him (which just passed 1 MILLION views) is below.

"Look how cool China is!" Just a bunch of lights on a building. Every time.

Hey Disney+, I want to be able to watch Logan, not be suggested some degenerate trash.

I thought people valued empathy? Or does that not apply to the literal voiceless?

We're so back.

This isn't a costume. This is 6 costumes trying to blend together. And they're really bad at it.