I decided to train the neural network to randomly generate Pokemon names and abilities based on this list as a training set - and found that it was good at generating Pokemon. Annoyingly good at it - by the time it had gone through the training set 50 times, it was already fluently plagiarizing Pokemon word for word. I had to go back to my very first snapshot of the neural network (16 times through the training set), at which point it hadn’t yet learned the entire set of names and abilities, and was still coming up with hilarious new ones.
I hate shipwrecks in Minecraft bc they imply that there is/was some form of intelligent life in Minecraft before the player…… It’s clearly not villagers bc they can’t even build a village properly…… Who are these mysterious ship builders and where did they go…..
actually the more i think ab it the more beautiful and lonely the world gets. i developed this interpretation after mineshafts where added but even before that, the temples buried by sand? trapped caverns in jungles? even in other worlds, fortresses in hell itself now only guarded by skeletons? houses in the end only accessible by portal after defeating the dragon? all relics of a past race thats been mysteriously wiped. the villagers dont know perhaps, they see you and assume your one of them. different perhaps, your nose is much to short and face much to squished, your language garbled complexities they have yet to decode, but thats fine to them. you have things they want and they have things you want. perhaps they will one day, long after you get tired of this world, uncover those past relics as well. perhaps they will recognize the stories passed down, perhaps they will lament not trying to understand you, to find the missing pieces of the race before them now entirely gone.
or something like that. im v tired
Whenever u see people talk about this it makes me think of the most recent minecon earth dev panel to something dinnerbone said.
“There are these huge mineshafts, going ALL ACROSS the world. But whoever was digging them left all this good stuff in here. Gold, diamonds, lapis. So what were they digging for?”
Okay I know we always go on about Marvel’s uncanny casting ability.
But if you thought they were the only ones, let me draw your attention to this man:
Viggo Mortensen, aka Aragorn son of Arathorn, aka Sexiest Ranger in Middle Earth
would hike, often for more than a day, to remote filming locations, in costume, for the sake of authenticity
was the best swordsman Bob Anderson (swordsmaster/instructor for LotR, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc) says he has ever trained
occasionally writes poetry (more book!canon than film!canon but um hello)
does all his own stunts
lived all over and speaks about 23940209384 languages
you know that scene at the end of Fellowship when he’s fighting the Uruk-hai? And one throws a dagger at him and he hits it away with his sword? Yeah, the guy who threw it was supposed to miss, but accidentally threw it directly at Viggo. Who just casually Aragorned and hit it away.
They actually cast Aragorn to play Aragorn
Can I just add a few things?
Would randomly give chocolates to the hobbits
According to John Rhys-Davis (aka Gimli), whenever you have a large cast, one or two actors will naturally become the leaders. Guess who ended up in that role.
Single-handedly convinced cast and crew to camp out to shoot a scene in the sunrise
Once hit a wild rabbit with his car by accident. Promptly stopped his car and went to see if the rabbit was dead, needed a vet or if the only merciful thing to do was to finish killing him. The rabbit was dead. Viggo realized he was hungry. So he took the rabbit, made a fire by the roadside and ate it.
According to cast and crew, sometimes you’d just see him disappear in the middle of the night and suddenly he’d come back with fish he’d caught
Had his sword with him at all times. Slept with once.
The best horse rider of the cast, hands down. Rides better than lots of pros, according to a horse trainer. Couldn’t bear to part with his horse at the end of the shooting, so he bough him. The next movie of his also involved horses, and he bought his horse in that one, too.
Knows how to survive in the wild. I’m not kidding.
Hand-stitched a few things in his costume for an authentic “I live away from civilization” Ranger feel. Also told the weapons department to make him a small bow because “Aragorn lives in the wild, he needs a hunting bow, or he’ll starve to death” - literally nobody else had thought about that. Also requested a small stone to sharpen his sword. Suggested that Aragorn would take Boromir’s arm guards after his death.
Speaking of hand-stitching, once he was touring Japan with a reporter for an article. Walked into a store, took a tshirt, bought it, cut off the print and hand-stitched it into the hat he was wearing. The reporter was going “?????????” the entire time.
Peter Jackson literally sometimes called him Aragorn by accident
They tried to give the role to Nicolas Cage first, though.
Ooh ooh I’ve got some:
Once nearly got arrested because he was walking down the street after rehearsal practicing sword moves and someone called the cops on him
Broke his toe during filming and the result is onscreen because he just rolled with it
Spent the whole running montage at the beginning of TTT running with a broken toe
Also broke a tooth off while filming Helm’s Deep and legit tried to just stick it back into his mouth and keep going but the crew dragged him to a dentist over lunch break. in costume.
liked to take photographs and put them around his mirror in his trailer, by the end of the shoot there was no mirror left
insisted on filming the scene with Aragorn floating down the river in TTT himself, almost drowned doing it
also, IIRC, bought a horse for another person (I think it was Liv Tyler’s riding double?) after filming because she got super attached to it too
takes the piss out of Orlando Bloom on the special features for going on about his broken rib too much and it’s completely glorious
had much less training (sword and the rest) than the others because he was cast late (i think he came in and had just a few weeks of training instead of months) (for the cast thing, they had cast someone too young at first and then cast him)
didn’t know LOTR, his son had read the book and told him to go for it
I find that if I’m wearing Real Adult Business Clothes my worksona can do things like call people and check my inbox, whereas pajamas hellen mostly wants to shovel hamburgers into her face and set things on fire.
imagine hearing “hall of the mountian king” for the first time in 1875. the sheer chaos imagine being some norwegian aristocrat and sitting down for a nice day at the symphony and getting your entire wig and life snatched right before your very eyes
