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morning quality time featuring book!bagginshield

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Bilbo and Smaug

A redraw of an illustration from 2022

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[screenshot] it was too perfect

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imagine being éowyn in the lord of the rings trilogy. your uncle the king is being mind controlled by an evil wizard until said evil wizard's cooler version shows up and frees him. he is accompanied by an elf, a dwarf, and the hottest guy you've ever met. the hot guy also happens to be 87 years old and maybe still not over his immortal elf girlfriend but he respects and listens to you so you're shooting your shot. your geriatric hotguy situationship turns you down the night before the biggest battle ever then goes ghost hunting in the mountains. you decide to go to battle because you'll either help save your people or die in a really cool and honorable way. you then kill middle earth satan's number one henchman with the power of loophole and being a woman (you are also helped in doing this by a 4 foot tall stoner). then you get to marry faramir. 10/10 no notes my girl went through it all

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If I was Denethor the second, Steward of Gondor I would not have sent my son to a council meeting to try and get a cursed ring- I would have sent both my sons out to Seduce Aragorn by any means necessary.

If I wanted the crown of Gondor and to secure leadership for my family for all time I would have said boys. Get out there. Make it happen. Fluff your beautiful shiny hair up. Make papa proud

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after a lifetime of hearing about aragorn but not reading the books or watching the movies, genuinely nothing could have prepared me for his actual introduction. the hobbits picked this man out of a dumpster. he is a textbook softspoken angst prince and he is covered in dirt and he probably smells so bad. he’s the coolest man alive and is so casual about it. his number one skill is Knowing Where They Are and his number two skill is Having A Horrible Destiny That Torments Him. tolkien got it in one i’m afraid aragorn son of arathorn you are the guy of all time

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lettus andf carrots

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little guys...

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I’m obsessed with the bit in the Hobbit films where Thranduil tells Legolas to go find Aragorn— because if you care enough to dive through the layers of obscure knowledge it takes to understand the timeline, then you’re also the exact kind of LOTR Film Nerd who knows why the moment actually doesn’t make sense.

Tiny brain: “oh cool Legolas will find Aragorn”

Small brain: “ummm actually in the first Hobbit film it says that The Hobbit take place 60 years before Bilbo’s 111th birthday in lord of the rings? So wouldn’t Aragorn be a baby?”

Medium brain: “ummm actually if you watched the extended cut of The Two Towers, it’s made clear that Aragorn is a descendant of Numenor who has an abnormally long lifespan. He is 87 at the time of Lord of the Rings; 60 years earlier, he was 27, a very reasonable age for him to have made a name for himself as a ranger.”

Large Brain: “Ummmm actually in the book it’s confirmed that there’s a twenty-year gap between Bilbo’s 111th birthday party disappearance to Frodo leaving the Shire with the Ring. The Hobbit quest happened 60 years before Bilbo’s famous birthday party. 87-60-20=7 years old. Aragorn would be a lil guy. He would not yet be Strider, the timeline makes no sense.”

Giant brain: “ummm actually the screenwriters have confirmed that the 20 year gap is not canon in the film’s universe. First, it’s really not portrayed as a 20-year-gap in the films— it’s written and shot as if it were a couple months. The screenwriters were also aware of the implications of removing it. For example, in a behind the scenes commentary they discussed how their portrayal of Frodo is much younger than the version in the book —because they removed the 20-year gap. Film!Frodo is an innocent youth going out on his own for the first time, in contrast to the book’s more mature adult— and that deeply affects his characterization throughout the trilogy.

We can consider Legolas’s journey to meet Strider an official canon confirmation that the 20-year gap did not happen in the film’s universe. So the timeline makes sense!”

Galaxy brain: “okay, but even if the timeline works with the LOTR films, this new backstory doesn’t work with the LOTR films’ portrayal of Legolas’s character.

In the Hobbit films, it’s retconned that Legolas went to find Aragorn because he was so overwhelmed by all the death he witnessed in the Battle of the Five Armies. It’s retconned that he has a mother who died when he was young, and a grief-stricken father, and that he’s constantly Angsting over both. it’s also retconned that Legolas was in unrequited love with a grieving woman who loved a dwarf tragically killed in battle. Legolas feels he can no longer stay in the Woodland Realm because of all this loss, which is why he decides to find a new purpose with Aragorn.

But in the Lord of the Rings films, part of Legolas’s character arc is that he’s witnessing death and mortality up close *for the first time in his immortal life.* He’s a fae magical immortal who’s not used to death affecting him personally. This character arc is unique to the films. (it is not reallllllly in the books, and doesn’t jive with the way Tolkien writes elves in general— but it is the way the films chose to rewrite Legolas’s storyline. )

film!Legolas reacts to Gandalf’s death with bewilderment, acting lost, as if he’s experiencing emotions that are entirely new to him. This acting decision is discussed explicitly in behind the scenes materials. Legolas has rarely encountered this kind of death, not in a way so close to him personally, so it’s hard for him to even comprehend. Legolas’s unfamiliarity with mortal death continues through Boromir’s death and into the Two Towers, where he gradually grows more worried over the lives of Aragorn/ the people of Rohan. He reacts with bewildered anger when told to leave Aragorn for dead, and then lashes out at Aragorn when he thinks that everyone at Helm’s deep will die (only to receive the response: “then I shall die as one of them.”)

This character arc ends in Return of the King, with a famous bit of dialogue that does not appear in the books. Gimli says he “never thought he’d die side by side with an elf,” and Legolas cheerfully responds “what about side by side with a friend?” Mortal death goes from something Legolas finds distant/unfamiliar, to something he accepts as a natural part of living among mortals.

This is similar to the changes the films make to Arwen’s character, vs the original book. In the films, both of the “young” elves have arcs about encountering death up close, and yet continuing to love the mortal world. The films contrast them with the “older” wearier elves like Elrond and Galadriel. Obviously this theme is more of a focal point in Arwen’s plotline, but it’s also relevant to Legolas. (And! In early drafts of the Two Towers, Arwen joined Aragorn at Helm’s Deep— I have a theory that the scenes where Legolas worries over Aragorn’s death were originally written for Arwen.)

So!

if you care enough about the Lord of the Rings films to understand that “there is no twenty year gap,” that Frodo is a young ingenue instead of middle-aged adult, that the films have their own storyline/characters/timeline separate from the books, and that therefore the timeline of Legolas meeting Strider can make sense …

….then you also probably care that Legolas had a specific character in the LoTR films, and this new backstory contradicts it.

Giving Legolas a new core motivation where “he’s overwhelmed by angst/grief from encountering too much death” undercuts his entire characterization in LOTR, which was meant to be about encountering mortal death up close for the first time. It also cheapens really impactful moments from LOTR— like Orlando Bloom’s performance after the death of Gandalf, where he really captures the idea that this fae immortal is struggling to comprehend the ordinary human emotion of grief.

And that’s why so many critics get that moment in The Hobbit wrong XD. People always try to critique it from a timeline/continuity perspective, when in reality, the timeline continuity makes perfect sense!!! The actual problem is the way it poorly attempts to retcon Legolas’s entire characterization. And IMHO that’s a much more serious flaw than a continuity error. It’s not “making a math mistake,” it’s undercutting the meaning of Legolas’s story in LOTR.

Super Mega Galaxy Brain: “nothing in the hobbit films is canon except the pieces I like”

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an underrecognised tragedy of AI slop isn't just that any piece of contemporary art could be AI, any news reel could be AI, it's that now just any video of something vaguely nice and whimsical happening in the world could be AI

this is about the trampoline bunnies

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“Boromir apologist” he doesn’t have anything to apologize for????? He fell victim to evil ringTM like once. and then immediately redeemed himself. Guys come on.

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Everyone seems to forget that Aragorn was living in Rivendell when Bilbo and the dwarves passed through and I think that’s a tragedy. Where are the ten year-old Aragorn and Bilbo shenanigans?

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Pippin and Pervinca shenanigans

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I think people really need to adopt some whimsy in their lives is all

My SO is having me watch Rings of Power since I'm a Tolkien nerd and also it's a reputedly bad show.

It's quite frankly amazing how bad this show is. It goes beyond "not following the plot of the Silmarillion". I couldn't give two shits how closely any given Tolkien adaptation follows the lore, I'll be honest, if the end result is something entertaining and still artistically resonant with the source material.

Every single thing in this show is wrong. It's honestly incredible. Every single aesthetic choice. For every one potentially good idea, however iconoclastic to "the lore", there are mountains of just the most hackneyed, tropey, just plain baffling artistic decisions I've ever seen. It's like every single person who was involved in the production of this show was still in their first year of art school. Everything lacks any semblance of depth, from the acting to the writing.

But worst of everything in this show lacking depth is the LIGHTING. Holy crap, if I was working in the costume or props departments I'd have beat up whatever morons were actually composing the scenes. Half the time, the only reason I'm even noticing all the shitty little flukes in the various designs is because every shot is blown-out with lighting and barely any focus range. It looks like a fucking car commercial.

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Okay well. I'm at the lake and there are some kittens here who were very very clearly dumped!!

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Mulan AU where she does get caught by the other fresh recruits while she's bathing but Mushu helps her spin it like the lake is cursed by an evil lizard demon and will turn men into women if they stay in it for too long.

From there it's not actually difficult to get the other soldiers onboard with covering up the fact that poor Ping took one for the team and got afflicted by the vagina curse, especially since it would have been all of them if they hadn't gotten the warning ahead of time. So they agree to help him cover it up, because obviously the army's not going to understand.

Shang is... tentatively glad that the men are bonding and getting along, even if they continue to be deeply weird about it.