#(they really had no idea what they were getting into with the whole Sauron and Galadriel thing)

[gi-nathlam-hi]

Words cannot express how much I want someone to sit the cast/production of RoP down and give them five good guesses as to the top ships in the fandom because I know in my soul that aside from Haladriel and Aronwyn they would have no fucking clue and I just want to witness their faces when they find out what they are.

[thescrapwitch]

Give me backstory on your longest currently in progress (meaning you have actively worked on it in, say, the last two weeks) fic!

Thank you for the ask!

For this, I'm going to talk about Reforged, since its the one I literally just posted a new chapter for. Be warned, this is gonna be long:

I had no strong feelings towards Maeglin at the beginning of this fic. But Celebrimbor is one of my favorite Silmarillion characters, and there are so many interesting parallels between the two. Father issues, smiths, a connection with Sauron/Morgoth, the downfall of a shining kingdom (Gondolin for Maeglin, Eregion for Celebrimbor). I started to wonder what it would look like if Maeglin had lived and they had met. At the time when I started writing, there were a few fics that explored the idea (shout out to Don’t Carry It All by @aipilosse which I really love; it's a great fic everyone go read it) but I wanted more.

My goal, then, was to write the sort of Maeglin Lives-Redemption AU that I wanted to read. One that focused on him making amends for what he'd done, the impact of Celebrimbor's friendship in remaking his life, and what to do when the pieces of that newfound happiness shattered again. So I scribbled down an outline for a one-shot. I know, I say it every time I talk about a longfic, but that’s because I like writing one-shots. You get the story done and posted and then you don’t need to worry about it anymore. I thought this would just be the greatest hits of Maeglin and Celebrimbor’s friendship from the end of the First Age to the end of the Third. I knew the beginning (being taken in by Celebrimbor), how things would get worse (ie: a certain banner), the climax (a scene that I cannot talk about yet but am EXTREMELY eager to write), and the ending (which will be happy, I promise). Quick, easy, no longer than 5,000 words.

(Reforged is now over 73,000 words and still going.)

At the time when I started it, I had also recently finished After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz, which is now in my top five favorite books of all time (READ IT, ITS SO GOOD!). I adore it, and part of the reason I love it so much is its structure. The book is made up of fragments, small moments of the characters' lives that span through years and years of history. So much is said and explored through those small scenes, and I wanted to try and do something similar.

(I am obsessed with story structure. Absolutely obsessed. One of my favorite things about books and writing is taking apart the bones of how a story is laid out. Its fascinating to me and I’m constantly looking for books that try something different with it)

The title “reforged” refers both to Maeglin remaking his life from the pieces it's been left in, as well as his craft as a smith. This structure, therefore, fit the theme of the story, its fragmented scenes coming together to create a whole tale. It also took a lot of pressure off of me for writing! I gave myself permission not to stress over transitions, or to show events in different ways: letters, one-sided conversations with statues, etc. It helps so much when I am stuck that I can use one of those ways to approach the scene from a different angle (especially since it covers SO. MUCH. HISTORY).

I also need to shout-out The Harrowing by @chthonion (again, very good fic go read!) which I had also been reading at the time I started and which has altered how I view conflict within stories. It inspired me to really look at how I was presenting the different people in Maeglin's life, to let them be very complicated and tangled as they all tried to make their way through history (such as Eöl or Gil-Galad's anger with the Fëanorians or Maeglin and the surviving Gondolindrim).

And that's how Reforged came to be! Currently, it is the longest fic on my AO3, though there's now only three (!) chapters left. I am very grateful for all the kudos and comments I've gotten on it (especially for Chapter 10 - those screams made my MONTH).

And thank you again for the ask and letting me ramble about my fic! ❤️❤️❤️

[emarasmoak]

The Rings of Power showrunners discuss, at length, that huge Sauron reveal

JD Payne: [Vickers] did eventually know. We kept it very close to the vest for a while. He read a monologue from Richard the Third. At certain points he suspected [Halbrand was Sauron], he was putting it all together like, ‘Okay, they're having me read deep English canon villains.’ We didn't tell him from moment one that this was what was happening. We let him discover it.

Patrick McKay: Charlie's amazing and enormously talented. And we were thrilled to get him. He actually read originally for Elrond. But this character was always Sauron. One of the initial sparks and ideas and, in our opinion, right or wrong, a reason to do the entire show, is that Galadriel talks about Sauron in the books in a way that indicates that she knew him really well.

JD Payne: [Quoting Galadriel in Fellowship of the Ring] ‘I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all of his mind that concerns the Elves, and he gropes ever to see me and my thoughts. But still, the door is shut.’ The idea of ‘still the door is shut’, that he's been reaching after her for a long time, and there's this sense of back and forth between them – we found that endlessly fascinating. And we said, ‘There's an entire history between them. He's not just some eye in the sky, who's looking at it from afar, there's a relationship. And so, how could you have a relationship between the Dark Lord and Galadriel, in a way that lets them get to an interesting place? If she knew it was him from the beginning, obviously she would reject him out of hand, because we know from the legendarium that he was responsible for her brother's death. We know that he has this desire to heal the world, and she has this heroic desire to fix the world. So if we could put them in parallel to each other without exactly knowing who he was, there was an opportunity there.

Patrick McKay: Two other things to add. There’s this whole idea from Tolkien's letters and other writings where he talks about how Sauron wasn't evil in the beginning. Elrond says in the book: ‘Nothing is evil the beginning, even Sauron was not so.’ Immediately, we're thinking about [the TV series] Breaking Bad. We're thinking about Tony Soprano [from The Sopranos], these characters who are these enormous, larger-than-life modern villains, but have this other side. You go back and forth: do I hate them? Do I love them? Are they seducing me? We thought that was really rich terrain. And then, Tolkien had this idea of chance meetings throughout his books – that chance meetings are preordained in Middle Earth. So, what if Sauron is in a place where he's repentant and lost? And Galadriel’s in a place where she's desperate and obsessed. What might happen if they meet? Maybe they'd be friends? Maybe they’d get along? The idea of a non-romantic, cosmic connection seemed so pregnant with possibilities. That was by far the hardest thing that we worked on. We have this idea that, if you watch it again, every single thing he says is not a lie. This isn't like a rug poll. We're not trying to shock people. We want to hopefully reward close viewing if you’re suspicious of him early. That's a whole valid version of the show, we felt.

JD Payne: There’s something in him that is sort of vaguely reminiscent of Gollum, when you watch it again, where you see these two forces driving within him. In some ways, Gollum is to Sauron as Sauron is to Morgoth, a little bit. The One Ring is operative on his consciousness at all times. And even maybe if he tried to turn away from it and be Mairon, the Maiar, who, in the beginning, was good, there's this shadow that has operated upon his soul that he is enslaved to, that you always see, every decision he makes, takes him, in one way, towards the good, but it also takes him towards power. And power is his addiction. Watching back, with that in mind, it's fun to pick apart everything he says, or if he does retreat from the decision he makes.

Source: https://www.gamesradar.com/rings-of-power-sauron-halbrand-episode-8-showrunners

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Boromir for the character ask?

Yessssss my man! Boromir my love!

First impression

First, first impression when I was like 11 and in theatres seeing LOTR for the first time? I couldn't tell him apart from Aragorn lol - it was two white dudes with the same hair cut and facial hair!

More serious note, like most, when I was young, I found him a bit unnerving and even frightening. Then it shifted to no strong opinion either way and now, obviously, that's vastly different.

Impression now

Love him so much. The older I get the more I sympathise with him and what he was going through. All he had on his shoulders and the stresses of his position and the expectations his people had of him to be their stalwart defender against Sauron. Let alone the whole Family Dynamic.

He is a complex, wholly imperfect person and I really appreciate that about him.

Favorite moment

In the movies I'm torn between the bit where he's teaching Merry and Pippin how to sword fight and every Fraught Conversation He Ever Had With Aragorn (there were so many).

In the books I love his response to the Balrog being: I'm Gonna Fight it.

Gandalf: We're not fighting it.

Aragorn: No, he's right, we should fight it.

Boromir: drawing my sword! it's gonna happen!

Idea for a story

Not sure I have one off hand - obviously every iteration of Boromir Lives is a godsend to us poor mortals.

ahufflepuffhobbit will know where this came from lol - but I am enamoured with a story idea of Boromir and Aragorn and Eowyn being a power couple.

Boromir lives, somehow. Schematics aren't important. Comes to Rohan, so Eowyn is like: Oh Wow Yes. Both of these men are A+

And obviously Boromir would be like "yeah girl you kill that orc. I'll hold your mead." Aragorn would be like, "the two people I love are MANIACS who enable each other."

Anyway, let Eowyn be queen of Gondor!! She deserves it and two hot husbands!!

Unpopular opinion

Not an evil or bad man? He has nothing to atone for?

idk - I'm not sure I have one when it comes to Boromir. There are people who don't like him, but my general opinions and read of the man aren't super out of the ballpark.

Is my opinion that Tolkien undermined his own narrative purpose about love etc. by killing Boromir unpopular?

(My one like, "yeah I get it and think it's important to the story," is that Boromir's death shows the reality of the great danger they are all in and that no one is coming out of this unscathed and he represents those who went to war and didn't come home. All those sons and brothers for whom people buried empty coffins. It's an important role that is needed in the story. But Tolkien, stop killing off only people who have "done wrong".)

Favorite relationship

Merry and Pippin, obviously. The three of them have a fantastic dynamic and clearly they need to hang out together more often.

I also love the complexity and manifold layers of his relationship with Aragorn and we were robbed by Tolkien in not having a chance to see how that would have unfolded over the course of the books.

Because there is Boromir before some of the dire, insane shit the Fellowship went through together and Boromir after - and I wish we got to see that and how it impacted/informed/changed his relationships with people.

Favorite headcanon

He and Gimli are Bros! The only reason I didn't have this as "favourite relationship" (because it is), is because it's not strictly speaking canon.

But yeah, I headcanon that they bonded super quickly during the Fellowship and are just absolute besties. Boromir is best man at Gimli's wedding to Legolas. It's all great for everyone

[dukeofriven]

Y’All Should Actually Read Barthes (Or: Why Your ‘Rings Of Power’ Critique Is Bad)

I think what really gets under my skin about the many, many lousy critiques about Rings of Power[1] on Tumblr dot Com and Reddit[2] that I see out there is that, firstly, they frequently seem to come from people who don’t seem to realize that their understanding and memories about Tolkien are shaped far, far, far more by the Peter Jackson movies (which were hardly ‘canon-compliant’) than they are by the original text. Second and more crucially, I think, is that everyone really wants to get pissed about canon that Tolkien never actually codified. Here’s what I mean: Tolkien didn’t ‘write’ the Silmarillion. He wrote a whole bunch of essays, letters, notes, scraps of ideas, poems, plot outlines, and ramblings, some of which he earmarked for a project he one day planned to compile as something called The Silmarillion. Then he made a slight error in his scheme by dropping dead. So his son Christopher Tolkien and his pal Guy Gavriel Kay stared at this enormous pile of stuff that went back decades, pulled out some of the bits they thought were most polished, did their best to link them into some kind of narrative, edited the crap out of it, added punctuation, and published a book they called The Silmarillion after JRR’s planned, but never completed idea. And was what was in The Silmarillion everything JRR planned to be in the final volume? Not necessarily. In many cases, not remotely, but Christopher Tolkien and Kay tried to take the stuff that was most polished, even if it was thirty year old material that Tolkien had changed his mind fifteen more times on, because the old stuff often had a clarity of completion that the later revisions did not. They usually took the stuff that complete sentences over the stuff with sentence fragments, even if the latter was more ‘fresh.’ Because they realized that The Silmarillion was more a simulacrum of Tolkien’s ideas than anything definitive, Christopher then put out The Unfinished Tales, which contained some more of Tolkien’s ideas: spme that had made it in other versions into The Silmarillion, some that had not. And since the very large pile of notes and scribblings and essays and letters and old recipes didn’t seem any noticeably smaller, he then spent thirteen years publishing The History of Middle Earth, comedically large tomes stuffed to the brim with Tolkien ideas, variations, variants, and late night side-table Kleenex notes. And then they kept putting out more books. And more. And then Christopher made the same silly mistake of dropping dead too! But other people put out even more books, with even more untouched material. There’s a new book coming out in November and JRR Tolkien’s been dead for fifty years! None of this was published under JRR’s aegis. And let me tell you, JRR Tolkien had a pretty weighty aegis: the man was famous for berating his publishers for edits and corrections. Part of the reason he never got around to completing a definitive Silmarillion was the fact that the man never wanted to publish something with which was not completely satisfied. Everything that has come out after his death, compiled with all the love and care in the world, is nevertheless pretty damning evidence that Tolkien was rarely satisfied. What we know about old JRR is that he changed his mind again and again, and we can’t know that on his death bed, his last thought wasn’t some brilliant revelation that finally made the One Ring work in the context of Sauron’s timeline in the Second Age. If he did, he didn’t get a chance scribble it on a napkin for his son to later try and make sense of. And so we will never really know what his true canon decision on, say, elven pregnancy was: sometimes he thought it should take about 108 years. Sometimes only 9 years. He would change his mind, or change his math, again and again.. So when you talk about the ‘canon’ of Tolkien, it’s important to remember that even if you’re just speaking about ‘definitive’ works, you’re left with those published with his approval in his lifetime. namely The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and The Road Goes Ever On songbook with Donald Swann. Even with those four books there’s complexity: what version of The Hobbit are you talking about? The original? Or the one he rewrote after he changed his mind about the entire nature of the ring Bilbo found in a cave and decided that actually it was the most important piece of jewelry in existence. Honestly, given world enough and time Tolkien probably would have made a third edition of The Hobbit because those two ‘canonical’ books, The Hobbit and it’s ‘sequel’ Lord of the Rings, don’t even fit together very well, as poor Peter Jackson learned to his sorrow and our pain with his wretched, tonally disjunct Hobbit films. It’s funny, because everyone on here loves talking about Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author. Almost none of you have ever read it, but it sure is a thing that’s a super important, inviolable concept... until we talk about an author the internet isn’t mad at, and suddenly the author’s word is inviolable and all adaptation choices are wrong. I don’t know how to get this across any clearer: anyone who has ever dug deep into Tolkien’s lore knows that speaking of things like ‘canon,’ ‘definitive,’ ‘authoritative,’ and all similar adjectives is often a fool’s errand. Tolkien left us with a lot of ideas about the second age, but very little in the way of clarity, much less ‘this is the true thing unchanging.’ Even the ‘authoritative’ timeline of the Appendices in LOTR is stuff he was changed in the writings he did in the years after. So I am begging you. Please. Please stop giving the Akallabêth a level of authoritative definition that even its compiler admitted it did not possess. Until you can prove to me you brought the shade of JRR Tolkien back from beyond the Veil to speak True Authorial Intent,[3] I am going to treat your recourse to ‘but the canon’ with the level of exasperation it deserves. --------------------------

[1] Besides the general problem on this website that everyone’s heard of critical theory and almost nobody’s ever read any. [2] There are plenty of valid critiques to be made, especially about pacing and awkward racial optics, but it’s really not the unhinged shit I’m seeing, as usual. [3] Let’s be honest: in the fifty years since he shuffled off his mortal coil, the shade of Tolkien will unquestionably return with a ghostly second pile of essays, letters, notes, scraps of ideas, poems, plot outlines, and ramblings, and they won’t be remotely definitive either. And we’re all going to be super disgruntled when the ghost insists that the only good adaptation is his work is Khraniteli.

[frodo-with-glasses]

Been thinking about a particular LOTR what-if scenario (because my D&D campaign took a turn into collaborative LOTR fanfiction), and I'm interested in your perspective on it if you have time . . .

Supposing Boromir somehow survived protecting Merry and Pippin, what effect would that have on Denethor?

Denethor's being fed despair by Sauron either way. But I have always read him as the news of Boromir's death being the thing that breaks him and makes him start to believe it. His grief is certainly a large part of what's informing his treatment of Faramir (though certainly not the only thing, as I think there's textual evidence that Denethor favored Boromir all along).

If Boromir didn't die . . . would Denethor still give into despair? Would he still send Faramir on a suicide mission — and if he did, and Faramir still suffered the same wounds, would Denethor still end up in his whole "all is lost; better to die on our own terms" spiral? Or would he have the presence of mind to see to the defense of the city?

How would he react to Aragorn, a man who has all the qualities Denethor disdains in Faramir but even more so, and who people are now saying is the rightful king (who even his own sons, even favored Boromir, are saying is Gondor's king returned)?

(He almost certainly wouldn't be a fan of Aragorn's plan to draw Sauron's eye away from Frodo. He probably would be greatly displeased that the Ring had been allowed to go across the River to Mordor at all, and even Boromir would have trouble convincing him otherwise.)

Thank you for letting me ramble in your askbox, haha. Don't feel pressured to answer if you don't want to or don't find the question as much as I do. (But if you do answer, I will be delighted.)

As much as the Gondor Dudes aren’t my personal hyperfixation in LotR, I am nonetheless a big fan of overthinking hypothetical situations, so this is right up my alley. :-D (Also, it’s really cool that you’re running an LotR-themed D&D campaign!! Sounds like a blast.)

To be honest, you hit pretty much every point I was going to touch on; Denethor’s despair and consequent insanity were certainly motivated, at least in part, by grief, so if you take the grief out of the equation then naturally the results are going to be at least slightly different. But we still have lots of other factors at play here: fighting a hopeless war, the looming specter of deposition, knowing that your allies just sent a nuke into the territory of the Enemy in the hands of a garden gnome so small you could punt him, and Prolonged Exposure to Cursed Artifact are still going to take their toll on Denethor’s mind. He will doubtless be more motivated to hold on to life while his favorite son is still alive, but even if he doesn't turn paranoid and filicidal, he’s still going to be Deeply Messed Up regardless.

So since I'm not getting any new ideas by looking at things from a Watsonian (in-universe) perspective, I'm gonna steer this in a Doylist (meta) direction and talk about implementation instead. The question I always ask myself with these sorts of "canon but a bit to the left" fanfictions is this:

What do you want out of the story? Do you want to:

A) Return to canon as quickly as possible? B) Change just one thing and see how far it butterfly-effects out? C) Find something somewhere in the middle?

Because the thing with "canon but a bit to the left" AUs that you can make pretty much anything work. It's a hypothetical situation. The question is how far away from canon you're willing to deviate. If I'm writing a "Boromir Lives" AU, I might go a couple of different directions, and the one I ultimately choose depends on personal preference and what I want out of the story.

Putting this under a read-more 'cause it's about to get long.

Option A: Canon, but like .5 degrees to the left

Ever since the battle at the Falls, Boromir has been following Aragorn and doing everything the Three Hunters (well, Four Hunters) do. When Pippin looks into the Palantir, Gandalf decides to take him to Minas Tirith right away, and Boromir, who's eager to get home and feels some responsibility for Pippin, volunteers to go with them.

(Yes I know that Shadowfax travels at ungodly fast speeds to get from Rohan to Gondor, but it's implied that lesser horses can keep up with their lord when they need to, so even if Boromir took a different horse they might still have been able to make it to Minas Tirith in a similar time.)

Denethor gives an enthusiastic welcome to Boromir and a far less enthusiastic welcome to Gandalf and Pippin. That welcome becomes less enthusiastic still in the ensuing conversation/interrogation, when he learns that they totally had the Ring but they sent it into Mordor instead of bringing it here. Boromir tries to reason with his father. Denethor is very disappointed with him. He blames Gandalf for corrupting his other son with all this foolishness, and treats Pippin with suspicion because of the whole prophecy with the Halfling, and the convo ends with hurt feelings all around.

I might need the War Nerds on this blog to correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the attempt to take back Osgiliath wasn't a completely useless suicide mission, at least in concept. It is a major river crossing, and controlling transportation routes is like War 101. If you make it hard for your enemy to cross the River, you make it hard for your enemy to get to your stronghold, and that's good. Not a bad idea on paper. The only problem was that Minas Tirith didn't have the manpower to pull it off.

(And also there were Nazgul.)

Anyway, the point is, it's almost logical enough that you might be able to get away with Denethor ordering the Osgiliath offensive even without the grief-induced paranoia. Besides, there's still other paranoia in play: so far as Denethor is concerned, the Ring is walking into enemy hands, his son and most trusted captain has turned against him, and Gandalf is already planning a coup.

So here's what I'm thinking. Keep the Osgiliath battle, but send Boromir out there as well. Boromir and brother bravely bear the baleful battle, before their butts are badly beat and they get bit by the Black Breath. Dad feels bad, his boasts bashed as his boys' bodies burn with fever. Battle bears down on the beleaguered bourgeoisie, but their bereaved bigwig is barely bothered, too busy building bier bonfires.

…Sorry, I don't know where that came from.

Anyway, the point is, this puts us squarely back where we'd be at this point in canon: Denethor thinks he’s about to lose his family, his city, and his kingdom, and consumed by despair he decides that it's better to die on his own terms than in the hands of the Enemy. You can pretty much just follow canon from here and copy-paste Boromir with whatever is happening to Faramir.

(Except, of course, for the whole "falling in love with Eowyn" thing. But hey! Boromir was in Rohan! He and Eowyn probably know each other already! So they might have some fun conversations in the Houses of Healing.)

This is the route I would take if you want to stick as close to canon as possible and still keep Boromir alive. If adherence to the narrative is not your biggest concern, however:

Option B: Go stupid, go crazy

Boromir doesn't die. What does that change?

Well, everything, if you let it.

Let's say Boromir does return to Minas Tirith with Gandalf and Pippin like I suggested above. Let's say he's able to talk his father into begrudgingly going along with their unorthodox plan to save the world. Let's say Denethor doesn't call for the almost-but-not-quite-entirely-completely-a-suicide-mission to Osgiliath and instead puts Boromir and Faramir to work strengthening the defenses of the Minas Tirith. By time the Battle of Pelennor Fields rolls around, Denethor—now no longer occupied by the family barbecue—is available to direct defense of the city, with both sons acting as his captains.

Awesome! All this is great stuff, right?

Well, yes. So far.

The problem is that we lose so many great moments with other characters in the process. Pippin's pell mell run to find Gandalf. Beregond abandoning his post to protect Faramir. Eowyn and Merry, who slayed the Witch King together because Gandalf was too busy putting out fires (literally!) to get down there and do it himself. Aragorn, proving that "the hands of a king are the hands of a healer"! And if Faramir and Eowyn hadn't both suffered the Black Breath, they wouldn't both have been forced to stay behind as everyone else went to fight at the Black Gate, and they wouldn't have fallen in love in the same way.

This is not a statement meant to push your decision one way or another, but it's just a fact of the decision: If you dispense with Denethor's paranoia, and the insanity, and the murder arson, then you dispense with a lot of the other cool moments in this book. The question you've got to ask yourself is if that's a price you're willing to pay, and if not, how you can work around it.

Anyway, back to Pelennor Fields. I want you to imagine that Denethor is standing at the wall, watching the battle raging below him. It's not going well. The reinforcements from Rohan arrived, but they're barely hanging on. And to his dismay, he sees a fleet of black dots which could only be Corsair ships sailing up the river.

The foremost ship unfurls a banner, with the Tree of Gondor glittering on it.

And the army that pours out of them absolutely wrecks shop with Sauron's forces.

Is Denethor feeling relief? Yes. But is he feeling dread and apprehension and anger too? Also yes. He knows what this is. It's a challenge to his power waiting to happen. All his suspicions about Gandalf's ulterior motives are coming true: he has found someone to supplant him, and whether or not this kid is the true Heir of Isildur, the darn upstart's already gone all dramatic and made a war hero out of himself. Whoop-de-frickin'-do.

And then, he sees Aragorn's face.

And he's livid.

Fun fact: Appendix A tells us that Aragorn actually worked for Denethor’s dad, Ecthelion, for a long time. Aragorn went by a different name, of course, but he was so competent and so well-liked that he became Ecthelion's most trusted and honored captain, to the point that the Steward liked Aragorn more than he liked Denethor. We don't just have history here. We have beef. It's a little bit of a Tony Stark, Howard Stark, Steve Rogers situation where it’s like “Dad liked you more than he liked me and I’m his own son”.

You’d better bet your bottom dollar that when Denethor’s childhood rival rocks up to Minas Tirith, flying a banner made by an elven princess and carrying the Sword that Was Broken on his belt like he's somebody important, it doesn’t matter if Boromir and Faramir and Imrahil and everybody else in Minas Tirith likes him and happily falls in line behind him; Denethor is still gonna take one look at his face and go, “oh. it’s YOU. I freakin' HATE you.”

Whether this colors their ongoing relationship "coolly polite" or "passive-aggressive" or "outright hostile" depends on how vindictive you want to write Denethor. Because let's be honest, bro could totally order Aragorn to leave Minas Tirith and he would; Aragorn knows he's not the king yet, and he's humble enough to accept orders while the Steward is still in charge (as bass-ackwards as that is). But the thing is that Aragorn has the support of the people, and banishing him isn't gonna change that; if anything, it will probably garner sympathy for him, cause the people of Minas Tirith to distrust their leader, and maybe result in fracturing the loyalties of the populous.

So here's what you've got, okay.

You now have a David and Saul situation.

Think about it. Charismatic, upright war hero, beloved by everyone he meets, serving under the suspicious and deeply disturbed incumbent ruler who knows the newcomer is gonna boot him off the throne. You can't live with him: 'cause he's gonna boot you off the throne. But you can't live without him: 'cause you're in desperate need of his particular set of skills, and you'd be incredibly unwise to do away with him and earn the ire of the public. So you put up with him. And put on a show of liking him. And maybe chuck a spear at his head while he's playing the harp to calm down your possibly demonic fits.

But that's just Saul, so let's get back to Denethor.

The next step, in the book, is obviously the Battle of the Black Gate. And, obviously, Denethor is gonna think this military equivalent of knocking on the door of an axe murderer and threatening him with a pea shooter is a terrible idea, because it is. But the whole point—Aragorn and Gandalf and Boromir and Faramir and Imrahil and everyone else insists—is to distract Sauron long enough that the Ring-bearer can succeed in his mission. The plan isn't to win, it's to be bait.

Now you have a few options.

Denethor can, once again, begrudgingly go along with it, showing that he's slowly changing in heart. Perhaps Aragorn's humility is winning him over. Perhaps Boromir's impassioned pleas are getting through. In any case, you have a pretty good set-up for a redemption arc here, which could be interesting if you want to go down that road.

Alternatively, this could be the moment that Denethor entirely gives in to despair and basically says "fine, if you guys wanna go kill yourselves, I'll just be over here doing the exact same thing", and he tries to make Steward a la flambé. (Whether or not he succeeds is up to you, but I will say that this would be a pretty easy way to settle the succession crisis.)

Alternatively still, Denethor could publicly denounce the whole idea as stupid and order the people of Minas Tirith to stay put and defend the city, at the same time that Aragorn and the rest are urging those same people to come with them for one last stand. Now every eligible fighter in the city has to make a choice. Who will they follow? Lord Denethor, or Lord Elfstone? The people are divided. Factions are made. (This might be the moment that a certain member of the Guard sees Faramir standing with Lord Elfstone and decides, for the first time in his life, to break the rules.) In any case, the force that travels to the Black Gate is far smaller than it would have been if not for Denethor's interference.

If you go with the first option, it's a quicker road to a happy ending. Aragorn returns victorious, he and Denethor reconcile, and Aragorn honors the Steward and puts him in a place of high esteem. Everyone in Minas Tirith likes this, including Boromir and Faramir, and everyone lives happily ever after.

If you go with the second option, Denethor has either successfully or unsuccessfully attempted sudoku, which should probably disqualify him from public leadership either way. If he succeeded in barbecuing himself, it's the tragedy of a man who never got to see the upcoming victory; if he failed, it's the tragedy of a man whose mind was so utterly broken by the Enemy that he couldn't enjoy it.

If you go with the third option, congratulations; after Aragorn gets back, you still have to deal with the succession crisis. But I've waffled on for long enough and have basically no ideas how you'd handle this post-story, so I'm not gonna go down that road any further.

Option C: Pitch straight down the middle

Now what I've just presented are the two most extreme possibilities of a "Boromir Lives" AU that exist in my brain, but they're far from the only options. This thing is a spectrum. There are a potentially infinite number of possible storylines, some closer to canon, some further away.

If you like parts of one but not the other, you can mix and match. Take an exit ramp from the AU and get back on canon wherever you want, or just don't and see where it takes you. All I've done is present the furthest extremes I could think of to help shake up the ol' creative juices.

(I would have explored the possibility of Boromir arriving on the corsair ships with Aragorn instead of a few days earlier with Gandalf and Pippin, but that didn't change much except for Boromir having less opportunities to talk his dad down from bad decisions. So do with that what you will.)

Conclusion

I have no idea if this was the kind of answer you were looking for, but I guess I'm just returning rambling for rambling, LOL! In any case, I hope this helped, and if not, I hope it was a fun read.

But there is one more thing I can do for you, before I wish you good luck in your D&D endeavors, and that's turn it over to everyone else who reads this blog and see what they think!

HEY YOU GUYS! If Boromir lived, how would that effect Denethor's psyche?? Reblog with your thoughts!

[transsexualhamlet]

4 and 8 for the character section of the fandom ask game for Mairon :)

hiiiii!

fandom ask game

4- NOTP for character

I am pretty open to anything when it comes to people's ideas about who's fucking Mairon because let's be honest, he really and truly does get around. However those bonkers Amazon Rings of Power watchers who think Sauron and Galadriel are getting jiggy with it are where I draw the goddamn line. It's blatantly out of character, our lord and saviour has never been able to maintain eye contact with a woman (but in all seriousness i dont care do what you want)

8- A headcanon I have about this character

I'm not going to lie I've gotten so in my head about this man that some things I had fully convinced myself were canon I realized I had just utterly made up in my head. I must admit I was so obsessed with the image of Mairon bestowing the crown that would lead the both of them eventually into ruin to his master I had utterly forgotten Mairon did not forge the Iron Crown and that in the Silm it is credited to Melkor himself. My solution to this was that Mairon did forge the crown itself, but credits it to Melkor because Melkor insisted on setting the gems (both because they would have burned Mairon and because he was very weird about them). I just think that after 3000 years of holding down the fort waiting for Melkor to come back Mairon had a lot of time to get Neurotic and very obsessed with Doing This Thing For Melkor, especially with the added stress of Ungoliant's wounds on him.

Another thing I think about is that, although there is something very satisfying about walking around seductively covered in jewelry and showing the whole world that you have those in power in your pockets, Mairon sort of grows to hate it. Like, really, really bad. He reinvents himself completely in the second age, and that pretty twink anglerfish lure he makes himself is fun, because at the beginning of the second age everything is still fun- even though he lost Melkor, in some ways he still thinks he can get him back, and that this is just playing the long game, which he is proven well in (see first paragraph). But as time goes on it starts to grate. He enjoys looking pretty and talking pretty. But he misses running around naked in the woods with the wolves and ripping people's throats out, which the further he gets into this con he realizes he's never going to get back (single tear rolls down face, I know, so sad) This is something sort of under the surface with Celebrimbor because in some ways he is actually being genuine in his desire with the elves to put things back the way they used to be. But when he has to stick on that face again in Numenor, he is already tired. He doesn't like Pharazon, he doesn't like Numenor, he doesn't like anything about the world anymore, really, and he's very sick of pretending otherwise. I believe this must eventually have been quite evident to those who witnessed his whole Death Cult Phase.

I think this is why he utterly gave that up in the third age, it is not that he physically lost the ability to 'appear fair' as if it was some injury or accidental loss of power, it is moreso a metaphor- that he actively could not bring himself to drag himself together ever again. It was moreso damage that Eru's action did to his spiritual state of being, and I think unintentionally on Eru's part (I think Eru is always more confused with Mairon than anything else). He simply did not wish to desire love anymore, only fear. The desire to be loved was removed into the Ring.

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

1, 3, 6, 10, 13, 16

Thanks for the ask! I’m not sure whether to answer for the Silmarillion or LOTR, so maybe I’ll do both?

The character everyone gets wrong:

For LOTR, I answered this one way here, but there are a lot of other ways to answer it! I also think people get Elladan and Elrohir wrong. This may be a weird hill to die on because they’re small characters in the book, but I HATE how they’re represented in fanon. They’re made into carbon copies of the Harry Potter twins, who I already don’t like (ugh, I hate even mentioning Harry Potter here). I’m a twin myself, and I’m sick of twin characters being shoehorned into the goofy prankster role. It feels like a cheap attempt at comic relief because people don’t know how to write anything else. Especially when it’s just not how Elladan and Elrohir are represented in the book.

For the Silmarillion, I answered this one way here. I think the Weasley twin treatment also gets applied to Amrod and Amras, which is particularly nonsensical because the lives of all the Fëanorians are all extremely dark and tragic (the whole Silmarillion is tragic!). I get that sometimes people want to write happy, funny fanfiction, but can we please let go of the twins-as-wacky-pranksters trope?

Description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr:

For LOTR, I answered this another way here. But I wasn’t even thinking of another worst take, which is so bad that I’d erased it from my mind… the idea that the LOTR movies were an improvement on the books. "But nobody thinks this!" you will say. They do, and I’ve seen this take here on tumblr. WE HATES IT! There are good things about the movies (music, sets, acting, costumes, etc.) but literally nothing can come close to the beauty of the books. And besides, the movies deviated from them in many inexcusable ways—it would take to long to even list them all.

For the Silmarillion, one of the worst takes I’ve seen is the idea that Maeglin was really an innocent victim all along who was unfairly slandered by a supposedly biased history. I understand that sometimes it’s interesting to deconstruct the story, but at a certain point you’re just throwing it out the window. I’m not saying you can’t sympathize with him to a degree—he was clearly abused by his father as a child. But then he internalized those lessons—of his father’s possessiveness and violence towards women—and that was how he treated Idril.

I also know there’s a discussion among fans about Maeglin’s race, because earlier drafts described him as swarthy—and it’s certainly problematic for the dark-skinned male character to be the creepy one—but Tolkien’s later drafts described him as pale. So do with that what you will.

Which ships are the most annoying?

I don’t like the prevalence of Thorin/Bilbo. That’s partly because I hate the Hobbit movies, where the pairing mostly comes from, and it’s just not my cup of tea. People should write what they want, of course. I just don’t see the appeal.

For the Silmarillion, Sauron/Celebrimbor. It’s just everywhere, and I’m tired of it. Also, I get that some people are into darker relationships, but a lot of what I’ve seen of the pairing (even though I actively avoid it) is bizarrely romanticized. Like you guys do realize Sauron is evil, right? Even if he literally seduced Celebrimbor, I don’t think he’d be wracked with guilt about anything. People say they like this pairing because it’s dark, but then they turn Sauron into a poor little meow meow full of romantic longing and riddled with guilt because he tortures and kills his lover, and it’s just weird. I don’t think Sauron had romantic feelings for anyone, and I really don’t think he felt bad about torture and murder.

Worst part of fanon:

LOTR: I’m not even sure what LOTR fanon is anymore, probably because I try to ignore it. I guess I don’t like how the movie versions of characters and events have taken over. You know who also gets Weasleyified? Merry and Pippin, and it’s the movies’ fault. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them in the movies to a degree—but some of their best moments in the books were cut out.

The Silmarillion: I don’t even know if I could choose the worst part of fanon. I find Silmarillion fanon particularly frustrating, because in a fanbase where a lot of people don’t know the Silmarillion well, fan interpretations often get passed off as canon. People absorb fanon thinking that it’s canon, and that’s why you get so many posts that say things like, “Wait, I just realized Maglor ISN’T the nice Fëanorian.” (To be clear, I’m not judging people who say this. They’re unlearning fanon, which is good. It’s just a sign that fanon interpretations are taking over too much when you end up with a lot of people having to revise these big misconceptions.)

Ultimately, it’s just frustrating to me that fanon is so prevalent in either the LOTR or the Silmarillion fandom, because the source material is WAY more interesting. I might be swinging a bat at a hornet’s nest by saying all of this—but the asks were meant to be controversial!

You can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc):

For both LOTR and the Silmarillion, I don’t understand why people think Sauron can mind-read. That’s not a thing, but it’s astonishingly prevalent in fan interpretations. The worst part is, I don’t think people realize that mind-reading Sauron is a fan-invented concept.

[imakemywings]

Elrond and Turgon for the tolkien bingo thing?

Elrond and his great-grandpa 🥺

Turgon:

I feel like I'm stepping into my defense attorney shoes again. Turgon is a great character and I'm really flummoxed by how much he's hated by the fandom. Yes he--as with basically ALL characters in Silm--made mistakes (ignoring Ulmo) but it also seems like he really tried to do the right thing and he cared about doing the right thing. He built Gondolin to be a safe haven for the Elves (and also in memory of Tirion, for which he was pretty explicitly homesick). He is the only one who tried to send ships back to Aman to get help for Middle-earth. He agonized over whether to stay in Gondolin or evacuate as Melkor starts turning up the heat. Gondolin is explicitly noted to take in former prisoners of Angband, of whom the rest of the world is deeply suspicious (not without cause).

And he loses so much. He and his family are made kinslayers in Alqualonde for the sake of the Feanorians, who then abandon them. He loses his wife on the Helcaraxe and Aredhel first to an abusive marriage and then to murder right in his own court. His youngest brother gets killed in the first battle they have in Middle-earth. His dad's body is dumped on his doorstep after he gets smashed by Melkor. His older brother is stomped to a bloody pulp by balrogs. He's betrayed by his nephew, whom he took in and raised, and his entire city which had been a refuge for centuries is razed to the ground. This guy cannot catch a break!

A lot of the Turgon hate seems to come from the idea that he was unfair to or mistreated Maeglin which I just do not buy. Everything in every version of this story suggests to me he fostered Maeglin and tried to have a positive relationship with him. Whether Maeglin never liked or trusted Turgon, or whether he eventually grew to desire power and Idril over any positive feelings he may have had for Turgon is up for debate, but there is no evidence Turgon ever neglected him.

Of his siblings, I think he was particularly close with Aredhel, despite their disagreements. The fact that she went with him to Gondolin, presumably understanding it was intended to be a one-way trip, suggests to me they must've liked each other a lot, or she never would have gone at all.

I am also delighted by his friendship with Finrod, because it's easy to see them as very different people, and yet their friendship persisted. I think they really consider each other like brothers and it must have killed Turgon to find out about Finrod's death, especially since they hadn't seen each other in centuries at that point. It's also very possible he didn't learn about Finrod's death until well after it had happened. Maybe that shouldn't make a difference, but I think it would. Finding out your beloved friend who you thought was alive and well has actually been dead for years, and died brutally and alone in the dungeons of Sauron? Ouch.

I think he should get credit for being like, the only Elf parent who seems completely unconcerned with his daughter marrying a mortal. As far as we can tell from the text, he takes zero issue with Idril and Tuor's relationship and has no problem welcoming Tuor into the house.

Also, Turgon going down with Gondolin and the whole "Great is the fall of Gondolin" -> "Great is the victory of the Noldoli" thing are such badass impeccable vibes. Turgon to me is someone who tries a lot and he doesn't always get it right, but that's part of what makes him interesting. Yeah it turned out to be a mistake to follow Fingon into Alqualonde...but he was trying to defend his family. Yeah he should've listened when Ulmo said it was time to ditch Gondolin...but he was proud of what they had built and it seemed safer than the rest of Middle-earth. To me, his mistakes were reasonable in the circumstances and they make him more than the stodgy, cranky counterpart to Fingon he's often seen as in fanon.

Elrond:

Is there anyone who doesn't like Elrond? I don't think I've ever seen one. Elrond is a character I liked long before reading The Silmarillion, but reading that really makes your heart break all the more for him. Here, again, is a character who has lost so much and yet in spite of that manages to stay kind and gentle--and not without effort on his part, I'm sure!

Given the events of his youth, it would have been so easy for Elrond to be bitter and angry, but he isn't (at least not by the Third Age). He doesn't do terrible things or act like a jerk and blame in on having had a hard childhood. If anything, his difficult experience seems to inspire him to ensure others don't have that kind of experience.

I don't have my copy of LotR with me so I can't look for quotes right now, but I love the callbacks there to his mom and dad and how he followed the tradition of his maternal family in naming his own sons. It must have felt so unfair to have them taken from him, and he never really got to know them, but that connection is still there and it clearly means a lot to him. I am so invested in Elrond getting to see Earendil and Elwing again in Valinor.

The naming tradition is particularly interesting since Elrond's maternal culture is effectively erased by the Third Kinslaying. There's nothing really left of Doriath or the Iathrim and there's no mention of them after that outside the note that Oropher led the straggling remains of them to the Greenwood where they took up the traditions of the Silvan there. Because Elrond was taken away from them, he really loses any chance to connect with his maternal culture until adulthood, where he might seek out what remains of the Iathrim, if he wanted. Yet he chooses to stick to the naming tradition of the royal family, one of the few pieces of their legacy that he knows of. I suppose I see him as someone who is continually seeking out those bits of information, trying to learn more about Doriath, about Gondolin, about the people and places his parents came from, about his heritage. He had no one to teach it to him, so he has to figure it out himself.

I wish we got to know more about his relationship with Celebrian! He basically falls for her at first sight but we don't get a lot of elaboration and it would be interesting to know more about their dynamic since she's out of the picture by LotR.

His goodbye with Arwen literally rips my heart out every time. Agony. At least she'll get to meet Uncle Elros.

Also, it's so fun telling LotR fans who haven't read Silm "btw Galadriel is Elrond's mother-in-law."

[thelordofgifs]

Anyway some thoughts on part 18 of tfs because sometimes self care is lying in bed on a Saturday morning analysing your own fic. I like this part a lot actually, but it’s also very self-indulgent. There is a battle going on outside and I should be dealing with that! But instead I am going to make the little guys have dramatic conversations!

So this part is mostly about slowing the plot down for a bit to do character work – for Maedhros and Maglor mainly, Fingon and Curufin are both involved but I wasn’t really focusing on what’s going on in their heads here. Maglor in particular has a lot to do in part 18. Since the stabbing he has generally been very Wise and Kind and Patient which is all quite nice but also! I wanted him to be snappy! I wanted him to be determined to save Curufin’s life and also be SO annoyed that he has to do it! I wanted him to verbally rip Curufin to absolute shreds, which. I think he did. Better than Fingon managed, anyway. Maglor knows how to hit at Curufin’s worst insecurities – his weird relationship with his father’s legacy, and the fact that his son disowned him – and he does just that. Without spoiling too much, I am setting stuff up with Maglor and Curufin and am SO glad I get to write them interacting now; it’s a brotherly relationship that fascinates me.

Anyway still on Maglor: he isn’t doing very well. Because! being stabbed by your brother whom you love more than anyone else in the world because he thought you were literally Sauron is Intensely Traumatic! But also he has no idea how to deal with this at all. Because he isn’t angry with Maedhros – he knows it isn’t Maedhros’ fault – but he also can’t forget. And he’s started flinching when Maedhros moves suddenly and he doesn’t mean to but he can’t stop. Almost all the conversation between Maedhros, Maglor and Fingon is from Maedhros pov – with a little omniscient head-hopping because I’m allowed to do that – but there was a lot I was trying to get across about Maglor’s emotional state too. He’s deeply unhappy basically. And that’s important because the story has focused so much on what’s going on in Maedhros’ head – and will be again now that he’s remembered – but he is not the only person with a lot going on atm.

But also, Maedhros! The central conversation of part 18, in which he confronts Fingon and Maglor, was very important to me. Maedhros has not had much agency lately. (In fact, for such a central character, he’s had very little agency throughout tfs. He’s much more reactive than the other protagonists: he doesn’t cause plot events so much as respond to them.) So I wanted him to be rightly frustrated by all the secret-keeping, and even to take it out a bit on the two of them. Particularly snapping at Maglor felt quite necessary – Maedhros and Maglor have been very gentle with each other throughout the story, but they do still have Tension sometimes. And then when he finds out about the whole cancelling-the-patrols thing, he’s initially upset, but by the time Fingon finds him he’s gone kind of composed and existential about it instead. I like Maedhros to be unpredictable, even to those who know him best: they don’t really have any idea how he might react to any given piece of information. (This is a quality of his I think is quite strongly based in canon. Abdicating, standing aside at Losgar, forming the Union instead of going after Lúthien, even searching for Eluréd and Elurín: he tends to do the unexpected.)

Anyway, it was important I got all this character work in now, because of course we are now at the Revelation and once again into very high angst territory. It’ll be fun!

[tolkien-feels]

@glitteringaglarond sent me a very cool ask but it may or may not be triggering to some people so I’m making it a new post and putting it under a cut rather than answer the ask itself.

Tw: Sack of Eregion era musings, so references to captivity, torture, victim (self-)blaming, etc. In addition to that, references to Maedhros in Angband, with the same tws

Okay but I'm sitting here having all sorts of emotions about Celebrimbor and obviously I must immediately go and dump them on you.

Because like... during those years of torment at the hands of Sauron, what was he thinking? I imagine in the first few months it was mostly self-recriminations. He should have known better! Galadriel, Gil-Galad, Elrond... they all knew better! They all warned him and he didn't listen!

But then after that, when recriminations started to fade as each day plodded endlessly by, as he was slowly being destroyed bit by agonizing bit, I wonder how often he thought of Maedhros. Did he try to find some inner strength thinking about how he was taken by Morgoth, and didn't allow the decades of suffering to destroy him utterly. Did he desperately try to find a similar strength to what Maedhros demonstrated?

Did he ever hope, no matter how desperate that hope was, that he would be rescued from his hopeless, impregnable, agonizing prison in the same way that Maedhros was rescued against all odds by Fingon? How often did he wish that Galadriel, who we know he loved, would come for him the way Fingon came for Maedhros? How many times, immediately after he entertained the thought, did he immediately chide himself for it because Galadriel and her Ring were more important than him and they both needed to stay far far away from him. But then... what if he couldn't help but cling to that desperate hope as each day passed painfully by?

On darker days, does he wonder if maybe his suffering was just recompense for all of the bloodshed caused by his uncles, just like Maedhros' suffering was recompense for the first kinslaying and the burning of the ships and only forgiveness and an effort by somebody wronged in that whole bloody business (Fingon) could rescue him? Did Celebrimbor utterly lose hope at that thought, because Elrond is the only one left who could come to him with forgiveness for the latter two kinslayings, and just like Galadriel he and his Ring were too important to risk just to rescue him?

During those last two years of his life, did he find himself being simultaneously comforted and further tormented by thoughts of the people he loved? Did Sauron ever get an idea of that and shapeshift into those people just to make Celebrimbor's suffering worse?

Just... Celebrimbor!!! Celebrimbor's complex emotional backdrop during those last two years!!!

I actually strongly headcanon Celebrimbor was close to Maedhros so this is hitting me extra hard. My headcanon is essentially that Feanor’s spirit was split into fire and subcreation, between Maedhros his eldest son and Curufin his favorite son. By some bizarre elven genetics, Celebrimbor unites both sides, and is naturally draw to Maedhros as someone who hones his inclination towards leadership in a way Curufin often forgets to due to focusing on his inclination towards craft. And then in Beleriand, Maedhros's morals align much better with Celebrimbor’s than with Curufin’s, and I think for as long as it was practical to (probably before the Bragollach) Maedhros was almost a refuge from Curufin’s (and Celegorm’s!) ever-increasing cruelty, which was never directed at Celebrimbor, of course, but was something Celebrimbor strongly opposed but had no real power to stop.

So yeah, I really like the idea of Celebrimbor towards the end trying to draw strength from his (probably inaccurate) understanding of Maedhros’s own captivity. Not because it makes it more painful (I don’t actually enjoy things being more painful for the sake of being more painful) but rather because I just love the idea of Celebrimbor feeling less alone somehow because of Maedhros, similar to how the LotR hobbits sometimes feel less alone in their struggles when they think of Bilbo.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #639

Top Ten Stories for a New Lord of the Rings Movie

Sometimes timing can work with you and against you.

A few weeks ago, we were shocked – shocked, I say – at the revelation that Warner Bros wanted to get back in the Lord of the Rings business. Okay, well, not that shocked; after all, money can be exchanged for goods and services. But what was interesting about this particular announcement is that the films were, essentially, going to be part of the “cinematic universe” established by Peter Jackson’s initial trilogy twenty years ago; that these films were being designed to be of a piece with the six films Jackson directed. What’s more, key creatives were coming back; the whole endeavour was overseen – and, indeed, produced – by Jackson himself, and writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens were crafting the scripts. Although The Hobbit films may have been a mixed bag, this was still exciting news for Tolkien fans. That the first of these films was going to be directed by, and star, Andy Serkis – returning once more to the role of Gollum – was flabbergasting in the extreme.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to write about it, but I had a bunch of other lists I had to do, so it got pushed back till now.

And so, the other night, I was compiling my list, when lo and behold the story dropped that Rory Kinnear would be playing Tom Bombadil in the second season of The Rings of Power – Amazon’s odd, continuity-adjacent, occasionally great, often meandering retelling of Middle-earth’s second age. The show – seemingly cobbled together from bits of the appendices to Rings – fluctuated wildly in its first season, and was often a bit of a drag. But the inclusion of Bombadil is really interesting; it doesn’t make much sense from a timeline perspective, but then the show seems to have jettisoned canon altogether, so let’s just run with it.

But Bombadil was going to be on this list, dangnabbit. So then I had to do a rethink.

Because what I’m writing about this week is other possible stories drawn from the world of The Lord of the Rings, that could serve as the basis for Jackson and co’s next foray to Middle-earth. Because the film The Hunt for Gollum is doing just that: finding a tiny space within the narrative, using a story beat outlined by Tolkien, to craft a new tale. So here I’ve found ten other story ideas, ten other moments, ten other snippets of lore, that I think could be adapted into a one-off, very interesting movie. These are little moments – battles, feuds, last stands, momentous occurrences, tragedies, romances, whatever – that could be cinematic in scope, could command our attention. And, crucially, they’re all to be found in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings; because, as I understand it, Warner Bros only has the rights to make movies out of that book (and The Hobbit). They can’t, I believe, touch The Silmarillion or the other various adjacent works that Christopher Tolkien has adapted, edited, and released since his father’s death. That means, tragically, that we can’t tell the story of Morgoth and Ungoliant stealing the light from the trees of Valinor, and how Ungoliant then tried to eat Morgoth, and he had to be rescued by his army of Balrogs. Come on: Sauron’s old boss, the evilest of evils, being cornered by a giant spider from beyond the boundaries of time and space? Don’t act like that’s not badass.

Anyway, here are the ideas I’ve got, on the assumption that Sir Pete is reading (which he probably is). As well as staying within the boundaries of the book, I’ve also tried not to step on the toes of anything recounted already in the movies (although there is a bit of crossover, I guess), or retell the stuff that’s being covered by the Rings of Power show. I almost succeed – as you will see.

I’m sorry that there aren’t any ageless kaiju spiders who devour light.

The War of Dwarves and Orcs: this was sort of touched upon in the Hobbit movies, so it would require – I think – I bit of ignoring/recasting (like they did with the Ian Holm Bilbo flashback in The Fellowship of the Ring, I guess). But after Smaug conquers Erebor, the Dwarves attempt to take back Moria, leading (long story short) to a huge war. The tragic beginnings could lead us to an apocalyptic climax (The Battle of Azanulbizar, in fact!), with many main characters heroically perishing and others stepping up to the plate, and although (spoiler!) the good guys win, it’s a pyrrhic victory, and even sets up events in the original LOTR trilogy. Also: Dwarves!

The Quest for Moria: back to the Dwarves (I love them so) and back to Moria, this one is (essentially) a long-gestating sequel to the first idea, as Balin (from off of The Hobbit, so maybe you could even get Ken Slott back if he’s up for it and not too old) leads a company of Dwarves to re-establish the colony at Moria, assuming the Orcs have gone. This could almost be a horror movie as the Dwarves realise they’re not alone down there. It's a bit of a bummer ending, as they’re all killed by Orcs and (yes) the Balrog. But it could be a tense, terrifying alternate look at life in Middle-earth.

The Ballad of Bullroarer Took: Bandobras “Bullroarer” Took was, at four foot five, the tallest Hobbit on record, and (by Hobbit standards) something of an adventurer. This film would be about how his wild ways provoked disapproval among the Shirefolk, whilst in the background the Rangers attempted to stave off a Goblin attack. Culminating in the Battle of Greenfields, we’d have a full-on invasion of the Shire, with Bullroarer riding a horse and inventing golf. It could be a cool slice of Hobbit life, conflicting the pastoral with the violent, and show us a different side to Hobbits.

War of the Witch-King: there are several stories you could tell about the several-hundred-years-long series of wars the Witch-King of Angmar inflicted on Gondor, Arnor, and their people. I think focusing on the “last” battle would tie into the other movies better; the Witch-King would initially conquer Arnor, before a coalition of men and elves (and even hobbits!) would form to fight back. This would allow us to finally see Glorfindel, a major character in the book cut from the movies, who gives us the prophecy about the Witch-King not being killed by “a man”; and also has the baddie finally flying away to Minas Morgul, where is in LOTR. Regardless, it’d be a human-centred war story.

The Battle of Dale: back to Dain Ironfoot, one of my favourite minor Tolkien characters, who was a hero in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs (and is played by Billy Connolly in The Hobbit). This is quite an interesting battle, as it ties directly into The Lord of the Rings; in fact, it’s happening at the same time as The Return of the King, but it’s in the locations we see in The Hobbit. King Brand (the grandson of Luke Evans’ character Bard) and Dain make a futile last stand against the Orcs in front of the Lonely Mountain; both of them die tragic, heroic deaths, but then Frodo destroys the ring, the Orcs lose heart, and their sons ride out to claim victory. A sad war movie with a happy ending, I guess.

The Journey of Aragorn: moving slightly away from just “war movies”, this would focus on a young Aragorn (you’d need to recast Viggo Mortensen, but I have a feeling they’re going to do that anyway for The Hunt for Gollum; after all, he’d be 25 years older by the time they film it). He lives in Rivendell until he learns of his ancestry and destiny, after which he embarks on a very long hero’s journey, including going to Gondor under an alias and fighting alongside a young Denethor (the Steward played by John Noble in Return of the King). This film would show Aragorn’s growing acceptance of his legacy, until at the end he joins the Dunedain Rangers and heads off once more.

Oath of Rohan: I’ve tried not to paddle in the same water as War of the Rohirrim, because, well, they’ve done it haven’t they? So we’ll get to see Helm Hammerhand before the year’s out. But I love Rohan, those freaky Celtic-adjacent horse-lords. The founding of Rohan could be an interesting film, as a disparate group of riders comes to the aid of the Steward of Gondor, fighting off a bunch of Bad Men, and being rewarded with land as a result. You’ve got some good, earthy characterisation, some nice battle scenes, and a big Star Wars-esque “Peace!” moment at the end as Steward Cirion and King Eorl swear and oath together.

The Founding of the Shire: this one maybe would deviate the most from lore, in terms of creating extra drama. But I do love the Hobbits and tales around them, so showing how brothers Marcho and Blanco lead a group of Harfoots from Bree into the Shire would allow us a nice insight on Hobbit life. Relatively comfortable with what they have in Bree, many wouldn’t want the risk of a journey and fresh start, even if it gave them their own land, and even if the King said it was okay; perhaps they face hardship, environmental hazards, and maybe even some baddies. But they find their perfect home in the end.

The Last Ride of Merry and Pippin: one way to tell a new film would be to just carry on the story from the last film. There’s not really a ton of actual drama (Aragorn has a few more fights, I guess), but we could get a lot of melancholy in Merry and Pippin riding to both Rohan and then Gondor at the end of their lives, most of their friends having predeceased them (or, rather, sailed off to the West). You’d get this nice sense of love as older men reflected on their own youth and the world their children have inherited, and the fact that these two friends adored each other. And I don’t think you’d need to do much to age up the actors; by the time they’d film a movie like this, Billy Boyd would be within ten years of Ian Holm’s age when he played Bilbo.

The Rings of Power: okay, so the oliphaunt in the room is obviously The Rings of Power, which I’ve said I won’t go near. But there are so many cool stories in that period that you could tell! The capture of Sauron! The fall of Numenor! The forging of the rings! You could even skip forward a couple of thousand years and show the arrival of the Istari in Middle-earth! It’s frustrating that the way they’re telling these tales in the TV show isn’t in accordance with the book, which would be fair enough, except I think that they’re doing it in a slightly less interesting way. But all the same, we can’t expect a movie to follow in their footsteps (just as we sadly aren’t going to get a Tom Bombadil solo movie). Alas and alack!

[sytokun]

So, I have a question I hope that isn't too much of a problem. How do you feel about Salem as a villain? Her character, her plans, and motivations and what the current Volumes have utilized her, how do you feel about what they do with her as a villain?

On paper, I don't have problems with Salem.

Since the beginning of the show, the Grimm are framed as this mysterious, endgame villain that the cast needs to deal with. There were two major ways they could have gone with this and honestly I wouldn't mind either:

They are a force of nature and cannot be resolved easily, just adapted to and lessen their deadly influence over the world

They have a source/leader who leads or coordinates them, and defeating them significantly reduces the Grimm's influence on the world.

Both can be interesting, and both can flow well with RWBY's themes if executed well. We know canon went with the latter, so that's the baseline we'll go with. Back when Salem was revealed in V3, many fans speculated she was a hyper-evolved Grimm that has lived for so long she gained human intelligence.

Now I used to be iffy on this back when this theory was trending, but over time I grew to like the idea, and thought it would have been a really cool way to frame Salem - she is the ultimate result of the arms race between the Hunters and Grimm, locked in an eternal battle to outpace each other. If Salem wasn't stopped, she would destroy everything. But you had to do it right. You had to somehow make it permanent and that the Grimm could never evolve down this path again.

Because if you don't properly deal with what is essentially the equivalent of the Grimm singularity, you've gotten rid of one problem. But the thing that comes after Salem will learn all of her failures, and then the world will be faced with a being that's even worse.

This idea, if you discount Salem's backstory and relation to Ozpin, and observe more her general vibe and tactics, can match pretty decently. Salem gives the vibe of a threat that is always watching and observing, growing in strength and influence. She's a very archetypal villain type: she's like the serpent in the garden, or Sauron from the shadowed corners of Middle Earth.

And clearly, she has a beef with Ozpin too, so that's a constant. Everyone latched onto Oz's "I've made more mistakes than any man, woman or child" line for a reason - it tips off he may be responsible for some really bad shit; he may be the reason for all of it, and has spent all his lifetimes trying to fix them. It's not farfetched to believe the Grimm and Salem are a result of that - his darkest moment.

Now we're getting into the specifics, and that's where I don't really vibe well with the route canon has committed to: the angry ex-wife thing.

Now, I still think Salem being originally human and not an evolved Grimm is fine too. It's basically like Kerrigan from Starcraft - she's the Queen of the Grimm. I don't even mind her being a former lover - I've had discussions with a friend from my server and there's a lot of potential there if you present it a certain way:

While it does seem weird that the fate of the whole world lies on a single relationship between two people - RWBY is technically a very personal story. It's about individuals, about self-expression and the soul. So having the main conflict be focused around a human experience that becomes corrupted can still work - it's a very Star Wars approach to it: the entire film saga is centered around the Skywalkers.

It's likely that both of them, while deeply in love, had different ideas about immortality, about how the world to be, and they were the only two people powerful enough to put those ideals into action, so they came to blows, causing the landslide that created Remnant as we know it.

So really, there is a lot you can do with Salem if you applied yourself to it. But what we got is a vaguely diet Sauron-ish figure sitting in a creepy castle, like we're in a nondescript cookie-cutter JRPG setting.

Some of Salem's scenes do hit well, and I can only really credit the artists and Jen Taylor's solid performance for that, particularly scenes of her exuding a serene and otherworldly, yet intimate and almost motherly presence, like a whisper given form. More a voice than a person, more a presence than a form.

This was the Salem I think could have worked best with canon RWBY if they had stuck to it. Keep her a largely formless being whose mere voice compels madness and ruin, whose invisible hand has moved the pieces towards a single end.

It sort of reminded me of the one Mephala quest from Skyrim, an unassuming, dark voice beckoning from behind a humble, wooden door tucked in a corner most would overlook until one wanders too near, or rather... seeks it out. Another mentioned Xal'atath from WoW, who is an ancient evil bound in a weapon. All three performances sound incredibly similar too.

I sort of like the idea of Salem leaning more into this trope than the fully physical being we see in the show. Have her start out as this ancient influence, whispering in the ears of Hunters promising power, perhaps bestowing weapons cursed with Grimm-like energy that slowly eats away at them. Hey look, cursed weapons, almost like weapons are an important and recognisable aspect of RWBY, and the idea of an ancient evil possessing your rocket-powered katana assault rifle instead of just a sword or dagger would have been a novel take on this familiar trope.

Have her gain power and influence throughout the series, and if you ever feel like making your pale-faced dark lord mommy character to hit your arbitrary waifu quota, you can just justify it as "she's powerful enough to enter the material plane now" and call it done.

I think it's the things Salem creates that should evoke more physical fear. The weapons she's made. The progressively stronger, more vile abominations she can turn Grimm into. The way she can tug a few strings and turn entire nations against each other. Salem doesn't need to appear as more than a very well-performed voice and a wisp of black smoke or a glowing red eye to be scary. Her works can speak more to her power than any fight scene or rainbow beams from her hand possibly can.

Because maybe, Salem is someone you just can't fight. She's not a problem you can solve with violence, but instead of an immortal, super-powerful mage who realistically should have killed Remnant ten times over yet chooses not to, she has a reason to need pawns. Her influence is strong, but she needs vessels to carry out her will, i.e. Grimm and people like Cinder. Why play a game of chess with Ozpin for thousands of years when you could have just flipped the board over any time you wanted? When the only canonical inconvenience was waiting 20 minutes to an hour to regenerate, good as new?

At least with this depowered, more subtle portrayal of Salem, she still had to play by the rules. She still had to be the Black Queen the show loves to symbolise her as. But really, given enough time, Salem will no longer just be the Black Queen. She'll be the whole board. Playing Ozpin's own pieces against him. Adding pieces to herself. Expanding the playing field so she covers everything.

And she'll do all of this one well-placed turn at a time. To me, that sounds more like the kind of game an immortal would play. Not... bringing six or seven dudes to your moonlit villa (most of whom died either betraying you or being betrayed by the same group members), sitting on your throne for the past few centuries when you could have made a few giant whales in advance, marched into each Kingdom at any time and wiped out all opposition through sheer overwhelming brute force alone.

Canon Salem is mishandled in canon because she had all the power, time and Grimm to take the Relics the boring, straightforward way, but thinks she's too cunning and smart to resort to that, so she just... does it the hard, inefficient way instead, because that's what real, mastermind dark lord characters are supposed to do.

[aipilosse]

3, 4, 7, 10 😇

3. Screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr.

This is one of the ones that I really don't think I can choose just one, even if I'm restricting myself to Tolkien related takes.

I think I'll do a general terrible take and a Tolkien-related take. For general terrible take, that fucking post that's like "you don't understand, these 20 companies are responsible for 80% of pollution" and then implies that killing the CEOs of these 20 (or w/e the number of companies is) would solve the climate crisis. I've seen this reblogged so many times and it is dumb as fuck on every level. That's not how companies work!! CEOs die, step down, move on all the time; there's a whole c-suite, a board of directors, and a host of vice presidents at each of these companies. My god this is common knowledge. That's on top of the fact that it ignores how the problem of fossil fuels is systemic and driven by demand on multiple levels. if you succeeded in murdering every executive and board member at each of these companies that does not remove the issue of a supply chain that runs on fossil fuels. And of course the whole concept is absurd -- tumblr kids who couldn't figure out how to buy weed in high school are talking about ordering hits on executives? lmao.

*ahem* now the Tolkien take. God there's so many. I think I'll go with a classic: the idea that because Elrond turned into a good person, therefore Maedhros and Maglor were good parental figures to him and Elros. I don't know about you, but I know people who endured terrible childhoods and are wonderful people. Likewise, I know people with kind accepting parents who are pieces of shit. Parents and what happens during childhood have a major impact on people, but it is garbage to imply that because someone turns out a certain way we know for a fact their childhood was good or bad.

That's of course not even getting into how these takes go hand in hand with the idea the Elwing and Earendil were unfit parents. Ugh.

4. What was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

She was mean to my friend >:( Horrible takes are one thing, but if you are mean to my friends I will never forget it.

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because of how the fandom acts about them?

I answered this here! Three guesses on who and the first two don't count.

10. worst part of fanon

Another one that's really tough. I'll go with my perennial complaint about overly simplistic Noldor-Sindar relations. It completely ignores Cirdan and the Falathrim, the Mithrim, and is usually about trying to make Thingol into the villain of the Silm. It also ignores the very real intra-Noldor tensions and the Noldor-Sindar societies of Gondolin, Nargothrond, and Sirion.

oh wait, no, I have to add: fanon use of the thorn. God. People make such a huge deal while not understanding at all how it works. No, Maedhros wouldn't have gone by 'Maedhroth.' Sindarin still had the voiceless dental frictive! Notice THingol, GorTHaur, THuringweTHil? And the idea that Elrond spoke with a 'Feanorian accent'? Not only is it disproved by canon (He says 'Sauron' in FOTR), but if you read the Shibboleth it sounds like Maglor and Maedhros abandoned the thorn early in the First Age anyway! And of course Feanorian accent Elrond also seems to have no regard for the tragedy of Elrond losing his family's language and is just treated as 'ahaha isn't kidnap fam fun and cute?'

phew ok that was a lot of violence.

[astrovian]

I think my issue with The Rings of Power is that I just wanted it to have really good writing (even if that meant deviating from Tolkien) so badly

What I mean by that is that I wanted us as the audience to be intentionally mis-led and deceived and double-bluffed... especially the Tolkien fans. While yes, they're trying to attract casual viewers, they also knew they'd have a big Tolkien audience and didn't cater to us at all in terms of giving us anything interesting/exciting re: plot

Like yes, it's awesome to see Númenor & Khazad-Dûm & all these 'unseen' things visually but for Tolkien fans there's not a lot plot-wise that's as exciting as the visual interpretations

I almost didn't care how much they changed up lore, if the trade-off was good TV writing... then I could accept that because we all went into this knowing it would be a bit of a bastardization of Tolkien's works

But this season finale was just so bland it's actually a little sad

The Mt. Doom reveal a couple of episodes ago was much more interesting and shocking than either the Sauron or The Stranger reveal which is pretty sad given they based the entire season upon the premise of "who is Sauron/The Stranger???"

Like if the reveals shocked you then great, but honestly both identity reveals were seen coming a mile away by pretty much anyone with a passing knowledge of Tolkien's works

They were basically hitting us hard on the head with a hammer in regards to the clues they left each episode which I was basically fine with because I expected the finale to be a be a big "gotcha! we were tricking you the entire time! It's actually not them at all!" rather than what it actually turned out to be which was just "why yes... it was exactly what you thought/predicted 6 or 7 episodes ago"

As a pretty die-hard Tolkien fan, I'm not as down on and harsh about the show as some others are and have enjoyed it for the most part but like... this episode broke me simply because the major plot twists they've been hinting at all season weren't twists at all by the end

I wanted it to be a big shock and that moment you get with good writing where all the puzzle pieces suddenly click into place and you're like "how did I not see this coming??" rather than reading the clues and knowing where you're going before you've even really left for the destination

In fact, I much preferred other theories we ourselves came up with while watching the first two episodes. If they had ended the series with the Mt. Doom eruption reveal (or something as suprising like it) it would have been a great cliffhanger shock ending. This ending just felt really weak

Really this big disappointment made me reflect on what bugs me the most about the series as a whole:

1) the fight in the Southlands that was like a bad tribute/homage to the battle of Helms Deep. It made it really obvious that the writers were struggling to find Tolkien's voice in the script and that they don't know how to come up with an original battle that still feels like a Tolkien battle

I feel like this is a good summary for the series - a wink and a nod to Tolkien's work with some referential dialogue or a visual scene or a specific important item scattered through-out episodes here or there to mask the fact that coming up with a Tolkien show when you can't write like Tolkien and haven't really captured his voice is hard

It's a very superficial and almost like... surface-level/lazy way of writing a Tolkien-based show imo

2) the whole 'mithril has special Silmaril powers now'/dying Elves plot is just SO BAD AND DUMB. Why would you change mithril like this???

The only good or interesting part about this plot is the tension it creates between Durin/King Durin and the Elves & Dwarves as a result. The actual idea of the plot itself made me laugh because I thought it was a genuine joke in the first few eps but now that it's not it just makes me angry

3) the fact that it was so obvious like 4 episodes ago (if that) who Sauron/The Stranger are lmao

4) there was literally nothing impactful in this entire season finale that made me go "I need more now!!" which is literally the exact opposite thing you want to do when you make a season finale of a TV show

5) the pacing and weird time-skips depending on which group of characters we're following is really weird through-out the entire season which I can mostly ignore but like... you're also just gonna have Celebrimbor make the elven rings overnight like that? alright lol

Theories we came up with early on in the season which would have been so much more interesting:

a) make Halbrand the King of the Dead

b) tbh I don't really care who The Stranger is just don't make him Gandalf because that was obvious the second we met him

they won't do it but even if it was Saruman I'd be like well... at least this makes for an interesting juxtaposition to his treatment of Hobbits in LotR/makes his corruption much more heartbreaking

my personal faves that were so unlikely but were thrown around in this category have been Tom Bombadil, a Blue Wizard or like a pre-Balrog Maiar(??)

c) have Gil-Galad think that the Elves are dying and mithril will save them (and in turn make Elrond etc. and us the audience think so) but have it all turn out to be a massive mis-direct where Gil-Galad has been unknowingly tricked by Sauron into getting mithril from the dwarves

d) I can't remember the episode number but a personal favourite theory early on that emerged during the ep where Elrond finds out Durin is mining mithril is that Sauron is actually in disguise as Elrond all along in order to gain access to mithril/Celebrimbor (though what that means for real Elrond in terms of his whereabouts I dunno). it only made sense during that episode really and look, it practically doesn't really work at all... but you can't say that wouldn't have been an exciting plot twist

TL;DR Yes, Amazon needs to cater to casual viewers who don't know much Tolkien, but the way that they have done so has made the plot immensely boring/predictable for anyone with a decent knowledge of (or background in) Tolkien's work

They demonstrate a basic understanding of some of the core central themes of Tolkien but their inability to cater to Tolkien fans beyond referential moments shows that they have a very shallow understanding of how to build alongside Tolkien's work/story-crafting style (or perhaps an innate inability to do so)

e.g. if you're gonna bastardize something at least make sure it's not extremely predictable and boring for a good 1/2 to 2/3 of your audience - you may as well just go all in

[truestarshine]

Episode 7 feels very underwhelming after how absolutely good the last episode was, they need to hire again however wrote and directed that episode for the rest of the series. 

I want to know how they are going to explain Celeborn absence since obviously he is not dead, where could he be all this time and how come he hasn't tried to contact Galadriel or anyone they know? is he amnesic? or drinking and partying so hard in Mirkwood that he forgot he had a wife? I honestly would have preferred if he had been introduced in season 2 and they had showed us how they fell in love and then married, they being already married and Celeborn mysteriously missing ...is utterly boring.

I don't know what's the deal with the three evil women but I really like their outfits, they kind of remind me of Valkyries. I feel sorry for Poppy and Nori but I couldn't give a damn when the rest of harfoots lost their carts, serves them right for being uncaring little shits to those that can’t keep up. 

The whole mithril plot is meh, but I understand why they are using it, after all we know that Nenya was made of mithril and that the three rings “could ward off the decays of time and postpone the weariness of the world.” so it makes sense how the mithril here could “heal” the leaf and also will explain how in the future Nenya is going to preserve and protect Lothlórien while Galadriel has it.

Now that we saw where Galadriel is taking Halbrand I can confidently say he is definitely Sauron. what a pity I liked the theory of him being the witch-king.

Depending of how the final ep ends I will watch the next season, so far the show is okay but I'm not invested on the fate of anyone, maybe Adar, his episode changed my impression of him, he has an interesting backstory I hope to see more of him.

oh and now that Good Omens and The Legend of Vox Machina are getting new seasons... where are all those that were all “boycott amazon!! amazon is evil!!!! don’t watch this evil corporation show!!!” why aren't they calling to boycott those shows also made by amazon hmm? or was your performative activism only for the show with the black elf and black dwarf? Back when we had no idea about what the story was going to be or what characters were in there and the only thing we had were posters of hands, racists lost their minds when they saw dark hands and that's where the hate begun. The hate people feel for this show was never about “the changes to the lore” or “amazon is bad and evil” is and always has been about hating to see people with dark skin color simply as that.