#Pippin meta

[blackcur-rants]

I just watched the 1970s version of “Pippin” on Amazon Prime (the one with William Katt and Ben Vereen, not the 2013 revival with Matthew James Thomas and Patina Miller) and that whole musical is just a full-on skewering of the whole idea of Great People and Chosen Ones and honestly, it and “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power” have basically the same thematic Cruz for their ending, I.E…

The hero (Pippin/Adora) is brought to their lowest point by everything that’s gone wrong across the course of the play/series and is convinced that the only way to achieve greatness/save the universe is to perform a dramatic act of self-sacrifice that will “set everything right”. However, their love interest with whom they’ve previously had a rocky relationship (Catherine/Catra) comes back to save them from their own self-immolation and the hero finally realises what they truly needed all of this time was love and acceptance from a kindred spirit.

@disregardcanon @dachi-chan25 @lady-asteria @theofficialkai517 @uncleasriel

i feel like there’s something VERY telling about the current culture where we seem to keep circling around the idea of the chosen one not as some actual work of destiny but as piece of manipulation by a malevolent actor who is trying to fuck people over. and that by saying “no” and breaking out of it the “chosen one” is actually saving not only themselves, but others as well

[thefabelmans2022]

did you ever notice how merry doesn't actually volunteer for the quest? pippin is the one who assumes he and merry will go, gandalf vouches for them both, but merry doesn't say a word for the entire encounter. it's a stark difference from his insistence on going with frodo in the conspiracy chapter, and i think it's because he's totally lost his confidence. in the beginning, he's very confident and fully believes he'll be able to lead the group through the old forest to bree with no trouble, and then they all almost die twice basically immediately. notice that when they get to bree, he refuses to go to the prancing pony with the others, deciding instead to stay in their room alone? and then of course he gets attacked by nazgul, which definitely doesn't help matters. i think by the time they get to Rivendell, he no longer believes himself capable of helping frodo. he'll do it, obviously, if frodo or gandalf or elrond or pippin ask him to, but i think he's at a point where he no longer believes he'll be any good.

[nin-varisse]

I have this strong belief that Finrod did not only fuck every major race in middle-earth but that he also produced many bastards during his wild years in Beleriand (as he should). Elven children, half-humans, dwelves and yes also half-hobbits. "HOBBITS?!", you might wonder, "how did you get that idea?!". Well do you remember that bit about the Took family having fairy ancestry?

There was something not hobbit-like about the Tooks.

So I propose to you: Peregrin Took of the house of Finrod.

"But why did no one know about Hobbits then for so many years?" It's Finrod, he probably thought it was a hairless dwarf and didn't want to be rude and address that.

[wordbunch]

sometimes i randomly remember that pippin is the younger brother of a hobbit assassin girlie

[balanceoflightanddark]

"Nonetheless, ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces. Though slow to quarrel, and for sport killing nothing that lived, they were doughty at bay, and at need could still handle arms. They shot well with the bow, for they were keen-eyed and sure at the mark. Not only with bows and arrows. If any Hobbit stooped for a stone, it was well to get quickly under cover, as all trespassing beasts knew well."

-J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Prologue 1. Concerning Hobbits pgs. 5-6

This paragraph fascinates me for a few reasons. Often in fiction, a long period of peace is often used for explaining why people are so slow to react to a rising threat. That prolonged prosperity dulled the senses and breeds complacency. Indeed, Frodo himself does express some exasperation and almost wishes for a dragon or some evil force to invade the Shire to shake the Hobbits out of their complacency.

Which to some level is true here. It's a known fact that Hobbits like to keep out of the affairs of the "big people". Yet at the same time, even if they want to keep themselves isolated, it doesn't mean the world won't march into the Farthings regardless of what they want. After all, there wasn't a whole lot stopping the Nazgul or Saruman from entering their borders.

Yet at the same time, the paragraph does illustrate that just because Hobbits have grown accustomed to peace, doesn't mean they're pushovers. Consider Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took and the Battle of the Green Fields. When a goblin warband led by Golfimbel descended from the Misty Mountains and broke through the Dunedain's encirclement to invade the Shire, Bullroarer charged straight at the goblin ranks. He then proceeded to knock Golfimbel's head off and shatter the morale of the warband.

The story was repeated in the Battle of Bywater when Saruman decided to set up a criminal ring in the Shire after his defeat at the hands of the Ents. Long story short, once Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin returned, the Hobbits proceeded to raise up a sizeable force and effectively kicked Saruman out of the Shire. Mind you, Saruman used to be the greatest wizard in Middle-Earth, and the Hobbits led to his final defeat. That's two accounts of invasions of the Shire going badly for the invaders.

And that's not even getting into the adventures that Bilbo, Frodo, and his friends got into during the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings respectively. Bilbo was able to save the asses of Thorin's Company multiple times, discovered Smaug's weakpoint and indirectly relayed that to Bard via the Thrush, and risked life and limb to forestall a battle between the Dwarves, Men, and Elves till Bolg showed up. Frodo and Sam were ultimately able to destroy the One Ring, while Merry and Pippin were able to rouse the Ents into attacking Isengard. That's not even counting Merry being partially responsible for the death of the infamous Witch King.

So even though the Hobbits were accustomed to peace, they weren't complacent enough to be pushovers when presented with a threat. Personally, I think part of the reason this is so is because the Hobbits never forgot the basic necessities of a good life: a comfortable home, friends, family, and basically everything needed to live simply. They never indulged too much in luxury to become lax like Smaug, nor constantly scheming to take more power like Sauron or Saruman. They were happy with living simple on the farm.

It turns out, that's what gave them their edge. They were down to earth, so they had a good sense of morality thanks to living humble lives. Safeguarding their farms from wild animals meant that some Hobbits could recognize a threat when they realized it. And their sense of community and friendship got them through some of their hardest trials, like when Frodo almost succumbed to the Ring and Sam never gave up on him. Their sense of community and toughing it out through the hardest times such as during the Long Winter when Gandalf began to really warm up to the Hobbits, seeing the value and courage in them.

So while they're not the flashiest or most "badass" of Middle-Earth's free peoples, the Hobbits are some of the hardiest and "purest" races. And how ironically, peace never dulled their senses but served to toughen them up for the dark times ahead.

[is-it-mungojerry-or-rumpelteazer]

Why I dislike the LotR movies

A few weeks months ago @acaseofsilverspoons​ asked me why I say I hate the Lord of the Rings movies, and I promised I would try to give an explanation. Sorry for the delay, I have a lot of thoughts and it has taken a bit of time to order them in my head and then I forgot about this draft.

Movie people following the newsletter: stop reading now. I am going to spoil the hell out of it. And even if you don’t care about spoilers, if you like the movies you’re probably going to get defensive and enjoy the novels less because of it. I don’t want to be the reason you enjoy Tolkien less. Come back once you’re done reading, I’ll be happy to discuss then!! ^^

Disclaimer: I haven’t watched the movies. I have a very weak visual imagination and I hated the design of the elves on sight, so I decided to avoid getting them as my default elves; and I react very badly to peer pressure, which means the more people tell me I need to watch them the least I want to. I still think I have enough information to base my opinions, but well. There you go. Can't tell me I lied to you.

The first, and main reason, I “hate” the LotR movies is very well summarized by this strip of the webcomic Weregeek.

The movies are good enough, and good enough adaptations, and enough of a cultural milestone, that people talk of them as if the movies and the novels were interchangeable. Tolkien was never exactly obscure, and it’s not like people are at risk of forgetting the novels exist, but a lot of people have seen the movies but will never read the books, and even people who are into the genre will read the novel after seeing the movies. So you have people who have only experienced the movies thinking they know all that there is to know, and people who have experienced both getting to the novel with the preconceptions of the movies (see all the people analyzing Frodo’s actions as effects of the Ring from day 1 in the newsletter, or people immediately assuming book!Denethor is an abusive parent... we’ll come back to that). I’ve heard people say “don’t worry about reading the novels, the movies are enough”. And they are NOT. They are very much NOT. Even if you think every single choice in the movies is justified and good, there were a lot of choices made. They’re not equivalent.

Let me expand on that under a Read More because believe me, this is going to get long.

Let’s start with the themes.

First of all: Lord of the Rings is not an action story. If anything, it is an anti-war novel. Even though most characters admit that violence is sometimes necessary, almost universally it is considered a necessary evil. We have Faramir, the closest to a Moral Compass Man we have, literally spelling that he doesn’t like war for itself, but only for what it defends. And the narration mirrors this: except for the Battle of Helm’s Deep, every battle is either skipped over (the Black Gate), told in retrospect (Isengard) or interspersed with sections about the grief it brings (Pelennor). And in all cases, we end them with lengthy descriptions of the people that died and the grief they caused. It’s hard to finish the novel going “oh, the battle of Pelennor was awesome! I wish there were more!” when the last thing you hear about it is three pages of obituaries. In contrast, the movies fall into the trap of wanting to utilize their shiny new technology and their great visuals for battle scenes, and end up making battles cool. I have lost count of the dudebros whose take on the LotR movies was “weren’t the battles awesome???”. And before you come for me with “but the text says”, to quote Lindsay Ellis, movies are a visual medium. If you make the battles the most visually appealing and fun part of your movie to watch, you can have characters have unending monologues about how bad war is, that’s not the message people are going to get from it. And if you make a LotR adaptation whose message is “war is cool and fun”, you’ve missed the mark by a mile.

Secondly, another big theme about Lord of the Rings is that in the end, it’s the small people that make the difference, and that noone wins alone. To quote Elrond, “you may find friends upon your way when you least look for it”. But the movies, in their (reasonable) quest to streamline the story to fit a movie runtime, choose to prioritize the more classically heroic characters and arcs, sacrificing the small people for the big flashy kings and warriors. Pippin and Merry’s contributions get pushed to the side, while Aragorn not only retains all his original plotpoints, but even gets a shiny new subplot that was only in the appendixes in the novel. And also everyone who isn’t a member of the Fellowship (and not even that.. we’ll get back to Gimli) gets their role changed to make the actions of our heroes more necessary. Théoden is under a literal spell that needs to be lifted by Gandalf, and has to be told how to do war by Aragorn; the Ents decide not to attack Isengard and have to be reminded of the stakes by the hobbits; Denethor is such an incompetent nutjob that Gandalf can hit him in front of his guards and nobody cares. I understand the urge to make the main characters more important,, but LotR has a very strong feel of people in the same danger uniting to fight together instead of fending for themselves; this way, the secondary characters feel less like allies and more like sidequests.

And that gives me a nice segue into another, less important but more annoying issue: the characters.

Noone who follows my tumblr will be surprised to discover that Pippin and Merry, especially Pippin, are my favourite characters. If you asked me to tell you what are my favourite scenes in the book, which parts I’ve re-read the most often, they would be A Conspiracy Unmasked, P&M’s meeting with Treebeard, Éowyn’s monologue, the passage with Pippin and Bergil, and The Scouring of the Shire. Do I need to explain more? Except for Treebeard and Éowyn, none of these scenes made it into the movie. Which is a crime against me, personally. But apart from being annoying to me because I like them, it also means that their entire character arcs (again, especially Pippin’s) completely disappear. Pippin has the most traditional coming-of-age story in the novel: he’s a teenager dragged in an adventure bigger than he expected who has to grow up and learn that the world is bigger than he ever imagined and some things are important, and who then comes back home all grown up and ready to fend for himself. By cutting both A Conspiracy Unmasked and The Scouring of the Shire, you cut both the setup and the payoff of his arc, and by aging up the actor playing the character, you turn him from a learning teenager to a bumbling adult. Is it important in the grand scheme of things? Not really; but every time I see a meme about how Pippin is an idiot I feel like punching a wall.

Denethor. I didn’t know it was possible to be this offended on behalf of a character I don’t even particularly like. When I first looked up Denethor meta I thought I had slipped into a parallel dimension for a while, until I discovered it was just that Peter Jackson had performed a little character assassination of his own. Book!Denethor is not a nice or an endearing character, but he’s not an easily hateable one either. He’s the leader of a country in perpetual war against an enemy way stronger than they are (he has probably been born already under the Shadow of Mordor, knowing he would have to lead his people against it since he was a kid). He is cold, and calculating, and shrewd, and he has sacrificed his humanity (and his family) in order to make the decisions he thinks need to be made. To put it bluntly, he’s a character type who would be a good (and successful!) guy in Game of Thrones. But because he is in a story whose core themes are empathy and friendship and compassion, he’s a tragic figure: when the grief of the sacrifices he was willing to make hits him, he has nothing and noone to lean on, and he breaks. From everything I’ve seen, Peter Jackson has decided to take his character in a more “abusive father” direction. And look, I’m not going to say book!Denethor was a good parent. He was not. But he didn’t just “love Boromir and hate Faramir”. It’s more complicated than that. He was sure of Boromir’s loyalty, while he feared that in a conflict situation, Faramir would side with Gandalf and not him. And as a general, that is a big concern. Also, from everything I’ve read, movie!Denethor’s military tactics are whack from day one, which kind of diminishes his characterization as a cold but effective general. But that might just be a question of filmmakers not understanding medieval military methods, which... fair, I guess. On a related note, what’s that about a scene of him eating a tomato?? Did they really give him a scene explicitly designed to be disgusting and unrelatable?? The quest to make Denethor more hateable, though, is not only a problem because of his character. His character choices bleed onto others. In particular, Boromir, Faramir and Pippin. If Denethor is an abusive nutjob, why is Pippin drawn to swear loyalty to him? Is he an idiot?? Boromir comes off as the favoured child in an abusive household. But the worst is Faramir. A few weeks ago someone who is movie-only described him to me as “Faramir is the brother of Boromir that is hated by his dad, right?”. And I don’t think I can explain my reaction to Faramir, fucking Faramir, being reduced to a wet blanket who looks very sad and does nothing while his dad walks all over him. Just give me that gif of a guy screaming into a pillow.

And lastly on the “character assassination” column, Gimli. I think I’ll leave @carlandrea​ take the mic on this one, they can say more than I could possibly, and better. All I’m going to say is that, from everything I’ve seen, the movies take one of the more well-spoken, dignified characters, and made him into a bumbling, crass comic relief who fits closer to a D&D parody dwarf than anything Tolkien ever wrote.

And now, let me end with some quick-fire complaints that wouldn’t be important if the ones above hadn’t happened.

What happened with the male elves’ design?? I understand holding a casting for “otherworldly beautiful men” is not doable, but why do they look like that?? And it’s not that they can’t do elves, Galadriel and Arwen look good! Were they scared to make them “look gay” if they were too pretty?? If that’s the case, why didn’t they lean into the “otherwordly” part of it and made them alien-looking? WoW elves look more interesting than that!!

Also, I need to have a serious talk with the wig department. Why do the elves’ wigs have no volume?? Why do they look limp and dead? Why is Elrond balding? What’s going on here??

While we’re on the topic of character designs, it’s a pet peeve of mine that the hobbits only have hair on the top of their feet. It looks more decorative than anything and I don’t like it.

Last complaint about the character designs, I promise: this is not a criticism of Elijah Wood’s acting. I have never seen him act, I couldn’t say. But Frodo is supposed to be a middle-aged gentlehobbit. Why is he played by a 20 year old skinny guy who looked like a teenager?? Why is Frodo not fat?? On that note, why is Sam the only fat hobbit? They are hobbits! They are defined by ruddy cheeks and round bellies!! Did the producers think a middle-aged fat protagonist would be too much for an audience to swallow??

I’m not sure if I got this right, but I think in the movies Arwen’s life is tied to Aragorn taking his throne?? Because if that’s true, wow, way to make her into a more active character in the beginning only to tie her entire existence to a male character’s story arc!

And while we’re on the subject of stuff I suspect but I’m not sure of, I’ve seen enough Éowyn takes with the same uncanny valley feel as Denethor’s to suspect they did something to her character. And if they turned her into a Hollywood Strong Female Character Who Don’t Need No Man (TM) I will bite someone.

Lastly on this category, I am very confused about the elves from Lórien who apparently appear randomly at Helm’s Deep. Is Lórien not being attacked in this version of events (again, reinforcing the idea that everything revolves around the main characters)? Where do they go after the battle? Did they come for two days and then go back to Lórien? That sounds like a stupid plan... And also, you are aware the Rohirrim are super fucking distrustful of elves, right, PJ? How the hell did Aragorn convince Théoden and Éomer to let a battalion of elves into the Helm??

If you’ve gotten all the way here, thank you so much! It got longer than I expected, which was already very long, so thank you for bearing with me! I am willing to discuss and debate all of these, as long as it is civil.

[hopeless-eccentric]

ok so now i actually have the energy to address this! let’s talk about boromir

i think my biggest issue with the way boromir gets characterized is that you see a lot of 1) prideful, near-spoiled cautionary tale characterization or 2) least “moral” member of the fellowship characterization, and i really just dont see either of them. if anything, i find him to be a very moving character with complex motivations that unfortunately get missed a lot because theyre not incredibly blatant and a bit hidden in the appendices

so boromir was raised to be an heir of what we know denethor sees as their kingdom, and faramir even mentions a young boromir asking why the stewards weren’t just considered kings after 1000ish years. a lot of what comes off as “pride” isnt just this guy being a dick, it’s directly what he’s been raised to think. he’s spent years learning how to be a good leader of a country he sees no reason not to lead. i wont deny he’s a proud character, but his reaction makes sense from someone raised to see this country as his responsibility. he’s not just gonna leave it the hands of some guy

to dig into that more, we know from the appendices that as a kid, boromir was his brother’s “protector” (the placement of this passage suggests that this may have been from their father, though it’s possible that faramir was just an incredibly bullyable child), but assuming either, he’s spent most of his life singlehandedly keeping what he loves safe. for faramir, he wouldve been his only supportive family after the death of his mother, and with the whole “best man in gondor” title going on, it doesnt seem like he’s in a place to get a whole lot of support or help when he needs it. im not saying boromir’s got older sister syndrome, but--

another thing along that line that pisses me off. especially when two children are close, favoritism towards one kid and maltreatment of another is going to fuck BOTH of them up. for one thing, if one child is constantly praised for successes and the other is constantly berated for failures, how supported or able to ask for help do you think kid A is gonna be? that is not a way to raise a kid if you want them to be able to handle pressure or failure normally 

as for the ring, this is a guy who’s got the weight of a nation on his shoulders. if this is the weapon that could singlehandedly save his home and his people and he just passes up on it? if the world ends and he couldve stopped it? that’s horrifying, on top of the fact that boromir’s probably got some nasty ingrained issues with failure from his childhood

and what REALLY gets me is the attitude that boromir was somehow “more evil” than the other party members for being taken over by the ring. resisting the ring is treated as one of the best markers of heroism throughout the text (galadriel, gandalf, faramir, etc), and boromir cant pull it off immediately, but he DOES IT. even in his last words, he tells aragorn he failed, but aragorn replies “no, you have conquered.” he’s talking about the ring man! boromir’s not necessarily naturally the most susceptible to the ring, he’s just more psychologically worn down than the other party members and the least supported. but he MAKES IT. he doesnt get gollumed, he doesnt waste away, he doesnt lose himself. he dies as boromir, as he was in life, protecting the people he cares about

and what really breaks my heart is that in the silmarillion, there’s an insinuation that because humans fear the Valar but love the ocean, most “miracles” are done through water. when faramir talks about finding boromir’s body, frodo points out that it wouldve taken a miracle to get him over the waterfalls safely, but faramir says it couldnt have been a dream because it left his shoes wet. so putting two and two together, the Valar step in to perform a rare miracle to bring boromir home

so at the end of the day, boromir was a man, and he was so much more than proud, and so often, his “proudest” decisions are motivated by fear. he wasnt the least good of the Fellowship, just the most troubled and the least supported. he was a protector, a man of his people, and a hero

anyway next time someone reduces him to just the “least moral member of the Fellowship” im gonna blow a gasket

[frodo-with-glasses]

Tags via @esthelle18 on this post:

Someone in my notes once said something along the lines of “despite all his griping about it, Pippin is Gandalf’s favorite actually” and this is just further evidence to that point.

[hobgoblinns]

i think a thing i love about merry and pippin is despite being so similar they get to have very different stories and develop in different ways. it would be so easy to always lump them in together but they’re consistently their own distinct person with his own battles, challenges, and tales but also with a very dear friend. i’m too sleepy to think any more about this but i think they’re amazing

[sing-you-fools]

I like how sometimes we say things like, okay, opinions aside, which one's better? As if that's not inherently a matter of opinion when it comes to pretty much anything we have these conversations about. We may be able to take a step back and say "okay, I like [thing] a lot but can recognize that it sucks," but even if a lot of people agree that something is both likable and terrible (Twilight, maybe), the criteria we use to determine something’s quality just aren't going to line up perfectly from person to person.

You can take a piece of writing and have two people with literature degrees disagree about whether it's well written, because as much as some people like to pretend, that's simply not an objective thing. We can put aside our particular biases about specific pieces of media for the sake of a conversation, but we can't put opinions aside entirely.

When I think about what makes a song good, for example, the biggest factor for me is: How fun is it to sing? Because for me, that's the point of a song. (Oh, I don’t mean fun like wheee yay giggle. It's more broad than that. Interesting? Challenging? Stimmy? I'm not sure exactly how to put it, so I'm sticking with fun.) My brain doesn't get a whole lot out of just listening to a song, especially if it's not one I already know (#autism), and I don't really know what else to go by. In my head, a song being Good To Sing Along To means it has fulfilled its purpose well and is therefore a Good Song.

All of this is to say that the Best Queen Song Tournament is going to kill me. Because my main criteria is "which one's more fun to sing along to?" and the answer to that is invariably "Freddie Mercury," because he knocked that out of the park every fucking time. It's not helpful.

Is this entire post a convoluted excuse to point out that when I say Was It All Worth It should be winning on instrumentals alone, that should mean something, dammit? I don't have to answer this.

[alexisaflop]

Obsessed with Faramir and Pippins relationship in rotk. Of course there is the whole Pippin wants a figure whilst he is separated with Merry. But Faramir, Faramir who is still grieving Boromir and remembering everything Boromir did for him as kids. Pippin being Faramirs inner child and Faramir healing.

And then ofc pippin needing this because of the guilt surrounding boromirs death.

I've seen people on this site talk about jirt's happy endings before. But it could have been so easy to just have Faramir die. Whenever I see him I'm like he deserves so much better. And then everytime i get the joy actually no he does suffer but he gets to heal and it's important to OTHERS that he heals too. And not just for romantic interests for others who look up to him.

Idk it's just really loving Faramir and his story giving me hope hours.

[wordbunch]

i showed LOTR to my baby sisters for the first time and here’s how it went (in order, from FOTR to ROTK)

so we have C, 9 years old; and N, 12 years old

C is 100% an Aragorn girl, but she couldn’t remember his name so she called him Aaron

N is head over heels for Legolas (”How can someone be so BEAUTIFUL?”)

they feel quite sad for gollum and think that frodo should pet him on the head

“merry and pippin are only here to get in trouble”

which one is saruman and which one is sauron?

favorite quotes “nice crispy bacon” and “we mussssst staaaarve”

later on also “they trickssssed usss!” (they’re only learning english at school so i’m amazed that they already caught on gollum’s weird pronunciation)

they absolutely DIED of laughter at low opacity elrond (”it looks like a music video!”)

both are concerned with the lack of girl characters!

when gandalf was imprisoned at the top of saruman’s tower, C was chanting “just jump!”

N says frodo has absolute main character energy

orcs are “those ugly pigs”

end of FOTR when sam jumps into the water to go after frodo, N screamed in total anguish WHY ARE THEY ALL DYING

whenever someone is close to the ring or frodo is tempted, they yell NO

at one point they also yelled SAM STOP HIM

“sam and frodo love each other very much”

“how did they find so many real tiny people?” (bilbo’s bday party) “Or did they just find one very very tall man?” (gandalf)

legolas is obviously a better boyfriend choice because aragorn is 87 and already has 2 girlfriends

legolas is a disney princess

treebeard is like if gandalf was a tree

(battle of helms deep) C, very aggressively: i would simply CUT OFF ALL THEIR HEADS

is haldir the brother of legolas?? IS HE DYING FOR FOREVER?!

are ents real trees or they just found very huge people and dressed them up as trees

merry is a baby

“THEY’RE SO CUTE” (they = 4 hobbits)

absolutely sobbing at “i can carry you”

gradually beginning to dislike gollum and they were so done when he appeared again at mt doom

screaming crying at legolas’ oliphaunt sequence and at “I AM NO MAN”

blowing kisses to Aragorn on screen

faramir is THE BOROMIR’S BROTHER???

rolling on the floor laughing at all gimli/legolas  banter and their kill count

the new favorite character.....drumroll please..... (after aragorn and legolas)....is PIPPIN

crying when frodo  and gandalf go to undying lands

“i know frodo is suffering but...he could have stayed just a bit longer?”

they loved it overall, wasn’t too scary, can’t wait to watch again

already using some quotes on a daily basis

i’m the proudest big sis lol :’)

@starlady66 @lazyoswald @elrondscalaquendi @thesolarangel @entishramblings @oldmanwithashield @friendofthefellowship yall might enjoy this dumbassery

[is-it-mungojerry-or-rumpelteazer]

'I know what is the matter with me,' he muttered, as he sat down by the door. 'I need smoke! I have not tasted it since the morning before the snowstorm.' The last thing that Pippin saw, as sleep took him, was a dark glimpse of the old wizard huddled on the floor, shielding a glowing chip in his gnarled hands between his knees. The flicker for a moment showed his sharp nose, and the puff of smoke.

I want to hear your theories, people: when Gandalf says “he needs to taste smoke”, is that an interesting way of saying he needs to smoke (and that means even in Middle Earth tobacco has nicotine and even Wizards can get addictions), or does he mean he literally needs to taste smoke? As a fire wizard, does eating smoke literally clear his mind? Is that why he took so readily to hobbits’ pipeweed?

(Also, he hasn’t tasted it since the morning before the snowstorm? Are these people not lighting fires and then smoking pipes??)

[ghost-husbands]

In Defense of Charles Rowland

Under the cut because this is gonna be a long one, folks.

I'm going to begin this by saying that I have recently joined this fandom and to be fair, don't have as much experience with writing meta and all that. However, I love reading and given that meta is

discussion of fanworks of all kinds, fan work in relation to the source text, fanfiction characters and their motivation and psychology, fan behavior, or fandom itself.

I have always thoroughly enjoyed reading and attempting to write it. Now I have finished watching all the episodes of the season we currently have, and when I finished watching 1x04, I had some pretty strong emotions about what happened in there.

What happened exactly?

Well before we get into that, I want to say that I was inspired to write this because of the original writing of @pippin-katz on the same subject.

So as we know, in 1x04, the ghost husbands have a confrontation with the Night Nurse--an immortal (I think she's immortal, no?) being in charge of the Afterlife's Lost and Found Department. Why is she after them? Because Charles and Edwin are two unaccounted for spirits who are wandering the world and not where they belong. They're both technically special cases. Edwin was dragged to hell by pure accident, the victim of a demon summoning. It says something that even the demon itself apologizes to him for the technicality before he's taken down to the inferno | Charles died after an attack, of hypothermia and his own injuries. He discovers he's dead when he sees his own body and once it hits him that Edwin's going to leave, he doesn't want to stay behind to wait for Death. Frankly, he isn't ready for Death, so he says. So he decides to flee Death, just as Edwin has been since his escape from Hell.

Aside from staying with Edwin for their foreseeable eternity, Charles' motivation for staying is, according to him, the purpose he still serves...the face that he is a Dead Boy Detective who's dedicated himself to helping spirits who still have unfinished business. He's doing good here with Edwin. They are helping people. Ah, let's not forget, I almost missed the fact that when the Night Nurse arrives, Charles almost immediately puts himself between the Night Nurse and Edwin.

He's protecting Edwin as he always has and always will. He's almost bristling with fury and you can see the strength of his will in the way he's standing there, refusing to go quietly. He will fight for his purpose here, he will fight for Edwin, and he will fight for his newly found friends (Niko and Crystal watching from the sidelines now).

The Night Nurse has her job, and she's convinced that it shouldn't be a problem to simply apprehend the boys and pop off. Perhaps if she had only just, then truly, there wouldn't have been a problem. The show would have ended there and that would have been a pretty fucking pathetic end, I'd say. But she resorted to force, and I here want to begin to make my point. The exact kind of force she used and how she used it was cruel, a low blow and makes her, to a certain degree at fault for what befalls her.

What did the Night Nurse do?

Put simply, as pippin-katz points out, she made Charles relive some of his worst memories.

That's being beaten by his father.

That's being stoned by his friends and pushed into the lake where he caught hypothermia.

That's dying freezing and miserable in the attic until Edwin shows up.

If you want a thorough analysis of her actions, go look at what pippin-katz wrote, I'm going to focus on Charles here.

She twisted the knife (and we know that it is a very, very deep wound in Charles, the anger and abuse of his father--he's emotional enough over it to get caught in the murder loop at the Devlin House and it's one of the points of his breakdown in 1x04) when she showed him these moments and basically asks him, "What's the point of staying here, this is what happened to you. That's what people here do to you. You wanted to stay for this? You can't make things better (this was during his father's beating)..It didn't get better, you died. That's the point."

Please, let's not forget how much this affects Charles, the fact that his father beat him and so we might suppose, was always disappointed in him. With Crystal, Charles admits that he looks in on his parents every now and then because yes, he misses them (this coming from a 16 year old boy who despite suffering at his own father's hand obviously had, at least before he died, still the desire to please that man, and perhaps some degree of love for him) but also to be sure that his father will not hurt his mother the way the old man hurt him. He wants to protect his mother. So all of that, reliving that, is going to be very painful.

What did Charles do in this moment?

He's angry. We know that he's very physical, and we can see the way that he puts himself between Edwin and the NN as he refuses to 'come quietly' to the Afterlife. He's visibly shaken by the ordeal and rattled after he recovers from whatever the NN did to him when she made him relive his memories. She flicks her hand and basically does something that makes him collapse, and he's trying to pull himself to his feet after that.

He's so very angry, hurt.

"If you wanted me crushed, devastated, I am. I'm also bloody angry."

Looking around a bit, I asked around to get an idea of how exactly what he did could be taken in a shocking, jarring way. I'm not here to disprove anything or knock other's opinions, I just wanted to compare both sides of it. That being said, two points.

He hit a woman with that big metal device.

It's not like him to be so violent.

Those, in a nutshell, are a very brief, concise idea of why people might look at what Charles did and think, "Hm that was a bit too much. Maybe he shouldn't have done that, not in that way."

I answer with the fact that, as pippin-katz also pointed out, the Night Nurse looks like a small, older woman, otherwise defenseless (Granted, she didn't have anything to defend herself when Charles attacked). Apparently in Doom Patrol (I've never seen it and don't plan to) she looks a little less like a woman and a little more monstrous. So she's not entirely innocent here. I personally disapprove of what she chose to use against Charles (and Edwin, given that she threatened to bring up the same painful memories in Edwin's mind). I don't condone the idea of violence against a woman, that's not okay, and it was a little jarring to see. I guess I'm trying to say....I believe that Charles was right to defend against the attack initiated by the Night Nurse.

Was it laudable that he reacted so violently to her? Perhaps not, I don't think so.

Was he to blame for choosing to fight? I certainly think not.

To the second point, I can't say very much because I haven't read the comics nor do I know extensively his personality and what he would or wouldn't do. But I've gathered that, from seeing the series, he's never quite been the one to attack first, or to strike just for the hell of it. I've only ever seen him react, not initiate. I think it's understandable that he would react strongly to what has happened, and I hold that he isn't to blame for wanting to protect Edwin and their loved ones.

How did his friends react to all of this?

Edwin

Charles reels from what happened, and you can hear that he's shaken by it. You can hear it in his voice when he asks Edwin and the girls, "Why are you all looking at me like that?" Edwin steps forward and tells him it was extreme. That kind of tipped it for Charles, then, I think.

"Was it too extreme, Edwin? So was me dying at 16, mate! I don't wanna be dead. I hate it. Yet every day I'm fucking smiling 'cause who else is going to be the one holding it together, keeping spirits up? You? Are you gonna do that, huh? And for what? What good am I even doing? I couldn't stop Devlin from murdering his family over and over. I can't stop Crystal from hurting. I can't stop whatever it is that's going on with you. I can't stop anything. I sure as hell couldn't stop my dad from beating the shit out of me. No matter how good I was."

Honestly, this part broke my heart. Because Charles, earlier, said that he did this for them, to protect them. He's admitting here that he IS the one trying to hold everyone together but that (wake up call everyone) he's actually hurting too underneath all of it. But as someone pointed out to me, Charles never brought that up to Edwin because he might have considered that Edwin has spent 70 years in hell and would not have wanted to burden his friend with his own problems.

We see that Charles is falling apart here. He's questioning the good that he does, because in his eyes he sees only how he's failed "to stop" all those things, and you can note how his voice rises and breaks towards the end.

Niko and Crystal say nothing in this moment, but either later that episode or in the next one, Crystal snaps at Charles.

"You’re a sweet guy with a rage problem. You walk around acting like the sun always shines, and then you lost your shit while beating the Night Nurse. Edwin and I are walking on eggshells around you instead of just saying 'what the actual fuck?'”

That was definitely something that caught my attention because didn't she hear what Charles said up above? It just popped out at me because Charles explained why he's the one acting like the sun always shines (he needs to try and keep everyone's spirits up because if he breaks down, and Edwin were to break down because of all the shit he's been through, that coupled with Crystal's own problems with David and her personal struggles...there would be no one to pull everyone out of their darkness)

Anyway, I'm not here to bash anyone either. Back to Charles.

So in the end, he breaks down and we can see that the catalyst here (probably) is not only reliving those memories and dragging up the pain he's been carrying from all of that but also the reaction of his friends. In his mind, he did it for them. He immediately steps between the NN and Edwin, to defend Edwin. He's left questioning the good that he's doing here, the point of all of that.

To the final question of was it wrong for Charles to do what he did?

I believe he wasn't wrong. He was defending against an attack. He might have responded with too much violence but he's reacting to something that wounded him just as deeply.

So this ended up being more of an exposition of Charles and his emotional state, but I tried to make a defense of his actions. It's not perfect, and I'm not out to prove any sort of point, just expressing thoughts because I too had a strong reaction to that episode.

Nonetheless Charles remains my favorite.

[daphne-dreamcatcher]

Someone is going to have to give up the link for that cufflink fiasco 👀👀👀

Every time Sean Astin makes a statement on whether or not Sam and Frodo were indeed gay for each other in lord of the rings he’s always like “well we have to acknowledge that attitudes around sexuality have changed dramatically over the past several decades and since authorial intent is only up to speculation, the story is open to multiple readings, some of which might have different significances for different groups of people also they kiss on the lips because I said so”

[astriiformes]

Okay, fun question time. One of the various multimedia elements of the LotR Road Trip AU story is that I am planning on making playlists for each member of the Fellowship, the idea being that they're supposed to be snapshots into everyone's music libraries for when they have the aux cord in the car.

My music taste is pretty all over the place, which helps with a project like this, but I can't claim it's as broad as I would like when trying to represent the music tastes of nine different people. So I would love to solicit some ideas from people--genres, artists, even specific songs. You name it.

Here's generally the vibes I've been curating so far, though I'm not entirely married to all of them:

Frodo -- Indie, acoustic, folk? Probably some instrumentals. Chill beats to carry a cursed artifact to.

Sam -- Generally pretty upbeat. For sure some really traditional folk influences but also like. Folk rock. Should be an extremely feel-good playlist.

Merry -- Nerd music, to put it simply. Folk and filk, as well as some of the found-filk folks out there like Hank Green, probably.

Pippin -- Pop music! He's here to have a good time. Would especially love some input from the Gen Z crowd here since my pop knowledge is a little dated for the youngest member of the Fellowship. What Chappell Roan song would be his favorite.

Boromir -- He is puzzling me. I am keeping in mind that he should have some like. Elder millennial vibes. Currently have Green Day, etc on there but I'm trying to decide if that works.

Aragorn -- Dad rock, plus some modern rock. Think about your dad's road trip playlist (I know mine has several) and you're getting the right picture.

Legolas -- Pop and some indie/acoustic songs. Also a little musical theater. I'll be honest I'm making his eclectic on purpose. Definitely a little cheesy, aro/ace jams encouraged.

Gimli -- Metal, industrial, classical. There is no bigger Trans-Siberian Orchestra fan. Possibly also some labor songs, though I'm thinking more like metal/rock covers.

Gandalf -- Prog rock and other wizard music. I am doing something very dumb and silly and putting classic rock songs with meta references to LotR on his (ex: Led Zeppelin's Misty Mountain Hop), but other suggestions are good too.

Please feel free to totally contradict some of these vibes though. Ideally some of these playlists with be a little more all over the place than I would usually lean towards, since the idea is to represent someone's music taste, not make a true character playlist.

So! Help me out here. What do you all think each Fellowship member would listen to?