#Tolkien Misquotes

[glorfindelridesagain]

Bilbo: You have to apologise to Thranduil.

Thorin: Fine.

Thorin: Unfuck you, or whatever.

[theheirofthesharingan]

The easiest ways I lose respect for someone when I hear them say:

I'm a dog person and I hate cats.

Frodo sucks and sam is the 'true hero' and 'Tolkien said sam was the' true hero' and 'Frodo wouldn't have made it without Sam so Sam is the' true hero' of LotR.

I love Sasuke but I hate itachi.

I love Itachi but I hate Sasuke.

I hate both Itachi and Sasuke.

[cacodaemonia]

"It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons."

-JRR Tolkien // Cool quote

[books-n-shadows]

"𝔄𝔩𝔩 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔦𝔰 𝔤𝔬𝔩𝔡 𝔡𝔬𝔢𝔰 𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔤𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯;

𝔑𝔬𝔱 𝔞𝔩𝔩 𝔴𝔥𝔬 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔞𝔯𝔢 𝔩𝔬𝔰𝔱.

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔬𝔩𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔦𝔰 𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔡𝔬𝔢𝔰 𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯.

𝔇𝔢𝔢𝔭 𝔯𝔬𝔬𝔱𝔰 𝔞𝔯𝔢 𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔢𝔡 𝔟𝔶 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔰𝔱."

[thephantomcasebook]

Btw Elio also said it was planned for Aegon III to have a second Velaryon bride, since 1999. So Jaehaera being too old for his kids wasn’t the only reason.

Yeah, Elio and Linda say a lot of things.

Like "Rise of the Dragon"?

Notice how it doesn't fit the canon of "Fire & Blood" and leaves things out or changes things entirely? Like how in "Fire & Blood" Aemond and Helaena die on the same day. But now it's all jumbled? Or how they left out entire battles from Daeron's Southern campaign that brought the Reach to heel?

That's cause they have their own preferred canon and characterizations that don't match up to GRRM's established lore a lot of times. If they don't like it, it somehow disappears and then reappears altered or changed, and then GRRM and their website have two conflicting dates, people, and events, of things. their meddling or "Keeping track" of the ASoIaF lore has often led to GRRM double speaking and misquoting events.

I also don't believe for a second that GRRM had the idea for Aegon III's regency crisis all the way in 1999. That's like Tolkien saying that he had Faramir planned in the narrative all the way in the 1930s. Or that Galadriel was always fully formed in his mind and didn't take shape while writing the Lorien section of Lord of the Rings.

Anyone who has ever spent any appreciable amount of time on the message boards of Westros.org back in the day know that's utter bullshit.

The patent GRRM: "No, I didn't change my lore, this has always been canon ... I had this all planned out since, you know, 1994!"

Yeah, sure, you did, Pops.

[sledgeley]

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[glorfindelridesagain]

Bilbo, pointing: May I sit there?

Thorin: That's my lap.

Bilbo: That doesn't answer my question, Thorin.

[theheirofthesharingan]

tolkien said sam was the chief hero of lord of the rings. also frodo wouldn't have made it out of the shire without him. sam carried frodo on his shoulders in mordor and fought shelob all alone.

tolkien said sam was the chief hero of lord of the rings.

He didn't, apparently. The chief hero quote is a heavily misquoted, perverted phrase LotR fandom has perpetuated without using any critical thinking because it serves their bias. The entire quote, within the context of the letter, means and says something else entirely.

Since we now try to deal with 'ordinary life', springing up ever unquenched under the trample of world policies and events, there are love-stories touched in, or love in different modes, wholly absent from The Hobbit. But the highest love-story, that of Aragorn and Arwen Elrond's daughter is only alluded to as a known thing. It is told elsewhere in a short tale. Of Aragorn and Arwen Undómiel. I think the simple 'rustic' love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero's) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the 'longing for Elves', and sheer beauty. But I will say no more, nor defend the theme of mistaken love seen in Eowyn and her first love for Aragorn. But altogether it would hardly amount to the excision of a single long chapter.

People miss the whole context. Here, the theme is that of Love. The characters in question are Sam (rustic, simple love) being compared to Aragorn (higher, nobler love). Tolkien also mentions Éowyn because of her feelings towards Aragorn. It's not a comparison between Frodo and Sam. LotR is a story about the hobbits and all four serve a purpose in the story. They all start out as fairytale heroes but only three return with a gain. Frodo is the tragic hero of the tale.

Furthermore, in many of his letters, Tolkien talks about Frodo as the central character.

Here is a small consignment of 'The Ring': the last two chapters that have been written, and the end of the Fourth Book of that great Romance, in which you will see that, as is all too easy, I have got the hero into such a fix that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty. Lewis was moved almost to tears by the last chapter. All the same, I chiefly want to hear what you think, as for a long time now I have written with you most in mind. (letter #91).

Many people think since Sam is the only one (physically) present there, Tolkien is talking about Sam; but in truth, the one character who is in 'fix' here is Frodo. The main objective of the story is how will Frodo, with Sam's help, go to Mordor and destroy the Ring. Since Sam abandons the idea of destroying the Ring and chooses to follow Frodo's 'dead body', hence endangering the fate of the world, I doubt it has to be about him. We need Frodo to save the world. And we need Sam to save Frodo. Without Frodo, Middle-earth is doomed and the story and the plot cannot go any further than this.

In another letter to David Masson (1955), Tolkien says this:

'Surely how often "quarter" is given is off the point in a book that breathes Mercy from start to finish: in which the central hero is at last divested of all arms, except his will?

(emphasis is mine)

Frodo is the one who divests himself of all arms. And it's his will that's repeatedly talked about throughout the story. The central hero Tolkien talking about here is him.

In The Silmarillion, Frodo is the only character mentioned from the Fellowship. Gandalf is mentioned as Olórin, not Gandalf. Surely, it's a bird-eye view of LotR, but the sentence that was phrased as 'Frodo with the help of his servant destroyed the ring' could also have been said differently with Sam being in focus instead. In the letter #246, JRRT goes in extreme detail regarding Frodo, his heroism, his contribution to the quest, and his relevance in the story thematically. Frodo was the antithesis of Sauron and fought against him singlehandedly. The battle of wills, not any physical battle. In the Field of Cormallen, both Frodo and Sam are honoured, but Frodo is still bestowed with the highest honour for his service (they sang 'Frodo of the Nine Fingers in his honour). Tolkien's words on this:

Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far. The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), 'that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named' (as one critic has said). (Letter #192)

also frodo wouldn't have made it out of the shire without him.

It's been many years since I read the book, so my memory might betray me, but if I remember it correctly, Sam helped them in the Old Forest because he was the only not under the spell of the tree (Old Man Willow, I suppose). In other instances Frodo took precautions himself. He knew whom to trust. The rest was handled by Merry and Pippin while they left their home and met Strider. Frodo saved his friends from Barrow Wight at the Downs, was the only one to summon courage enough to get back at the Nazgúl while the other three hobbits were terrified. Are you sure you aren't making any overstatements in your comments?

sam carried frodo on his shoulders in mordor and fought shelob all alone.

His contribution in helping Frodo and getting him to Mordor, even on his shoulder, are undeniable. He has a long list of accomplishments, for which he was generously rewarded in the end. But his accomplishments don't make him the 'true hero of LotR', definitely not greater than Frodo.

I can't recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I'm naked in the dark. There's nothing — no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.

This was Frodo's condition while they were nearing Orodruin. He still didn't give up. No one else, I repeat no one else, was put through these conditions, not even Sam. There comes a time when the Ring physically forces Frodo to put itself on. He resists it and then finds Galadriel's phial. When Sam carries Frodo on his shoulders, he states Frodo hardly weighed more than a hobbit child. It was either Sam was rewarded for his kindness or Frodo had actually lost so much weight that he didn't even weigh more than a child at that time.

'All gave some and some gave all' is a quote I read somewhere. Frodo was the one who gave all he had. He was the kindest, bravest, and most selfless hobbit. Tolkien might have meant Sam to be the chief hero/main character, but that means that for a 'supporting character', Frodo is far more heroic, relevant to the story, because without him, the story wouldn't even exist.

___

I hope this answer was convincing enough for you, anon. Thanks for reminding me why I grew to dislike LotR fandom so much. Apparently, anything pro Frodo must be responded with "sam is the true hero" and "tolkien said so" without looking at the context of the phrases because it helps you with your own bias.

[evilmidnightlurker]

Last of all Batman stood alone. Then he cast aside his grapple, and wielded a batarang two-handed; and it is sung that the 'rang smoked in the black blood of the Parademon-guard of Desaad until it withered, and each time that he slew Batman cried: 'Nanyë i lómë!  I am the night!' Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive, by the command of Darkseid, for the Parademons grappled him with their hands, which clung to him still though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, until at last he fell buried beneath them. Then binding him, they dragged him to Apokolips with mockery.

---

“What a pity that Batman did not stab that vile clown, when he had a chance!”

“Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Tim. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Laugh so. With Pity.”

---

There was Bruce, the Wayne, who in Gotham is called Batman; and he trained first the Robins, the Boy Wonders, that were the offspring of the slain, and they were with him before aught else were recruited. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of vigilantism; and they sparred before him, and he was glad.

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

Award for the most nonsensical, contradictory comments goes to this person:

Maybe YOU need to read the text you misquote and misunderstand. Galadriel scorned Sauron, fancy that! Wow, it's almost like ROP contradicts this. And just so we're clear: scorning someone is pretty different from making googly eyes at them. Galadriel's scorn is canon; the latter is not.

Nowhere in this block of text - or in all of canon - do I see the suggestion that Annatar asked Galadriel to be his queen, or posed as a mortal man, or showed up on a random raft in the Sundering Seas, or any other abysmal writing choice ROP made. So whatever point you think you're making, you're not making it well.

We cannot assume that Galadriel's only reason for scorning Annatar would be knowing his true identify. Do you remember how she scorned Feanor simply because she sensed a darkness in him? It's pretty obvious that she found Annatar to be suspicious but didn't know exactly who he was and thus had nothing concrete to tell the other Elves, but she certainly didn't trust him. If Galadriel had known Annatar was Sauron, she absolutely would have told the other Elves. But what does ROP do? It has Galadriel fall for Sauron's deception hook, line and sinker (not scorn him), then discover who he is and just... not tell anyone! The guy who killed her brother and countless other Elves.

It's never "made explicit" that her speech is "her own"? Usually people's words are their own, so maybe jot that down.

You said it's "weird" that I "want" Galadriel to be power hungry of her own free will... Uh, what? This is not about what I want Galadriel to be, this is about canon. Then you say that Galadriel has been a "power hungry narcissist" since Tolkien created a backstory for her... You're not making sense. You're telling me I "want" Galadriel to be power hungry... and that she actually is? What exactly is your big breakthrough here?

My post above was literally about how Galadriel's ambition is her own and it comes from her and is not an idea Sauron planted in her mind. So after lecturing me on getting it wrong you say: "Sauron offers her what she truly desires - that desire did not come from Sauron." Yes, I know. Thank you. That was literally my point. My LITERAL POINT was that Galadriel has always had ambition and a desire to rule, and that ambition came from her, and so attributing her speech in FOTR to Sauron is fucking absurd.

Uh, guys? Don't confuse your crappy televised fanfic for the story that Tolkien actually wrote.

Galadriel was never "under Sauron's thrall." That's something ROP made up. In Unfinished Tales, she was the only one in Eregion who suspected that Annatar was lying about being an emissary of the Valar. Celebrimbor was deceived by him. She was not. She was certainly not "under his thrall." No, not even because she had Nenya.

Yes, when Frodo offered her the One Ring, she was tempted. It could have given her the power to prevent the fading of Lothlórien. But when she makes this speech in the book, and in the Peter Jackson movies, it's her own thought, she's not repeating something that Sauron said to her once:

“You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

These are Galadriel's words. Her words. Not Sauron's. And she was tempted by the One Ring because she could have been a more powerful queen, not Sauron's queen. Like, you guys really took one of the most powerful and complex female characters in Tolkien's works and you made her story all about a man and his power over her and his manipulation of her. Fuck off.

And stop tagging ROP as Lord of the Rings.

[thedangerfloofhasreturned]

Théoden: You must lead the people to Helm’s Deep. Make haste!

Éowyn: I can fight!

Théoden: This is not about you being female, this is about you being next in line for the throne if I and your older brother both die; do your freaking job

[dicksoutforboromir]

if the fellowship had google:

frodo:

gimli:

legolas:

samwise:

aragorn:

pippin:

gandalf:

boromir:

legolas:

[gattmammon]

Ok adding a cut to hide my rant sorry in advance

I voted "something else" specifically to mention this. When he said how academia apparently hated how gay Tolkien was but loved "a book about a man taking a walk while his wife cheats on him"; most people didnt even notice probably but that was a jab at Joyce's Ulysses.

And IT REALLY FUCKING GOT TO ME. I had to stop the vid and walk it off for a few minutes like physically I had to get off the computer. None of the other lies in the "pop culture and literature" section got to me like that not even the Dracula ones because those are extremely common misconceptions I'm semi-used to hearing. But this one is SO SPECIFIC. Anybody who knows enough to know that the Ulysses is a thing also knows enough to know that this is BULLSHIT. Ulysses's publication was a goddamn labour. There was a famous obscenity trial involved. Joyce got a lot of shit for it. This is an integral part of the history of the book.

This is not him misreading or misquoting something, this is him deliberately shitting on a seminal work of art because it doesnt have enough gay hobbits, which is a legit way to feel if you are like, talking about your preferences and shit. But he isn't. He is presenting it as an objective fact, that Tolkien is better than Joyce and academics dont recognize it because they are evil homophobes - but he is SUCH A FUCKING COWARD that he knows that if he said this explicitly he could be fact-checked. So he hides it into a broadstroke claim and an indirect reference because he thinks his public is too ignorant to catch a reference to the plot of Ulysses.

Just like. The little self-satisfied way he smiles, so sure that he's got one up those boring dumb idiots who make it their life's work to create the analysis he steals. Fuck.

okay piggybacking off of that previous poll someone else did:

[eruvadhril]

I keep seeing artsy shit with “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” written on them and it pisses me off every damn time because the missing “those” throws off the whole rhythm of the line, Tolkien fuckin knew what he was about and wrote that entire poem in amphibrachs on purpose, goddammit, it’d be like if every fuckin Halloween there were creepy moody artsy pictures of corvids with “The Raven Said Nevermore” on them and 90% of the people making them didn’t even know any better because their only exposure to the poem is this one mis-quoted line that they keep seeing repeated on fuckin artsy Instagram posts

[confluence-and-drift]

Holy shit, some people are still ardently defending amazon’s stinking shitheap that is ‘rings of power’ as being ‘true to tolkien’ and... ugh.  It usually takes nothing but a casual browse through their opinions to see the glaring idiot-takes that go into informing such a viewpoint and it’s always invariably the same old takes.  No amount of contrived bullshit, fucking stupid plot point stacked upon fucking stupid plot point along with a frankly cringeworthy script all justified by *checks* misquoting J.R.R. Tolkien and shitting on Christopher Tolkien can obfuscate the fact that it’s just shit television.   A shoddy, cringeworthy story that could have been generated via machine learning trained on online trends.  It doesn’t matter if you literally spend a billion USD polishing a turd, it still remains a turd.   And where does their loathing for Christopher Tolkien come from?  Is it just because he respected his father’s clearly stated intentions and wishes regarding adaptions until the day of his death and these people don’t like that? It can’t be that simple can it?    *shakes head*  I mean, feel free to enjoy it if you like, but you’ll eventually have to admit quality isn’t subjective and if that’s the flavour of shite you enjoy, then who am I to stop you?  Just don’t go around telling others that it smells of roses.  It would have been fine (not good, fine) if it were just generic fantasy, might even be watchable, but if you’re going to adapt Tolkien certain standards are important and missing them so egregiously fully warrants it being labelled for the beforementioned polished turd it is.

[lightdancer1]

Where do you get your ideas for each au that you write from? Every time I read one of your stories I find myself beyond amazed with the plots and just the way how you write these stories overall.

With my first AU it was simply wanting to write Avatar: The Last Airbender as it would have been written if it were a part of my broader multiversal cosmology. Including the Urhalzantrani as the central cosmic figures, a multiverse, and the slow dawning awakening on the part of the people in that universe of the nature of the truth....and since it's an ATLA story they get to fight back and win a victory. In the course of writing that story one of the main ideas, a Fire Nation Katara as a villain and a bloodbender led me to the idea of the opposite, a Water Tribe Azula who'd be a hero.

That led to the idea of the Dragon-verse, which combined with it themes from the alternate history novel Fatherland. The Dragon-verse also took in the other half of my main themes in my original fiction, with that Azula incorporating a few aspects of Xaderavcal the Unifier on smaller scales, specifically the experience of mind-whammy from super-science, a berserker mode, and gleefully burning down the society that made her into what she became.

From there it grew to seven different AUs, each of them designed to interweave into the others, with the House of Wonders AU in a separate kind of storyline that spun out of talks with @ultranos over the notion of what time in the asylum would have realistically done to Azula and how the storyline might have evolved if she had actual realistic human limits.

The seven AUs basically developed from the first when the glimpses of alternate universes in a specific scene in the third story of the Fire and Water verse led me to want to develop various universes, with the seventh, the Fire Sage AU, working as the 'if it had been the 'good' cosmic horrors instead of the bad ones that made first contact' scenario.

I also take in each case with the Fire Nation various influences from real life societies and fictional totalitarian regimes that serve as the theme of various universes, as well as experimenting with a variety of different people to fill the niche of Fire Lord, and making each case where this happens feel like its own story and its own universe rather than coming across as cookie cutter plots.

Also at a broader creative level, I never lose sight of the idea that each of these worlds is a deliberate creation, where the characters are devices to tell specific kinds of stories. One very deliberate aspect of telling such different stories and different iterations, like the affably evil totalitarian overlord of the Dragon-verse versus squishy happy cuddly badass Iroh in the Sins-verse and the Azulon II spinoff or House of Wonders Ursa vs Empress of Humanity Ursa is to reinforce that. I think too much of the Avatar fandom, as Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit show regularly and sadly loses sight of this because the world as it was created felt real enough it was easier to feel the characters were real, and not characters in a story. Treating them as means to tell the tale allows each tale to stand on its own without feeling like they duplicate each other or are required to do so.

TL;DR: To slightly misquote J.R.R. Tolkien 'the tales grew in the telling.' And include elements from my original fiction + reading on history and military history, which is very helpful in telling war stories and making them feel like actual glimpses of other worlds that could exist.

As always I appreciate and am humbled by the feedback. It's a pleasure to know that people enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoy writing them.