#back on my lotr bullshit

[xolaanii]

ÉOWYN and FARAMIR in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

[the-writing-goblin]

We know that canonically, by the Third Age, there mortal stories about Galadriel, telling of the creepy elf-sorceress whose powers are unknown and undefined. That those who enter her woods do not leave again the same.

Personally, I suspect elves have the same ideas, they're just not stupid enough to say them out loud because she might hear. Yes they're currently in Imladris and she's in Lothlorien, what's your point?

Like, I really feel like it's important to note how utterly alien Galadriel would be and feel to pretty much everyone else by the Third Age. Even other elves.

The most obvious difference would be that she's looked upon the trees, but I also think the fact that she was born and raised in Aman is... actually probably a big deal?

Like: she grew up near the only direct source of light in her time, and much of the food she was eating was probably blessed by Yavanna, Vanna, or one of their Maia. The men in her family, Turgon and Maedhros most famously, are notably tall. Galadriel herself is described as 'no less tall than' her husband Celeborn in lord of the rings. I take this to mean they're the same height but... the wording doesn't technically rule out her being taller? She could be a damn giant.

And she's the only elf who we know looks visibly Vanya. Elrond, the only other named elf who we know had Vanya heritage seems to take after his mother (probably, at least in coloring). Even if there are other elves with some Vanya looks kicking around by the time the fellowship roles up pretty much all of the elves any of them would have seen would be some combination of Sinda, Silvan, and Noldor. We know that canonically her coloring is quite different from these, with her hair being closer to Vanya gold than Teleri or Noldor colorings. It's not clear exactly how different these groups are in appearence, but it could be dramatic. Certainly, her hair is... ya know... kinda a big deal. In the books. Just a bit.

Basically, she is tall, stunningly gorgeous in a deeply unfamiliar way, powerfully magical in a way no one else in middle earth is and her eyes are fucking glowing because of the treelight. She learned magic from the Middle Earth equivalent of a minor god and she's at least somewhat telepathic.

Everyone with any sense is afraid of this woman.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

Lord of the Rings but I've never watched it

*slides into the post with a creepy smile* hello maggots it's me back again doing what Satan put me on this green earth to do, summarise things I have no authority to summarise.

I kind of read the Hobbit when I was like 9 or 10? And I may have seen a scene or two from the movie(s)? But that's it. So of course let's hear my hot take on the series.

The elves are hot. Like really hot. They are fucking pretty. Everyone is such a slut for them.

Now I hear some of you lil shits saying no asmi actually i'm a hobbit person no actually i prefer the dwarves and one motherfucker who says actually i'm a gollum kinnie and I'M PREEMPTING THAT BY CORRECTING POINT ONE. MOST PEOPLE ARE SUCH A SLUT FOR THE ELVES. DON'T MAKE MY POST WEIRD.

Oh yeah Gollum was a hobbit but now he's married to a ring and he calls it my precious.

I think he's also a cannibal. Not to indulge in profiling, but he looks the type.

There are like horsepeople of the apocalypse except they're just horsepeople of Smaug and they're like scary. I think their music theme/call is very cool. I do not remember.

Who is Smaug? Smaug is Bendover Cumsnatcher.

On reflection, the horsepeople might be of Sauron, not Smaug.

Who is Sauron? Idk but it's his ring and he has an eye.

Martin Freeman is the hobbit named Bilbo and he had to shave his legs for the fake legs so he has shaved legs in one Sherlock episode.

There's an old dude named Gandalf. He wears robes and says mysterious shit. He has a wand/staff and a possibly homoerotic history with the villain. He has white/grey hair and a long beard. He's the main character's mentor sometimes.

No, what do you mean R**ling's Dumblewhore is a ripoff of that? I see no similarities at all.

He's grey and then he dies and gets whitewashed by the narrative.

Frodo is played by that one actor that reminds me of Aamir Khan.

Frodo is like Freeman's nephew or something. He has a bestie named Sam. They take the ring somewhere to destroy it.

It could be Mount Doom. It could be not. It is in New Zealand. Idk.

The pretty elves live in Rivendell. I've studied to Rivendell ambience before.

The hobbits like comfort and they eat second breakfast and elevensies. I stan.

Thorin is dwarf. He's the king of something.

I had a Hobbit activity book when I was a kid. It was very cool. The riddles were fun.

Galadriel is an elf and they just made some kind of backstory series with her and ruined her character which seems on brand for modern cinema.

There's some kind of book called the Silmirallion or Similarlion or Smillylirryon IDK IT HAS A SI, L, M, A, R AND ON.

Uhhhhh that's all I've got. I am open to being educated, even though I clearly know everything about this.

[legoflas]

hc that Elladan and Elrohir are excellent singers and hearing them sing in battle is both beautiful and terrifying

[snaggletoothedbastard]

So I'm having thoughts about LOTR. Specifically the ending. And the fanfiction that rewrites the ending. Bear with me.

So we all know that LOTR ends with Frodo leaving Middle Earth and going to the Undying Lands, right. And we all know that he does this because all the events of the story have had such an impact on him that they've left him quite traumatised and not really able to live life the way he used to. And we can probably all guess that this is a reflection of how Tolkien may have thought about his trauma after fighting in the First World War.

The ending makes sense considering the time the book was written, because in the 1940's and 50's, people didn't know as much about mental health and disability as they do now, and there weren't as many ways to help people manage disabilities other than institutionalising them or like. Giving them cocaine or something idk. So it's reasonable to assume that because Tolkien didn't see many ways that people could live with disabilities and be happy, he couldn't write them into LOTR and instead basically just put Frodo in Middle Earth's equivalent of Heaven and said "there you go, you're all better now".

I like this as a sort of tragic ending. I mean, you can't deny that someone being so drastically changed by an experience means they can't enjoy the things they grew up with is pretty tragic. The ending does make sense. But I kind of hate it.

I don't think it was written badly or anything, and I'm not trying to dismiss Tolkien's experiences that influenced this ending. My issue with it is that, when you look at it through a modern lens, it has vaguely ableist connotations. Specifically the idea that disabled people (Frodo) can't live full lives and be happy in the real world (Middle Earth) and can therefore only be happy when they're "cured" or when they die and go to Heaven (the Undying Lands).

Now obviously LOTR is an old book and it's important to consider the time it was created when analysing it, as you would do with any other piece of classic literature. A lot of old books have some outdated language and concepts in them, simply because that was normal back then. And until very recently, we probably wouldn't have thought the ending of LOTR was in any way problematic. And it might not have been, because it's not really the fact that Tolkien wrote that ending that's an issue; it's the fact that the way the world worked back then made it near impossible to even think about any other ending.

Since the book was written, though, there have been a lot of advancements in science and research into disabilities, and there are now much more effective ways to treat and manage them. There's medication and therapy for physical and mental issues, and there are lots of accommodations that we can and should put in place to make life easier for everyone. Back in the 1940's, Tolkien wouldn't have had these things, and therefore didn't consider them to be options when writing about what happens to Frodo at the end of the story. But now, we do have them, and it's this progress that has discredited the idea that disabled people can't be happy in the real world, and subsequently made LOTR's ending seem outdated by today's standards.

Now this is where the fanfiction comes in.

LOTR readers these days, who are aware of the progress we've made as a society and the new ways people view and treat minorities, often write fanfiction that puts things into Tolkien's universe that wouldn't have otherwise been there because of when the books were written, from openly queer characters to characters living good, happy lives with disabilities. And I think this is a good thing and it's really nice to see, especially in regards to Frodo's disability. I like seeing people work out how he might accommodate himself in the world of Middle Earth, and how the other characters would help him with that. I like that sometimes people have to get creative when figuring out how he would cope with trauma and chronic pain, because obviously Middle Earth doesn't have a lot of the things we have in the real world.

I like that we can finally give Frodo a chance to recover in a more realistic way than just sending him to the afterlife. I like that we can finally allow him to live.

A lot of Tolkien purists complain about new adaptations and fanfiction because "it's not what Tolkien wrote so he wouldn't like it". First of all, why do we still care about the opinions of a man who's been dead for over fifty years? What are you going to do, summon his ghost to haunt all the fanfic writers? Hold a seance to find out exactly what he thinks? Good luck with that.

Second of all, I honestly believe this is something he would approve of. He went on living after the First World War, but he didn't get to live with the disability accommodations we have today. And because he didn't, neither did Frodo. We can't give Tolkien the life many disabled people have now, but we can give it to his tragic hero. We can make his story a little less tragic. And if Tolkien was here now, of all the tropes we're using in LOTR fanfiction, it wouldn't surprise me if "Frodo stays in the Shire" is one he could get behind.

[introverting-rn]

lotr + bible fans, where you at

[weirdnotal]

Me n some friends rewatched lotr so have some commentary from nerdy gay teens in no particular order

*Aragorn sulking in the corner, staring at the hobbit gang*

Friend 1: he does various activities in his spare time

Friend 2: like fucking?

Friend 1: yup

Friend 3: unfortunately not me :/

Friend 4: the Nazguls are having a toddler tantrum bro

Friend 2: they're going to see the elves!

Friend 1: Legolas.... *dreamily*

Friend 4: shhh it's okay

Friend 5: Sam look-

Everyone: DONT INSULT THE BABY

Friend 2: shh everyone shut up the memes

*all intently watch them argue about second breakfast*

*stops movie to show Friend 5 potato song*

*Legolas and Glimli walk in*

*Everyone chanting "ONE OF US" in snyc*

Friend 1: when Saruman sits like that he looks like that one Bernie sanders picture with the mittens

Friend 3: JUST TAKE THE RING OFF FRODO

Friend 2: it's for PLOT REASONS

Friend 4: this is a terrible plan boys

Friend 2: yeah but they're boys

Friend 2: I hate Arwen in this movie she's a bitch

Friend 3: but she's pretty so it doesn't matter

*a lil later*

Friend 3: okay it matters

*stop movie to show Friend 5 the "taking the hobits to Isengard" song*

[eerieechos]

Hey I haven’t posted about Morianar in a while huh

[ecle-c-tic]

the leitmotif that plays when Bilbo and Frodo reunite in Rivendell be like

[ssantisheep]

Hey... Hello people. So. I have written a fic. An eight chapter Desmond centric fic. The fic is set in middle-earth. yes. You have read correctly. Desmond in middle-earth during the lotr timeline. Anyway.

Is anyone interested to beta it ? You can DM me for more info!

[mwezina]

If anyone has ever doubted a Hope player's propensity for good, look no further than Samwise Gamgee, Knight of Hope. He gave Frodo the strength to keep going, and when Frodo could not muster that, he carried him upon his back. And even when all was hopeless at the end, when Sam could not go on saying they will come back, he still believed they were doing some good. Even if they would never return to the Shire, this journey would have saved the world he cared so deeply for.

If anyone deserves a happy ending after so much evil, it's Sam.

[tathrin]

“Aragorn called Wingfoot? More like Aragorn called WingMAN, am I right lads?”

[y0uc4nc4llm3a1]

[buttered-milky]

Oh whatever I put it in my friend’s dms originally but I suppose I might as well say it here. Thinking about how the One Ring is simple gold, like a wedding band. I know many of us love to read Frodo never marrying as queerness (and I do, believe me, it doesn’t contradict what I’m gonna say) but I think it’s support for another metaphorical representation of trauma. Like, listen, older views on divorce were not quite as lenient as modern ones. And when Frodo put that ring on, he got married.

He put that ring on and got married to evil, and I don’t just mean that in a contractual way. I mean that in a marriage, as in forever entwining your life and soul with someone, no matter if good or bad comes of it, way. Doesn’t matter that he effectively also divorced the evil when the ring went into the fire. In the same way your ex is still out there, the trauma is still with him. There is no unbinding your soul from something like that.

And also, just as a separate little thing: it’s fun to acknowledge that there is literally only one person in this marriage. This is a ring. And then a guy. So instead of divorcing someone else, he’s divorcing part of his soul.

[ashfdhfgdsfk]

will these mfers quit choking my boy smeagol out jesus christ

[hamletthedane]

No but really. Tolkien obviously wasn’t building off of the modern fantasy genre, but it’s very much not a coincidences that he decided to deconstruct the same tropes that would later come to define paperback fantasy.

Like if you think about it, he was a writer taught in the old Victorian style of rote memorization of a canon of classics. However, he - like the rest of the Modernist authors of his era - clearly became disenchanted and even horrified by those kind of stories after barely surviving what was the most brutal war in human history to date.

That’s proven in his (to my mind, deliberate) rejection of the tropes and values of those older stories: it would indeed be hard to stomach a story of King Arthur taking the sword from the stone to wield its power for good and save Britain when you’ve seen such meaningless destruction by men who thought they were doing what’s right. It would be hard to blame Achilles’ raging apathy when the thing they’re asking him to leave his tent and do is kill and kill and kill. The Greeks felt justified in slaughtering their own men to wage a war built on questionable ideas of loyalty and alliance without cause. The British felt justified in slaughtering their own children based on questionable alliances and loyalty. I’m sure Boromir would have found some justification too with that kind of power in his hands.

Obviously, we know that 20th and 21st century fantasy tropes didn’t spring out of the ground one day seventy years ago, but sometimes it’s surprising just how little of modern fantasy actually came from Tolkien. Arguably, the book Once and Future King, as well as classics like the Iliad, the Aeneid, and Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies all had MUCH more influence over the development of Dungeons and Dragons, Highlander, Game of Thrones, Skyrim, etc etc etc than Tolkien ever had. Tolkien undoubtedly popularized the genre and contributed to it greatly, but he certainly wasn’t building off of nothing and there’s a reason the tropes he criticized still exist in fantasy fiction today: they’re much, much older than The Lord of the Rings.

Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.