#development to write sauron better

[thebitchkingofangmar]

@sauronism tagged my main, for the WIP of the week show and tell. Since it’s Tolkien related, I’m posting it here.

(Also because my other WIP of the week is literally about the cultural significance of Artichokes for One Specific City in my original work. No, you don’t get more context than this)

Anyway, genderevil jeweller and she/her witch-king to be be upon ye.

Tagging @elvain @hobbitwrangler @imakemywings and @woodlandrealm

[neyafromfrance95]

Do you agree that Sauron, who seems to love only himself, is truly in love with Galadriel? Why make her his queen? He doesn't need her unless one can say it's to have dominion over her. No, I think he's in love. It's the only love he will ever feel, forever.

i think the cast & crew pretty much confirmed that sauron indeed loves galadriel.

is he redeemable? no. he is basically that universe's satan. but that's what makes his love for galadriel even more fascinating! it almost defies his nature.

why does he love her? well, i love the writing of the show, specifically for sauron x galadriel bc the answers are sewed into their entire relationship, respective characterization/development. it's in text and subtext.

so the answer would be too long as we'd have to analyze the show throughly 😆

but in short, i'd say it's bc galadriel represents the light that sauron wants to have at his side (mild version) or have an absolute power over (extreme version). it's not exactly "human" kind of love, but rather dark and twisted one.

as we know, the light reflecting galadriel's hair inspired the creation of silmaris that bewitched morgoth.

and i think sauron recognized this light from the moment he met galadriel on that raft and that's why he lookd like he had a revelation.

we can see that sauron is already obsessed with galadriel. to the point of delusion. this lays a groundwork for his persistent groping for her in the 3rd age.

he knows that he is the dark, and there is this intrinsic connection between the dark and the light. they really are the twin flames. and they feel that.

and while at her very core galadriel is the light, she's gotten so familiar with the darkness that the other elves couldn't distinguish her from the evil that sauron represented! now, sauron believes he does good for the world but he himself lacks the light needed to balance the darkness. so i think he believes that just like galadriel can touch the darkness through him, he can touch the light through her.

and he already experienced that! as galadriel, the personification of the light in his eyes, gave him that link to her very being when she let him in!

he believes that galadriel would balance him out, and he wants her to be the ruler in her own right (in reality sauron would turn galadriel into a tyrant tho, imo).

the connection they have is the profoundly unique one that they are only able to establish with one another, so it's like he doesn't want to let go of the only one with whom he feels that.

and another reason why they managed to establish this link (other than the fate bc i do believe the show portrays their bond as the destined, rather mystical one), is bc they opened up to one another, feeling understood for the first time in their lives. yes, sauron didn't tell her who he was, but he still was vulnerable and real around her, not putting on an act. and it's not just that he related and empathized with the one who was hurt by his and morgoth's actions, she inadvertently gave him the forgiveness for that!

one could argue that sauron loves only himself. well, that's the thing, he saw himself in galadriel! it was as if she was his mirror, but maybe even better, more perfect version of him as she had the light he lacked. his mirror, yet the personification of the light itself.

[wordbunch]

Time to say a handful of things abt s02 finale!!!

under the cut so you can avoid it! :)

However I am very much looking forward to reading everyones comments opinions feelings etc ♡

Did I expect to cry over the death of freaking king durin in the first 0.3 minutes??? That scene was so incredibly well done and I was like omg am I glad to be witnessing this for the first time🥹😭 yes I'm still pissed I couldn't see LOTR in cinemas cause I was still in freaking diapers

NAAARSILLLLLLLL narsil our beloved, I was squealing, yes OUT LOUD. narsil bbygirl you will always be famous 💅🏻 elendil go slay

I know yall pay him dust but ISILDUR I always love to see him and I love him and theo being the resident trouble brothers duo (its giving merry and pippin but Doomed). Sorry not sorry but yall moved on too fast (I DIDNT!) from the fact he feels guilty for his moms death. pls i am HUGGING HIM! his doe eyes I am deceased. pls I just want to stare at his face for eternity. MY PERSONAL HEADCANON WAS CONFIRMED 😩💦 that boy kisses like he is STARVEDDDD

[Redacted thoughts here]

Stranger yes we knew he was gonna be gandalf but. I love a name drop. I love Tom and I love choosing friendship over power and I love the staff and I love everything . They're giving me my childhood dreamlike feeling and I am so grateful I get to see a glimpse of that story 🥹💛

So many SPEECHES foreshadowing SO MANY THINGS. I am obsessed. The absolute cruelty of celebrimbors death and the death of his works....the one SINGLE TEAR on annatars face....dare I say peak p o e t I c cinema.

Where do I even begin with HALADRIEL ✨️✨️✨️ charlie the lord of acting and just like. in his eyes you can see everything and more. I need to write a dissertation on their duel istg

The way he didnt hesitate to absolutely PURR "GALADRRRIEL" every. single. time. [Redacted thoughts]

I WOULD HAVE PLACED A CROWN ON YOUR HEAD.

do you want me to like die?????

I SEE YOU.

yes actually they do want me to die.

HUMAN HALBRAND???

And RIP to me indeed.

[Ultra redacted thoughts]

I audibly WHIMPERED. sweet lord i was like My poor babygirl has to endure this manipulation 😩😩😩😩 he stooped so low and I was so here for it but girl i would have F O L D E D 😔✊🏻

Then galadriel on galadriel violence??? The only thing better than galadriel TWO galadriels actually.

but then.

the elrond and rivendell of it all. rob aramayo has never looked more gorgeous than when he took nenya to heal Gal. WE GET TO SEE HEALER ELROND GROWING INTO HIMSELF WITH OUR OWN EYES!!!! you don't UNDERSTAND i spent 20 YEARS dreaming of rivendell and now I get to see it coming to be!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭💚💚💚💚 the way that you can see gears turning in his head as he takes the ring. the camerawork ate and devoured i fear - with your own eyes you can see him growing. developing. like yes I am feeling more ready to take charge of some things. what if I CAN do it. what if I CAN make so many things and people so much better????

and u will babyboy 🥹🥹🥹🥹

Do i even need to add i had full body chills at the scene of elrond,gil,galadriel and arondir!!!!!!! on the cliff!!!!!!

BITCH THE SUN STILL RISES!!!!! Pity CAN defeat sauron!!! friendship and light DO WIN over darkness!!!! The tolkienism of it all. i will rewatch a hundred times and then some.

[ceescedasticity]

Discussion: When hobbits in the Shire are taught to read and write, what script are they using?

My own impression is that it is something other than Tengwar or Cirth — I feel like calling things "elf-runes" implies the existence of one or more other kinds of runes/letters, possibly more familiar ones.

As for where this other alphabet came from, I see three major possibilities:

Hobbits developed it themselves.

It was developed by Men off in the East or South somewhere, and eventually was adopted in the northwest of Middle-earth.

It was invented by Númenóreans during their "elves suck!" period.

My own opinion: Some Men sufficiently far to the East and/or South undoubtedly have their own scripts that they're very happy with, but the script widely used in northwestern Middle-earth is a Númenórean invention.

Arguments for this:

It wouldn't have existed in the mid-Second Age when Sauron forged the One Ring and used Tengwar for the inscription even though he's said in the present time not to use elf-runes.

It would have been forcibly spread across a wide area to many peoples as the export of an empire, who might not have been so quick to adopt or invent a new script when they already had access to two perfectly functional alphabets.

It would likely have been the first writing system learned by even Faithful Númenóreans, and the only writing system learned by many of them, so it probably would have been the most common writing system in Gondor and Arnor. (Tengwar is around as a prestige writing system, but if people only learn one, it's the other one.)

However I'm somewhat torn on this because I like the "somewhere East/South" option better, mainly because one can imagine it being developed gradually over time like most real-world writing systems.

So—

[clockworkprism]

The Rings of Power discourse is the most frustrating thing ever. It might be more annoying than the Star Wars 8 discourse which is saying something.

No, the show is not accurate to the lore. Galadriel was not developing in the second age, she is older than the damn sun and moon. She was an ethereal being of wisdom before the events of rings of power started. Among other deviations well beyond the excuses of compressing the timeline or lack of rights. Also no, that in and of itself is not enough to write the show off as bad.

Yes, it's better than the Hobbit movies. The Hobbit trilogy was hot garbage why are people using that as a yard stick? That's like saying Star Wars episode 8 is better than episode 2. Filming yourself wiping your ass after explosive diarrhea is better than episode 2. The Hobbit movies are down there with the live action Avatar movie. It would be a remarkable achievement for RoP to have been worse than the Hobbit movies.

People now are hating on Frodo???? I don't like gate keeping fandom, you can and should criticize characters. But really?

Finally, the Galadriel Sauron shipping, which apparently was intentional by the show runners, is just beyond ridiculous. Galadriel was already basically a different character with the same name. But Sauron crushing after an elf? He's a demigod obsessed with order. He is completely aromantic. He did not need a love interest. This is Five Hargreaves all over again.

The show is not all bad. The dwarven women should have had beards because a lack of even basic sexual dimorphism is a big part of the legendarium but I love the actress they picked and their plotline is one of the better written. The orc perspective is something that is present even in the LOTR book.

Anyway, if you like the show good for you. But please stop trying to act like it's accurate to or somehow elevates the lore and definitely don't hate on Frodo to make some kind of point.

[letrune]

You know what annoys me in Harry Potter?

And let us imagine for a moment that the author is Hatsune Miku. That it is an adaptation of Neil Cicierega's Potter Puppet Pals. That Warner Bros is not holding the franchise with patents and trademarks well beyond the powers of even millionaires.

Ah, nice to imagine, isn't it? Still with me?

The books are wasted potential. Every new thing coming in helps to show how the magical world is as flawed and xenophobic as regular, mundane version of it. Slavery, segregation by "blood purity", racial segregation, magic supremacy and cishet white male magic supremacy, too.

And then a downtrotten guy shows up. He is a hero, has loads of cash and a fame beyond his age. You would think the dude from the literal closet would CHANGE THE SYSTEM. To push along a new, better, more liberated, more equal world. Maybe even prevent the next bad guy from rising by removing the key aspects that made him rise to power, like slavery, the segregations, the supremacist ideas, and so on. Even if just pushing it in a way.

You would think the main character would fix the system. You know why?

Because every fantasy story, even if by just getting the just and wise king or queen on the throne, does that. The Lord of the Rings does not end by blowing up Sauron. It goes on, the world has to be changed to prevent a new, different Sauron. We saw glimpes on how anyone, even the purest heart, could go down that path.

So why can't this boy who lives in a closet? It is WASTED POTENTIAL. Imagine the stories you can tell! Now that you got a better world coming, would the old jerks not hate it? Would some change? What new issues arise? It is a fantasy, so you can do whatever you want - and then go the Man in Black route and have the magical slowly dripped into the mundane. Or, again, as with the (comic book) Men in Black, we had shown how even the utopian parts get issues not seen before, all based on xenophobia, human folly, etc.

You make a status quo that sucks, and then GO AND CHANGE IT. The big bad in a bad system is not the guy with the biggest gun, but the system that fails.

Oh, sure, you can make a story about the cyclical nature of revolutions - and yes, a bloodless revolution is the best for the little people, but in fiction, we may have the bad guys represent issues. So, you can make a story where a revolution leads to another in the next cycle. But...

You have to change the bad systems. Say that some things may change. Even if it is just a new school being put forward in the end, with empathy, and two characters talking about how the world will change if they keep going on... You have to change. The utopian status quo is the only one what the audience may like to be returned to.

When Bilbo comes back to the Shire, it is almost the same, but Bilbo himself changed. It was a bit for the better, but not that much that new stories could not be told... and what he thought as the status quo is shown to have changed. He became more artistic. He wrote a book, inspired by his "miserable adventure"... and then, later, Tolkien slipped in the ring from the sequel. It was not in the original draft! The ending did not changed, but we had a plot hook.

Though, Tolkien already had given us all the potential in the story. He hinted at a bigger world.

So imagine Miku, writing a thing but then she does not develop the things. The potential goes wasted, and when it returns, it has this "stop nagging me, here, a stupid retcon for your stupid questions" thing. Potential squandered! Wasted! No wonder the fans would go to write their own, for better or worse.

I am so happy Hatsune Miku is a talented writer and not some woman slipping into right-wing hatred, akin to some dude who loves gold and the aesthetics of power, and having none of it in his tiny hands or something. That would be-

Oh. I just realised the intro to this rant. Well, now that the train is deralied, what is my point?

If you write a story with systemic issues, you should at least attempt to resolve some of them. You got slavery? Have the main character and their friends free slaves and ban slavery when they get the power to do so.

You got a sort of space cyborg wizard nazi movement? Your character has the potential to punch them in the face, alongside B. J. Blazkowicz and Captain America, WHILE ALSO breaking the systems the space cyborg wizard nazies rely on. In fact, it should be what you do, because while your heroes give the cool action scenes, they also show their intelligence and empathy by PREVENTING new space cyborg wizard nazies coming into existence and fixing the inequalities in the world.

Sure, it is not as cool to see Mr. Potter to write a new constitution about equal rights than seeing him in a wizard duel with wizard nazies, but you can have both. This is fantasy!

You can get the audience to believe that a man can fly, that a single guy can save the world by throwing a ring into a volcano, or that a boy living in a closet is a chosen one - letting them change the world for the better is not a stretch, it is catharsis! That is where the happy ending happens.

[katurdayss]

It’s been a full week since the finale of Rings of Power and every time I've sat down to try to write my S2 review I see a new take and start rethinking. I eventually circle back to the same ideas tho, so fuck it, here are my thoughts in no particular order.

Season 2 was a lot better than Season 1. This is true for most shows, as S1 is usually a 'lets find our footing' scenario, but also these seasons are SHORT. Which leads me to...

This show would benefit GREATLY from seasons longer than 8 episodes. The way they've structured it means they juggle a LOT of storylines at once. Sometimes this is great, other times it feels like storylines suffer because they're just planting seeds for the future and it doesn't really have an impact on the Main Storyline for the season. For me, Arondir was one of these. His started with this great potential for how an immortal would understand the concept of grieving the forever loss of a loved one. Unfortunately that was really watered down into tracking down Adar to kill him, full stop. Which brings us to...

What.the.fuck.is.the.timeline? How much time has passed? S1 and S2 feel like they happened in a month. I don’t care if the timeline is compressed, I still want to feel time passing other than noticing Annatar's/Sauron’s hair magically grew like 4 inches in one episode.

Speaking of Annatar, I feel like what the show did really well was creating original dialogue/moments (even with canon things) instead of what I would call fan/studio service. The parts that I have loved the most were the more original moments: like anything involving the dwarves, the development of Miriel and Elendil, the Ents, and Cirdan. The parts that I felt were weakest were when the show relied too heavily or used dialogue from the Jackson movies. I didn't want the Stranger to be Gandalf, not because it isn't canon, but because Peter Jackson already did that. I don't need multiple call backs to his movies (I love those movies too). I'm here for NEW STUFF. Expand my Tolkien universe, show me shit I've never seen before that will make my head explode. That weird nameless thing Arondir killed? Imagine the Cardi B 'What is that' meme and that was me. Fucking great. I don't want to be constantly reminded of the Jackson version of shit, I'm here to see Prime's version.

That brings me to the idea of consistency. I have yet to figure out what the methodology the showrunners/writers have when choosing to follow or not follow canon. Example, they included that little orc family but didn't make Elrond an elf lord? WHY? His lineage is like royal af. Even when not following canon, I feel like the writing can be really inconsistent. The Numenor storyline is a great example of this. Sometimes it's awesome, but the dialogue for the Kings Men characters are often really cringy, and not because what they're saying is fascist. Galadriel is another one for me. Do I need to like her, no, but her character is also used as a studio catch all for every woman character archetype possible. She's single-minded and driven, she's soft and caring, she's thoughtful and wise, every dude apparently is in love with her and it swings WILDLY from episode to episode. You need space to build in these changes to make them believable, which see points 2 & 3.

And finally, on the subject of romance/shipping, for the love of god a story can be great without all the fan service romantic tension editing and teasing. People can exist without romantic partners. People exist without romance. I literally do it every day. I'm not saying you need to make characters asxeual or anything either. Just you know, let people be people. Did The Kiss bother me? No, but you also could of written Elrond slipping Galadriel a lock pick numerous other ways. Is Sauron obsessed with Galadriel? Sure, but maybe its because her hair shines with the light of the west or something and not this tired trope of 'bE mY qUeeN'.

There are other things I would personally change, but I thoroughly enjoyed this season. It made me do a whole lot of reckoning with the ideas of canon representation vs just good storytelling for the audience, which is a really good thing. But it also showed me the folly in treating every media property the same, because Tolkien is not Marvel is not GOT is not The Witcher. You can't be like, 8 episodes works for X so it should work for this too, or x worked for GOT so we'll use that here as well. Maybe it's the Graphic Designer in me but just because Pepsi and Coca Cola are brand soda's doesn't mean the design language and marketing is the same, ya know?

[greenleaf4stuff]

I saw you're up for asks!

I've just finished The Silmarillion and wondered what your favoruite part is?

How do you develop your story ideas?

What are you most looking forward to in RoP season 3?

Hi @ultrarebelheart and thank you so much for your questions! :D <3 Sorry that this took me a bit, I was busier than anticipated! Due to the (somewhat) lengthy answers, I will put two of them behind a cut to protect people's dashboards. ^_^'

What are you most looking forward to in RoP season 3?

Considering I am an Adar fan, I am both very interested in and apprehensive about whether or not they will give any more focus to the uruk under Sauron's leadership. And whether the "orcs" will end up being a faceless mass/simple "cannon fodder", or if the writers will let them retain some agency and personality at least.

I found s1 and s2's efforts to humanize the uruk incredibly compelling, and I see Adar especially as a welcome new addition to Tolkien's universe, so I hope that won't get completely left behind in s3.

(Additionally, I am still hoping we might get more insights into Adar and his life in whatever fashion. I don't care if it's a fool's hope, I would love to see him return, his character is so very interesting.)

I also cannot help but be curious about which humans Sauron will choose for the Nine, and whether or not we will get to see Númenor defeat him in battle/see him start his shenanigans in Númenor in S3 already. Another thing I'd love to see are Elrond and the beginnings of Rivendell.

How do you develop your story ideas?

Oh that is such a good question - there's two different ways that work for me. For the first one, I usually start with some kind of base idea. A prompt, a trope, a type of interaction, a scene, something that pops into my head or I find compelling. Inspiration can come from all manner of sources; the media I write for itself, prompt lists, tropes, stuff from other pieces of media.

I then write the idea down - a bit like a blurb, just a very basic outline so I won't accidentally forget it, and maybe I will also make some additional bullet points for specific scenes, interactions and the likes. (Sometimes that is already enough to get me writing.)

Strangely enough, I usually manage to include a somewhat-coherent plot into most of my bigger ideas even at that point.

If the idea stays with me and gets to marinade in my head (so to speak), I will usually go back and add more and more onto it, and eventually expand the blurb into a proper step-by-step outline about what I would like to see in the story, whether it is a one-shot or a multi-chapter work.

The other way is that I get completely blindsided with an idea and just start writing, without a plan or any preparation, as has happened with my last few fanfics. For the long one ("Of Convenience"), I eventually had enough time to come up with a basic idea for future scenes (after chapter 4 or 5 I believe) and where I wanted things to lead to, but the start was just completely improvised. This works best for single scenes, drabbles and one-shots I find.

I hope that answers the question? :D

I've just finished The Silmarillion and wondered what your favourite part is?

That is awesome, congrats, I hope you enjoyed the book? Full disclosure, most of the Silm-related information that I make use of is from wikis, articles, meta pieces, videos/video essays or excerpts. I have the book at home and supposedly read in full when I was a child, but - I cannot remember any of it, for some reason. I usually read up the parts that (hopefully) help me understand TROP better or that I might need for stories, or watch videos about interesting topics.

That being said, due to TROP, I am getting more and more interested in Celebrimbor's story and am also trying to learn more about the geography of Arda, specifically the places where Morgoth and/or Sauron resided (and Adar would have).

(Sorry if that is a really disappointing answer! ^_^')

[lesbiansforboromir]

(RoP ep 5 spoilers)

I was rlly down on rop after episode 4 w/ the flagrant racism and what felt like a real dip in writing quality after the first 3 eps - both the Rhûn and Southlander survivors plots could have been done so much better, Bombadil & Barrow Wights go back to the shadow pls...

But I just watched ep 5 & we're so back!!! Love the delicious deepening poison of the Eregion plot, the web that Celebrimbor has been spun in; every scene in Numenor pulling no punches, + 'our armies cannot defeat both Adar & Sauron. Not alone' 👀

Khazad Dum developing fascinatingly as always, the web beginning to be woven around Young Durin as well (though I miss that spark of threatening ambition from Disa in the 1st season)

And these little teases of Adar & Galadriel have built up the anticipation for that plot to come in the next eps so well, Sam Hazeldine killing it!!

Will be gutted not to see Alex Tarrant again. King 😔✌🏼

Did you have any thoughts? Always enjoy your insightful takes.

Sorry this took so long to reply too I've been enduring diverse horrors but yes! I experienced the last two episodes very similarly, ep 4 was extremely disappointing just for the genuinely shocking orientalism present and whilst it had some good scenes (really enjoyed the elaboration of Isildur's history with his mother and Theo identifying with it so viscerally, the ents were beautifully voice-acted and designed and, of course, big worm) in the majority it was just all the most superfulous plotlines in this show that really have no business being in this story bundled into one episode and none of them even justified themselves by being... good.

And again, cannot express enough how bad Tom's so called 'cornish accent' was, kind of compounding the show's clearly very unexamined and dismissive attitude towards culture, accents, ethnicities and employing any of them with skill or respect.

But with that in mind I wasn't very surprised that the next episode was just better to watch, it had all the plot-relevant plotlines in it 😂 AND was just in general better television. Like I've said this before, but they've clearly worked on and better'd their understanding of 'tolkienian dialogue' for this season, I'm fully convinced by every scene and especially Miriel and Elendil's dialogue, 'when the wolves are licking at the cradle' felt particularly good to me.

And!! Full commitment to the religious conflict! Like I know people will moan and gripe that Tolkien SAID Eru wasn't worshipped but I think he meant that in a completely different way to what most people think it means. Like the Meneltarma exists, the holidays for thanksgiving to Eru exist, hereticism exists and Numenor's story is one of religious oppression, resentment and rebellion. It is a no-brainer to make that clear to the audience through reverence, shrines and prayer. I was particularly won over by the use of 'Nasie' in the shrine desicration scene, which is the quenya version of 'Amen' from Tolkien's quenya translation of the Lord's Prayer (nerd).

I'm also genuinely enjoying the Eregion plotline! Which I did not expect. I think just purely for the acting actually, like it's not groundbreaking to say that Charles Edwards is a brilliant actor but still! It's worth mentioning! He's portraying Celebrimbor in this poignantly empathetic way, not flinching from the frailties but in a way that keeps me with him emotionally 100% of the time.

And I'm enjoying Charlie Vickers offering us, the audience, a clear understanding of exactly the tools he's using to try and manipulate the people around him whilst maintaining the idea that those tactics would work. I also like that there's an effort to make Celebrimbor appear as competent as he's supposed to be this season, even though it doesn't really make up for how little the forging of the elven rings was about him initially.

And in this episode I was REALLY taken with the scene where Mirdania puts on one of the rings, there was a gentleness to the way he found her hand to pull it off and a sort of immediate comprehension of the situation that made me go hell yeah! Thats a lord of elves! Thats a masterful person! Thats someone who is gentle at heart!

Everytime the balrog comes up I'm a little annoyed and concerned, I really do not want to see the destruction of Khazad-dum in the second age, but other than that the dwarf plot line also indeed continues to be excellent. I have lesbian blinkers on about Disa so it's hard to be unbiased, but god the WAY the relationship between the two Durins is progressing... UNBEARABLY heartbreaking, they are putting in work to make this complex and to preserve both characters as ultimately good and to keep the slow disaster inevitable anyway. My personal brand of narrative agony writ large. And! Really appreciated that they had Durin tell Celebrimbor that greed was never a part of his father's personality until the ring's influence, a small thing that helps nod to the larger antisemitism issue.

HOWEVER! Having said all that, the episode was more emotionally polarising for me than solely good.

Firstly, whilst I am enjoying Narvi's characterisation, I was enjoying it mainly because in every scene with him I was like 'wow! I love this guy, he's quiet and thoughtful and a little awkward but also knows his stuff, he and Celebrimbor will get along so well! can't wait to see their friendship progress! 🙂' And then... the doors of durin were already made and Celebrimbor made a joke about Narvi being a thief? And that's the last we saw of them together 😅 Like it really felt like a check box for the writers, and is one of these mirriad of little moments where you're immediately thinking about how much time the harfoot/gandalf plotline is taking up in this very time-constrained show and wish SO much that it could be used for THESE kinds of relational developments. And I mean I know ultimately Narvi and Celebrimbor's relationship is not important for the overall plotline of the show either, and it's not a crime to focus on the characters they're using to drive the story along, but it's still disappointing and sad to see it so relegated to the sideline.

AND THEN god, the scene with Pharazon and Kemen. Like I already feel so blindsided about how fast Pharazon became king, and with the use of the Eagle too. Like I appreciate the idea that Numenor's relationship to the west is complicated and that the eagle still holds weight when elves don't, ultimately like... the Eagle came to Miriel's coronation! The fact that this was apparently such a political blow to her that there was no rebuttal she could make seems a bit insane, does she really have no political allies to debate this for her in parliment? And I know I'm the 'lore doesn't matter' guy I know but... why didn't the eagle speak? We all know they can!

But that's not even my main issue with the Pharazon and Kemen scene, DELIGHTED to finally have the show acknowledge that Kemen had a mother and wasn't grown from Pharazon's own body or something, but... okay so RoP DOES AGREE that the dunedain can just HAVE the gift of prophecy.. so why have we slandered my poor benighted palantiri once again and given them powers they have never possessed? (I know why, the cool Miriel and Elendil vision misinterpretation couldn't have happened if they hadn't I know I know but it hurts it hurts okay!!)

BUT THAT'S STILL NOT EVEN MY MAIN ISSUE, my main issue is... this is the first time in the WHOLE SHOW we've heard anyone mention death as an issue between elves and mortals. Like Pharazon seems to have touched the sceptre and been imbued with the sudden realisation that is sucks elves get to live forever when humans can't. It's being portrayed in this like 'well clearly this is unreasonable, only a tyrant would think this' when this is one of the most emotionally relatable narratives in the whole canon! And multiple characters have MASSIVE motive to connect with this resentment. I mean, didn't Elendil literally lapse in faith BECAUSE his wife died??

It's made most gruelling by the fact that RoP got SO close to crafting a narrative that would have perfectly introduced and accelerated this resentment. Miriel went to war on the word of an elf who will live near-as-makes-no-difference forever and who HAS been alive for thousands of years already and that war killed a huge swathe of humans, many of whom were young with their whole lives ahead of them, but the thousands of years old elf still survived. Like that basic formula IS the catalyst for the first wave of faithless kings of numenor in the original canon! Minastir dragged Numenor to Gil-Galad's defense after Tar-Telperien spent so many years resisting that course of action and Minastir was the last faithful king of numenor for a millenia or more. So you would think! It would be EASY for the show to capitalise on that and show kingsmen associate the deaths of their loved ones with their resentment towards elves and the west who decreed it be so! But no! Somehow, the connection seems like... avoided almost!

Earien is angry at Miriel for taking her brother to war because of an elven artifact that she percieves as mystical and untrustworthy, and that sentiment is repeated by all the kingsmen we see (though many like Belzagar dont even seem that emotionally invested at all, it's more of a political ploy for them apparently). But literally none of them seem to have even considered the fact that dying at all sucks and apparently the option to NOT do it could be on the table, bizarre when their founding king's brother made that exact choice.

I don't know the cynic in me feels like it's an attempt to lead the viewer into an unthinking dichotomy of Faithful = Good and Kingsmen = Evil with no nuance or sympathy offered to the normal people of numenor who are reasonably asking why they have to die when elves don't! Which is would be a frankly crazy take in a show where sympathy for the villainous seems to be like... A HUGE PART of the overarching narrative they're constructing!!

And it's also clearly working if all the viciousness towards Earien is anything to go by, like my god the woman's just doing what she thinks to be the right choice with all the information she has at her disposal and since NO ONE ELSE (Elendil) seems to want to actually have a calm and respectful conversation with her about why she's mistaken and have decided just shouting and threats are the best way to go (Elendil) I do not blame her even one bit.

In general the Numenor plotline remains the MOST like... like it tears me fully in half. I am in love with the designs, the acting is great, even the FOUNDATIONS of these themes and relationships are immaculate (Elendil being initially a reluctant martyr and a disconnected unsympathetic father, Isildur survivor guilt, Elendil having a daughter who was wooed by kingsman ideology, Anarion's estrangement from his father over his revolutionist religious views etc) But they're just not handling it as well as the rest of the show's plots are. It feels rushed and muddy, and the whole 'elves coming over 'ere stealing our jobs' scene still haunts me at night. I can never get over it.

AND LAST THING I am not... content with Valandil's death. Like the scene itself was great, and my god is the music this season hitting right, but I feel like it was a waste to kill him off so early. The tragedy of it was certainly immense and it's going to drive the tension in Numenor up for sure, but Valandil was really carving a place out for himself as an interesting character in his own right and I would have liked to see him go a bit further into the story before we lost him. Though, of course, he always did have to die.

[thelandswemadeofpaper]

I can't hardly blame Tolkien for spending so much time creating names and cultures, its so fun!

I - finally - have courage to actuallly develop the crossovers and plots I have been writing and slowy creating in my head

And making up names and customs for my favorite Arda's people (my beloved Easterlings) is awesome. I need to be careful so I don't 'sanctify' them, for lack of better words, as much some people love to make them Feminism, Queer Accepting, Not-Racist, Unflawed just like some people do in real life with Native American Cultures.

I genuine thinking about men having more than one wife like some cultures had, not that I approve or fetish it, its just...historical? In some parts of Middle-East? I just don’t want to make Arda Eastern Culture...perfect?

What I can do to make them more 'feminist' is that, since so many men die in Sauron's army, and Easterlings are mostly trying to survive in a bad enviroment, its won't be historically incorrect for women to take men roles becaus of necessity

My Easterling names and words so far

Enni:

Kurma

Tenka

Vika

Viya

Kurko

Kurya

Naku

Rutta

Nysa

Wyla

Penthu:

Freggo

Briegga

Brinna

Adhina

Kuhina

Mharai

Inra

Runa

Welfa:

Oresha

Araya

Suriki

Yefa

Karuk:

Gretta

Dhurara

Kulthan

Valko

kheda (widow)

bri (beauty)

hina (bride)

ku (sea)

van (clan)

nel (woman)

nul (man)

Nelva (literally 'house of women', the place where widows and women whose husbands are away live with their younger children and orphans)

The tribes are deeply intertwined due to the constant exterminations of their people done in the past, both by Edain and Orcs alike, many parts of their cultures were lost, but those that remained were adapted among them

Although they can no longer say they have 'nobles', each tribe is divided into clans, each one proud eith their crafts and all following the same naming system. A single syllable added to the sufix '- van', while they don't have surnames, the firstborn naturally has the syllabe in their names (like the head of Tuivan could be named Tuikan or Tuimer), in daughter or a second son's name its optional

The Karuk and the Welfa are more present in the Sauron's army than the two others tribes, for their weapon and horse skils are more prized there and, with exception of Enni's boat-building and navigation skills, the sea tribe mostly contribute by farming and fishing. The Penthu are forced to give up their elaborate arts and gifts in exchange for more useful crafts produced in mass.

However they have an upper class, those who remain wealthy and powerful despite the ruin of their homeland and its inhabitants, allying themselves with the Dark Enemy in search of glory and participating in the terrorization of their own folk

This is my first time actually writing beyond just random making ideas like that post in 2022

I still starting and I want it to be a crossover, so still in making

Easterling, a simple term, often spoken with anger, fear and mockery, soon lost his original meaning. A vast word that embraced all the folks that lived beyond the Sea of Rhun. From the wild Karuk horsemasters, the skilled artesans of Penthu with their pottery, glasses and paint, the fierce warriors born in Welfa, and those that lived and died in the cold blue rivers of Enni.

[imakemywings]

Fanfiction Author Interview Game

Thank you @mithrilhearts for the tag! (oﾟvﾟ)ノ

How many works do you have on AO3?

168 presently

What's your total AO3 word count?

908,813

Your top 5 stories by kudos/likes:

Carpe Natem (I blame this popularity of this on Spanish Tiktok, where apparently someone linked to this fic)

Transcript of Divorce Proceedings: Mairon v. Melkor

Surprise Developments (Recalculating)

The Sleeping King

Laying a Foundation

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Almost always! I always like to acknowledge people taking the time to say something about the fic.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Well that's certainly debatable lol

Silenced? (Maglor gets his mouth sewn shut by brigands)

Asphodel? (Daeron visits the aftermath of the Nirnaeth where his lover Fingon died)

A Silent Echo? (Fingon and Fingolfin process Turgon and Aredhel's disappearance)

Something Sleepless in Mirkwood? (Thranduil is terminally ill and Elrond doesn't want to believe it)

Haunted, Hunted? (Elwing is hunted by the sons of Feanor)

Sandbox Love? (Galadriel is in love with Luthien who has other things to do)

One Last Song? (Daeron visits Luthien on her deathbed)

Extinguished? (Feanor and Nerdanel arrive at the scene of Finwe's murder)

A Cup Always Half-Empty? (Maglor pines)

Queen Under the Mountain? (Dis after the events of The Hobbit)

I could go on

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

In terms of relativity to canon, definitely What the Water Gave Me, a fix-it of sorts for Nienor and Finduilas. But I've written lots of other random fluff pieces that have no angst at all.

Do you write crossovers?

No, not my thing. I've written AUs of other works, like my Silmarillion Crimson Peak AU, but I don't count that as a genuine crossover because no Crimson Peak characters are in the fic.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Once in a while, but very infrequently.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do...not sure how to characterize the "kind" though. The smutty kind.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah! Can't remember which ones though! It's in the author's notes somewhere.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I tried one time and I was a terrible partner and I felt so bad I've never done it again. I work better alone.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

Too hard to say!

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Ahh several, unfortunately. I had one that was about Sauron and Tar-Miriel in Numenor, but I could never get the tone right, so that one's dead tbh I also had a modern AU about Aredhel returning home for the holidays after disappearing (and marrying Eol) but that also never got finished...There was also a follow-up to my f!Thingdhros smut that involved Daemags dyke drama

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, for sure.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Soooo bad at scene-setting. The characters are arguing in The Void.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Very much not a fan. Unless there's an immediate translation, it's just distracting and I don't think it really adds anything. Someone who doesn't speak the language isn't even going to know how to read it so they're not even getting the "sound" of it. The more of it there is, the more distracting and annoying it is.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I'm not even halfway through Veilguard yet, but I assume there will eventually be fic.

What's your favorite fic you've written?

Couldn't possibly say honestly...many of them are difficult to compare because they're just very different

(｡･∀･)ﾉﾞ

[neyafromfrance95]

I find it so interesting that even though Galadriel will “close the door” on Sauron, she never renounces ownership over Nenya and even takes it with her to Valinor, something that sort of was his idea, and even tho he never touched it, it’s a still a part of him, always with her. RoP is setting this nicely in S2, with her feud with Elrond. And Nenya is also known as “the Ring of Adamant”, and Sauron’s fortress in Mordor, Barad-dûr, is also called “Tower of Adamant”. And Galadriel is still tempted by the One Ring thousands of years later. I think Galadriel blocks Sauron because she’s aware she can’t resist him, she would eventually succumb and be at his side. I’m so excited to see the “the Last Temptation” scene, honestly. They better not disappoint, please

i think one of the most fascinating aspects about galadriel in tolkien canon is that back then no one dared or even wished to write female characters like that in a fantasy genre.

galadriel wants to lead, wants to rule, wants glory, and is tempted by power.

but in trop right now, while she is an ambitious leader who always does things her way, she is mainly motivated by revenge.

lorebros say she needs to become wiser and tamer to have an "accurate" development, but tolkien!galadriel has never been a pure virgin mary the lorebros claim her to be. she actually needs to become wiser, much stronger and even more thirsty for power than she is right now! so what will take galadriel's ambitions to the next level? doesn't it make sense for it to be an influence of the dark lord?

even if she is an unwilling companion or if it's a forced mind-palace shenanigans, sauron would slowly mold her into something alike himself, would give her a taste of true power that she won't ever be able to forget. she would close the doors on him after seeing for herself how real the possibility of her becoming a tyrant is.

but if she were to overcome his temptations as early as s2, trop and lotr contexts wouldn't fit together in a way that makes sense. her suddenly overpowering sauron would feel too premature and unearned.

and while in the future, she becomes so strong that sauron isn't able to access her mind, she still can't stop fighting him. besides gaining more power, her main goal is still fighting sauron.

i think it's truly fascinating that she takes nenya with her to valinor. it's as if she is unwilling to fully give up her deepest desire for power, as if she is still unable to let the fighter go. but with added trop context, it would also indicate that she just can not give up the only thing that connects her with sauron! nenya is the only reminder of him and of their fated connection so she can never take it off!

so just like sauron needs to still covet her in the end of trop, galadriel needs to still be consumed by her fight against him in order for their stories to make sense in regards to lotr.

[theworldsoftolkein]

The Éowyn Mystique - by Gerry Canavan | The Los Angeles Book Review | 10th/01/2025

Gerry Canavan reviews Kenji Kamiyama’s animated film “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.”

ALTHOUGH J. R. R. TOLKIEN never set foot in Milwaukee (or anywhere in the United States), Marquette University is the unlikely home of the author’s drafts of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55)—and every two years for the last decade, I have taught a Tolkien class there that draws on this unexpected treasure trove. In many ways the course has become a strange sort of reverse-adaptation class; only, this year’s college seniors were mostly born after the 2003 theatrical release of Peter Jackson’s Return of the King, and it is very clear to me that many, if not most, of my students come to the books through the films (if indeed they have read the books before my class at all).

Our discussions frequently bounce off Jackson’s choices in ways that I hope are generative for better understanding Tolkien’s original intentions; if Sherlock Holmes fans have to deal with “Watsonian” explanations that describe events from within the story world and “Doylist” explanations that describe events from a point of view outside it, readers of Tolkien in the 21st century always find themselves reckoning with the Jacksonian alongside the Tolkienist and the Gandalfian.

This tension between visions of Middle-earth may be no clearer anywhere than in the character of Éowyn, whose iconic victory over the diabolical Witch-King in Jackson’s Return of the King was a formative moment of political awakening for many of my female students. You remember it: the Witch-King believes himself to exist under a prophecy that promises him he can be killed by no living man—but Éowyn rips off the helmet that is obscuring her identity, proclaims “I am no man,” and stabs the monster through the face, in one of the fantasy genre’s most enduringly delightful contractual loopholes.

It’s the unhappy task of my students, then, to read the rest of Éowyn’s story as it is presented in the novel. She wakes up in the Houses of Healing after the battle, and the men—who have all been saved by her heroism from a monster they could not themselves defeat!—are disappointed that she didn’t stay in Rohan like she was told to. They credit Merry, Éowyn’s squire, who sliced the Witch-King’s knee with a special sword he’d acquired hundreds of pages before, with the kill, on the grounds that he is not a man either, but a hobbit—and they stand over her bedside fretting about what to do with Éowyn now given that she is still so very unhappy, asking for a horse and a weapon so she can have another chance at dying in battle like she’d wished.

Earlier, in another deeply quotable moment, Éowyn had told Aragorn, the future king, that she viewed the expectations that had been piled on her due to her gender as a “cage” that she feared worse than death, dreading not simply the feeling of imprisonment but the idea that she would get used to the bars, even come to rely on them, until “all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.” That Tolkien, an Oxford don and pre–Vatican II Catholic, could write such a stirring defense of women’s agency almost two decades before the publication of The Feminine Mystique is shocking—but what is perhaps, sadly, less shocking is that he can’t really commit himself to the idea that Éowyn’s revolutionary desire for equality is a positive development. Instead, he sees her desires as a symptom of the deep sickness of the world in the moment of Sauron’s ascension—and the solution, in the end, is for Éowyn to put down her weapons, become a healer, and most importantly, become a wife and a mother.

In the earliest conception of The Lord of the Rings, Éowyn’s fated husband was supposed to be Aragorn himself, a happy ending that nearly all of the saga is still pointing toward narratively; at the last minute, however, Tolkien added the character of Arwen, an elf princess, to be Aragorn’s partner, leaving Éowyn an unresolved loose thread. Remaining deeply depressed in the House of Healing, and forbidden from returning to the battlefield by order of the still-uncrowned king, Éowyn meets another wounded soldier there—Faramir, a heroic Gondorian nobleman—and is so inspired by his kindness, decency, and piety that she renounces all the aspects of the character that made so many of my students, as young girls, fall in love with her in the first place. But the book reports this as good news: “And to the Warden of the Houses Faramir said: ‘Here is the Lady Éowyn of Rohan, and now she is healed.’”

To say the novel’s version of the Éowyn plotline lands with a thud in the classroom would be a severe understatement. Nearly every instance of the class has unraveled over Éowyn in its final weeks, trying to understand why Tolkien could get so close to a 2024-approved opinion on gender fluidity only to trip over his own feet at the finish line. There are, of course, elements of the book that might help us see this picture in more nuanced terms: the fact that it is ultimately Aragorn’s task to become a healer too; the fact that the book’s 100-page-long in-universe appendices reveal people still arguing about Éowyn and the right way to understand her life centuries later, with the war songs of Rohan remembering her first and foremost as a warrior, not as a wife; and even the fact that the ancient text that will eventually be translated into English as Lord of the Rings is in the possession of Éowyn’s descendants for most of those centuries, and that those descendants are known to have edited the manuscript in unknown ways for not entirely clear purposes. But in the end, there are some number of students who think Éowyn getting married off is, simply, bullshit; no matter how incompatible the idea may be with Tolkien’s ideas about violence, gender, trauma, and recovery, what a sizable portion of my students truly seem to want is for Éowyn to break out of the hospital in the middle of the night; steal a horse, a shield, and a sword; and go on being a superhero until the end of her days.

This long preamble brings us to 2024’s animated The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, which reveals to us an older version of Éowyn who seems, potentially, to be wishing for the exact same thing. The anime is heavily indebted to Jackson’s films, not only using its famous soundtrack and elements of its visual design but even deploying Miranda Otto, Jackson’s Éowyn, as its voice-over narrator, stepping into the role that Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) played at the start of Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). This is an Éowyn living in peace after the war, in Gondor, but thinking about the legends of her own people, the Rohirrim—and in particular, thinking about a princess, Héra (Gaia Wise), who, like her, bucked her expected gender role and committed great deeds on the field of battle, only to be written out of history for her trouble. (Even this is something of a deep-cut reference by someone involved in the production who knows Lord of the Rings very well: in the published Lord of the Rings, Helm’s daughter goes completely unnamed, and all the events of the film are attributed to the men around her instead.)

The legend Éowyn tells is a crucial pivot point in the history of Rohan. The king, Héra’s father Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), is strong but proud, inadvertently causing a civil war with the notoriously untrustworthy Men of Dunland when he challenges a rude nobleman, Freca (Shaun Dooley), to a fistfight and kills him with a single punch. The resulting schism sees Helm betrayed by an untrustworthy advisor and his court in Edoras destroyed, requiring his forces to retreat to the Hornburg, where they endure a months-long siege in a brutal winter. With both his sons dead, Helm, too, ultimately falls in battle (which is why the Hornburg came to be called Helm’s Deep in his honor). Through her cleverness and resolve, and the help of allies including Olwyn (Lorraine Ashbourne, a retired shieldmaiden) and the Eagles (whom Héra is seemingly the first person to have the good sense to ask to intervene, as opposed to just sitting around waiting for them to show up), Héra is able to lead the people to victory over the usurpers, led by Freca’s son, Héra’s villainous childhood love interest Wulf (Luke Pasqualino).

But after the war, they make her cousin Fréaláf (Laurence Ubong Williams) king instead (over his own objections that Héra should be the one to lead). The choice is Rohan’s loss; from what we see in the film, Héra is the only person in the country with enough brains to see through Saruman (briefly voiced from disused audio recorded by the late Christopher Lee for the Hobbit movies), whom we witness taking up residence in Rohan at the film’s close, ominously. Instead, she rides off into the wild, seeking more adventure. In an almost MCU-esque nod toward sequels that, due to the film’s commercial failure, will likely never be made, she has been secretly contacted by a different wizard, Gandalf, who appears to be assembling a team.

The film is hardly subtle about the parallels between the story Éowyn is telling and the way her own life turned out—an early scene has Héra firmly rejecting her father’s attempt to blithely marry her off to some “Gondorian princeling,” and her own version of a feminist catchphrase sees her wearing a cursed wedding dress and wielding a blade on a flaming battlement, proclaiming, “I am bride to no man.” The older Éowyn is not only fantasizing about a different path she might have taken but also reflecting on what has happened to all the women in the story Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam wrote about the War of the Ring; it’s not hard to imagine an older Éowyn, much like the one who narrates War of the Rohirrim, reading the copy of the Red Book of Westmarch that Pippin has brought her and Faramir decades after the war and feeling a bit sour over the question of who gets lauded for their heroism and bravery, and who gets relegated to a footnote of a footnote in a long list of great and powerful kings.

By all accounts, The War of the Rohirrim did not meet either commercial or critical expectations: on a budget of $30 million, the film made only $4.6 million in its opening weekend, and has not cracked $20 million worldwide since its release. The film was very quickly put on streaming in an effort to recoup what is considered by Warner Bros. to be a major flop in an important franchise. Critics—perhaps many of them unfamiliar with anime conventions, including artistic techniques that limit detail and movement to save money on animation—certainly seemed flummoxed by the film, which generally earned quite mixed reviews. To be sure, the film’s embedded first-person narration and explicitly mythological tone is a bit hard to square with the mode and tone of the Peter Jackson films, a disconnect also amplified by the anime form; what are we to make of characters, inhabiting the same basically realistic world as Frodo and Sam, who seem able to activate Super Saiyan power-ups in the midst of battle?

But the students from my latest Tolkien class uniformly loved it. The idea of Héra’s story as an in-universe legend, being told long after the fact by a person with a particular agenda in ways that might be interrogated or contested, actually replicates the narrative frame of the book version of The Lord of the Rings in a way no adaptation has yet been able to. This isn’t the truth, as such; it’s a legend, one Éowyn is thinking about and telling us in a particular way for a reason that is meaningful to her. And the idea of checking in on Éowyn after the war to see how she’s doing, and if she’s actually happy with the choices she has made, allows us to think in a new way about questions that have haunted my class every single time the book has been taught. My students have never been willing to let her go at the end of The Return of the King, and obviously they aren’t alone. Trying to read the entirety of the legendarium in a single semester is a challenge—in my class, we read not only The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings but the famously difficult Silmarillion (1977) too—but I’ve already decided that future versions of the syllabus will need to make time for The War of the Rohirrim, and its tantalizing vision of a postwar Éowyn telling stories of women that the men around her would prefer to forget.

LARB Contributor

Gerry Canavan is chair of the English department at Marquette University and the author of Octavia E. Butler (2016).

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

2024 fic roundup

*that’s the number of words in the two chapters i got out this year; the fic’s total word count so far is 99,043

Total Words Published at end of year: 44,834

Fandoms: overwhelmingly tolkien with the tiniest bit of demon slayer. that first part is not surprising since i dove facefirst back into the fandom this year, but the second one is because my demon slayer kick ended like two years ago. still love yoriichi and uta though

Highest Everything (raw kudos, hits, comments):

I Was Eros, and You, Psyche for everything lol -- 241; 6,329; and 159 respectively. it is a longfic that i first published in 2021 (wow...), so that's not surprising though. for the ones from just 2024, it would be the self is not so weightless, again for everything. 51, 459, 19 respectively.

New Things I Tried: oh several.

the self is not so weightless i'd consider "new" in the sense that i wrote it after i began liking thingol a lot more than i did during my initial foray into the silm fandom. i really had to re-imagine him to fit my better understanding of his character; i previously kind of defaulted to seeing him as stern and moody 24/7, and while he definitely could be stern and moody, it's far from the only side of him. i'd even say it's very much not his default. i also had to do a good bit of digging with my take on elwing; at the point that the fic takes place, she is safe and the worst traumas are behind her, so it was interesting writing a stage of her life where she actually can afford to begin processing all the horrors she's lived through, and her own perception of how those horrors have affected her as a person. she's just. lost so much :') but at the same time making the choice to go meet thingol, someone so intimately connected to the family and the ancestral home that were taken from her, is an indication of her resilience, her hope, and her determination to make the most of everything she can, and i really wanted to convey that. it's definitely a mindset and stage of development that i'm not used to writing, that kind of resentment/closure/perseverance after you've seen hell and survived.

we are a pair of mirrors that face each other is an interesting one! i've done stuff from the perspectives of ainur before, but it was definitely new because i really had to think about my impression of sauron as a character before i could write the fic to my satisfaction. of course he's a villain, but the fic itself is from his perspective and the majority of it takes place at a stage where he wholeheartedly believes he's truly doing what's the net best for creation. he still fully abides by his own principles and ethics, and he still cares for the people he cares for. sauron changes a lot throughout his career as melkor's chief servant followed by dark lord in his own right, and writing from his pov definitely required me to consider his character arc more than i'm used to doing.

where you go i'm going, so jump and i'm jumping bc it's my first time writing this type of oc: someone who's a main character in the fic itself, but really functions as a way to explore and elevate the canon characters. i was actually surprised with how rewarding it is, and it gave me a new appreciation for how conducive to original characters the silm is.

Fic I Spent the Most Time On: besides I Was Eros, and You, Psyche -- which naturally takes more time just because it's the only thing i worked on in 2024 that's not a one-shot -- where you go i'm going, so jump and i'm jumping took me a while. a lot of it was related to worldbuilding insofar as one can worldbuild with canonical source material -- i had to really solidify my headcanons on thingol's family, and there was quite a bit of oc naming involved. my end notes on that fic are a gd essay. andddd besides all that i just had to consider how i wanted thingol to be acting; after all the fic's premise is him hearing the news of luthien's first death and seeing her body. thingol is a character who has been through immense and constant grief, so it took me some pondering to get down how i think he'd react to what would still be the most devastating loss he's experienced up to that point.

Fic I Spent the Least Time On: than the deserts have sand. i may like it partly because it's so short

Favorite Thing I Wrote: i'm going to say, again, than the deserts have sand. if only because it's my favorite in the sense that i struggled the least while writing it; it was one of those fics that just flows out of you in a few concentrated bursts. not all my writing has been that simple and clean an experience for me, so i guess i'm uniquely fond of this one for that reason

Favorite Thing(s) I Read:

Wall the Heart by heget -- the first battle of beleriand has ended and thingol is picking up the pieces with his family, but then morgoth hits him from a direction he didn't expect. wonderful look into thingol's character, his relationships to his friends and extended family, and his sense of responsibility to his people

histories, full of stars by RaisingCaiin -- in the early days of creation, varda enjoys solitude in her domain when ungoliant comes to visit

Penumbra by @imakemywings -- maedhros makes himself a guest in menegroth with diplomacy on his mind. as he grows closer to thingol, professionalism gets further and further away from him. also guys... thingol is literally soooo sexy here. whew

the names she calls you by tarinumenesse -- ares falls in love with aphrodite at first sight, but he still falls deeper after that

Ares At Troy by themoonflower -- ares' most favored mortal consort was otrera, the first queen of the amazons. with his backing, she makes a kingdom for herself

high enough for me by anonymous -- daji, ziya, and riga argue about how old they're getting and take viagra. that's the fic, legit. love it

Writing Goals for 2025: pretty much to just work on the ideas i have in mind

Tagging: @ladysternchen @serene-faerie @cilil @nyarnamaitar

[ichabodcranemills]

I’m not a fan of defending screenwriters, as someone who has been part of an audience baited and mocked by a production team who gave reason to the worst parts of the fandom (Loki) or was straight up racist (Sleepy Hollow), so I know writers can fuck up real bad. But also because I was hurt this bad, I’m also not willing to expect the worst when I still haven’t seen it displayed.

All that to say that I get real tired of reading takes like “the TROP showrunners are listening to the incels, cutting off Haladriel and sidelining Galadriel”

Not to say that this might not happen on the coming seasons, but for now, I think the audience has to acknowledge two things that are way more likely than this malicious approach:

1. This show has way too many characters and the writing isn’t the best balancing them all out.

You might think “I don’t like the Numenor (or whatever other) plot, why do we waste time with it”, but the story they want to tell is about THE SECOND AGE, there are many plots and people. Last season gave Galadriel the centre stage, this season focused more on Celebrimbor, that is just the nature of the show’s storytelling.

Could it be better done? Sure! Has Galadriel lost protagonism? No!

2. You guys might have lost focus on a few tolkenian things here.

That said, do I wish they sent Tolkien Estate guidelines out the window and gave us steamy steamy Saurondriel sex? sure. But Sauron is the enemy. It’s consistent with the story they’re telling that there’s a Saurondriel connection throughout all seasons, and it’s only decent of them that said connection remains full of tension and longing, but they WILL NOT end up together. I was pleased with what we’ve been given this season. If you weren’t, that’s okay, but you can’t say that this was due to “listening to incels”, when it’s a natural development of the story. Saurondriel is amazing, but it isn’t endgame material under any realistic light.

Now re: Galadriel, there’s a long way between being less angry and war prone, and becoming a tradwife, useful for nothing more than being pretty in Lothlorien. The first is what we’ve been walking towards this season, and it’s also a tolkien endgame for most of the heroes.

All that said, was I 100% pleased with their treatment of Galadriel this season? No, she should have had more space, a better dialogue on the last episode and all around more consistency, but that doesn’t mean they’re “sidelining her” or “making her into Cate’s Galadriel because this is what the incels want” or whatever is that twitter is saying.

Sometimes a writer is just not as good as you’d hope, not maliciously acting against you.

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

I mean, okay, I’m not sure this is actually a problem in the context of LOTR and the history we know from the Silmarillion and such. Because if the orcs are corrupted elves and their entire race has been enslaved to Morgoth/Sauron since their creation then they’ve never really had much of a chance to develop goodness. In ROTK, if I’m remembering correctly, when Sauron falls the orcs and the rest of his minions just disperse as if a spell on them had broken, so it stands to reason that there was probably some mind control involved here too and certainly manipulation.

My writing professor in college actually posed this question to us once and we discussed if there could be a good orc/goblin if it was raised by another race of Middle Earth and I would argue that yes, that seems possible. We just never see this happen in the books because they’re recounting wars and great events in history. There will always be that ONE human who would adopt a baby goblin/orc if they found one, at the very least.

As for why the other races of Middle Earth are allowed to kill the orcs indiscriminately- it’s a war! They’re enemies! The orcs are killing them indiscriminately too! That’s what happens in a war!

The only argument you can really make here is that there are instances of other humans being spared when the orcs are not and yeah that probably is racist tbh but to be fair it does go back to the fact that the orcs have been servants of the Dark Lord for as long as anyone can remember and they tend to keep to his strongholds when they aren’t out raiding, so how would they ever even have the chance to learn how to treat with orcs and discuss things and come to compromises with them? Are the orcs even able to do these things because of the mind control? Have people tried and died from doing this? We don’t know! Because the text doesn’t cover it! LOTR doesn’t really have room for anything like this, the Silmarillion would be a better place for it, since it takes place over such a long span of time. And the Sil is, technically, unfinished (Christopher Tolkien pieced it together but Tolkien never really finished writing it) so who knows? Maybe with these existential concerns Tolkien was having he would have wrote something of that nature for the Sil if he’d lived longer/thought of it.

If this is really bothering you though and you want an epic fantasy story that deals with whether a race can be totally evil and irredeemable or not, as well as racism from well meaning, heroic people that is called out and addressed in the story, I highly recommend The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson, who is, in fact, a big fan of Tolkien and even owns his fireplace.

Not posting this as a reblog because I don't want to screw with somebody else's notes, but the whole "theological implications of Tolkien's orcs" business has some interesting history behind it.

In brief, a big part of why the Lord of the Rings Extended Universe™ is so cagey about what orcs are and where they come from is that later in his life, Tolkien came to believe that orcs as he'd depicted them were problematic – albeit not because of, you know, all the grotesque racial caricature.

Rather, he'd come to the conclusion that the idea of an inherently evil sapient species – a species that's incapable of seeking salvation – was incompatible with Christian ethics. (Basically, it's one of those "used the wrong formula and got the right answer" situations.)

In his notes and letters, Tolkien played around with several potential solutions to this problem. (Though contrary to the assertions of certain self-proclaimed Tolkien scholars, there's no evidence that he ever seriously planned to re-write his previous works to incorporate these ideas.) In one proposal, orcs are incarnated demons, and "killing" them simply returns them to their naturally immaterial state; in another, orcs are a sort of fleshy automaton remotely operated by the will of Sauron, essentially anticipating the idea of drone warfare.

Of course, this is all just historical trivia; any criticism of The Lord of the Rings must be directed at the books that were actually published, not the books we imagine might have been published if Tolkien had spent a few more years thinking through the implications of what he was writing. However, the direction his thoughts on the matter are striking for two reasons:

Tolkien's orc conundrum is very nearly word for the word the problem that many contemporary fantasy authors are grappling with fifty years later. They want epic battles with morally clean heroes, and they're running up against exactly the same difficulty that Tolkien himself did – i.e., that describing a human-like species who are ontologically okay to kill is an impossible task.

After all the work he put into solving this impossible problem, one of Tolkien's proposals was literally just "what if they're not really killing the orcs, they're just sending them to the Shadow Realm?"