#ford is the evil arrogant piece of shit

[cecilscribbles]

@localcanadiancreature62 i think people forget that ford's anger was never about the machine or the school itself. it was because he'd had a really rough childhood (growing up in pretty poor conditions, horrific bullying, alienation from his peers, etc) but he was always told he was going to be great, he was going places. and then the one person he trusted more than anything - from his perspective - purposefully took away that opportunity because he wanted to go sailing. i think the stan o' war plan seemed pretty childish to ford now he was a little older, and resentment had already been building for a while at this point, so it was basically an opportunity to justify all the bitterness he had at stan. to ford, that wasn't just a machine and a school - that was his trust, his future, and a big part of his identity, all going to shit.

i'm not great at explaining things sorry!! but i am a diehard ford defender and i think you'd have to be... i don't even know how you could not be angry in his situation ^^;

[elerondo]

Headcanon | Rivendell and Celebrian

This headcanon is set in the timeline from S.A. 1697 to T.A. 2501, so it’s going to be very long. It is my attempt at the fullest account of Elrond’s priorities in that timeline, and his life and marriage to Celebrian. And the After.

PRELUDE After the initial crush that Elrond had on Celebrian, Elrond did wait more than 1700 years before proposing to her. Elrond did not want to subject her to a life of war and hardship with him when they’d only just met. Elrond loved Celebrian enough to let her go home to safety and a more peaceful life. But Elrond loved Middle Earth more, that he would sacrifice his personal happiness in order to protect and save the free peoples.

The dire costs of the War of the Elves and Sauron were echoes of the War of Wrath, where Elrond had seen the wrath of the dragons as a youth and the trumpets that eventually marred and sunk Beleriand. He was determined not to let Eriador reach that stage of destruction, and since few of the strangers in the Valley were well enough to engage in battle, Elrond was frequently at the helm of offensive measures against the forces of Sauron that sought to besiege Rivendell.

POST WAR OF THE ELVES AND SAURON When Rivendell was founded, it was basically filled with refugees and soldiers gravely wounded from the destruction of Eregion and Sauron’s conquest of Eriador. Simply put, Rivendell was functional at best, and a stinky shit hole of armour and blood at its worst. A stronghold with severely weakened military power. There was no Ring of Power to protect it yet, so Elrond took it upon himself to ride out and meet evil before it could come near. Frequently, he rode from the northern foothills of the Hithaeglir, to the south bordering the outskirts of Eregion, then east across the valley to the ford of Bruinen, and even further still to penetrate the forests to the west.

Even though Elrond wanted to beautify Rivendell with other areas like education, hospitality, music, etc, it remained clear to Elrond that his immediate and most urgent priorities had to be taking vanguard in most marches as his elves and men were recovering, returning home, or sailing West.

After Vilya was handed to Elrond and he was made Lord and Master of Rivendell, Elrond was at the peak of his power and strength. Loyal and following the passions of a war won, the coverage of Vilya stretched from the Men-i-Naugrim to the Coldfells to the Last Bridge to the meet of Mitheithel and Bruinen. It matched his initial marches, patrols, and more. Elrond purified the forests and straightened the roads, dealing death to the last of the fell beings out of the Coldfells, the East Road, and the Old Forest Road. Strongholds were built upon the Misty Mountains and the borders of Eregion to keep watch on the southern and eastern passages. Where the Ring could reach, there Elrond’s spirit was, working its inner machinations to keep it safe.

FALL OF NUMENOR Elrond took his marches very far south to keep the borders and to exercise his Crown rights. He tripled the patrols around southern Eriador. If there were any stray survivors, they must be verified clean and without evil before they could travel. Otherwise, they were caught and handed to the nearest City willing to let them stand trial. When the presence of the Crown Prince of the Noldor increased near the borders of Gondor, there were quite many mixed reactions. A certain pressure to observe decorum, for example, to stop everything one was doing to answer questions, possessions checked thoroughly, and weapons that were deemed stolen or machines of darkness were confiscated until further notice. As long as one saw the banners of Gil-galad, even from a distance, they were compelled to stop and obey.

MARRIAGE TO CELEBRIAN Elrond is not a free and easy leader. He is a leader who actively chooses to sacrifice his happiness, his reputation, rest / sleep / food, for the sake of protecting and aiding the people at large. Elrond’s version of taking care of himself was stretched until his limits threatened to break, then rest for a while. It was the equivalent of sleeping once a week.

I think that Celebrian would have heard a lot about Elrond and what he was doing, Elrond’s fame and infamy spreading far and wide over the Misty Mountains. On the other side of the land, Elrond knew his deeds and renown were preceding him. He had some fears that he wouldn’t be well liked, because who could understand the land’s emergencies as well as him? He didn’t think anyone could, not because he was arrogant or wanted to do everything himself, but he was the most endowed.

Celebrian would be the only person Elrond could be weak to without being judged, rejected, or told to change or stop what he was doing. With her, Elrond was that bit more comfortable in taking / asking for comforts, and sharing his griefs, resentment, the nasty stuff and not just his plans, counsel, the good stuff that was always dispensed to all without cost. Celebrian was the shoulder Elrond cried on, while he was the shoulder for the world. Celebrian was the person whom Elrond revealed all of his quirks and eccentricity to. It was Celebrian who really made Rivendell into a Homely House. Celebrian was the one who helped him fulfil his visions and execute the blueprints of his mind while he properly focused on keeping Eriador and Rivendell safe. With her in mind, Elrond took more care of himself because he did not want her to be worried about him. Elrond was the healthiest in the 1000+ years before the Angmar War.

ANGMAR RISING The split and existence of Rhudaur in T.A. 861 unsettled him and so Elrond frequently visited Arthedain in secret, debating upon many topics of potential insurrection and defense strategies. The chief of the matter were these: Both Rhudaur and Cardolan desired to possess Amon Sul, and Rhudaur resisted Argeleb who claimed to be High King over all of Arnor. Elrond was sensitive to the matters of kingship and the Palantir. For the lands of Men and the Palantiri to come under one king was better than for them to split into the hands of the wrong people. Celebrian understood that for Elrond to ally Rivendell with Arthedain, hostilities with the rest would be inevitable.

( my Angmar war timeline here where Elrond suffered a Morgul-wound at the end of )

THE WATCHFUL PEACE … is a deceitful name. It was more watchful than it was peaceful.

Rivendell spent the early years recovering from the 600 year war, especially Elrond - being the first of all elves to suffer a Morgul-wound, a large scar on his back with no recovery method yet. Elrond had to devise and experiment on himself, while he was suffering from it, before he managed to heal himself. However, the military never again rises up to any relevant standard in a war. A lot of commanders were lost, Elrond was weak and sick, and many elves succumbed to their injuries, grief, and they faded or sailed West.

Every year for the rest of Elrond’s life in Middle Earth, on the same week, the Morgul-wound brought Elrond searing and debilitating pain. He still could hold the power of Vilya over The Angle and the Misty Mountains, but the western forests and Coldfells were neglected.

Rivendell never ceases to send patrols across Eriador, despite Elrond being in an extremely bad shape and the vale was desperately short handed. Elrond depended on Vilya more, both to heal and to protect, as he would leave Rivendell defenseless except for the Kingsguard, while he sent aid and resources everywhere else. Celebrian was beside him every step of the way, going into a Post-war scenario in a huge piece of land called Eriador again. They really could not enjoy the quieter times at all.

Furthermore, before the Watchful Peace ended, evil again invaded Eriador. It was followed by Galadriel’s summons of the White Council.

CELEBRIAN ASSAILED, DEPARTURE TO THE WEST 46 years later, tragedy ended the marriage of Celebrian and Elrond. He would be officially widowed with her passing over the Great Sea. The greatest healer who ever lived could not save his greatest love.

He let her go when she made her choice to go. He did not force to stay her, it would be too cruel to her. Elrond chose to do what was right instead of what was kinder to himself. When she left, she tore half his heart and flesh along with it.

This trauma is one that Elrond carries with him. The darkening of the times did work to twist his sacrifice into guilt, into thoughts of ❛What if❜ he was stronger, more powerful, better, or enough. Because of how obvious it was that Celebrian’s assault was premeditated by Sauron to weaken Rivendell, Elrond would always blame himself for bringing her into his life. Perhaps he should have just continued hiding his love. Perhaps she would have been safe. Perhaps.

In Elrond’s lowest moments, he could not understand what was so good about Valinor. He could not reconcile Celebrian’s choice of Aman over him and their 3 children together. For all his wars and battles in Middle Earth, no army ever came from the West to aid the people. He has no good perception of Aman. Over time, Celebrian’s departure joined one of many gravestones that Elrond had to force himself to move forward from. It was the only way, force himself not to dwell on it, bury himself in work, in the forge, in planning. For his children, for all the people who depended on him, for the sake of unseating Sauron, Elrond had to move forward even if it was by crawling through the mud.

His love for her did dull, did become mixed with depression, and he feared to see her again if he sailed to Aman. Elrond fears that Aman might actually be better for Celebrian than him. The dilemma? Wanting Celebrian to be happy and healthy, but wanting it to be him for her and no one else. Elrond knew the solution to that, and the answer was: Not him. It is a fact that is so hard to swallow at times, that he has to leave the love of his life in someone else’s hands.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #377

Top Ten Character Reveals in Movies

You only get one chance to make a first impression, unless you’re a movie version of a comic book character, in which case they’ll probably retell your origin story every seven years. But generally speaking, movie characters emerge onto our screens fully-formed and eager to show us their stuff. Sometimes this is a slow-build affair; sometimes a single frame is enough to give us an insight into their character. Often with a confident performance and excellent cinematography, a character can become iconic almost instantaneously, sometimes with little or no dialogue. This week I’m celebrating ten such characters, whose first appearance in the films in question is a marvel to behold. And – hey! – only one of them is actually from Marvel. Ain’t that a surprise?

Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2001): as much as I’ve cooled towards Depp in recent years, and as much as the Pirates films lost their way once their superlative first instalment sailed off the screen, no one can deny the majesty of this character introduction. Looking amazingly cool and confident, Jack Sparrow glides across the screen, seemingly standing astride the mast of a great pirate galleon. It is only as the camera pans wider that we see the boat is almost entirely sunken, with just the mast visible. This in itself is a perfect distillation of Sparrow – equal parts pirate rock god, master tactician, and clumsy drunken oaf – but the icing on the cake is that the sunken mast deposits him directly onto the shore at precisely the moment it disappears beneath the waves. Piratical perfection.

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford, Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981): Indy is a character introduced in silhouette and close-up: the image of him, broad, leather-jacketed, fedoraed, walking through the jungle, is the first thing we see after the famous dissolve from the Paramount logo to a real mountain. After that his hands do the talking, examining arrowheads and assembling a map, before he whips out his, er, whip to disarm a treacherous guide. Only then does he finally step into the light and we see just how pretty Harrison Ford is. And it’s even later than that before he finally speaks. But Indy is already an icon: resourceful, robust, a sexy swarthy man’s man, a take-no-shit hero, and clearly incredibly competent and intelligent. And very, very pretty.

Jessica Rabbit (Kathleen Turner, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1988): speaking of pretty… the joy of Jessica Rabbit’s introduction is partly in subverting our expectations (or, at least, watching Bob Hoskins’ Eddie Valiant have his expectations subverted). Roger Rabbit is cute but chaotic; Jessica is a bona fide sex bomb. Sultrily singing a bluesy number as she flirtatiously struts around the Ink and Paint Club, she is the antithesis of the family-friendly Roger, a busty pin-up model, all legs and curves and – vitally – the full-throated voice of Kathleen Turner. Quite frankly it’s rather shocking in a Disney movie from the director of Back to the Future.

Darth Vader (David Prowse, Star Wars, 1977): the opening scene of Star Wars is all tension. A small craft is abducted by a larger one; on board, two droids flit about whilst angst-faced soldiers await a boarding party. The subsequent firefight is short and rather brutal, efficiently directed by George Lucas, and leaving the corridor strewn with Rebel dead. And then, unheralded, out of the smoke emerges Darth Vader, beautifully framed, his vast black frame exquisitely contrasting with the white interior of the Tantive IV (and the “fascist white” of the Stormtrooper uniforms, according to Lucas’ own screenplay). He barks orders definitively in James Earl Jones’ baritone rumble, before hoisting a Rebel officer into the air by the scruff of his neck. He instantly oozes not just evil, but strong evil. He’s a Big Bad and no mistaking. Even without the depth and nuance afforded him by subsequent films, we know from frame one that he’s a really, really big deal.

Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman, Leon, 1995): Stansfield is one of 90s cinema’s greatest villains. A whirling dervish of tics and eccentricities, beautifully orchestrated by Oldman. The first thing we see him do is rattle a small tin before removing and consuming some narcotic, which he swallows in almost orgasmic fervour, before mowing down an entire family with a shotgun (mum in the bath, teen girl in the back). But it’s his shark-like entrance through a beaded curtain that sticks with me, all cool malevolence and forward motion.

Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen, Toy Story, 1995): one of the beauties of Toy Story is how it presents its fantastical world – a world of living toys, but one which follows a very strict hierarchical structure – so efficiently. As such, the arrival of an exciting new toy into Andy’s bedroom is an incredibly tense event, portrayed mostly through sound and shadow. The symbolic nature of Woody, Andy’s favourite, being knocked off the bed but still trying to keep his optimism, is neatly done. And then we get the reveal: a slow pan up Buzz’s form, his slick plastic limbs giving way to his stern jaw and proud face. The subsequent scene, in which Buzz’s pomposity and assurance is quietly mocked but ultimately used to puncture Woody’s desperate and fragile self-belief, culminating in the “falling with style” scene, is a masterpiece of economic, witty script-writing, world-building, and character development. It also makes terrific use of nascent computer technology to deliver something that was, in 1995, a visual set-piece the likes of which we’d never seen.

Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca, 1942): like Indiana Jones (who was, presumably, inspired by him to a certain degree – or at least that typical Bogartian old-fashioned manly-man), Rick is a character introduced in his absence, other characters reacting to him in a way as a note is passed through his club and into his hands. His hands are the first thing we see as he signs off on a note of credit and lifts a cigarette to his lips. We can tell from the surroundings, the money, the reactions of others that this is a man with some degree of power; we can tell from the weariness of Bogart’s performance that it’s man with some degree of past.

The Borg Queen (Alice Krige, Star Trek: First Contact, 1997): the Borg were not meant to have a leader; the Borg were not meant to have individuality. To have the Borg as the villains in a movie felt like an obvious, inspired choice; after all, they were essentially the “big bad” of the Next Generation era. But how to give face to the faceless, how to give character to a legion of identikit drones? Creating the Queen is as elegant a choice as I think you could come up with, and Krige’s performance is all sensual menace, her bio-organic appearance almost giving off an air of Cenobitian S&M. And she speaks before we see her, so we get a little bit of darkly seductive exposition as she touts the Borg’s accomplishments to a captive Commander Data. But it’s her first appearance that sticks in the mind, if only for the technical chutzpah on display: Krige’s head and torso is lowered from the ceiling in one long panning shot, before being attached to her waiting body, all whilst she delivers a speech. Krige’s performance might be what makes the Borg Queen linger in the memory, but Jonathan Frakes’ direction, and the wizardry of First Contact’s FX team, is what made her stand out from frame one.

Quint (Robert Shaw, Jaws, 1975) Quint is introduced through one of the greatest uses of sound effects in movie history. During a tense, argumentative, and loud town meeting to discuss the killer shark of Amity, a horrid screeching noise is heard. Fingernails down a chalkboard. The culprit: Bartholomew Marion Quint (who I’m fairly certain is only ever called “Quint” in the film). From his appearance and accent we know this a salty old seadog, a man of the open ocean. He delivers one of a number of Quint monologues that have gone on to anchor a place for themselves in popular culture; the assured speech of a man who has no time for bluster or politics, a man who gets down to business. “You all know me,” he begins, “You know how I earn my livin’.” He grabs attention with the shrill finger-trick, he holds it with his stern but wry delivery. “For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn fish.” He then disappears for an hour of film time, but we know he’ll be back; the film circles round him like a boat in a whirlpool.

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, Iron Man, 2008): I’d heard rumours. Sam Jackson was, apparently, going to play Nick Fury, following on from Bryan Hitch using Jackson as the basis for the character in The Ultimates. Art imitating life imitating another form of art; nice symmetry. But there was no confirmation; indeed, at this point, Marvel was treating the possibility of an Avengers crossover movie as a pipe dream, a wish only fulfilled if they’d done their homework and the audience was interested. So I didn’t even bother staying for the end credits. God, I wish I had. Because following on from Iron Man’s spectacular, hilarious final line, its continuity-baiting desire to move beyond simple comic adaptation with these characters, to see the world expand so explosively is really something to behold. Cocksure, arrogant, always-right Tony Stark has just announced to the world that he’s Iron Man; venturing back into his sexy cliffside mansion, his elaborate technology – showcased to winning effect throughout the film – is on the fritz. Lights don’t work, computer-Jarvis is popping and crackling. And then it comes: that distinctive Jackson baritone. And one of the most important lines in any movie, a line that shaped the next decade of cinema history, but a line that – at the time – just felt like a cool, somewhat badass thing for Jackson to spout: “You think you’re the only superhero in the world?” We knew he wasn’t; we knew the Hulk was around, that Captain America was frozen up north somewhere, that Thor was still on Asgard. We didn’t know that the Ancient One was over in New York, that Rocket, Star-Lord and the rest were up in space, that Carol Danvers was out there somewhere, that a small boy from Queens would one day be bitten by a spider. We didn’t know that Thanos was searching for Infinity Stones, that SHIELD had been infiltrated by HYDRA for years, that Hank Pym had had his company stolen out from under him. Everything got smaller and bigger all at the same time, all because a really, really cool dude in an eye patch and a long coat stepped from the shadows. Welcome to the Avengers Initiative, indeed.

There were others, as usual. Ones that I honestly thought would be included. I almost traded Fury for Thanos. There’s Harry Lime, of course. Trinity. Heath Ledger’s Joker (really, he fell by the wayside because however good the opening scene of The Dark Knight is, the best Joker scene is when he does his pencil trick, which is technically his second introduction). I even thought of doing Batman’s initial appearance from his 1989 film. But, y’know, ya gotta draw the line somewhere. These ten seem as good a place as any.