#lord of the rings films

[vigilantegreen]

I see a lot of hate for The Hobbit films regularly but what I don't see is people saying that actually, people usually have seen The Lord of the Rings before seeing The Hobbit and suddenly, the whole situations a lot more serious! That hobbit had that ring the whole time! Frolicking about with that ring! The whole time!

[callipraxia]

This. And…I say that as someone whose first sustained piece of writing did, in fact, involve a thinly-veiled self-insert joining the Fellowship of the Ring.

I…sort of want to say “imagine that I took a deep breath and said that with my eyes closed,” but I’m honestly not even ashamed of it, lol. I was…either eleven or twelve, I was obsessed with the film of The Two Towers, and one day in chorus class, when my usual bullies were inexplicably doing something other than playing keep-away with my glasses (a whole other story), I somehow found out that another girl in the class was a) almost as friendless as I was at that age, and b) also really, really liked that movie. We ended up chatting and coming up with the premise that it would be cool if we were plopped into the Riders of Rohan scene for no good reason. Then I (desperate to repeat this novel behavior of “interaction with another student that did not involve violence being directed against my person”), in an unexpectedly fateful moment of confidence, started to write about it that night, so I could show her the results at the next meeting of chorus class. This would go on for over three hundred handwritten pages over the course of the year, ending in something it…suited us, anyway, to call “a novel.”

It was a nonsensical train wreck from start to finish. My friend wanted to marry Legolas. I proceeded to write almost four hundred pages on the subject of our adventures and her eventual marriage to Legolas, eventually mixing in another of my major interests of the time, which was Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time. Each day, my friend would read what I had - over the course of lunchtimes and times at home when I was pretending to do my homework and, often enough, in actual classes - written up to the beginning of each chorus class and would offer feedback and suggestions about what her character and Legolas should do next; as long as Orlando Bloom remained faithful and devoted to her, she didn’t care that I decided on a whim that we were writing in a multiverse (even though I’m pretty sure I didn’t know the word at the time) and that the powers of evil were making realities all around go “boing,” resulting in thinning boundaries that first explained why my friend and I had literally fallen from the sky into the middle of Rohan and then explained why the White Towers of Gondor and Randland just as illogically became the same place while simultaneously battling the forces of darkness. I don’t recall a lot of the plot after that point, but it ended with us and Legolas in a hot tub, reflecting on how great it was for us that reality had nearly collapsed, since it the worlds hadn’t merged, Legolas and my friend wouldn’t have been able to have a bunch of elf babies and I wouldn’t have been able to become Aes Sedai. Why was there a hot tub? Where did it come from? No idea! I guess it just seemed like a good idea at the time?

So yeah, that was my first completed writing project. I am 100% sure it was one of the most execrable things that a tree ever died to make possible. It didn’t even have a title, and I still hadn’t consistently broken this unfortunate habit I had when I was younger of forgetting that “of” wasn’t spelled with a v (I pronounced it “ov,” everyone I knew pronounced it “ov,” and I remember vividly what it was like to struggle, sometimes for minutes at a time, to think of any other way to spell it before I’d give up and just write “ov”). I didn’t learn to type until eighth grade and didn’t have the nerve to go online for a while longer after that, and the upside of those facts is that “The Tale Of How Me And My Buddy The Legolas Fangirl Joined The Fellowship of the Ring” was never posted anywhere and I thus possibly avoided internet infamy for producing it (to say nothing of how much suckier my sucky middle school life would have gotten if anyone had found out I writing fanfiction - this was back when the twenty-first century was still in single digits, and my middle school made the school from Mean Girls look like an over-the-top parody of a particularly nurturing Montessori kindergarten)….

And you know what? I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I had a blast writing that thing - so much so that when my first friend moved on, I ended up starting a new series of…what at least began as LotR fanfictions (this time set twenty years after the films, featuring thinly-veiled, idealized version of me and Second Friend as a couple of princesses) but rapidly spiraled into our own little made-up world. I drew maps and tried to invent cultures (in pathetically weak attempts to imitate Tolkien and Jordan) and wrote nonstop for two years, producing two completed 400-odd-page handwritten manuscripts and the first two hundred pages of a third before we finished middle school and didn’t really cross paths again in high school. In ninth grade, now alone, I wrote really awful Harry Potter and Wheel of Time fics for a few months before a Harry Potter-based text roleplay basically ate my life in the second semester. My first few years at the RP also featured a lot of prose I don’t like to recall, and my attempts at plots and characterization were even worse…but the others in the group, either because they saw some glimmer of potential or were just really nice people, never gave me so much as a glimmer of a suspicion that they thought I sucked. Nor did they ever call me out on it when I began to clumsily improve by, uh, blatantly imitating them (since they were and are some darn good writers). And so I wrote, fumbled, wrote, fumbled…and, slowly, improved, to the point where I now, as of this March, have three novel-length fics I’m actually pretty proud of. None of them would win me a Hugo/Poe/Pulitzer/What-Have-You, but I would not feel cheated if I spent five bucks on something of equivalent quality at the dollar store. And if I die tomorrow, I’ll do so knowing that I entertained at least a couple hundred people, and that my work even meant something to a number probably in double digits. So take that and chew on it, Kelsey From Eighth Grade Who Mocked Me For Writing At All And Told Me I’d Never Amount To Anything….

…though that’s beside the point. The point of offering up the details behind 95% (I also write fan essays and used to write original poetry, both mostly unconnected to all this) of my writing-life autobiography was…I guess to echo the exhortation to show some grace to teenagers writing teenager things?

So, TL;DR - being a teenage fanperson is often a natural stage in the development of a writer, and I have a bunch of concrete examples to back up the assertion. Be nice to kids who are just having fun and not being jerks to or hurting anyone. They might improve and discover a lifelong passion, and even if they don’t, then at least they’ll enjoy themselves in a mostly harmless way and maybe have some fond memories to look back on one day.

Teen girls reading this, if you feel a calling to write fanfiction about a teen girl being transported to a fictional world, go for it. If you want to write about a teen girl being adopted by your favorite characters or joining the fellowship of the ring or becoming a knight, please do.

We should be encouraging kids to be creative and practice writing, an important life skill, not discouraging it because we find teens acting like teens to be cringe.

[emyn-arnen]

Gandalf: If the beacons of Gondor are lit, Rohan must be ready for war! Théoden: Tell me. Why should we ride to the aid of those who did not come to ours? What do we owe Gondor?

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) dir. Peter Jackson

[tuserlivia]

VIGGO MORTENSEN as ARAGORN Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

[illustratus]

[postcardsfromheapside]

And meanwhile in this scene, Arwen begins to move forward with such love and hope in her face. She has zero doubt about her choice, even knowing the cost of grief.

No, these movies were not perfect. But they got the heart of it right, and more if you knew how to see it.

rewatched aragorn’s coronation scene and i just realized you can see elrond’s heart breaking as she goes to join aragorn

like, that is the face of a man who was promised eternity with his daughter, a reunion in the west no matter what happened, only to lose her forever to love

[badwolf-gallagher88]

Boromir “They took the little ones” really doesn’t get enough credit for how sweet he is to Merry and Pippin. Sword fighting and training with them, protecting them from orcs - despite his flaws he was kind at heart.

[bluntblade]

I refuse to believe that anyone's ever truly ready for "the last pages are for you".

[arwen-evenstar]

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) dir.: Peter Jackson

[optional]

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

[mithrandirl]

Then an old wife, Ioreth, the eldest of the women who served in that house, looking on the fair face of Faramir, wept, for all the people loved him. And she said: ‘Alas! if he should die. Would that there were kings in Gondor, as there were once upon a time, they say! For it is said in old lore: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known.’

[drawinggoose]

I don't post LOTR content usually, but damn...

When I tell you I snorted!

[emyn-arnen]

“I will not let the White City fall, nor our people fail.”

“Our people.”

[bookaddiction14]

Someone’s prob caught this long before me, but:

In Lord of the rings (fellowship) we see the ring leaving Gollum and bouncing and rolling down the rocks:

The ring wanted to leave Gollum and therefore did.

It’s then picked up by Bilbo unwillingly; has an ‘unexpected journey’; and stays with him.

But when Bilbo is leaving, he decides to leave the ring with Frodo. The ring however, wants to stay and keep wielding its power and influence over him.

And when, at Gandalf’s insistence, Bilbo drops the ring, it still doesn’t want to leave him:

Which is why it falls flat, no bouncing or rolling away. It thuds to the floor like a child might stomp its foot when not getting its way.

I dunno how i’ve never caught this b4, and I may just be stupid and ppl have spoken bout this b4 but i’m a nerd and can’t help but mention it unprompted.

[killbilled]

Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003) dir. Peter Jackson

[yocalio]

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) Dir. Peter Jackson