#sauron's theme

[hellofeanor]

For RINGS OF POWER WEEK 2023: Day two: favourite musical theme

Where the Shadows Lie, all vocals by me, with @niennawept joining in for a lil bonus of Sauron's Theme at the end on the upper A2 line. A creepy a cappella arrangement just in time for spoopy season!

The two themes here are, completely by coincidence, the first and last musical themes I heard from the show: Sauron's theme a couple months before the premiere when they released two teaser tracks (Sauron and Galadriel), and then Where the Shadows Lie in its full vocal version at the end of episode 8. It's kind of difficult to say whether these two are my *favourites*, since honestly I love the whole soundtrack overall. But Where the Shadows lie was definitely the vocal piece best suited to my voice in the recording environment I wanted to use, and Sauron's Theme worked out to weave into the arrangement at the end. And uhhhhh I've kind of been wading through a lot of Mordor stuff lately so these seemed like the obvious choices.

Most of the audio tracks you hear were sung in the echoey concrete stairwell at work. All of that reverb is 100% natural, picked up on the original recording, and is completely unaltered. The only editing I did to any of the tracks was trimming to line up the timing and some volume adjustments. So we have a lot of background atmospheric noise and a few random weird sounds. It was also done just on my phone's voice recorder app, so the quality is a little iffy, but honestly I really like the effect overall.

[helenvader]

Gotta love Bear McCreary. :-)

[steve-needs-a-hug]

Halbrand as a pseudo-Jesus figure & Annatar as a pseudo-Christ

There's something eerily compelling about what the Rings of Power has done with these two guises of Sauron and how he's able to inspire trust, faith, and devotion in Galadriel and Celebrimbor. In the show, Sauron believes himself to be the one who needs to save or redeem Middle-Earth. The effectiveness in his manipulation of these characters involuntarily reminds me of the exploitative and manipulative nature of Evangelical Christianity and how powerfully it markets itself as the one way to solve people's deepest existential problems. So I thought about some parallels between Sauron's two main guises or personas in the show, and how Jesus and/or Christ is popularly depicted or understood (especially in Evangelical spaces). To me this helps illustrate why RoP!Sauron's deception is so effective, while exposing some unsettling issues I have with Evangelicalism.

Halbrand as a pseudo-Jesus

Halbrand was presented to Galadriel (as well as us the audience) as a scruffy, humble, ordinary man. Although more glamorous depictions of Jesus were common in Catholic art, the recent Evangelical trend has been to portray a humanized down-to-Earth Jesus (e.g., in The Chosen series, Jesus sweats, cries, gets hungry and tired and frustrated). Scripture allegedly described Jesus as humble and unexceptional in appearance and growing up through adversity and suffering (Isaiah 53). Halbrand is (ostensibly) a smith's aide, Jesus was a carpenter - both trades involving working and crafting with one's hands. It's then "revealed" that Halbrand comes from a lost royal lineage and Galadriel hails him as the King who can save his people from enslavement to an evil overlord - Jesus came from the line of the legendary King David and was hailed as King of Jews, expected to rescue his people from the Roman Empire's oppression.

Halbrand's surface-level resemblance to Aragorn, heir to the throne of Gondor, can't be ignored either (this is partly why I found the character of Halbrand so insufferable in s1, he seemed like an Aragorn knockoff to me!). It's also been argued that Aragorn is a Jesus-like figure, though he turns out to be one of the most legendary fantasy heroes rather than one of the most notorious supervillains (Sauron).

Galadriel grows to trust Halbrand and view him as her friend and possibly the only person who truly understands her. Celebrimbor also develops a close friendship with Halbrand as they work together. Evangelicalism emphasizes a "personal relationship" with Jesus as your very own friend (some even lean towards a lover) who knows everything about you and helps you with your problems and gets you what you want. Jesus' disciples were also close personal friends with him while possessing little understanding of his true divine nature.

Annatar as a pseudo-Christ

Now this is where things get a lot more interesting. In 2x02, Halbrand reveals his "true nature" to Celebrimbor in an awe-inspiring display. This goosebumps-inducing moment is akin to a religious experience for Celebrimbor, who instinctively bows in reverence to this angelic figure. Christ has also been depicted and described as arriving with the clouds (Revelation 1:7), and I'm sure the religious symbolism of this scene was not lost on many viewers. Even though Annatar seems to be a powerful emissary of the divine, he still tells Celebrimbor that they are to be equal partners in their work to save Middle-Earth. An important tenet of Christianity is that Christ desires to partner with humanity to accomplish His works. This all sounds well and good to Celebrimbor, but Sauron's ultimate mode of "saving" Middle-Earth is to enslave all its peoples and creatures to his will.

Annatar is known in Tolkien's lore as the Lord of Gifts (in the episode he describes himself to Celebrimbor as "a sharer of gifts"). His gift is the knowledge of the way of Middle-Earth's salvation. Evangelical devotionals and sermons frequently refer to salvation of the soul as a "free gift" Christ offers to humanity. (I can go on about how this phrase is a redundant tautology - oops, there's another one - but that's a whole other discussion.) I will suffice to say that the term "free gift" reads like a salesperson's marketing pitch and it bothers me. Evangelicalism as a whole feels like a colonial mission converted into a giant media marketing operation - its glossy veneer of concert-like megachurch services, prepacked apologetics, and friendly approachability often conceal sinister things (exploitation, corruption, discrimination, abuse, the list goes on).

Sauron chose to prey on two vulnerable people with potential for influence - Galadriel and Celebrimbor, both feeling isolated and slighted by their people and striving for a deeply personal and important goal that feels just out of their reach. However, he didn't force himself on them. They chose to let him in, and as a result he took advantage of their trust. In Christianity, God is described as someone Who stands at the door and knocks, and for those who choose to open the door to Him, He will come in and share a meal with them as friends (Revelation 3:20). This is more or less exactly what Celebrimbor did in 2x02 when he allowed Halbrand in, gave him food and wine, and called him his friend. This was the most eerie parallel to me, inspired by some great analyses I've read about how Sauron is depicted in the show thus far.

In season 1 Sauron as Halbrand laid his strategy bare to Galadriel - give your opponent the means of mastering their greatest fear, so you can master them. I can't help but feel that this is what organized religion does - providing the sense of assurance, safety, and emotional comfort that people desperately need, in exchange for gaining control over their life choices and even their thought patterns through rules, dogma, and pressures of social conformity. Shaping minds and bending wills sounds pretty Sauron-like to me. [Disclaimer: This is not meant to be a dunk on religion as a whole, just a reflection as I work through unlearning and critically inspecting beliefs I grew up with.]

[fukutomichi]

"How strange. When the light caught your hair, for a moment you seemed her perfect likeness."

Alexa, play Obsesion by Aventura.

[elennalore]

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Picture yourself in a boat on a river With tangerine trees and marmalade skies Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly A fey with kaleidoscope eyes

(Lyrics by Lennon/McCartney - one word is changed)

Celebrimbor hallucinates in the hands of Sauron who wants to know the location of the three Elven Rings. My art for @silvergiftingweek day 5: Darkness.

[artbyvampiraptor]

In the land of Mordor, where fucking neon hue and saturation lie.

Hi my commissions are open, DM me for more info

[silvergifting]

okay so maaaaaybe the plan to suggest a silmarillion-themed middle name for my child isn't working so well... my cousin and partner are now affectionately referring to the baby as 'sauron' and i'm not entirely pleased

[urwendii]

As always, reblog for larger sample. 🔥

[ghostinthetumbchine]

With the amount of mentions of Aules name i am literally *starving* for the Aule&Mairon backstory, at least some crumbs, i'm begging on my kneeees

[nenyabusiness]

Fan music for @youwearfinethingswellwriter's wonderful fic "Our Rings Mean Death". The backstory of Captain Mairon, told through a combination of Halbrand's, Sauron's, and Davy Jones' themes.

[fandomblr]

Tolkien’s ghost: *goes in and slaps Jeff Bezos for buying the rights to LOTR*

Bezos: Mr. Tolkien, I’m so sorry… I knew we shouldn’t have casted actors of color for this series…

Tolkien’s ghost: What? No, I don’t care about that, you racist piece of orc filth! I was considered anti-racist for my time.

Bezos: Then what…

Tolkien’s ghost: YOU GAVE MY ELVES SHORT HAIR! YOU HAVE DESTROYED THE VERY ESSENCE OF THE ELDAR! Do not even get me started on how you treated Nerwen…

Bezos: *nervously taking notes* Uhm, we can change all of that… who is Nerwen

Tolkien’s ghost: AND YOU BUTCHERED ANNATAR! YOU GAVE HIM A MORTAL FORM! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO MAIRON THE ADMIRABLE WAS?!?

Bezos: No… we fired our Tolkien expert

Tolkien’s ghost: *summons his dragons* Ancalagon, Smaug, Glaurung, meat is back on the menu boys. EAT THE RICH!

[coraleethroughthelookingglass]

This song is now Sauron’s. I don’t make the rules (well maybe I do)

[helenvader]

A user pointed out the similarity of Halbrand's and Sauron's theme, so I attempted to put them together. I am no wizard in working with music files, but yes, they do match. Had to slow down Sauron's to make the melodies run together.

And of course, the music belongs to Bear McCreary, and I hope this short excerpt falls under the fair use rule.

[cupkakie]

Watching the trailer for The War of the Rohirrim leaves me, at best, hopeful and at worst, sinking into cynicism hoping that it won't be a reprise of the RoP treatment by Amazon.

I don't know if I should take it as a warning sign that a Halbrandriel? Saurondriel? shipper finds parallels in a seeming enemies to lovers (but I would argue the lovers part gets thrown out the window when you look at the lore, even if the movie hints that in childhood a friendship existed between the two as children).

If this will be more of a Héra-centered movie, I wonder if the movie will also pose the question of deeds remembered or what gets recorded in history as a possible answer to why she was not named or why her potential deeds were not remembered as other members of her family were, like her father, brothers, or cousin Fréaláf.

Then again, Tolkien must have had his reasons for not including more information about her. I just hope they do give equal attention to her father and brothers in the story.

In short, I just hope this film is nothing like the hot trash fire that is Rings of Power.

[lightdancer1]

See the further irony is:

That in using 'Mall Goth Sauron' as the take on Dark Willow over 'misogynist has character randomly killed for LULZ' it also allows for greater accountability on the one hand and for Season 7 to thematically focus on repairing all this damage in the midst of facing an enemy of shadows reliant on lies to further itself. The only way to break the Druj is the absolute Truth in a very Zoroastrian sense. Characters don't get to neatly skip past accountability for their actions, and this would spiral over into further later seasons with the essential reality that in an otherwise lower-level setting this one random girl from California is a Dark Phoenix-tier reality warper and the most powerful person on the planet, or the universe.

And the questions of how that power could and should be employed on the one hand and that Willow is essentially a Doctor Strange type who beats up Gods and Eldritch Abominations for her regular line of work where her counterparts deal with the more 'street level' crises would in turn be the logical conclusion of where the show ends. She doesn't do as much physical fighting for the same reason that Stephen Strange never uses magic to go punch the Hulk in the face, her narrative role is ultimately that of Sorceress Supreme of Earth, with literally nobody in an ancient established war anticipating that this one random ginger from California was and is the new Sorceress Supreme and that if they had had such awareness the realities are that this power would and could have taken worse forms.

Unfortunately for the world, the reality too is that it is a shy computer geek who has a not at all subtle dark side and the usual teenage anxieties and insecurities given the equivalent of being able to reliably actually do things other people might dream of but can never do.

But again as long as Dawn Summers being a good thing is a narrative convention that's established memory magic is a poor choice to show the corrupting effects of reality-warping. It's a case of 'yes as established in canon all of this is true for that one season but then they decided to retcon it, so the fans are not obligated to care about it any more than the canon does about this itself.'

[styrac0saurus]

watching lord of the rings for the first time and it Is an absolutely beautiful and wonderfully cinemagraphic movie but Incredibly white