#series: lotr

[ladystoneboobs]

i like how at some point the elves renamed sauron (just as melkor was renamed morgoth) and from then on their name(s) were "his right name". the dark lord was deadnaming himself by going by mairon or anything else not describing how vile, stinky, and abhorrent he was.

[velinxi]

Lord of the Rings fanart! I watched for the first time recently and loved it

[EDIT: Thanks for the love on this! Prints of this are also available on my shop for those interested!]

[paintedcrows]

Holiday Classics

Been thinking about Ford watching the 70s Animated Lord of the Rings Movies... (companion comic to this post!)

[lasaraleen]

I love how entirely guilty Boromir feels after trying to get the ring from Frodo. The way he calls out to him after realizing what he’s done, the way he falls to the ground and cries. He was more than this moment, and he bravely defended his little friends, making them seem important to the cause and keeping them alive. I love him. He’s imperfect, but noble. He was more than that moment. He was all the moments before, and the moments after.

[minacoleta]

Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king’s head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. ‘Look, Sam!’ he cried, startled into speech. ‘Look! The king has got a crown again!’

[ithilienns]

Name Etymologies of Middle-Earth: Gandalf

“Yes, yes, my dear sir—and I do know your name, Mr. Bilbo Baggins. And you do know my name, though you don’t remember that I belong to it. I am Gandalf, and Gandalf means me!”

― The Hobbit, Chapter I: An Unexpected Party

[enchantedflameandflower]

Save a horse, ride a Karl

which one would you pick first? 😋

additional bonus question - which two together? 🥹

[fukutomichi]

Benjamin Walker as High King Gil-galad S2.E5 ∙ Halls of Stone

[calirph]

𝐕𝐈𝐆𝐆𝐎 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐄𝐍 as 𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐎𝐑𝐍 𝐈𝐈, 𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐍.

Aragorn at The Battle at the Black Gate. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).

[oncloudatlas]

the illustrations of: the two towers

[ladystoneboobs]

man, you ever think about how christopher lee's two '00s movie villains roles are basically the same beyond just both being played by christopher lee? more specifically dooku is similar to movie saruman whose origins from the text are never really hinted at, so to the general audience he was just a wizard like how the jedi/sith are space wizards. pj even throws in a magic wizard fight between saruman and gandalf not unlike dooku using his force powers to fight jedi. so it's like however lucas may have been influenced by old man wizards in lotr, pj was also making his christopher lee baddie more like a sw baddie. except the lee connection must have just been coincidence since this was all being done around the same time, right? then there's all the non-action char stuff. both saruman and dooku delude themselves and try to fool others about their intentions only being for a higher purpose, with dooku's political idealism and saruman thinking his power made him more fit to rule for everyone's good than any mortal men. both try to use their reasoning to recruit peers from their former order, trying the carrot before the stick, dooku with obi-wan as a prisoner on geonosis only turning him over to be executed when he rejects the offer and saruman with gandalf at orthanc taking him prisoner after gandalf refused him. dooku got in too deep to realize that becoming a sith and starting a galaxy-wide civil war are not really how you solve corruption and create a better gov't, just as saruman didn't listen to gandalf's obvious warning that sauron was the only lord of the one ring and trying to replace him would lead nowhere good. dooku and saruman both built secret armies, with dooku doing it double building up droid forces the jedi didn't know about until it was too late while secretly arranging an army for the other side too, an army of clones artificially made and grown without mothers just like movie!saruman's uruks were artificially grown out of fucking mud or something without any mothers. saruman gambled and lost by trying to ally with sauron and find the ring for himself and dooku played himself acting like the sith rule of two only went one way to favor the apprentice, never thinking his master might try to replace him, even knowing how easily maul had been discarded. then both of these proud, old, snobby men get blindsided by undignified deaths due to betrayal, dooku losing his head when palps told anakin to kill tho dooku actually thought they were recruiting anakin to ally with both of them, and saruman getting defeated by ents and hobbits-ents avenging their losses as anakin avenged his arm-and then stabbed by wormtongue, who was his most loyal servant until being kicked too much. dooku was replaced by anakin who did eventually after about ~20 years destroy the sith and saruman was replaced as the white wizard by gandalf whose efforts did eventually result in that one ring getting destroyed. it's like...i guess my point is...that just like saruman was a poser ringlord who could only try to imitate sauron, it seems dooku the corrupted space wizard could only copy his middle earth wizard doppleganger, yknow what i mean, man?

[doverstar]

can't express accurately how happy it makes me that c.s. lewis did not leave room for many interpretations in narnia. it's christian and you can't get around it. susan chose to care more about worldly things than what matters and he said what he said. the lion is Jesus. evil is evil and good is good and people have to choose. and that makes some readers angry because it's nearly impossible to ignore and they want to ignore it. they want it to be something else and they can't make it something else without making it not narnia. love that. that is doing it right

[inkskinned]

sometimes we just need someone to pay enough attention.

for the longest time i had been trying to read The Lord of The Rings. everyone had sung the praises for it, over and over. i'd seen clips of the movie and it seemed like it could be fun, but actually reading it was fucking horrible.

my parents had the omnibus - all the books squished into one big tome - and in the 4th grade i started sort of an annual tradition: i would start trying to read TLR and get frustrated after about a month and put it back down. at first i figured i was just too young for it, and that it would eventually make sense.

but every time i came back to it, i would find myself having the exact same experience: it was confusing, weird, and dry as a fucking bone. i couldn't figure it out. how had everyone else on earth read this book and enjoyed it? how had they made movies out of this thing? it was, like, barely coherent. i would see it on "classics" list and on every fantasy/sci-fi list and everyone said i should read it; but i figured that it was like my opinion of great expectations - just because it's a classic doesn't mean i'm going to like experiencing it.

at 20, i began the process of forcing myself through it. if i had to treat the experience like a self-inflicted textbook, i would - but i was going to read it.

my mom came across me taking notes at our kitchen table. i was on the last few pages of the first book in the omnibus, and i was dreading moving on to the next. she smiled down at me. only you would take notes on creative writing. then she sat down and her brow wrinkled. wait. why are you taking notes on this?

i said the thing i always said - it's boring, and i forget what's happening in it because it's so weird, and dense. and strange.

she nodded a little, and started to stand up. and then sat back down and said - wait, will you show me the book?

i was happy to hand it over, annoyed with the fact i'd barely made a dent in the monster of a thing. she pulled it to herself, pushing her glasses up so she could read the tiny writing. for a moment, she was silent, and then she let out a cackle. she wouldn't stop laughing. oh my god. i cannot wait to tell your father.

i was immediately defensive. okay, maybe i'm stupid but i've been trying to read this since the 4th grade and -

she shook her head. raquel, this is the Silmarillion. you've been reading the Silmarillion, not the lord of the rings.

anyway, it turns out that the hobbit and lord of the rings series are all super good and i understand why they're recommended reading. but good lord (of the rings), i wish somebody had just asked - wait. this kind of thing is right up your alley. you love fantasy. it sounds like something might be wrong. why do you think it's so boring?

[rosefires20]

My brainrot today is thinking about just how incredible for a character Eowyn is.

Genuinely. The series might not have many female characters but the ones we do get go so fucking hard.

To me, Eowyn is literally the definition of defining being a woman for oneself. She rejects the roles she is given despite acknlowdging the importance and its mostly because she knows part of the reason is that she is a woman.

The reason why she is obsessed with Aragorn isn't because she loves him but because she wants what he has. She wants the freedom and courage and bravery that Aragorn has at every turn. She literally has multiple conversations during the Two Towers about how what she fears most is a cage. All this girl wants is the freedom to be and not be forced into a role. The best thing is that she literally gets that.

The segment of Return of the King about Eowyn and Faramir is literally about her piecing together what she truly wants. She doesn't want Aragorn. She wants freedom and the ability to choose. Faramir does nothing but encourage that in her. Their love story is literally one of the healthiest love stories I've seen in a long time because at the heart of it, their love is a place to return home to for both parties. Both go off to lead and help their people for a considerable amount of time before returning to each other but that does not diminish their bond. Even Faramir, I believe, falls in love with her bravery and dedication to her loved ones. The reason she went to Pelenor Fields and Gondor with the troops of Rohan was because she had things she wanted to fight for. She wanted to fight for herself, her people, and her loved ones. She is the one who protects Theoden after he is killed so that his body gets the treatment it deserves. She encourages Merry and helps him go to the battle because she sees her struggle in Merry. They feel helpless standing around when there are things to be doing.

Let's also not forget the fact that she was around Grima Wormtounge just as much as the King was. She was exposed to the same poison and awful words that eroded the king. It's even implied that her care for him is part of the reason why Theoden was savable when Gandalf showed up. She had the same power and bravery as everyone else even if she didn't see it in herself.

Then at the end of the day, SHE decides where she wants to go and what path she wants to walk. She walked the path of a warrior. The path of a princess/ruler. The path of a caretaker. But in the end she decides which elements truly mean something to her outside of gender definitions. That is what makes her character so incredible to me. In this she literally kills one of the biggest enemies in that battle with such a badass line.

[maalidoesart]

ruins of the past

[yukipri]

The FANCIEST blu-ray box set I've ever seen...

The Middle-Earth Ultimate Collector's Edition Blu-Ray: Complete LOTR + Hobbit Trilogies, Extended Editions + all Appendices. Each movie has its own "book" that holds its discs, which are all stored in a special bookcase. There's also two beautiful art cards with art by Alan Lee and John Howe, and a completely filled red book that has all the ending character portraits from the movies and more.

This is a set from 2019, so there are higher resolution movie types/sets with different media that have been released since, but I can't top the presentation of this. I feel really lucky that I was able to find a reasonably priced second-hand set!