#tolkien rambling

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

Yes, JRRT loves and favors Lúthien’s line. Her family has authorial bias; he makes them the specialist, most unforgettable, and most extraordinary group of people from which many of his most influential characters stem. And good for them! They deserve it. They deserve to be the most magical family ever. 

[la-pheacienne]

I'm reading the lord of the rings and I'm once again amazed at how... good most characters are. Like, they are genuinely good people. They are a bunch of kindhearted, gracious, caring people, coming together under adverse circumstances and trying to figure things out and find a solution and support each other through it all. Like Frodo and Sam meet Faramir and Faramir is a bit suspicious at first and kind of implies Frodo may be a spy, and then when he hears his story and he's like Frodo, I pressed you so hard at first. Forgive me! It was unwise in such an hour and place. And this blows.my.mind. He wasn't even particularly mean or threatening to him in the beginning, he's just such a kind, considerate man, recognizing the kindness and honesty of another man. And they're all like that. Even Gollum starts slowly changing (for a short while) when he encounters Frodo because that's the thing about kindness and humility and grace, they are contagious. They transform people, even a creature like Gollum cannot be immune to that. Like, you may consider all this simple and basic and I get it but, hear me out. It is quite rare to see that in modern media and it is also pretty difficult to pull off in a way that is not corny and simplistic. It is mind blowing that you actually don't have to present the entire palette of human cruelty and vice in order to tell a compelling story, contrary to popular belief. Lotr does the exact opposite, and it is just beautiful and it warms my heart. Especially taking into consideration tolkien's pretty grim growing-up experience, him being a double orphan without a home, raised between an orphanage and a priest and having no family apart from his brother and then the war and then he almost dies and then he's poor as hell and then a second war and it all makes sense somehow. He writes to his wife who is also an orphan two days before the marriage "the next few years will bring us joy and content and love and sweetness such as could not be if we hadn't first been two homeless children and had found one another after long waiting" and, yes, yes! The love and sweetness just radiate from his work, the entire lotr series is a little radiant bubble of hope and love and grace that he imagined in his head to deal with a dismal reality and then he just gave that to the world, and isn't that what imagination and art is all about after all?

[queerofthedagger]

the thing is that tolkien was right trees really are that great

[tehcherrya]

Somebody give me the rights to the LOTR cinematic productions so I can create a coming of age dramedy taking place during the seventeen years between Bilbo's 111th birthday party and Frodo leaving the Shire. I'd call it "The Shire Seventeen". It would not only include the Conspiracy as a backdrop but also a bunch of the development and growing up that was probably done within those seventeen years, that is entirely unrelated to the Ring.

It's a whole seventeen years worth of low-stakes hobbit Shire drama and shenanigans, guys-- I need that cozy comedy content.

[armenelols]

Eru bless Legolas because if I was Boromir and Aragorn trying to bore through thick snow as tall as me on a mountain in a snowstorm. And this dude kept walking on top of the snow right next to me and joking about it and telling me, you can do it! Without doing anything to actually help. My teeth are rattling and that fucker doesn't even get goosebombs. Actually, I would murder him. Aragorn and Boromir are stronger men than I. Can you tell that I am cold? I am so fucking cold

[starboymp3]

the lotr trilogy are the best movies on earth but one thing i’ll never forgive them is the complete lack of aragorn and éomer friendship. i know i already made a post abt it but i honestly cannot believe these two talked One time in the movies while in the books they became literal besties. what do you mean they promised they’ll fight together, draw swords together, upon literally their first meeting, then repeated the same promise later again and again. what do you mean “Since the day when you rose before me out of the green grass of the downs I have loved you, and that love shall not fail.” what do you mean “And wherever King Elessar went with war King Éomer went with him; and beyond the Sea of Rhûn and on the far fields of the South the thunder of the cavalry of the Mark was heard, and the White Horse upon Green flew in many winds until Éomer grew old.” LIKE HELLO?????

[iminye]

hot take but you're allowed to like both the noldor and the sindar, you're allowed to be a fan of fëanor and/or any of his sons and be sympathetic towards thingol, you're allowed to like both miriel and indis, you're allowed to like the kidnap fam and simultaneously be a massive stan of elwing and eärendil, you're allowed to like maeglin but also to like idril and acknowledge that the betrayal of gondolin and everything that came with it was terrible, you're allowed to be a celegorm fan but you can also absolutely call him out for the lúthien situation and make fun of his death at the hands of a 30-something year old half human twink (all the love to dior btw he's awesome), you're allowed to do that!

and you know what, none of these are mutually exclusive, you don't have to feel forced to choose one side or the other depending on who is morally right. like what you like!

and also before anyone comes at me, obviously you're also allowed to completely ignore this and stay rooted in your opinion but please don't antagonise people who do not share it.

thanks.

[trees-of-valinor]

"He was as noble and fair as an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as summer."

is such an amazing character description. All of it lends to the image of a being who is very stately and aged, but "kind as summer" in particular is incredibly evocative. Even if you generally dislike summer (like me), you can't help but know what it means.

It just conjures up the image and feeling of the softest most beautiful day, golden sunlight, flowers and meadows. Just life. And there is strength in summer. The heat of the sun, and summer is all about vitality and growth.

That short phrase says so much and shows Elrond's character so well. After everything he's been through, he still has so much life and strength.

He manages to show so much softness and kindness to people who come to him and his home for help, and is a person of healing, and the fact that he is able to be so and to remain so kind is his strength.

[larissa-the-scribe]

Reading The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis (and loving it so far), when--

"But the nature-lovers whom I have in mind are not very much concerned with individual beautiful objects of that sort. The man who is distracts them. An enthusiastic botanist is for them a dreadful companion on a ramble. He is always stopping to draw their attention to particulars."

Is this from personal experience. Is. Is he talking about Tolkien.

[vaile-elenya]

He's one of us 🖤

[pomrania]

You know what's interesting to me? New memes from old sources. Like, "one does not simply walk into Mordor" was a meme within at most months of Fellowship coming out, but "all right then, keep your secrets" only became a meme like a decade or two after its source first released.

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

someone saying idril is "cold" because she "never tried to understand maeglin despite him being in love with her"... free the silmarillion women from the fandom's misogyny

[spinnenpfote6]

I just re-read some pages of The Fellowship Of The Ring and I don't get why so many people take issue with around-20-y/o Elijah Wood being cast. While Frodo Baggins is indeed canonically about 50 years old, the book specifically mentions how he looks like someone fresh out of his teens because he kept the One Ring for multiple years, which is known to keep their owner young and fresh (at least at the beginning until they rapidly age after getting rid of it) - not to mention that since hobbits age slower than humans, Frodo would only be in maybe his 30s. On one page we are being told that multiple people gossip and wonder about how young he still looks, including Gandalf. So if anything, you could say that Elijah Wood was too skinny or too attractive (though I do think he looks like Frodo is described), but not too young.

And I actually like that he looks young because it not only does it make him look cute and innocent, but we also get the notion of someone who has had a relatively quiet and happy, sheltered life before (aside from the terrible death of his parents) and of someone who is visibly sensitive and innocent and gets taken care of a lot. The BIGGEST reason I like his young looks however, is the parallel to young soldiers who are ripped out of their homes by outer forces, by older men who are the ones who started the wars. Young soldiers whose lives are practically destroyed before they even really begin, just like Frodo's - even if he's already half a century old. He comes back traumatized and sick/disabled having saved the world but having lost so much. Most likely his innocence too.

[queerofthedagger]

if i think too much about how elros chose quenya as the language for the royal names and records of númenor I'll need to disappear into the woods to scream for days. like. the implications and weight that carries just make me insane

[valar-did-me-wrong]

No ROP did not "poison the well" for other Tolkien adaptations.. you with your incessant hate & need to feel superior by being a part of the online 'in-crowd' have poisoned the well for Tolkien adaptations!

When you were (& still are) blindly hating on ROP & bullying it's fans by creating such a vile toxic online environment towards anything that isn't PJ's literal clone, did you really think that environment will remain in a vaccum?

When you were repeating & promoting rubbish talking points to make ROP look bad did you really never check that 90% of those points were coming from men who HATE women as anything but glorified furniture on screen?

NOW you complain about men hating women leads & critics hating entertainment for entertainment's sake but for some reason that same grace was never granted by you to ROP?

Your taste in entertainment is good enough but other people's is a sin towards life on earth just because you didn't like it?

How does it taste the medicine that you were prescribing for the past 2 years?

Btw I have no problem with the movie, this is not an anti-wotr post.. it's an anime movie, I've grown up loving anime & it looks gorgeous! A LOT of love & effort has obviously went into it just how it went into ROP.

It's the posts that are trying to justify their liking of wotr by disrespecting ROP that keep coming on my dash that I'm responding to here..

The utter irony of the situation tbh! You wouldn't be needing to justify enjoying shows if you had not created this environment yourself in the first place! People have different tastes, it's that simple tbh

I hope you learn from this how hate is never the answer because whatever you put out into the world comes back to find you eventually..

[armenelols]

In deference to my recent bout of shitposting, have a daily reminder that Tolkien's half-elves have no happy ending and no matter what they choose, they'll still lose part of their family forever. They'll always be split between two people, neither fully one or the other, yet forced to pick one and lose the other