#tolkien tldr

[lowcountry-gothic]

I really like the fact that the first form we see Sauron take in The Rings of Power is Halbrand, believed to be an heir of a southern kingdom of humans that has lost its king. This adds so much nuance and significance to the fact that Sauron, in The Lord of the Rings, sees Aragorn as such a huge threat: because he sees in Aragorn a flicker of his own history. Because he fears that Aragorn might achieve the thing he wanted to do but never could: to actually help heal a world plagued by evil. Also, his fear that Aragorn might supplant him as the Lord of the Rings—by taking up the One Ring and claiming it—feels much more possible when we've seen Sauron himself begin as an Aragorn-like figure.

[ofthebrownajah]

Seeing so many show onlies saying this brings me joy 🥹

[earlgraytay]

i'm beginning to think that it's impossible to make a good video game set in the Tolkien legendarium

don't get me wrong: i'm not saying you can't craft an immersive and enjoyable experience set in Middle-Earth (there are plenty!), and i'm not saying it's UNADAPTABLE or anything like that

but I'm beginning to think that any game set in Middle-Earth is actually doing itself a disservice, and that setting a video game (especially a conventional action game) there actively weakens your game rather than strengthening it

[akahellcat]

Dude you’re lotr fan right? I’ve completely forgotten who Feanor is. Could you explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old?

Yoo, yes I am!

Anything around Feanor's family is insanely complicated and there are far too many names to get too deep into it.

But basically, he's an ancestor (grandfather really) of the guy who made the Rings for/with Sauron, Celebrimbor. He's also the guy that made the Silmarils in the First Age (LOTR events happen in the Third Age, for comparison). They were THE most valuable thing that caused friction in the early days, especially with Morgoth who at one point stole them. Relevant note re: Morgoth- he was a teacher to Sauron and, to put it in pop terms, like Lucifer, an angel that fell from the rest of the Valar/angels and was THE Dark Lord before Sauron took over the mantle. The reason why the stones (Silmarils) were so fought over is because they held all the light of the two trees (Laurelin and Telperion) that were magical and special to the Elves (think: the source of all light in the early days along with the stars). They also bore fruit that would eventually become the Sun and the Moon, but that comes way later. The trees were also destroyed by Morgoth.

Going back to our guy Feanor, he was also the king of the Noldor elves, and he fought Morgoth because of the Silmarils eventually, and died to the lord of Balrogs Gothmog (think the flamey dude that almost killed Gandalf in Moria, but older) in one of these battles. Not many people liked him, and he was hot headed and kinda insane, but there is the entire history of his rule and the oath that he made with his sons and so many other things... at that point I'd just recommend you read the Silmarillion!

[wizardlyghost]

dnd elves that go from baby to adult at the same rate as humans but start aging at 1/10th speed once they're done with puberty. the elven milestone for social adulthood is around age 100-120 because that's roughly when an equivalent-of-mid-30s elf reaches the point where most or all of the non-elf friends they grew up with have died, and they start to form more bonds with other elves than with shorter-lived folk. this also somewhat explains why elves are known for being both lively and fey and also serene and melancholy - the former is more typical of younger elves, the latter of elves who have passed this milestone and settled down somewhat.

[irrealisms]

checks out.

the experience of being into silm vs being into mcyt rp are so vastly different that i dont think i could ever successfully manage to get silm fans to watch dsmp or get dsmp fans to watch silm. which is tragic because yall cdream enjoyers would go crazy for maedhros feanorian

[sorcerousundries]

If you're taking requests, could you please write something about which Lotr and The Hobbit characters would be most attracted to a reader who's really intelligent and good at debating them? Like I'm picturing a sort of Rivals to Lovers dynamic where the reader is super smart and really good at arguing their points, but I'm curious which Tolkien characters you think would be most into that type of partner 🤔

I can totally picture Eomer falling for a person like that because he honestly seems perfect for Enemies to Lovers arcs, but tldr what Tolkien characters do you think would be most attracted to a super intelligent person who could debate them into the dirt? Thanks!

I have been alone all my life but with the compensations of intellect.

Lord of the rings and The hobbit characters react to an intelligent reader

Warnings: none

Includes: Elrond, Thranduil, Gimli and Éomer

A/n: thank you for your request <3

Content under the cut

Elrond — Friends to lovers

You and Elrond would meet in a fairly formal setting, maybe during a business gathering or a dinner of sorts.

You would be chatting with some high noble who would introduce you to lord Elrond and the two of you clicked immediately.

He would often invite you for tea and insist you stay for dinner, maybe offering you a bed as the hour gets later.

He is knowledgeable about history, lore and the affairs between both men and elves alike, he would likely be drawn to someone he can engage deeply in discussions of middle earths past, present and future.

The debates between you and lord Elrond would be competitive but friendly, if he lost he would shrug it off, the pinnacle of healthy masculinity. If he won, he wouldn’t care, maybe tease you if your friendship started to grow closer but never in a cruel, condescending way.

He would grow feelings slowly yet steadily, he would never force himself on you but he couldn’t deny the flutter of his heart whenever you’d smirk triumphantly as besting him during a debate of which medicine would be best to use for a rope burn, the simple action making his heart warm.

As your relationship turns romantic your playful banter wouldn’t stop, it would only grow, turning into silly debates before bed as you two move in chorus around the bedroom, performing your separate night routines though you’d never allow the room to grow silent as you chat about whatever topic comes to mind.

Overall he’d enjoy having a partner that he could chat away with, it’s rare that he finds someone who equals his intelligence, let alone best it.

Thranduil — Shared traumas

Thranduil would likely already be acquainted with you, after all the king knows everything that happens in his kingdom.

Though he only started to cultivate a relationship with you when you outwitted him in his own throne room, for the first time a millennium the king of the woodland realm was left speechless, you intrigued him, instead of sending you away he invited you to join him in his study.

The debates between you two would be filled with romantic tension, heated discussions would be filled with you leaned so forward your nose would also my be touching his, as you did something that countered his you would pull back, thoughts of how his eyes would dart down to your lips so quick you almost didn’t see it would flood your brain.

He would love discussing battle strategies and such, even better if an elf and you saw the battle for yourself.

Nothing pleases him more than falling back on you when he doubts his leadership skills, after having to listen to courtiers and advisors drone on about their ideas and excuses, he can go to and simply sit across the room as you answer his questions logically, not even looking up from your book.

Your relationship would start to turn romantic when he confided in you about his troubles, his worries for his son, even telling you about the death of his wife.

And who knows, maybe he’ll pull you in for a kiss before you turn in for the night.

Gimli — opposites attract

Gimli would first see you at the court of Elrond, during the forming of the fellowship.

He never thought his heart would lurch from his chest when he saw an elf sitting at lord Elrond side, chin held high and regal.

Not even his admiration for lady Galadriel could compare to the way his heart jumped at the sight of you.

While he’s not typically seen as a debater, Gimli has a strong sense of pride surrounding his culture and way of life, he would be drawn to someone who can engage in conversation about dwarven history and culture with him.

He would hold an immense level of respect for you, often coming to you to double check any technical blueprints or a different perspective if he’s struggling to visualise how something would come together. He would appreciate someone who can offer unbiased opinions not swayed by any existing rivalry between elves and dwarves.

Any debates with him would lively and high spirited,he would engage enthusiastically defending his views with passion and light hearted humour, your discussions could range from history and craftsmanship to the simple differences between elves and dwarves.

He would let out a small “oh!” As you kiss him on the cheek, nodding him a farewell after helping him find scrolls about an ancient smithing technique, his smile turning his eyes into slights as he pumps his fist once you’ve turned your back.

Eomer — Enemies to lovers

Eomer would find your intelligence intriguing and infuriating at the same time.

His warrior ideals and loyalty to Rohan would initially clash with your more logical approach to things, your debates would arise over strategies in battle most likely.

Early on in your relationship, misunderstandings were the main fuel to your bitter relationship. Your critical views on his leadership or warfare would be interpreted as disrespect, driving a wedge between you two.

But as the power of Sauron grows, you’re forced to put your differences aside.

He would begrudgingly admit that you’re actually very useful in a fight, offering new ideas that contrast his own.

However one night as your both sat around the fire, when every other solider has turned in for the night, he might open up, revealing to you his fears about not being a good leader, you in turn offer him insights and philosophical perspectives that resonate with him.

He thinks about the conversation when he nods silently before sauntering off to his tent, laying in bed staring up at the white linen cloth of his tent, the words he forgets as he slowly realises he in-fact wasn’t listening to your words, instead focusing on the curve of your lips and the brush of your eyelashes against your cheeks every time you blinked, the way your eyes gleamed as the fire crackled.

He frowns as the words “oh shit, I’m in love with them” echoed in his inner monologue.

He doesn’t tell you through words rather showing you, right before the rohirrims marched to Gondor he would give you heated kiss, displaying not his passion as a warrior, but as a lover.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Monsters Reimagined: Bandits

As a game of heroic fantasy that centers so primarily on combat, D&D  is more often than not a game about righteous violence, which is why I spend so much time thinking about the targets of that violence. Every piece of media made by humans is a thing created from conscious or unconscious design, it’s saying something whether or not its creators intended it to do so. 

Tolkien made his characters peaceloving and pastoral, and coded his embodiment of evil as powerhungry, warlike, and industrial. When d&d directly cribbed from Tolkien's work it purposely changed those enemies to be primitive tribespeople who were resentful of the riches the “civilized” races possessed. Was this intentional? None can say, but as a text d&d says something decidedly different than Tolkien. 

That's why today I want to talk about bandits, the historical concept of being an “outlaw”, and how media uses crime to “un-person” certain classes of people in order to give heroes a target to beat up. 

Tldr: despite presenting bandits as a generic threat, most d&d scenarios never go into detail about what causes bandits to exist, merely presuming the existence of outlaws up to no good that the heroes should feel no qualms about slaughtering. If your story is going to stand up to the scrutiny of your players however, you need to be aware of WHY these individuals have been driven to banditry, rather than defaulting to “they broke the law so they deserve what’s coming to them.”

I got to thinking about writing this post when playing a modded version of fallout 4, an npc offhndedly mentioned to me that raiders (the postapoc bandit rebrand) were too lazy to do any farming and it was good that I’d offed them by the dozens so that they wouldn’t make trouble for those that did. 

That gave me pause, fallout takes place in an irradiated wasteland where folks struggle to survive but this mod was specifically about rebuilding infrastructure like farms and ensuring people had enough to get by. Lack of resources to go around was a specific justification for why raiders existed in the first place, but as the setting became more arable the mod-author had to create an excuse why the bandit’s didn’t give up their violent ways and start a nice little coop, settling on them being inherently lazy , dumb, and psychopathic.   

This is exactly how d&d has historically painted most of its “monstrous humanoid” enemies. Because the game is ostensibly about combat the authors need to give you reasons why a peaceful solution is impossible, why the orcs, goblins, gnolls (and yes, bandits), can’t just integrate with the local town or find a nice stretch of wilderness to build their own settlement on and manage in accordance with their needs. They go so far in this justification that they end up (accidently or not) recreating a lot of IRL arguments for persecution and genocide.

Bandits are interesting because much like cultists, it’s a descriptor that’s used to unperson groups of characters who would traditionally be inside the “not ontologically evil” bubble that’s applied to d&d’s protagonists.   Break the law or worship the wrong god says d&d and you’re just as worth killing as the mindless minions of darkness, your only purpose to serve as a target of the protagonist’s righteous violence.  

The way we get around this self-justification pitfall and get back to our cool fantasy action game is to relentlessly question authority, not only inside the game but the authors too. We have to interrogate anyone who'd show us evil and direct our outrage a certain way because if we don't we end up with crusades, pogroms, and Qanon.

With that ethical pill out of the way, I thought I’d dive into a listing of different historical groups that we might call “Bandits” at one time or another and what worldbuilding conceits their existence necessitates. 

Brigands: By and large the most common sort of “bandit” you’re going to see are former soldiers left over from wars, often with a social gap between them and the people they’re raiding that prevents reintegration ( IE: They’re from a foreign land and can’t speak the local tongue, their side lost and now they’re considered outlaws, they’re mercenaries who have been stiffed on their contract).  Justifying why brigands are out brigading is as easy as asking yourself “What were the most recent conflicts in this region and who was fighting them?”. There’s also something to say about how a life of trauma and violence can be hard to leave even after the battle is over, which is why you historically tend to see lots of gangs and paramilitary groups pop up in the wake of conflict. 

Raiders:  fundamentally the thing that has caused cultures to raid eachother since the dawn of time is sacristy. When the threat of starvation looms it’s far easier to justify potentially throwing your life away if it means securing enough food to last you and those close to you through the next year/season/day. Raider cultures develop in biomes that don’t support steady agriculture, or in times where famine, war, climate change, or disease make the harvests unreliable. They tend to target neighboring cultures that DO have reliable harvests which is why you frequently see raiders emerging from “the barbaric frontier” to raid “civilization” that just so happens to occupy the space of a reliably fertile river valley. When thinking about including raiders in your story, consider what environmental forces have caused this most recent and previous raids, as well as consider how frequent raiding has shaped the targeted society. Frequent attacks by raiders is how we get walled palaces and warrior classes after all, so this shit is important. 

Slavers: Just like raiding, most cultures have engaged in slavery at one point or another, which is a matter I get into here. While raiders taking captives is not uncommon, actively attacking people for slaves is something that starts occurring once you have a built up slave market, necessitating the existence of at least one or more hierarchical societies that need more disposable workers than then their lower class is capable of providing. The roman legion and its constant campaigns was the apparatus by which the imperium fed its insatiable need for cheap slave labor. Subsistence raiders generally don’t take slaves en masse unless they know somewhere to sell them, because if you’re having trouble feeding your own people you’re not going to capture more ( this is what d&d gets wrong about monstrous humanoids most of the time). 

Tax Farmers: special mention to this underused classic, where gangs of toughs would bid to see who could collect money for government officials, and then proceed to ransack the realm looking to squeeze as much money out of the people as possible. This tends to happen in areas where the state apparatus is stretched too thin or is too lighthanded to have established enduring means of funding.  Tax farmers are a great one-two punch for campaigns where you want your party to be set up against a corrupt authority: our heroes defeat the marauding bandits and then oh-no, turns out they were not only sanctioned by the government but backed by an influential political figure who you’ve just punched in the coinpurse.  If tax farming exists it means the government is strong enough to need a yearly budget but not so established (at least in the local region) that it’s developed a reliably peaceful method of maintaining it.  

Robber Baron: Though the term is now synonymous with ruthless industrialists, it originated from the practice of shortmidned petty gentry (barons and knights and counts and the like) going out to extort and even rob THEIR OWN LANDS out of a desire for personal enrichment/boredom. Schemes can range from using their troops to shake down those who pass through their domain to outright murdering their own peasants for sport because you haven’t gotten to fight in a war for a while.  Just as any greed or violence minded noble can be a robber baron so it doesn’t take that much of a storytelling leap but I encourage you to channel all your landlord hate into this one. 

Rebels: More than just simple outlaws, rebels have a particular cause they’re a part of (just or otherwise) that puts them at odds with the reigning authority. They could violently support a disfavoured political faction, be acting out against a law they think is unjust, or hoping to break away from the authority entirely. Though attacks against those figures of authority are to be expected, it’s all too common for rebels to go onto praying on common folk for the sake of the cause.  To make a group of rebels worth having in your campaign pinpoint an issue that two groups of people with their own distinct interests could disagree on, and then ratchet up the tension. Rebels have to be able to beleive in a cause, so they have to have an argument that supports them.

Remnants: Like a hybrid of brigands, rebels, and taxfarmers, Remnants represent a previously legitimate system of authority that has since been replaced but not yet fully disappeared. This can happen either because the local authority has been replaced by something new (feudal nobles left out after a monarchy toppling revolution) or because it has faded entirely ( Colonial forces of an empire left to their own devices after the empire collapses). Remnants often sat at the top of social structures that had endured for generations and so still hold onto the ghost of power ( and the violence it can command) and the traditions that support it.  Think about big changes that have happened in your world of late, are the remnants looking to overturn it? Win new privilege for themselves? Go overlooked by their new overlords?

Art

[thefallenangelsgang]

I'm losing my fucking mind

Or: I just saw Lord of the Rings the Musical at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and my brain chemistry has irreversibly changed

I'm too genuinely scrambled at the moment from travel to make a solid post (I am multiple states away from Illinois and I hate city driving) but I cannot shake the life-changing experience that was.

SPOILERS AHEAD

(Spoiler free tldr: story is changed sometimes severely to make a sub-3hr runtime or to simplify, but the message doesn't get completely lost. Tolkien fan approved)

First issue I can see everyone having is how much the story changes because it does change a lot. Rohan and Gondor being merged is probably the most glaring. I think it works because the show is more focused on the Hobbits (specifically Frodo and Sam). Personally I can look past it. My one issue is the missing Sam monologues (mount doom is a rather swift sequence, I'd have liked to see Sam give his devotion speech and his speech about the shire while waiting to die) those would have made insane songs but alas. The ending still was a gut punch though so it's more a personal preference thing.

First thing that blew me away was the technical aspect. The lighting and set design was GORGEOUS and EVOCATIVE. There were multiple times lighting alone drew me to tears.

The puppetry is immaculate. The nazgul chase is singularly some of the most beautiful choreo I've seen and I'm a slut for puppetry

The cast play all of the instruments live on stage, sometimes while doing choreography (nothing will prepare you to see Legolas holding a fucking trumpet or Boromir strapped into a goddamn accordion)

The costuming is more accurate to the original editions' illustrations which I found endlessly charming. One difference is, for safety (probably OSHA), all the hobbits (and Gollum) wear Sandals. This is never discussed. I love that.

BOROMIR IS KILLED BY HIS OWN SWORD WHICH I CANNOT EXPRESS HOW PERFECT THAT IS NARRATIVELY

GOLLUM PLAYED BY TONY BOZZUTO IS NEARLY INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM ANDY SERKIS

(I am not joking about this. Somehow he has mastered Andy's physicality and voice work. It truly was a sight to behold.)

Saruman/Elrond's actor (dressed as a hobbit) was hanging out in our section during preshow and was having a grand old time.

Bilbo and Frodo were in the main audience bothering people. Frodo was playing a stick and ring game and got absolutely shown up by some 10 year old he invited to play.

The Entmoot took literally 2 minutes (the way I had to stop from HOWLING at that)

I was SOBBING at the end, like actually.

Somehow this production managed to keenly make me feel the ending of Frodo leaving for the Grey Havens more than the movies did. The Irony of Frodo leaving being both a hopeful prayer that there is a place where people bound with trauma and wounds too deep to heal can live in peace without pain and also a grim acceptance that sometimes people cannot recover was STARK

Frodo and Sam really push the narrative of this show up until the end and it hits HARD. God bless this cast with steady work, they all deserve it.

[inquisitionthoughts]

Dragon Age the Veilguard: My Thoughts

I have played through all of the latest Dragon Age installation (except for two side quests in Rivain, and one blighted dragon that I was locked out of for the entire game due to what I believe was a bug) and I have things to say. 

After finishing it I had so many conflicting thoughts and feelings, and those internal conflicts have only grown after letting the experience marinate. 

I want to start with saying that I am writing what I'm going to say as a nonbinary, queer, bi, pan, poly, “leftist” progressive feminist vegetarian working at an NGO LGBTQI-organization, so you can safely assume that I am not coming from a grifter or alt-right point of view. 

To give you an idea of where I am coming from:

I grew up reading folktales, mythologies and fantasy literature by Pratchett, Tolkien and Eddings; playing the Swedish version of Dungeons & Dragons, making role-playing games, and programming text based fantasy adventures in DOS as a kid. That's how I ended up in this whole fandom in the first place. 

I am an original Dragon Age fan. I've followed and absolutely loved the series since before the release of Origins. As I watched my friends play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but never had a good enough computer at home to play those games myself at that time, I was elated when I got to hear talk of a game universe that was the “spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate”, and I followed all info on the development and marketing, until the game was released. And boy did they deliver, Dragon Age: Origins converted me into a gamer and cemented my love for cRPGs as well as my love for BioWare. 

I did many playthroughs of Origins; every origin, good runs, evil runs, canon runs. All the DLC. Several runs of Awakening. When the demo for DAII was released I was apprehensive due to the really weird look so it took me a while to play it, but when I eventually did it was amazing. The companions and the story were stellar, and it didn't really matter that they reused the dungeons, I just wish they had updated the maps so it wasn't as obvious. Several playthroughs later with both siblings, all romances and different allied endings I was ready for the next installation. 

I pre-ordered Dragon Age Inquisition as soon as it was possible, the collector's edition, so I ended up learning tarot to use the deck that came with it. I bought all the art books for all the games. I kind of wanted to stop playing Inquisition at the 1337 hour mark but now I have over 2000 hours in the game, with all the DLC completed, and I've played every race and class, explored all the different ways the character can be portrayed as devout Andrastian, carefree selfish asshole, elven supremacist or goodie-two shoes hero, and I’ve even written a guide to how to get the best DAI experience here on tumblr (tldr; get out of the Hinterlands, talk to companions, skip the shards 😅). 

And then I waited for ten years. Played Mass Effect 1-4, Fallout 3-4, Skyrim, Witcher 3, Baldur's Gate 1-3, Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Divinity: Original Sin 2, The Outer Worlds, Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield to bide my time. Followed Ghil Dirthalen's YouTube channel religiously. Read most of the Dragon Age Wiki, even contributed to it. Made my own mad person mind maps over the lore and timeline of the universe; the Maker, the titans, the spirits, the elves, the veil, humans, Tevinter, qunari, the blight, Andraste and the Chantry. 

I love the darkness and depth of the Dragon Age universe. How it consciously turns fantasy tropes on their head in its own way. I have memories of the writers of Origins explaining that when they created the setting they wanted to contemplate how the existence of magic, elves and dwarves actually would play out in a gritty realistic world filled with bigoted and narrow minded people, and then followed through with those conclusions. How the plight of the elves had clear connotations to the holocaust and the Jewish gettos of Europe. It was a curious series not afraid to follow their own trains of thought, making you nauseated, flabbergasted and upset on the way. 

I followed the twists and turns of the development at BioWare. Through development being halted due to teams being moved to Andromeda and Anthem, the pivot to and from multi-player live service, mass leavings and layoffs, teaser trailers, Kotaku articles and whatnot. It was a roller-coaster pendulum swing between being afraid and hopeful, oftentimes at the same time. I refused to completely give up hope, I never did, and I was immensely excited for the release of Dragon Age Dreadwolf. 

Eventually it came! Name changed to Veilguard. A quite weird League of Legends-esque companions trailer. A spoiler filled gameplay video. Marketing team spoiling endgame scenes with official trailers. Rumors of amazing character creation and a shocking reveal that only three choices would carry over from the past three games. We already knew the Keep wouldn't be used, but only three? Nevertheless I pre-ordered and then it came. 

And I played it. 

I loved it so much, but at the same time I had so many deep grievances that threatened to take over the whole playthrough unless I somehow managed them. I had to create a document that stayed open at all times on my second screen just so I could write down things that I just could not let go otherwise, that made me able to keep focusing on the game and not the hard to swallow moments I was getting stuck on. I have never experienced anything like this before, but on the other hand I have never loved and been invested in any game fantasy universe like this. 

This was the result of all my reactions to Dragon Age the Veilguard:

THE LOVE

Things I really loved

the lighthouse <3

the look and graphics of every place, the game is absolutely stunning, and the visual people have outdone themselves, the level designs, the environmental storytelling is amazing and beyond

the cities, the markets, I LOVE LOVE LOVE them, and they give so much cyberpunk 2077 vibes in a good way 

dock town gives awesome low town vibes from da2 ❤️

the main story

the new lore drops, omg the lore, yum yum

buskers playing the old tavern songs, just love it

the blight, visually, oh god I loved it, it was really a throwback to the fleshyness of the Deep Roads in Origins

the new look of the demons, I actually loved it eventually as I was first sceptical, even though the pride demons were abit too much floaty neon

so many new iterations of enemies, in such fun ways

the faction systems and factions stores 

the companion gear systems

the gear system, upgrade systems

the short letters ❤️

the leveling up systems, really funny, great to be able to refund at any time

the world maps and fast travel systems

the cards where you chose your companions, stunning

the scene in front of the lighthouse eluvian, awestriking

the companion conversation system where you could see on the map of the lighthouse if they had anything new, or a quest or where they were if you wanted to eavesdrop - it was very refreshing after talking to everyone in camp in bg3 every night to see if there is any new reaction to something you did, now I could just talk to them if they had something and not compulsively all the time

the quest formats of walking along with your companions in areas you otherwise can end up in battle in, loved that so much, a calm way to experience these absolutely stunning environments

the combat system on explorer mode, when at highest level the animations that played out were mad cool XD that was fun!

that you can walk into and climb ladders at the same time as companions and that they teleport to you or enemies in battle, lovely

squeezing through narrow passages, sliding down, walking on thin planks

the no fall damage jumping

opening doors like in dark souls games

that lucanis had a contract on a bronto once XD

elgar’nan has an amaaazing voice actor giving weight to his menace

loved the format of the ending in the style of mass effect 2, so well executed! one of the best endings of all times

the varric twist OMG!! I cried ❤️

I have cried and have had goosebumps so many time during this game ❤️ I love so much of it so much ❤️

the hype for what the "devouring storm", "the adversary" and "it's eye" is, and a potential next game

the joining chalice T_T

THE MEH

Things that were meh

that the romance was super PG13 T_T I guess I am spoiled after bg3 but to get a peck and then a lying hug on a couch and an "I love you" was of course wonderful, but NOT ENOUGH XD I absolutely loved the Lucanis romance otherwise, very spicy in it's way, but I really wanted the scenes of origins, da2 or dai - we honestly didn't get that here

wasn't a fan of the cartoony vibes for the characters but I still grew into almost immediately, I really wish that they had done something to not make all important characters look so extremely young, some people who should be in at least their 30s look like teenagers.. they should have used more rugged face textures

that there was no real way to make your inquisitor look like your original inquisitor like in they did with hawke in Inquisition, kinda broke immersion and emotional connection

the controls (ok remappable so it was fine in the end)

the lol dota fortnite overwatch type of ui vibe

whats up with all this drowning all the time XD

that you have to destroy stuff to loot it - very dark souls (they have clearly been elden ring inspired in this game) - very unimmersive as you trash the markets in all major cities…😅 but in the end it was fun, but still insane XD

repetetive puzzles in especially arlathan forest, wish they made more meaningful quests there instead to slow the pace

wish I never watched the game trailers they released, they spoiled too much of the

would have loved to be able to zoom in a bit more

too many cats XD 😉

the music was more like starfield or a scifi game than dragon age - there was a lot of modern music instead of the classical brass orchestra or choirs, I missed that

I missed the chantry, and the chant of light

personal quests starts like in the shadow of mordor games, interesting, a bit weird 😛

THE 😬

Things that I did not like

that I could not recreate a body that is similar to mine (and I have a completely normal female body that is just kinda curvaceous) because they put an unrealistic cap on boob and butt size, it makes me really sad because it feels like there is something wrong with existing like me, especially since women like me are the only ones not allowed to be included and represented in a game that otherwise prides itself at inclusion and representation

the stressed opening throwing us into the main action of the game far too quickly with far too little buildup as to who your character is, how they were drafted by Varric, what they have been doing, why they have been split up, what their relationships are like and why you should care about your own character

the gold exploding everywhere when looting or opening chests, it is really immersion breaking and unnecessary, I really hope someone can mod that out

the new look of the darkspawn: I like that there are so many different types and the amazing idea that the blight has changed, but they obviously went for comedic effect instead of horror here which makes me so sad, it feels like it ties in with other choices that make the game more juvenile that are hard to reckon with, especially since the game is marketed as “mature”

the new combat system on anything other than explorer, a huge nope for me, unfortunately, but I can only congratulate all those that seem to love it

that we, true to american culture and despite healing magic existing in this world, get death scenes of people just sitting and watching someone die crying for dramatic effect instead of trying to help them… it irks me every time it happens in any media

that you cannot sort your inventory by any values or show only light or medium armor or anything, a missed opportunity

THE 😭

These last grievances are the hardest ones to put into words and the things that have stayed with me since I played the game. They have given rise to so many questions as to why these choices were made, because these things are so obviously choices that it becomes really hard to understand why they would chose to go this route.

But here they are, the three major grievances I have with this game:

1) the lore breaking or retconning

2) the writing regarding companions, NPCs and its ideas of "teambuilding" and preaching

3) that there is so little real choice 

The lore breaking or retconning

That there is much lore that is missing, and many choices or things from the previous games that are not referenced, felt a lot more okay than the instances where actual lore and world building was retconned in a way that was not explained in any capacity, but where you were just supposed to live with the fact that this is the new reality of the world. 

I am not fully sure why this happened, and it felt really disrespectful to the game itself, its previous creators and all those who love this universe. It feels like they did it for two main reasons: one was that they wanted to remove things that could be somehow perceived as “uncomfortable” or “problematic” to the player, and the other was in instances where I think that the writers did not have enough knowledge or interest in the world lore, or experience with playing the previous games, and thus missed important pieces of lore where they had taken part of just some of previous codex entries and just kind of gotten it wrong. I really don’t know. 

They seem to have retconned and thrown out the window all previous elf lore regarding dalish and city elves, that dalish elves are very hateful towards shemlen, and that humans are generally racist against elves, and that city elves are oppressed, and that they are often andrastian, and that not all elves even speak elvish… 

Playing an elf mage warden was a rollercoaster of people talking about "my people" when I most likely grew up in a mage circle and was drafted to the wardens and should most likely not speak old elven? All elves just talked about "our people" and "our culture" like if that was a thing constantly, but it is so much more complex in this universe. And it seemed all elves just suddenly knew elvish, which was not a thing in the older games, that was like a cryptic language people didn't know much about.

The weirdest scene in the whole game that had me rubbing my eyes to make sure I was seeing and hearing correctly was the one where you meet the Veil Jumpers for the first time and the two leaders of the faction for some unknown reasons had knowledge of Solas being Fen'harel and most importantly that the old elven gods were power hungry evil mages. Like, that should not at all be any kind of common knowledge, that just felt absolutely insane. No explanation given as to how they could have pertained that bit of info.

And there was something really off with Arlathan, where the whereabouts of the ancient elven capital was like the biggest mystery of the previous games; no one knew where it had vanished, it had just been buried according to legend, and suddenly there is just a large crater in the middle of Arlathan forest and loads of city parts kind of left? Just, really strange. 

And all this talk about the Tevinter blood magic destroying the elves while walking in that forest - where we literally just learned in the last game that it was not Tevinter that destroyed the elves, but the elves themselves and that when Tevinter came they were long gone, which makes those throwaway conversations just like this huge retcon of the last games. Kind of like someone reading the early lore and being like, aha, this is what happened, without also taking part of the events that showed that as being a false belief… 

And it feels like this was done because it fits in with this whole new idea of “elves good” and “man bad” vibe of the story, where elves had been turned into some kind of indigenous population that were fighting the evil colonialist Tevinter? Which is not at all the original lore; in the original lore pretty much everyone’s an asshole in different ways (even if Tevinter are more assholes than most).

They have also removed a lot of the difference between surface dwarves and thaigh dwarves with their quite oppressive cast systems and racism towards the surface dwarves and peoples.

And they made the chantry into the catholic church in Antiva, is that really lore friendly? The chantry run or other mage circles aren’t really referenced anymore, even with several new organisations around that forming after Inquisition no matter what choices you made, and mages aren’t really treated any special, and people don’t seem to be afraid of them or revere them as they would in the rest of the world or Tevinter, and magic has been turned into some kind of scifi magical tech instead of what it used to be. 

And apparently dragons have treasures now, but they never used to have that, so that's another thing where it feels like the writers did not write for the Thedas but for like generic fantasy. 

And the Crows of Antiva are only a friendly family instead of an unscrupulous child buying assassin’s league (I hear that has kind of been explained in some written media by a war between the different crow factions, but they could have somehow then explained that...), and the pirates lead by Isabela - one of the worst perpetrator of cultural theft known from Dragon Age 2 where she stole the Tome of Koslun, with so little care as to return it to the point that a war with the Qunari broke out in Kirkwall - are not pirates but culturally sensitive treasure hunters, but of course without explanation as to how this could come to pass. 

I have seen many people complain about things and references that are missing but that actually ARE in the game, and that is why I am not as upset about the missing lore because I know that there are probably a lot of that lying around in codexes and scenes and little NPC conversations and such that I have missed, just as many others have missed a lot of things. But those things that ARE there, that break the earlier lore without any given plausible explanation, that is what hurts. 

The writing regarding companions, NPCs, "teambuilding" and preaching tone

Generally people are just too happy and cheery almost all the time.

I've heard "you've got this" WAY too many times - the disconnect between the dark lore and world and the NPCs who are so unphased almost all of the time, except for when emotion is needed for a scene, is too large. There is way much more cynicism needed here to reflect the evil in the world and the actual goings on around. This constant cheeriness was present in both companion dialogue and NPC interaction.

This game is obviously themed around building "a team" - that's the main premise, but the idea the writers have about how you do that doesn't feel based in reality. It feels like the power fantasy of nerdy queer computer developers on how they want people to feel or operate. Rook is made out to be a good leader because the question "are you ok" is used in any and all (not always reasonable) situations. Romantic questions are blunt in a way that not everyone would be comfortable with, but all companions are still happy with that in-the-real-world not very successful flirting style, and it feels like that is a power fantasy of writers who just wish the world would function like this. 

You as Rook feels like your companion's mom and therapist, and their struggles are so juvenile and safe that they are about that they cannot sleep, forget to eat, that their mom told them to do something, that grandma might not approve of them, or that they do not like vegetables… And you tell them how to live their lives; they should eat, and sleep, and lots of other cliches, but the game also tells you as the player through companion dialogue that it is also good to do breathing exercises, drink less coffee, eat more flax-seed because it's good for your stomach, and how often you should shower. I as Rook even gave the mega ancient goddess Mythal modern style RELATIONSHIP advice, I wanted to sink through the floor… 

This game feels preachy in a way that I have never ever felt in a game, it is like there are some writers there who just discovered that mindfulness, flax-seed and personal hygiene are good for you and now have to tell that to the WORLD. If kind of feels like they were envisioning us players some young vulnerable gamers that they needed to save with their hard earned life wisdom. I feel like the writers behind a lot of the companion interactions were not suited to write the kind of deep meaningful content that you expect from this kind of game.

The amount of times I have heard "Thank you" and "I am sorry" in this game is insane. The characters thank each others and apologize constantly like there is no tomorrow, and they resolve their differences within two sentences like - "I hate your whole way of life" - "Oh, I'm sorry I wish you said something sooner" - "Oh, no, I am sorry, I should never have called you assbag." It's just… so much bad writing, I don't know what to call it, it's shallow and flat and I just wish it was so different.

A whole lot of the preaching style could have been remedied if there had been more “show, don’t tell” in this game. It feels like the writers have forgotten that when you want to convey a moral, cultural, artistic or political message through a piece of art, like games are, you need to do it through the power of allegory and not just by having characters outright saying what is right or wrong.

For example, if the message that you want to get across is that cultural piracy is bad, you should not have a character posture for an organisation just telling you how good they are for returning treasure to cultures they come from; you should write a quest where you dig up a piece of treasure that gives you some kind of power, but where you later find out this is an important cultural relic of some lost tribe that really wants it back, and where you as the player have to grapple with the weight of that moral choice. Even players who would then choose to keep the relic for selfish and power-grabbing reasons would still feel kind of morally bad, and they would still get the message you are trying to convey. This kind of mechanic in storytelling is something that is missing throughout the whole game when it comes to different moral, social or cultural messages. 

Also, in the character Bellara the retcon or writing for a different universe and strange companion writing converges. She namely talks about herself as autodidact - that she has learnt not by studying but by poking around and figuring out what goes boom - but at the same time she has many discussions with professor Emmerich about academic stuff and she uses all the fancy words, words that are also out of lore-words, about frequencies and things that come rather from Elder Scrolls and sci-fi universes, whereas in Dragon Age magical power relates to blood (titan blood, human blood, blighted blood and so on) or the fade and spirits. A person who is self taught by only learning and doing would not at all talk like that "you need to huperflux the enchantment-condesator", they would say "you know that feeling you get when it's about to go boom, that's when you do like this show and hold your breath" or something.

That there is so little real choice, you have only one personality and morality

You get very little choice in this game, so little that it almost no longer really feels like an RPG. Especially around who your Rook is and how they act, oftentimes they will just continue talking and say things about their life and background that you had no idea about and had never chosen. You are getting to know your character at the same speed as the NPCs of the game.

For a while while playing this game I honestly thought I had lost my ability to read and understand the English language, and was making plans to try to regain my language skills, because I had never before experienced such a disconnect between what you choose as a player and what Rook actually says. I realized later that this disconnect was not only felt by me but by others as well, and that there is a large disconnect between the options and what is said. 

I don’t need to be “evil” like you could be in Origins or can be in the Baldur’s Gate games, but at least I thought you could be a kind of paragon or renegade version of Rook, or at least that you could form your personality like Hawke and be kind, funny or harsh - but not even that. Rook is more pre cooked than Geralt in the Witcher games, this is more of an interactive movie in many places, so many that I wish they were more honest about that and made those conversations more into quicktime events where you would just experience the scenes like in Detroit Become Human or games like those. The illusion that there are RPG choices where you have less choice in dialogue than you had in Fallout 4 is just hurting the experience, and especially hurting any immersion and connection you can have with your player character. 

You are only allowed to be heroic, and just one type of heroic; not the one that is ready to sacrifice things for the greater good or to get things done, but only the goodie two-shoes hero (that for sure oftentimes is what I play, but which feels meaningless unless there is an option to go another route). 

The most glaring example of this forced morality that pretty much breaks the fourth wall was when Rook goes by a scene in a blighted city where several people have been hung and says very dramatically that “this shouldn’t happen anywhere” and then proceeds to murder 20 Venatori agents with zero thought as to who their mothers, children or pets are. That comment did not feel like a legitimate comment that would be said by a Rook as created by genuine interest in the character or their connection to the world, but much more as a clear “social posturing” or “virtue signaling” for the player behind the computer screen that this is a good person, and that they are good according to the only specific moral view the hero is allowed to have (no chaotic good allowed). 

It was also very present in Rook's interactions with Solas' memories in the crossroads. When confronted with a memory of the blight being created and threatening to spread to the whole world and how Solas sacrificed ONE of his agents to guarantee that the blight would not spread to the world the only way to react to that was the Solas was a horrible callous and evil person for not saving this one person and possibly condemning the world. I think they somehow meant for Rook and Solas to be moral opposites, where Rook would always protect the little people against oppression and Solas would sacrifice the little people for his missions, but it really feels so off to not have any say in your RPG characters moral values, even within the tropes of heroes.

This kind of virtue signaling is also present in many other parts of the game, used not to deepen the characters but to position them as the "good guys", and my best example here is how they handle Emmerichs vegetarianism. It could have been a really interesting trait that could have resulted in interesting conversations about morality, mortality, spirits of animals and flesh - but instead this trait is mainly used to position the other companions as good because they have (wow, time to get impressed) remembered to cook vegetarian food for Emmerich, several times even (naaw, that is so nice and inclusive of them, uwu). This cheapens the whole thing and makes it instead feel preachy (which it is at this point) and it's such a wasted potential.

And when it comes to the choices in the main game there is only one big choice before the suicide mission ending that is major and creates some replayability, but it doesn’t have a particularly large emotional effect because you have not come to know the places enough to care about them properly. The choices you make in the companion quests are, with the exception of Emmerich’s quest, so shallow and just affect their gear instead of their stories in any meaningful way, that I just wish they didn’t have any choices at the end of the quest lines.

SUMMARY

In conclusion: a lot of people have tried to explain these choices of retconning the factions and the lore, and the strange “teambuilding” discourse, as stemming from an idea of Rook as a heroic hero and their team “The Veilguard” as some kind of Avengers. And that for this purpose everything they do has to be good, they have to have only one type of personality, with one type of morality, have only one type of interaction with the world and their companions, the companions have to lack any type of “problematic” (or god forbid interesting) or morally ambiguous character flaw, and all factions you collaborate with have to be morally unambiguously good and the bad guys have to be unequivocally evil preferably without grayscale.

This way of thinking, if this is true, makes these choices that they have made for the game kind of make sense, but it is still such a weird choice to make, to take a complex dark fantasy story that is Dragon Age - and a cRPG franchise known for morally difficult and emotional choices and complex morally grey factions and cultures - and turn it into this hero-fiction, with clear cut morals and cartoony vibe aimed at younger audiences. 

This could have been such an amazing game (which is in many parts still is), but something went really wrong in the direction for the writers and I ache so bad for all those developers that I am sure really tried their best and probably suffered under insane creative direction. I don’t know how else to explain this. 

It feels like, when playing through the game, like the teams that made the environments, the main story and the companions were three different teams where the first two got all the time and resources, and no micromanagement, whereas the last team didn't have any contact with the others and got the short end of the stick.

I am still waiting for the Kotaku article where they talk to 19 people who have worked on this keeping them anonymous and telling us the real story about the experience of making this game. 

Thank you for reading this far, I seriously hope you loved this game no matter its strange choices at time, and I would STILL say after all of this that it is worth playing for all Dragon Age fans out there.

Dareth shiral.

[cilil]

Why did Manwë let Melkor out of jail? - Ainur answers

(by none other than JRRT himself)

Like Námo's silence regarding important events in the future (for an explanation of that, see here), the decision to free Melkor after three ages of captivity has been subject to very understandable confusion and frustration on the part of many readers. Instead of the unsatisfying, dismissive answer "we wouldn't have a cool story otherwise, duh", there actually are in-universe reasons, but the answers are somewhat hidden in deeper Elf and Ainu lore that not everyone comes across or finds pleasant to read and research (which, again, is very understandable).

I thought long and hard about how I could present this in a digestible way and upon revisiting the texts, I realized that, conveniently enough, Tolkien himself has provided an explanation for Melkor's release from Mandos, which of course is even better than anything I could have scraped together.

The passage in question can be found at the end of the essay "Ósanwë-kenta". I'm going to summarize Tolkien's explanation in a hopefully clear and helpful manner and am happy to provide screenshots from the PDF (best I have access to right now, sorry) if needed. There's also a tldr at the bottom.

⪼ Previously, Tolkien has described how ósanwë works. The key takeaway is that not even someone as powerful as Melkor can forcibly "read someone's mind" or perform "mind control" or anything of this sort because every sentient being is able to close themselves off and not reveal their thoughts unless they choose to. Thus Melkor was able to deceitfully approach some people, convince them to "let him in" and gain access to them that way, but others essentially blocked him. He learned language as a secondary tool to circumvent that barrier by other means of communication.

⪼ Tolkien then moves on to the issue of the Valar being deceived by Melkor. He acknowledges that it may seem strange to a reader that the Valar couldn't see Melkor's true intentions and how Manwë "appears at times almost a simpleton compared with him" (his words), especially when we as readers already know that Melkor is too absorbed in hate and pride to repent

⪼ He states that Melkor could read Manwë's mind because his was open, but Manwë couldn't do so in return because Melkor had closed himself off/projected a sort of false openness that hid his true intentions

⪼ Tolkien then poses the question: "How otherwise would you have it? Should Manwë and the Valar meet secrecy with subterfuge, treachery with falsehood, lies with more lies? If Melkor would usurp their rights, should they deny his?"

⪼ According to him, Manwë's mind was always open, both as in receiving instructions from Eru and doing his will and as in being open to others because he had nothing to hide. Melkor knew this and relied on Manwë being consistently honest and acting in accordance with Eru's rules and laws, even if he (Melkor) broke them and did whatever he wanted

⪼ Tolkien writes: "Thus the merciless will ever count in mercy, and the liars make use of truth"

⪼ He makes it clear that Manwë couldn't force Melkor to reveal his true thoughts. Melkor had to be believed until proven false and be given an opportunity to fulfill his promises

⪼ The force that was used against Melkor - Angainor, the captivity, etc - was, as Tolkien clarifies, not a way of forcing any sort of confession ("which was needless"). It could be called punishment, but should more accurately be thought of as "putting Melkor in timeout" (not his words), so that he has the opportunity to reconsider; for the sake of Arda, but also his own

⪼ Tolkien stresses that, should Melkor choose to return to the allegiance of Eru, he has to be given his freedom back and could not be enslaved or denied his part

⪼ He also stresses that Manwë's task as Elder King was to keep everyone in Arda in the allegiance of Eru and bring back those who strayed, BUT he is to leave them free within that allegiance. This is important to understand about Manwë's role and kingship in general

⪼ Because of this, it was only when Eru finally allowed it that the Valar went after Melkor (presumably referring to the War of Wrath, but the same idea applies to the Chaining)

⪼ Tolkien describes Manwë as acting reluctantly when he went to war against his brother. The reasons given include grievous hurt to Arda, as is the result of Ainur fighting, but also that, while the use of force was lawful here, it didn't accomplish much: Melkor's evil wasn't eradicated and couldn't be; only maybe if he had repented, but he didn't. The captivity made him more hateful, more adapt at lying, more vengeful

⪼ Next Tolkien argues that while great pain, suffering and loss came from Melkor's release, this chain of events also led to his ultimate defeat which otherwise maybe couldn't have happened

⪼ Finally, he discusses the question whether Melkor's continued captivity in Mandos would have led to a better outcome. Even when diminished, his power is "beyond our calculation". It could have been that, being denied his freedom and when he asked to be released, there could have been a "ruinous outburst of his despair"

⪼ But Tolkien says that this wouldn't have been the worst outcome. Rather the main concern is that Manwë breaking his promise to Melkor would have been a step down the same dark path his brother chose, even if done with good intentions. He would have acted like a mere worldly king who takes advantage of a defeated rival and ceased to be Eru's representative

⪼ Tolkien concludes by saying that this would have resulted in a world split between two proud Valarin lords striving for the throne and reminding us that one evil Vala was more than enough to handle, especially for us incarnates

Tldr:

Due to the way ósanwë works, nobody had any way of knowing if Melkor was speaking the truth or not and he couldn't be forced to reveal his true thoughts

Manwë had to, according to Eru and Eru's laws, give Melkor the benefit of the doubt

Not doing so would have been an evil act and disqualified him from being Eru's appointed vice-gerent

Melkor's lies and ultimate refusal to repent caused untold sorrow, but also his own final downfall which otherwise may not have happened

Obligatory disclaimer: As should be evident in the text, this is Tolkien's opinion, Tolkien's answer to this question and Tolkien's intentions for his own universe. The above summarized explanation he gave is not an "opinion" or "headcanon" of mine. You are entitled to your own opinion on this, I merely felt like it's only fair - and arguably necessary or at least helpful in terms of understanding - to hear out what the author himself has to say.

Like I said in the beginning, the intention behind this post was to compile his take for your convenience. The intention is very much not to attack anyone or their takes. In return, I ask you to please don't attack anyone either, please don't bash characters and please keep the conversation nuanced. Thank you!

[nemiriel]

LotR dudebros online irritate the heck out of me! All they do is whine and nitpick every little detail about The Rings of Power; so many of the things I enjoy about the series, they revile. 🤦🏼‍♀️

Tolkien’s works and “the lore” are not the gospel, and there is no reason whatsoever to be treating it like religious people treat holy writings.

An adaptation is never going to 100% exactly like the original work. And if you want to spend your free time channeling all of your energy into hate, you’ve got big problems. 🤷🏼‍♀️

And another thing: as much as I love Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, it is by no means gospel either. So please stop endlessly comparing the two and treating PJ’s movies as far superior The Rings of Power. Both make departures from “the lore”! And both are great!

TLDR; haters gonna hate, but sometimes it wears me down. 🙃

[cupkakie]

War of the Rohirrim thoughts:

Overall, I would say that I quite enjoyed stepping back into the world of LOTR (and it would be impossible for a single film to live up to the atmosphere of the original trilogy) it was a relief to see that, despite a few deviations/flaws, you can tell there was a lot of care and respect for the source material from those involved.

I only wish they provided more of a historical context as to the disparity or ongoing conflict between the Dunlendings and the Rohirrim to give more depth to the 'contract' or marriage proposal that eventually goes awry. I also wish that they fleshed out Wulf more and I think reducing him, even jokingly to an "incel" (or even reducing the character of Héra under a label) doesn't do justice to their characters. Wulf could have been more of a compelling villain and the fact that his late father's general (a new character in the story of the movie) placed some measure of faith in his rulership, points to that possibility. But, I guess it's also realisitic that he fumbled those grand ambitions (if there was a tiny seedling of that in his quest of revenge) in the end. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that General Tark (?) had more nuance than just throwaway supporting villain.

Apart from one major plot deviation concerning how the conflict is resolved, some may take issue, but with the choice of how the story was more Hera focused at that point, I'm not sure how the writers could have made it align with how it really concluded according to the book. I'm also not sure if the writers intended to open up the question I had been wondering before this was film was released about "deeds remembered in history" and added to that with "who" and "how" these tales are recorded or passed down generations. It is mentioned in Appendix A of RotK that "[m]any lords and warriors, and many fair and valiant women are named in the songs of Rohan [...] (Tolkien 424). So, it's not far-fetched to think there could have been such a story about Hera but it was never written down or recorded as such, and the story as Éowyn tells it may have survived only orally through song.

There was no "girlbossery" to be found in Héra if ROP's "Galadriel" is an exemplary model of that regurgitated toxic trope. She had her strengths and weaknesses and cared deeply for her family and for her people.

I enjoyed the familial relationships we saw, though I wish there was more, especially of Fréaláf. I wish we could've gotten more on his situation in Dunharrow during the Long Winter and how and why it was difficult to secure aid for the refugees in the Suthberg (Hornburg later named after Helm Hammerhand).

As to the allegations that may be out there that Helm is a "Gary Stu" , I think he's more akin to the mythic characters like Beowulf or Gilgamesh; just an epic, larger than life character --and I think the medium of animation did that mythic hyperbole justice, and live-action would require some kind of creative framing to suspend the disbelief of the audience.

For me, the movie had the potential to be more, but I still enjoyed it, coming away with loving Rohan and the Rohirrim all the more, especially Fréaláf, who may hearken back to another horse-lord, but is not a "copy-paste" of him, just as Hera is not a facsimile of Éowyn (though I do wish they had given her a more Anglo-Saxon inspired name).

TLDR; if you enjoyed the trilogy/ hated the travesty that is ROP, you will most likely enjoy this movie.

(Also, kudos to the voice-acting, especially Luke Pasqualino.)

[eri-pl]

Silm reread 24A (the long-expected continuation): The Gift

Or: the Fall of Númenor

TW: well, it is Númenor. I will not give more details than the book does.

It is said among the Eldar (because where else :þ) that Men fear and worship the Darkness (which is a word the Eldar use as a synonym for "evil" which is a bit inconceivable but let's move on).

We get a recap od what we know of Men, also in the War of Wrath Morgoth was "ultimately defeated" ok I know you can't make your mind, (both Jirt and Pengolodh probably), I like this better than "he's going to fight Túrin and Fefe in a van".

Men in the East are in a bad situation, the Valar abandoned them for a time (until they send the Blue Wizards I guess) because they obeyed bad people. Generally the East is wild and bad and … :/

OK, so now we are told Manwë imprisoned Morgoth and the language strongly suggests "but he will eventually break out and do Ragnarok stuff". Huh. I did say something about not being able to make your mind, right?

Now there's the weird part about "the will of Morgoth" which sounds like a somewhat separate entity?… I get the general idea, it's hard to have him booted out and explain why there's still evil in the world. Still it all feels odd.

OK, quote (emphasis mine):

But Manwe put forth Morgoth and shut him beyond the World in the Void that is without; and he cannot himself return again into the World, present and visible, while the Lords of the West are still enthroned. Yet the seeds that he had planted still grew and sprouted, bearing evil fruit, if any would tend them. For his will remained and guided his servants[…]

Huh. Any thoughts?

Eonwë personally taught the leaders of the Edain. What did he teach them? I don't know. We are not told. But it suggests that Eonwë may have better social skills with Men than I have assumed.

It was Ossë who raised the island of Númenor (at least he does something nice and non-violent ;) ) + the Valar upgraded it and only then did the Númenoreans sail. It is almost as the history of Arda in miniature. Just make it better (Morgoth is not there, Men live longer etc), what could possibly go wrong with this?

[Yes, I read the situation as "the Valar are trying to jump higher than their heads here".]

The Númenoreans don't get sick. I forgot that part. Well, they don't until they get under the Shadow. They are taller than normal people and their eyes shine like stars. TLDR: they're like offbrand Elves and Tolkien likes shining eyes.

And they don't have many children. Why? It makes sense for Elves, but why the Númenoreans, even early?

No temples, only the open mountain. OK. and we get the mention of the graves of kings at the mountain's base even now. Does it mean that even the first kings had big decorative graves?

It was the Valar who chose Elros to be the king. I wonder why, but "he could be an Elf but preferred to be a Man" seems like a --- yes, this is a good reason.

We get a recap of the peredhil. Again.

The Númenoreans learned Quenya during the alliance with Elves, so again: they speak Vanyarin Quenya, or maybe non-Exilic Noldorin Quenya. So either they do read "ty" as "ch" or they read the "th" as "s". I don't remember which one it was. Anyway later they spoke a lot with the Elves so they probably settled with some kind of pronounciation based on whom they spoke with the most.

Nobody later reached the sailing awesomeness of the Númenoreans. The book is written in, what, late TA? Early FA? Makes sense that they sail less.

We get an explanation of why the ban. It makes sense, but also I get that it seems very arbitrary (especially with Númenor existing).

Also, a quote:

For in those days Valinor still remained in the world visible, and there Ilúvatar permitted the Valar to maintain upon Earth an abiding place, a memorial of that which might have been if Morgoth had not cast his shadow on the world.

OK, maybe it's just me adding to my little box of arguments, but this sounds to me as "Ilúvatar permitted them because they asked intensly but it wasn't a great idea". Also, a memorial. Of what might have been. This does not sound good. This sounds like the vibe of the Elven Rings.

Also, again we have mixed messages about whether Valinor was moved to the orbit or into the unseen world (made purely spiritual somehow)?

Sigh. the Númenoreans civilize the people of ME because they need it. *sigh* at least they're goodwilled about it.

Aaaaand, who could guess, with time they grow more and more focused on the bright thing that is nearby (Valinor). Just like it was with the Silmarils and almost everyone who saw them.

Also, they don't like that they die, and they murmur. And they are upset that the Elves don't die, even the ones who disobeyed the Valar and it's so unfair, the Noldor went to ME and did all kinds of bs and still they don't die and we never even get— I mean, and we die. How unfair.

Seriously, almost everyone in this book is so predictably stupid and the worst part is that knowing that all does not make us less stupid. anywa, let's continue with the reread:

"Aren't we the greatest?" Huh. :/

Manwë is sad. Relateable. I want to hug him, and it's not even from a fic. My guy [affectionate], my poor birb.

He sends emissaries to the king. Oh, he's learning from his mistakes around Feanor! <3 You'll eventually learn how to deal with the Children. <3

The Earendil argument (and as was discussed, no tuor arguement, at least not quoted in the book). And a recap of how Men and Elves work. <3 some vague Athrabeth-ish tones. <3

Thirteenth king and we're already deep in trouble. :(

OK, now we get the big graves. And colonialism. The good guys visit Gil-galad and figth Sauron together. The bad guys colonize the South.

We get a recap of Sauron. Who wants to be an overking and worshipped by Men and hates the Númenor for pretty much everything including "their ancestors fought against Melkor and me in the War". And he is afraid of them.

More kings. Some of you remember their names… 23rd king hates the Faithful the most… huh, he is not the one to burn them so I would argue with the narration here. The Elves from Tol Eressea still visit, but in secret. This has a lot of fic potential. (Also, don't tell me that nobody ever at any point of Númenorean history tried to sneak into an Elven ship and go to Aman with them. not at this point, probably. But earlier you could have someone who both doesn't like the Ban, and has contact with the Elves)

Then the Elves stop visiting, because the Valar get angry. i'm not sure why now, what exactly was the tipping point.

A recap of Andúnie, the, ugh, situation of Inzilbêth, we get a good older brother and bad younger brother— wait, maybe the Men have this scheme inverted in general? I'll need to investigate this.

Tar-Palantir. Whose remorse is too late because the Valar are already angry— excuse me, Pengolodh, my guy, what? I'd get it if you told me that the problem is that the whole nation has already been gone so far and the king could not convince them, but I really don't like what you said about the Valar here. But yes, ok, it;s probably because the nation is still full of bs. Pengolodh. Please, be so kind and spare us your opinions. Especially on questions like forgiveness. go handle your exilic trauma somewhere else. I can't find a quote for this, sadly.

So, Tar-Palantir gets a healthy dose of the typical Silm "sad about my brother" especailly that he (the brother) dies early. Aaand we get Pharazôn. Yay… :/ People love him, because he's a great general and gives out riches.

The 25th king. As I have already speculated in one post, the number 5 is not a good number.

Sauron provokes him to war. When the Númenorean fleet arrives, everyone is so scared that they run away and the army marches through an empty land, which gives me echoes of Earendil, but this makes no sense, I think tolkien just likes the image of someone (or an army) walking through a deserted land/city. I agree, it has a lot of atmosphere. they march for seven days, with trumpets, and in red and in gold.

So Sauron does his thing, but Ar-Pharazôn is not a fool—well, not this kind of fool—and doesn't trust him. which plays very well into Sauron's ringed hand.

Sauron sees the capital of Númenor and again we have someone reacting to a beuiful city with envy and hatered. (First: Melkor to Valinor in general; second: Maeglin to Gondolin; third: here.)

He tells the king a lot of secrets, and "he knew many of the things not yet revealed to Men". Like… what things? I wonder. Many of the Elf-Friends get confused and scared and switch sides. I wish I knew why exactly. It is before the violence started.

Something something Darkness and Sauron's peak bs.

Amandil and Pharazôn have been friends in their youth (yes, Pharazon liked him too!) → Fic. Potential. So much fic potential. Amandil gets higher on my "I like him because he has a lot of things to be sad about" list. So, Amandil—

We've had many, many instances of characters cursing things/characters/themselves/whatever. Now we get the only instance in the Silm of an Incarnate blessing something. (Amandil blesses the seeds of the White Tree.) which is very interesting.

OK, warning: it gets dark from here.

Sauron. The language. I know the style of description of the thing is not Sauron's fault… I suppose the style is, again, illustrative of his general vibe (which is a very smart writing btw), so, ugh. Seriously, Professor, you never give the dimensions, so we all know why you gave the dimensions here, and … yes I do get your stylistic choices, they make me want to punch him which i assume is exactly what you were aiming at.

I'm sorry, I should probably elaborate more.

So, to elaborate more: the temple which sauron built is described in a language that is vaguely reminescent of the Temple of Salomon (ie giving the exact measurements, and yes, this is very noticeable because tolkien is always very poetic, about sizes too) and the juxtaposition makes me feel offended, and this helps, because this is how we should feel at this point in the book. So, this is brilliant.

They didn't burn only the Faithful, I would assume also some criminals and maybe random people. Also, there were some anti-king conspirations, the book almost says that.

People die more, everything is awful, and of course the people of Númenor are "it's fine" (as you do). In addition to Sauron's main temple of Melkor, people have private temples. Where they burn people stolen from ME.

madness and sickness availed them; and yet so they were afraid to die and go out into the dark, the realm of the lord that they had taken; and they cursed themselves in their agony.

I really wish we had an idea how this came to the chronicler. anyway, an Elf repeating things he hard from some escaped Númenoreans about what their friends/lords/whomever were thinking. And still it sounds very much like what they would be thinking.

No, wait, there could be a better source. Imagine a noble and depraved lady (or nobleman) who left Númenor for the colonies, thinking it'd be just for a short time, and in the meantime— the whole thing happenned. Great fic potential for survivor's guilt leading to remorse and later this person as an old woman telling this stuff to an Elvish chronicler, or maybe not even so old, maybe telling the story in the times of the Last Alliance and fighting against Sauron to do at least that, and I'm not a fan of the "redemption equals death" trope, so living into old age, but without a leg or something. Maybe ending up in rivendell. that would be fitting. The guilt of it all. And yet you chose to live and to do what you can.

Anyway back to the story. Amandil. Nobody even speculates about what happenned to him. (Well, I do, but)

The Faithful prepare to sail and the seven Seeing Stones (all but one of them) given by the Eldar— by whom? I hope it was Nerdanel. Or someone wlse who actually had the right to give them away. Yes, I will assume it was Nerdanel.

Lightning strikes kill people on random hills… I would prefer to assume it's either Sauron or gossip. especially that just a bit later we learn that Sauron is immune to those lightnings. So yes, i think some elements of the "wrath of the Valar" is just Sauron trying to make people even more desperate.

I can't imagine Manwë killing people just like that, even in this context. Especially with how later he doesn't do anything to Pharazôn's army until given a very explicit leave to do so.

Logically, it is sauron killing those people.

The armada… they sail for 39 days (where did I find that information?) which I'm sure means something, but what. 40-1? 3*13? Both?

40 is a number of transformation, so 39 would be a failed or false transformation maybe?

Also, black and gold coloring. Beautiful but in the Silm, vaguely evil-coded.

Just as they break the ban(? but I think it is this moment) they get a strong wind. I guess it's Manwë saying "ok, if we have to, let's make it quick".

They pass Eressea, I think mostly ignoring it? Pharazôn sees Taniquetil and gets one good idea (to cancel his idiotic thing), but nope, he's too proud. Seriously. That's… "my guy" is not enough of a wording.

The Eldar have escaped from Tition… this makes me smile a little, because assuming the ex-exiles did move back to tirion, they do deserve a little fright. For Alqualonde. I know I know. But. It's not like any harm happenned to them. they were just terrified. Of an army of Men. Which is encamped around their island.

So yea. The world is round now. And again it sounds like Aman is moved to the unseen world. Huh. Mixed canon.

Oh, here is the 39. 39 days from the fleet leaving Númenor to the destruction. Including also a volcano and earthquake.

And speaking of numbers, 9 ships of Elendil, Isildur and Anárion.

Also, all the sea shorelines are changed.

So, back to Sauron. Idiot. He is terrified by what happenned, because he expected Pharazôn and everyone to die, but not something like this. So, he is sitting on his black (of course) throne and laughing. What had I said about Sauron being somewhere high up and laughing? So he laughs three times and just as he does the third time his throne falls down into the watery abbyss. "Not noticing a divine tsunami" level: pro. I am not surprised. I mean, I read the book before, so of course I am nor surprised, but anyway, that is nor surprising.

Loses his beauty. Just. The amount of mercy. "I convinced Men to sacrifice other Men to Morgoth, and put the Valar into a trolley dilemma and all I got was this ugly face so that I maybe finally learn" — he needs a t-shirt with this. I need to draw him in a frigging t-shirt.

I want to punch him in the face again.

Yes, i know, i know. It's not my fault he gets more infuriating descriptions.

Oh and the peak of Meneltarma is maybe an island, and people want to find it and have visions of Númenor's past glory… *sigh* Call me old and grumpy but focusing on that doesn't seem like— ok oh. they don't have anything better to focus. This is also true. Huh. I just realized that this makes the whole "focusing on unreachable shadows" things so much more tragic. anyway…

Oh, they do not find it. Good for them. I am sorry, I know it's sad, but it is good for them.

The Dúnedain seeking this island is peak amdir. (This is neither a compliment nor a accusation, or maybe both).

But explaining this would need a long tangent of "amdir" meaning etymologically "looking up" and of the gneral idea of looking in the wrong place. I know I shouldn't be quoting motivational posters when talking Tolkien, because they are much less profound but generally "Stop Looking for Happiness in the Same Place You Lost It"

So anyway, The Land of the star is lost, and the Straight Road is no more and Tolkien is sad and pretty much everyone is sad and we are growing up.

Still, there is a shortcut for Elves who want to use it.

Huh. this reread felt more profound than the others. Not so many facts I've been missing, but the vibe. I think I understood some vibes I didn't understand before. But this may be just the autumn.

[thecalvinistkat]

Sonic Prime and Lord of the Rings: A Cross-Character analysis

So we all saw how Nine acted when he was hocked up on Prism energy…

that’s rough buddy

…but did anyone notice the similarities between him and the previous wielders of the Prism shards?

It reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings, actually. The wielders of the Prism are so overcome, so intoxicated by the sinful energy that they cannot help but act irrational and ruthless.

And, if given the opportunity to hold on for too long, I’d imagine it might even become a Smeagol/Gollum situation. I mean, Dread was calling his shard “me beauty”— not all that far off from “my precious…”

I’m not saying that Nine and the others shouldn’t be held responsible for what wrong they did. But at least a part of them was acting under the maniacal influence of the Prism. I’m reminded of Paul’s words in Romans 7: 19-20:

“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

On an opposite note: Sonic’s willingness to sacrifice himself points to his purity and goodness, and is almost sort of maybe possibly absolutely reminiscent of martyrs and saviors such as Jesus. Now don’t confuse what I’m saying here. I’M NOT SAYING THAT SONIC IS HEDGEHOG JESUS, OK. Please don’t make Jesus the Hedgehog a thing.

(That will immediately reverse the redemption that Jesus gave you when he died for your sins /j)

What I am saying is that all good stories have a hero, and the writers have to get inspiration for that hero’s qualities from somewhere. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis both got their inspiration for their fantasy worlds (Hobbit/LOTR and Narnia, respectively) from the Bible’s story and message, so I don’t think that it’s a stretch to say that some of Sonic Prime’s heroic qualities are reminiscent of Biblical heroes.

After all, where better to get inspiration for a good savior than from the Ultimate Savior?

Sorry for the long post; here’s a Tails Chao

TLDR: Nine, Dread, and Thorn Rose were influenced by the sinful power of the Paradox Prism in the same way that Smeagol/Gollum was influenced by the sinful power of the Ring; Sonic’s heroic sacrifice is reminiscent of Jesus.

[mrkida-art]

What are your headcanons regarding dwarves and their attitude towards treasure and gold?

Hello Anon! I do in fact have a lot of thoughts about this subject. I always go by the legendarium as something that is fallible (since Tolkien’s work is written from the POV of unreliable narrators), especially when it comes to the secretive dwarves who do not share their culture and secrets openly. This leaves a lot of room to recontextualize or even straight up change things (hence the “not canon compliant” disclaimer on my blog lol) and this is one of those cases. 

Anyways, here are some of my headcanons about dwarves and their treasure.

Dwarves are stereotyped as being greedy by other races, this is rooted in many stories circulating about dwarves going to extreme lengths to protect their treasure. This is especially true about the Durin’s Folk dwarves, who are said to have killed men for simply laying claim to what these dwarves felt was rightfully theirs. One of the more well known examples being Fram, the Lord of the Éothéod, who claimed the hoard of the dragon Scatha after slaying it.  This hoard contained treasure which Durin’s Folk claimed as theirs. Fram refused to give it to them, and it is said by many that he was murdered by the dwarves of Durin’s Folk as retribution. Among the race of men  it’s said that this story illustrates the greediness of dwarves.  Fram is said to have had rightfully earned this treasure as it was he who killed this dragon, and the dwarves acted in dishonor and tried to steal it from him.  

Much of this story does ring true for the dwarves, but their attitudes towards treasure is misinterpreted by the outsiders who tell these tales. Dwarves see treasure in two ways, there is treasure meant for trade and monetary gain, which they will guard as anyone would with their money. And then there is the most important type of treasure, artifacts made by their ancestors and loved ones.  The value of their artifacts is not determined by what materials have been used, but rather by WHO made them and who used them, as well as their age. Some of the most ancient and precious artifacts are made of crude stone and wood, not gold and silver. Their artifacts represent their history, heritage, and the story and souls of their ancestors.   To specific families their most important treasures or heirlooms may also be trinkets or craft made by loved ones who have since passed, it can also be tools or weapons that these dwarves used while still alive.  Dwarves  believe that these artifacts  can be used to communicate with their dead, both their ancient ancestors and those who recently passed, which naturally means that their protected treasure is of massive cultural importance. It’s also said that artifacts falling into the wrong hands may disturb the peace of the dead, which may contribute to them becoming restless spirits which is something no dwarf wants for their loved ones. 

The reason as to why Durin’s Folk may very well have killed Fram for what he did is because they are particularly protective of their artifacts. The treasure he took originally belonged to them which then had been stolen  by the dragon Scatha. Many of these artifacts were in fact of cultural or sentimental importance, which means it was something they sought to get back. It’s also good to note that Fram didn’t just claim artifacts from any dwarf clan, these were dwarves who had been exiled from their lands in Khazad-dûm. Big part of their cultural heritage had been lost when it fell which meant that they were even more desperate to protect what little they had left.   And they do not look kindly upon outsiders that steal from them, especially their most treasured objects. 

TLDR: Dwarvish treasure is sometimes artifacts that are extremely important in dwarvish culture. And clans such as Durin’s Folk who have lost so much are desperate to protect the little they have left of their cultural heritage.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed it. I have more headcanons about this particular subject but that would be too long of a post haha.