thinkinginquenya

[thinkinginquenya]

I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but I’m hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen days’ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.

My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813

*electric guitar riff*

And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like

[thinkinginquenya]

i'm a writer irl (can't say who because my agent would rightfully put me into a blender and press the button if i go and out myself as "balrogballs") and honestly the funniest and most humiliating incident of my life was the time my finished manuscript triggered a plagiarism flag with the publisher for two lines of prose in my literary fiction novel...

.... which was word for word similar to a paragraph in a certain explicit work on FFN starring elrond and his batsman from the hobbit films, aka that one elf that looked like he ate panic attacks for breakfast (i forget his name but it's Figwit II) where the lord of imladris bends said twink over his writing desk and gives him the battering ram treatment.

and if you think i had to sit in front of one if the biggest publishing companies in the world and admit that it was, in fact, me who wrote the fic where the lord of imladris bends said twink over his writing desk and gives him the battering ram treatment in order to avoid being wrongly flagged for plagiarism, you would be absolutely correct.

(yes they published the book)

[thinkinginquenya]

THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978) dir. Ralph Bakshi THE LORD OF THE RINGS (2001 - 2003) dir. Peter Jackson

[thinkinginquenya]

To largely agree with and expand upon @ciceronian 's points: There are indeed two tiers of Ainur, though it's important to note that the two tiers are not power tiers, strictly, but tiers of authority, kind of. The Valar + Morgoth start out with greater responsibility and authority over Arda (authority which Morgoth loses through his attempts at total domination, though he remains powerful) and the Maiar start out with less authority over the world, but this doesn't mean that they are necessarily less strong/powerful than any particular Vala at any particular thing.

And that's an important point because this means that Ungoliant could have easily been one of the Maiar despite being apparently powerful enough to be a danger to Morgoth and the Valar. However, it's never explained in the text that she is one of the Maiar gone bad, and some of Tolkien's draughts indicate that she was originally going to have been a malevolent spirit unrelated to the Ainur, so there's some wiggle room as to what she is. (I tend to think the simplest explanation is that she is Maia because she does have power over things in the world, which contrasts with me thinking that Tom Bombadil is a visitor from another narrative/universe because Tom ONLY has power over that small domain that he occupies near the Shire, he does not have any power beyond his borders.)

I will disagree with you slightly: the Ainur are angelic beings yes, but I would argue that they also count as (lower case g) gods in themselves. I have become convinced that the divine hierarchy in Tolkien's work roughly resembles the way that Plato laid out the relationship between the creator of the world and the Greek pantheon (in the Timaeus, possibly? i forget), and resembles it enough that while Tolkien's strict Catholicism means there is still only 1 God, the resemblance of the Ainur to gods was intentional enough that they are technically angelic beings but functionally a pantheon of gods.

I'm really interested though as to how the person in the reblogs above arrived at that explanation of events. All of the details are just slightly off, like a knockoff toy range based on the Silmarillion.

Thinking of the larger context of LOTR and like, the fellowship swapping old war stories and shit and Sam just says “Yeah I killed a huge spider…Shelob, I think?”

And Gandalf just blinks and is like, “You what now?”

“Yeah, killed it. Had to save Frodo”

Gandalf elects not to tell Sam that he killed the spawn of a primordial demon.

[thinkinginquenya]

"Do not take me for some conjuror of cheap tricks!" says man who spent the last several hours providing the fireworks show for a birthday party

[thinkinginquenya]

nobody knows where i came from i just showed up one day and started doing my thing and god was like who the hell is that i didn't invite them

[thinkinginquenya]

As every inktober, I am going to draw series of Middle-earth landscapes ♥ This Himring is little bit too fancy, since I was feeling low last day and needed to escape somewhere. Well, it is afterall castle of the fairy prince. ♥ Previous years: Hobbit The Fellowship of the Ring The Two Towers The Return of the King Silmarillion Silmarillion II Childern of Húrin Song of Dúrin

[thinkinginquenya]

Me, reading “On Faerie-Stories”: Star Wars is a faerie-story.

Of course, it’s been called ‘science fantasy’ or ‘space opera’, but that doesn’t entirely get at the same thing. Tolkien may be the source of the popularizing of the fantasy genre as we know it today, but much of fantasy is arguably not faerie-stories. (Which is not to say that they are bad! Only that they are doing something different than a faerie-story as Tolkien describes it.)

But Star Wars (the original trilogy) is. It feeds the imagination, the desire for the strange and wonderful and terrible. It gives us not only shining swords and magic, but strange worlds, cities in the clouds, and ogres in forms like Jabba the Hutt. It is concerned with Good and Evil, with the overthrow of a usurping tyrant and the return of the rightful form of government.

And it has eucatastrophe in in the same way that Tolkien does. The key moment on which Return of the Jedi and the entire trilogy turns is the renunciation of power, the moment when Luke throws away his lightsaber and refuses the temptations of power that are offered by evil. And then it takes us up to the very edge, the expectation that this renunciation will lead to nothing but a horrible, torturous death – and it says no. It says that clinging to Good against all hope can give it the power to reach into the very heart of Evil and draw out goodness from it, and in that moral power rather than physical power lies victory. It is not inevitable and it does not always happen – in the words of Tolkien “eucatastrophe does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance” – but it can happen and the heart of Star Wars is that it does.

[thinkinginquenya]

Boromir had a long sword, in fashion like Anduril but of less lineage and he bore also a shield and his war-horn. 'Loud and clear it sounds in the valleys of the hills,' he said, `and then let all the foes of Gondor flee!' Putting it to his lips he blew a blast, and the echoes leapt from rock to rock, and all that heard that voice in Rivendell sprang to their feet. 'Slow should you be to wind that horn again, Boromir,' said Elrond. 'until you stand once more on the borders of your land, and dire need is on you.' `Maybe,' said Boromir.

this is funnier every time i read it

the way this is written there is no impetus for boromir to describe and blow the horn. i am picturing that 'off-screen' so to speak, maybe pippin or somebody pointed to the horn of gondor and said 'hey whats that' and the answer was OH ITS SUPER LOUD ITS TOTALLY SICK LET ME SHOW YOU FWEET FWEEEEEEEEET but maybe that didn't happen and boromir really did this with zero provocation.

everyone in rivendell freaked out

'friendo, do not blow that thing again until you are back in your own country, and even then, it had better be dire'

'Maybe,' said Boromir

[thinkinginquenya]

AU where the Ent wives were indeed living in the Shire, so when Saruman arrived there to make mischief he immediately got his shit wrecked by yet more walking talking trees

[thinkinginquenya]

Anyway the most important scene in the Hobbit is when Bilbo sees all the dirty dishes, is like "crap, it wasn't a dream," and then is just like "oh well," and does the dishes. And then he cooks himself breakfast and does the dishes again.

The fact that he fails to do the dishes the third time in the same morning is enough to get him presumed dead.

What a guy.

[thinkinginquenya]

Frodo and Bilbo Baggins are both huge fuckin nerds and i love them reblog if u agree.

[thinkinginquenya]

Imagine, if you will, a sort of slice-of-life sitcom, maybe in the vein of like, Living With Yourself? But instead of focusing on how Paul Rudd is falling into ruin, the setup is more that like, he’s really got it together. He’s got a nice house, maybe a little too nice, gets into petty lawn disputes with the neighbors, likes to have his coffee just so, sort of a metrosexual stereotype and all that, but ultimately happy with who he is…

…and then coming home from a jog one day there’s some…guy…? Leaning on his fence? And he’s about to get salty with him because he just had that painted, you know, and he’s gonna mess up the Feng Shui or something…when he sees it’s like an obvious expy of Bill Nye…

Paul Rudd loses his mind. He’s like “oh my god! You’re Bill Nye! WTF! I used to love your show when I was a kid! I had all your books and action figures, even the bootleg ones with the laser eyes *pew pew*”…before realizing he’s being kinda weird and outing himself as a freakin nerd to boot. But Bill Nye just looks at him in a weirdly intense way and is like “I’m gonna hire you for a job.”

Paul Rudd’s like “uhhhhhhhh I already have a job and it’s Being Paul Rudd and I’m awesome at it, so thanks no thanks…” but now it’s getting kind of weird and he also doesn’t want to admit that he has no marketable skills so he’s like “um…I’m just gonna…go inside now…”  But then he’s worried that he’s just been rude to Bill Nye (Bill NyE!  can you believe it??) so he’s just like “….uhhhh but if you wanna have a drink sometime?  … like… come over for drinks tomorrow maybe…?  I’ll barbecue something??”  And now he’s just dying of actual awkwardness and runs inside and slams the door and just stares into space wondering why his life is Like That.

And the next day he’s just chilling and is on like his third cup of coffee and Enjoying Life and the doorbell rings and he’s like “OH CRAP I invited frickin Bill Nye over for drinks and nothing is ready oh my god when did my life become CHAOS” so he puts a new case of beer in the fridge and pulls some meat out of the freezer to defrost cuz he promised to barbecue something (IDIOT) and runs to the door and

It’s not Bill Nye.  It’s this huuuuuuugue dude, like… Vin Diesel, or maybe the Rock, bald, tattooed, totally ripped, just towering above him and looks like he could crush Paul Rudd with his little finger and he’s just…standing there…like he’s expecting something…and Paul Rudd’s just like “WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF” and they just stand there like that until it gets too awkward to bear and Paul Rudd just manages to squeak out “so…you wanna beer?” because he doesn’t know what else to say, and the Vin Diesel looking guy just grunts “thanks” and walks into his house and sits at his table and starts drinking his beer and Paul Rudd is just like “…what is happening…”

…so anyway when are we gonna get the adaptation of the Hobbit that we deserve?

[thinkinginquenya]

[thinkinginquenya]

I’ll forgive The Rings of Power’s flaws if they let Sauron unironically call himself King-Excellent the Wizard.

[thinkinginquenya]

I'm not sure why they decided to cast a Michael Palin lookalike as Celebrimbor

[thinkinginquenya]

in the laundry list of gripes I have with That Show, it just seems to me like the writers have chosen a style that requires characters to make stupid choices despite ample information in order to further the plot, where making the sensible choice would seem to sidestep most of the plot developments. Which is not inherently bad or whatever, it's clearly a choice they're making, but I despise it as a choice for the backstory of the making of the Great Rings, which I feel would be much more satisfying as a story about people making seemingly very sensible choices that nevertheless turn out to lead to ruin. And I'm not seeing that so far.