thinkinginquenya

[thinkinginquenya]

Oh yay time for that ridiculous plotline

"Arwen's sick oh no you have to win for her"

Yeah, look. Sauron wins this, everyone dies. Arwen as well. So it literally changes nothing.

Oh, and damsel in distress plot device? Yeah, I'll pass.

[thinkinginquenya]

Alright, some of you are absurdly good at finding posts on my blog. I have been through every tag I can think of and not found it so I am turning this over to the experts

There was a post from a quotes blog - possibly an image? - that was the line from the Two Towers movie "there's some good in this world, Mr Frodo, and it's worth fighting for" - (mis)attributed to Tolkien

And somewhere I have a reblog taking it apart word by word and going through how literally every word of it misses the entire point of the story.

I could probably recreate it but I don't wanna. Anyone think they can find it for me?

[thinkinginquenya]

Do movie people know that in the book version of the "I ain't been dropping no eaves!" scene Sam did not just happen to overhear Gandalf and Frodo talking but was in fact deliberately and pre-meditatedly spying on them?

[thinkinginquenya]

Tolkien Is Not Amused

Can Tolkien write a movie now or….

[thinkinginquenya]

Concept: Lord of the Rings from the perspective of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins

It starts with her and Otho doing like the paperwork to get Bilbo declared legally dead. She's like Wil. Wil. Listen to me. It's been a year. There were dwarves and other unsightly sorts crawling all over the place. Bag End was left unlocked. He didn't even take his stick. If he'd eloped we would know it by now, and believe me - cousin Bilbo was never gonna get married. Trust me on this one. The grass is over my boy Lotho's head. He's not coming back! Just gimme the Hole and I'll get it cleaned up to stop being an eyesore to the whole neighborhood and I'll even handle the estate sale and everything.

And she does! All the organizing, all the work, she's measuring rooms and running everything and just in her element and everything's coming up lobelias and WHO COMES TROTTING UP THE ROAD RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT oh ffs

So she hastily shoves some spoons in her pocket because she can see the writing on the wall but she is NOT going to go home empty handed and goes out to deal with her worthless and inconvenient cousin

- and then you do one of those cool transitions where the person stays in the same place but now she's at the Birthday Party and rolling her eyes at the speechifying and ends up leaving early (Lotho wants to stay cuz there's still food ma) so she misses the Mad Baggins exit but maybe she kneecaps Gandalf with her umbrella on the way out

And we sort of pick up from there. We have some newspaper and/or pillow discussion with Otho of Bilbo's adoption of Frodo and what a ne'erdowell he is (and from the wrong side of the Water too) and you get all those nice Bag. End confrontation scenes at Bag End - Bilbo's parting gift of spoons, her "you- you BRANDYBUCK" line, Frodo being all cool and hanging out with his cool friends and her resenting him for being the Popular Kid by contrast to poor Lotho who didn't even get his father's brains and that's saying something.

And then we get however much we can handle of like, petty hobbit politicking. We have another time skip to Frodo finally selling her Bag End and her installing Lotho in it (making it clear that Otho has died in the meantime and this has affected her despite the fact that he never brought much to the table and had a backbone of wet spaghetti). Maybe she tells a Black Rider to Get Rekt (riff-raff! What is the world coming to, I ask you).

And then the meat of the movie is her evolving relationship with Lotho. Her pride as he starts to come into himself as masterof Bag End. Her concern and eventual despair as he cuts her off more and more, fraternitizing with Foreign Types and worse, Big People. His descent into power hungriness and Dystopia. Until the day she realizes something has to be done and hefts her umbrella and comes marching up the Hill to put things to rights -

And of course it's too late and she gets thrown into prison for the rest of her natural life.

The point should be made and made HARD that Lobelia is the first arrest. This is the precise tipping point between "Lotho is kind of a dick" and "the Shire is a Police State now". She's a 98 year old widow and she both throws the first punch and takes the first fall.

...you know I just realized that this story is a tragedy

But anyway, cool things you could show would include the gradual fall of the Shire, Fatty Bolger's Rebellion (possibly via conversations with Lobelia while they are both in prison), a bit of showcasing of the Sandyman/Gamgee rivalry and Ted becoming Lotho's crony, the closing of Tuckborough, Lotho's murder and cannibalization by Wormtongue - heck, you could even go off-script and have Lobelia try to dig herself out of Michel Delving with one of Bilbo's silver spoons...

Okay wait is Lotho's murder before or after Lobelia's arrest? Because like...

Okay, no here's how you do it. Lobelia gets hauled off from Bag End and everyone is just like "WTF we knew Lotho was a pimple but arresting his own mother???" And Lotho is also not okay with this - he goes to his ruffian and is like "Hey, what is the meaning of this?" and the guy is just like "There's a new boss in town...Chief." And in the only worthy act of his life he goes to confront this Sharkey character and we get The Saruman Reveal! But Lotho stands his ground for once in his life and is like "dude, I sell you tobacco you don't get to come to my house and push my mother around" and it's this big redemptive moment for him and you're actually rooting for him for once - ...and then Wormtongue emerges from the shadows and strangles him to death.

RIP in pieces Lotho. You were indeed a pimple, but you probably didn't deserve to get eaten by Brad Dourif.

Anyway the big payoff in the end is of course her release from prison in the end. And she expects Frodo to blame her for everything that's happened and she's prepared for all sorts of hostility - but instead he hugs her and tells her he's so sorry and so glad to se she's okay, and he leads her out on his arm -

And everybody cheers. For her. Nobody has ever been happy to see Lobelia before in her life, but now everyone is. She was the first in and she was the last out. Her release means that it's all finally over.

She is of course broken over Lotho's death, but she finally forgives Frodo for being just... way cooler than her own son, gives him back Bag End and retires to Bracegirdleville or whatever and that rivalry is over.

And the best part would be it would be way more compliant with the books than the movies we actually got. Because everything I just said is either canon or all but.

[thinkinginquenya]

Evil interpretation of my idea, that's hilarious

an ideal Lord of the Rings adaptation: a screen adaptation that keeps all of the dialogue from the books in the order the dialogue happens regardless what other kinds of changes it makes.

[thinkinginquenya]

an ideal Lord of the Rings adaptation: a screen adaptation that keeps all of the dialogue from the books in the order the dialogue happens regardless what other kinds of changes it makes.

[thinkinginquenya]

I know I’m a super normie though because I still don’t… understand… how exactly you wield the One Ring as a weapon. Like what did Boromir and Denethor etc. expect to do with it besides turn invisible and get soul-corrupted by Sauron

[thinkinginquenya]

I don't call star wars space fantasy because there's wizards (but it helps). I call it space fantasy because the story isn't at all interested in using the setting to say stuff about humanity or the nature of existence or whatever else people say scifi is meant to do (the technology involved could well be magical swords and boats and the planets could be islands separated by a sea etc and the essential story being told would be the same), and the fact that there's space wizards simply helps tie it to specific fantasy novel tropes (as opposed to a more generic space fairy tale).

The setting itself could easily be used to tell scifi, I agree.

i don't actually think star wars is space fantasy. 99.9% of people in the GFFA are just in a regular science fiction story. but also have a low likelihood of meeting a real actual wizard.

[thinkinginquenya]

Ahhhh, I seeee. Yes, if this had been The Hobbit, Tolkien would have had an aside saying "and this later became the origin of...", in the same vein as hey diddle diddle, and "out of the frying pan into the fire" but since we're past the bit of LotR that retains more of the feel of The Hobbit, then he doesn't do that.

Either that or Tom Bombadil taught him the rhyme, since Tom is definitely from a different universe where everything is made of poems.

This line of Aragorn's is probably one of my favourites in the whole book. Why? I just like the rhythm of it, I think. I am not confident in poetry mechanics, so I'm not sure if it fits to a particular meter.

"Here’s a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in!"

It's got an alternating stressed-unstressed pattern, so it's trochaic, but it feels to me like "skin" and "in" work as end of line rhymes, so to get it as a catalectic trochaic tetrameter you have to pretend the "to" isn't involved in the stress at all?

"Here’s a pretty hobbit-skin/ (to) wrap an elven-princeling in"

I am very un-well-versed in poetry though, so if anyone knows what the rhythm is actually supposed to be doing here I'm all ears.

[thinkinginquenya]

This line of Aragorn's is probably one of my favourites in the whole book. Why? I just like the rhythm of it, I think. I am not confident in poetry mechanics, so I'm not sure if it fits to a particular meter.

"Here’s a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in!"

It's got an alternating stressed-unstressed pattern, so it's trochaic, but it feels to me like "skin" and "in" work as end of line rhymes, so to get it as a catalectic trochaic tetrameter you have to pretend the "to" isn't involved in the stress at all?

"Here’s a pretty hobbit-skin/ (to) wrap an elven-princeling in"

I am very un-well-versed in poetry though, so if anyone knows what the rhythm is actually supposed to be doing here I'm all ears.

[thinkinginquenya]

He actually said he was fine with people reading WWI into his works, as long as people didn't say he was doing allegory. (It was WWII that he said he definitely wasn't writing about, because he'd already decided the shape of the story before the war started, not because he wouldn't write about it). So even Tolkien agreed that his writing could be about a thing that he experienced without him intentionally trying to parallel that.

a LOTR fandom thing that annoys me so much is when ppl respond to stuff like readings of the text as WWI fiction with 'but Tolkien said he hated allegory' like do u think direct allergory is the only way a book can be about something!! hello!!

[thinkinginquenya]

first drawing of 2025! This year I am doing animation full-time until the end of April, and already I do not have much power for other drawings x_x But I will try to experiment with a more sketchy style! So here is Fellowship doodle ♥

[thinkinginquenya]

And speaking of pronouns, flat-out my favorite part of the LOTR Appendices is when it’s revealed that the Gondorian dialect of the Common Speech differentiates between formal and informal second-person pronouns but the distinction’s been lost in the Hobbit’s dialect, so Pippin’s blithely been using familiar terms of address with the Lord of the City, and thus helps to explain both why the Gondorians are so ready to assume he’s a prince and why Denethor finds him so amusing to have around.

[thinkinginquenya]

Gandalf in The Hobbit: You are Took and that makes you absolutely suited for adventure!

Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring: Who the FUCK let the Took come on this adventure?

[thinkinginquenya]

“There are many magic rings in this world, Bilbo Baggins, and none of them should be used lightly.”

-Gandalf the Grey, wielder of Narya the Ring of Fire and also coincidentally maker of the best magic fireworks in the world

[thinkinginquenya]

Yeah, I'm not sure that Círdan was ever associated with firey magic either, and setting boats on fire would DEFINITELY be considered poor taste by anyone familiar with Feänor

“There are many magic rings in this world, Bilbo Baggins, and none of them should be used lightly.”

-Gandalf the Grey, wielder of Narya the Ring of Fire and also coincidentally maker of the best magic fireworks in the world