frodomybeloved

[frodomybeloved]

glóin and baby gimli

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Mucha inspired Eowyn illustration

[frodomybeloved]

The last time I read Lord of the Rings, I particularly focused on the songs and the lore that they communicated. Now that I've re-read The Silmarillion, which establishes that this universe was created from song, the music in LotR takes on a new dimension. The whole history of this world is recorded in the lyrics, with successive generations building onto the story, right up to Bilbo and Sam composing verse at the end of the Third Age. Participating in the act of creation.

[frodomybeloved]

that part in fellowship where gimli isn't allowed to walk without a blindfold through the Naith of Lorien and Aragorn understands that it is not about the blindfold but about being alone, and so all of the fellowship agree to be blindfolded so that they are all treated equally. That is allyship. aragorn is heir to the throne of gondor and a powerful person in middle earth but he would rather they all be blindfolded so as to point out how outrageous it is that gimli would be blindfolded. As long as the world is unfair we stand with those it is unfair to, and we deny the privileges the unfair world would give us to separate us from our friends

[frodomybeloved]

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Everyone says that the eagles should have just carried the ring to Mordor but people who really know their lore know that they were actually stuck in some sort of hotel

[frodomybeloved]

One of the things that’s really struck me while rereading the Lord of the Rings–knowing much more about Tolkien than I did the last time I read it–is how individual a story it is.

We tend to think of it as a genre story now, I think–because it’s so good, and so unprecedented, that Tolkien accidentally inspired a whole new fantasy culture, which is kind of hilarious. Wanting to “write like Tolkien,” I think, is generally seen as “writing an Epic Fantasy Universe with invented races and geography and history and languages, world-saving quests and dragons and kings.” But… But…

Here’s the thing. I don’t think those elements are at all what make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so good. Because I’m realizing, as I did not realize when I was a kid, that Tolkien didn’t use those elements because they’re somehow inherently better than other things. He used them purely because they were what he liked and what he knew.

The Shire exists because he was an Englishman who partially grew up in, and loved, the British countryside, and Hobbits are born out of his very English, very traditionalist values. Tom Bombadil was one of his kids’ toys that he had already invented stories about and then incorporated into Middle-Earth. He wrote about elves and dwarves because he knew elves and dwarves from the old literature/mythology that he’d made his career. The Rohirrim are an expression of the ancient cultures he studied. There are a half-dozen invented languages in Middle-Earth because he was a linguist. The themes of war and loss and corruption were important to him, and were things he knew intimately, because of the point in history during which he lived; and all the morality of the stories, the grace and humility and hope-in-despair, was an expression of his Catholic faith. 

J. R. R. Tolkien created an incredible, beautiful, unparalleled world not specifically by writing about elves and dwarves and linguistics, but by embracing all of his strengths and loves and all the things he best understood, and writing about them with all of his skill and talent. The fact that those things happened to be elves and dwarves and linguistics is what makes Middle-Earth Middle-Earth; but it is not what makes Middle-Earth good.

What makes it good is that every element that went into it was an element J. R. R. Tolkien knew and loved and understood. He brought it out of his scholarship and hobbies and life experience and ideals, and he wrote the story no one else could have written… And did it so well that other people have been trying to write it ever since.

So… I think, if we really want to write like Tolkien (as I do), we shouldn’t specifically be trying to write like linguists, or historical experts, or veterans, or or or… We should try to write like people who’ve gathered all their favorite and most important things together, and are playing with the stuff those things are made of just for the joy of it. We need to write like ourselves.

[frodomybeloved]

i don’t really care for lord of the rings all that much but bombadil civil war still makes me lose my mind

[frodomybeloved]

Frodo: Sam hates Gollum, but that is what I shall become once I have lost myself to the ring… he’ll despise me… 

Sam if Frodo did turn into a Gollum: That’s a very nice fish you caught with your bare hands, Mr. Frodo, and its very smart of you to eat it raw, saves us the trouble of starting a fire. I knitted you a sweater in case you get cold running around in that loincloth of yours. Is the sun hurting your eyes? I’ll kill it if it’s bothering you. I’ll kill the sun

[frodomybeloved]

Love that one scene in Return Of The King that's like "bad news, sauron knows everything pippin knows. good news, pippin knows absolutely fuck all."

[frodomybeloved]

when you catch your crush very obviously staring 🤭

| these two melted the shit out of my heart |

[frodomybeloved]

remember when éowyn first met faramir and immediately thought "ah yes. this is a guy who could wipe the floor with any soldier of rohan." bc I think about it a lot

[frodomybeloved]

i LOVE the way aragorn is like everyone's friend. he's like the popular hot girl whos nice to everyone and you kind of wonder if maybe it's fake but then she offhandedly mentions some detail about you that she remembered or asks how your mom is doing and you can tell she really means it and cares about the answer. and she volunteers as a tutor after school also.

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Help

[frodomybeloved]

Pippin has unfortunately figured out that if he plays with something he’s not supposed to, he gets my attention

as if he doesn’t get it enough 🙄 it’s just when i’m working and not paying attention to him bc of that work that he decides to rebel

[frodomybeloved]

hobbit sayings that I’m inventing for my own devious purposes

‘washes their neighbours’ windows’ - a person who is too nosy. took origin (pretty much Always hypocritical) 

‘starts their 4 o'clock tea at noon’ - a person who is overly cautious. took origin

‘they’d take their pony into the bar’ - a person who is very oblivious to what is going around them. origin unclear. common in buckland 

‘can’t find the nose on a pig’ - when someone is very drunk. started with the proudfeet 

‘swims like a baggins’ - can’t swim. took origin. obsolete for obvious reasons 

‘goody two hats, soon to be none’ - a person who is so annoyingly ‘good’ that they make you want to trash them. took origin

‘their head is a hat rack’ - someone can’t think. origins in buckland. became wildly popular through use in gondor and is still in use to this day 

‘harder than finding your child at a birthday party’ - a task is difficult. origins in buckland 

‘can’t tell a bird from a butterfly’ - a person who is very foolish and naive. origins unclear. most common in south farthing 

‘eyes like a spinning wheel’ - someone who is greedy for other people’s things. origin under dispute. 

‘kissed by a fairy’ - a person who is insane. hobbiton origin. used extensively 

[frodomybeloved]

historians will tell u frodo was not serving insane cunt during his recovery at the house of elrond but i will refute it