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#gotta love a ship that STARTS with the '... oh'

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#thingol ignoring fëanoreans' 'requests' for the silmaril

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had a revelation

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#I was a 'it's too obvious that can't be it' denier for the first 7 episodes #but then he went full Annatar and I was just #'alrighty then hello Sauron'

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Galadriel: You lied? Halbrannatar: I just told a story. It was a good one, too. It was much more true than the truth would sound.

#'my backstory is way too long so I gave you the gist of it' #where 'the gist of it' is a bundle of technicalities wrapped up with a 'he's hot' bow

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Well… mark me down as scared AND horny!

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This might sound controversial

But I am convinced there are times when the funniest ship is the best ship

And Sauron x Galadriel is HYSTERICAL to me

#100% this

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What I learned from The Silmarillion:

Genesis can be rewritten to be way more beautiful and interesting.

Gandalf and Durin's Bane were probably buds once.

All the Elves in the Third Age are nice because all the assholes got brutally slaughtered in the First Age.

"I have a Silmaril in my hand." "Show me." "Sorry, my hand's not here right now."

Old School Sauron is way cooler than the mopey voyeur in LOTR.

Elrond's dad is a planet and his mom is a bird.

Tolkien's cosmology explains everything—except Eru Ilúvatar, Ungoliant, Tom Bombadil, talking swords and purses, animals serving dinner, and That Fox Who Never Knew Anything More About It.

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BOOP! 🐾

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Sketchy time! We still paddling this ship. *o*

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Halbrand and Galadriel + text posts

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POV:

Some elf you hate made 3 shiny stones, and now you want them but he "Get thee gone from my gate, thou jail-crow of Mandos!"'s you.

#that line always cracks me up #fëanor has zero chill but he sure has a way with words

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I am Nothing; You are Everything - The Ballad of Halbrand and Galadriel

A musical retelling of Halbrand and Galadriel’s storyline in The Rings of Power Season 1.

Lyrics: “I am Nothing; You are Everything” by @youwearfinethingswellwriter .

#hopefully safe to unprivate again #i'd forgotten how much people outside this nice little bubble hate rings of power lol #still unlisted but at least it's up again ish

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Reading the Silmarillion, the elves seem so active and full of life.They’re always doing things. When you get to the Lord of the Rings, they just seem so tired. Elrond holds a meeting and then he’s out. Galadriel has some guests stay with her. They’re so done. They just wanna leave.

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Halbrand has four moods and that’s it

(c)rafty boy a smith ™️

Hello lord Halbrand Heart eyes for his gal pal

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I feel like people try too hard to keep Sauron "in character", to the point that they super-impose the 3rd Age LOTR Sauron onto the 2nd Age TROP Sauron. To the point that people attribute everything he does to a manipulation, thinking that the guy does everything as planned, as if he can't do an action because he just feels like it, or make a decision based on emotions. That is just... Not how I saw even LOTR Sauron. Plus, a lot can happen to a guy in several millenia, yk? (And I believe we will even see this road of his in later seasons).

I will give you the scene where he apologises for killing Galadriel's brother, for example.

Rewatching it, you can absolutely tell that Sauron seriously intended to stay in Numenor and do nothing but simple smith work.

He wasn't lying later to Gal when he said he had all but given up at this time frame - he really did. In that moment, he believed himself to be a giant failure, all his plans had fallen through, even the orks mutinied against him and his close servant/friend (because it is obvious he and Adar were close - 1) how else would one disembowel fucking Sauron unless he trusted his back to that person? 2) he would NOT act THAT angry if that betrayal wasn't personal on some level) betrayed him and murdered him - so at this stage he is in the "to hell with it all, I give up, I am a loser, let me just smith cutlery and horse shoes in peace" frame of mind.

But then comes Galadriel asking him to help her take the Southlands, refusing to take "no" for an answer.

As a side note, I find this part of the scene interesting:

Love the actor's work as well here - how his stare becomes vacant as he loses himself in the dark memories.

(And he is turned away from Galadriel here. She doesn't see his face at all. At. All. So, unless he is trying to manipulate coals, the emotions on his face are. All. Real.)

"You don't know what I did. How I survived...

And, as he gazes into the fire, it's not his memories that come (as would be expected out of this cimetographic tactic), but the present scene of the villagers submitting and kneeling to Adar and the orks.

Legitimately, his words here are narrating over the people kneeling to Adar. Right over this moment. I kid you not, go rewatch it, if you do not believe me.

This, here, is a 100% tell that, at least in this story, as TROP authors intended it, the idea is that Sauron's continuous service to Melkor was a matter of survival. You don't make such an obvious parallel unintentionally.

So, while he came to serve him probably out of his young foolishness and ambition, but that, down the road, it became simply impossible to change sides, even if he wanted too, unless he was willing to sacrifice his life for it.

Going back to the point. So, Sauron, as Galadriel asks him to abandon his own plans and help her with her quest, demands that she gives him an honest answer why she pursues her goals.

She turns away from him in tears and:

"The company I led mutinied against me"

Mmmm?🤔

"My closest friend conspired with the King to exile me"

MMMMM?🤔🤔🤔

(what could it be reminding me of I wonder??)

What? What is it, Sauron? Why are you making this sad version of a surprised Pikachu face?? And to her back no less, where she can't even see you doing your obviously manipulative surprised sad faces😆

(Seriously, guys, he even does a small gasp here)

And Galadriel's next words:

"Because they could no longer distinguish me from the evil I was fighting"

...beyond being a hilarious irony (because, yk? said evil is standing right behind you, Gal), are supposed to clarify for those that didn't get it from his shocked face what exactly ran through Sauron's mind at that moment, that surprised him so much:

"We are alike".

Bingo. So there you have it. What made Sauron change his mind and follow Galadriel was not some masterplan where he decided that her quest to the Southlands would be very beneficial for him - but simply he recognised a kindred spirit and he felt he could understand what she was going through and empathised with her, decided to help her.

Bonus - after he just discovered for himself that they have much in common and apologised for killing her brother, she says:

"Your sorrow cannot ease my pain.

And nor will a hammer and tongs ease yours.

There is no peace to be found for you here.

And nor for me.

No lasting peace in any path, but that which lies across the sea.

I have fought for centuries to earn mine.

This is how you earn yours."

(even her words here are perfectly paralleled, casting them as mirrors of each other)

And after saying this she leaves. And he stays looking like this:

- which, again, no one is witnessing, except the empty smithy.

So, in conclusion, Sauron follows Galadriel because: a) he feels a sense of guilt towards her; b) he cannot ignore it because he understands her and he feels they are alike; c) a person he feels they have a lot in common with is sure that "there's no peace to be found for the likes of us here", so yes, it makes him first hesitate and then change his mind about staying in Numenor and living a simple ordinary life; d) while he did plan to just live as a simple smith in Numenor, it was never what he actually wanted for himself. His failures together with his guilt made him give up, but Galadriel gave him hope that he could be something more and do something good. And that was always his dream and his ambition.

I believe it's not before they came to Eregion and he heard about the mirthril and the Elves' plight that it all came to him how he could restart his previous plans that he had abandoned because of continuous failures (and Adar physically banishing him from existence).

PS: and no, it is not Galadriel's fault, because nothing she said here was wrong. Sauron stood on a crossroad and he had a real chance here - where he was wrong-footed and doubted all his previous beliefs - he had a chance to choose the right path. But instead he chose subjurgation of others (and I do not believe it was because of his nature as Dark, but because of his previous experiences, what they shaped him out to be). If anything, the one to blame is Adar with his untimely volcano show, because - who knows? - had they had more time, maybe Sauron could have found the right footing. Instead, before he could unlearn his worse life lessons and learn new better ones, he, sort of, came to the Tree of Knowledge in Eden.

#YES #the 'it was all manipulation' theory just doesn't hold up #he did so many things when people weren't looking #IMPORTANT character moments #why would he fake that? #fourth wall aware of the camera? #nope #he's a pragmatic little shit but he's not a mastermind #AND NEITHER WAS 3RD AGE SAURON but that's a different story