sunrayse

[sunrayse]

#heartbreak #trop #haladriel #why must this ship be so good while it's so painful

nightmare

[sunrayse]

#halbrand x galadriel #trop analysis #quite accurate IMHO #haladriel #doomed but we don't care

There’s still something so interesting to me in the fact that Sauron seemed honestly resistant to Galadriel’s efforts to crown him king of the Southlands and drag him back to Middle Earth with her. A lot of his early behavior we can just put down to various subtle forms of manipulation, but his resistance here came across as real. We got that shot of him alone in a room putting the seal of kingship angrily down on a table - with no one else watching, and therefore no one for him to be performing in front of. When we see him then pick it back up again, it appears like a clear case of the character truly changing his mind, and not just pretending to. Which I read as therefore meaning that Sauron genuinely considered staying behind on Numenor and refusing to travel with Galadriel to the Southlands.

Which, I mean - and yes forgive me for stating the obvious - but that’s kind of important! It suggests that Sauron’s supposed repentence and reluctance to take up the Dark Lord mantle again was real. Because this was a golden opportunity that literally fell into his lap - Galadriel is seriously out there spinning her secret kingship theories and collecting him an army all on her own, with Sauron barely having to lift a finger. And then he just…truly doesn’t seem to want it? Like I don’t think the show will ever tell us just how much of his early relationship with Galadriel was real and how much was a con, but it took the time to provide actual evidence that his reluctance to take advantage of what she was offering him here was sincere. I’m not saying he necessarily planned to start saving kittens from trees and donating all his salary to orphanages, but if he was only looking for a new path to power, then the one Galadriel gave him was a million times more efficient than staying behind in Numenor as a smith. So like, I think a part of him genuinely wanted to give it a try. He really had a moment where forsaking earthly power and kingship and just hanging around a forge on Numenor making swords and vibing seemed like a legitimate life path.

And I think that’s also interesting for his relationship with Galadriel. Because yes, obviously a part of it was just him jerking her chain to make her dance [’kneel’ pffffft okay dark lord we get it] and laughing to himself at this absurdly lucky opportunity to sink his claws into the famous Noldor elf who’s been obssessed with murdering him for a couple millenia. But if a meaningful part of him doesn’t actually want to regain his power in Middle Earth, then why would he need to manipulate Galadriel into giving it to him? I mean sure he’s an opportunist and the temptation is kind of too big to turn down [and yeah to no one’s surprise he does eventually give into it], but at the same time, their dynamic really does come across like he’s conflicted about getting closer to her - and in ways that I think genuinely could have driven Galadriel away, rather than just playing hard-to-get to reel her in more.

All of which is to say that I think this suggests that part of the temptation was really just Galadriel herself. And I mean there’s not enough evidence in the show to prove this either way - you could argue that Sauron was exclusively conflicted over whether or not to pursue power again, and Galadriel was an incidental cog in that temptation. But I find that take less convincing [and less fun], because so much of the push and pull of their relationship is happening even before Sauron has made the choice to use Galadriel to take power in the Southlands [and then later to scheme his way into Eregion &etc]. He risks his life to save her at sea before he’s decided to become the Dark Lord again. All the little jokes he plays on her, convincing her to trust his intentions and his advice, cornering her into a confrontation about her brother - he does all that before he’s even sure what he wants to use Galadriel for. He could easily have discarded her at any point and saved himself considerable trouble. However useful keeping her as an ally might theoretically be, he didn’t need her for any of his immediate goals, and he’s clearly playing with fire vis a vis tricking the bloodthirsty military commander out for his head into spending more time with him. She’s potentially useful, sure, but also a much more immediate risk. So why keep her around when she serves no clear purpose? Why keep her alive at all if she doesn’t further his goals?

Anyway [and this is the shipping aspect of the argument so turn back now if that’s not your thing]: my pet theory is that I think Galadriel herself might have been part of the temptation. She wasn’t just offering Sauron a path back to power - she was also offering him her trust and respect and basically just continued access to herself as his friend and ally. If Sauron didn’t take her up on the offer of kingship, she was going to run off to Middle Earth without him. If he did take her up on it, he got not just the kingship itself, but also the chance to keep hanging out with Galadriel, manipulating her in various ways and setting the groundwork for potentially persuading her over to his own side. And maybe that in itself was a part of the offer he couldn’t turn down. [because he’s in deeply embarrassing love with her] He didn’t only want the power Galadriel could give him - he also just, like, met this angry unhinged grief-stricken agent of chaos with great hair and terrible people skills and went, oh, okay. I want to see what she does next. And anyway yeah that’s the temptation he really couldn’t shake and that’s why the Dark Lord rose again to bring death destruction and ruination to the land &etc etc, the end. [and that’s how love ruined everything hurray]

[sunrayse]

#halbrand #sauron #trop

How Sauron isn’t lying to Galadriel

I’ve seen people say “Galadriel was never deceived by Sauron and in RoP she is, so it’s trash”, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the differences between the books and the series. First of all, in The Unfinished Tales (I mean deceiving of the elves of Eregion is mentioned in several books, but in this one story is more detailed) Sauron does not disguise himself as someone pretty harmless, i.e. human, he is a Maia and he does not hide this fact. Secondly, he’s lying from the very beginning and some of his lies can be easily refuted. He is like ‘Hi my name is Annatar, I am a servant of Aulë and I was sent here by the Valar to help you’ and Galadriel is like ‘Well, I apprenticed for Aulë and I don’t remember anyone with that name working for him’. In The Rings of Power Galadriel does her reseach in Númenor and they apparently don’t have information contradicting everything she knows or assuming she knows about Halbrand, so why should she doubt him? Also he’s is just some “low man” she found on the raft with his countrymen. Not dangerous, not suspicious. Sauron is not yet notorious for going to people with pretty little lies pretending to be someone he is not.

In some texts there is this ‘he gives a bad vibe’ Tolkien thing. I mean, it kinda works… sometimes… in his works (Idril branding Maeglin a bad guy the day they met - I look at you), but I’m not sure it would worked on the screen. Someone just shows up and the main character goes ‘oh I don’t trust him’ why? ‘I dunno he seems kinda sus’ em okay I guess. How does it work? She has a gift of prophecy or what? She owns radar-of-evil? She doesn’t have Nenya yet so she is not that powerful. I’m definitely not a fan of this version.

So lets assume she can… sense lies and look at everything Sauron said to her about himself and his past one more time. 

The concept of “homeland” is hardly applicable to Sauron because he was created in the Timeless Halls, they aren’t a part of Eä (this world) and don’t have physical form, so I assume that this is more or less a synonym for the word “home”. And he had plenty of them.

When he was servant of Aulë he lived in Almaren with other Ainur - and this place no longer exists, it was destroyed when Melkor threw down the Two Lamps. You can say “it’s ashes now”. 

When he was servant of Melkor/Morgoth he lived in Utumno, Angband and Tol Sirion/Tol-in-Gaurhoth, all of which were destroyed during the wars, they no longer exist after the sinking of Beleriand.

In the first part he’s talking of fortress in Forodwaith, which can be also considered his home and he indeed was chased from it by the orcs - by one particular orc, Adar.

Sauron (and writers) use such formulations so that they can relate to many things, and at least one of them is true.

I assume by “his people” he means (ex-)servants of Morgoth like himself and they indeed have no king, because Morgoth is no longer in this world, he is in the Void, and his next-in-charge lieutenant Sauron lost his power when disembodied by Adar, who’s also not a king, more like a leader/father figure. So, another truth.

This is simply truth. He is suffering because of many things, but Galadriel is not one of them.

Also true. She doesn’t know shit.

Probably a thousand years ago, but yep, he really found this on a dead man.

Notice how he never explicitly says ‘I’m the king, I’m the heir’. He does not directly respond to Galadriel’s claim that he is the King of the Southlands with 'yes’ or ‘no’ and here he says ‘his [the heir’s] ancestor’, not ‘mine ancestor’.

Yeah, you and your big bad husband, that family. Family of losers.

Oh, he definitely is not the hero she seeks.

I suppose we all agree that Sauron is not truly repentant, but I think he believes what he is saying here. He realizes that what he did was evil and he wants to change his life so he has to feel sorry for his past. It’s not equal ‘I’m really, really sorry’, it’s more like ‘it didn’t end well when I was doing what I was doing and I was doing it all for Melkor and we didn’t even want the same thing so I should recant my actions’. That’s just my opinion, but it’s obvious to me that at least he isn’t lying on purpose. 

He basically admits it! He admits he personally was fighting alongside Morgoth.

“I told you the truth. I told you that I had done evil, and you did not care”

There are definitely a few more things that can be considered lies. Like his name. Halbrand. It’s not his name, is it? But it is comprised of hall (“exalted, high”)  and brand (“towering; tall and massive”) and this can describe him in this form, why not.

In front of Míriel he has to admit he is from the Southlands, but it seems like he indeed come to Númenor from the Southlands, people on the raft looked pretty much like they lived there. I hope in the 2nd season we will see how he got on that raft, but it really looks like that he left the Southlands with these people.

He also has to agree with Bronwyn that he is the king they were promised, which also can be true. He was planing to make the Southlands his home for probably thousands of years, made this mechanism and sword-key to it, spread the message to the orcs and the map. Maybe he made up this legend of the promised king, so he wouldn’t have any trouble with this people and this is why he took this mark from its last owner. Maybe when he became strong enough and made himself a new body, he took this mark and went to the Southlands to seize power, but the orcs appeared and he had to flee with the survivors, since he had not yet regained all his strength after the disembodiment. 

I don’t know if my theory turns out to be true, but I definitely appreciate writers to give “Halbrand” such lines with no outright lies.

[sunrayse]

Can one seriously be a true Tolkien fan AND a lover of the Halbrand/Galadriel dynamics in TROP?

I have been a hardcore fan of Tolkien's work for 20 years and especially enjoyed the feast of mythology that is the Silmarillion. So I'm fully aware that TROP took (too) many liberties from the lore and disregarded its time/space framework, almost as if it were a different story than that Tolkien wrote. And I don't want to delve into the polemics of what could have been done differently with the Appendixes material they owned the rights to.

What really interests me here is that much of the dynamics between Galadriel and Halbrand/Sauron, though not being in the canon/lore, stems from issues that were present there, except they lacked any romantic undertones. Galadriel has actually been fighting Sauron in her mind for centuries, and this must have started somewhere.

TROP gave its own interpretation of one of these possible starts, and as far as these two characters are concerned, it doesn't bother me. One can love the lore and at the same time enjoy an interesting, new take to two powerful characters, that creates something new with them. Is it a fanfic-like move? Yes. Is it disrespectful towards Tolkien? Arguable.

The question would then be, to what extent is fan-fiction disrespectful? Are some works to be shielded by it, up in their ivory tower to prevent "tainting"? I mean, has anyone ever created a fanfiction on the Divine Comedy? (I t'd be soooo fun if they had!). Where are we to draw the line between literature and creativity?

In the end, a work of art such as LOTR will not be tainted by any faulty rendition. If one truly loves it for what it is, and especially strip it of any religious/ideologocal layer that was quite far from Tolkien's intentions, a series such as TROP changes nothing. One will always have to go back to the book, and the book alone (possibly in the indescribably beautiful English of the original), to find the real LOTR, as all adaptations (and even translations) involve some degree of distancing from the source material.

Back to the two of them, then.

I personally think the screenplayers knew very well what they were doing in colouring the interactions between Halbrand and Galadriel with not-so-subtle romantic shades. The fact that the actors label it as an interpretation from the audience, I can understand, but if so many people caught these undertones, it's no longer an interpretation, it's simply the audience's ability to catch on the non-verbal cues, one that we almost all possess. The light, the music, the proximal distance, the cut of scenes, and, even the way the actors delivered some lines at the physical level are all cues. They cannot possibly have been ALL dropped there by chance.

So, the romantic possibility of the connection is there to be, if not seen, at least perceived in a tangible way, although never confirmed. This was, cynically speaking, a bold but intelligent move. Proof is the 130 and counting fanfics that sprouted in less than two weeks from the last episode's airing (some of them remarkably well-written).

The heroine/villain and (unacknowledged)lovers-to-enemies tropes are too powerful not to be used by a show which hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured in. In doing so, they opened up new and interesting territories to explore, that make it more entertaining for a consistent faction of fandom.

I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed the opening of a space in which two such characters might be bound to experience something akin to love that has no time enough to bloom, but that will potentially loom in the back of their minds for millennia, charging their conflict with a rich array of complex emotions, a connection beyond time and space.

Even knowing full well how doomed such a romance is, its ability to inspire amazing levels of creativity is undeniable, and as such, it can be welcomed without subtracting anything to a more traditional enjoyment of the Tolkienian lore in all its fantastic richness.

The LOTR's author loved stories, after all.

#haladriel #halbrand x galadriel #galadriel x sauron #the rings of power #the lord of the rings #archetypes #literature #trop #lotr rp #saurondriel