#I'm not actually a hardcore fan of lotr

[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

[giuliadrawsstuff]

Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks....

oh hi!

I actually haven't!!

Levi from AOT, he's probably my most favourite character of all time, cool af, brave and selfless

2. Todd from Bojack Horseman. I won't enter into detail cause it's too personal, but he's helped me in ways no character except maybe Levi ever has.

3. Sophie (and Howl) from Howl's Moving Castle, I absolutely love that movie (and book) and Sophie is one of the few female characters with whom I easily identify. Howl is a gem too of course.

4. Hange from AOT, brave selfless and super smart. They helped me too along with Levi

5. Sam from LOTR, he's the bravest. most selfless and loyal of friends and he's truly an inspiration for me

6. Jigen from Lupin III series. I have a thing for silent characters haha the less words they say the better (like Levi hahah)

7. Roy from FMAB, Royai was my first real ship so they have a special place in my heart

8. Riza from FMAB, same reason as Roy, they're also both cool AF

9. Deadpool from Marvel Comics, I read the vast majority of his comics and I love him wholeheartedly, especially when he interacts with Spiderman

10 Selene from Underworld, I grew up watching this movie a thousand times and Kate Beckinsale has always been one of my favourite characters

so here they are more or less hahah these are the ones that came to mind first.

I would also add Ripley from Alien and the Doctor from Doctor Who, I'm a hardcore Eleven fan, my obsession is gone but I still love Matt Smith a lot. Oh and maybe Jamie and Brienne from GOT (the books, not the series with the mess they made)

#ask #characters #favourites #levihan #royai #todd #deadpool

[oldladyblogs]

I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things

Confession: I saw the movies before I read the book. And on first view, I didn't like the movies--I was too young and the Moria troll scene scared me. But I got a bit older, watched the movies again, and LOVED them. Then I read the books, didn't understand them, and went back to the movies. Got a little older--I remember reading the books first in middle school and then in high school--and something just clicked.

Though Frodo and Sam aren't actually my favorite characters, their love for each other is really inspiring. However you see it (I personally view it as a deep platonic friendship), I've always wanted a love like that in my life. I hope I mean that much to someone one day, and that's the main reason I chose this quote above all others. It's simple yet meaningful and I think it's rather powerful, for all its plainness.

I had a bit of a rough time deciding how I wanted this panel to look. When I first started rereading the books for this project, I thought I'd pick a quote from Gimli, one of my favs, so I was thinking like. A square, dwarfish border with like, axes or something, and a big quote. But the more I read, the more I hated that idea. I finally chose a (slightly modified free pattern) mountain, since Sam and Frodo spend 90% of their time crossing them. Plus, coming from the Midwest, mountains very much represent the ultimate "adventure" for me (that and REALLY big trees. The oceans I couldn't care less about, I have the great lakes which are basically the same thing, especially Michigan). I did make the border a bit more elvish though, since LOTR is like, the epitome of elfness for me and a lot of other people, I assume.

Finished this panel the middle of May 2019, and it was fairly easy from start to finish. It's one of my favorites (the design, the font, and the quote all go together well, I think) and is also one of the few panels that DOESN'T have a mistake on it :)

#actually a project #cross stitch #lord of the rings #fandom #THE BOD #this is my design #I'm not actually a hardcore fan of lotr #like i never read the similarion or however its spelled #i dont know all the backstories of all 100% of the characters #but thats ok to be a casual fan #i cant be 100% on EVERYTHING #im like a solid 98% on Greek and Roman mythology though #i also know a smattering of others because im a huge history and mythology nerd #which you'll see in a few panels #BUT YEAH #lord of the rings is awesome #its in my top 20 favs ;)

[tolkien-feels]

Okay, so, I've watched the movies and I've read The Big Three, though I'm still a little shaky on my Silmarillion lore if I'm being honest. Where do I go from here if I want to read more Tolkien? Is there a commonly followed reading order? Should I just go by publication date? (Yes I am motivated to get into deeper lore because of your blog, that's why I'm asking you lmfao)

Oh hey! Happy to see my blog dragging people deeper down into the black hole of increasingly obscure Tolkien works!

I actually have a friend reading the Silm for the first time and I'm already making my little evil plans that can be summed up by "If she doesn't hate it, what can I tempt her to read next?" So I've been giving it a lot of thought lately, actually! Which is why this post ended up, uh, long.

I've taken the liberty of adapting this answer a little bit just in case I have any followers who have read fewer books than you have and find this useful. Hope you don't mind it!

The best way to read Tolkien depends a lot on what you enjoy. If you thought The Hobbit was too childish, don't read his stories for children. If your eyes glazed over when poems came up in LotR, don't pick a poetry book. If The Silmarillion drove you to tears, maybe wait before you get into the more scholarly works.

Availability is also something to consider. Maybe your local library has a few titles already, or you happen to find a good copy of something in a used bookstore, or there's a deal that saves you a lot of money. Alternatively, maybe you're set on reading something but can't find it. You might also fall in love with a story through fandom and want More Of It, or see a pretty edition that you just Must Own. These are all okay! See, the thing about Tolkien is that generally speaking, you can read his works in almost any order, so be open to changing your plans as stuff comes up in your life. I'd be willing to take a bet that the minority of fans read his stuff in any way that makes any sense lol

Personally, I think it makes sense to read in this sequence:

Read these first

The core stuff

The Hobbit

The Lord of the Rings

The Silmarillion

These are the Big Three, and you should probably get to them before you get to anything else.

The Silmarillion might take a couple of attempts to get through depending on how comfortable you are with the style, and I personally had to read it from cover to cover twice before I felt like I had a good grasp on it. @askmiddlearth has a pretty good guide that my friend who's reading it is finding really helpful.

Stories you already know: now with 200% more detail

Most other books won't be Silm levels of difficult, btw! But many assume you're familiar with it, simply because Hobbit-LotR-Silm are usually the ones most people read. So even if I otherwise follow a generally "easiest to hardest" logic, the Silm belongs here.

As an addendum, I would say the LotR appendices are a good bridge, stylistically speaking, to the Silmarillion.

The books in this category can be read in any order you feel like - you already know how they fit together.

Unfinished Tales

The Great Tales of Middle Earth, which is a series containing the following standalone books:

The Children of Hurin

Beren and Luthien

The Fall of Gondolin

Here you'll find mostly unfinished, often contradictory versions of stories you already know - but with lots of awesome detail that fandom tends to consider canon as much as we can.

These are books which contain both stories by Tolkien and commentary by his son Christopher, explaining his father's creative process and taking educated guesses as to how stories connect together and so on. It's a gentle introduction to more hardcore scholarship and if you can handle long tumblr meta I'm sure you can handle these.

Oh, and of these four books, Children of Hurin is the easiest to read by far, so maybe begin from that one. You might even read it before The Silmarillion and possibly before The Lord of the Rings (especially if you've watched the movies) - it's a pretty straightforward novel.

Read these in any order you want

I'm listing them in the order I think makes the most sense, but if you've read the books above you can just pick any section here according to your interest

Fairy tale essays, short poems, short stories and such things

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book

Farmer Giles of Ham

Tree and Leaf

Smith of Wootton Major

The Father Christmas Letters

Mr Bliss

Roverandom

Tales from the Perilous Realm

These aren't technically legendarium relevant but are delightful if you like fantasy. A lot (but not all) of these are very light reading and excellent to read to children who aren't ready for the actual legendarium yet, or to turn to as a break from heavier material.

I really wanted to make separate sections for children's literature and things that just happen to be fairy tales but immediately noticed I had no idea when a fairy tale becomes too grown up to be children's literature, so a single section it is

The Deep Lore™️

You know when Frodo inherits Bilbo's papers (and then Sam inherits Frodo's) and they have to make sense of it? That's what it's like reading HoME.

The History of Middle Earth series, or HoME for short.

(There are 12 books in this series. It's probably a terrible idea to read them out of order, so I won't even list them here)

Basically, these are nearly all the scraps of paper by Tolkien that could be found at the time, put together chronologically and presented with commentary. Here you can find answers to like 80% of the questions you might have after reading the other books, and then answers to a million other questions you didn't actually have.

This feels more like reading a library than a book series - whether this makes you want to read it more or less depends on your taste.

Also! Last year they released The Nature of Middle Earth, which is in the same vein as these but I haven't read it yet so I don't feel quite comfortable saying "Oh yeah this is when you should read it!"

Tolkien as a person: biography, letters and essays

JRR Tolkien: A Biography (by Humphrey Carpenter)

The Letters of JRR Tolkien

The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

I'm not the best person to ask about studying Tolkien as a person, but these are probably the most famous (and important) books.

The Letters also contain a lot of info about Middle Earth, so they might be worth taking a look even if you, like me, don't feel like reading tons of biographies.

For fans of all things medieval

The Fall of Arthur

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell

Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

The Story of Kullervo

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo

The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun

These are all translations, commentaries or deliberate imitations of actual medieval texts, as opposed to the ahistorical quasimedieval thing the legendarium has got going on. You probably shouldn't touch these if poetry scares you, though.

And that's it...?

Not really, no. There are other publications if you're a completist, but these are the major ones in every category I can think of. There should be some 30-40 books here anyway, so this should keep you busy for a while!

Note that I won't revisit this post to update it every time a new book is released, so for more recent books, use your best judgment!

#reading order #<< for my own reference if someone ever asks me again or i do manage to get my friend down the rabbit hole #in which i am forced to confront my lifestyle choices as i realize how much tolkien i've read #me @ me diversify your reading material fgs #hyperfixations are truly impossible to explain

[evilwriter37]

What are the characters from lotr and the hobbit that you ship? I know you ship Bard and Thraundil, Bilbo and Thorin, but I'm curios about the other characters.

I'm not like the other Hobbit fans. I actually ship Kili and Tauriel. I think their relationship could have been really sweet had Kili lived.

I slightly ship Legolas and Gimli. Like, not hardcore shipper, but if I see a good post about it or good art I'll definitely reblog. Same goes for Frodo and Sam.

Aragorn and Arwen was like, my first OTP, even though I'm kind of meh about them now. (Maybe because I've seen the movies so many times?)

#asks #the hobbit #lotr

[hobbitsetal]

Every single one of those asks for Cahan, ~If I got his name wrong I'm really sorry I mean your mute OC with the trouble brother who really loves that one girl who's name I think starts with a P? Prya?? maybe??~

first of all, i'm absolutely delighted by all the details you remembered! my mute boy Cahan with the trouble brother who's in love with Priya...12/10 summary, pls insert wild applause here.second of all...i feel like i should've expected *someone* to ask all of them, and yet i'm slightly surprised. *cracks knuckles* let's roll B)1. what do they look like? unkempt red hair (about the color of a red fox, in fact), bony little sap, somewhat pointy face...since he's mute, Priya's family calls him Fox. personally, i sorta kinda picture domnhall gleeson, but shorter.2. describe their personality in three words: loving, indomitable, cheeky3. how tall are they? he's about 5'5",4. favorite foods? boy's got a sweet tooth. currently, his all-time fave is honey scones, but he's used to not getting enough to eat, so he will eat literally anything. *anything*. one time he probably ate grass.5. any allergies? poison ivy sucks hardcore for him.6. what is their build? slim and athletic when he's actually got enough to eat.7. do they have curly, wavy, or straight hair? tends to be wavy, but that's mostly because he doesn't comb it much.8. do they like books? if so, how often do they read? he does like books, but he lives in an age when they're still fairly precious commodities, so he reads maybe a couple times a year.9. what are their talents? v sneaky, 10/10 sneak, pretty decent burglar, good leader, good with weapons, and also ridiculously good at looking pitiful.10. two or more other fictional characters they’re similar to? oh gee...maybe Lieutenant Bush from Horatio Hornblower, and possibly Carrot Ironfoundersson from Discworld? idk, i'm making it up.11. what is one strange hobby/talent they have? does picking locks count?12. five songs that fit them: i'm gonna have to get back to you on this one...remind me later, i'll consult my muse and come up with some answers. probably along the lines of LoTR13. who do you think could play them in a live-action rendition? i'm sticking with domnhall gleeson unless somebody's got a better idea.14. do they just want to rest? YES.15. which OC did not sign up for this? he sorta signed up for this? his brother doesn't think they signed up for this, and this other dude who likes Priya (Ifan) def did not sign up for this.16. who’s their favorite person? his brother Rhys and Priya17. who do you ship them with? Priya :P18. have they experienced the death of a loved one? oh yes. he's a warrior and an escaped pow. death is a familiar horror.19. have they ever been tortured? yes. that's why he's mute, actually.20. what’s the worst thing you’ve done to them without spoiling anything? besides being tortured into muteness?21. any mental illnesses? ptsd22. what’s their favorite animal? he does in fact like foxes. i feel like he'd also be a fan of cats.23. what are their flaws? cares too much, will rush into danger for his loved ones, can be very stubborn, steals (though to be fair, that's to survive)24. what’s their favorite color? hazel eyes *stares dreamily into the distance*i'm kidding, he likes yellow and the green of spring leaves25. pet peeves? picking fights, bullying in general, people who don't know when to stop or to accept no means no26. bad habits? will steal your food, wipes crumbs off the table onto the floor, doesn't volunteer for chores27. an OC they hate: Lotaan Tiras, the reason he's mute and traumatized28. random fact about them: he used to be able to sing beautifully. he can play the harp, though29. family members? his brother Rhys, his parents back home, probably some cousins who aren't relevant to the story30. Hogwarts house? he'd be a Gryffindor31. what makes them happy? safety. food. Priya. people who are relaxed and happy. knowing Rhys is asleep and therefore out of trouble32. middle and last names (if they’re established)? don't know about middle names, but his last name is Windlow33. introvert, ambivert, or extrovert? probably ambivert leaning toward extrovert34. how old are they? 26? i'm 89% sure?35. strange quirks they have: none come to mind...36. any unhealthy obsessions? i can't think of any that i'd call unhealthy...being aware of escape routes and stuff kinda comes with the ptsd, wanting Tiras dead in about fifty pieces comes with the torture and war...personally i think that's a reasonable reaction.37. looks like they could kill but is actually a cinnamon roll, looks like a cinnamon roll but could actually kill you, looks like a cinnamon roll and is actually a cinnamon roll, looks like they could kill you and could actually kill you, or sinnamon roll. OKAY: Luka, Cahan/Egan, Priya/Anise, Tiras, Rhys38. how smart are they? pretty darn. he's a noble, so he's educated, and he's got a decent amount of common sense.39. master planner or master improviser? bit of both, but more of an improviser40. species/race? faery--it's either faery or human in this world41. cat or dog person? more so cat42. where are they from? the Realm, the kingdom of the faeries that exists in the north of this world, in a more tropical area.43. moral alignment? i suspect neutral goodthanks, my lovely!!