Latest Posts by godtookmygenderagain - Page 4

I think part of why I can’t get into any Tolkien stuff outside of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is because I immediately lose interest once the gay little hobbits stop being center-stage. “The main hero is CeleFinElfidor the Bold, an immortal warrior who slew three thousand balrogs with a song” makes me go to sleep. but “his name was Blorbo Boffin and his neighbors said he was a queer creature who liked to eat strawberries” is Intriguing. Instantly you’re invested. You immediately see the vision

just messed around with some screenshots, they're so funny, I can't 😭😭

The company, silly edition

“Manic pixy dream girl” Son & and his “type-A bipolar wine mom” Dad

Art by J.R.R. Tolkien

They heard a noise in the middle of the night

I think a lot of people are getting the wrong idea when they call Tolkien a freak because he invented this elaborate framing device whereby the Red Book of Westmarch was actually written by Bilbo and Frodo (with some addenda by Sam) and he, Tolkien, was merely an editor and translator. Throughout history it's actually been a very common literary device for an author to represent their work as having been written by a character who appears in the story, with the author themselves variously positioned as a translator, editor, and/or literary executor. At the time that Tolkien was writing, such a device would have been seen as somewhat old-fashioned, but certainly not eccentric. Like, Tolkien was definitely a freak, but not for that reason.

I think the reason so many LOTR ripoffs fail is because they make their Aragorn analogue the main character, when the entire point of Aragorn is that he’s “the person the villains think is the main character, but is Not.”

Aragorn seems like a traditional King Arthur style hero— he has huge Main Character Energy because he’s supported by destiny, by bloodline, by all these magic artifacts and prophecies, and etc etc. Frodo and Sam are Just Some Guys. Aragorn recognizes that Sauron understandably thinks he’s the main hero of this story ….and he pretends to believe it too, spending the entire series using himself as a diversion to prevent Sauron from seeing Frodo and Sam.

Aragorn’s whole thing is that knows he seems like the Main Hero of this legend to people who don’t know better —- but he also knows that he isn’t, and that his role is just to keep Sauron’s eye on him in order to protect the people around him.

And it works! Sauron is so fixated on defeating his Legendary Destined Archenemy with Extreme Main Character Energy that he completely overlooks the two ordinary little guys who were the real threat to him all along.

It's ironic how a major part of Lord of the Rings is that storytellers always overlook hobbits in their legends because their simple lives are "less important" than the lives of Great Royals & Grand Warriors--- since that's ultimately been reflected in the current state of the Tolkien franchise itself! After the LOTR films, big-budget Tolkien franchise installments (and copycats) overwhelmingly focus on their Aragorn analogues, with hobbit-like characters shoved to the sidelines. The Lord of the Rings films may be flawed, but they succeeded because they had a strong central story-- the relationship between Frodo and Sam, and the fairytale-themes about small overlooked people who save the day while the villains are distracted by Great Heroes from Noble Bloodlines, are what give the story the deep lasting emotional impact that it has. But the franchise(tm) quickly decided that the royal warrior elves/men were the far more exciting marketable characters, and their battle skills could allow for more flashy spectacle. The Hobbit films gradually focused more heavily on the warrior characters, with Bilbo being a glorified extra by the last movie; The Amazon LOTR show focuses on a noble warrior elf of royal blood as its main character and political intrigue among the royalty of different kingdoms as its main plot; the recent animated film focuses on a noble hero of royal blood involved in epic battles. I've mentioned before that it's fascinating how all the new "Tolkien franchise" installments (as well as media inspired by LOTR) continue to center their stories on the Aragorn archetype-- a Destined Noble Hero/Warrior from a Royal Bloodline etc etc. The entire premise of Lord of the Rings is that Aragorn represents the hero of a typical generic fantasy epic, while the ordinary Hobbits are the heroes of this one. Aragorn is interesting not in spite of the fact that he is a side character, but because of it. If he were the central character of the story, Lord of the Rings would be very bland and generic. "Let's do a new version of Lord of the Rings but focus on powerful grand royal hero characters instead" is a lot like saying "let's do a retelling of Wicked from Dorothy's point of view." It's like, "congrats! you've successfully reinvented the exact type of story the original writer was commenting on and subverting." XD

I got further into the council of Elrond and the dwarves are fucking ride or die man

Gandalf: So I’ve developed an elaborate plan to save middle earth from darkness

Elrond: does it-

Gandalf: it involves hobbits again yeah

Gandalf's Totally Foolproof I Swear This Is Gonna Work Guys strategy for protecting Middle-Earth:

apply hobbit of choice to problem

introduce big groups in smaller groups as not to spook potential host

when all goes haywire, eagles

AI won’t replace people because i just found out someone wrote a fic in which hobbits hibernate and bilbo forgot to tell this to the dwarves AND THEY BURIED HIM ALIVE AND HE HAS TO CRAWL OUT OF HIS GRAVE

TECHNOLOGY ENTHUSIASTS TELL ME HOW WOULD A MACHINE BE ABLE TO REPLICATE SOMETHING THIS UNHINGED I - -

Any queer man in fiction can’t have a healthy relationship. All they know is pining, divorce, cause the apocalypse, wear silly costume, fight they homo boyfriend, trauma, be disastrous, eat hot chip & lie.

sam, reading bilbo’s book: “well now, i’m sure he had a very nice voice, but that’s hardly a reason to go on an adventure with someone you just met”

sam: turns page to an illustration of thorin, with his dark hair and blue eyes

sam: “understandable, good for you mister bilbo”

Some unexpected heroes

i love how Gandalf invested in Hobbits in year one and has been pushing them ever since. Thorin, i hear you need help with a breaking and entering. Can I recommend one of these little cunts? Silent as fuck, trust me. Elrond my dude i know you're skeptical but these four chucklefucks just transported a weapon of mass destruction all the way here. Theoden, you've gotta get yourself a hobbit man, I've got a spare one here. Denathor you big prick, take a hobbit - literally this is the bottom of the range but listen to him sing. Beautiful little bastard.

i'm a writer irl (can't say who because my agent would rightfully put me into a blender and press the button if i go and out myself as "balrogballs") and honestly the funniest and most humiliating incident of my life was the time my finished manuscript triggered a plagiarism flag with the publisher for two lines of prose in my literary fiction novel...

.... which was word for word similar to a paragraph in a certain explicit work on FFN starring elrond and his batsman from the hobbit films, aka that one elf that looked like he ate panic attacks for breakfast (i forget his name but it's Figwit II) where the lord of imladris bends said twink over his writing desk and gives him the battering ram treatment.

and if you think i had to sit in front of one if the biggest publishing companies in the world and admit that it was, in fact, me who wrote the fic where the lord of imladris bends said twink over his writing desk and gives him the battering ram treatment in order to avoid being wrongly flagged for plagiarism, you would be absolutely correct.

(yes they published the book)

Mona Lisa cat nest 😭

Downstream

friendly reminder that rays are just flat sharks

Dreamy

oh to have a male character drop to his knees and drown his tears into his love interest’s stomach

DID MY YAOI STICKERS ARRIVE

absolutely love this post on the broadway subreddit

and my favourite comment:

i learned today that my great great grandfather (dad's mom's grandfather) was not actually a member of the irish immigrant family at all but was in fact some random "nebulously eastern european" orphan that just kind of latched onto the family at the docks and they said "fuck it" and brought him to america???

1: i'm going to attribute my ability to properly squat to this.

2:

my olympics suggestion is that they should have an event where they draw two random teams and a random sport from a hat or something so you have like. the chinese women's skateboarding team and the lithuanian men's shooting team competing in a field hockey match

The Welsh Angel 🥺🥺🥺❤❤❤

there is no soul of an artist that distinguishes them from some 'non-artist' category of person that could simply never comprehend what it is like. anyone can make art. you should know this by now. from ratatouille