Full-sized Image Here.

"Actually in his later writings Tolkien said Maglor died-" *slaps you across the face* fake news I saw him at Dunkin Donuts last night

Can I please ask for your top five theories on why the Ringwraiths become so much more powerful over the course of the LotR trilogy? By the end of the books a single Ringwraith holds an army of 6000 men in paralysing dread from a height of a mile, they're dismaying hosts of men, etc. And in the beginning, they're easily defeated by "jumping behind a tree," "pretending to be in a different room," "getting on a little boat," "man with a stick on fire," etc.

hmm ok

1) their power depends on how physically close they are to sauron/mordor

2) they consciously weren’t unleashing their full power early in Fellowship bcos it didn’t seem worth it when they were just dealing w hobbits

3) they just woke up from a REALLY long nap and it takes them a while to fully come ‘online’

4) their power just waxes & wanes sometimes

5) hobbits are their One Weakness 

Nerd Rage, general hatred of Amazon, and, yes, a certain degree of racism are surely aspects of it for some people, but I think that the backlash against the "Rings of Power" is more prosaic than any of this.

What I think that it boils down to is that "Lord of the Rings" was made with love. Tolkien was certainly not writing it to make huge amounts of money off of it, he did it out of love; the generations of children who grew up RPing Elves and drawing detailed maps of Osgiliath and somehow forcing their way through the text of the Silmarillion were acting out if love; even, yes, the Peter Jackson movies, which were absolutely capitalist enterprises from top to bottom, would not have been what they were without the love of the people working on them.

And then along comes Amazon, for whom this obsession, this passion, this love is just a market segment. Amazon, the economic equivalent of a malignant brain tumour, to which all things are always and only IP to be consumed. And they show complete disregard for the original text, because they just don't care. To them, it's an aesthetic. Something they can market to fans of Game of Thrones or the Witcher. A centrepiece for their own forays into streaming.

So that's the basis for the pushback. It's not because Galadriel has the wrong heraldry or because the Dwarven women are beardless. It is the revolt of culture against being puréed, processed, and packaged into #Content

"The Rings of Power" is allegedly-historical fiction being filmed in Sixth Age Gondor and I only want to consume summaries written in the form of Maglor livetexting Daeron his hatewatch of it.

The Silmarillion but it’s narrated like a football game with play by play commentary done by Rúmil and Pengolodh.

You know what the Fire Nation is missing? Lizards. Have you ever gone to a tropical place? There are just: Lizards. You see a wall, there is a lizard. You go walking, you find lizards. Azula is talking? There is a lizard trying to figure out how to get to the other side. Zuko is being dramatic? There is a lizard in the background as public. The escape from the boiling rock? A lizard also tags along. Just lizards, they really know how to set the ambient 

It's when Elrond shouted profanities in Quenya that Aragorn and the twins knew they were in deep shit.

—The Book of Very Lost Tales, pt. III

Me: why do my intestines hurt?

Me: *remembers that I drank a large milk tea and I'm lactose intolerant*

Me: oh

Ran into my seventeen year old brother in the kitchen at 1am last night and when I asked him what he was doing he just shrugged, said “these are my roaming hours,” and walked off strumming vaguely on his guitar

"Elrond raised his eyes and looked at him, and Frodo felt his heart pierced by the sudden keenness of the glance." - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Council of Elrond.

So. What do you want to bet that when glorfindel came back to middle earth he had a heart attack because elrond looked like maeglin.

(This means that the list of people glorfindel has considered trying to murder about this exact topic is elrond, bilbo, and aragorn. Plus a bunch of elrond's other human fosters but none of THEM fell for arwen so aragorn was def the most severe)

And since arwen is exactly like elrond in every way, this is yet more proof for my theory of "every character named twilight + son/daughter is a meaningful parallel"