#I still need to write my aragorn nazgul one shot

[halfelven]

writing idea~

so........... so I have this idea I was thinking of Sauron's name and reading Isildur's account of taking the Ring and he was obsessing over the Ring. and then I was thinking of Morgoth, like obsessed like that about Sauron in a fucked up he views him as a "pretty thing" kind of dynamic?

so Sauron is fucking gorgeous and ruins people's lives by being hot, his name has that connection to being precious, Isildur has the ring and despite his family dying he's already all "oh it's precious to me" even though it's this thing that contains Sauron's soul (even though Sauron has killed his family)

so the concept of Morgoth having this possessive "Sauron is one of the greatest creations and I want to shape him with my own hand like I did to the world" kind of aspect because he's... Like That

okay so maybe I'm just looking for characters to torture but like... 'he's beautiful and I want to ruin him' and then absolutely doing that

Sauron has a lot of fire connections and Morgoth has a lot of ice elements in the freezing north and Mordor is in the south with Mordor being really hot. and then Morgoth wants to grab him and shape him or break him into what he wants. It's a really really really really abusive relationship. like really fucked up. like Morgoth torturing Sauron levels of fucked up BUT Sauron becoming almost like addicted to it? like and then it shapes his interest in torture/cruelty

I think it's in character for both of them? Elrond makes that weird comment about Sauron being not evil in the beginning (which like is read as a warning) but it's like... almost sympathetic? like it makes me wonder how much he's seen of Sauron's mind

bc we know that Sauron really does hate his family. and Elrond still makes that comment. A warning that you can become evil but... Elrond, that's a weird person to bring up right there. (I know he's going the most evil person on the planet right now was not evil to begin with. remember that. but still this is when they've just lost Saruman and he's been saying this happens)

But I want to write like seeing Sauron like actually... break. bc Morgoth wants complete domination of the world and creation and Sauron being part of that creation? and Sauron has such a strong will and wants order while Morgoth is more chaotic but he admires that will. but he also wants to break it? you know?

and then we see it in Sauron's control later. with like the ringwraiths and how he winds up controlling people in the end after he loses his beauty. like I really want Sauron to be a little bit... insane? I guess would be the word. the whole Numenor thing really gets to me

(I know I shouldn't relate so hard to that but when I was a kid I had this idea where we were like captured but I created a fake religion where we had to do "human sacrifice" so that we could get people out alone into the forest but they wound up escaping as the 'sacrifice' but when we came back with blood and without them everyone thought we were doing human sacrifice and were too scared to stop us. I was like... six. okay look. I heard too much about human sacrifice. It fucked me up. But I read about Sauron and his human sacrifice and I was like same. and like sometimes I just relate to Sauron and I hate that I relate to Sauron BUT actually I can give Sauron a fucked up enough background to relate to. and it's like... you can see where my life influence comes into this idea. but like... people would read it and be like that's fucked up. and I'd be like yeah I didn't invent ideas about human sacrifice religions in which I was the high priest. ever. never did that.)

I'm going to project onto Sauron so hard right now

[urcadelimabean]

Fellowship of the Ring rewatch thoughts from one of those intense lotr nerds!

- One thing that strikes me after so long - I think the last time I saw it was about 3 years ago - is not just the music but the sound...the sound effects for the heaviness of the Ring, the way spells echo and amplify when Gandalf or Arwen speak them, the sound effects for bowstrings, the screams of the Nazgul being so inhuman, the drums in the deep of Moria, the scrape of stone on stone for the Balrog...if the sound hadn’t bee so good the movies honestly wouldn’t have worked this well. God the soundtrack.

- I will always have little quibbles about stuff -- the Ring moving onto Frodo’s finger in Bree with CGI, Galadriel’s over the top green CGI moment, the fact that we see too much of the Watcher in the Water -- but in general, like in GENERAL, the fact that these movies are so beautiful and well made....we didn’t just dodge a bullet we dodged a nuclear weapon LOL....we really did. These could have been so atrociously bad, but instead they are beautiful.

- no one should be reading LOTR as an allegory anyway, but the Ring is often read as an allegory for addiction or a nuclear weapon and somehow not as frequently likened to carrying trauma. Which is absolutely wild to me. The concept of carrying something that poisons and hurts you but that you can’t put down....it seems much more similar to trauma than many of the things I see it compared too

- I love moral complexity, greyness, etc, but I find the idea that the Ring is just utterly and completely evil very refreshing. That there are things that you cannot compromise on, that are indisputably evil.

- One thing i love about LOTR is the fact that it is not what people think of as “high fantasy” - it doesn’t take place in a shiny, perfect world, it takes place in a decayed, faded, eroded remnant of so many things that have been lost. The whole setting being created that way is so important. And magic honestly doesn’t even come into the story that much. The Ring is magical, but the way magic functions in LOTR is so different from how it functions in Harry Potter for example and I am so thankful of that because it’s a refreshing and beautiful and different world.

- I’ve thought a lot about how Tolkien’s time in the trenches of WW1 influenced his outlook and therefore his writing, but the part where Frodo is talking to Bilbo and he says “My own adventure was quite different. I’m not like you, Bilbo.” It really struck me as something straight out of Tolkien’s mouth. This was a generation that became so disillusioned about the point of war and all this bloodshed and all these young lives lost, who found out that this idea that ‘fighting for your country is some grand adventure’ is completely empty.

- Really has been bothering me for years that the conversation of racism in Tolkien’s works is restricted to conversations about orcs and dark/light. Left out of that conversation is all the talk about bloodlines, pure blood, heritage, etc, and all of that stands out so sharply to me...like HELLO. That’s clearly as much of or even MORE of a problem than the other things, and once you know how drawn white supremacists are to LOTR it’s not hard to connect the dots as to why. But the LOTR fandom has historically been absolute shit at admitting this.

- I really really love that in LOTR you have characters like Merry and Pippin who have no special powers, no special birthright or parentage and the reason they are heroic is simply because they are loyal and protective of their friends. The way they distract the orcs by waving to them to come get them, so Frodo can run away - it has nothing to do with how good they are at fighting, they dont protect Frodo with special powers, they literally just do WHATEVER they can even if it means sacrificing themselves.

- And then you have Sam - he doesn't have special powers, or special parentage, or magic - and it’s again a situation where his heroic moment is simply refusing to be parted with Frodo. He wades into the water even though he can’t swim. All these movies these days are just heroism = powers, and it’s so refreshing to see the opposite, of heroism even when it’s almost futile, and that’s why it’s heroic.

- There’s something so painfully bittersweet about LOTR, and it’s one thing I love the most. It feels real because it’s painful. It wouldn’t feel real if it didn’t have this thread of sadness running through it.

- Everyone saying Gandalf is a Christ figure....brooooo do you know Odin??? I’m not even denying there are Christian themes in LOTR but Tolkien created LOTR to be a pre-Christian myth. Clearly it is compatible with Christianity, but Tolkien was a scholar of all these pre-Christian epics and he knows there are themes that are shared across mythologies. Compatible with Christianity does not mean original to Christianity. Also all this death and glory shit is so Norse guys come on. anyway ODIN.

- GOD the mythic themes of hubris, the importance of promises, warrior’s deaths....LOVE THAT MYTHOLOGICAL FEEL!!!!!!!!! LOVE IT

- everyone wants in on a redemption arc but Boromir is out here literally getting shot full of arrows, dying a courageous warrior’s death and confessing his love and loyalty to his King.....everyone just want what he has!!!!!!!!!!

- love me some hobbits. curly haired. small. love food. would love to marry one one day.

- did I mention how much I love Ian McKellen? I swear every time I hear him say those lines to Frodo I heal in some amazing way. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” I remember the first time I read the Fellowship when I was 13 and Gandalf died I was just like “nope. that did not happen :)” and then sure enough I was right!!! and then I felt relived but not even that relieved because I literally had refused to accept it in the first place so I was just like :)

- Saruman should start a hair product line. His hair looks so silky. No but seriously Christopher Lee was perfect. Imagine how bad the casting could have been. I’m so glad they got the right actors. Viggo Mortensen!!!! that man

- Legolas after Lothlorien was literally like Gimli likes blondes? maybe I have a chance after all.....eyes emoji....

- never over the level of detail in the costumes, the armor, the chain mail, the Elvish in the songs, the way the scenes mirror paintings from book illustrations....like holy fuck. FUCK!! FUCK

- the way these movies do or don’t reveal things is so integral to how well they work. the fact that at first you meet one Nazgul, then two, then three, the fact that you hear the Balrog before seeing it, the fact that you rarely hear Sauron speak unless it’s indistinct, the fact that you never see Sauron in battle except for in flashbacks. It all preserves the mystery and suspense that makes it scary and compelling. Lotr made in 2020 would be like Aragorn vs Sauron and it would be literally awful.

- the amount of hugging and crying and actual human emoting in this one movie cleansed me of so much marvel fatigue. it’s so nice to see characters actually grieving and comforting each other instead of acting like cardboard cutouts.

- I’ve talked a lot about this before elsewhere but the reduction/interpretation of lotr to this black and white good versus evil type of story really does a disservice to the whole ass POINT which is that it’s a story about despair in the face of insurmountable evil, in the face of the destruction of the environment and the destruction of freedom and this awful powerlessness, and so it’s not just a story about despair it’s also a story about hope in the face of despair. which feels very needed right now.

- these bullet points are getting less coherent but I’m still just thinking about that last shot, of Sam and Frodo beginning to walk away into the wilderness towards Mordor, and the soundtrack.