Hello! My name is Victoria, I'm over 20, and I am a major fan of Broadway. I love old films, the stage, period dramas, classical music, and nature! To find out more about me, hit the links above and my ask box is always open!
that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.
(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)
but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.
it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.
and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.
(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)
but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.
someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.
I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.
y'know say what you want about tumblr (and I have), but this is still probably the simplest and most powerful distillation of the heart of the Lord of the Rings I’ve ever read. I think back to it all the time
society is jumping the gun big time why the fuck are we developing AI and robots and shit brother we don’t even have printers or vacuums that aren’t dogshit CAN we dial it back
“available with premium subscription” “will be removed on the 31st” “available free with ads” “rent 4.99 buy 20.00″ “not available in your country” “not available on this device” what if every streaming service fucking killed itself and films ran around their fields free and organic in their natural state
TV Executives: “if the strike goes in, you won’t get new episodes of your favorite shows! You won’t get new movies you were looking forward to! Isn’t that terrible, what the writers are doing to you?”
Me: Bitch, that might have been an effective threat in 2007, but we have since survived a Covid shutdown and discovered ways to amuse ourselves while we waited, we can outwait this shit, too. I got a pile of shows saved I haven’t even watched yet, and a Mt. TBR waiting for me.
Compensate (and respect) your writers for their work, assholes.
It’s just hilarious that they’re trying to pull this whole “but your favorite shows!” nonsense.
Oh, you mean the shows you cancel after the third season no matter how good they’re doing to avoid paying writers residuals? The shows that get produced and then never aired because you found a nice tax writeoff? The shows whose writing suffers because the writers’ room got six weeks to write before getting booted and making the showrunner adapt all their scripts? The shows you straight up pulled from your streaming service to scam their crews out of rewatch money?
I will happily sacrifice my shows for the writers that gave them to me, no questions needed, but if anyone tries to say that the blatantly terrible way streaming treats its writers is somehow beneficial to shows, remind them of Infinity Train and Batgirl. That’s the ideal they’re pushing towards if someone doesn’t say no, and we should be thankful that the writers are doing that for us.
What pisses me off the most is the fact that Netflix has cited low viewing numbers as one of the main reasons to cancel Lockwood and Co, but might I just point out that the viewing numbers (which were already great) might have been higher if Netflix hadn’t developed a reputation for itself by cancelling literally every YA show in recent times. Not to mention the fact that most of the shows produced by Netflix, leave the endings open to another season or on a cliffhanger. As a result, people were quite literally terrified of starting a new show in this genre in the fear of it getting cancelled and just being left with NO conclusion and therefore no fucking closure for the audience. I hope it gets picked up by another network.
