Everything in the Amazon lotr series makes perfect sense when you learn that the show runners have literally no experience working on tv shows. None. 😂 J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have barely any experience in the entertainment industry. And like if you check their IMDb, their only credits are a Flash Gordon screenplay for a movie that wasn’t made and “uncredited” writing on the 2016 Star Trek movie (meaning they weren’t an official part of the production but talked to J J Abrams every now and then.)

The only way I can praise the Amazon show is the way you’d praise something written by a kid…”like wow this is your first try? Your first time ever working in tv and writing a fantasy story? This is good for a first try! Nice work! Your mom should hang it on the fridge!” The real question though is like, why didn’t they give biggest budget of any tv series ever made to people who had literally ANY experience showrunning ahsjndndnd.

To be honest I’m baffled at people who say this show is “desecrating tolkien” because like…first off, desecrating tolkien can be super cool. He sucked sometimes. Second, “desecrating tolkien” implies they were creating a story that had something specific to say about Tolkien, and they knew how to use their medium to convey what they wanted to say. But like…they didn’t. The Amazon series can’t desecrate tolkien, it’s relying on tolkien as a crutch to tell an amateur story that would be literally totally incoherent without you filling in the blanks with prior knowledge gained from the books and from other better adaptations.

I’m baffled at people trying to act like Amazon is being progressive with this series when its sorta like…the peak of conservative Hollywood nepotism? Two upper middle-class white dudes with literally no idea how to run a tv show because they have never been part of the process, ever, were gift wrapped the highest budget for any tv show ever made— not because they deserved to make the most expensive tv series ever made, but because they were upper middle class white dudes who happened to know famous people in Hollywood. People work in television their whole lives for the chance to be a showrunner and these two mediocre white dudes who have barely done any professional writing were handed the most expensive tv series of all time.

And it shows! It explains why the show doesn’t feel as expensive as it is. The process was “run” by people who literally have never needed to understand how creating a tv show works.

Everything feels so clumsy, unfocused, and generic because it’s being showrun by people who do not have enough experience to know what they’re doing.

It feels like someone’s first published work because it is. there’s some vague generic theme about being corrupted by darkness but it’s portrayed with all the grace and subtlety of showrunners who have no experience telling stories professionally, don’t understand how to do it, and so are just turning to the audience and flatly saying what the themes are supposed to be in bland boring language. (They couldn’t even find relevant quotes from the books to use instead— at least then it would sound pretty. Tolkein’s language is almost entirely absent from the show. :P)

There’s a lack of specificity— the tone veers wildly from “epic and idealized like the Pj films” to “relentlessly gory and cruel like GOT,” and almost no quotes from the books appear in the show despite language being so important to the feel of middle earth— because the showrunners are too busy struggling to learn the basics of showrunning for the first time to figure out things like “how to set a consistent tone.”

Characters turn to the camera and spoon-feed the audience information like we’re stupid and constantly reiterate exposition from previous episodes because the show runners have never worked on tv shows before, and don’t have enough confidence to trust the audience to understand anything.

The pacing is so bizarre and wonky, and the introductions of important characters/McGuffins is so clumsy, because the showrunners have never done this before ever on any tv show.

The show doesn’t look like the most expensive tv show of all time (even though it is) because the show runners don’t understand how to budget visual effects effectively. Tons of expensive labor is wasted on dream sequences and meaningless one-off plot beats that don’t add anything to the story when they could’ve been spent on the actual important emotional story moments.

And of course the way the show handles gender and race is so hollow because it’s driven by two white male nepotism hires tackling these topics for the Very First Time. They decide to handle sexism in middle earth by making it a world where patriarchy just doesn’t seem to exist(?), but they’re also not willing to actually genuinely imagine what that would look like. so we get a world where “there’s no patriarchy” but most the warriors/leaders are still men, all the women still dress in feminine clothing/hairstyles and all the men have masculine clothing/hairstyles, no women are butch and no men are effeminate, a woman fighting/showing up in battle armor is framed as a big cool reveal, and every single relationship is suffocatingly heterosexual (and there isn’t even the possibility of queer relationships/homoerotic subtext.) They had three POC play some of the side characters but were careless in how they handled them, in a way that’s a disservice to the talented actors— for example the character they marketed as “the first black elf in tolkien” is immediately thrown into a plotline where people are racist to him for being an elf and then he’s captured into slavery and spends a few episodes in chains driven around by white orcs with whips in a way that makes you realize the creators were too white to think about the optics of this. They also don’t tackle the root issues with the way tolkein portrayed race (the idea that different races are different Species with immutable personality traits) and just take his racist assumptions for granted. Meanwhile, every scene where people are “fantasy racist” against white blonde Galadriel for being an elf is handled with all the grace of a white teenager who just realized racism was maybe Bad writing their first fiction story saying Deep Things About Society for a high school assignment. Can you imagine how much more thoughtful writing we would’ve gotten from literally ANY of the far more talented experienced female and poc directors in Hollywood, people who understood how to tackle gender/race in their writing and who understood how to actually run a show? But no, the show has to be handed to two white dudes who have literally no experience writing for tv and no relevant credits, just because they’re white men who are well connected, and we have to trust tHese people to condescendingly explain the importance of diversity to us like we’re children. And then we have to pretend to like it because theres a massive right wing backlash against the show for being “so woke” (when it isn’t). ANSJSJJDJDJD

I just kinda…don’t understand? Why give so much money to people who have no experience and don’t know what they’re doing? People whose only qualifications are being random white dudes who know famous people?

It feels like such a waste of money and resources to throw so much into what’s essentially a training exercise for people who’ve never run a show before. The Amazon series is longer than the first two PJ films but it doesn’t feel that way because the showrunners don’t understand how to use a medium they have never worked in.

Like Peter Jackson had never directed anything on the scale of LOTR, but he had directed plenty of movies (with the writers who later partnered with him on lotr) before he was allowed to make it, AND had spent years pitching his scripts around Hollywood and helping develop the technology used for the visual effects. Heck, Ralph Bakshi had made animated movies before, and Rankin/Bass had worked on tv specials. As much as all those adaptations are flawed like?????????? I genuinely don’t understand why you wouldn’t hire more qualified people for the most expensive tv show of all time. or even just. Anyone who had literally any qualifications at all.

But I guess I’m thinking about this all wrong because…their lack of experience is likely why they were hired. Because of the complicated legal and rights issues happening behind the scenes, Amazon likely didn’t want to hire anyone who would have a coherent vision and a clear idea of how to execute that vision. The show needed to bow to the mandates of Amazon but ALSO the copyright issues (they don’t have the rights to actually adapt most of the stuff dealing with the history they’re adapting), the mandates of the Tolkien estate (who were allowed to make whatever petty changes they wanted to the story at any time) and the mandates of New Line Cinema (who were allowing Amazon to ape the style of their movies to get l publicity for their brand but are also completely willing to enforce copyright and demand change if they felt Amazon was stepping on their toes, and etc etc). Amazon needed inexperienced people who would go along with whatever they were told to do. Someone who had a clear vision and knew how to execute it would fight against the dumb corporate mandates. Someone who has literally never worked in tv before would assume Amazon knew best and do whatever they were told.

I don’t know, I feel the same way I do about the hobbit films where it’s just—it’s such a waste? It’s such a waste. It’s such a waste of time and a waste of labor, on a project that (because of weird corporate nonsense) has no clear artistic vision and only exists to be part of a lucrative Brand(tm.)

I won’t be watching the next season— I assume the the future seasons will be “better” because the show runners have now had their very first season of experience working in television ever (good for them and congrats on breaking into the industry for the first time etc etc), but that doesn’t change what a massive corporate waste the first eight hours were— again, that’s longer than the first two PJ films but it doesn’t feel like It because it’s so directionless and devoid of a clear artistic vision. Idk as long as the only Lord of the Rings adaptations we’re legally allowed to get are massive Mega corporate ones funded off the suffering of all the underpaid Amazon workers who die in the warehouses, you would think the adaptations would at least be good XD. Again, can you imagine what more experienced and talented directors with a long history of working in TV, and who were free to execute their artistic vision, could’ve done with such a giant budget? Can you imagine if corporations didn’t waste an entire season of television as the world’s most expensive training wheels for people who’d never seriously worked in tv before? Can you imagine how much good art we could get if Hollywood was actually a meritocracy? Idk dudes, idk.

(pats head)

Here, have some crack

Y/N: (coughs softly)

Character: Are you sick?

Y/N: Nah, only a bit dehydrated.

Character: Ah, then, have some water.

Y/N: No thank you.

Character: What??? Why not-

Y/N: * L a z y *

L i t e r a l l y m e

I’m the worlds worst when it comes to drinking anything let alone water.

heyyy hello to you too calliee!!💕

i apologise for not replying sooner, i reeeally wanted to but i have a pretty big exam coming up so today was a full day of studying, great way to spend a saturday🙄 so yeah we could say my weekend didn't start in the best way possible, but it's alright.

totally relate to the morning struggle to get out of bed ugh. WHY does it have to be soooo warm, soft and comfortable??! wish i could stay curled up in bed forever, it's so cozyy

and HOW DARE YOU kill me like that by announcing there may be a NEW FIC TOMORROW???!!!!! aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA i'm sooo excited (tbh even if it ends up coming out in a week i'll be just as excited lol)

hope your saturday was just as fantastic as you and that you accomplished everything you planned to♡

yeah unfortunately no thirsty asks but can't wait to see their comeback, they're so fun and make me feel less alone about my strange, dirty thoughts lol🥵

love the nickname teddy btw, so cute and fluffy kajhshajajdjkkas🥺🧸💓

also loved <3 anon's idea of this blog being a little book club of Oscar Isaac stans, cause that's definitely the vibe, just coziness, comfort, love with just the right amount of smut🤭 (oh <3 anon, loads of love to you too, you're such a precious soul and seeing an ask from you again made me so so happyyy)

also THE COFFEE PICTURE!!! mmm HELLOOOO??? I'M NOT FEELING SO GOOD. his hands, THE HANDS DEAR LORD HAVE MERCY ON ME wkkahshsjsskhdhdj (so so glad to see I'm not the only one OBSESSING over people's hands, 🌻anon totally agree with what you said and I hope you're having a great day too <3)

last thing, umh HOW can i possibly choose just ONE of your fics to be my favourite??? no, you're asking me the impossible. ugh they are all so goooood callie, i can't😫 literally everything you write just takes me to a whole new dimension that i never wanna leave ugh. you are such a talented writer callie, for real🥺💕 but like IF my life depended on it, IF i had a gun to my head and i had to choose my favourite i'd probably say the morning after. it's the first fic of yours that i read and it made me follow you instantly, so yk it holds a special place in my heart. then i fell in love with all your other works and can't wait to fall even more with each story you create💞💞

as usual this came out a huge mess, just me blurting out every single thing that crosses my mind lmao

i hope you're having a great day/night callie and can't wait to talk some more with you, love you to the moon and back💓💓

-🧸

teddyy, happy sunday to you my love ✨

oh my, no worries sweet !!! school is def no joke haha. but i really hope your exam goes super well :) i’m sending you the best of luck your way, you’re going to ace this and i will cheering you on from all the way over here 🍀🥰

my saturday started out slow but then something came up later on so i wasn’t able to finish writing 😭 but it’s alright! i’m going to work on the fic this afternoon and have it all ready for tomorrow :)) i’ve written half of it so i’m pretty confident that it’ll get done by the end of the day heehee.

and yeeees!!! honestly it’s been so fun with all these asks about oscar and moon knight 😭 just chatting and crying and simping about them together literally makes my incredibly happy like you don’t understand skjdjdjj. i wish we could have one big group chat here where we all can just *sob* at the same time lololol.

but omg you’re too sweet??!!? you’re making me cry right now forreal ahsjdjdkd. i’ve been so highly critical of my writing but your words are always so encouraging and uplifting 😩 i really appreciate all the love and support and ughh this is going to turn into a long sappy post if i don’t stop now so lemme put on the breaks for a sec lmao we don’t want another crying fest @ me.

as always, it’s been such a joy chatting with you love babe :)) hope you’re having a beautiful day and staying hydrated, love you and talk to you soon 💗

Happy Year of the Tiger! I was requested to make a Tiger variation of my New Years cat so here he is, yuh can find him on stickers and other fun things in my store! :3

I got myself a boyfriend y'all

whoever invented burek i hope ur tearing it up in heaven rn ily let me kiss u on the mouth

A HEALER'S OATH UPDATED OH MY 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭😭💕💕💕💕

Honestly both eve and y/n deserve better. Really hope they both leave spencer 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️

yeahhhh, if homeboy can't really pick one and not break it off with the other, then he ain't worth it 🤭😙

Since you're on Kuroo brainrot: one, two, for kicks.

I feel like all I do is scream about him, but the way I feel about that ‘tokyo drifting’ art?? AWOAKDJDBEJD

thank you anon. thank you. 😌✨

I’ve seen so many ppl doing this so I decided to give it a try! No one really truly has short curly hair, but Mika was the closest to what I have.

I guess my personality type is…brooding extremist? Idk ahsjdjdkd it’s INTJ if you’re wondering

Here is the blank template for everyone to try!

what an easy puzzle!

I started watching Demon Slayer so here’s a Demon Slayer cat! :3

trying to finish my essay and my brain is just not working today

Since its Compliment-Alex-Night i just want to say I love you 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

:(( i love you too 🥺🥺🥺

my art style has changed a Lot in the past sixth months or so oh gosh ahsjsjjsjs