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Really into the idea that the Mouth of Sauron is Númenórean; in my head he looks a lot like Aragorn. There's something ghoulish about that and I like it
#lotrn325#lotr newsletter#also just bc...look the movie design is SOMETHING. it's a lot of fun.#but if he looks like a normalish dude and even looks like aragorn it makes your brain go Oh Fuck it really is about our choices huh#and you can infer his ancestry and wonder abt the history#i just keep thinking abt that drawing of idr which evil tower that looks so...normal#horror can happen in any place fair or foul#appearances aren't a shorthand for morality#i know i know the language of cinema is not without merit but i JUST THINK--#ahh anyway lol
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'Dwarf-coat, elf-cloak, blade of the downfallen West, and spy from the little rat-land of the Shire'
Yes thank you Mouth of Sauron for outlining the fact that Frodo physically represents the hope of all who oppose you >:,(
'These are his terms. Take them or leave them!'
'These we will take!' said Gandalf suddenly. (...) and Gandalf coming seized and took from him the tokens: coat, cloak, and sword. 'These we will take in memory of our friend,' he cried. 'But as for your terms, we reject them utterly.'
Gandalf suddenly walking up and snatching the things back in such an informal way is gut-wrenching to me. It doesn't matter now if it shows how much he cares for Frodo. And he can't accept the terms.
Reading chronologically this is one of the occasions where narrative tension is actually lost (not that it doesn't still hurt.) In book order, we left Sam reeling outside the doors of the tower of Cirith Ungol and still don't know what's happened to him or Frodo all this time and finally we are presented with this.
The exchange between Gandalf and the Mouth of Sauron is so tense too because what of the ring? Frodo himself has been taken captive but the enemy speaks of spies and conspiracy, fishing for information, and seems to know nothing of Sam...but he could be holding back, yet why would he? And surely Sauron has not found the ring. Does Sam have it? Where is he? Is he lying dead somewhere? What of Gollum?
Gandalf, Pippin, and all the rest have to just sit and take the uncertainty, sit on blind faith and do their job as a distraction, death looking them in the face and this promise echoing in their ears:
he shall endure the slow torment of years, as long and slow as our arts in the Great Tower can contrive, and never be released, unless maybe when he is changed and broken, so that he may come to you, and you shall see what you have done.
#thanks i hate it#and now im wondering. surely the orcs got Frodo's name out of him 😥#i guess that info got lost in all the killing and maiming bc surely...#food for thought#lotr newsletter#lotrn325
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Sméagol and the Gift
'Now!' said Sam. 'At last I can deal with you!' He leaped forward with drawn blade ready for battle. But Gollum did not spring. He fell flat upon the ground and whimpered.
'Don't kill us,' he wept. 'Don't hurt us with nassty cruel steel! Let us live, yes, live just a little longer. Lost lost! We're lost. And when Precious goes we'll die, yes, die into the dust.'
Devastated by this. Just a little longer, he begs. Even though his existence is a torment. Even though the will that holds him to life is barely his own anymore. He has long outlived his time but it's such a cruelty that now the only freedom for him is in death. I'm glad Sam didn't kill him but the whole scenario is awful.
When a mortal keeps a ring of power he does not gain more life, he continues, denied natural mortality as the fear of death is amplified and twisted into fear of separation, nothing matters anymore but the keeping, the continuing. In that miserable existence there is no peace, and at its end there is no graceful goodbye to life, there is only dust. Sudden, empty, and final.
It would take murder to spare him that. Or falling with the ring into the fire.
Bilbo let it go in time (did he feel anything when it was destroyed?) Frodo is freed of it now, though the toll it extracted for the separation was at very least a finger. It was too late for Gollum for the price to be anything other than it was, and that's brutal.
If you live long enough, death is no longer the enemy. What Sauron did to Gollum ensured that it would always be the enemy, to be feared and avoided for ever, once time and the ring had fashioned it into the only escape left. Evil.
#lotr newsletter#suicide mention in tags#haunted by the au in which gollum goes into the fire with the ring On Purpose#bc he still couldnt separate himself from it but frodo's compassion had somewhat released him from its evil#in a way an honor to frodo's quest and in a way an act of mercy to be able to give up the self-torment#which gives me shrimp feelings bc of the everything but also back to the original point that it is so tragic that death is all that awaits#bc death is natural and that was taken from him. what is the will to live in the absence of natural death?#smth deeply horrible about that#matt bugg screaming we'll be dust. so famous and rent free#lotrn325#damn it im having more thoughts#wraiths vs gollum: discuss#the nature of the ring kept affects the nature of its possession no? those rings were made FOR thralldom#sauron has power over gollum but not That Much and his own ring is all abt the domination#what would a 2000 year old gollum even be like ._.#the wraiths are probably even more tragic bc at this point they're like...undead. even death isn't freedom#on that topic what happened to the witch-king's spirit fr#I'm pretty sure he isn't ever actually called that in the book but it's epic and gender and way snappier than lord of the nazgul#anyway shoutout to i think yambits for breaking the lore and giving them peace that was sick#where's my gollum rehab fic#i know he's a horrible little man who is constantly trying to murder my boys but i love him so#the au...gollum gaining the willpower to destroy himself because he was given trust and kindness and companionship for once. FUCKED UP.#fucked up horrible i need a minute. being shown compassion and then becoming more self-compassionate. epic#that compassion entailing seeking the freedom of death your soul was denied bc this is fantasy and somehow the exact#arc that usually leads to fighting to live is now flipped. HUH.#yeah jirt alluded to his motivation being For Frodo but i maintain that the willingness to die is HUGE there and extremely relevant#me and my red string keeping me company#ugh tag championships i win i think but at what cost#who wants to spin around miserably in a pool like franknfurter with me as we listen to gollum's song#tam you're already invited i have a floaty for u
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They came to the path and found that it was broad, paved with broken rubble and beaten ash. Frodo clambered on to it, and then moved as if by some compulsion he turned slowly to face the East.
Pure dread babey. Usually when I read I note down certain passages to comment on later but I didn't even do that for the 25th I was so enraptured in the ✨atmosphere✨ and it was raining and the back of my jacket got soaked and I didn't even notice
Sam knelt by him. Faint, almost inaudibly, he heard Frodo whispering: 'Help me, Sam! Help me, Sam! Hold my hand! I can't stop it.' Sam took his master's hands and laid them together, palm to palm, and kissed them; and then he held them gently between his own. The thought came suddenly to him: 'He's spotted us! It's all up, or it soon will be. Now, Sam Gamgee, this is the end of ends.'
I think about the fact that Molly Ostertag illustrated this like once a week. Molly your hobbit bender was so real and special
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youtube
And even as he espied them and came swooping down, he saw them fall, worn out, or choked with fumes and heat, or stricken down by despair at last, hiding their eyes from death.
Side by side they lay, and down swept Gwaihir, and down came Landroval and Meneldor the swift…
Orthannen im vi ól
Coll e dû
Or hiriath naur
Na rovail mae sui 'waew
Man prestant i ardhon?
Cerithar aen illiad dim ùthenin?
In a dream I was lifted up.
Borne from the darkness
Above rivers of fire
On wings soft as the wind.
What's happened to the world?
Is everything sad going to come untrue?
lyrics by JRR Tolkien and Philippa Boyens, translated by David Salo
#lotr newsletter#sam and frodo#lotr#what to even tag this i want ppl to see it bc it FOUGHT me#can you believe i had to edit this on my phone and a computer to make it stop glitching#tumblr has gone off the rails for me tonight it's a nightmare adfkhjksdfj#lotrn325#i almost wanted a sam frodo cliffhanger for days just to be evil but this was nice#and then i scrolled down and saw april 1st and said Fuck Off out loud XD#lotr newsletter songs
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'I am glad that you are here with me,' said Frodo. 'Here at the end of all things, Sam.'
'Yes, I am with you, Master,' said Sam, laying Frodo's wounded hand gently to his breast. 'And you're with me. And the journey's finished. But after coming all that way I don't want to give up yet. It's not like me, somehow, if you understand.'
- the Lord of the Rings, book 6, JRRT
#if one quote got to be repeated in the text it's that one 😭#but sam's bit too...<3#the hand holding is reaching unprecedented levels of sweet#lotrn325#lotr newsletter
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Sammath Naur fragments
Sam came to the gaping mouth and peered in. It was dark and hot, and a deep rumbling shook the air. 'Frodo! Master!' he called. There was no answer. For a moment he stood, his heart beating with wild fears, and then he plunged in. A shadow followed him.
Fearfully he took a few uncertain steps in the dark, and then all at once there came a flash of red
The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone.
'I have come,' he said. 'But I do not choose now to do what I came to do.'
Sam got up. He was dazed, and blood streaming from his head dripped in his eyes.
The fires below awoke in anger, the red light blazed, and all the cavern was filled with a great glare and heat.
#imagery#sensory#lotr newsletter#lotrn325#the way this part plays out in black and fire and heat and blood is crazy#it's about the terror and dimness and the stark silhouette#the increasing red imagery all condenses into this delirium and then like the sudden clearing of the eye of the tower#the horrible clarity of frodo's voice as he says the worst thing ever :D#also the last part made me think of lucille in crimson peak how the grand fireplace roars as if responding to her#bc she and the house are entwined and her breath is the house's breath#GDT was crazy for that <3
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Blackness and stench and crushing pain came upon Pippin, and his mind fell away into a great darkness.
'So it ends as I guessed it would,' his thought said, even as it fluttered away; and it laughed a little within him ere it fled, almost gay it seemed to be casting off at last all doubt and care and fear. And then even as it winged away into forgetfulness it heard voices, and they seemed to be crying in some forgotten world far above:
'The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming!'
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'It needs more to make a king than a piece of Elvish glass, or a rabble such as this. Why, any brigand of the hills can show as good a following!'
Aragorn said naught in answer, but he took the other's eye and held it, and for a moment they strove thus; but soon, though Aragorn did not stir nor move hand to weapon, the other quailed and gave back as if menaced with a blow. 'I am a herald and ambassador, and may not be assailed!' he cried.
Really into the fact that Aragorn just looked at him and he freaked out. That must have been one bombastic side-eye
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'But come, my friend, let us not speak of it! Let us not speak at all! I stand upon some dreadful brink, and it is utterly dark in the abyss before my feet, but whether there is any light behind me I cannot tell. For I cannot turn yet. I wait for some stroke of doom.'
Éowyn to Faramir, March 25th
#i have all kinds of feelings about how Éowyn had no fear of death and even went seeking it and how much of her life has been this...waiting#and now this hhh#but she's not waiting alone <3#lotrn325#lotr newsletter
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Hey, so...
Pretty cool, huh 😏
More info
Also our moon this year is pretty much directly opposite the canonical phases in lotr. It is a new moon in the story right now, or near enough.
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