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irisseireth · 2 years

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Fëanor, to his sons in Alqualondë: I don't think we can malewife, manipulate or mansplain our way out of this one, boys.

Fëanor, unsheathing his sword: manslaughter it is

#tolkien #sorry jirt #Fëanor woke up and chose violence #feanor

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clouds-of-wings · 5 months

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You know how some dildos are designed to look like horse penises or something? Well this glass dildo is the Vanya version of that.

#silmarillion #elf #elves #vanyar #tolkien #nsft #sorry jirt

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aragornsrockcollection · 2 years

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Hello I’m here to talk about an opinion that isn’t so much unpopular because people don’t like it, but because it is splitting hairs and basically an argument based in semantics that sane people reasonably do not waste their time caring about it.

I am neither sane nor reasonable and therefore think about this a lot, and get ready to pull out a soapbox and type the Text Wall of China any time I hear people offhandedly contradict this opinion, and so I have come here today to die on this molehill, and write the over-long post of my dreams, because fuck it, it’s my blog.

Drumroll please:

Sauron is not The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is the main antagonist though, so furthermore,

Sauron is not the main antagonist of The Lord of the Rings

I internally go insane every time someone says “Sauron, the eponymous Lord of the Rings” or “The antagonist never actually appears in Lord of the Rings” or uses Lord of the Rings as an penultimate example of having a flat ‘evil for evil’s sake’ villain. This is mostly in YouTube videos so I’m not calling out anyone here.

So who is the Lord of the Rings? Where do I get this shit? Why should anyone care?

I will tell you in far too much detail under this cut, because I told you I was gonna be extra about it and this is already long enough to inflict on my followers without their consent.

First and foremost, Frodo is not the Lord of the Rings either. Let’s get that out of the way. Gandalf explicitly tells us that in Many Meetings (the first chapter in Rivendell in Fellowship), when Pippin greets a newly awakened Frodo with quintessential Fool of a Took™️ swagger.

‘Hurray!’ cried Pippin, springing up. ‘Here is our noble cousin! Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring!’

‘Hush!’ Said Gandalf from the shadows at the back of the porch. ‘Evil things do not come into this valley; but all the same we should not name them. The Lord of the Ring is not Frodo, but the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor, whose power is again stretching out over the world! We are sitting in a fortress. Outside it is getting dark.’

So that’s my theory busted right off the bat! Gandalf straight up tells us the Lord of the Ring is Sauron (‘the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor’ which is Sauron).

But I already told you, this is a hair-splitting semantics-based theory! He said Sauron was the Lord of the Ring. Not the Lord of the RingS. Yes, this whole theory revolves around a single letter difference between the title of the series and Gandalf’s statement, WHAT OF IT?

But in all seriousness. Tolkien was a linguist. There was no way this choice was not deliberate, not on something so important to the narrative. And there is a very important difference between what he is referring to when he uses ‘The Ring” singular, and “The Rings” plural. The Ring that Frodo carried to Mordor has it’s singular nature highly emphasized by the language that surrounds it. THE definite article Ring, the ONE Ring. Just the One. Singular Singular Singular.

The Rings (plural) refers to the rings of power which Celebrimbor wrought, with Sauron’s help, but Sauron is objectively not the Lord of those rings. Not the three Elven ones at least, which he never touched and only suspects the location of. Without his One Ring he has no power over the Three, and a big problem with him regaining his Ring is that he would gain power over those rings, the ringbearers, and the safe realms that had been wrought with them, basically crippling those with the power to resist him.

Him NOT having the Ring, and therefore NOT having lordship over all the rings, is a pretty major plot point. Like, it’s not a reach to say Sauron not having the Ring is what drives the entire story. And he is NOT the Lord of the Rings without it.

And he never gains it, so is the whole series named after Sauron’s aspirations, that the main characters are trying to prevent? I mean, from an angle yes. But also no.

Because while Pippin and Gandalf’s exchange is the closest we come in the text to seeing the title, let me show you the only place within the covers that “The Lord of the Rings” is presented, at least in my beat up third hand 70’s edition. It may not be formatted like this in other editions, but I still think it says something about how we are supposed to read the title:

[Image ID: Masking tape can clearly be seen holding together my poor abused copy of Fellowship, open to the title page. THE LORD OF THE RINGS is written across the top of the page in all caps, directly below it is the Ring Poem, as if The Lord of the Rings is a the title not only of the series but of the poem. /.End ID]

The One Ring is the Lord of the Rings, not Sauron, who is the Lord of the Ring.

“What?” Say imaginary naysayers in my head, “How can a Ring be a Lord? And why does this matter, if Sauron is the Lord of the Ring, doesn’t that make him the Lord of the Rings by proxy? Why are you wasting your and my time making an argument about this?”

I’m glad you asked imaginary naysayer, let me speak to your first point. How can a ring be a Lord? Well, like any good first time speechwriter, I’ve turned to Miriam Webster, and asked it to define a word we already know, in this case ‘lord.’

[Image ID: Screenshot of the Miriam Webster definition of ‘lord.’ The ones that are relevant are 1: One having power and authority over others. 1a: A ruler by hereditary right or preeminence to whom service and obedience are due. And 1f: One that has achieved mastery or that exercises leadership or great power in some area /.End ID]

In the poem, it is the Ring that is spoken of as ruling, not Sauron. Sauron is actually listed in the same position as all the others who receive rings, “The Dark Lord on his Dark Throne” occupying the same place in the sentence structure as the “the Elven-kings under the sky” and “the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone” and “Mortal Men doomed to die.” It is the One Ring, not Sauron, who rules them all, fulfilling our first definition “A ruler by hereditary right or preeminence.” In this case it would be by right of preeminence, or superiority. The One Ring outclasses the other rings and thus dominates them, binding them to obedience and service. Gandalf calls it “the Master-Ring” when it is first revealed for what it is in Bag-End with the words appearing from the flame.

The Ring has it’s own will too. It’s repeatedly stated to be in control of Gollum when Gandalf is first telling us about it. I’m literally so spoiled for quotes about this that I was paralyzed with indecisiveness over what to use but let’s keep it simple with this one. It’s from Gandalf explaining why Gollum didn’t have the Ring allowing Bilbo to come upon it in the chapter “Shadows of the Past” from Fellowship:

‘It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.’

So if Sauron is the Lord of the Ring, and the Ring is the Lord of the Rings, isn’t he Lord of the Rings by proxy? Yes, when he has the Ring. But also being the ruler of a lord doesn’t make the title of that lord your title, if that makes sense. People don’t call Aragorn the Prince of Ithilien, that’s Faramir’s title, Aragorn is King of the Reunited Kingdoms, he rules Ithilien, sure, but by proxy. Ithilien reports to Faramir who reports to Aragorn (I should be calling him Elessar since I’m talking about him as king, but whatever). If Aragorn lost the ability to contact Faramir or Ithilian, he would still theoretically be king there but he would have no practical control, just like Sauron with the Rings of Power.

Why does this matter? It mostly doesn’t. It does not change anything practically in the story at all.

But it matters to me, because it might help change perspective on the antagonist of LotR. It’s the Ring. Sauron is a force in the world, one the Ring is closely allied with, and from whom many of the obstacles come, but the entity that our protagonist is really fighting on every page is the Ring.

If Gandalf were the main character, or Aragorn, or almost anyone else on Middle Earth, Sauron would be the Primary Antagonist. But they are not. Frodo is the Primary Protagonist, and his struggle is NOT against Sauron, it is against the Ring.

If destroying the Ring had not destroyed Sauron, would Frodo have kept fighting in this war? NO! He had his task, and once it was done he was done, even if the world ended afterwards. Everything is driven by the Ring. The threat to the Shire comes from the presence of the Ring, so Frodo takes the Ring to Rivendell. The danger of the Ring is not neutralized by it being brought to Rivendell, so he continues his journey to destroy it once and for all. He doesn’t fight Sauron, he fights the Ring. He fights with himself to keep going in spite of the despair it levels on him, the poisonous words it whispers in his ear, the physical toll it takes on his body. He fights Boromir and Sam (not to the extent he does in the movie, but still a bit) and Gollum over the Ring. He negotiates with Faramir over the Ring.

And the Ring is SUCH a more interesting and nuanced villain to struggle with than Sauron. Sauron is representative of a force in the world. He controls events but never appears, because he acts as the source of all evil, it’s representation on earth (at least now Melkor is in the Void), but it is far more interesting to watch the effect he has on others than deal directly with a character that is so obviously in the wrong in every way. Making Sauron a physical character in LotR is like making the Devil a present character in basically any piece of media that deals with evil.

Evil at its purest isn’t that interesting, because it contains no conflict. Leaving Sauron as an offscreen player leaves us to see characters that are not pure evil struggle with that conflict.

The fascinating thing about the Ring is that it has no power outside of what you give it. But given enough time even the best people, like Frodo, will end up losing themselves to it, as it whispers in your ear with your own voice.

I want to go ballistic when people point to LotR and say it has a one dimensional villain. EVERYONE’S OWN VIOLENCE, DESPAIR AND THIRST FOR POWER IS THE VILLAIN OF LORD OF THE RINGS! Brought to the fore by a small unassuming golden trinket which just happens to also be the titular Lord of the Rings.

Honestly “The Ring is the Villain of LotR change my mind” should be its own big long post with lots of quotes and shit, the fact that the Ring is The Lord of the Rings just being a small point in it.

But unless you are a specific type of interested in story structure and stuff none of this is at all meaningful and it really, really doesn’t matter, so I’m gonna go.

Thanks for coming with me on this dumb journey.

#tolkien #jirt #lotr #lord of the rings #the one ring #Sauron #jrr tolkien #Frodo #story structure #long post… even for me!#hot take #Gandalf #look #I’m sorry ok #this is so inconsequential and I say this as someone who likes meta

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hamletphase · 6 months

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kinslayers and kidnappers

designs based on the talented @ silmaspens <3

#silmart #the silmarillion #maglor #maedhros #elrond #elros #tolkien #my art #they are my silly freaks sorry jirt

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nereb-and-dungalef · 2 years

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Ok something that really strikes me about Lord of the Rings is just... how sad Sauron is

Like, there are constant references to loss and mourning, with him going on about how "there is no life in the void," being way too into the color black and grief and hopelessness, never healing from his loss and just spiraling down into trying to replace Melkor, calling himself Melkor, but by nature only being a part of a whole, the loyal follower who never wanted anything more than to follow

Sauron put a part of himself into the One Ring and boy does that piece of jewelery do psychic damage. And like, yeah that's kinda the point of it, but I like to see the Ring as a genuine distillation of Sauron's own despair, that inflicts nothing more than his own unfathomably deep suffering, a grief that is so incomprehensible to the human mind that it by all means should not exist

The thing is that like, human emotions are fleeting. A person can feel grief for a year or a few years, but eventually there comes a time when the wound is no longer fresh and things have stabilized. Existing in a period of eternal mourning and desperation for thousands of years is incomprehensibly bleak to any mortal mind

Especially when the only strategy for survival in Tolkien's world is to fight tooth and nail against your own despair, having the big bad guy be just so deeply eternally drowning in hopelessness is. Well it's a thing I think about. He is my pathetic little meow meow and only gets more pathetic and I watch Lord of the Rings and take psychic damage whenever he comes on screen to talk about how sad he is.

#jirt #sauron #mairon #tolkien #lord of the rings #silmarillion #i hope i'm not grasping for straws here. like i hope some of my fellow sauronfuckers know what i'm going on about #abhorred little meow meow #disclaimer i haven't read lotr in forever i think i forgot the books almost entirely #and i was Not paying attention to mairon's dead boyfriend complex when i did so. yeah idk sorry

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cornerful · 4 months

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Lotr Jan 12th p1

While I wait for the snow to come to my own door, please enjoy my mood lighting XD

They heard eerie noises in the darkness round them. It may have been only a trick of the wind in the cracks and gullies of the rocky wall, but the sounds were those of shrill cries, and wild howls of laughter.

o_o I'll say it again, jirt has a fantastically underapreciated knack for writing spooky. The winter storm howling outside my window is adding to the effect

'But what can we do?' cried Pippin miserably. He was leaning on Merry and Frodo, and he was shivering.

:( Pip...

'...it is no good going back while the storm holds,' said Aragorn. 'We have passed no place on the way up that offered more shelter than this cliff-wall we are under now.'

The Ranger paying attention to their surroundings and thinking of the future <3

Bill the pony stood patiently but dejectedly in front of the hobbits, and screened them a little; but before long the drifting snow was above his hocks, and it went on mounting.

Bills poor toes!!! My fingers are freezing in solidarity my friend

Frodo gazed wearily at the flakes still falling out of the dark to be revealed white for a moment in the light of the dying fire

I am enamored of this description <3

Gimli looked up and shook his head. 'Caradhras has not forgiven us,' he said. 'He has more snow yet to fling at us, if we go on. The sooner we go back and down the better.'

Gimli's personification of the mountain and his sense for its temperament <3<3<3

In places the snow was breast-high, and often Boromir seemed to be swimming or burrowing with his great arms rather than walking.

Boromir swimming in the snow is an image that has been in my mind rent free for years 😂

I GO TO FIND THE SUN!!! This bit in Phil Dragash's reading was so cute oml there's a little bit of jaunty music for Legolas' impishness

PIGGYBACK TIME FOR HOBBITS

...hardly had Frodo touched the ground when with a deep rumble there rolled down a fall of stones and slithering snow. The spray of it half blinded the Company as they crouched against the cliff, and when the air cleared again they saw that the path was blocked behind them.

'Enough, enough!' cried Gimli. 'We are departing as quickly as we may!'

GIMLI ❤

...they turned their backs on the Redhorn Gate, and stumbled wearily down the slope. Caradhras had defeated them.

:( sorry Aragorn

#lotrn112 #lotr newsletter #the spooky bit for some reason reminded me of gwyn's journey in the dark with the hanging man *shudders* i love written horror #absolutely adore it #*todd brotzman voice* everything is connected #which is a meta joke bc all three of these things are connected six degrees of kevin bacon style through Frodo XD #anyway #horror movies are great but lit is something else *thinks fondly of the barrow downs*#jirt i am sorry you had horrors of your own but the incredible descriptions they influenced reach out to my horrors in the dark #like Will Graham to Georgia Madchen on the cold wood floor or in the woods #“if you can hear me you're alive”#not to write a mini love letter to Scary Media and reference like 50 different things in the tags but uhhh #thats just how it is on this bitch of a my brain

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clarabow-mp3 · 1 month

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tolkien would definitely not approve of my invented hobbit pagan nature religion but he's dead so.

#sorry jirt! they're gonna sacrifice a sheath of wheat to the embodiment of the sun to ensure a good harvest! that's just how it is!

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butchboromir · 2 months

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ok i have figured out names. j is jenny davis. beck is beren hammond

#sorry jirt for stealing one of your character's names for my short story

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aragornsrockcollection · 1 year

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Considering Elrond, Cirdan and Gil-Galad refused Annatar entry into the Grey Havens (despite disguising himself as an emissary of the Valar) and that Galadriel also didn’t trust the “Lord of Gifts”, why wasn’t that very same mistrust from the high Elves applied to the Istari once they arrived in middle-earth, as well?

I think this was the primary reason Glorfindel was sent back when he was, which was alongside the blue wizards in at least one version. I can’t remember the source, but I remember reading he was a follower of Olorin in Valinor after being reembodied, and as a famous hero who presumably there were people from Gondolin still around to verify his identity. (Turgon’s great grandson is leading most of the remaining Noldor after all, and Galadriel probably crossed the ice with Glorfindel)

Thus he can verify the Istari’s story as actual emissaries.

Also one of the ways we see Galadriel, Elrond and Gandalf speaking is mind to mind (Osanwe or whatever), and that for sure has to come with a certain level of heightened empathy, and insight, so I could believe them clocking Sauron off pure rancid vibes.

There’s also the fact that Annatar came in a fair form offering power, which is somehow way more suspicious than coming as an old man and offering wisdom. When Frodo chooses to trust Aragorn he says something that I’m not going to look up because my energy level is subterranean, which amounts to “I feel like if you were trying to trick us you’d make an effort to not like a dirty bandit, because looking like a dirty bandit is not helpful in convincing anyone, but since you do look like shit, I believe you’re being genuine.”

Except he says it pretty.

But yeah, mainly Glorfindel paved that road.

#tolkien #the silmarillion #jirt #lotr #glorfindel #silm #sorry I haven’t been posting much my last cat got cancer and I’m just devastated

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nereb-and-dungalef · 2 years

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Thingol: i don't sell those I love

Melian: i mean you did sell your daughter for a silmaril. like i get where you're coming from here but you very much did sell your daughter for a silmaril.

#sorry if this isn't the right quote I'm too lazy to find the book #jirt #thingol #melian

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