Can you explain LoTR things to me?

his insanity in the movie is not as well explained as in the book, wherein he's corrupted by a powerful influence

he didn't hate faromir. i think he wanted their "legacy" to be "honourable".

maybe.

quite the contrary. they're sailing to the "undying lands".

Ned busy with work today. But I might chime in as I can here.

Anyway, the only reason Sam married Rosy is that he could not admit his feelings for Frodo to his friends and family in the Shire. I thought that much was obvious.

Sean, five bucks says the DVD will be about an hour longer and will set up the emotional pay off of the ending very nicely, though don't count on Sam delivering any monologues about his sexuality.

Do y'mean as in cue cards? There's a reason that went out with the silent film era. Besides, at 3 hrs plus, it was long enough. How to explain without adding another 10-15 mins?

There may in fact be both cake and eating it too if you reread the Appendices...

How embarrassing, this whole time I thought his name was L. Ron.

Neither he nor Frodo or Bilbo are granted immortality, though. They are granted the grace to pass to Valinor, but not to live forever.

Where can I read more about that? (Scrolling upthread, I see this has gone a long way from the nutty king.)

Why didn't Gwaihir(?) the eagle take the ring to Mount Doom? If he couldn't take it, couldn't he at least have given Frodo a ride, thus sparing him and Sam all that torment?

This question has bugged me for so long that it's nearly spoiled my enjoyment of both the books and the movies. The only thing I can think of is that Sauron would've been more likely to spot a giant motherfucking eagle than two small ground-based hobbits, but since the whole premise at the end was to distract him (and it worked), I don't see why one eagle might not have gotten through via some circuitous route (waiting for the Nazgul to leave Mordor, as they do).

Bryan's link is indeed most spiff.

(xpost with Bryan and Ned. I'll go check that link. I really want to find a way around this, as I'm a geek and I love the books and the movies, but every time I think about it, I wonder why it wasn't considered -- does anyone remember whether it was mentioned as an option, at least, at the Council of Elrond? I mean, Tolkien's intentions aside, but the motivations and ideas of the characters have to stand alone, right?)

Well, yeah, I know -- that's why I have to have this answered (because I'm an obsessive-compulsive type)!

Maybe a combination of your explanation (it's the same reason Gandalf or Galadriel couldn't take the ring, so it makes sense) and the "Sauron would more likely spot an eagle" explanation might do it.

(Another sort of related question: why didn't Sam and Frodo go around to the East of Mordor, thus avoiding the mountains?)

adolescent mark s to thread!

(Apologies, there's no tag for "facetious".)

http://www.lordotrings.com/tourtot/shire.asp

FOTR = Green
T2T = Brown (reddish brown)
ROTK???

if they intend to keep with the earth colours as i think they do

um....I'm guessing, yeah

x-post

For color I'm guessing blue for ROTK, easy.

Going around to the east of Mordor = very damn long and miserable.

The wizards (istari) are members of the maiar, who are like angels to Earth's gods, the valar (who aren't even mentioned in the movies, I think). Sauron is a maia as well, but an evil one - he used to be the right hand man of the evil god Morgoth (who was originally one of the valar), but when Morgoth was defeated he became the number one bad guy in his own right. Sauron has been Middle Earth ever since the First Age, but the wizards were send there from Valinor (the home of the valar) only during the Third Age, to help the world to get rid of Sauron once and for all. They took human-like forms so people wouldn't be scared and suspicious of them, and would follow their advice. The wizards weren't inccorruptible, however, as the case of Saruman shows. Radagast was also sort of a failure - he fell in love with the animals of Middle Earth and didn't bother about the humans and elves as he was supposed to. The other two wizards (the blue wizards) went to the east, and their fate remains unknown; they were perhaps corrupted by Sauron like Saruman was.

They are granted the grace to pass to Valinor, but not to live forever.

Where can I read more about that?

Living in Aman (the island Valinor is in - not everyone on Aman lived in Valinor) didn't give one immortality - that was something only the elves had, and they had it even before they went to Aman. The Numenorians also entered Aman and yet they died (admittedly the valar themselves killed them). It is also possible that the hobbits and Gimli got to live only on Tol Elessar, the lonely island right next to Aman, which was meant for those who couldn't or didn't want to enter Aman. It isn't said clearly in the books, but I got the picture that Aman was meant only for the valar, the maiar and the elves. Since Gandalf was a maia, he probably was able to return to Valinor, his home.

I heard something about how Tolkien wanted the eagles thought of as being their own race with the own agenda, and that they're not to be considered Middle Earth Taxis.

That doesn't sound right, because in Silmarillion they act exactly like Middle Earth taxis. It could of course be that they had mellowed out ever since the First Age.

Though Thorondor only intervenes at very specific moments in the text, usually at times of total extremity for the characters involved -- Beren and Luthien, Maedhros and Fingon, etc. Otherwise their interaction is limited to helping guard Gondolin, or more accurate try to keep it hidden from prying eyes.

When ILX is but a fading memory, never let them say we weren't consistent.

🚨 IMPORTANT TOM BOMBADIL RESEARCH 🚨

"Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil"
http://km-515.livejournal.com/1042.html

Old Tom Bombadil. Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings. A childish figure so disliked by fans of the book that few object to his absence from all adaptations of the story. And yet, there is another way of looking at Bombadil, based only on what appears in the book itself, that paints a very different picture of this figure of fun.

What do we know about Tom Bombadil? He is fat and jolly and smiles all the time. He is friendly and gregarious and always ready to help travellers in distress.

Except that none of that can possibly be true...

That's...dedication.

Bombadil is my favorite character in LotR

uh wow

as a total LotR book geek, I'm impressed

Darth Jar Jar of The Rings

I love Bombadil and Goldberry but I don't entirely like their placement in the story. No sooner do the hobbits step foot outside the Shire than they run into the oldest spirit in all of Middle Earth.

That's why hobbits are content to relax in holes and low houses instead.

Played by Gary Sinise

in addition to just naturally being sympathetic to the pastoral/pagan mythos angle, honestly I love that Tolkien had the commitment to deliberately insert this thing that violates all sorts of otherwise carefully worked out continuity/world-building into his masterwork, that he saw the value in having something mysterious and inexplicable and confounding left in.

Tolkien's comments are interesting:

I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. But if you have, as it were, taken 'a vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the questions of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless...

It is a natural pacifist view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war ... the view of Rivendell seems to be that it is an excellent thing to have represented, but that there are in fact things with which it cannot cope; and upon which its existence nonetheless depends. Ultimately only the victory of the West will allow Bombadil to continue, or even to survive. Nothing would be left for him in the world of Sauron.

And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally).

He almost seems like an Eastern religious figure plucked out and placed in a Western mythic context.

He’s Canadian

Green jacket, red cap and white owl feather indeed

Centrist dadless

Seriously, though, can we finally talk about how Lord of the Rings is one epic PR story covering up Middle Earth's secret drug wars?

— Matt Wallace (@MattFnWallace) September 13, 2017