This is downright so cute! Like, in a nerdy way, obviously, but it is just so delightful!
Aww, thank you! I was basically looking for a fan community and using academia as a substitute in the only way I could. It was actually really fun when you were asking for recommendations about a good edition of P&P, because I still own about 20 different editions and I was like AT LAST, MY TIME HAS COME!!
(There were ways in which academia made a very poor substitute for the fannish community I actually wanted, as I'm sure you can imagine—Austen criticism is very hit and miss in terms of attention to detail, trading on her reputation to talk about some sketchy pet theory, forced detachment, etc. When I did eventually end up in Austen fandom, partly it was because although Austen fans could be bigoted and short-sighted, they honestly seemed to know the actual novels much better than the academics and weren't nearly as invested in propping up theories from the rejects of other fields.)
I do agree with this, although once I got my VHS copy (ye olden times) I actually spent an afternoon logging how many times Frodo falls down in FOTR (it's 34 times, iirc all these years later, but close to that number +/-2) and ranted at anybody unlucky enough to be in my radius about how this was a travesty of filmmaking and was sending cues to the audience about how Frodo was incompetent and unable to handle the burden of the Ring and completely ignored his bravery and fortitude and
You're not wrong! My Frodo feelings are not as intense as my Gondor feelings obviously, but he is actually one of my favorite characters in LOTR and I think the most thematically central in ways that the movies seem to either not understand or were actively trying to undercut. Although FOTR (the film) is the strongest and also the most engaged w/ Tolkien IMO, a lot of the seeds for things that would hit particularly hard in TTT or ROTK were actually set up in FOTR. You can see this w/ characters like Elrond and Boromir, but it's most noticeable w/ Frodo. Part of the power of Frodo's story in the book, I think, is that he's so clearly not tripping over his feet from day 1 and not a wide-eyed child coming of age, and the effect of the Ring on him is subtle and gradual even as it becomes increasingly powerful, and so his ultimate claiming of the Ring at the end of the quest is all the more powerful because it doesn't feel inevitable. There have been so many "Sam is the true hero and wouldn't have claimed the Ring" "Bilbo wouldn't have claimed the Ring" "Aragorn wouldn't have claimed the Ring" NO YOU ARE ALL WRONG!!! Frodo did the most that anyone could have done, sacrificed virtually everything he was to get as far as he did, and was incredibly durable in the face of an incalculable force in a way that, in all probability, no other person would have been. He was "meant" to carry the Ring for a reason!
I also think things like the flattening of Merry's ingenuity and resourcefulness also has its roots in FOTR. :\
Cue similar rant about Éowyn cooking a meal for Aragorn on the road ffs -
An emotionally open doe-eyed Éowyn making terrible food for Aragorn (LMAO WOMEN WHO CAN'T COOK, AM I RIGHT?) is such a weird choice for her character. I don't blame Miranda Otto; she doesn't look or act anything like how I see Éowyn but she didn't write that script or direct herself, so it's not on her. But I don't think they ultimately knew what to do w/ her even while pretty obviously preferring Aragorn/Éowyn and leaning into it, so she's pretty consistently made more personable, more approachable, more open, more ... cute, I think. And of course that also has ramifications down the line.
+1 to all the Faramir commentary on TTT/ROTK, but I had to pull this section out because OH MY GOSH YES. And the last 20 years of discourse over how Sam is the real hero has only been worsened by the PJ adaptation.
YES. It is so hard to have any conversation about LOTR, the book, that is not shaped by the films at every turn and a lot of the more annoying tendencies are directly rooted in the films or vastly amplified by them, definitely including Sam Is The Real Hero discourse.
lol the screenshot is just ... me for the last 20 years, pictured.
Anyway, very cool history <333
Thank you! I'm glad you were interested enough to read the whole thing :D
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2024-04-06 06:43 am (UTC)Aww, thank you! I was basically looking for a fan community and using academia as a substitute in the only way I could. It was actually really fun when you were asking for recommendations about a good edition of P&P, because I still own about 20 different editions and I was like AT LAST, MY TIME HAS COME!!
(There were ways in which academia made a very poor substitute for the fannish community I actually wanted, as I'm sure you can imagine—Austen criticism is very hit and miss in terms of attention to detail, trading on her reputation to talk about some sketchy pet theory, forced detachment, etc. When I did eventually end up in Austen fandom, partly it was because although Austen fans could be bigoted and short-sighted, they honestly seemed to know the actual novels much better than the academics and weren't nearly as invested in propping up theories from the rejects of other fields.)
I do agree with this, although once I got my VHS copy (ye olden times) I actually spent an afternoon logging how many times Frodo falls down in FOTR (it's 34 times, iirc all these years later, but close to that number +/-2) and ranted at anybody unlucky enough to be in my radius about how this was a travesty of filmmaking and was sending cues to the audience about how Frodo was incompetent and unable to handle the burden of the Ring and completely ignored his bravery and fortitude and
You're not wrong! My Frodo feelings are not as intense as my Gondor feelings obviously, but he is actually one of my favorite characters in LOTR and I think the most thematically central in ways that the movies seem to either not understand or were actively trying to undercut. Although FOTR (the film) is the strongest and also the most engaged w/ Tolkien IMO, a lot of the seeds for things that would hit particularly hard in TTT or ROTK were actually set up in FOTR. You can see this w/ characters like Elrond and Boromir, but it's most noticeable w/ Frodo. Part of the power of Frodo's story in the book, I think, is that he's so clearly not tripping over his feet from day 1 and not a wide-eyed child coming of age, and the effect of the Ring on him is subtle and gradual even as it becomes increasingly powerful, and so his ultimate claiming of the Ring at the end of the quest is all the more powerful because it doesn't feel inevitable. There have been so many "Sam is the true hero and wouldn't have claimed the Ring" "Bilbo wouldn't have claimed the Ring" "Aragorn wouldn't have claimed the Ring" NO YOU ARE ALL WRONG!!! Frodo did the most that anyone could have done, sacrificed virtually everything he was to get as far as he did, and was incredibly durable in the face of an incalculable force in a way that, in all probability, no other person would have been. He was "meant" to carry the Ring for a reason!
I also think things like the flattening of Merry's ingenuity and resourcefulness also has its roots in FOTR. :\
Cue similar rant about Éowyn cooking a meal for Aragorn on the road ffs -
An emotionally open doe-eyed Éowyn making terrible food for Aragorn (LMAO WOMEN WHO CAN'T COOK, AM I RIGHT?) is such a weird choice for her character. I don't blame Miranda Otto; she doesn't look or act anything like how I see Éowyn but she didn't write that script or direct herself, so it's not on her. But I don't think they ultimately knew what to do w/ her even while pretty obviously preferring Aragorn/Éowyn and leaning into it, so she's pretty consistently made more personable, more approachable, more open, more ... cute, I think. And of course that also has ramifications down the line.
+1 to all the Faramir commentary on TTT/ROTK, but I had to pull this section out because OH MY GOSH YES. And the last 20 years of discourse over how Sam is the real hero has only been worsened by the PJ adaptation.
YES. It is so hard to have any conversation about LOTR, the book, that is not shaped by the films at every turn and a lot of the more annoying tendencies are directly rooted in the films or vastly amplified by them, definitely including Sam Is The Real Hero discourse.
lol the screenshot is just ... me for the last 20 years, pictured.
Anyway, very cool history <333
Thank you! I'm glad you were interested enough to read the whole thing :D