Brevity is the Wit of the Soul

I watch and read too many things to remember and mention.  20's. She/her pronouns. (Currently cleaning out old likes so don't be alarmed by the random reblogs).

[mystery-ink]

forgot to say that, without Howl chasing girls and Sophie resenting him for it, the film completely erases part of the point of Sophie being old.  Wynne Jones is using an idea that Beauvoir talked about - that being an old woman is both tragic (as we lose male attention/attractiveness) and freeing (as we are freed from the male gaze).  the idea is that with being old comes liberation, and the true meaning of what it is to be a woman, as society no longer forces gender norms on us.

Sophie is free from Howl’s attentions and therefore safe from harm (a big part of the book is the fact that Sophie believes he eats women’s hearts, and him chasing girls proves this to her).  she takes solace in the fact that she’s old, and finds it freeing.  when she learns more about Howl (notably: that he doesn’t eat hearts and that he’s not evil), she starts to curse her age and resent him chasing girls.  BUT she remains old OF HER OWN VOLITION - Howl notes that she’s perpetuating the spell by wishing to remain “in disguise”.  there are SO many layers to this, and lots to do with gender politics - if she’s still old Sophie can’t get hurt, she likes the freedom, etc.  but of course on a personal level being old is her denying her feelings for Howl, and also a representation of her low self esteem - being old is a defence mechanism and protection, both on a gender level and a personal one.

and the film kinda… loses this?  the only thing that remains is being old = low self esteem.  which really sucks.  because there’s SO MUCH MORE to Sophie being old in the book (perspective I already mentioned), and a HUGE amount of this is gender politics.  that the film just erases.

[sylvester-malone]

Also there’s the subversion of that in the book. Sophie’s belief that she’s safe from Howl, isn’t quite true because he fell in love with her while she was under the spell (and in the book, there’s no switching between looking young and old. Sophie is looking ninety the entire time, and Howl falls in love anyway.)

Also, her belief that being old means she can’t go to her stepmother or her sisters, that they’d fail to recognize her or reject her, is also unfounded. Fanny almost immediately recognizes her at the end of the book, and hugs her and cries over her and asks why Sophie disappeared. Sophie’s belief that the love of her family, friends and even her romantic interests is somehow conditional on her appearance is shown to be completely false at the end, which I think is absolutely beautiful.

Like, there’s definitely gender politics and commentary going on about beauty and youth and age and the male gaze and male violence going on, but there’s also this message about how love, real love, transcends all of that.

[absynthe--minded]

every time I see the words “Tolkien ripoff” in reference to fantasy I laugh, because while there’s a lot of Tolkien ripoff in worldbuilding it almost never crops up in plot or theme or characterization

like

where are my stories about the decay of the world from the glory of days gone by?

where’s the motif of limb loss?

where’s the longing for the return of something worth following?

where are the bloodthirsty oaths that tear sanity to shreds?

where are the evil spirits who try and destroy the gods with steampunk V-1 buzz bombs (looking at you, The Lost Road)?

where’s my continent-wide dialectical shift ending in massive arguments over the proper pronunciation of a name? where’s my family drama centered around sparkly rocks? where are my dragons the size of mountain ranges?

[alia-andreth-deactivated2018121]

Tolkienesque Fantasy™: there’s a quest, the elves are bitchy, the dwarves drink a lot, farm boy hero.

Tolkien’s Actual Writing: absolute power corrupts absolutely, a little bit of power corrupts a little, to what extent are people responsible for their actions? does God/the gods really answer our prayers? and pacifistic undertones.

[huntercombe-deactivated20241118]

@reeve-of-caerwyn @oldshrewsburyian

[lloerwyn-deactivated20201104]

Also actual Tolkien: The world is full of hope even in dark times. Kindness and friendship are what heroes are made of. Absolutely do not fuck with nature or you will regret it.

[garrettauthor]

Also actual Tolkien: actual heroes are little people who band together because it is right, and because they must.

[mazarinedrake]

Actual Tolkien: write your spouse into the story as an Actual Demigoddess whose song can charm even the Big Bad and the Keeper of the Dead themselves. Write your best friend into the story as a longwinded shaggy tree who takes hours to get to the fucking point. 

[tanoraqui]

Actual Tolkien: a true leader values peace rather than war, and is identified by their ability to heal rather than fight. We are all essentially shaped and guided by the past, what was done and what stories we know of it. We are part of that great ongoing story. Despair is the enemy; hope is never foolish. 

[godspeedmp3-deactivated20200914]

jenny slate / two, sleeping at last / an oresteia, euripidies (trans. anne carson) / the chaos of stars, kiersten white

[dumbledoreisabamf-deactivated20]

[hash-tag-whatever]

Merry: confused awe

Frodo: confused awe

Sam: confused awe

Pippin: finally i’m getting the respect i deserve from these peasants 

so accurate i am choking on my carrot. this is making me giggle harder than it should. I love Pippin so much.

I don’t think there will come time when I’m not reblogging this. Sorry guys. 

[pippin4242]

no no no you guys don’t understand, Pippin is someone really important in the Shire! The books don’t talk about it a lot, and the movies won’t touch that stuff with a bargepole, but Pippin will be inheriting land rights to about a quarter of the Shire. He’s second in line to becoming military leader of all Hobbits. His dad is currently in charge of that stuff, but he’s completely aware of it, and educated for it, and that’s why he’s such an over privileged little shit in the books.

I thought it was a shame the movies didn’t talk about class differences in the Shire. Also puts M&P stealing food in an uglier light.

[animate-mush]

To be fair, at the time of the Party, Pippin would have been 12, which puts it back into a more acceptable light.  And they’re stealing food from Bilbo, a wealthy and eccentric family member, which again makes things a bit different.

But yes, when they call Pippin Ernil i Perrianath - Prince of the Halflings - they are actually completely spot on.

And when Pippin tells Bergil “my father farms the land around Tuckborough” he’s deliberately downplaying his class so that he can greet the boy as an equal rather than a superior.  It’s Pippin’s most adult moment in the series.  Bergil is engaging in a status contest which Pippin can totally win - but instead chooses not to compete.  Pippin is a gilded and spoiled lordling in the Shire, but he becomes a Man of Gondor.

[iridescentoracle]

Yeah, to add a bit of unnecessary trivia/level of preciseness, Frodo is the oldest of the four; he was born in 2968, was (obviously) 33 at the time of the Party, and so he’s 51 here. Sam’s second-oldest; born in 2980, he was 21 when Bilbo left and is 39 at this point. Merry’s two years younger than Sam, making him 18 or 19 in 3001, when the Party took place, and Pippin was born in 2990, so he was actually 10 or 11 during the Party, and during this scene they’re ~37 and ~29, respectively.

So yeah, Pippin’s the youngest by a lot. Plus, taking hobbit aging into account, he really is still in the equivalent of his teens; remember the Party was half to celebrate Frodo’s coming-of-age at 33, and Pippin’s around twenty years younger than Frodo. 

This fucked me up. I didn’t read the books and in the movie it was shown like Frodo took off with the ring like 2 days after Bilbo’s gone away, but it was 17 years after that. OMFG.

[bramblepatch]

Also worth noting that “Merry and Pippin stealing food” isn’t in the book - raiding Farmer Maggot’s fields, specifically the mushrooms, is something Frodo used to do when he was a kid, before his parents died and he moved to Hobbiton to live with Bilbo. Frodo’s still afraid of Maggot’s guard dogs, but the farmer himself is sympathetic and helpful when he finds Frodo & Co. cutting through his field.

[mikkeneko]

And this is specifically invoked in the books at the Council of Elrond, where Elrond argues against Pippin in particular going, because  he is so young. He’s okay with Merry going but wants to keep Pippin in Rivendell. Elrond has serious misgivings against sending an early-teenager off to face the Shadow, and given what happens to Pippin in The Two Towers, he was not wrong.

[library-seraph]

@cyrefinns

[krool-gwooptsoov]

@the-books-we-travel

[the-books-we-travel]

This is just so great. I just–I can’t.

[wrangletangle]

Merry is also a prince of sorts - his father is Master of Buckland, which is the semi-autonomous boundary community between the Brandywine river and the Old Forest (never, alas, discussed in the movies). Merry and Pippin are friends in the books in part because they’re of relatively equal status and in part because they’re cousins (like all nobs, Shire nobs mostly marry each other).

However, the books also clearly make Merry the Responsible One, even though he’s only been a full adult for four years. (Think early 20s in human terms.) Merry buys and prepares the house at Crickhollow. Merry figures out the secret of the ring before Bilbo even gives it to Frodo, but Merry keeps Bilbo’s secret. Merry convinces Sam to spy on Frodo. Merry explains that they’re all joining Frodo on the Quest, whether Frodo wants them to or not. Merry cautions about the Old Forest and doesn’t go down to drink in the taproom at the Prancing Pony.

So in the books, Merry isn’t Pippin’s partner in pranks - instead, Merry and Pippin spend all their time together on the Quest because Merry’s looking after his younger cousin. Can you imagine what his mother would say if he came home without Pippin? Merry can, and that’s why he takes some pretty absurd personal risks during the books to make sure that doesn’t happen. Like, he literally rides into battle on the back of someone else’s horse, in disguise, because Pippin is probably somewhere in that battle.

Merry is 99%* common sense unless Pippin is involved, and then he is 100% save/rescue/protect/support Pippin. The character growth and maturation we see in Merry in the movies isn’t in the books; instead he has almost the exact opposite arc of becoming an extreme risk-taker, driven by his protective instincts.

(*The other 1% stabbed a ringwraith in the calf that one time, but we can argue that this was due to a natural expansion of Merry’s protective instincts toward Eowyn, with whom he’d bonded quite a lot recently, and toward Theoden, who he deeply respected as being kind of like his dad.)

[mikkeneko]

bonus kleenex moment:

when pippin finds merry stumbling half-blind and sick through the streets of Minas Tirith after killing the Ringwraith, he tells Merry “Poor old fellow! I’ll look after you,” half-carries him to the healing halls, and is worried sick about him until he can finally get Aragorn in to give him medicine.

It’s the first time in the story that Pippin  has looked after Merry, instead of the other way around.

It shows that Pippin has grown up, that he can protect the people who always protected him.

[roxilalonde-deactivated20251105]

like! people always reference pride & prejudice as the archetypal “normal girl falls for mysterious brooding antihero” story but they overlook the part where lizzy drags darcy so fucking hard he leaves town and then apologizes for talking to her the next time they meet even though they’re at his literal house

[hoppipollas]

[iwritesometimes]

#having a rewatch#and highkey want to bash myself to death on his cheekbones like a lovelorn moth (via benevolentbridgetroll)

i have seen a lot of good, correct, and #relatable responses to viggo mortensen’s aragorn since the year of our lord peter jackson 2001, but this is the one that most made my soul project backwards through time and space into my own confused 14-year-old body just to feel the agony all over again.

[zombeesknees]

#thats the most good correct and relatable sentiment i may have ever seen

[rolling-times]

[overthinkinglotr]

LOTR’s concept artists designed the films as a “journey back in time”

So (according to the concept art book) as the Fellowship travels deeper into Middle Earth, the places they pass through become inspired by progressively older periods of history. The farther along you are in the story, the more ancient the design influences

We begin in The Shire: which feels so familiar because, with its tea-kettles and cozy fireplaces, it’s inspired by the relatively recent era of rural England in the 1800s

But when we leave Hobbiton, we also leave that familiar 1800s-England aesthetic behind and start going farther back in time. 

Bree is based on late 1600s English architecture

Rohan is even farther back, based on old  anglo-saxon era architecture (400s-700s? ce)

Gondor is way back, and no longer the familiar English or Anglo-Saxon: its design comes from classical Greek and Roman architecture

And far far FAR back is Mordor. It’s a land of tents and huts: prehistoric, primitive, primeval. Cavemen times

And the heart of Mordor is a barren lifeless hellscape of volcanic rock…like a relic from the ages when the world was still being formed,  and life didn’t yet exist

And then they finally reach Mount Doom, which one artist described as 

“where the ring was made, which represents, in a sense, the moment of creation itself”

[snoozy-red-panda]

I’ve watched the movies a few times and love them so much so I can’t believe I actually missed this!

[all-things-devours]

Tolkien’s lesser-known nickname

According to a letter Tolkien wrote in 1971, his school-friends “used to write his initials as ‘JR2T’ and pronounce them ‘to rhyme with dirt’.”

[honestlygarbage-deactivated2020]

you: jolkein rolkein rolkein tolkein

me, an intellectual: jirt

[diamndogs-deactivated20240402]

shoutout to the guy checking frodo out at bilbo’s party, hope he’s got himself a good lad

[penny-anna]

various LOTR wikis reckon this guy here is Folco Boffin. I have no idea how canon that is but. there it is.

[blu3-mhel]

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

Sigmund Freud: All men secretly REALLY REALLY want to have sex with their mothers

It’s the Oedipus Complex

Oedipus: (Who literally gouged his own eyes out and killed himself when he found out he accidentally had sex with his mother) I’m sorry it’s the WHAT complex

[khazad-dumbs]

i’m pretty sure the real reason hobbits rarely leave the shire is because they only ever see the other races from that horrific lower angle you catch when yr phone cam comes on

[rissa-explains-it-all]

Andre de Shields’ rules for sustainability and longevity:

1. Surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming.

2. Slowly is the fastest way to get to the place you want to be.

3. The top of one mountain is the bottom of the next, so keep climbing.

[macrolit]

“I must change my life so that I can live it, not wait for it.”

— Susan Sontag (b. 16 January 1933)

[penny-anna]

One of my fav things about Gandalf is, he can & canonically does Full Name hobbits when he’s angry like he’s their mum or something

[penny-anna]

important follow up Qs:

1) does it frustrate Gandalf that he can’t do this to Bilbo & Frodo with the same impact bcos they don’t have nicknames

2) does he do it to non hobbits

Gandalf, in the distance: ARAGORN SON OF ARATHORN

Aragorn: oh shit I’m in trouble

[stevviefox]

I think when Gandalf is pissed with Hobbits he reverts to the extremely formal  Mister Baggins!

[penny-anna]

you’ve cracked it, that’s absolutely what he does

[fallenangelvictorious]

you know how mad he is based on how far back into your lineage he goes, consider:

Mild: Meriadoc Brandybuck! (last name only, you’ll probably live)

Mad: ARAGORN SON OF ARATHORN! (now your ancestors are involved, bad)

Murderous: THORIN, SON OF THRÁIN, SON OF THRÓR! (you are maybe about to meet your ancestors, via Gandalf… and not glorious battle) 

[penny-anna]

If you find yourself in times of trouble, ask yourself, ‘what would Gandalf do’, and remember, ‘beat a man unconscious with a big stick’ is a valid answer