vampireapologist:

not to be dramatic but…there’s some good in this world mr frodo…..and it’s worth fightin for

fluentisonus:

Only once before have I seen them from afar in waking life, but I know them and their names

– The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 3

bendingsignpost:

aqueerkettleofish:

elidyce:

nimblermortal:

icryyoumercy:

icryyoumercy:

icryyoumercy:

games that i think would be great, but no one will ever make:

lord of the ring ‘farming’ sims

like, the ring has been destroyed, peace has been achieved

sadly, the whole war has left ithilien, the shire, moria, minas morgul, the mirkwood, osgiliath, and tons of other places all across middle earth a dreadful mess

which is the perfect setting for having a random unimportant character go ‘fuck it, now that all the big warriors and heroes have done their job, i’m gonna do mine and plant some fucking flowers here’

and like. rebuild all of the things, and repair stuff, and plant flowers, and just. make all those places the story shows only in ruins be proper, real communities again

like: the player character’s parent is this great amazing warrior, and you just… never got into that, and now the whole war is over, and everyone is all ‘let’s celebrate our heroes’, and gets very… the whole thing fantasy does these days, where war against evil is the main focus, instead of actually living good lives?

and it’s like that scene in the beginning of a lot of farming sims, where the player character is sitting in an office and despairing, but instead it’s some sort of feast where everyone is bragging about how many orcs they killed or something, and also trying to recruit for the army, and it’s really terrible

and the player character just goes ‘nope, i do not want anything to do with this, i’m leaving, this was not what we fought for’

and gets, like, a shovel and a spade and a broom and maybe a pickaxe, and goes to find the nearest ruins left by the war, and starts tidying up

i understand that a lot of the tone of the books stems from some sort of magic is leaving, and the world is moving onwards, and that is just fate, because it’s now the age of the humans, and you know what?

fuck this. that just sounds ridiculous and some weird missing the good old days bullshit. of course it’ll never be the same, but that doesn’t mean it’ll never be good again, if we’re all working towards it together

You are a hobbit. Your name is Junior. it’s the anniversary of your dad’s return from the big hike he went on, the time when all the Big Folk come out to have a party, when your Uncle Frodo’s face looks even more like glass than usual. Sometimes he’s cheered up when the littles ask him for stories, and he tells them of places he’s seen, ruins and vast empty plains where only, occasionally, kingsfoil grows.

“Well why’s that then?” you ask.

“I beg your pardon?” says Uncle Frodo.

“Why hasn’t anyone gone to perk it up a bit?” you say. You’ve been learning a bit from Dad, who can make anything grow. “Why didn’t Dad, when you were passing through?”

“We were on a bit of a schedule,” says Uncle Frodo, and you’re not quite sure what the expression on his face is, but at least it’s there.

“All right, then why didn’t you stop when you were coming back?” you demand. “You had plenty of time then. You didn’t know what was going on in the Shire, and you could have at least - at least -” Your mind is too full of all the things it takes to get a good garden growing. “I thought you said Uncle Merry and Uncle Pippin wanted to help Fangorn find his treewife, I thought they said they were going to do something.”

“You know,” says Uncle Frodo, and now there is definitely a bit of a smile in the corner of his mouth, “You make a good point. Someone really ought to go and follow through on those promises.”

The next morning, there’s a pony and cart waiting for you in front of Bag End. You think that’s a little excessive, until you see the cart is half full of tools and half full of seeds, and you know none of that was Uncle Frodo’s gift.

“Be careful out there,” says Dad, giving you a hug. “Your uncle left you his old sword under the driver’s seat, but…”

“A good whack with a shovel will do for most things,” you finish. “I know, Dad.”

And you pick up the reins and drive east.

I would play the HELL out of a LOTR based game in which you are (player name) Gamgee, setting out to replant the world one flower or fruit tree at a time. 

There is a game called Littlewood which, while not specifically LOTR based, is “The world has been saved! Now farm.”

A compromise between Settle Here To Farm and Must Restore All The Lands:

Say we start in the Shire for an overall learning experience and to have a load of overly helpful NPCs telling you how to farm and mentioning quests being absolute gossips. The longer you tend to the land in the first area, the more you know about growing things in general, but you can also specialize in grasses, vegetables, flowers, trees, mushrooms, and soil quality. Let’s say there’s also a cooking mechanic to persuade other hobbits to teach you these specializations.

Potentially, achieving a specific specialty will unlock a specific area or quest (have to be really good at trees to find the Entwives or go to Mirkwood). If you specialize in mushrooms and low light plants, you could end up living in Moria, even.

Once these areas unlock, you can decide to move away from the town that may have sprung up around you OR do New Game + style, where you opt to play as your own kid who sets out to the next area with major information starting boosts. Could add in fun New Game + perks where, yes, you do get some absurdly good piece of starting equipment, but it comes with a little story attached like “a parting gift from your neighbors.” If you opt to cash in on any NG+ points or whathaveyou during the game, the item in question arrives in the mail as a parcel from back home.

Naturally, the Absolute Final Level is farming in Mordor. You need to have unlocked the hardiest crops, grasses, flowers, and trees. You need to know everything you possibly can about soil. You need high quality gear to till the land.

icryyoumercy:

games that i think would be great, but no one will ever make:

lord of the ring ‘farming’ sims

like, the ring has been destroyed, peace has been achieved

sadly, the whole war has left ithilien, the shire, moria, minas morgul, the mirkwood, osgiliath, and tons of other places all across middle earth a dreadful mess

which is the perfect setting for having a random unimportant character go 'fuck it, now that all the big warriors and heroes have done their job, i’m gonna do mine and plant some fucking flowers here’

and like. rebuild all of the things, and repair stuff, and plant flowers, and just. make all those places the story shows only in ruins be proper, real communities again

lotrfansaredorcs:

• Most composers spend just 10-12ish weeks working on a film’s music. John Williams spent around 14 weeks on each Star Wars movie, 40ish weeks total for the whole OT……but composing the LOTR trilogy’s soundtrack took four years
  
• The vocals you hear in the soundtrack are usually in one of Tolkien’s languages (esp. Elvish). The English translations of the lyrics are all poems, or quotes from the book, or occasionally even quotes from other parts of the films that are relevant to the scene
• When there were no finished scenes for him to score, Howard Shore would develop musical themes inspired by the scripts or passages from the book. That’s how he got all Middle-Earth locations have their own unique sound: he was able to compose drafts of “what Gondor would sound like” and “what Lorien would sound like” long before any scenes in those places were filmed
• Shore has said his favorite parts to score were always the little heartfelt moments between Frodo and Sam
  

Originally posted by tlotrgifs

• Shore wrote over 100 unique leitmotifs/musical themes to represent specific people, places, and things in Middle Earth (over 160 if you count The Hobbit)
• The ones we all talk about are the Fellowship theme, the main Shire Theme, and the themes for places like Gondor, Mordor, Rohan, and Rivendell…but a lot of the more subtle ones get overlooked and underappreciated
  
• Like Aragorn’s theme. It’s a lot less “obvious” than the others because, like Aragorn himself, it adapts to take on the color of whatever place Aragorn is in: it’s played on dramatic broody stringed instruments in Bree, on horns in  battle scenes, softly on the flute with Arwen in Rivendell….
• Eowyn has not just one but three different leitmotifs to represent her
• Gollum and Smeagol both have their own leitmotifs! Whose theme music is playing in the scene can often tell you whether the Gollum or Smeagol side is “winning” at the moment

Originally posted by middleearthsource

• The melody for Gollum’s Song in the end credits of the The Two Towers is the Smeagol and Gollum themes smushed together (it’s Symbolic)
• And then there’s the really obscure ones. Like there’s a melody that plays at Boromir’s death that shows up again in ROTK in scenes that foreshadow a major death or loss
• Wikipedia actually has a list of these leitmotifs, click this link and scroll down to check it out if you’re bored
  

Originally posted by arwencuar

• Shore wanted the theme music to grow alongside the characters– so that as the characters changed, their theme music would change with them.  
• You can hear that most clearly in the Shire theme. Like the hobbits, it goes through A Lot 
  
• Like compare the childish lil penny whistle theme you hear in Concerning Hobbits/the beginning of FOTR with (throws a dart at random Beautiful Tragic Hobbit Character Development scene because there WAY TOO MANY to choose from) the scene when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield, where you hear a kind of shattered and broken but more mature version of that same theme in the background 

• I could write you a book on how much I love the way the Shire theme grows across the course of these films 
• Unlike the hero’s themes, which constantly change and grow, the villain’s themes (The One Ring theme, the Isengard theme, etc) remain basically the same from the very beginning of FOTR to the end of ROTK. Shore said this was an intentional choice: to emphasize that evil is static, while good is capable of change
• Shore has said that between all the music that made into the movies and the music that didn’t, he composed enough for “a month of continuous listening”……..where can I sign up

southfarthing:

the pure MAGIC of fellowship of the ring is unparalleled… the unbelievable comfort of the shire… the heavenly healing of rivendell… the awe of the argonath… the sheer wonder of the halls of khazad-dûm…. the haunting memory of the ruins of men and elves scattered across middle earth …. the power of hope in the companionship of nine unlikely travellers…… the incredible faith and devotion and love overriding all the terror and hurt………..

middle-earth-mythopoeia:

princeescaluswords:

bodhimcbodeface:

incomingalbatross:

I love that Tolkien took a paragraph aside in Bree, after all the horses were run off, just to let us know that A) Merry’s ponies were going to be fine and B) Mr. Butterbur would not, in the long run, suffer financially by the incident. He understood what was really important.

Tolkien would have let us know how the Cabbage Man was doing.

One of the recurring themes in Tolkien’s works is that the world belongs to the baker down the street as much as it does to the Lord of the Golden Hall.  In almost every city we visit, Tolkien talks about shops and living arrangements and where people work and how they get their food.   

One of the noticeable things about Tolkien’s Enemies are their complete disdain for the little people – even the ones that are loyal to them.   Smaug, Sauron, Saruman are all rich, powerful, knowledgeable.   All of them are disdainful of those weaker and smaller than they are, while Sauron and Saruman are obsequious to those stronger than they are (until they can become stronger).   They don’t value parties and lunch and working in the garden.  

They’ve missed the point of life.

This is so well said, and this is also why I think the hobbits are able to resist the temptation of the ring better than Men or Elves. Hobbits, of all people, understand the importance of parties and lunch and working in the garden. They don’t want power or realms or armies. When Sam was tempted by the ring, what Tolkien calls his “hobbit-sense” was still there, and he realized that “The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.”