Discuss about the works of Tolkien and things relating to Middle Earth.'Thread question: What are some alternate takes on How the Elves look like besides Peter Jackson's? I like his whole look for Gondor, but I always kinda disliked the look for the elves, especially their arms and armor. Always looked a bit too beetle-y and muddled. Not so much the arms and armor in a vacuum, they are nice, just didnt seem very elvish to me in terms of their aesthetics.Would think something a bit more elegant and understated, but refined, would be more their style. not so much the criss crossing layer thing, nor the brass-gold (High elves are supposed to be much more into silver and blue right? night sky and stars and all)
For me, it's chain mail and scale armor.
Want rivendell. But not 499 want.
>>88976282I can see the appeal, but I personally do like thinking of the elves in full plate and having a distinct look as well. This too me speaks more "northmen" like Rohan or Dale, at least in the front helmet.I do think the gold loral as maile ties and the green cloth over intricate maile is sweet though.
>>88976217Just got to say, always thought it was a massive shame that the titicular fellowship of the ring lasted for all of like 2-3 chapers. literally just from rivendell to the end of moria. They had had very little time together really on their journey. them vs the wargs, them in the bitter snowy mountains, and them in moria.
>>88976282Elves and Rohan have the best armour design
>>88983014maybe if you are a s*xon or a blue footed boobie (but I repeat myself)
>>88976282This is the only correct answer as it is the only way that Tolkien ever describes armor in his setting. Plate armor is a projection of late medieval culture onto a dark age world.
>>88986748Rohan/elven armor fits the niche aesthetic I love where the society has progressed to be more ''civilised'' but also holds on to a more barbaric/primitive past, like how klingons in star trek have honor duels and a ton of other old klingon shit, but they're also smart enough to utilise any piece of technology they come across
>>88987182yes, for the third age. but it is pretty clear that most of the world is far flung in terms of greatness and advancement from old numinor and the sons of feanor.I dont think its hard to imagine the reminents of those great civilizations to have some plate or other markedly more advanced paraphernalia.
It bothers me how weak Tolkien's villains are and how piss-easy they're beaten. The trek to Mordor is treated more like an afternoon picnic. Frodo learns about the ring and spends half a year smoking pipeweed before anyone decides something should be done.
>>88976432>>88987182Partial plate is fine. They had early plated armor in the Roman Empire's days.
>>88991383The same shit happened in Anglo-Saxon epics all the time. Beowulf basically defeats Grendel by just holding his hand. It's the fallout and the inevitable, I think, that makes LOTR interesting. We know the villains will lose, but who do we lose getting there? There's a lot of massacres and awful fates both offscreen and off.
>>88991519I think Tolkien's mistake was not keeping his worldbuilding autism in check and divulging too much detail right away. If you read the appendix where every story about Sauron is>and this is how Sauron got completely BTFO by this particular group of peopleit greatly cheapens the experience.That said, I've heard in his 60s/70s revisions he was working to make the bad guys stronger and more intimidating. Maybe he realized he'd ultimately made them weak to the point of being detrimental to the story.
I'm enjoying playing The One Ring currently with my group, I missed the first edition so I'm collecting the second edition for personal enjoyment now, would like to keep it but if times become hard in a few years I could probably resell the whole collection for a good price. The only thing I don't have is the Strider Mode, but I don't think that came out in physical form?
>>88991383>It bothers me how weak Tolkien's villains are and how piss-easy they're beatendont really get this, most of the time charactets are actively avoiding them. and they are mostly only defeated by huge armies and misdirections.>The trek to Mordor is treated more like an afternoon picnicno it isnt. its pretty clear about how grueling it was. only some of the earlier stuff like part of the journey to bree was semi hospitable.>Frodo learns about the ring and spends half a year smoking pipeweed before anyone decides something should be done.I remember also feeling jt was weird how unhasty Frodo was to leave for rivendell given the possible magnitude.
>>88992268>divulging too much detail right away>If you read the appendix uh, arent the appendices at the end? isnt that the opisite of what you said? I thought he keeped most of the world building particulars to the very end, and the stuff in the story itself was pretty effective. Arnor being completely destroyed by the forces of angmar and us being shown its ruins as the party is going to Rivendell, Moria being completely a goblin realm with the dwarven expidition utterly destroyed, and gondor being steadily and constantly being forced back. we dont see much of sauron being “btfo” in LotR specifically, its more the suplemental stuff that does that.which is why I find it weird that you say “divulge too much detail right away” since all those details aren't exactly front and center at all.
>>88983014I actually like how they went the way of having Dale be more Novogorod and eastern in aesthetics. >>88976282Dislike but understand why they couldn't really do that en masse for soldiers in the movies.My question is, are there any actual knights mentioned? I think in Dol Amroth, but then there are esquires in Rohan which makes me think they may as well.
>>88997839matters how strictly you define knighthood. The word seems to be used in its greater sense most of the time. A noble dedicated to arms in service of some liege. pretty sure there were mentions of “elven knights” as well. In the sense that a samurai or boyar would be a knight as well in relation to a shogun or tzar.which is in line with the sort of phraseologies used in the writing. an older sense of broader terminology.
>>88996362Stories of the evil dark lord getting his ass repeatedly and effortlessly beaten by random Elves and Mary Suemenorians shouldn't have been in the book at all.
>>88999869I have to admit that tolkiens fangasm for elves comes off pretty egregiously. i do like Most of the Numinorean stuff. In the waining of the first kind the Men take their mantle and become great, but their hubris destroys them. But a few escape the folly and go on one last grand blaze of glory before slowly growing dim until only the very last embers of their kind in waining gondor and the scattered northern dunidain help to strike the finishing blow to the great enemy.
>>89000734There's an older alternate version where Sauron isn't captured by Numenor and instead comes over when they return from victory, causes a tsunami and destroys half their fleet with it, and appears so powerful and terrifying that they all submit to him willingly. It's honestly a lot cooler than what he wrote later and I'm not sure why he got rid of it, aside from fangasming over Numenor.It's the fangasming over the Elves though that for me is probably the worst aspect of the story and the hardest thing to get over to enjoy it. I'd say that in all his insistance that Middle-earth be the real world in the past is the worst thing about the story overall, but it's pretty much a background detail and is never relevant to anything. The Elf authorwank on the other hand is egregious and constant. Outside of Maeglin not once is there an Elf who's portrayed as having any moment of weakness, fear, or frailty. They're perfect super saiyans in all cases except Feanor and even then he's just an evil super saiyan.Pretty famous trivia at this point that one of Tolkien's peers absolutely hated LOTR, chiefly because of the Elves.
>orcs have registration numbers and id cards>hobbiton has flash photography>numenor had flying steamshipsWhat a weird setting this is. People take the elves and orcs and dwarves and don't realize how bizarre and incoherent the world actually is.
>>88995895It appears not, I think like Ruins of the Lost Realm it was an early KS delivery that did not get printed until later. Hopefully it'll come out with the new adventure books. I also hope I can get more copies of the double sided maps they've made, they're so wonderful I hope to frame them.
>>88976384don't surrender to consoomer culture
>>89000807I dont mind elves being largely all around great, I think thats a fine angle to explore. its just how…. “jumping the gun” it feels sometimes in LotR especially. them essentially being demigods is a good angle, I dont believe that you need some essential flaw from on high to “balance out” a people. them being men of gold that made way for the men of silver who then desend into the men of bronze is cool. Galadriel is a great sort of character in this vein. wise and kind and imperious, while the the weight of those ages show. And the elf band they meet just outside hobbiton.
>>89002693fuck you, i’ll surrender to what I want.
>>88997839>I actually like how they went the way of having Dale be more Novogorod and eastern in aestheticsIm kinda eh about it. Not hyper against or anything, but dale is supposed to be northmen like Rohan, so I think a more Germanic look makes more sense.>understand why they couldn't really do that en masse for soldiers in the movies.didnt they have multiple scenes with massed amount of rohan cavalry? Helmsdeep and pelanor feilds.
>>89003819My understanding is that they basically swapped around shirts and covered with leather as much as they could.
>>89004194no reason they couldn't have done the same with other groups.
>>88976282Chainmail is a misnomer.
>>89004332No it isn't, its clarification. Mail (of the chain sort). Nothing "mis" about it. its to distinguish homographs in modern speach.
Which noldor prince was repping the best sword?
>>89006578Damn son, Fingon used that?
>>89002693>Don't spend money on what you enjoy>Just sit here and be miserableMust be fun being you, anon
>>89007859fuck you, i’ll be miserable if I want.
>>88991519>Beowulf basically defeats Grendel by just holding his hand.You sound like someone who's never grappled before.
>>89000807>The Elf authorwank on the other hand is egregious and constant. Outside of Maeglin not once is there an Elf who's portrayed as having any moment of weakness, fear, or frailty. They're perfect super saiyans in all cases except Feanor and even then he's just an evil super saiyan.What the literal fuck are you talking about? The entire Silmarilion is all about that shit.
>>89000807Famously Tolkien once gave a reading in Oxford of his WIP on LOTR, and someone at the back of the room shouted "Oh Christ, not more fucking elves!" and walked out.
>>89009154Fine, but don't try and drag the rest of us into it
>>89013740Can you at least get your facts straight before posting, you fucking embarassment
>>89011845The entire Silmarillion consists of the elves easily destroying everything that comes their way, never once suffering actual hardship, opposition, failure, or weakness, save for when they do it to themselves. They show up, Melkor tries to stop them, they dunk on him hard and chase him into his castle for decades, his volcano erupts which is the only reason he breaks out and he also gets the shit kicked out of him by an elf in the process, he then tries to fight the elves again but now can succeed only because they've had infighting, he corners the elves and only wins because of treachery, and even then isn't totally successful because some elves escape and that causes the valar to come over and effortlessly dunk on him, mainly via elves.Basically all of LOTR is elves overcoming every obstacle and adversary without breaking a sweat but it's supposedly counterbalanced by the world getting older so elves are no longer needed.Until that happens though, what really grows old fast is the nonstop wanking the elves get.>the fellowship casually strolls to an elf settlement, what do they find there? is it>a: an elf lord that is suspicious of them and insular, preferring his people be left alone>b: an elf lord that's greedy and wants to extort a toll from the travelers>c: an elf lord that's very afraid of sauron and doesn't want to fight, preferring to hide>or d: an elf lord that is very beautiful and brave and smart and wise and is wiser and smarter than anyone and looks 20 and is beautiful and strong and tall and brave and wise and humble and selfless who will proceed to sing a song or recite a poem for the next 15 pages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X6Nl5fHwBE
>>89013777fuck you, i'll drag the rest of you down if I want.
SUFFER ME NOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!
>>89014078My take of it was that they were God's chosen people and supposed to win, but they keeping fucking themselves over. I personally drew a metaphor to the Jews and later Christians, with the Jewish people of the Old Testament making covenants with God and being giving wonderful things till they do stupid shit like worship baal. His second issue, the Christians/Men, get to go to Heaven, while his first born do not.
>>88991383>Frodo learns about the ring and spends half a year smoking pipeweed before anyone decides something should be done.He literally waits 17 years just because he wanted to be the same age Bilbo was when he had his adventure
>>89014382Not just that, but also there was an overlying worry that both permeated his decisions of not wanting to face it, and iirc they didn't know exactly what was up. Gandalf mentioned to him the ring was something important and not to fuck with it, and to keep it hidden until his return with more information. It took a long time and information gathering, going after Gollum and checking old lore such as in Minas Tirith to ascertain the truth.
>>89014078Not him, but I dont really agree with your central complaints of elves, that they have to have these low level flaws. I more took Umbridge with how tolkien made everyone around them being immediately and completely entranced by them, Instead of that coming more naturally. Not that they dont collect road tolls (which the wood elves do in the hobbit and they are described as cruder, but still good, elves). Its more the presentation rather than those specific things that rubs me. I think you lose the whole thrust of the elves if you give them too many petty qualities. They ARE a hightened people broadly.They are men of gold, and I prefer them having that innate quality. Their closeness, but not complete, perfection is whats makes them them. They are three parts angle to one beast in relation to man's half and half. And even with this proximity to absolute good, they still are not quite that. they are a glimmer or echo of a sublime state of being. They may kill 10,000 orcs, but they are doomed to their fate regardless of their greatness. Its the residue of perfection thats not quite there and the drama of being so close, but as high as you get, you will never reach infinity. And the drama that comes from beings so close to what we all want to be, but never quite grasping.That they are innately kinder, beautyful, stronger, humbler, and everything else is what makes tolkeins elves what they are. They arent just a "different (equal) species" in an rpg character selection sense. But the demigods of myth that are becoming waning in an increasingly mundane world. and thats their thematic core. makiong them crude and petty completely misses the point.>>89014355ngl anon, thats kinda stupid metaphor. I dont think it reads at all. they are portrayed as superhuman in pretty much every aspect.
>>89014382Think you got mixed up. when Gandalf first saw the ring and didn't know what it was exactly and went out to research, that was 17 years. the second time when he knew it was the one ring, frodo took like 3 months. Still egregious, but they didn't sit on the one ringing knowingly for 17 years.
>>89014635They are super human, they're Eru's chosen people. And each time they're the ones who ruin things for themselves. It's the point, that only they can hurt themselves.
>>89014640ah, right. In any case, Frodo had explicit instructions from Gandalf to wait until the fall to make it appear natural and not raise any questions. It isn't until they get to Bree and Barliman hands over the letter he forgot about that it's explained that secrecy as fucked, everyone knew about the Shire and Frodo had to get the hell out of dodge. Their whole plan was that no one knew The One Ring still existed, and they were going to work on destroying it after handing it over at Rivendel before anyone realized it wasn't at the bottom of the ocean.
>>89014635tldr: the melancholy of near perfection is the compelling and essential thing about elves. Tolkien just jumps the gun sometimes and tells more and shows less then he probably should.
>>89014675eru's choosen and erus first are two different things. He didnt abandon elves for men, he made and gave them both things of different kinds. They fuck up no more then something like the folly of the numinorians. And there was no point where they were abandon. He gave them both their specific attributes at their creation.
>>89014710There should be a superhero duo called Gilgaman and Gilgalad who have the powers of Gilgamesh.
>>89014640>>89014694The movie did it better imo. There are letters where Tolkien addressed editors telling them not to speed up or trim anything about Frodo waiting around and I don't think he ever explained why he wanted it that way. To me it's one of many things, such as the demigod superhuman elves, that weakens the tension of the story and makes Sauron into a meme.>gandalf, look! i have this ring of an evil dark lord that could threaten everything!>oh no! anyway, pass me the pipe, would you?>*4 months later*>gandalf, remember that ring?>huh? oh, yeah, that. uh, well, guess we should probably take it to the elves or something, i dunnoFrodo being in the confirmed possession of what is (supposedly) the most dangerous artifact in the world is treated with the urgency of afternoon tea.
>>89000807>>89002981It does seem weird how the elves were just plain perfect, and only less than 10 or so in all of Middle Earth existence who ever had so much as a negative thought. While the rest of the Noldor just followed their king as good and loyal subjects no matter the cost. I'm not even sure where this came from in literature since elves in Celtic, Welsh, and German stories are far from perfect and noble. Most are kidnappers, many do wage war on human settlements, love to cause trouble and spread plagues, they can be assholes.
>>89014635I -could- accept that idea if they really were this dying, mostly absent race, with maybe a few dozen tops left in all of Middle Earth who are very wary of war and fighting because they're basically extinct, but there's just too many of them in the story and they don't seem to be bothered by losses. Or rather, they don't have -any- losses to begin with. Sauron himself struggles to kill a single one of them, Glorfindel and an elfsquad should be able to barge into Mordor, kick down Sauron's gates, and drag him out and beat him down after having cleaved throuigh a few hundred thousand orcs and trolls, with how powerful elves are made out to be.It's not just a few chosen elves either. According to Chris Tolkien wrote a pseudo-navy seal copypasta about how Legolas was the strongest and most agile and most durable of the fellowship who could run forever and not get tired and was as strong as a healthy tree and could shoot a nazgul out of the sky miles away.
>>89014887In the books it came across to me initially as the elves are here to guide men, and after reading beyond Hobbit/LoTR I got the feeling that natural selection over millennia had taken care of the shit lords.>>89014872I think the movies are fine as their own thing, but people really gloss over in the first book/half of Fellowship that Gandalf and Frodo were really banking on no one knowing the ring existed. They put a lot of hope and effort into trying to play it cool and get rid of the thing under everyone's nose, it's just we as readers know it doesn't fly that way.
>>89014355That's probably how Tolkien saw it. People often forget Middle Earth has this really weird and not very logical interwoven connection to the real world, and how it's supposed to be "real" history with real places and the real God and Aragorn's the real Jesus and Numenor is the real Atlantis and Aman is an island off the coast of Ireland, and other things. It really doesn't make a lot of sense.
>>89014910Also the dwarves are literally the jews, but it's the elves that are the chosen of the abrahamic god, or something like that.
>>89014355The whole >They were supposed to winThing is always confusing when reading the story too, since this happened twice. The very first war of the Valar on Morgoth, they were supposed to always have faith that they would win even though they all knew 100% that Morgoth was going to kick their collective asses without effort, just based on the whole idea of they should have just plain known Eru would not let them loose.Then again in the War of Wrath, they should have just plain known that Eru would never let them lose and keep the faith. Despite Morgoth rolling over them again and again and again until he finally took Beleriand, killed most of their heroes, and sent them into the woods while a human begs the Valar to come save them.
>>89014920I believe the Jewish analogue came along later, rather coincidentally if I remember my Tolkien lore.
>>89014925>>89014910I do occasionally think about how he considered Atlantis, and how much he saw that in elves vs his own Christian faith but love of pagan lore.
>>89014925I mean Morgoth's an even bigger jobber than Sauron. The elves do demolish him, repeatedly, easily, over and over and over again, to the point a single elf is able to smack around what's supposed to be the secondmost powerful thing in existence besides eru like he owes him money, only losing because he gets tired and trips over. Morgoth never once scores a meaningful win against anyone, and even the wins he does score are said to be entirely because of an elf or human betraying the rest, or in the dagor bragollach I think it's cool, a well-timed volcanic eruption that the elves still ultimately win against anyway.Then you have Sauron whose one and only singular accomplishment ever is convincing numenor to attack the Valar, which gets numenor destroyed and Sauron has nothing to do with it. Everything else is him getting an elf or man boot up his ass and out his mouth.
>>89014909It's hard to really hammer down what was supposed to be the original function of the world had Melkor not fucked up the entire plan.It sort of looks like the original plan of the world was that the elves were to be the noble caste that ruled, were the educated elite, and basically administered the world. While Men were to be the worker bees that were taught by the elves, then did much of the labor, worked the lands and the animals and when they became tired they died and left the world.While the marred, flawed world it seems like the Valar were meant to defeat Melkor in the very first fight of the lamps, but instead ran away and let him ruin the world as much as he wanted. Then their function was to teach the elves civilization. Then when men came the elves teach civilization to men. But this plan was fucked up by the Valar taking the elves to the west, so when Men came, there was no one to teach them anything so they remained largely uneducated barbarians that had to learn how to live in the world through trial and error themselves. At their best they can only makes flawed, lesser versions of the things and cities elves built.
>>89014979Even Melkor's fall and corruption of the world was planned, to his own anger rhat his discord in the song only made Eru's more beautiful. He likely had free will, as did all the Valar, but where his made things greater by making an evil for good to be distinct against, the Valar's, Elve's, and Numenorian's only diminished the world feom where Good was supposed to triumph. Where in a Christian reading the serpent was necessary to move from a perfect world to one where man could choose to be good, it is upon Adam, Cain, and so on to choose good but fail to.
>>89015333If you look at it, really the only time good ever triumphs on its own is when two little people hold onto faith to the very end, where failure is inevitable, but their own acts of kindneas and mercy see them through as evidence of Eru's providence and reward for their good acts. In doing so, they succeded where the Valar, Elves, and Numenorians could not.
>>89014078>The entire Silmarillion consists of the elves easily destroying everything that comes their way, never once suffering actual hardship, opposition, failure, or weakness, save for when they do it to themselvesDahora Bragollach, Nirnaeth Arnoediad.
>>89015510>really the only time good ever triumphs on its own is when two little people hold onto faith to the very endWhat about all the times Morgoth and Sauron lose? Which is literally every single battle they ever fight (except two in Morgoth's case, but both cases weren't won because of him or his forces).>>890155581. Volcanic eruption scattered the elves, and they still didn't totally lose.2. Won only because of human treachery and Morgoth's forces just let the dwarves walk out of the battle unharmed for some reason. It also has one of the most inconsistent and embarassing moments for Morgoth when he sets up an ambush for some guys, and they fall for the ambush, and he's terrified and trembling of them... while they're in his ambush. Which succeeds but only because there's like a dozen guys involved, who somehow breached his fucking fortress in the first place and slew all his guards, which was apparently Morgoth's plan, but apparently not because he's terrified when they show up.
>>89015792They lose, but it's not until mercy, kindness, and faith are fulfilled that evil is actually defeated. It's an explicit point that hobbits are the little, underlooked people who go farther than the great kings and nobles elves and save the world. It's my interpretation that I analyze through a christian lense that it's about their submission and faith in Eru (God) they succeed.
>>89015792Imagine a name as cool and evil-sounding as MORGOTH being forever attached to what is possibly the most pusstastic cowardly wimp in all of fantasy fiction.Voldemort is arguably worse, but at least Voldemort isn't as cool of a name.
>>89014078Bro, the Silmarilion ends with all of elven kingdoms ground down to dust, all of their cities burned and the great kings and heroes dead. And THEN the Valar come in and ruin the entire continent for good measure. It's a story about greed, jealousy, loss and ruin, and it's clear you haven't read it.
>>89014910>>89014920>>89014957>People often forget Middle Earth has this really weird and not very logical interwoven connection to the real worldeh, idk if thats massively relivent. that just seemed to be the go to thing for fantasy at the time and to give it a poetic bent. Its the same with Conan or the Dying Earth.Both are said to be earth in a far flung past/future, but like LotR, its not directly relivent in the least. Alternate universes just didnt seem to be the thing.Specific analogies between specific peoples just dont really seem to fit. Numinor is LIKE an atlantis… Or a Mu, or the general troop that fell into a sea. just like the Great flood apears in many cultures, but its not necessarily just biblical or morse or mesopotamian or chinese. its much more of larger architypes.
>>89020971All of that not because of Morgoth himself, and in the end the Valar prove they can instadelete him but just can't be assed.
>>88976217>What are some alternate takes on How the Elves look like besides Peter Jackson's?Hobbit animated elves are the best ones.
>>88976217>tqthey shouldn't have pointed ears. tolkien was ambiguous on the matter but literally none of the adaptations have represented them with normal ears, so it's about time that changed. really the most important visual detail of the elves are their eyes, which is what every character in the story notices first and is how you distinguish an elf from a mortal. eyes are the windows to the soul and the elvish soul is more vibrant and bright than those of the fallen races, doubly so the high elves like galadriel who saw the light of the two trees in valinor. aesthetically, nothing else really matters. an elf could wear rags and have shit smeared over their face and they'd still have an unmistakable air of divinity. in terms of costuming for a visual adaptation, their armor should evoke that divinity as well. instead of looking utterly alien or fairyish, they should look like paladins or angels
>>89014979The one thing you are missing is that Melkor made the world chaotic, and basically invented nature. Like >>89015333 said, it was thought to make the world more beautiful. Basically without Melkor fucking things up and adding entropy to existence, the world would have been a perfectly flat, round, featureless disc floating in space with a lake in the center. No hills, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, rocks, or jagged coastlines at all. Everything is a perfectly symmetrical geometric plane. Melkor throwing toddler tantrums is the reason the land has any features at all. Yeah he fucked up by adding things like disease, old age, and winter, but he made the world a normal world we know today instead of the blandest existence imaginable.
>>89015510Would be nice if Eru actually did extend his godly hand down and fucking do something about his immortal, all powerful children that ruin the lives of whole civilizations...like he personally did to Numenor. He has no issue stomping his divine foot on the lives of every Numenorian and rearranging the entire planet as a result, but is cool with letting Morgoth rule the whole of Middle Earth and torture the inhabitants into grotesque monsters and orcs for the better part of 3K years. Those hapless victims should have just kept the faith more and took up swords and swung harder.
>>89015792>and Morgoth's forces just let the dwarves walk out of the battle unharmed for some reasonThis kind of thing happened a lot. Morgoth and Sauron would capture people and dream up nightmarish hellish torture scenarios, and then sort of pardon them and let them go after a while. It was weird for the Dark Lord to just let captives out and let them go.
>>89020971Why did the Valar just decide to let Morgoth go and own Middle Earth after the sundering of the trees anyway? They let him just have half the world and all the mortal races to himself for thousands of years and were apparently okay with it.
>>89021748Because it's just not well-written. It'd be one thing if the Valar couldn't because, say, Morgoth could stop them, but we know he can't. He can just barely manage to kill a single elf. So there's really no reason whatsoever they don't just go kill him, and even when they do in the war of wrath, it's mostly elves doing the job.
>>89021712Literally yes. Compare Sodom and Jericho to the fall of Judea and the Second Temple. The idea that God must act because you demand it rather than have faith is a mortal failing, and entirely in line with Tolkien's world view.
>>89006578>anyone other than that one elf from Gondolin wielding a curved swordlol. lmao even.
>>89014348>No game where you create an army of named Free peoples to fight Sauron during the War of the Ring.
>>89021748>>89021825Every time the gods took action directly it fucked up the geography. At least one of them explicitly hates doing it for the harm it does to the world itself. And they didn't see the winged dragons coming at all.>it's mostly the elves doing the jobEonwe was leading the charge with all the eagles and a pile of other warrior ainur. You think the vanyar were the ones breaking rivers, upheaving valleys, and throwing down mountains?
>>89021116Yet Elrond looks more humanlike, and that's from the same movie
>>88999869>effortlessly beatenGil-Galad was the high king of all the elves, a descendent of the one-and-only Fingolfin (pic related) who wounded Morgoth seven times, and in his hand was one of the most deadly (unelaborated) magical spears in noldorin history.Elendil was explicitly 7 foot 11 inches tall, wielded Narsil, one of the finest swords ever made by dwarven hands, in one hand, and was the last of the living royal line of the mega-humans who were just strong enough to make Sauron hesitate when facing them.And with them both were Elendil's sons Isildur and Anarion, who were already famous warriors in their own right, with stories left untold by JRRT.Others might have joined in against the fight against the most powerful evil sorcerer in Arda if they had the guts but they didn't. And from that fight, only one man emerged alive & whole. As the cherry on top, Elrond even says Isildur and the rest of us might have been better off if he had died in that epic tussle.Doing Sauron in was a totally pyrrhic victory, and Elrond spends a good chunk of his dialogue saying just that. Before that, the only other fight Sauron had been in was against a giant holy werewolf-killing dog, born and raised by the god of hunters in paradise. Besides Carcharoth, it is the most brutal fight in the Beren & Luthien tale. On all other occasions, he cleans house. All other times he is mentioned, nobody talks about Sauron in tones of anything less than abject terror, and guys caught by him never get away except as ghosts.If anything, he should have added even more history & autistic worldbuilding to get the full breadth and scope of Sauron's threat across, but if you could take your hand off your dick for once and had the patience to read the damn book you'd have sensed his menace on every page. His dread is apparent in the story even though he never appears. He's famous for it.
>>88991383>>89000807>>89000734>>89002981>>89014078>>89009154In every fandom, in every discussion, there is someone who wants the villains to be eviler, stronger, more unstoppable, and the heroes to be weaker, less confident, and more pathetic. It doesn't matter how dark or gritty it gets, it can always get darker, grittier, browner, more miserable, and they call it complexity.Someone's always here to pull it all back down into the shitter.
>>89024039Wanting the villains to be at the very least somewhere near capable isn't the same as wanting it to be a grimdark edgefest.If the villain is COMPLETELY inept, impotent, cowardly, and weak, and loses every single time they try anything against the heroes, there simply isn't any tension, drama, or stakes. The villain amounts to nothing.This is true of LOTR. Morgoth and Sauron are nothing, they don't pose a threat to anyone or anything, and even the wisest characters believe that in the middle of danger the best course of action is to drop everything and stop what they're doing to recite a poem about a rock they saw.
>>89023867>nobody talks about Sauron in tones of anything less than abject terror, and guys caught by him never get away except as ghosts.Which is silly when outside of character dialogue, what we read in the lore is that Sauron is a puny jobber who's scared of his own shadow, never succeeds at anything, is intimidated by Aragorn and Denethor, and is, quote Tolkien himself, "quite stupid".The eponymous Lord of the Rings is per Tolkien himself a bumbling, cowardly, incompetent idiot.
>>89024540Except he's only in an idiot in the fact evil makes you self centered and unable to understand others, only project your vile opinion onto others, much like yourself. He's used the last several millennia building unstoppable armies, undermining the very fabric of human civilizations, and conquered or seduced the east and south. Literally he only loses because of the faith of the Fellowship in following their duties, and their acts of kindness and mercy along the way. >>89024039Some people see only that the villain loses in the end, and can't understand why they lost or that there's a reason they didn't win before they began. Hell, the idea of being diminished in Tolkien's works eludes them, that each generation is less than what has come before, and thus evil is stronger than ever also seems to escape them.
>>89025388>He's used the last several millennia building unstoppable armiesThat attacked his enemies two or three times in grand total over several thousand years, and lost every single time overwhelmingly.
>>89025465He's conquered or subverted literally the rest of the world you fool. You absolute illiterate.
>>89025495>literally the rest of the worldMostly empty desert.
>>89025495>>89025514He also can't conquer anything, anything at all, in the West despite it being twice the size of Western Europe and only inhabited by like 50,000 people total for some reason. The world's basically a wasteland and he still can't conquer it.
>>89025639Because conquest by force is evil and good kings don't subjugate people, so therefore Sauron always loses because conquest is bad. Unless it's Gondor or Arnor doing it, in which case it's perfectly fine for them to forcibly subjugate and conquer, and they do so with nothing but overwhelming success and minimal losses. Because conquest is bad. I mean good. I mean bad. I mean. Here, let me sing you a 10,000 line song about leaves.
>we quickly agreed to push for a more virtuous goal - inclusion
>And our #MTGLTR set definitely reflects our consumers
>>89026378>conquest is good when it's a good king doing it to bad people>>89026420>fucking with stories is good when it's done by good people for good reasons
>>89026420>>89026436I thought this was a parody account and it's blackpilling to find out it's not.I hate LOTR personally, but fuck this literally gay earth.
>>89026436>visit FLGS>every MTG is a fat white guyThey're just fucking lying.
>>88991383Did we read the same books?
>>89026436>Unironically using the word hip
>>89026420oh noes, its a literal tranny faggot retard too.
Behold, a black gondorian.
>>89014909Elves were supposed to be the ones to lead Men and teach them everything. But that plan fell apart when the Valar took them to the west.so apparently Morgoth snuffing out the trees, stealing the silmarils and running back to Middle Earth was now in Eru's plan so that the noldor would go after him, be exiled and have to remain there, and become available to teach arts and skills to the tribes of Men that show up.
>>89021748>>89021825Not exactly, it was written that the Valar just plain do not understand several emotions. Like they cannot grasp jealousy, loss, or hatred. Not even on the level of a child's understanding. They just do not get it. So they cannot really think up to go mount up an army to go after him in revenge because they never once thought anger at the trees being gone, felt any particular loss over it, and do not get just what the fuck is Feanor's problem.They also cannot grasp lying, like it makes no sense to any of them for someone to say something that is not true, or saying something to get someone to do something. Like pretending to be reformed or repentant. They genuinely believed Morgoth was repentant in every way the entire time.
>>89023629But the alternative is to leave the world fully in the hands of an immortal, all powerful Dark Lord that tortures, kills, and horrifically mutates the little people that exist there. Leaving the world to him is basically giving up on the whole project of creation and letting him kill everyone and destroy everything.
>>89023709He's a half elf innit?
>>89023867Sauron also defeated one of the most powerful elves in history in a singing battle. He also basically ruled Middle Earth for a few hundred years after the forging of the rings. Annihilating the at the time, most powerful Noldorn nation Eregion and making Celebrimbor his battle standard. Then he went on to go take down the Grey Havens. He then engineered a plague that eradicated the capital city of Gondor and most wiped out the high men.
>>89023709This never made sense. I did not get why Thranduil was a weird little gremlin while Elrond was a normal looking elf. We get a discription of Thranduil, and even then that's Legolas' father and anyone making a movie in the 70s would know that.
>>89038619Morgoth got his ass caved in over and over again by elves with no trouble, though.>>89038683I'll give you that, Sauron was successful hitting Eregion, but then Tolkien turns around and shits on that accomplishment by saying that Elrond Sue came along and beat Sauron's army so bad that Sauron himself was almost killed and had to flee, because elfwank.
>>89038761Also, for all my shitting on these things I don't like, I do appreciate Tolkien's effort and how he basically modernized the fantasy genre.
>>88987182Yes, but the problem is that you literally can't put that on a screen. Logistics of making 2000+ mail hauberks (they made over 2k sets of armor for the films, so if you're replacing it all with mail, that's the quantity you need) aside, the audience has to be able to tell who is who onscreen at a glance; if you have a 1/4-second long cut in a fight scene, can the audience tell who is doing what to whom?And the two ways to tell that are through color palette, and through silhouette. Giving everyone mail - even if it's accurate to the books - simply cannot fulfill that requirement of visual media. Giving each group their own distinct armor, with a unique color palette and silhouette, was necessary from the moment they decided to adapt the books into a visual medium.
I'm looking forward to the new Peter Jackson middle earth movies. Especially angmar and war of the north movies
>>89041435>I'm looking forward to woke garbage
>>89041629How do you know it'll be woke niganon? Weta workshop is awesome and I want to see their designs and Howard shore's music.
>>89041660Because it's being made after 2004.
>>89026436>gives Aragorn the blackface treatment>look guys! we're very progressive and not racist!
>>89026447>eradicating proven threats is the same as misappropriating others' workDisgusting.
>>89035732That looks 96% caucasian at least. I easily see him as an escaped haradrim that joined forces with gondor rangers. 13th warrior reference for the win.
>>89026420It's all awful. They even fucked up Andúril.
>>89026420>That profile pictureI didn't bother to look it up but he's trans isn't he?
>>89026568Tell me about the shittiest LOTR fan you ever met.
>>88991383you fools, this was so obvious
>>89038711My theory was always that its because he's not a wood elf like thranduil, hence his kind is taller and probably less gremlin like, or >>89038627 could work too
>>89044105>opinion i dont like is woke
>>89035732For Gondor there's at least the fact that it was a multicultural realm under a Numenorean ruling class. The people of the White Mountains that Isildur cursed to not find death until they fulfilled their oath of loyalty to Gondor weren't the only natives that became subjects of the Numenoreans. The Lord of Lossarnach who led his warriors to the defense of Minas Tirith in LotR is called Forlong, which is a name not from Westron or Sindarin, but from a human tongue native to the area.When you look at Near-Harad and the shifting Gondorian borders over the centuries, it becomes clear that there's probably no big ethnic division between the southeasternmost Gondorian subjects and the people living just south of Gondor.
>>89038761>but then Tolkien turns around and shits on that accomplishment by saying that Elrond Sue came along and beat Sauron's army so bad that Sauron himself was almost killed and had to flee, because elfwank.This is incorrect; Elrond is beaten back to the valley where he would later establish Rivendell, it's the Numenoreans who save the havens of Lindon and push Sauron out of Eriador and Calenardhon; after that comes the era in which the Numenoreans start to colonize Middle-earth more and more, and become greedy and worldly. It calls back to a conflict between Aldarion and his father (then King of Numenor) centuries earlier, in which Aldarion pushes for more Numenorean presence in Middle-earth and assistance to Gil-galad while his father feels that no good will come from it long-term.
at first thought this was supposed to be Saruman, because the white hand. but is gandalf apparently
>>89026436>>89026420Isnt this the art director that describe her "orignal cool characters" and just sayin "he is fat and black, so he is the best" instead of saying anything interesting about the characters?
>>89035732a spaniard?
>>89047902What the fuck? Why does he look like an evil old Mongolian? McKellen had the perfect face that emanated warmth and kind mischief. This motherfucker looks like he's about to order an execution and have dogs eat your remains.
>read the Fall of Nümenor>there were bears native to the island that would gather in numbers up to 50 and dance for the spectacle of the NümenoreansWhat
>>88976217Is Manwe the biggest bitch-chump in all of the legendarium?> Brother to Morgoth but so weak he needs Tulkas to beat him up> Just lets Morgoth dunk on him and his friends feasting on their island> Cant even be arsed to find the Eldar, Orome has to pick up his slack> Likes and liked by the lame nerds of the Eldar, the Vanyar> Side note, the Vanyar aren't even book-nerds like the Noldor, they are the teacher's pets who do literally fuck all but sing> Morgoth dunks on him and his friends AGAIN, trashes their home with impunity and instead of going to war like Chad Feanor he sits and cries> Abandons Middle Earth instead of helping the Eldar like Ulmo> Cant even be bothered to go with his army to get Morgoth, sends his manservant Eonwe to do everything> Pisses and shits all over himself when some fucking men sail up to his home and gets daddy Eru to solve the problem and then fucks off to space or whatever
kind of funny, Just realized that I have read the hobbit, the silmarilion and the sons of Urin.. but did not finish reading the Fellowship of the rings
>>89049103Is the hobbit still worth reading if I've already seen the old animated version and jackson version numerous times?
>>89048591ME is a weird and pretty nonsensical setting when you look at all the details.>hobbits have invented cameras while the most technologically advanced and powerful country in middle-earth is basically the eastern roman empire circa 700 ad
>>89049103lol.Kinda understandable tho.>>89049239Its pretty short and sweet. It reads very much as a Childs bedtime story. Very frank, but charming. Nothing overstays its welcome.
>>89048154tbq fair, Gandalf is usually pretty curt and has a bit of a low tolerance for bs and can be kinda prickly. In the book its often not so much a kind mischief, but more of an old grognard who gets his way without explaining, but sometimes lets down his gaurd. I dont think it doesnt fit.People say hes kind and warm, but he is pretty narly in a good amount of in the moment contexts. Gives me actual pic related feel. THe napoleonic grognard where known for being old mumblers.
