comparing gandalf vs dumbledore is childish but not bc “it’s pointless to argue about such things, everyone can like who they want” or some little bitch shit like that but because gandalf is so many leagues beyond anything dumbledore could ever hope to have achieved that it’s like why even bother. why even attempt
gandalf is (literally.) an angel and he knows how to smoke and party. the only thing that could take him down was a literal demon and even then he just resurrected stronger than ever before with some sexy new clothes. dumbledore lost to a chemistry professor
Hello all! This is the first of many announcements for the Tolkien Video project I’m hosting. It’s the first time I’ve done anything like this, so it’s a learning experience for us all.
The
Tolkien video project is a video project specifically aimed at people of color. The purpose of it is
to recreate scenes from movies and books written and inspired by Tolkien. This
includes all form of media produced by Tolkien and inspired by him.
*If you’d like to
make a fan video (your own story) than that’s fine too! It doesn’t have to align with canon.
Requirements
All actors must be people of color, as well as directors and those who’re
recording the movie. All players involved must be people of color. The entire idea behind this is exposure for Tolkien
fans that are people of color.
You must be 18 YEARS OR OLDER to participate.
A name and a bit about yourself. It doesn’t
have to be too personal. Include the names of everyone participating as well, and their parts in the project (did the direct, edit, etc.).
Give me a small description of the scene, trigger warnings if necessary, and a
title.
When you send me the link or the file, save it as the fandom it belongs in
(etc: Lotr, Silmarillion, The Hobbit) so that it will make it easier for me to sort them.
You have till January 15th , 2019, to send me your video.
send all videos (links/files, etc) to
diversetolkien@gmail.com (feel free
to send questions there as well, but I’m also on tumblr and I’ll respond faster
there).
Share this post! Also follow this blog for more updates and flyers! Everything will be tagged under #tkvideoproject. Even if you’re not a person of color, sharing this around would be awesome!
At the end, I’ll compile the video into a
youtube play list and organize them accordingly! The link will be shared on this blog!
I will always remember Christopher Lee as that horrifying moment in the LOTR commentaries where Peter Jackson says he started to direct him on how to act like he’d been stabbed and Christopher Lee goes “no no peter dear, when someone is stabbed like this, THIS is how they look, they don’t make a sound, air just leaves them all at once” and peter jackson remembers in that moment that lee was in the secret service and just slowly backs away.
One of JRR Tolkien’s ideas for Aragorn’s backstory in The Lord of the Rings was that he was actually just three or four generations removed from Isildur himself.
Then how did he survive for the thousands of years between the Second and Third Ages?
The story goes something like this:
Many hundreds of years ago, young Aragorn fell in love with an Elven woman, who exactly resembled Lúthien Tinúviel in shape and outward form.
She called herself Arwen Undómiel, the Evenstar.
He fell for her, and romanced her, and gave himself to her; together they lived in her kingdom, where her magic and her power slowed Time to a crawl for them, while hundreds and hundreds of years passed in the world outside.
At first, the Elven-maid seemed every inch a queen: beautiful, graceful, soft-spoken, meek, and with the manners befitting an upbringing in Valimar long ago.
But over time, Aragorn came to realize that his beloved had a hard, greedy, grasping side, even a cruel streak, which more and more showed itself in unexpected flashes.
Worse, she was not who she seemed to be.
Eventually Aragorn pieced together the secret.
His bride was Sauron, divested of her usual male disguise.
Greatly weakened by the loss of the Ring, Sauron yet maintained strength enough to craft a prison for the heir of Isildur: a false realm of hollow bliss and sterile delights, where the one she thought was the greatest threat to her power could languish in eternity.
A part of herself, wearing a female aspect – the gender she had hidden long ago in the deeps of time, to gain entrance as an apprentice to the smithies of Aule – remained in this pocket world, as Aragorn’s bride: a plaything to keep his attention from the bars of his gilded cage.
But eventually, Aragorn figured it out.
Eventually, Aragorn escaped.
Thousands of years had gone by in the world outside since Aragorn had been ensnared by Sauron.
Now, emerging from long captivity in a magical sub-realm, he studied the world around him, and learned what had changed and what had endured.
He met Gandalf, and learned much from the Grey Pilgrim, and taught him some things of his own; and, in search of information, he pursued and captured Gollum, who had possessed, and been possessed by, the One Ring for so many centuries.
And, shortly before his ascent to the throne of the reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, he met his future bride: Eowyn Elfsheen, sister-daughter of Théoden, King of Rohan.
(PS: Christopher Tolkien or another amanuensis may have written this story down as part of the Secret Library Archive Project.)
I ship this now.
My reaction:
“Aragorn’s backstory“ Oh, ok, is this gonna be what the whole Amazon thing is going to be about?
“He meets Arwen“ Yeah ok
“She seemed evil” um, ok…that’s new.
“She was Sauron“
so you’re telling me Sauron was getting ploughed by Aragorn for thousands of years “as part of a fiendish plan to waylay the heir of Isildur”, no other reason, Sauron just lying back and thinking of Mordor, hating every second of it, is that what you’re telling me
Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
Legolas:
~*~earlier~*~
Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits
Merry: Frodo what’d he say
Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish
i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.
english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.
they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max.
frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.
so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.
plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.
so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.
to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather
was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a
somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.
so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his
upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his
Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice
from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really
obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!
considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.
…it’s
also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though
with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.
which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.
this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!
Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.
Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*
Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now
Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?
Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?
Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.
Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.
Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y’all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.
Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man
That feeling when you watch Fellowship of the Ring and realize that the lotr soundtrack seeped into your bones sometime in your childhood and became a physical part of you
Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
Legolas:
~*~earlier~*~
Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits
Merry: Frodo what’d he say
Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish
honestly the funniest thing about the lord of the rings is how gandalf is literally a minor god sent to middle-earth by The Big Man Himself and yet literally nobody apart from the elves seems to recognise this or take him seriously
like yeah gandalf is pretty grumpy most of the time but how would YOU
feel if you were the fantasy equivalent of an angel and a bunch of
people who only come up to your knee were just like “oh fuck it’s that
spooky old wizard” every time you showed up for a friend’s birthday
party
alternatively, how would you feel if you were the fantasy equivalent of an angel and not long after you got to earth you discovered what weed was?
the thing about lotr that the movies don’t convey so fully is how the story is set in an age heavily overshadowed by all the ages before. they’re constantly traveling through ruins, discussing the glory of days gone by, the empires of men are much diminished, the elves (especially galadriel) are described as seeming incongruent, frozen in time….some of the imagery is even near-apocalyptic, like the ruins of moria and of course the landscape surrounding mordor
this is a strange thought to me, somehow: that the archetypal “high fantasy” story is set at the point where the…fantasy…used to be much higher? this is not the golden age; this is a remnant
LotR is Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome of the elves.
i want to emphasize that people have added excerpts of their theses in reply to this post but this is still my favorite reblog
myblog 