i'm gonna level up by touching mushrooms

The long-lost heir is not the hero, he’s a side character who deliberately uses himself as a decoy.

The real hero actually fails in his quest, his goodness and determination and willpower utterly fail in the face of evil, and the world is saved by a series seemingly unrelated good deeds.

The central conflict is not between destroying the world and preserving it. An age of the world will come to an end, and many great and beautiful things will perish, whether the heroes win or lose. The past may have been glorious, but preserving it is impossible, and returning to it is impossible, time has passed and the world has moved on. The king returns, but the elves are gone and magic fades from the very substance of Middle Earth. The goal is not to preserve the status quo, the goal is the chance to rebuild something on the ruins.

Killing the main villain seems to instantly solve the problem, eradicate all enemies and fix the world, except it doesn’t, not wholly, since the scouring of the Shire still has to happen.

Also, the hero gets no real reward, and what he gets, he cannot really enjoy. He is hurt by his ordeal, and never fully recovers.

There is a team of heroes, a classic adventuring party, except the Fellowship is together for less one sixth of the series. The Fellowship is intact from the Council of Elrond to Gandalf’s death, four chapters. The remaining eight are together until Boromir’s death, an additional six chapters. This is nothing compared to LOTR’s length of sixty-one chapters, if I count correctly.

Tolkien is not classic high fantasy. If you actually think about it, there is very little magic. The hobbits’ stealth is not magical, most elven wonders are not unambigously magical, wizards are extremely rare, and even Gandalf hardly uses magic if you compare him to the average DnD wizard. Most magic is indistinguishable from craft, there is no clear difference between a magic armor and a very good armor, between magic bread and very good bread, between magical healing and competent first-aid plus a few kind words.

celegorm the fair

celegorm still on his bullshit

They were cowards for those tiny little elf ears.

YOU. ARE. CORRECT!

Blasphemy? No, the need here is to be able to see that Faramir’s valar devotion and peaceably noble manner IS the punk alternative culture of the times. To have belief in mystical hope and elvish nonsense and prophetic kings is to go against the grain and Faramir makes it sEXY. 

Saruman: everything is going according to plan, don’t worry about my giant fortress and the army I’ve amassed, they’re for an unrelated project

Radagast: I named this hedgehog Sylvester :)

Gandalf: I’ve started a side business making and selling fireworks

The Blue Wizards: 

the hobbit movies fic authors: due to personal reasons, i will be ignoring everything tolkien ever said about his universe. any elf can choose to be mortal, background regardless. the valar are completely benevolent and directly involved in the affairs of middle earth in the 3rd age. thorin and bilbo are together in the afterlife. try me, bitch.

Watching the movies, you have to wonder: Why would Pippin pledge his life to such a monster? Why would Faramir even bother to argue with someone who’s so clearly irrational? How could Boromir place so much faith in his country when its reigning leader is so obviously sinister?