burn that page for me

You either die a casual LotR fan or live long enough to become silm trash

i think i don't really vibe with most other fans of my favorite male characters is because they usually depict them too much of a man, and i am not interested in men, i am interested in The Character. and i am not saying that they should depict them as women, or nonbinary, or should depict them as feminine, no, not at all. but there's like, you know, you can depict a male character as The Character, and you can depict them as The Man. do you get me? like, i go to the fandom looking for art and fics, and it's just, regardless of his actual characterization, it's all just fantasizing about some kind of an abstract dominant patriarch, wearing my favorite character's face. it may be the most totally-wouldnt-have-normal-relationships (and sometimes even would-literally-abuse-you) kind of guy, and you join a dedicated space for his fans, and all they talk about is how they want to marry and start a tradcore 50s style nuclear family with him. it can be a guy who's arrogance and attempts of domination are explicitly shown to be a facade that hide the fact that he's actually kind of a massive pathetic wet loser, and you go to his fics, and they're all depicting him as a caricaturish daddy dom. at this point it's like, do you even like the character at all, or do you just like The Man, and project this man onto whatever character you find visually attractive? and these people kind of, really really poison actual discussion of the character, who is kind of a fucked up evil person (i only like *those* types, so im talking about them) because they see analysis of the actual character as an attack on their fantasized daddy dom husband, who is actually isn't The Character at all, and is simply a face of the day for The Man

hey friends where is that picture of boromir with the gondor flag except its a pride flag?

the "my favorite character did nothing wrong" mindset is completely unappealing to me because i love thinking about all the things my favorite characters did wrong

Being crazy about a piece of media for any amount of time will leave a weird mark on you forever because years later you’ll see someone posting something about it like “can we talk about this frame” and you’ll be like “ah that frame. i know all about that frame. I was once a scholar of that frame.”

it’s me boy it’s the oath of feanor speaking to you from inside your brain listen to me boy what you have left behind you should count now no loss; needless baggage on the road it has proved. let those that cursed your name, curse you still, and whine their way back to the cages of the valar! come with me and let the ships burn! we’ll have kinslaying times in… beleriand! doo doo doo doo ye-ea-ah! you need me boy the security of valinor is an illusio-

Not "The Character did nothing wrong" or "The Character is irredeemably awful" but a secret third thing: The Character may display moments of deep love & compassion, may even have a strong sense of ethics, and may also be capable of brutal cruelty that is irreconcilable with those traits. The constant tension between the different sides of The Character's nature is exactly what makes them compelling, and attempting to reduce them down to simply "a terrible person" or "innocent & misunderstood" is missing the point of the questions a media with nuanced characters is asking you to consider

DON'T read the silmarillion that elf will haunt you forever!!!!

When you consider that Gollum is an extremely old man who's spent most of his life in solitary confinement with heroin being injected directly into his brain every day, he's really not that unreasonable