#bofta

The background music for this scene is, very appropriately, titled “Sons of Durin”; it’s one of my favorites from the soundtrack ❤️

bearing in mind it's 2:30 in the morning and i've not slept so it's probably a mess but

so i'm rewatching botfa (again, no i have no shame i fucking love it), and in the scene where thorin finds out bilbo betrayed him, i've always noticed the heavy tears in his eyes. i honestly must have watched bofta near enough one hundred times, but this time i suddenly thought, that what if those tears are the real thorin underneath? i mean, just look at him as he gets real angry at bilbo and threatens him and tries to kill him.

and here he is in tDoS when he holds a sword to bilbo and confronts him. bilbo can see there's a shift in thorin, he's completely struck that he's threatening him like this.

but i rlly wanna talk about thorin at this point. now, richard is an absolutely incredible actor, especially when it comes to the eyes, and i can't help but think there's confusion there and resistance and worry for what he can feel the gold sickness doing to him, what it's making him do to those we all know he fiercely cares for. also, see his scene with dwalin when he threatens to kill him, too.

also, the acorn scene (because i can't not mention it, it's like shakespeare if bagginshield were poetry);

in the acorn scene, the real thorin comes back, only once, just for a few minutes, and so thorin's tears are no longer hurt or confused or panicked. they're soft, overwhelmed with emotion and fond bewilderment at how bilbo can find such solace in simple things like this. they are just relieved to be out from the suffocating sickness. this scene was supposed to show us the thorin as we all know him to be, before the paranoia and defensiveness of the fever steals him away again. but more importantly, thorin knows this is the real him.

what if thorin can feel and experience and know what the gold sickness is doing to him, to bilbo, erebor, to his nephews, to his company, but it's overtaken him?

idk just the thought that he's threatening everyone and starting wars and being a shit king and becoming his grandfather/father and leading everyone he cares abt into peril, and thorin can't do anything.

the idea that thorin is in there all along, somewhere but very clearly still in there, might explain what nudged him to tell everyone to stand down and then go walk around the gallery of kings and break free from the madness. thorin's also sort of continuously being brought back slightly by his company; bilbo's "the dwarf i met in bag end would never have gone back on his word ... doubted the loyalty of his kin" // gandalf's "thorin son of thrain" etc, so he's always close to coming out of the sickness but he barely can because it's controlling him, he has no power over it, until the tears win and thorin breaks free from the sickness at the others' words.

i also wanna mention this bit of richard talking about thorin's relationship with the fever, experienced directly through his family line; "... so when it [the sickness] starts to manifest itself in him, he knows exactly what is happening to him, and it's terrifying." so yeah, just the fact that thorin is canonically at all times conscious to what is happening and the fact that, in richard's words, it scares thorin to his bones but he's helpless.

and okay yeah ig you could say there tears in his eyes because thorin's emotions were intensified for obvious reasons, but i like to think that it's because the good heart thorin so obviously has is still in there, showing us the kind of leader he still is, that we've seen him be. but it's also tragic.