#overthinkinglotr

[overthinkinglotr]

I think the reason so many LOTR ripoffs fail is because they make their Aragorn analogue the main character, when the entire point of Aragorn is that he’s “the person the villains think is the main character, but is Not.”

Aragorn seems like a traditional King Arthur style hero— he has huge Main Character Energy because he’s supported by destiny, by bloodline, by all these magic artifacts and prophecies, and etc etc. Frodo and Sam are Just Some Guys. Aragorn recognizes that Sauron understandably thinks he’s the main hero of this story ….and he pretends to believe it too, spending the entire series using himself as a diversion to prevent Sauron from seeing Frodo and Sam.

Aragorn’s whole thing is that knows he seems like the Main Hero of this legend to people who don’t know better —- but he also knows that he isn’t, and that his role is just to keep Sauron’s eye on him in order to protect the people around him.

And it works! Sauron is so fixated on defeating his Legendary Destined Archenemy with Extreme Main Character Energy that he completely overlooks the two ordinary little guys who were the real threat to him all along.

#lotr #overthinkinglotr #Aragorn #rewatched fellowship with friends!! #and we were talking about this

[retellingthehobbit]

Welcome! This is the official tumblr blog for my webcomic adaptation of The Hobbit.

When does it update? I post a massive 20+ page chapter every few months. If you want to see one page a week, viewing a chapter as it slowly comes together and getting “sneak previews” of everything— you can support me on my Patreon.

Where can I find it? Ao3 here, or on Webtoon here. You can also see pages early on Patreon. Finally, I also crosspost to tumblr. You can start at chapter 1, or any of the links below:

Chapter 1: A Bedtime Story/Tooks and Bagginses Chapter 2: A Very Respectable Hobbit Chapter 3: Very Old Friends Chapter 4: An Unexpected Party, Part One Chapter 5: An Unexpected Party, Part Two Chapter 6: An Enormously Important Dwarf Chapter 7: The Lonely Mountain Translator's Note Chapter 8: A Tangled Web Chapter 9: Ash and Smoke Chapter 10: The Heart of the Mountain Chapter 11: Polite Nothings Chapter 12: The Company's Quest Chapter 13: The Necromancer Chapter 14: Terms & Conditions Chapter 15: Unattached Chapter 16: The Song of the Lonely Mountain Chapter 17: Dawn Chapter 18: Over the Hill and Across the Water (Coming April 13th (tentatively), first several pages up on my Patreon) Chapter 19: Roads Go Ever On (the grand finale of this arc! Coming TBD)

Chapter 20/21/22: Q & A, character sheets, miscellaneous fun (Coming TBD) In this adaptation, titled “Retelling the Hobbit,” the book is reimagined as a bedtime story told by unreliable narrator Bilbo Baggins to a younger Frodo. The art style changes depending on which character is telling the story; most of the story is in Bilbo’s art style, but when Thorin explains the history of the Lonely Mountain or Gandalf explains the history of the Necromancer, it shifts into the different art styles of those characters. The comic's typography, art, and writing gradually improves over time :).

On this tumblr blog I will post all of the chapters (tagged #chapters and #chapter number.) I will also post additional art, which I will tag #not chapters, #wip, #misc, and #announcements.

Where else can I follow you? My main is @secretmellowblog, my general art blog is @secretmellowart, and my lotr sideblog is @overthinkinglotr. I am also on instagram at @blog.mellow and on Tiktok at Mellow_art8.

Feel free to send me asks about the comic, or to @ me if you post about it! :3

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoy. <3

#pinned post #the hobbit #Tolkien #lotr #the hobbit comic #retelling the hobbit #finally making an info post as I get back into it!!!!!!

[secretmellowblog]

But if I do have the energy to post any #hot takes from rewatching lotr (which isn’t likely) I’ll probably do it on my sideblog @overthinkinglotr !

#i doubt it but also #yee

[soundsfaebutokay]

I've been thinking about @overthinkinglotr's post on how Aragorn has friends all over Middle Earth, and y'all, this man cannot help but win people over wherever he goes.

Remember that when he came to Gondor as a young man (what the movie was referencing when Aragorn told Boromir, "I have seen the White City, long ago."), he became so popular that young Denethor got twisted up with jealousy because his dad Ecthelion II loved and trusted him "above all." And they didn't even know who he truly was! He was just a dude who showed up one day in a time of crisis and was like, "Hi, I just spent the last few years helping Rohan with their problems and now it's your turn." Despite that super sketchy introduction, it wasn't long before he became the Steward's close adviser and greatest captain, while everyone in Minas Tirith looked at him with stars in their eyes. There was some serious hero worship going on. He was that good.

He dipped out after winning their hearts and their battles, and to the people of Gondor back then (except Denethor), he was totally that Mysterious Stranger who sweeps into your life, fixes your problems, makes you fall in love, then fades out into the shadows before you could ask for a commitment. And you're totally heartbroken but he did change your life for the better and you still sigh wistfully whenever you think about him.

Oh my god, Aragorn was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in his youth.

#seriously check out the appendices #Thorongil was basically Gondor's The One that Got Away #until he shows up again years later #somehow even more attractive #probably looking like Viggo Mortensen #and he's like #hey girl I've loved you all this time and I'm ready to settle down #also I can tell you my real name now I hear you've been waiting for me? #lol if you were Gondor what would you do #my Tolkien thoughts #Arda #my faves

[hello-robin-goodfellow]

January 03th (J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday)

July 29th (Anniversary of The Fellowship of the Ring publication in the year of 1954).

September 22th (Date chosen by Professor Tolkien to be the birthday of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, and named Hobbit Day by the Tolkien Fandom (known as ringers).

November 21th (Christopher Tolkien’s birthday).

@overthinkinglotr @mademoiselle-princesse

@superkingofpriderock @musicalhell @secretmellowblog @diversetolkien 

#l.o.t.r #lord of the rings #the lord of the rings #cinema #literature #fantasy #j.r.r. tolkien #tolkien #tolkien's legendarium #peter jackson #ask game #tag game

[rin-jinkato]

Wildly delighted to find out I'm a blind fool for not realizing @secretmellowblog has a LOTR blog, @overthinkinglotr and it is INCREDIBLE 🤩🤩🤩

#secretmellowblog #spent 20 minutes reading lots of things #youre amazing

[coolnerdyrn]

On this most illustrious of days in the Tolkien fandom, let us not forget it is also the anniversary of Frodo Baggins doing the chicken dance. @overthinkinglotr

#lord of the rings #lotr #tolkien #hobbits #frodo

[captainsupernoodle]

i haven’t even CONSIDERED giving the hobbit movies the time of day until i read @overthinkinglotr‘s post about how lotr introduces new settings from the perspective of the characters (including their current emotional state) while the hobbit is just kinda like here!! an epic fantasy setting!! completely divorced from the characters’ perspectives

disclaimer - haven’t seen the hobbit in a while, but watching the scene of when the dwarves enter erebor gave me a glimpse into what a more mature and serious adaption of the hobbit might have looked like.

first of all, juggling 13 characters for your main cast is insane. lotr handled seven main characters and a high number of supporting characters, but the company is nearly twice that and there’s still the minor characters to think about. but! from what i recall, a lot of the main cast is severely underdeveloped. introducing a whole bunch of characters via their “stereotypes” (characterization-wise, NOT physically) is valid for getting a bunch of different people on screen very quickly, but then you have to DEVELOP those characters and portray who they are as people rather than stereotypes.

i can remember less than half of the dwarves and i couldn’t give you all of their names, which might have been unavoidable, but even the “core” of the main cast barely gets development. why are all these people here? it’s for erebor, obviously, but why did thorin pick this set, specifically? They’re warriors, but i’m pretty sure at least one of them carries around a book and records a lot of the journey (maybe the same dwarf that wrote the “drums, drums in the deep” record?????????), but i didn’t catch that until i saw it pointed out. that’s interesting!! what is the dwarvish attitude towards preservation of history? is he here, officially, as a historical observer or is it just a hobby? who were these people before the company? how many of them remember it? does anyone have doubts, about returning to erebor or about thorin handling the archenstone? apparently most of them are relatives of thorin’s - does that make them minor royalty? it’s been a heckin long time, but do any of them have keepsakes? have they made an effort to keep elements of their previous life, like traditions and holidays and clothing styles, or was everything lost when they were driven from the mountain? is this the first time in a while that they’ve gotten to get together or do they all know each other and live in the same place?

again, i barely remember most of the films, but there’s so much focus on things like the white orc and tauriel and the big battles while the fact that this is pretty much just a journey to reclaim a ruined home for most of the company seems like it might have been buried. There’s a lot of material here that could’ve evoked the same kinds of emotions as boromir describing the trumpets of gondor calling him home, but i don’t recall too much focus on things like that.

#make! things! emotional! so that we! can feel! emotions! #i mean it's true they'd have to invent most of this whole-cloth #but were the dwarves developed at all in the appendices? #what are their attitudes towards other major historical events? #were there hints of what sauron was gearing up to do even during the time of the hobbit? #in lotr they say the dwarves have their own problems #would some of them have been happening around this time? #the whole story would've had a whole bunch of risk to develop in this direction #but lbr pretty much any adaption of something as huge #and epic as lotr also carried enormous risk #could've at least risked offending some hobbit purists in the name of having #an emotionally compelling story #the hobbit #lotr #longpost #noodle speaks #meta

[radellama]

@overthinkinglotr jazz ring wraiths?

#lotr shitpost #lotr memes #ring wraith #jdjddkdodof I could not get this out of my head since you talked about it and I laughed the whole time making it jddjdjd

[overthinkinglotr]

One thing I feel people miss about lord of the rings is that it’s sort of..........post-apocalyptic?

Like-- the world already ended, a long time ago, and the characters are surrounded by the ruins of dead countries. They spend most of their time journeying through places that are either abandoned (Moria) soon to be abandoned (Rivendell/Lorien) or half-destroyed and falling into decay (Rohan/Gondor.) The villains are creatures that Used to be Human; I feel like Lotr’s orcs/ringwraiths have more in common with zombies than they do with DnD-style orcs, because they’re a state that “normal” people enter when they’re corrupted by a supernatural force.

Even the Shire is surrounded by ruins-- the ruins of watchtowers, the ruins of the old Northern Kingdom, the ruined city near the Grey Havens. The people around there have an idiom “when the king comes back” that means the same thing as an idiom like “when pigs fly”--  “when a completely ridiculous improbable thing happens.” They’re so used to the disintegrated state of the world that the idea of a central government is fairy-tale-like and bizarre. They have their little mayors and thains; they don’t need anything else.

So yeah! I see people try to “modern-real-world- au” versions of Hobbiton by making it “a peaceful suburb” but to me, a modern au version of Hobbiton would be more like.......

You are a hobbit.

You don’t know much history, but you understand that there were Wars a long time ago that destroyed a great amount of life on earth.

You live in a little hole in the ground. You don’t know that long ago these holes used to be called “bunkers;” you decorate them with flowers.

When you want to say that something won’t happen, you’ll sarcastically say things “lol yeah SURE that will happen! And tomorrow pigs will fly, Parliament will come back into session, there will be a president in the White House, there will be a prime minister making speeches, and diplomats will intercede between all of them! ha! XD”

If you journey even a little outside of your home, you’ll find the ruins of old cities and skyscrapers. There are messages in the ruins that are written in languages you don’t speak. Human beings used to live here; they don’t anymore.

And you’re not supposed to leave the Shire because sometimes you’ll meet the things that used to be human, but aren’t anymore.

#lotr #overthinkinglotr #lord of the rings #anyway the setting is such an important part of the story ;-;

[citizen-of-the-fandom]

@khazzman @coolnerdynursingstudent @isi7140 @avenger-shaped-plotholes

Now that @overthinkinglotr has brought us all together in common purpose and I have done the stalkerish thing of scanning their replies to see who else plays, can I ask which server you all play on? I haven't played in months but I want to more regularly.

I'm on Arkenstone (and Arnor) and in the kinship Band of Brothers.

#want to get into the more social aspect of the game #which i have thus far soloed as much as possible #i still think of myself as a noob #:)

[secretmellowblog]

Frodo/Sam hours ;_;

#lotr #samfro #overthinkinglotr #'don't go where i can't follow?' #thinking about Frodo's sea-longing again #also #thinking about how Into the West is from Sam's pov again #imagine loving and being loved like that #someone who will love you in all your damaged glory and etc etc #this is why they invented love #anyway catch me listening to Merelle and the Grey Havens theme on repeat #;_; #;______________;

[tetsufierro]

Did you know Daedalic Entertainment is working on a Gollum Game?

It is based on the book world, not the PJ-Movies, and portraits an independent story about Gollums escape from Barad-dur he tells Gandalf in an interrogation. Also Thranduil is affirmed to appear. During his journey, Gollum will travel through Mirkwood and Cirith Ungol.

The preview by german magazine Gamestar also speaks about companions. Like a Haradrim and an owl. The Gameplay is supposed to be like the Styx-Games. You also have decisions based on your playstyle and representing the violent natures of gollum and the innocent nature of Smeargol.

Release is supposed to be 2021 for PC, XBOX Series X and Playstastion 5.

@overthinkinglotr

#lord of the rings #lotr #tolkien #daedalic entertainment #books #novells #games #video games #pc #xbox series x #playstation 5 #ps5 #middle earth #german #english #gamestar #gollum

[punch-a-bunch]

@overthinkinglotr thank you for these amazing tags you’re so right

#its the tenderness #one of my fave blogs reblogged my samfro gifset???? and added these beautiful tags???????? wow <3 #you made my day thank you :’’) #lotr

[hello-robin-goodfellow]

Afternoon flamboyant tree 

By: Alicia Maury.

@princesssarisa @lioness--hart @mademoiselle-princesse @overthinkinglotr

#alicia maury #paintings #art #aesthetics #inspiration station

[emeraldskulblaka]

(I'm also @overthinkinglotr) I just wanted to say thank you for posting so much information about the LOTR musical! I really LOVE the LOTR musical, and you've helped me find out so much more about it!!

Thank you so much, you're so sweet!

The LotR musical has been one of my favourite musicals for four years now, and I'm so glad you took the time to share your thoughts.

Ever since February (when I was fortunate enough to hear Wonder sung live), the LotR musical has been ever-present on my blog and in my thoughts, so it's awesome to see more people getting into it!

Actually, I need to thank YOU for promoting so many different adaptations of The Lord of the Rings on your blog! It's incredibly fascinating getting to know so many "obscure" ones. You're awesome, keep doing what you're doing <3

#ask #secretmellowblog #thank you #this makes me so happy #lotr musical #I'll try to scan the gary russell book tomorrow I waited for half an hour and then decided the scanner queue at uni was too long