#rings of power negativity

[soul-spices]

watch me age 10 years after reading the short interview with ROP’s script writers

they are so lovingly applied, they aren’t even visible. Amazing.

having to take the passive aggressiveness of a 40+ year old white man-child in a Tolkien adaptation is something I never thought I would experience, but here we are, Mister Payne.

also, can you maybe stop using the “Well Tolkien never mentioned x thing” argument? You can use this as a template excuse to justify basically anything. Which is probably why you’re overusing it in the first place.

 the hairstyles changing over time seem to apply solely to male elf characters, who now sport short, gelled up hair, mullets, fades and buzzcuts; and not the female elf characters, who still have long hair. How very gender normative of you! Truly, the public applauds you for your backwards views in this very contemporary adaptation.

amazing Mister McKay. I’m left in awe at your lore knowledge, yet I cannot help but notice you didn’t gave Galadriel her iconic braided crown hairstyle; the hairstyle that TOLKIEN DESCRIBED HER WEARING during the first age. You show that you know the lore, yet you seem to have put little of your knowledge into the show itself. This is truly and quite an amazing feat. Bravo.

i forgot who created this month old meme, to credit them, but it seems to be still valid to the discussion:

firstly, the fault is not that Galadriel is portrayed as a warrior. The issue is how piss-poor you’ve written her as one ( among other things I won’t go into here). You’ve basically written her as the most generic and unlikable manchild-warrior-protag ™

secondly, Nerwen is not a “nickname”, it is the name given by her mother because Galadriel was the tallest female elf among her peers ( and in all ME history, if we’re going meta), and because she was athletic, and liked partaking in sparring with other elves. She wasn’t called Nerwen because she was manifesting the manchild-warrior-protag ™  vibes you cursed her with. Maybe Mister Payne is projecting his own inner man-child into the character he’s likely writing for the script.

thirdly, since we are playing ‘taking the names as literal as physically possible’ game, did you know that her birth name, Artanis, means “noble woman” in elvish? Funny how we don’t see any of the diplomacy of a noble person in her character during your show. Interesting how you wrote her character to be brash and muscle headed :) with the social skills of a petulant child.

no. no, I don’t think I have anymore patience for this.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter Interview

#anti rop #anti rings of power #anti amazon #rings of power negativity #rings of power criticism #rop criticism #rop negativity #anti trop #trop negativity #trop critical #i feel ancient and tired

[anipologist]

Wait Halbrand was Sauron? I would have never guessed...man was the least suspicious character in the entire show. Nothing at all about him screamed "I am a violent dark lord who likes metalsmithing."

Like...I'm flabbergasted. The person who was very obviously Sauron from the beginning of the show was....gasp Sauron. And the person who was very obviously Gandalf from the beginning of the show was....gasp Gandalf!

Such convincing plot twists…

I mean once the weird sisters turned up and told me Gandalf was Sauron all thoughts fled my mind and I found myself agreeing. Of course the stranger hanging out in grey rags with hobbits was Sauron. Obviously the show runners had given up hope that my puny mind could comprehend the depths of their convoluted and circumlocutory genius and felt I needed to be ordered to believe that Gandalf was Sauron.

But they tricks us precious! Who could have seen it coming? After telling us that the stranger is Sauron he is not….he is Good? What a twist! I couldn’t have seen that coming if I had a telescope.

And who could have foreseen all the years of working together and cultivating trust and working with Celebrimbor in ring making could all be summed up by a suggestion to use alloys. Who could have thought of such a blatantly obviously solution. Definitely not the grandson of the greatest elven smith to ever live…WHAT A GIFT.

(Currently ignoring the rest of the mithril storyline for my remaining sanity's sake).

Completely unrelated thought…mentioning something about alloys definitely deserves a whole epessë,…maybe we should call this generous character the Lord of Gifts…

Ok, yes I am being sarcastic and snarky but I am just so disgusted. I have had a lot of problems with this show. I didn’t trust Amazon once the first couple episodes started coming out. Apparently I still held onto an entirely undeserved sliver of hope. But for heavens sake this is a caricature of a parody of Tolkien. An entire season of a show literally titled THE RINGS OF POWER and the rings of power turn up for a tiny portion of the final episode.

Another thing....having actors not know who they are actually playing once they start filming is one of the stupidest things the movie/tv industry is currently obsessed with. It makes zero sense from a directorial and acting standpoint and has no payoff except for idiotic headlines like "Sauron actor didn't know he was Sauron". That's so grossly insulting to the actor and the audience.

#the rings of power #anti rings of power #anti rop #anti trop #rings of power critical #trop spoilers #trop critical #rings of power negativity #yes I am venting #i am this close to going up like stupid rube goldberg orodruin #there is so much else wrong with this whole show #but this post would never end if i kept going #particularly the gil-gilad slander #who wrote this show #curufin? #was this revenge after celebrimbor renounced him #the idiocy of galadriel telling halbrand to his face that he is the lost king when he assures her that he isn't #and then having the nerve to feel betrayed when it turns out he was telling the truth

[bereft-of-frogs]

(paraphrased) ‘the forging of the rings shows Galadriel that elves can be corrupted which she’s never seen before’

#CANT BELIEVE I HAVE A SECOND USE OF THIS GIF TODAY #look I’m TRYING not to be a toxic fan but that would be easier if it would stop being SHOVED in my FACE #this last marketing push is TOO MUCH #I know they can’t touch the silmarillion without the estate having a stroke but STILL #and yet we still have no answers re: where tf is Celeborn #rings of power negativity #like I am trying to avoid things but the realities of Web 3.0 means it’s impossible #like there’s genuinely no way to avoid it without I guess installing a million adblockers and avoiding any algorithm based sites #which I should probably do anyways

[symphonyofsilence]

So, now, according to TROP, Finrod, in Valinor calls Galadriel 'Galadriel', which is a name given to her by her husband after she goes to Middle-earth and sees him there. the aforementioned husband has not been mentioned in the show so far. instead, Galadriel flirts with an original character and to a lesser extent, with her future son-in-law who is generations younger than her and is apparently her bestie now. (But they don't even mention that Galadriel is Gil-Galad's aunt cuz God forbid she actually has some of the caliber that she canonically had. Nobody listens to her, nobody looks up to her, nobody even calls her "lady".) She doesn't even inform her husband and says goodbye to him when she decides to go to Valinor. She doesn't go to see him when she apparently comes back from years of expedition.

(And Galadriel and Halbrand accidentally hold hands in their sleep in the concept art so make of that what you will.)

Also, Galadriel is the Sindrin form of "Alarariel". The Noldor of Valinor, including Finrod, didn't know Sindarin, a language spoken by the elves of Middle-earth.

Then how should have they shown that this child is Galadriel you might ask? Well, they didn't have any problem showing her with the same shift she was wearing in her childhood flashback when she was grown up! But actually, I say, change that whole scene! The point of the scene was probably Finrod's dialogue about the buoyancy of the stone and holly shit! Was that bad! The dialogues are so trying to be philosophical and epic and end up so cringe!

And apparently, Finrod had sworn to find Sauron?? And Sauron found him first?? And killed him?? After the first age??

And look, there is "breaking lore" and then there is "eliminating the whole Akallabeth" which the show is about.

Finrod dies saving Beren. If Finrod wasn't with Beren in the quest for Silmarils, Beren would have died. (Since Beren managed to get that close to Sauron because of Finrod's shapeshifting arts, he might have died sooner.)

And had Beren died, there would have been no Dior. No Dior, no Elwing. No Elwing, no Elrond and Elros.

Elrond is now in the series, and Elros is the first king of Nomenor, which is the subject of a large part of the series.

And it may seem that this will just eliminate the first king of Numenor. But no. There will be no Numenor at all.

Had Beren died, the Silmaril would not have been taken from Melkor's crown and gone to Doriath. The sons of Fëanor wouldn't attack Doriath. Elwing, who would not exist in this scenario, even if she did, wouldn't have gone to Sirion and would not meet Eärendil, and once again, Elrond and Elros wouldn't exist. But more importantly, the sons of Fëanor wouldn't attack Sirion, and therefore Elving wouldn't throw herself into the sea with the Silmaril, so Earendil wouldn't know that his land was gone and that his children had probably died, and reached his last straw and gone to Valinor to ask for help, and because the Silmaril wasn't with him he wouldn't have managed to reach Valinor.

So Eärendil wouldn't have reached Valinor to ask for help, the War of Wrath wouldn't have happened, Beleriand would still be in Melkor's grasp, and the men wouldn't have helped the Valar during the War of Wrath so the Valar wouldn't create Numenor as a reward for them.

Therefore, a huge part of the series should not exist.

But no, apparently the showrunners thought it was more important to change Finrod's death to motivate Galadriel's absurd plotline, in which the wisest of the Eldar throws herself into the ocean and sidestrokes her way from Valinor to Middle-earth. (Valinor that Galadriel was not allowed to go to in the first place... so the whole point of the scene where Galadriel passes her test by rejecting the ring and succeeds in going to Valinor is lost. After removing the story of Galadriel's ambition and that she had come to Middle-earth to rule a land of her own and spent the Second Age looking for that land, and replacing it with this pointless plotline, removing both Galadriel's arc and the weight of the scene that she rejects the power of the ring.)

Also, apparently, Finrod took the oath of Fëanor. Yes, technically, that wasn't the oath of Fëanor. That causes its own problems but I understand that they didn't have the rights to some things but then THEY SHOULD HAVE LEFT IT ALONE! But a bunch of elves holding their swords out while the narrator is talking about how the Noldor swore to defeat the enemy and went to Middle-earth is alluding to the oath! They knew what they were doing when they added it!

And they could have just added a bunch of elves crossing ice with Galadriel, Finrod, and a dark-haired man in blue leading them?! Show the Noldor coming to Middle-earth, strong Galadriel being a leader, Finrod coming to Middle-earth, and a little cameo of Fingolfin without basically showing Fingolfin if they hadn't had the rights (just like how they showed little ginger children in Valinor probably with Amrod and Amras in mind) and stay true to the lore!

Also, with that hairstyle, show! Finrod looks like a popular but bullying captain of a high school's basketball team who would bully book! Finrod for being a theater nerd.

Oh, and, Celebrimbor apparently doesn't have any relationship with the dwarves before Elrond's arrival.

And Elrond, the heir to the Sindarin throne via Thingol, Noldrin (Gil-Galad's heir) via Turgon, and all the houses of the Edain is not an "elf lord" enough!

And yes! That was important! Cuz Elrond, the heir to any thone that there is, CHOSE instead become a healer, minstrel, linguist, loremaster and basically hotel manager. (I like what Robert Aramayo did with the role though. Elrond, Durin, and Disa were the only characters I liked.)

They keep needlessly going against canon! Not having the rights to this book and that book is not an excuse to willfully go against anything the books say!

And you might say that these go against the books, but are not bad writing.

Well, there is bad writing, too.

Show! Galadriel is SUCH a one-dimensional, unlikable, unrelatable character. All she was during the whole thing was angry and in posession of a dagger. With a single purpose and one thing to do. Making bad decisions while pretending to be wise. And the acting doesn't help it at all.

And jumping from the edge of a sword?! Listen, either your world has rules different from ours, or it's the same and you can't break physical rules in such a world! When you establish swords and people's wrists in your world as something that can be deflected with other swords, you can't say that they can endure (the weight of a person+ their armor)×(the acceleration of that person+ g) AND navigate a distance (r×teta) while enduring this weight to give that person an acceleration!

And you can't make people care about your characters and thus their plotlines with 5 minutes at most for each of them in every episode! There's not enough time for anyone to get invested. They don't have any filler scenes to show their characters and their relationship and make us care about them.

And that going to Valinor scene?!

We KNOW Galadriel wouldn't go to Valinor. So if you're choosing that bold plotline (going against the canon and logic along the way) the focus shouldn't be on whether or not she would go, but HOW she wouldn't go! I guess it was supposed to have the emotional weight of someone rejecting heaven for a cause or a person or something but it didn't work. Cuz we didn't know this show's Galadriel. We didn't know much about her adventures in Middle-earth and her relationship to the land, how she fought for it, who she had there (like...you'd think adding Celeborn and Celebrian would have helped), and her cause, keeping Finrod's oath did not work cause FINROD DIDN'T HAVE SUCH AN OATH!

And there is a LOT OF telling and not showing.

So yeah, to answer the showrunners question "can we make the novel that Tolkien never wrote?", yes, you can. You just did. Tolkien never wrote any of these. And would never.

#tolkien #silmarillion #lotr #the rings of power #trop #rop #lotr on prime #I pirated it #amazon lotr #galadriel #finrod #celebrimbor #elrond #my two cents #anti rings of power #trop negativity

[mag-lore]

Amazon: we're making our show diverse to represent the modern world through rings of power !!

Also Amazon: gives almost all the male elves short stereotypically masculine haircuts while the female elves all have long hair. Ignoring the fact that all elves have long hair and all look very similar and androgynous. Gives the female dwarves no facial/body hair and stereotypically feminine clothing, ignoring the canon fact that dwarf women are indistinguishable from dwarf men and therefore look very manly. Removes all the queer coding from Sauron's character, making him a cisgender man who looks very stereotypically masculine and has a beard. Also gives him a forced heterosexual love interest. Makes him and Ar-Pharazon have virtually no interaction and therefore a completely different relationship than they have in the canon. Casts Celebrimbor much older than he is written and removes almost all of his scenes and interactions with Sauron, replacing him in almost all of the canon scenes they have together with Galadriel.

Seems like your "diversity" excludes anything queer coded that exists in the canon as well as relationships that could be and often are read as queer. Painting middle earth as aggressively cisheteronormative even if that means fundamentally changing existing characters and races.

#not to bring rop discourse into 2024 #but this has been on my mind for awhile #and before anyone says anything #no i dont think tolkien wrote annatar and celebrimbor as gay #or any of the other things i mentioned were created by him with the express purpose of being queer #however #i thought this was an important point to make #rop negativity #rings of power #lotr on prime

[gi-nathlam-hi]

for people being mad about this, that, and the other part of the Silmarillion which Rings of Power has altered, failed to mention, or glazed over in passing -- claiming that they have no respect for the source material, I am begging you to understand copyright laws. 

Finrod’s death? Still a cool way to go. Definitely not as cool as wrestling a werewolf with his bare hands but they don’t have the rights to that. That’s in the Silmarillion.

Disa being named Disa? Yes, it’s Dis with an ‘a’ at the end. They don’t have the rights to Dis.

The whole glazed-over kinslaying situation? They don’t have the rights to that either. They literally are not allowed to go into too much detail about it or get specific. 

Oh, and all of the details about Elvish hair/aesthetics? That’s all in LaCE. They’re not ignoring it. They don’t have the rights to that either.

And also, I can’t blame them for wanting to separate themselves a little from PJ’s (outstanding) work. PJ was a less than accurate adaption. Especially where the elves are concerned. And it was so utterly white. But his elves are NOT Tolkien’s elves. They’re missing a very distinct joy and sincerity in a strong bid to make them ethereal. And his dwarves are mere comedic relief.

Rings of Power treats Elves and Dwarves much more sincerely, I feel. Their dwarves are so noble and family orientated and smart! They still have some chaos-gremlin vibes but also the culture! the stone-songs! I love them!

And Rings of Power gives us elves who joke with each other and rib each other and elves who feel things so intensely, as Elves canonically do. I never really got that from PJ’s ethereal brooding elves.

Yes, Rings of Power gave us short-haired elves that are much more down-to-earth than we’re used to, but to me they actually feel closer to Tolkien’s work. 

I’ve seen so many complaints but so much of what they are ‘changing’ is just down to the fact that there are things the Tolkien estate has told them they’re not allowed to touch. I understand, then, the question of “then why adapt the Silmarillion” and that’s valid. But honestly I’m just begging you to understand that they’re constrained by copyright laws. That means that there are going to be deviations from canon. A lot of them, actually. But it really feels to me like they very much love and care about the source material. They’re not altering it out of disrespect for Tolkien’s work. They’re making judgements about how to tell the same story, with the characters that still feel like themselves, while having to greatly alter or leave out huge chunks of canon events. And yeah, they are squishing the timeline. Like holy shit are they squishing the timeline. But honestly that doesn’t feel like a very big deal to me. Fanfics have made more egregious sins than compacting the entire Second Age into the span of one human lifetime. 

It’s a fanfic AU. That’s all it is. And IMO it’s actually a very decent fanfic AU. There is so much love here for Tolkien’s work. Is it the best show I’ve ever seen? No, no it’s not really. But it IS a good fanfic. 

(and Robert Aramayo is absolutely killing his role, holy shit). 

#the rings of power #not inviting negative discourse #i'll block you #but healthy discussion is valid and welcome #the script can use some work at certain points i feel #and sometimes i feel it needs an extra edit #but so far i love all the characters and it DOES feel like it comes from a place of genuine love #and also the prop design and set design and costume design departments are KILLING it #and ALSO we get orcs!!!! with prosthetics!!! not fucking CGI orcs!! and they are doing scale work!!!!!!!!!! #i will NEVER forgive the hobbit for its use of CGI #and also for how badly they fucked up the costumes

[fixing-bad-posts]

From your tags: "if anyone wants to ask me about rings of power please do because i have thoughts™" This is me asking. (Also love your blog!)

i love you for asking, thank you 💛💛💛 this will be part three: parting thoughts & the funniest details from rings of power (part one; part two).

some parting thoughts:

i absolutely hate that all critics of the show are labelled as racists, misogynists, and anti-progressives, especially when the show’s treatment of women is tokenizing and pitiful, and it does nothing revolutionary nor makes a meaningful statement on issues of marginalized race. they don’t get to position themselves as champions of diversity just by doing the bare minimum and casting poc in side-roles, and having one original-character black elf whose plotline is tragically underwritten. they’re already taking vast liberties with the source material—why not a black galadriel? why not an asian elrond?

with that out of the way, some of my favourite* parts from rings of power:

* when i say "favourite" i mean i'm about to make fun of the show.

i love the part in the show where galadriel spends years of her life tracking down the ‘mark of sauron’—which looks like a little stylized pitchfork—only to discover it’s actually not a sigil. it’s a map, turned sideways, and sketched in modern minimalist style with the least helpful, least detailed, least interpretable shapes because apparently morgoth was really really bad at drawing mountains. and sauron, for some reason, is so forgetful that he carves this “map” into dead bodies and his tables and weapons and gloves so that he? won’t forget which mountain range he’s trying to conquer? wants to give his enemies fun clues about his favourite piece of real estate? unclear.

i love that one scene where galadriel and halbrand are on a raft and the set designers/director did not give morfydd clark enough stage business so she spends the whole scene pulling the same piece of rope tight, and then loosening it, and then pulling it tight again, on a random piece of wood.

in the same vein, i love the part where a conversation between nori and her mom happens except the stage business they were given for the scene was apparently… rub a rock on a piece of wood. and they just have to do that for the entire scene as if it’s normal.

i love the part where the writers seemingly forgot to actually go in and edit their placeholder dialogue and they have gandalf yell, “i’m good!” when he’s mistaken for sauron in the finale.

i love the part where galadriel discovers who sauron is and then goes inside and does not tell anyone what she learned for some reason. and elrond asks her what’s up and she’s just like, there’s no time to explain. and then never explains ever.

i think it’s really funny that the writers want sauron to be “like walter white, tony soprano and the joker,” when these characters have nothing in common except being well-written characters. i like to imagine they sit around the writers’ room examining every single piece of well-written television, marvelling over the very idea of multifaceted characters—a concept completely foreign to them.

and, for posterity—i have fun criticizing rings of power. i like to think i gave rop a fair shot—when i started watching it, i was fully hoping it would be well-done. when i heard the show was coming out, it gave me an excuse to re-read the silmarillion for the first time in years, and has connected me with the tolkien fandom on tumblr. i’m also a script writer irl and, so it’s been a fun exercise to pick apart why the show didn’t work for me both from a fan’s perspective and a writer’s perspective. a lot of tolkien fans are deeply hurt by this show and hate its existence and its fans—that’s not me. i would not be engaging with this material if i wasn’t having a good time doing it.

that's all for me, folks—thanks for tuning in; i'll shut up about this now haha.

#ask fbp #anon ask #fandom posting #rop critical #anti rop #anti amazon lotr #anti rings of power #amazon rings of power #rings of power #rings of power negative #anti trop #rings of power critical #rings of power analysis #rings of power meta

[three--rings]

Someone: Rings of Power is just a generic fantasy show, I don’t get what’s wrong with that.

Me: See.  See.  That hurts my soul. 

(And like this is not a personal attack on anyone watching and enjoying the show, or anyone expressing this opinion.)

But like, imagine your favorite thing.  Like book, TV show, whatever, something really personally important to you that you deeply love.  And then imagine someone took that thing, used the names but changed all the specifics and made the characters OOC and made a semi-mediocre generic version of it. 

Like, no I haven’t watched it, tbf.  But I’ve read reviews and all the positive things people say is like the CGI is pretty and it’s nice generic fantasy.  And like...sorry, that’s not enough.  

Like, this is not even really an ADAPTATION, so much as a bastardization, and I think that’s what people need to understand.  They don’t own enough of the rights from my understanding to make it an adaptation.  They are apparently making all of this up from the LOTR appendices?  IDEK.  They don’t own any of Silm and they’re trying to tell the story of it?  Without infringing copyright, meaning it can’t actually be accurate to what Tolkien wrote?  Someone explain this to me. 

One thing that’s occurred to me from this whole thing is that I might be part of the last generation to read Tolkien before seeing any adaptation of his works.  Like I can’t imagine that for people born after the turn of the millennium that they are likely to read the thousand page, somewhat difficult novel without having watched the films.  And that’s fine.  If I had kids, no doubt I’d make them watch the films first to get them interested.

But when I was 11 a family friend gave me The Hobbit and impressed upon me that it was incredibly important that I read this book.  I finished it and immediately made my mom buy me the whole LOTR set.  It took me I think until I was 12 to make it through the whole thing. 

I absolutely cannot express how much Tolkien became part of my soul.  I’ve been using the name threerings in some form since I was 12 and it’s a LOTR reference. 

Younger people can’t know how controversial the Peter Jackson films were before they came out.  How fans scrutinized every little thing to find fault.  The casting of Elijah Wood, omg, the howls against it. 

I was working my first job out of college when the Fellowship came out.  I took the day off to go see it, along with HALF MY OFFICE.  We had our office holiday party that night and LOTR was the major topic of conversation.  (okay we were geeks, yes.)  The debates over the changes.  Arwen instead of Glorfindel, etc...

But the Jackson films (the first three at least, I have Hobbit Opinions) showed themselves to be faithful adaptations made with love and understanding of the source.  Like not perfect.  But mostly with changes that made sense or which could be overlooked.  Tolkien fans felt their cherished texts had been respected.

But this?  This is like all that anxiety and skepticism and then...the best anyone can say is it’s not too bad for generic fantasy. 

I can’t.  You know?  I don’t want to watch my most beloved characters of Galadriel and Elrond (two of the three holders of the Three Rings, btw) in a bastardized generic fantasy. 

#that amazon show #so much debate over what to tag this #but whatever I've been using this for months so #rings of power #rings of power negative #which you can block if you don't want to see me bitching

[mistergandalf]

ULTIMATE TOLKIEN BLORBO: ROUND ONE

MAEDHROS vs. CELEBRIMBOR

See the ULTIMATE TOLKIEN BLORBO MASTERPOST for details and follow #ultimate tolkien blorbo to cast your vote for the blorbiest blorbo of all!

#ultimate tolkien blorbo #the silmarillion #silmarillion #tolkien #maedhros #celebrimbor #if you're mad I used RoP!brimby then I don't care #maedhros is my blorbo anyway #this is a rings of power positive blog but if you hate it that's fine #but leaving comments on this post or in the tags that are RoP negative means I will block you :) #which means you won't get to see the rest of the polls and results! #kindly keep your thoughts out of my activity feed thank you!

[curufinrod]

THE RINGS OF POWER (2022) 

Main Trailer x Allusions to the Years of the Trees and the First Age

#Amazon LOTR #Rings of Power #Lord of the Rings #oneringnet #The Silmarillion #silmedit #lotredit #tolkienedit #lotrrop #finrod #house of feanor #house of finwe #flashing tw #violence tw #galadriel #fantasycreatorsnet #note: if you try to rt this with negativity you WILL be blocked #do NOT bring your oh no they're gonna fuck it up energy onto MY posts #this has been a PSA #userwanyin

[honeyrins]

[MDZS + DC] For me and the other 4 ppl that it might interest, today I bring you: Wei Wuxian Green Lantern AU!

(+ A-Yuan and conflicted but always righteous Blue Lantern Lan Zhan!) ❤️💙

#mdzs #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #green lantern #lan sizhui #dc #for the peeps that dont know green r powered by willpower/blue by hope/yellow by fear #lan zhan breaking the rules by deciding to power up yellow lantern wei ying despite blues usually drainin negative emotion rings is so drama

[bereft-of-frogs]

So where I’ve landed on amazons rings of power - which I was trying really hard not to think about today and just enjoy watching return of the king, but it’s on my mind even if I’ve tried to stuff it back down - is that I will not be watching it. Just, with every trailer that comes up, I get less likely to watch it myself (we are in some extreme lows of probability I will watch it), but I really really need someone to watch it and live text it to me. I have so many questions that I both desperately need answers for (where is Celeborn???? Where???) and desperately do not want to find out for myself. I need a filter on this content. One of my friends is going to have to take one for the team and be the one to watch it for all of us. It can’t be me, I’m not strong enough.

#rings of power negativity #I’ll keep that negativity tag if anyone would like to filter it #honestly I hope to not need it that much to just…sit back and ignore its existence #but just in case I have to be upset about what they’ve done to Elrond again lol #and I need these answers #where is Celeborn?? #where is he??????

[rings-of-power-realm]

Sent to me by a Twitter Moot Orlando Bloom on Instagram supporting Ismael <3

 LOTR Cast supporting our Rings of Power Cast makes me so happy! <3 

#the rings of power #ismael cruz córdova #orlando bloom #positivity #a true fellowship <3 #they truly did put everything into this #been bummed out by the haters lately and it makes me sad I can't go on insta #or barely anywhere for fear of seeing negative hateful comments #I just have to remember the rop cast knows they have support #and my beloved LOTR cast are behind them too #that means everything <3

[sindar-princeling]

anything new from ROP? im still reluctant to watch the show, and i trust your judgment most in review

a few weeks after the season ended I can say the only things that will stay with me is frustration and also the sheer amazement at how hard I can deny things. I literally lived in denial about halbrand being sauron until the very last moment. and don't get me wrong, I had been seeing the theories about it, I just completely waved them off because i thought it was way too stupid to be true and so every hint that appeared on the screen wasn't processed as a hint by my brain and I forgot it as soon as I watched it. i refused to connect the dots SO HARD i actually thought there were no clues for the reveal until I looked back at the season again. I didn't even know my brain could do that, just Not See something so hard that it really, genuinely misses what's right in front of it. truly amazing

and the thing is, I usually DO see the connections in shows and books and shit, but here i was expecting something else (sauron being well. sauron and not Just Some Guy) to happen so hard that it legitimately, utterly blinded me to everything. it's so fucking funny to me

(thank you for saying you trust my judgement! ♡♡♡♡♡ it means a lot)

#i still dont know how i managed that. the hints were so obvious its actually funny and i just Averted My Gaze #the show: LOOK SAURON IS HERE!!!!!! HES ACTUALLY SAURON #me who looked at Halbrand is sauron theory once and decided it was fundamentally dumb and made no sense canon-wise: #*looks straight at halbrand* hmmmmm i wonder where sauron is. i wonder what theyll do with him #rop negative #rings of power #anon #no questions except on party business

[thefollow-spot]

As an avid writer of fanfiction, I resent Rings of Power for doing what so many fans do for free, in obscurity, out of love and passion for MONEY, for AMAZON, with entitlement to praise, recognition, and canonization. Shitty headcanons and shitty AUs and dialogue that doesn't quite have a grip on how to write high-fantasy without sounding pretentious is fun and amazing and I have spent years of my life consuming it and producing it, but it belongs on ff.net, not in the public consciousness, not in paid ads, and definitely not on Amazon Prime.

#The story RoP tells doesn't deserve to be mass media #Now—am I watching and enjoying it? Yes‚ of course‚ I'm a fan of Supernatural. You think I can't enjoy a bad show? #Halbrand needs to be shirtless #anti rop #rop crit #rop critical #rop negativity #rings of power critical #amazon rings of power #rings of power #the rings of power #rings of power tv show

[fixing-bad-posts]

I haven't watched rop myself but I would absolutely like to hear your thoughts. Like, this is your cue to vent (if you wanna) :)

okay so i just got three asks about rings of power when i didn’t expect anyone to actually message me about this at all!!! as such, i’ll be giving my opinion in three parts with this being, part one: rings of power as a bad adaptation.

basically, the failure of rings of power is two-pronged: 1) it’s a bad adaptation, and 2) it’s a poor piece of writing. charitably, it’s a solid first-try for a pair of newbie showrunners who have never written a big project before. and following that, a bad adaptation is actually easier to forgive than a poorly written story—with a text so beloved, and without the proper rights to all the material (they only had access to the appendices of lotr), it was always going to be impossible to make a perfect text-to-screen translation. that said, it’s (imo) a pretty bad adaptation (although still not as bad as the artemis fowl movie lmao) for a few reasons: thematic interpretation, use of characters/characterization, justification of setting, and fidelity to canon lore.

on: themes—a good adaptation requires both an understanding and an appreciation of the source material, two things which rings of power lacks. in this promo article, the rop writers summarize tolkien’s works as about “friendship,” “brotherhood,” and, “underdogs overcoming great darkness,” and cannot imagine a tolkien story without hobbits. from this, it’s clear that they were first peter jackson movie fans, and then read all other book material as auxiliary support for what is inevitably peter jackson’s interpretation of tolkien’s writings on the third age. whether or not i agree with pj’s interpretation is irrelevant against the fact that the first and second ages of middle earth are stories with completely different themes than the third age. interpreting everything though the same thematic lens as the third age is a fundamentally flawed approach to telling a second age story.

the second age is permeated by arguably recent, memorable trauma from the war of wrath—the human characters are further removed via the mortal generations that have passed, but many of the elves were alive to see these events in (relatively) recent memory. this dissonance between elves and men regarding the events of the first age fuels some of the most interesting wider conflict throughout the second age (ex. the númenóreans being manipulated to become obsessed with/envious of elven immortality & the powers of the valar). furthermore, the world impact (i can’t say global impact because the world is not yet a globe) of the war of wrath fuels the setting (political reformation, social, cultural, and technical development). but rings of power ignores all of this because the showrunners don’t seem know what to do with any of it. they are trying to interpret second age events as if they have the same story elements/are painted in the same thematic palette as the events of the war of the ring. they relegate the events of the first age to ‘ancient history,’ instead of using its fallout as direct motivation for anyone except galadriel (more on this in the following section). the tension between elves and men is flattened into an allegory for contemporary immigration, which neither makes sense in-universe (there is a scene in which a group of men gather in the town square to protest the elves ‘stealing their jobs’ even though there is only one (1) elf on the island and she has not to date done any labor or craft associated with the people present), nor adapts the canon themes of anti-industrialization, anti-materialism, and fear of mortality.

on: character—whether the writers were/are incapable of doing their own analysis of the text, or their analysis is flawed, the result is that they struggle to write characters and conflicts who don’t fit into stock tropes. for example: galadriel—she’s the only elf who has any trauma about the war of wrath/the wars in beleriand, and this makes her seem like a poor communicator at best and paranoid/unreasonable at worst (she claims sauron is still at large but the writers never give the audience a reason to believe this, which implies that her crusade is fueled by dubiously exceptional trauma). this is especially egregious in a scene played opposite elrond where she tells him he can’t possibly understand her pain, and he just kind of lets this accusation stand despite the fact that he was functionally orphaned in a slaughter, and then adopted by two mass murderers before losing them too. but i digress.

on: canon lore—many creative decisions were ostensibly made to appeal to casual fans of the peter jackson movies. characters with recognizable names are given top billing in the storylines. galadriel. elrond. the pre-hobbits are given an entire section. meanwhile, key players of the second age like celebrimbor and gil-galad are made side characters in elrond plotline. why? because no one who has only seen the films recognizes their names, thus they wouldn’t be profitable to feature, and they wouldn’t sell a show. it’s only so transparent because the writers spend every episode contemplating how best to recreate memorable moments from the lord of the rings movies. galadriel is constantly shot with close ups on her eyes to mirror her film introduction in fellowship. shots of bronwyn (one of the rop original characters) at the elven outpost are framed, blocked, and even written in word-for-word monologue to recreate iconic éowyn-at-helms-deep scenes. various characters are constantly quoting the lord of the rings movies. the worst is when bronwyn practically quotes a section of sam’s iconic osgiliath speech to her frightened son, implying that sam’s speech is a collection of common idioms.

on a tangible level, the writers also fail at the monumental task of presenting a large map in a way that makes sense to people who don’t already know the world. they represent “the southlands,” as two villages, giving the sense that mordor as a whole is about fifteen kilometers wide. the timeline is fucked because they tried to condense it, while giving no clear indication of when anything is happening in relation to anything else, so it’s incredibly difficult to grasp the scope of any project or journey. for some reason they invented a fourth silmaril of dubious origin. they had elrond, raised by sons of fëanor, swear an oath only to break it in the following episode. they’ve made the choice to have all the elves speak quenya without acknowledging the history of sindarin vs. quenya and the politics of why certain elves speak it or don’t (i would love to see even one nod to thingol’s influence on elven language).

tl;dr—rings of power misreads, misunderstands, and miscommunicates the crucial themes of the second age. this leads to a complete misinterpretation of the pre-known movie characters they feature, as well as a sidelining of important book characters who aren’t movie-fan favourites. their attempt to properly explore a vast setting is clumsy, and the show invents lore out of a source material that already has arguably too much. 

(i have to go run some errands but i have more to say on rop as a poor piece of writing regardless of its status as a so-called adaptation. i’ll be back.)

#ask fbp #anon ask #fandom posting #rop critical #anti rop #anti amazon lotr #anti rings of power #amazon rings of power #rings of power #rings of power negative #anti trop #rings of power critical #rings of power analysis #rings of power meta