aragorn i understand ur projecting onto beren and luthien and worrying about the love of ur life sacrificing her immortality for you but like, someone asking you about the story of luthien and all you say is “she died” is the most reductive shit ever. this woman broke into satan’s house, called him a bitch to his face, stole his most valuable objects, and ran off to marry her malewife. show some respect.

Talking about unresolvable bad blood, it’s very important to me that some members of the fellowship actually don’t get along and just never will. I get the desire to manufacture rad friendship dynamics between very different people but you’ve also gotta have a few motherfuckers that a character can’t stand so that the actual ‘surprising’ friendships have a contrast to them to make them more impactful. Not only that, it emphasises the kind of strange camaraderie that the Fellowship represents, they’re all working towards a common goal and sure Legolas will risk his life for Boromir but… a conversation? You couldn’t pay him to try… It also just makes everything WAY funnier too. 

This ok, this is where the magic is.

Most of The Hobbit adheres closely to Bilbo's POV, and when it goes beyond that it usually makes a note like "although Bilbo didn't know it then" or "they told Bilbo this afterward," keeping to the constraints of Bilbo as our narrator even though it's third-person limited. This is good writing for narrative and in-universe purposes.

It ALSO makes the "starving in the forest" exchange even funnier. Because it means Bilbo had to have heard it repeated in full, either from Thorin or (more likely, I think) as Elven gossip while invisible. Then he clearly agreed with the teller that it was worth recounting, and deliberately recorded it in full. I like knowing it was appreciated in-universe.

Or, to put it another way...we have textual grounds to argue that "starving in the forest" became a meme in Mirkwood.

@incomingalbatross 😂😂😂😂

#gandalf at some point to the fellowship probably: and what were you /doing/ just now?#legolas: *muttering* ...starving in the forest#the hobbits all burst out laughing

Update: Sauron is not afraid of hobbits. He was unaware that hobbits existed up until very recently.  he literally did not have time to be afraid of them, they went from a 0 to 100 threat level in twenty seconds. There he was, minding his own business worrying about the usual Elves and Men when suddenly these kids are on his lawn and now he’s dead, like just; 

What did— who– 

did I just get one-shotted by an infant how is this occurring 

Honestly I have to love this whole thought process that the Fellowship must have cultivated in Sauron, like…

“These children have found the Ring! But they’re taking it to the elves, of course. I will simply have to catch them on the way.”

“Well, the elves are still not to be trifled with, it seems. It looks as though they have a group of intrepid heroes, how cute! Wait, who’s leading them? Aw, hell.”

“OKAY! Olorin’s out of the way, and now I can finally kill them all and reclaim the- OH DAMMIT, IT’S IN LOTHLORIEN.”

“Well, okay. They’ve taken it onward. Curunir says one of the halflings is still carrying the ring, so he’s going to capture them and we’ll see how this develops. Thankfully Olorin’s still out of the picture and their little group just shattered into pieces, so that’s one less thing to worry about.”

“Aaaaaand Curunir shat the bed. Excellent. Trees, who would have thought? Okay, so we’re back to plan A: conquer Gondor, because if the Ring’s going to be anywhere, it’ll be there.”

“Wait, who’s on the– Isildur’s WHAT? Ohhhh. Ohohoho. Oh now everything makes sense. Isildur’s Heir is back, and he’s here being all prideful again. That’s fine. Really. I’ll just crush him and his kingdom, and then nobody can stop me!”

“WHAT? FUCKING WHAT? THEY SENT HIM BACK? Ugh, alright, alright, I’m cool, I’m fine. He’s still got that stupid wizard costume on, and I’m still stronger than he ever was. It’s not like he can come toe to toe with me, even if he does have an army behind him. This’ll be fine.”

“They’re… actually marching on the Black Gate? Sweet lord, I didn’t think they’d actually do it! This is perfect, everyone’s right here! Olorin, the human princeling, most of the remaining fighting forces of Men, all I have to do is kill them now and– Wait. Someone just put on the Ring. Someone just– That’s a halfling. They’re inside the mouNTAIN OH GOD NAZGUL GO GO G–”

…aaaaaand curtain.

you can laugh but that is literally what happened

i’m just saying aragorn son of arathorn oh im sorry STRIDER (one of them rangers what his right name is i never heard etc etc) didn’t need to be that sexy at the prancing pony. like ostensibly he’s trying to lay low but even dipshit little [relatively] eighteen y/o frodo is like hey what’s the deal with that extremely ostentatiously sexy man in the corner

“you draw far too much attention to yourself ‘mister underhill’” if i were frodo i wouldve snapped. jesus christ. i can’t help that i’m two feet shorter than everyone else in this definitely definitely 100% a gay bar but at least i didn’t lurk in a sexy corner making eyes at everybody from under my cloak at least im TRYING to pretend i’m not a protagonist you fine ass idiot. i KNOW i’m being pursued by the black riders which is why i didn’t SERVE CUNT from the SHADOWS. the fellowship of the nerve of this bitch

I can’t believe I haven’t done this before.

Sauron: “I like your Silmarils”

Morgoth: “Thanks, I stole them from the president”

hold on i have to read the Silmarillion real quick

yeah this is funny

braver than any US marine

Frodo may be Bilbo’s actual adopted nephew, but Merry and Pippin are his younger cousins, and Sam is his old gardener’s son whose family he clearly has a soft spot for and who he taught to read and write, and Gimli is the son of one of his old adventuring friends, and Legolas is, similarly, the son of the Elvenking who named him an elf-friend, and we know Aragorn is canonically his friend as well, who he very possibly could have met as a small child in Rivendell when he passed through, so really, like 7/9 members of the Fellowship are people he can employ weird elderly relative (or the honorary equivalent thereof) energy on if he wants to and I think that’s very powerful.

the fellowship is 7 people who Bilbo Baggins can employ weird elderly relative energy onto PLUS 1 person who can employ weird elderly relative energy onto Bilbo Baggins PLUS Boromir.

LOTR Triptych, by Yaroslava Murashko.

Legolas: This forest is ancient and scary. I wish I could vacation here.

Gimli: Legolas you’re so fucking weird. I’d follow you anywhere.

underrated lotr moment is gandalf’s “let me risk a little more light” so the fellowship can see the ruins of dwarrowdelf.

idk what it is idk how to put it into words but like. such a quick and quiet little moment of, recognizing we’re all in constant mortal peril but while we’re here you should still witness the wonders of the world. while we are here, though it may be on a life-threatening quest, you deserve a little tourist moment. soak it in, the great city that remains long-abandoned and nearly forgotten, the grand pillars that outlived the memories of those who built them. so much of love and life is fleeting in this dark age. but the scraps of it can still be found. the remnants are still here, and even with significant risk they deseve to be beheld.

Bugs Bunny could have simply walked into Mordor. He would have shown up at the gates of Mordor in a disguise and been like "Evil volcano inspection unit" and flashed a fake ID badge to the confused orc.

Love the implication here that the one ring would have little to no effect on Bugs

To be fair, it’s canonically established in Lord of the Rings that Tom Bombadil, an inexplicable magical trickster, is unaffected by the ring, and the only reason they don’t give the job to him is because Tom Bombadil is a silly little man who’s easily distracted and just wants to spend time with his hot wife.

Bugs Bunny, on the other hand, loves nothing more than fucking over self-important dickheads, and is also an inexplicable magical trickster, so he would in fact be perfect for this mission.

The One Ring may not tempt Bugs, but he’d have other problems with the mission: he’d get lost halfway there (”I knew I should’ve made a left turn at Albuquerque”) and get distracted enough to hand the One RIng to Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam as a prank, only for it to be stolen by Daffy Duck, leading to an ever-increasing number of characters on an increasingly-destructive chase across Middle Earth as everyone keeps stealing it from each other, (Bugs would definitely pull the “evil volcano inspector” gag to get into Mordor, and he’d then immediately turn around and pose as a customs agent stopping whoever currently has the ring at the border and relieving them of it as “contraband”) culminating in an all-out brawl at Mount Doom.  Bugs manages to reclaim the ring one last time as everyone else is busy fighting each other, only for Daffy to come out of nowhere and grab it out of his hands.  Laughing maniacally, Daffy doesn’t realize that his victory dance has taken him right off the edge off a cliff - until Bugs points it out, at which point gravity reasserts itself, and Daffy and the ring both plunge to the fiery depths below

Coolest thing about lord of the rings? The king of horses shows up. It appears he is no different from all other horses

King of the eagles shows up later. He can talk. Horse king couldn't talk.