The Nine Glories of the Rings of Power: The Eighth Glory

What Ho, Wee Readers and welcome to the Eighth glory of the Nine Glories of the Rings of Power. Remember to sign up to the Wee Mailing List before the 27th of February, to discover the Ninth Glory of the Rings of Power.

Galadriel and Sauron: BFF

Spoilers ahead…

This was the buddy /secret enemy/ Dark Lord of the world road trip that I never realised I’d been craving all this time.

There’s been some criticism of TRoP’s depiction of Galadriel, namely that she’s not very likeable – which is absolutely true, she’s not likeable at all. She’s cruel, she’s bitter, she’s self righteous, and worst of all she’s also kind of racist. Not in the real world kind of way we discussed in my first post, but closer to a fantasy kind of racism. Namely, to the Galadriel at the beginning of the series, if you’re not an elf you’re pretty much nothing to her.

Heck she only really starts being polite to the man who saved her from the ocean – when she learns he might be the long-lost king of the Southlands and therefore useful to her crusade.

All this sounds like a complaint, but it’s not really. Because all this unpleasantness, all this snobbery, cruelty, and self-absorption just makes it all the sweeter when it finally dawns on her who that “lost” king of men really is.

It was so glorious, I giggled. It’s a good twist, regardless – and really the only way we’d get a closer look at Sauron as a character rather than just an ominous threat – but that look on Galadriel’s face, made it really funny as well.

If you’ve enjoyed this little gem from a Tolkien obsessed fan girl, and would like to see the rest of them why not follow the Wee blog if you haven’t already. And check me out on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Mastodon, Tumblr, TikTok, Facebook and Kofi. And don’t forget to sign up to the Wee Mailing List to get the final post of this blog series on February 27^th. Until next time Wee Readers, keep safe and have a very bonny day.

The Nine Glories of the Rings of Power: The Seventh Glory

What Ho, Wee Readers and welcome to the Seventh glory of the Nine Glories of the Rings of Power. Remember to sign up to the Wee Mailing List before the 27th of February, to discover the Ninth Glory of the Rings of Power.

The Music

Do I really have to say anything here, I know you’ve already clicked on the videos above. You heard the awesomeness that is that music.

It’s self apparent. So let’s just give a hand for Bear McCreary, who joins Howard Shore in the illustrious halls of people who kicked ass making the music of our Middle-Earth experience come to life.

The Nine Glories of The Rings of Power: The Sixth Glory

What Ho, Wee Readers and welcome to the Sixth glory of the Nine Glories of the Rings of Power. Remember to sign up to the Wee Mailing List before the 27th of February, to discover the Ninth Glory of the Rings of Power.

Númenor

Many times the name of Númenor has been spoken in reference within the works and the adaptions of the great professor’s work. In the third age, the men of Númenor were held up as the pinnacle of what men could be.

Then the Silmarillion happened and we all find out that while that might have been true enough to begin with, boy did they do a face plant at the end. Like the men of Atlantis, who they are very clearly based on, their greatness was their undoing. For it made them over proud, and they sought to challenge the Valar, so that they might break the curse of men and live forever.

As the Silmarillion was for the literature of Tolkien, so the Rings of Power is for the on-screen adaptions. While the greatness of Númenor blood was never as prolific on screen as it was on the page, it’s also notable that they often avoided the subtler criticism of it, that Tolkien added through his appendices.

Not so anymore. While Númenor has not quite yet reached challenge the gods stupidity, it’s clear they’re on their way there. They’re small, petty, and have an over inflated sense of their own importance to the world. And yet there is nobility there, something of the great people they used to be. It’s nuanced, it’s layered, it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

This is going to sound terrible even in context, but I can’t wait to see them get themselves sunk.

The Nine Glories of the Rings of Power: The Fifth Glory

What Ho, Wee Readers and welcome to the fifth glory of the Nine Glories of the Rings of Power. Remember to sign up to the Wee Mailing List before the 27th of February, to discover the Ninth Glory of the Rings of Power.

Harfoots

Hobbits, undoubtedly my favourite part of any Tolkien based project, are a peculiar race as fantasy races go. Unlike Elves or Dwarves, they are not particularly fantastical at all. This is by design of course, as being the viewpoint characters for the two most well-known works in Tolkien’s legidome – they needed to be more recognisable (culturally speaking) to the original intended audience.

Which was, probably, late 20th century middle-class English people.

Which, very clearly, are the people that Bilbo and Frodo Baggins most resemble, both in speech and manarisims.

And yet…even from the first, there had always been hints that the history of the hobbit people, was very different from the sheltered, middle-class English veneer we get in the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.

We hear talk of the different tribes, Fallowhide, Stoor and…Harfoot. We even hear talk of their wandering days before the Shire. But because Tolkien’s got a ring quest to start, the narrative can’t spend too long delving into this rich backstory.

Surely the only way we could properly explore this fascinating part of hobbit history, is with an entirely new tale.

Enter The Rings of Power…

Like their descendants the Harfoots love laughter, family, good cheer, and food, lots and lots of food. But they live in a very different world – unlike Bilbo, they don’t really have a land they can venture away from. All they have is the path – the set route through the lands they travel through – and those that wander away from the path, get left behind.

It’s a much harder, more brutal life. And what I find particularly fascinating about it, is how we can see the foundation for many of the foibles of the Third Age hobbits begin here. They are untrusting of outsiders because in their past, a stranger – particularly a tall stranger – might mean death. And they don’t want their children going on mad adventures, because in the past that would absolutely mean you never saw them again.

There are some that complain that the Harfoots are a bit too mean, in comparison with their later cousins (they do have a tendency to abandon those that don’t follow the rules) – but to that I’d like to argue, what hobbits have you been reading about? Because the hobbits I grew up with, would declare someone dead just so they can sell off his stuff.

TheNine Glories of the Rings of Power: The Fourth Glory

What Ho, Wee Readers and welcome to the fourth glory of the Nine Glories of the Rings of Power. Remember to sign up to the Wee Mailing List before the 27th of February, to discover the Ninth Glory of the Rings of Power.

The Stranger

In the past few posts I’ve started out fairly negatively in regards to previous depictions of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. It’s hard to see how I could have done anything else in my first post, but I will concede that for the others it’s a fault of my own writing.

Thus for this post I’d thought I’d begin a bit differently – do you know who I love? Ian Mckellen as Gandalf. He’s so warm to the Hobbits, brave to the soldiers he’s leading into battle, and damn right scary to the people that oppose him.

So you have to understand that when I say I love the Stranger, and the way his actor portrays him – it’s not because I think he’s a superior depiction of the grey pilgrim. Rather that I enjoy the depiction of a different Gandalf, in a different part of his life.

It asks interesting questions of his character, not just as a wise sage for the more inherently flawed heroes of the story – but as someone who is quite lost himself. Gandalf is basically an angel like being in the guise of an old man. What would a being like that be like when he first came to mortal lands? He’d probably would be quite unsettling to anyone who found him. His powers might be dangerous and unpredictable, and he might thusly need a lot of emotional support. Ultimately what all these questions lead to is a depiction of a familiar character that is – what Rings of power succeeds at over all – very different and very, very interesting.

Plus, the idea that Gandalf is attached to the hobbits because it was their ancestors who helped him at his most vulnerable, just makes me feel all warm and nice inside.

The Nine Glories Of the Rings of Power: The Third Glory

What Ho, Wee Readers and Welcome to the Third Post in The Nine Glories of the Rings of Power blog series. I hope you enjoy reading it, as much as I enjoyed writing it – and remember to sign up for the Wee Mailing List, if you haven’t already, to catch the final post in this blog series on February 27th.

Adar and his Many Children

Orcs, one of the enemies of the free people of Middle Earth. Orcs, one of the horrors that the Lord Morgoth released onto the world. Orcs, they were elves once you know? Tortured by the dark lord until they became something else, something twisted. Wow, what a tragedy – what a story to tell, so we ever going to really explore it?

Yeah Orcs are one of those things that have a really fascinating backstory. But because most of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth work was either set in the Third Age (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) ; or from the perspective of characters with no real motivation to see them as anything but the minions of the dark Lord (The Silmarillion, The Lost Tales, and so on) – they’ve always kind of stayed in their little minion box.

Heck the Peter Jackson films were so uninterested in exploring that side of them, they literally killed them all at the end. Which by the way, didn’t happen in the books. Yeah, this isn’t just me picking at a small flaw in one of my favourite author’s works. Tolkien himself, eventually grew uncomfortable with the depiction of orcs in his stories. As it went against his Catholic belief, that anyone could be redeemed. Or at least so I’ve heard – but correct me if I’m wrong.

Enter the Rings of Power.

While the show certainly doesn’t lean away from the villainy of the orcs – they are still the antagonists, and basically assholes through and through. Yet nuance is added both by the revaluation of the identity of their mysterious leader “Ada” as one of the first elves that was “ruined” by Morgoth; and the reveal of the Orc’s underlying motivation.

Namely, to find a home for themselves. What they’re doing is still evil – killing, burning, awakening a dormant Volcano to blanket the sky in ash – but it’s not in the service of a Dark Lord. Nor is it evil for evil’s sake, as so often has been the case with other Tolkien adaptations.

Instead we have an actual societal motivation for the evil the orcs do. It’s nuanced, it’s somewhat sympathetic and most of all…it’s interesting!

The Nine Glories of the Rings of Power: The Second Glory

What Ho, Wee Readers and welcome to the second glory of the Nine Glories of the Rings of Power. Remember to sign up to the Wee Mailing List before the 27th of February, to discover the Ninth Glory of the Rings of Power.

Elrond and Durin, the Bromance

This friendship between a prince of dwarves and a lord of elves is exciting both from an individual story beat ( the Stone of a simple friendship can start the avalanche that is the creation of the Rings of Power); and from a wider cultural impact in regards to Tolkien mythology.

Namely, this is the most narrative attention a dwarf/elf friendship has gotten in a while. Possibly ever, since while friendships like Legolas and Gimli were always there – neither Legolas or Gimli were the stars of their own storylines. They were side players, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, someone has to be, but it did mean that this presumably momentous friendship really didn’t get the attention it deserved. For goodness’s sake the most extraordinary part of their friendship – Legolas bringing Gimli to the Undying lands – is shoved into an Appendix at the end.

I’m not saying that’s a problem narratively speaking – it was just a little disappointing for me personally.

Compare that to say the friendship of Elrond and Durin which due to the nature of its medium – and the multiple story threads of the Rings of Power – has a lot more room to be explored. In particular I enjoyed the drama of their differing views of time – with 20 years being nothing to an immortal elf, but quite a lot in the life of a mortal, even a mortal as long lived as a dwarf.

Plus I just kind of like Durin as a character, what can I say…I just find him neat.

The Nine Glories of the Rings of Power: The First Glory

What Ho Wee Readers and welcome to the first blog post of the Nine Glories of the Rings of Power Blog Series. Since my Christmas Folklore & History Series was such a success I decided I’d quite like to continue the trend. And since I’d already been planning on doing a post on the awesomeness that was the Rings of Power, this seemed like the perfect topic.

But enough talk…let’s get started. Eeeeh I’m so excited!

A Less White World

It seems right to start with the Glory that has provoked the most ire amongst the more Troll-like in the Tolkien Fandom: the diverse casting.

Look I’ve always loved the Peter Jackson Films – heck I’ll even stand and defend the Hobbit Trilogy till the day grows old, but we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t admit that they’re a little monochrome in their casting. It’s not just the Lord of the Rings, god knows Hollywood has a white preference in general – but just because it’s a common problem, doesn’t make it in anyway an excusable one.

Enter The Rings of Power.

Honestly their correction was so simple it almost seems stupid that it’s not been done the whole time. Step back before you’re blown away by this…they cast actors who weren’t white in some of the roles.

Oh my god, the land of Middle-Earth is starting to look like a real living place rather than a white washed version of history. And before you start I know this isn’t the first Middle-Earth property to include people of colour on the screen – but it’s the first to give them speaking parts and storylines of their own. So I think that counts for something. Plus the trolls of our fandom made such a fuss over something that, in some cases, was completely accurate to the source material – so I feel like it’s worth mentioning.

Yes that’s right, in the case of the Harfoots, they were not described by Tolkien as being the white hobbits these “Tolkien Purists” fantasy about, but rather hobbits with brown skin. Can you imagine that…non-white hobbits exist in Middle-Earth and nothing exploded 😁

(Pauses and looks up at the picture of own brain exploding with excitement).

Okay, poor choice of words.

And yet still, my point remains.

If anything the Rings of Power arguably doesn’t go far enough – most of the main characters are still white. And large sections of the Harfoots – including Nori, the one we’re supposed to be rooting for – are white, despite that being very inaccurate to the book. So, you must be thinking, if it doesn’t go far enough, why are you still calling it a glory? Well, that’s the state of our world isn’t it – any step forward is better than none.

Could it go further, absolutely and maybe we’ll see more of that next season – but as it is, it’s still done more than the other adaptations. After all, as the great man once said, the longest journey is the one you never start at all.

Memories of a 2019 GoodReads Challenge: or, the top ten books to read while you’re social distancing

What ho Wee Readers, how are you all doing? Are you trapped at home in quarantine? Or practicing social distancing to protect yourself and or your family? Yeah, my Mum’s got a damaged lung, so I’m right there with you. At times like these the world can seem a terrifying place, almost overwhelmingly so – and I find the best cure for such depressing thoughts, can be found in the pages of a good book.

Wow, that was a far more depressing opening than I thought it would be. Anyway, if you’ve been following my Goodreads account, then you’ll know that I really enjoy their Reading Challenge. At the beginning of 2020, I challenged myself to read a hundred books, which is quite a step up from the thirty I read in 2019. I’m well on my way to completing this year’s challenge, so I’d just thought I’d take a look back at my favorite reads of last year, to try and forget about this year.

10. Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly

This is a collection of essays about the cancelled tv show Firefly, one of two I read over the course of 2019 – though by far this is the superior volume. Mainly because unlike its sequel, it didn’t go on and on about how not having aliens in it made Firefly the greatest sci-fi show ever to exist. Or sneering at the notion that anyone would ever put an alien in their space fiction, let alone actually believe in life on other planets. Which, as someone who is patiently waiting for the mother-ship to return, I find slightly offensive. Anyway, you won’t find any of that nonsense in this book – at least, none that I can remember.

9. Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds: The Musical Drama

So…Michael Sheen’s voice…wow. Anyway, back on topic…I started this post quite a while ago, and then got pulled away to write another essay (I know I’ve said that before, but it’s not just an excuse, it really is what I’ve been doing all this time) and during that interval the world kind of…exploded. Basically, we somehow woke up one day and found ourselves living in a dystopian novel, which is…well…bad whatever, but if it was going to happen, why couldn’t it be ‘The War of the Worlds’ instead? Look I’m not trying to be crass here, I’m well aware how terrible the coronavirus, the mass panic buying of loo roll…for some unexplained reason…and well everything the British government has been doing lately, is. All I’m saying is that I would rather watch Boris Johnson be disintegrated by a Martian, than worry about the bloody coronavirus.

8. Coffee at Luke’s: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest Edited by Jennifer Cruise

So, this is a thing. Rather like the first book on this list, this is a collection of essays; except this time on the topic of Gilmore Girls. Gilmore Girls is one of those shows in which I have a… complicated relationship with. On the one hand I loved the original show, and yet like many of you out there I found the revival lacking in the charm that made the original so appealing. Also, the characters were all awful, and by that, I mean they were all awful people. Where they like that in the original, I don’t remember that. Still the book is well worth a look, even for the most disappointed of Gilmore Girls fans, and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys digging deeper into their favorite shows.

7. The Silmarillion by J.R.R Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s least enjoyable book…there I said it. I’m of two minds about this book, on the one hand nowhere else is J.R.R. Tolkien’s genius most evident, and yet the only way to describe how I manged to finish this is: with great difficulty. Whether or not you enjoy this book really depends on how much you’re invested in the Elves as a people – for you see The Silmarillion is not just the history of Middle-Earth, it’s the History of Middle-Earth as told by the ruling class of Elves. It’s why we never really get a look into the other races unless they’ve had direct contact with the elves. Notice how it’s only the men who live under the Elves sovereignty who are in anyway explored in a meaningful way. This isn’t the story of Middle-earth but rather how the elves perceive it. And nowhere is this more apparent than the story of the petty Dwarves. The petty dwarves were a diminutive race that lived in the continent of Beleriand (the north most tip of middle-earth) during the first age (or at least round about that time, Middle-earth calendars are a lot less straightforward than you’d think). In fact, they were the first people to live in Beleriand, even before the elves – and what did the elves do when they got there? Come on, we all live in a post-colonist world, you know what they did. That’s right, they massacred them…hunted them for sport actually. Claiming all the while that they thought they were animals. While they do stop doing this once they meet the larger dwarves, and realize the creatures they were gleefully slaughtering – which had worn clothes, and held weapons – were not in fact a strange kind of boar. However, they don’t actually seem to feel guilty about what they’d done. In fact, the text itself implies that the petty dwarves had it coming, because they were…unpleasant, and didn’t like anyone. My Valar of the Forge and Earth, why would a people that have been hunted to near extinction, and smeared in the history books, not have a sunny disposition? Madness, don’t they know that the feelings of their murders come first above all things.

Yes, I am a Tolkien nerd, why do you ask?

6. Last Shot: A Han and Lando Novel by Daniel Jose Older

They should have let the cooking robot kill Ben Solo. Out of context that sentence sounds like nonsense, doesn’t it? But trust me, after you read this book, you’ll know what I mean. Anyway, getting down to business. Despite my first impressions of the film I can freely admit that ‘Solo’ is by far and away probably one the weaker members of the Star Wars franchise. Many people have tried to pinpoint the exact reason for this – raging from the sensible to the outright ludicrous – but I have come to the conclusion that ultimately, it was the pacing that let Solo down. Namely, it was originally supposed to be three films, but got squished into one for…some reason…and you can really tell. Despite this, the film had many positive qualities, not least among which was being the only film to note the cruelty many heroes casually throw at droids – I mean it didn’t do it well, but at least it mentioned it. Last Shot is everything Solo should have been: it explores Han Solo’s past but only so much as it pertains to the story, and it gives characters that had previously been killed off before they could do anything more than snark a chance to shine. And most of all, droid abuse and activism was made a central theme and story plot, rather than just something to be giggled at.

5. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

The book is better than the show. Yeah, I’ll say it, the show was needlessly dark and depressing and… that second season, oh my god, did I hate that second season. I couldn’t even watch it to the end. Look I know both the book and the show cover heavy topics that need to be taken seriously, like abuse, possible murder and body issues, but somehow the book was able to do that without making every single character completely unlikable. I mean what was with that story-line of Madeline cheating on Ed? She didn’t need more drama in her story, her book story-line was dramatic enough and unique. It wasn’t just another copy and paste affair arch. In conclusion, read the book and skip the show.

4. Revenge of the Sith by Mathew Stover

I love this book. I’ve read it more than once, more than thrice really, and each time it just gets better. A common trend when praising this book, is to imply that it vastly improves upon the original film. However, I’m not going to say that, because quite frankly not only is that kind of petty prequel hate repugnant to me in every way but, I found nothing to hate in the original film. In fact, it’s one of my favourites. What I will say is Mathew Stover’s take on the fall of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader is interesting and new, not better just different – but I found his description of the force, particularly how Obi-Wan experiences it, the most fascinating I’ve ever encountered in any Star Was franchise media, films included.

3. Snape: A definitive Reading by Lorrie Kim

Awesome, just awesome. Severus Snape is the essential base-breaking character. You either love him or loathe him, there doesn’t seem to be any neutral ground on this issue, but that doesn’t matter because Snape a Definitive Reading is the book for both sides of the argument. Whether you love him and want a conformation of why he is so awesome, or you absolutely hate him, but want an insight into what all your crazy friends see in him, this is the book for you.

2. Room by Emma Donoghue

I love this book. I was so, so about the film – since as a visual medium it lost much of the magic that was Jack’s misunderstanding about his situation in the beginning of the story – but the book was fantastic. Now I’m assuming, Wee Readers, that each of you fall into one of two categories. Either you’ve already read this book/watched the film, and know each of the ins and outs of the story, and therefore don’t need me to tell you what you already know; or you have no idea what I’m even talking about. In which case I don’t want to ruin the story for you. So I’ll just say this, if you’re stuck at home at this strange time, pick up a kindle or audible version of this book, sit back and enjoy.

1. The Mermaid and the Bear by Ailish Sinclair

Speaking of good books to read while you’re waiting out the coronavirus. This is, and I don’t think I’m overstating this, the best book published in 2019, hands down. If you’ve been following my blog for a while – hello early Wee Readers – you’ll remember I interviewed the author herself a few months back. If you’re interested go check that out here, or Ailish’s own blog here. There now the plugging is done, onto the real talk of the book. Without giving away the end – because as we all know, only gypes give out spoilers on the internet – this a book that will not end how you think it will. Whether you are a fan of sweeping Romance, accurate Historical Fiction, Heroines that aren’t a size two, or like me an accurate portrayal of a Scottish accent… this is the book for you. Trust me, Wee Readers, you will not be thinking about the coronavirus while you’re reading this book. Seriously go out and buy this book.

If this wee post has distracted you at all from the ongoing dystopian narrative, we’ve all somehow found ourselves living through, then don’t forget to follow the wee blog if you haven’t already. Also check me out on Twitter – where I am hilarious – Facebook, Pinterest, GoodReads, Tumblr and Instagram. Also check out my Wee Mailing List ,for brand new content. Until next time my Wee Readers, have a bonny day.

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