(no subject)

[truepenny]

So heres_luck and I were talking last night, as we are wont to do, and came up with what seems to us an appealing personality litmus test. To wit: what is your favorite part of The Lord of the Rings?

Mine is Cirith Ungol. This, say HL and Mirrorthaw, explains much about me.

What's yours? And if you want to talk about why, that's cool, too.

Comments

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I've always liked the beginning. Not the beginning in the Shire, though I love that part too, but after the Fellowship is formed and they're all getting ready to leave. It's exciting to me, like I'm going on a real journey with them. I used to reread that section a lot.

I also like the part when they first learn Strider is more than he seems. I've always loved moments of revelation like that.

But the part that moves me most is when Sam first sees elves.

[libskrat]

Oh, my, that's a hard one.

Pippin finding Merry on the battlefield and taking care of him, I think. Terror and grief and otherworldliness and loyal friendship and sturdy hobbit common sense all mixed up together.

For pure humor value, nothing beats the meeting of Theoden's entourage with Merry and Pippin at Isengard. That's just howlingly fall-down funny, for all that the humor is understated.

Now, my favorite part of the movies thus far is Boromir coming to his senses after assaulting Frodo, and then attempting to rescue Merry and Pippin. This is a basically decent guy who was enticed to screw up, and he's going to pay with his life. I totally never got into the whole Denethor-Boromir-Faramir dynamic until I saw Sean Bean's Boromir, and now it's what David and I bat around most when we discuss the books.

(I, for instance, think that a good paper could be had out of Denethor's perversion of the "good death" and pyre burial, a la Beowulf.)

[heresluck]

I haven't been a particular fan of Boromir in the books either, and the movie's changed that for me too. One of my favorite moments in FotR is when he's teaching Merry and Pipping swordplay — it's such a Gondor warrior thing to do, and at the same time so sweet and entirely human (I can't imagine Legolas, for example, doing anything of the kind) — and then when he accidentally knocks one harder than he meant to he looks so horrified, and they both tackle him. It's a great moment all by itself, and of course it also sets up the also-wonderful later moment you referred to, in which he attempts to rescue them.

HOOM!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I have three.

Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn's amazingly courageous race in pursuit of the orcs who have Merry and Pippin (utterly ruined in the movie, as they played it for laughs. Grrr.)

Gandalf pointing out to Gimli that Gimli himself is not un-dangerous, and that Gandalf is the most dangerous thing Gimli's likely to meet.

And the byplay between Legolas and Gimli at Helm's Deep, culminating in the orc with the iron collar.

All of which probably confirms that the dwarf is my favorite character. *g*

Actually, he's tied with Fangorn for favorite. Interesting, isn't it, when you consider the actor choices for those two roles.

I do dearly love ents.

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

Oh, gosh. In what time period? Now? When I first read them?

Just one?

Running through all my favorite bits in my head, I'm surprised to find that the one that doesn't put up a "yeah, but" in my head is Frodo and Sam after the Ring goes into the fire. Dear Sam, saying "well, yes, it may be true that we're going to die, but maybe we could die a little farther down the mountain? Because, hey, it couldn't hurt, right?"

I suppose that in some ways sums up the entire journey for me. It's about grace in the end, or luck, however you want to put it - but you have to go all the way, extend yourself as far as humanly possible (or farther) to put yourself into that place where grace can operate.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The battle of the Pelennor Fields.

We had the bit where Theoden charges as one of the readings in our wedding.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

Pippin finding Merry on the battlefield and taking care of him, I think. Terror and grief and otherworldliness and loyal friendship and sturdy hobbit common sense all mixed up together.


Yes, that one is mine. I really love most of the scenes in Gondor and the characters we meet there; there's something very truthful and desperate about them. And I love most of Merry's and Pippin's scenes very much too, since they're so fundamentally normal people in abnormal circumstances. So to me, the scenes with the two of them in Gondor are two of my loves coming together in a very touching moment.

[copracat]

Frodo and Sam at the Havens. It makes me cry every time, just thinking about it. Sam followed Frodo so far, so very far and here he can't follow.

"And I can't come."

"No, Sam. Not yet anyway," then, "you have so much to enjoy, and to be, and to do."

I think it means I'm a shameless romantic.

[libskrat]

So, truepenny, heres_luck, mirrorthaw, what does all this say about us, then?

:)

[elisem.livejournal.com]

[written before reading any of the other comments]

Galadriel being tempted, and then passing the test.

I have no idea why this part got me, when I first read it, but it certainly did. Still does, though the shock of it has been cushioned somewhat by time and familiarity. Still there, though.

Other than that, there is the leave-taking between Sam and Frodo, and most especially the journey Sam makes home afterwards. And I'm not sure why for those, either.

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

Helm's Deep, for me, with the Pelennor Fields coming in a close second. Apparently I am a Rohirrim fangirl. ;)

Re: HOOM!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I do dearly love ents, too.

I think of them when I am trying not to be hasty.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Eowyn and Aragorn, the Ents and the Entwives, Galadriel deciding to go into the West Because I am a sucker for the love that cannot be, and yet cannot be ended. And Tom Bombadil, because someone should be free.

Mer

[libskrat]

And I love most of Merry's and Pippin's scenes very much too, since they're so fundamentally normal people in abnormal circumstances.

The whole ordinary-extraordinary space draws me strongly to fantasy that explores and questions it. LeGuin turns this question inside out in Tehanu and later, showing us the "abnormal" Ged and Tenar in relentlessly "normal" circumstances, and pointing out that damn it, they're still the same people as before, and they're still heroes.

Pullman goes there too in His Dark Materials. All the fancy abnormal strivings of Metatron and Azriel and Mrs. Coulter, done away with by a relentlessly normal little girl who realizes that all of us in our relentless normality have to work together to create the Republic of Heaven -- it ain't just gonna get handed to us by a bunch of weird heroes.

DeLint goes there, though it isn't his focus the way it is LeGuin's, but I'm kinda going off DeLint lately. Is it just me, or has he written the same book about a dozen times?

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I feel like the only (wannabe?) fantasy writer in the world who doesn't much like Tolkien. Respect, yes. Like, no.

The bits I remember loving best in the books were the Denethor attempting to burn Faramir alive and then, also and differently, Faramir and Eowyn walking in the gardens of the House of Healing.

[rosamund.livejournal.com]

The end with the Havens

"But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it
has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are
in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep
them."

Probably others, but that's the quote I know off by heart and that's what I keep coming back to. The price Frodo has to pay.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Is it just me, or has he written the same book about a dozen times?

No, I think he's written the same book about a dozen times.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

This part feels really post-WWI England to me--it resonates.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Those bits changed my perception of Boromir, too. I'd always seen him as The Traitor, even as I grew older and my understanding of the world changed. But that simple enjoyment of Merry and Pippin's "attack" made him human, with flaws and foibles. Not the cardboard Traitor after all.

[katwrites.livejournal.com]

I'm there with you. Maybe we should start an AA style club where we'd begin each meeting by taking turns standing up and saying, "My name is ****** and I don't like Tolkien." Of course, with just the two of us, the meetings would be a little thin.

[katwrites.livejournal.com]

Wicked cool icon.

[kate_nepveu]

Is "pretty much all of Book I of _The Two Towers_" too broad an answer?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

DeLint (I've read one of his novels and several short stories and very much disliked all of them) seems to me to go for the pararealistic, rather than actual realism. His characters aren't ordinary. They're all Special, with Special Traumas and Special Gifts. Oog. Whereas, especially with Tolkien and especially with the hobbits, there's nothing Special about them. They get pitchforked in over their heads, and they do the best they can. Their strength doesn't have anything to do with magic or creativity or anything but being stubborn and decent. That's one reason that I think no one has managed to write a Tolkien-style fantasy as good as Tolkien. Please note, I do not say, No one has managed to write a fantasy as good as Tolkien. Because people have written better fantasies than Tolkien, but I don't think any of them are in that particular genre of high-fantasy epic that Tolkien essentially created. The scullery boy always turns out to be the king, or to be a wizard, or in some other way to be Special. Whereas people in Middle-Earth become stronger, find bravery they didn't know they have, are grievously damaged--but it doesn't change who they are.

There's something about heroes and identity nudging at me, but it's refusing to be chased out into the open. Shall ponder.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

No. That's a fine answer.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Um. That y'all are much less bloodthirsty and morbid than I am?

:)