Precisely

Thinking of the larger context of LOTR and like, the fellowship swapping old war stories and shit and Sam just says “Yeah I killed a huge spider…Shelob, I think?”

And Gandalf just blinks and is like, “You what now?”

“Yeah, killed it. Had to save Frodo”

Gandalf elects not to tell Sam that he killed the spawn of a primordial demon.

I got to meet.

Stephan Hunter and Lloyd Owen.

Aka. The actor of Bombur from The Hobbit and Elendil from Rings of Power.

Now I am about to absolutely rant about getting to meet and talk to these guys in a follow up post, and yes it was at Supernova.

I love the hc that dwarves who cut their hair are either shamed or in mourning but cutting your hair is a huge part of self expression!! and I think of dwarven hair as the ultimate form of telling every other dwarf who you are and what you do in life

so I propose that ceratin crafts require cutting your hair in a specific way. you can't confuse it with shame or mourning because everyone knows what that very specific pattern is.

for example! Ori has bangs. bangs are perfect for a scribe! you never have to worry about hair blocking your immediate vision, especially when you are handling old documents where you can't afford to touch anything but the paper in front of you. so you see a dwarf with bangs and immediately know they're a scribe

example 2! Dwalin is half bald and the top of his head is tattooed which sounds pretty painful. what if that's just the hairstyle of warriors? they test your dedication to guarding and protecting and sacrifice by making you shave the top of your head and tattooing it. this also works great as a deterant, like imagine someone thinking to assassinate crown prince Fili but they see Dwalin with his shaved tatted head staring into their soul and they just. slowly back away. you don't fuck with dwarves whose soul craft is being a warrior, especially when they want you to see them coming by announcing to the world that I'm so dedicated to this, I shave the top of my head every day

Some stories don’t just entertain you, they shape you. They become part of your inner mythology, quietly influencing how you see the world and yourself. For me, The Lord of the Rings was one of those stories. Long before I understood its depth, I felt its weight. It wasn’t just the adventure or the battles or the magic. It was the sense that there was a vast, ancient world just behind the curtain of this one, full of language, loss, and quiet courage. And I wanted to live there. Not just visit, but understand it, piece by piece.

I started with The Hobbit. It’s technically a children’s book, but to me, it felt like something far older and more mysterious. What first grabbed me weren’t the goblins or Gollum. It was the Dwarven runes. I spent an entire night translating the symbols on the cover, realizing some of the letters matched the title. I didn’t even know what I was doing, but I was obsessed with cracking the code. Only later did I find out the introduction explained it all. But by then, I had already figure out every letter's equivalent English glyph.

That moment set something in motion. I wasn’t just reading a fantasy story. I was beginning a lifelong fascination with language, symbols, and the hidden layers of storytelling. When the films came out, it felt like the world I had only imagined had suddenly stepped into reality. The scale, the emotion, the music, it swept me away.

From there, I started learning Elvish. Not because I thought I’d ever use it, but because I wanted to understand it. I wanted to sit with the same beauty and care Tolkien poured into every word. The way his languages were rooted in history and myth made Middle-earth feel like a place you could find on a map if you just looked hard enough.

That curiosity pulled me deeper. I started reading the expanded works. The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, the appendices, the letters. I wanted to know about the First Age, the Valar, the ancient wars and sorrows that shaped the world long before Bilbo ever found the Ring. I was drawn to the tragedy and grandeur of it all. The way history echoed forward, how the light of the Two Trees still touched the edges of the Third Age like a fading memory.

Some of my earliest and most enduring friendships were forged over The Lord of the Rings. We traded favorite characters like sacred names, debated Elves vs. Dwarves like it actually mattered, and built elaborate inside jokes steeped in Middle-earth lore and behind the scenes trivia from the films. When I got into D&D, I couldn’t help but carry that influence with me. I made characters with the moral weight of Númenórean kings or the quiet resilience of a hobbit far from home. I didn’t want to just play the game. I wanted to tell stories that felt like they could have been whispered into a campfire by an old ranger on watch.

And to this day, I still wear a silver One Ring replica I got in middle school. It’s not flashy, but it’s meaningful. A tiny symbol of a much larger world that continues to live in me. A reminder that the stories we grow up with don’t always stay on the page. Sometimes, they become part of who we are.

The Lord of the Rings taught me that true strength often looks like perseverance, not power. That hope can exist even in the face of sorrow. That history matters. Not just the grand heroic moments, but the quiet choices that echo across time. It made me believe in the power of language, the weight of promises, and the beauty of stories that dare to dream of a better world. Middle-earth may be fictional, but the way it shaped me is very real. Tolkien didn’t just build a world. He built a doorway. And I’ve been walking through it ever since.

just found this on pinterest and IMMEDIATELY had to share

THANK YOU!!! I needed this reassurance so bad, I’ll tell you why later 🤫🧏‍♀️

Sam calling out to Gollum asking him whether he would like to be the hero for a change feels tragic when you know what follows is a betrayal because for this one fraction of a moment, there was genuine friendliness from Sam's side towards Sméagol. For this one moment , Sméagol, the pathetic little creature who shunned the world and was shunned by it in return, belonged. Not to the hopelessness he had surrendered himself to long ago but with Frodo and Sam. And he wasn't there to witness it. He had made his choice. Kind of mirrors reality in a way. Not all those who wander are lost and, sometimes, even those who are lost can be found. Some are lucky enough to have that one helping hand extended to them which can pull them out of the abyss. Sadly, not everyone ends up noticing it and taking it every time.

this totally happened in the movie dw