one of my favorite things is when geralt finds out jaskier's birth name is julian alfred pankratz and it's like when a kid finds out their mom's name isn't mom
'sam was never tempted by the ring'
?
Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be.
Tolkien, J. R. R.. The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings, Part 3: Return of the King Vol 3 (p. 203). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
???????????????
speaking of i do find it very interesting that we never see what the Ring is tempting Frodo with. all of the scenes where he's being tempted to use it in the first half of the book take the form of a temptation to use it to save himself. in the later part of the book we almost never get to see what he's thinking. i have no idea what's going on in his head when he claims the ring at mount doom. it is a mystery.
honestly Frodo's sufficiently fucked up by the time they get to mordor that at one point he starts hallucinating that Sam is an Orc trying to steal the Ring so it's not a given that he was claiming it for any reason that even made sense to anyone but himself
Honestly, it reads almost like a reaction to all the pain he’s had to go through while carrying the Ring.
Getting chased by servants of the enemy in what he previously thought was the safest place in the world, then the bs that was Old Man Willow, then the Barrow-downs, Bree, WEATHERTOP and the flight to the ford of the Bruinen, and so on and so forth. There’s been SO MUCH. The only time Frodo ever used the Ring almost like Bilbo did - i.e. as a bit of a joke and because he COULD - was in Tom Bombadil’s house after Tom had treated something so dangerous like it was nothing. That is the ONLY time Frodo put it on just because he could, to be sure it WAS the right ring and sort of to pull a bit of a prank on Tom and the others to kind of re-establish his ownership of it.
But all the other times? It was to hide, to escape. So in the end, when he claims the Ring, it reads almost like an attempt to escape the trauma he’s gone through. He knows the Ring can allow him to escape, he has used it for that before. He knows the risk, yes, but the pain of letting it go is also too much in the end.
another thing wrt Sam's moral character is, I do think that if it had come down to it (and it could easily have come down to it) he'd have let the rest of middle earth burn rather than let Frodo die.
WHICH is actually one of the qualities which makes him such an invaluable friend to Frodo - it's what keeps them both alive long enough to be rescued after the Ring is destroyed and is also (obvs) what prompts him to go back for Frodo at the end of TT, even tho he fully believes he's dooming the quest in doing so.
Sam's willingness to abandon the quest is part of what ultimately allowed the quest to succeed. & I think that's neat.
fullmetal alchemist was nuts because “theres a crazy murderer who was executed for his crimes and then had his soul implanted in a suit of armor as part of a twisted government experiment” is a D-plot at best
correction: this was actually three characters i just forgot about the other two because they had a more minor role and they were two mass murderers in a trench coat pretending to be one mass murderer
you don’t get good at doing something by not doing it
you get good at doing something by doing it badly and learning how to do it better
You don’t learn from success, you learn from failure how to achieve success.
you see, the thing is, i hate failure.
in order to find success, you must first submit yourself to the mortifying ordeal of being kinda crap at something
Also, reality check with yourself to make sure failures are actual failures. Did you produce something kinda ok? That’s not a failure, that’s a kinda ok success. Was your goal just to keep yourself entertained? Then as long as you were entertained your good. Not everything has to be high quality.
