fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POSt #2600 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2600 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]

08. [WARNING for rape]

__________________________________________________

09. [WARNING for rape]

__________________________________________________

10. [WARNING for RL death]

__________________________________________________

11. [WARNING for underage?]

[Lilo and Stitch]

__________________________________________________

12. [WARNING for rape, non-con]

__________________________________________________

13. [WARNING for rape]

[Panic! at the Disco]

__________________________________________________

14. [WARNING for child molestation?]

__________________________________________________

15. [WARNING for rape]

[Silent Hill]

__________________________________________________

16. [tb]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #371.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That'd be missing the whole point, though? Thorin's death is a tragedy because it's hard and it feels wrong that someone who went through so much and fought so hard paid the ultimate sacrifice for the battle he chose. That might feel unjust, but it's not wrong for the story. It's supposed to hurt.

And more importantly, it's supposed to hurt because this is how war works: good people die before their time, and victories feel a little "wrong" because of it. Tolkien understood that better than most people.

Are you sure OP means his death? I thought they meant the whole bit where he goes crazy, barricades himself inside the mountain, shits on the elves and humans, sends Bilbo away, and generally makes things even worse for the dwarves.

This. His death was pretty much a relief after that.

If this is what you truly think, then I think you've missed a lot of the book's complexity and characterization.

Maybe I did. Because to me book!Thorin was sympathetic but rather unlikeable and kind of a flat character. And the things he does later are understandable. Movie!Thorin, while already showing some gold sickness in DOS, just doesn't seem like he'd go as far as book!Thorin did. I can't see it.

Really? I can nearly see it more easily with movie Thorin, since we were given a lot of his backstory regarding lost kingdoms, and a people in exile, and men and elves turning their backs on his people in their times of need, and having to live on the charity of others at times. In that context it makes a lot more sense to me that, already afflicted with gold madness, Thorin would instinctively close his gates when threatened by those same men and elves (and being fair, armed forces arriving on your doorstep in numbers is fairly threatening no matter how rationally it was meant on Bard and Thranduil's parts), and cling ever more tightly to everything he's just won back after years of hardship and which the people who abandoned them are threatening to try and take from him all over again. Then ramp up the tension as the situation between the two armed camps worsens, throw in gold madness clouding his judgement and ramping up his emotions, and then have him realise that the one non-dwarf he's trusted in so long, the friend who's saved his life and helped his people so many times by this stage, has just utterly betrayed them and handed his most precious (and focal for the madness) possession over to their enemies, the better to allow said enemies to blackmail and extort their treasures from him.

I could see him breaking down and holding Bilbo over a parapet in madness and betrayal induced rage, under those circumstances. Rather easily, really. Thorin is proud, desperate, easily moved to anger, sensitive to betrayal after all he's been through, and afflicted by a madness that is as potent in its way as a Ring's influence. Those wouldn't be actions that are beyond him in extremis.

I can see it pretty easily, unfortunately. After all, he's already held Bilbo at swordpoint, and that's even BEFORE he gets Erebor back. Thorin's story is kind of being... amplified by the movie, I guess? So now he's a much more well-rounded character, but the seeds of gold sickness are still there, and it's going to be vastly more painful actually seeing it.

Last time I reread the Battle of Five Armies, I felt sad, but I honestly think I'm going to cry when I see the movie. (And that's even WITH its flaws and padding - if it's done one thing extremely well, it's made the dwarves feel like CHARACTERS. Fili and Kili's deaths will be devastating as well for the same reason.)

Naw. I wanted the book to have complexity and characterization that it did not. It's really hard for me to care about Thorin at all when I read the book because he's so unsympathetic and douchey. :( I will care when movie Thorin dies way more than I ever cared about his death in my multiple re-reads of the book.

I think the same idea still applies. Are we really supposed to think that good people with noble intentions will never have flawed judgement and make terrible mistakes? The idea that only monsters or assholes do terrible things is an illusion and always has been. Good people-- even heroes!-- can fuck up just like everyone else.

The fact that Thorin does is what makes him more than a flat, generic hero type. He's deeply flawed in many ways, though his quest is still a heroic one. If you took all that away, what would be the point of the story? An unsympathetic jerk who goes on a long trip, does unsympathetic, jerky things and then ends up an unsympathetic jerk who dies an unsympathetic jerk's death isn't a plot.

It wasn't like it randomly happened to him. The gold fever is a curse of his line, ever since the seven rings were gifted to dwarves. Not much different from what the Ring did to, oh, half the people it encountered? Such as, for a random example, Boromir?

dude, tolkien fail, the rings of the dwarves were pretty much all gone by the time the One Ring was forged. Also entirely unrelated to the gold fever.

Really? I thought the Seven Rings were what had started the dwarves' need to hoard gold in the first place, and were the ultimate cause of the gold fever that plagued certain families afterwards? They didn't confer invisibility or extended lifespan, but they DID increase the avarice and anger of their bearers, the knock-on effect of which was the gold fever in later generations.

Plus one should keep in mind that Thorin is old enough to have seen and even touched the ring. It belonged to his grandfather didn't it? It wasn't lost until Thráin went and tried to go to Erebor, after the battle of Azanulbizar.

Not quite - after escaping Erebor, Thror gave his ring to Thrain. Sauron got it back from him when he was captured and taken to Dol Guldur. He had two of the others as well, and the last four were destroyed by dragons. The dwarves BELIEVED it was lost after the battle, though.

Okay, I have the details slightly off, but Thorin still might have seen it in his youth.

Yeah, definitely. It could have definitely been a major contributing factor to Thror's own gold sickness. I THINK by The Hobbit, Thorin's line is the only one who still has their ring, so this family tendency for gold sickness could have been amplified by exposure to it.

By the time the Ring was forged? Thror, as in Thorin's granddad, still had one of the Seven in his possession when Erebor fell. Isildur failed to throw the One Ring into Mount Doom a couple of THOUSAND years beforehand. So there was at least one of the Seven still in existence several thousand years after the One was lost, let alone forged.

+1. Don't call others out when your canon details are shaky themselves.

[ SECRET POSt #2600 ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

OP

Re: OP

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject