Hello!
I am SpiritImmortal. You might know me from some other sites as well. Feel free to call me Spirit :)
This is my personal all-in-one blog. If you'd like to role play with me, please visit my rp blog, Endimion-Issyl.
I’ll give him a proper intro when I get my drawings finished but I’m working on my Baldur’s Gate boy, Clover 🍀
He’s an entirely self-taught wizard out of survival and he is Going Through it
He’s been on his own for his whole life and although he doesn’t speak up much, he’s starting to see his party as the only family he can remember and he’d die for them. Also he pronounces a lot of words completely wrong because he’s only read them in books– you might see this as a problem for wizards and yes, for much of the time it sure was. Without a teacher Clover fought tooth and nail for everything he knows. He’s a good caster with no head for people and he just met Halsin who looks like he’d like to eat him as much as talk to him. He received the signals but failed to interpret them.
Another Lord of the Rings Hot Take: the reason Frodo starts starving himself isn’t *just* because of the horrific emotional toll of the journey. It’s also because the only food Frodo and Sam have is Lembas bread, which the Ring takes away your ability to eat.
When Frodo tries to share the Lembas bread with Gollum, Gollum is physically unable to eat it. He wants to eat it, but Can’t. Because it’s elvish bread, it burns Gollum’s throat and “chokes” him.
I mentioned in a previous post that Frodo isn’t just afraid of becoming like Gollum– he’s afraid of becoming like Gollum because he knows that Sam despises Gollum, and he’s paranoid that he’s becoming someone who Sam can no longer love.
When Gollum says that he can’t eat Lembas bread, Sam coldly responds that he’ll have to “starve then, and good riddance.”
And then Sam repeatedly worries that Frodo isn’t eating enough, that he worries Frodo is starving himself. (”You haven’t eating anything all day, and you’re not sleeping neither– don’t think I haven’t noticed!” “I’ve seen you– you’re not eating, you barely sleep.”)
I feel like the reason Frodo is eating less isn’t the horrible emotional strain of the journey– it’s also because he’s physically losing the ability to eat. As the Ring takes over his mind eating elvish food is starting to become painful for him, the way it’s painful for Gollum. Frodo saying ”I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass” on Mount Doom is a direct callback to Gollum saying that “we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind” in the beginning of the film.
One thing I think is really compelling about the Ring is that….there is no clear line between “the emotional toll the journey takes on the characters” and “the actual physical damage the Ring does to their minds.” There’s no clear separation between the times when Frodo is not eating because he’s traumatized and afraid, and the times when Frodo is not eating because the Ring is warping his mind and making it harder for him to eat. It’s like the Ring is parasitic, feeding off the guilt and trauma it creates in people.
Frodo tries to hide how little he’s eating because he doesn’t want Sam to worry about his emotional state…… but also because he doesn’t want Sam to realize that he’s gradually becoming corrupted like Gollum, that he’s gradually becoming the kind of person he’s afraid that Sam can no longer empathize with.
Fantastic post. I think part of why Sam is so vicious to Gollum is because he is afraid that Frodo will become like him and refuses to contemplate the possibility, but I hadn’t considered the parallel idea that Frodo is afraid that Sam won’t love him if he becomes like Gollum.
Also if I were to write a proper review, I’ll have to be prepared for the inevitable wall of text full of trigger warnings that this thing has, it’s an adult horror series after all, albeit it’s the prettiest adult horror series I’ve ever watched. The use of colors, textures and scenery is very interesting, though it can sometimes be a bit eye straining. There’s also a lot to say about how each story is structured in a way that is part murder mistery, part classic theater. Some elements are rather obscure and kind of difficult to understand but that’s what makes it fun.
So yeah, I liked it. I’m excited for the movie next year.
The Medicine Seller is the most smoking hot transforming magical boy(?) in all of cinema.
