1 post tagged “the x-files”

I just finished Lord of the Rings--I'd seen the movies as they came out, and I'd read The Hobbit in 9th grade, but I must confess that I hadn't read LotR properly, all the way through, until now. I love it all (well, except the bits about squint-eyed ruffians. I like my squinty eyes dammit); I love fantasy and epic quests and victory wrought with sadness and all characters being everything at once while simultaneously being obviously wholly good or wholly evil (Aragorn is at once the sketchy Strider and the King Elessar, most glorious of all men, and all in between; Gandalf has his moments of doubt but obviously can do no wrong and even comes back from the freakin' dead; hobbits by nature are small and humble and prefer gardening and drinking beer to epic quests and that is precisely what makes it so that they are the only ones who can carry the Ring and the whole world's hope and folly and doom... etc etc etc). Simplicity wreathed in complexity via doubt--you don't read this story to find out what happens "in the end" becuase you know they win (and the whole book's full of references to the future, the narrator's always going off about how "in his old age pippin would think often of the time when..." yadda yadda so you know they survive and there's peace after the ordeal); you read it for the journey. And here I pause and remark upon the fact that Tolkien was a biblical scholar, and like lotr you read the bible for the stories and for the journey, not to "find out" whether or not Jesus gets resurrected or something. That's the difference between "great lore" and summer blockbusters--great lore is already ingrained as part of our culture; we all know "what happens in the end" but read it anyway for the journey.

Anyway, I wanted to note this here:

Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him in wonder; for they saw that the grace of his youth, and the valour of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.

That's easily my favorite phrase in the entire thing. It's actually in Appendix A(v). I'm glad that they worked it into the movies, though it is a fabricated scene between Elrond and his daughter--he's trying to convince her not to forsake the sea--I was completely captivated by this line. It just completely breaks your heart. It's beautiful.

Appendix A(v) is the tale of Aragorn and Arwen. I love it for its surety and its doubt--Aragon loves her starting from the hour of their meeting, Arwen's "choice was made and her doom appointed" at their second meeting... vs the sadness and the uncertainty, what with Estel's adopted father and his sadness, and it not being "proper" for men to wed elven-kind whilst everyone sings tales of the great who did, blah blah blah...

Interesting that the movies A) focused on Aragorn and Arwen, even though their tale is relegated to the Appendixes while Eowyn and Faramir's is in the book proper, and B) they couldn't acceptably use "doubt and waiting" as tension in the love story so they had to construct all that stuff about Aragorn trying to get her to forsake him so she could sail away from the Havens. No--Arwen's "choice was made and her doom appointed" as soon as they met in Lorien. Haha. Enough about this.

Another random bit: x-files voiceovers for the win.

But what science may never be able to explain is our ineffable fear of the alien among us; a fear which often drives us not to search for understanding, but to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate. To obscure the truth not only from others, but from ourselves.

O, Chris Carter. O, purple prose. O, xfiles sites that make it easy for me to find whatever xfiles quote I want. Thank you, Scully, for helping me get a 720 on the verbal SAT.

[Much of what is said here has already been expressed in some form or another on the livejournal. I've added capitalization for the voxizement.]