Hi! I thought I'd give a quick (random) update, in case someone was curious about my disappearance. I was really sick at the end of last year, and by Dec. and Jan., it got a little out of control. Since I'm still on the mend, I don't know when I'll be back to finish the theories I have in...

"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been an unprecedented success, with a broad, highly engaged, global fan base." ♡ From Prime Video's official S3 press release (posted by Varking on r/LOTR_on_Prime).

#TROPspoilers It's about to get r e a l

i love this shot

I think about this scene on a daily basis.

I love Rings of Power so much I can get emotional just thinking about it

Bad vibes. Bad vibes all around. Galadriel (1x01): "But sometimes, the lights shine just as brightly reflected in the water as they do in the sky."

On a blurry sidenote, the pendant here absolutely doesn’t look the same as it was before? The kingfisher design isn’t there at all. Or am I losing it? #TheRingsofPower

The truth of what happened after Sauron joined Melkor.

I love reading (what I think are) random parts of the book and suddenly seeing stuff like this. (ngl, it happens every time i open it)

friendly reminder that this man can look like two completely different people with the smallest adjustments

THIS CONCEPT ART HELLO!?!?!?!?

BLOG UPDATE— I've finished reformatting all of my blog posts! I made some minor wording adjustments for clarity and flow, but none of the actual content has changed (besides pictures). Most importantly, Chapter 6 and the Meta Preview have new links—their old links won't work soon.

Sauron after he injures himself to be taken to Eregion, and Galadriel can still be useful. vs. After he injures himself for the Nine Rings, his work is nearly complete, Eregion is on fire, he's ready to abandon it and condemn it to burn, and Celebrimbor has almost "proven his worth."

One of my favorite things will forever be that every frame in the show is so unbelievably deep; like a regular person wouldn't think twice about a bunch of ships sailing to Middle-earth. But the story is there.

Examining Another Pattern—"To see whose will was the mightier." "You must know it pains me, treating you like..." "Like you've treated countless others?"

All aboard the pity train.

Theo: finds a Sauron-made artifact that's activated by blood, stabs himself with it, has its mark on his arm, "only blood can bind," gets stared down by Sauron... No matter who you think Theo's going to be, there's no dismissing the Jupiter-sized target he's put on himself. Just saying.

This moment became a core memory in October 2022.

🚨The Rings of Power was Amazon's most watched show this year!!

This still makes me so suspicious of Tamar's guild crest.

“Sauron never being genuinely repentant is boring”. To you, maybe. I personally find the idea of a being wrestling with his options and ultimately falling back into evil to be quite true to his character and entertaining to watch!

Considering repentance as an option does not automatically make one genuinely repentant. As Diarmid said, you must actively choose to be good each day. Sauron considered this and then left Diarmid to die with a smile on his face. He considered repentance, liked the idea, then changed his mind.

The deaths of Finrod and Celebrimbor (and the events that follow with Lúthien/Galadriel) parallel so thoroughly, it's actually crazy.

There's something about this image... Mount Doom in the background, Sauron's eyes completely shadowed, his subtle smirk, the tangible darkness beneath the surface, him being dragged in chains when he could single-handedly level the whole village if he wanted to...

More dialogue parallels that clarify things: this time, between 1x08 and 2x03. (possibly part 1 of 2) - In both scenes, there is a time constraint, first emphasized by Celebrimbor in 1x08, then by Sauron in 2x03.

Gil-galad (1x05): "A power [...] as strong and unyielding as evil." Galadriel (1x01): "Evil does not sleep, Elrond. It waits." Gil-galad: "They say it seeped down the roots into the mountain depths, where for centuries now, it has waited."

Charlie Vickers: "She brings this light and goodness, and... He sees things in her, like her ways of leading armies, or seeking out her goals and striving towards a different end point [...] that kind of illuminate some things for him in terms of how he can control others."

I was looking at the comparison I made yesterday, and I wondered if there was any sign of Sauron having the same smile, off camera, when he left his companions to death on the raft. And there WAS. It reveals an interesting pattern... bsky.app/profile/trop...

This guy smiled as he brutally murdered/left people to die horribly; the same one who laughed and mocked Gorlim as he put him cruelly to death. Depicted below is not Halbrand, nor Annatar. This is the true Sauron coming out of hiding; he's the one you see just before you die.

"It's been wonderful meeting people that have been like, 'I just totally go into Middle-earth, I turn on Rings of Power when I just want to feel safe and in a totally different world.'"

I said this on Twitter, but it's even more applicable now that we've seen s2: Making us love Sauron as Halbrand before stabbing us in the heart was such a pro move. There's a scene from a trilogy I recently read ("The First Law" by Joe Abercrombie) with two best friends who became bitter enemies...

A whole day of working on various projects, while absorbing the new interviews with the showrunners, Morfydd, and Charlie, is all I ever needed.

2x05 is my comfort episode.

I'm reformatting some things on my blog, and reading the old stuff I wrote in 2023 makes me mourn for my lost innocence, such as: "The Elves would not turn into shadow without mithril, but the Nazgûl will, WITH mithril (or whatever material will be used to craft the Rings for Men)."

🥲

Galadriel grabbing the lantern with her bare hand is so... 🙌🔥 (can't think of a good word to describe it)

This scene from 1x05 is the very beginning of what we might see with the Sauron/Pharazôn dynamic. Pharazôn thought he was using his own words the whole time, but they were devised by Sauron.

It's the little things that make me happy, like the way Celebrimbor holds his pencil.

Celebrimbor, to Sauron: "But the Rings are beyond your reach, as I shall be, ere long. For soon, I shall go to the shores of the morning, borne hence by a wind that you can never follow." Finrod, to Beren:

Given how different Sauron's expressions are in these shots, I wonder if the first was filmed specifically to be a "vision shot." It captures the result of the whole encounter: defeat. Whereas in the second, he was humiliated, but did not see defeat as an option; so he mocked.

I knew that as soon as I started reading the books again, I would be overwhelmed with notes, and it would take me twice as long to finish as it would any other series. But here I am. On the bright side, it has been worth it; my perspective has slightly changed. I think this readthrough...

sometimes you gotta have this on loop just to feel something

I think about this a lot: Galadriel stayed in Doriath because of Celeborn, and her brothers went to Nargothrond. But they would still come to visit her because "they wished to see their sister." Now, all of them are gone, and Galadriel is alone.

:)

Galadriel: "How fares the quest for peace?" Sauron: "Better than expected." the quest for peace:

I finally started my post-season reading of the books, and I'm taking notes. I wanted to talk about a connection I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Adar and Gandalf both describe Sauron consuming/devouring a victim ("sooner or later"), even if they resist for a time.

"It is what comes after the night storms, when the dawn is silent, and the birds awaken." "We have tended this forest since before the mountains rose up and divided it. When the only sound here was the light upon the moss, and the breathing of the leaves. Yes, we know peace."

Even if two scenes aren't very similar visually, dialogue parallels can reveal/clarify things that may have previously been difficult to uncover. I decided to see what would happen if I aligned these apparently unrelated scenes, solely based on one line from Sauron: