"The Breaking Of The Fellowship"

"The Breaking of the Fellowship"

2021

"My heart speaks clearly at last: the fate of the Bearer is in my hands no longer. The Company has played its part."

-"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers", by J.R.R. Tolkien

Another underrated moment of great courage, from both parts: Frodo decides that to fulfill the Quest, and to protect the Fellowship from the destructive influence of the Ring, he must head out alone to Mordor; and Aragorn understands that the best way to protect Frodo now is to let him go. It's a moment that isn't in the books, but that adds a lot to the story and the characters, a placing of trust and faith in each other.

"The Fisherman"

2022

Time to introduce Tumblr to my OCs.

"Orangutan"

2022

Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)

"Treebeard"

2022

They found that they were looking at a most extraordinary face.

-"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers", by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Ents are probably the most delightful of Tolkien's creations, and of all of Middle-earth's creatures, the ones I wish were real the most. The wild spaces of this Earth could use with guardians as committed, wise, and formidable as they.

"Wild Yak"

2022

Wild Yak (Bos mutus)

Really underrated bovids. They are really huge, bigger even than African buffaloes, a fact I was reminded of when I saw a video circulating of a wild yak mingling with a herd of domesticated ones, and it towered over them.

"The Two Towers"

2022

A strong place and wonderful was Isengard, and long it had been beautiful... But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived–for all those arts and subtle devises for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child’s model or a slave’s flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength.

-"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers", by J.R.R. Tolkien

2022 was the 20th anniversary of The Two Towers.

Though the whole trilogy are collectively my favorite films of all time, the second installment is definitely my least favorite of the three, ironically in part for the same reason a lot of people love it: Helm's Deep. I find the battle is unnecessarily overblown, in importance, length, and stakes in comparison to the book, to the point that it takes away from other important story points, and somewhat diminishes the impact of the later Siege of Gondor and Battle of Pelennor Fields, which is a much bigger and much more narratively significant battle in the War of the Ring. Nevertheless, it was fun to revisit some of my favorite scenes from the film, as I did in 2021 with Fellowship of the Ring.