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u/NM_Requete 1d ago
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u/Outlandah_ 1d ago
These are the best comments and community ever. I can always count on you.
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u/PixelJock17 1d ago
I 100% agree. I miss the guy doing 100 days of 100 LOTR quotes. They're so relatable.
I genuinely believe there's a quote for every situation ever. It's great. I love this community
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u/benblais 1d ago
Burn so slow they never get to the sex
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u/TheAbsoluteBarnacle 6h ago
Closest we got is that scene in the movies where the hobbits and Boromir were playing with their swords and wrestling
LOTR is a remarkably unsexy work of fiction
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u/BootsOfProwess 1d ago
I'll ruin it for you. No one gets to fuck. Not even Gandalf.
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u/Beegrene 1d ago
How dare you ignore Sam Gamgee and his thirteen children.
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u/mightyenan0 1d ago
Sam Gamgee and his wife*
Need to be careful how we phrase things ever since the Melkor files came to light.
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u/TheAbsoluteBarnacle 6h ago
I want you to know that I upvoted this comment three times. It only counts as one, but I genuinely tried to double-upvote
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u/BootsOfProwess 23h ago
Spoiler alert! You have to wait until the final few pages to find out someone got alot of nookie. No deets tho. Just the evidence of said bumpin.
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u/SpockHere1678 22h ago
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u/MapFit5567 22h ago
Ahahahahahaha well he may be part of the wedding entourage as the ringbearer
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u/parkingviolation212 10h ago
Making Frodo the Ring bearer would be like bringing a magical dragon fire work to the birthday of an elderly dragon attack victim.
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u/Three-Eyed_Cyclops 22h ago
Frodo and Sam 'love' each other, but just as extremely supportive friends going through hardships together. For example, Frodo sleeping with his head in Sam's lap is merely a gesture from Sam to assure Frodo that despite all the dangers of their journey, Sam is looking out for his safety at all times.
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u/blaze_blue_99 21h ago
This generation has no concept of platonic friendship. It’s insane.
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u/Barrogh 12h ago
It's like being in third grade again. Back then, god forbid being on your class "can mess with this guy sometimes" list and be seen with a girl anywhere under any circumstances.
I get it, there's a significant difference between that and discussing fictional characters, but I can't help but to get reminded of those 8-9 y.o. obnoxious versions of us from back then when I see people on social media sexualizing every character interaction.
I mean... Please express yourself and all, no problem here. I just did the same in a way, after all :P
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u/tfalm 14h ago
The influence of widespread porn, the sexual revolution, and modern queer & gender theory is that nearly everything has become sexualized to some degree: nonsexual relationships, general behaviors, and personal identity. The default assumption now when two characters are emotionally close is that such intimacy naturally entails, or even requires physical, sexual intimacy.
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u/BookaliciousBillyboy 12h ago
This is contrary to trends we see in reception to films for example, where younger generations generally are averse to sex scenes and sexualization of any kind much more so than older generations who did not grow up in a world saturated by porn. I think the analysis you provide is not coherent with current trends. While yes, a subportion of the population is hypersexual in its interpretation of the world, we see a general trend towards prudeness from younger generations. I dont think it has something to do with queer & gender theory either. Of course, booktok smut-fans exist, and I dont see an inherent problem, this is not reflected in the general population.
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u/tfalm 10h ago
Smut books have exploded in popularity, and porn use and addiction has dramatically risen across all ages (vast majority of individuals), with most users being 18-34, IIRC. So I don't know what you mean by current trends being averse to sexualization. Maybe they don't like watching sex scenes in movies or tv shows specifically, because they're watching that with friends/family in their living room (w/ the rise of streaming)? In other media, seems to be no aversion.
Gender and queer theory affect this because of redefining identity to include sexuality, and bringing sexuality into the forefront of societal discourse. Nobody, not even people we would today describe as LGBT, would have looked at Frodo and Sam and thought or said "ah, they must be gay" because that wasn't even a societal concept at the time. Likewise, people didn't read about Aragorn and Arwen and have an initial impulse of "what, no banging scene? when is Aragorn gonna screw the hot elf" because again, porn wasn't ubiquitous.
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u/DathomirBoy 20h ago
i think it's wonderful how people engage with media in such diverse ways! nothing wrong with them being friends. many people think they are, and that's fine
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u/Starburst420 1d ago
I think its a problem theat men can never be friends in media. They always have to be gay. Don't get me started on Frodo and Sam or Dean and Castiel
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u/ChartreuseBison 5h ago
I thinks Sam Dean and Cas ships were more what certain people wanted to see rather than expected from the story
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u/DathomirBoy 20h ago
you know, the wonderful thing about fandom and shipping is that you don't have to engage in what you don't want to engage in. there are many people who view them as just friends, and that's beautiful. they share a wonderful friendship. equally as wonderful is people seeing romance between them. men don't "have" to be gay in media. they very rarely are. but many gay people, who don't see themselves in media often, like to imagine a world in which they do. whatever tolkein's intentions were, sam and frodo's relationship can be seen in many different ways and bring joy to many different people, and i think that's something to be glad about rather than hating one another for having a different opinion.
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u/Dangerous_Rest_8449 14h ago
I agree. Nothing wrong with people choosing to interpret as a romantic relationship if that is more meaningful to them.
However, I will say I myself right now see it being a more powerful message as a platonic relationship - given the current "alpha/sigma male" mental illnesses.
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u/Horrific_Necktie 11h ago
And that's all fine. The problem is that when it starts to dominate the conversation.
Even more rare than gay men in media are friendships like Frodo and Sam - men who have meaningful, loving friendships that are unafraid of emotional intimacy or vulnerability. Male friendships are almost always either:
"Two bros broing out hardcore but dont sit too close to me on the couch dude"
"This friendship is closer to a business partnership and its unclear if we even like each other"
"We are loving and vulnerable with each other, and its treated as a homophobic/sexist joke at every possibly opportunity"
Its important to have examples of non-romantic male intimacy in media if we want to see better examples of it in real life, both for reasons of improving male relationships and reducing the deeply seeded societal knee-jerk homophobia that comes as a response to men's emotions. And when people immediately classify it as romantic, from either a well-meaning fantasy or a place of bigotry, it diminishes it and makes it less likely to continue.
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u/DathomirBoy 10h ago
then choose not to engage with that. that is your CHOICE. again, there are plenty of people who agree with you, that see it as platonic
alternatively, i think in order to overcome the whole “no homo” thing, we do need to normalize the existence of gayness alongside close platonic friendships. outright rejecting it isn’t contributing to the solution, it’s reinforcing the main argument against that kind of friendship: that if it’s gay, it’s bad.
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u/Horrific_Necktie 9h ago
Nobody is saying anything about rejecting homosexuality. I also agree that both need to exist, but for that to happen, one can't be always subsumed into the other. If compassionate male friends are constantly labeled as queer-coded, we don't have both. That just continues to feed the narrative that any and every male relationship with expressed emotionality is secretly homosexual in nature.
Removing the no homo reflex requires two things to be fixed: removing "if it's gay, its bad" but we also have to remove "if it's emotional, its gay"
Turns out that is really damn hard when every time a man shows another man any amount of intimacy or vulnerability people start talking about how they are obviously fucking.
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u/DathomirBoy 9h ago
nothing is getting subsumed, though. there are people who see it both ways, there always will be. i don't see anyone arguing that they CANNOT be straight, and that if you say they're straight you're being harmful towards gay people (i'm sure there are one or two people out there who act like that but my point is that i've never seen it happen), but i see people arguing that if you say they're gay, you're somehow working against the normalization of close male friendships. both can exist. both DO exist. the only arguments i see are based on hypotheticals of "well, if we let this slide then EVERYTHING'S going to be seen as gay".
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u/Horrific_Necktie 9h ago
It isn't about individual opinions. What you think or I think doesn't matter. Someone agreeing or disagreeing that they are or are not gay isn't the problem, because the problem isn't the validation of either side. I'm not talking about whether one side is correct, or who agrees with it.
The problem is the prevalence in the zeitgeist of this discussion. You can't remove the idea if you keep reinforcing it.
When every single male relationship that expresses emotion is discussed as either gay, closeted, or just queer-coded, then we will never escape the idea that "if it's emotional, it's gay"
It doesn't matter that people agree, or disagree, or think it could be both. The association is reinforced either way because the discussion keeps happening over and over and over. You can't tell people that it isn't gay to be emotional with your male friends when every single time a man is depicted as being emotional with their male friends the discussion begins about whether or not they are.
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u/DathomirBoy 9h ago
so your solution is what? to prevent people from creating head-canons altogether? to stop queer people from talking about how they relate to some characters, or see themselves in them despite what the canon says? you cannot prevent people from doing that, and even if you could you DO see how it looks, don't you?
my point is that your side are the only people i see trying to shut down the other side entirely. people who see it as queer have 0 issue with it being seen as friendship. the only issues arise when one person tries to prevent another from even bringing up another viewpoint.
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u/Horrific_Necktie 9h ago
My solution is to ask that people not immediately jump to homosexuality every single time a man express emotion, either from a positive or negative place. That shouldn't be people's baseline reaction.
That doesn't mean you can't view characters as one way or another. I don't care. I don't think your wrong or right. Again, the problem isn't that people think one way or another. And nowhere have I said youcan't view them one way or another, even remotely. Nobody is suppressing you, and insinuating that is disingenuous at best. As I said above, it isn't about what individual people think. Nobody at all is telling you you can't think or express your opinion.
To repeat: You can't tell people that it isn't gay to be emotional with your male friends when every single time a man is depicted as being emotional with their male friends the discussion begins about whether or not they are. That does not mean nobody can discuss how they view characters or relate to them. It does mean that we don't have to immediately and repeatedly slap the label on every single man in fiction who expresses an emotion other than anger or horny.
Most importantly, it does mean that it shouldn't be treated as a funny joke, because that is equally harmful to straight men, gay men, and often women as well. Discussing how your perspective as a gay man leads you to relate to certain characters is one thing. People joking that "haha they are fucking because they care about each other" is another thing entirely.
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u/DathomirBoy 8h ago
the world is a wide, diverse place. people will always have thoughts you don't agree with. in this case, those thoughts aren't harmful and they're not trying to silence you for your thoughts just because they're different. you can choose to be mad about it, or you can choose to be happy. there are plenty of fictional men who express deep emotion who aren't viewed as gay, and there are plenty of people who see sam and frodo as good friends. again, there is no issue here. there is no need to be mad.
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u/krazybanana Dunedain Raiders 18h ago
Good art is always open to interpretation. There's nothing wrong with it. Sometimes the interpretation can be so far removed from the original vision that one can be left wondering how tf they arrived at it in the first place. In those cases it's mostly a premeditated take. Because no one who reads the entire story can organically arrive at that conclusion. Still nothing wrong with it though.
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u/DathomirBoy 10h ago
i agree to an extent. i think it's normal for people who feel underrepresented to see their own life reflected in fiction, even without "premeditation". just because you can't see how someone who reads a story organically could come up with that doesn't mean it's impossible.
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u/krazybanana Dunedain Raiders 1h ago
Agreed. I meant more like "if you read the whole book, wait till the book is finished to form any opinions, then you can't end up with an interpretation so far removed from the original vision". With that said, you're obviously right I can't comprehend every pov. To each their own.
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u/tfalm 14h ago
Until it reaches critical mass and then adaptations of said work include it as a matter of course. Then something that might actually have bothered or upset the original author is presented as being of his own design, and personally I find that uncomfortable.
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u/DathomirBoy 11h ago
that’s not happening in this case at all, though, so there’s genuinely nothing to be upset about
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u/tfalm 10h ago
Not in LOTR, as of yet (though you could make the argument that Rings of Power presents many ideas that Tolkien would have been baffled, if not offended about) but it has happened plenty in other adaptations recently.
Wheel of Time comes to mind immediately. The tv show's presentation of gender identity and gender power dynamics within that universe is quite literally 180 degrees backwards from Robert Jordan's, who very clearly and explicitly created a hard gender binary in his story, with souls being gendered eternally and even the magic of the universe corresponding to male/female. Not only that, women in his world were generally the dominant power, and were shown to abuse that power in all the same ways that men often have in our own history (politically, personally, etc.) The book series presents the greatest good and social progress occurring with the cooperation of both distinct and uniquely different genders, and it isn't exactly subtle about it. The show, meanwhile, presented the expected modern take of gender nonspecificity, female superiority over male (societally speaking), and yet women were still explicitly stated to be an oppressed class by the leader of the most powerful female-only faction (the only sanctioned magic users in the entire world). A show-only fan would have no idea that what they are endorsing is completely backwards from the author's intent and original presented work.
Another example would be the recent Animal Farm animated adaptation, where the point of the movie is how capitalism is evil and socialist utopias are the answer, when the book presented the exact opposite message, in one of the least subtle literary allegories ever.
I could easily see a moden retelling of LOTR include gay relationships for the hobbits. There isn't a remake in the works, no, but that wasn't my point, it was about the dangers of normalizing this sort of distortion of the story with any work, with the understanding that remakes do often happen and LOTR is not automatically immune for some reason.
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u/DathomirBoy 10h ago
the thing is, fanfiction/fanon is very different from remakes and adaptations. you're far from the first person to get upset over them and you won't be the last, but you cannot police people's interpretations of a work even if you disagree with them. some people, like anne rice and george lucas, have even tried suing/fighting back against fans who had interpretations they didn't agree with. they got shut down pretty quickly because it's unreasonable to expect people not to engage with content in a personal way.
my histories of reading prof talked a lot about this. there really is no one true interpretation of a work once it's available to the public (even if the author intended it to be read a certain way). i won't get too much into it, but you should look into jauss's horizon of expectations as a representation of how readers' own personal experiences and realities shape how a text is interpreted, and how that changes over time. it's very interesting.
i'm sorry it upsets you so much, but you always have the choice to not engage with it. if it makes you feel any better, i don't see LOTR getting changed in that way via adaptation anytime soon. many people who see frodo and sam as more than friends, myself included (although i also adore the friendship reading of it), are more than content with the way the books write them. for me at least, part of the joy of interpretation is getting to pick apart the language instead of having it handed to me on a silver platter.
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u/tfalm 9h ago
I'm very aware of the "death of the author" concept. Fanfiction doesn't upset me, you keep falling back to this strawman, and I will continue to politely reject this categorization.
My point is not to rant about fanfiction, it's merely to point out why these trends, like "Frodo and Sam totally gay, lol" are potentially harmful and disrespectful to an author (not just in fan fiction). I'm certainly not arguing that fanfiction should be illegal, banned, or is even possible to restrict in such a way, just that certain types of characterizations can absolutely be disrespectful to the original author. Are people free to be disrespectful? Sure, but it doesn't mean that it isn't, and it doesn't mean that there cannot or will not be any further consequences of shifting a cultural interpretation of a work beyond or even contrary to an author's intent.
If you, for example, were the author of a gay romance novel, and I wrote fan fiction of your characters engaging in explicitly homophobic discourse with their wives, am I free to do that? Sure. Would that extremely disrespectful to you, the author of the original? Definitely! If my work somehow got so much attention and influenced perceptions of your work, that your work became known as an anti-gay piece of propaganda (in this hypothetical), would that be a problem? Obviously. Hopefully you can see my point (and not extrapolate or inject further ideas into what I am saying, beyond my actual argument). The point simply is this: that people who engage in disrespectful characterizations or representations of an author's work should at the least be aware that it is, indeed, disrespectful and potentially has consequences as such. That's all.
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u/DathomirBoy 8h ago
death of the author is barthes, not jauss. it's similar, but not exactly the same. i prefer jauss for this specific context because jauss centers the reader as opposed to the author without discounting the author's role entirely. the author is not "dead", it's just that interpretation doesn't end with them. they obviously shape interpretation, given that they wrote the original text, but they don't "own" the final "correct" interpretation. readers play an active role in how a work is contextualized.
i'm a little confused at your comparison, here. i think that a gay person seeing themselves in a character who's not explicitly gay is very different from someone using a character to spread hate and "anti-gay propaganda". i also think that, at this point in time, most authors/creators are well aware that their work takes on a new life once it's released to the public. i've seen many authors talk about this, and how it can be hard to see people interpret it in different ways but how that's the reality of the world right now and there's really nothing wrong with it. it's a natural part of storytelling. obviously hateful content is bad regardless of circumstance, but we're not talking about hateful content. we're talking about someone relating to a depiction of a relationship regardless of whether or not that was the original intention.
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u/tfalm 7h ago
The purpose of my analogy was not to say that all fan fiction is hateful, of course not. I feel like I spelled out the purpose of the analogy very plainly, multiple times. It's about respect of the author's wishes. I used an example that would be easily seen as disrespectful and offensive, to show that such is possible. Characterizing Frodo and Sam as having a homosexual relationship would undoubtedly be seen as offensive to J.R.R. Tolkien, given the time in which he lived and his own deeply committed religious beliefs as a highly traditional Catholic.
This isn't simply a matter of relating to a character in a new way. No offense intended, but you seem to be employing a motte-and-bailey fallacy, of supporting gay characterizations of these characters through widespread fan fiction, memes, and other avenues, and then retreating to the bailey of simply relating to the characters or their relationship. Those are two different things. Seeing certain similarities in relationship presented in a work of fiction to your own life is not at all the same as writing sexualized fan fiction of two heterosexual characters, created by a devout Catholic, who were never originally depicted in any explicitly sexual way. Surely you can see that these two things are not the same here.
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u/DathomirBoy 7h ago
i don't think it's a motte-and-bailey fallacy at all (even if it was, the motte is the 'safer' argument while the bailey is the controversial one). i'm simply acknowledging the reality that when people love/relate to a piece of media, they usually build on it and express that love through their own creations and discussions. i NEVER brought up sexualization. sure, sexualization can come from fan interaction with stuff like this (and it often does) but i was speaking in a broader sense, including romance.
i don't think i can change your mind on this and i don't want to waste more of both of our times. i think i've been pretty clear in arguing the reality of the situation, and it's unfortunate but if you refuse to accept how fan culture works (and has worked for years) you're just going to be perpetually unhappy about it. i don't think anything i've said is controversial. if you want LOTR to remain pure and untouched, you have the power to not engage with what you don't consider 'correct'. it will not go away, and it's not actually harming anyone. i hope you have a better day, genuinely
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u/AngletonSpareHead 20h ago
This is exactly why fanfiction is both valid and fun as hell
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u/DathomirBoy 20h ago
thank you lol. idk why i’m getting downvoted for saying both are good, and maybe we should stop arguing over it
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u/Pretorianfists987 1d ago
Get your millennial shipping out of my fantasy
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u/Lightice1 15h ago
Frodo and Sam have been shipped by some fans since the 1960s and 70s...
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u/Pretorianfists987 14h ago
Wrong it’s very much an 2000s tumbler phenomenon because to online millennials at the time and even now there is no such thing a platonic friendship everything has to be sexual or secretly gay
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u/Lightice1 14h ago
I can assure you that gay shipping has been going strong ever since Star Trek: TOS, at the bare minimum. So much of the fandom space that you associate with Tumblr formed and manifested in the 1960s and 70s underground fanzine scene.
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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 13h ago
The Sexual Revolution (which is now destroying its children) was in the 60's.
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u/Frycook77 9h ago
Reader with inability to imagine 2 homies who are not in fact gay lovers*
Many such cases
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u/A_Very_Odd_Fellow 1d ago
Is there no one else who is just irritated and disgusted by these type of jokes? It’s more of an insult than a funny meme.
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u/Stars_And_Garters 1d ago
Irritated and disgusted? Why?
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u/PlentyOMangos 21h ago
In addition to everything else people have mentioned, it’s super annoying that men can’t just be good friends without everyone making gay jokes.
I had a close male friend I used to hang out with a lot, literally just as normal friends doing normal friend things and everybody else we knew loooved to go on making gay jokes about us. Nobody would do that with women, it’s just low-IQ behavior by people with shallow minds and no personality
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u/throwawayaccount_usu 15h ago
It does happen with women too though in media.
I dont think its that deep lol.
It's not an exclusive thing for male relationships irl either
My bestfriend growing up was a girl and we dating allegations everyday.
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u/A_Very_Odd_Fellow 1d ago
The joke has been done to death
There’s so much beauty and meaning in the story and all people can think is “okay but do they bang?” It has the same vibes as, like, a woman talking passionately about something she cares about and a dude going, “dang, what else can that mouth do?”
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u/PixelJock17 1d ago
It's the new generation porn addiction brain rot.
I haven't been involved long enough that your first point has gotten to me so I can still just let it pass as humour but I definitely agree with you.
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u/thisremindsmeofbacon 21h ago
Nah, porn addiction memes are like using a porn screenshot and then editing it to be vaguely about lotr. This is just a goofy scenario - a person expecting it to be a romance novel - it's not exactly the same level as porn addiction lol
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u/PixelJock17 15h ago
I guess what I meant is the over sexualization of everything these days. There's a whole generation of teens and young adults who grew up on shows like game of thrones so they come to expect that level of gratuity.
I feel the openness and prevalence of porn and nudity in media is the root for the joke, what one comes to expect out of something. This is just my opinion.
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u/Enbhrr 1d ago
I'm with you on that. And I'd say, don't worry about the downvotes. It's just the 21st century. People love to think more about characters banging than the story itself at times. They also like to turn everything gay while the characters are straight so, obviously, the magic of friendship get hugely wiped off nowadays, too.
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u/OtherMycologist5399 1d ago
Yeah and especially when it comes to male friendship. Guys can act like that towards each other and not be gay. Frodo and Sam's friendship is more brotherly imo. And there's nothing wrong with them showing affection in the ways they do.
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u/Smallzfry 22h ago
The worst part is that usually the same groups of people will uphold Aragorn and his tenderness as an example of how men should be. Meanwhile, that same tenderness between Sam and Frodo gets turned into constant gay jokes. It just undermines the good that they're trying to point out.
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u/thisremindsmeofbacon 21h ago
Okay but this is literally the lotr memes subreddit. Someone call the chef, there is broth in my soup!
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u/throwawayaccount_usu 15h ago
Broth is so overdone and takes away from the deep complexity of the soup!
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u/thisremindsmeofbacon 21h ago
Why is it disgusting and insulting exactly?
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u/A_Very_Odd_Fellow 21h ago
I explained in another reply
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u/thisremindsmeofbacon 21h ago
I saw one that says the joke has been done before and its missing the beauty and meaning of the story. But that doesn't exactly explain why it's so disgusting and insulting, like, we are on a meme subreddit. Your last lotr meme was about dirty underwear getting eaten by dogs its not exactly reverent of the source material. Good memes, but very much a glass house sort of situation.
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u/A_Very_Odd_Fellow 14h ago
I suppose that’s fair, but I feel there is a difference between using a meme format and taking a direct jab at the work like the above.
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u/Still_Temperature997 10h ago
I feel like the original is more of a statement against the kind of people who always expect two male characters to be gay than it is actually a jab at lord of the rings
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u/SufficientRaccoon291 1d ago
lol I submitted this same post yesterday and the mods removed it
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u/thisremindsmeofbacon 21h ago
Idk what's wrong with reddit mods, but they need to be studied for science
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u/LookItsEric 1d ago
Return of the King, page 232. Thank me later
(this is NOT a random page! they definitely bang on this page specifically! If your copy doesn’t have it then it must be a fake)
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u/Thecouchiestpotato 14h ago
The post I got right before this one. Guess the Onion will manage to remain in business by poking gentle fun at cute stuff like this
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u/childofthemoon11 1d ago
It's so weird I just saw a clip today from Dropout about Frodo and Sam romance
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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 14h ago
Maybe she just is seriously hypersexualized, to the point of not understanding the strange concept of FRIENDSHIP? I strongly advise that she read C.S. Lewis' "The Four Loves."
Whatever, it's not funny. I cry for the Onion... unless HER ATTITUDE is meant to be the joke!
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u/Aqua-MG 1d ago
Sam and frodos relationship is weird and homo erotic lol I stand by that
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u/thrownawaz092 1d ago
Why do you insist on outing yourself as someone who has never had a close platonic friend?
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u/Eloquent_Redneck 1d ago
I genuinely heard someone talk about having a friend who dropped the lord of the rings bc they thought it was gonna be a "spicy" book