Riss. 28. (Check out my Dragon Age nerdery at redredribbon.) Just some jigsaw puzzle bisexual nerd who writes and takes pictures. I'm creative but lazy, spiritual but still figuring it out, and trying to become a more well-rounded, socially aware person. This is just a gigantic hodge-podge of things (from video games to social justice to religion to art to fandom to gender and sexuality to adorable animals to INFINITY AND BEYOND). If you need it tagged, just let me know!
Rating: Explicit Warnings: None Relationship: Arthur/Charles, Past Arthur/John Summary: Minor spoilers for the beginning of Chapter 4. “We ain’t never done right by the people we loved. Even–even when it was each other. So do right by her, and your boy. You hear?” After a night of celebration, Arthur gets some unexpected closure to old wounds, and finally feels ready to start something new.
Not sure if anyone’s even still here to see this at this point, but hey! I wrote a fic! For the first time in a year and a half! Red Dead has consumed me, particularly Arthur/Charles, but I cannot resist a good complicated angsty teenage past relationship with Arthur/John. I love both pairings, and everyone’s amicable (or as much as they can be) here. Anyway, please enjoy!
well tumblr, it’s been real. we had some good times, back in the day. not deleting my blog or anything, i’ll still pop in as I do, but i’ll be genuinely surprised if this website survives this shockingly out-of-touch decision-making. I don’t come here much at all anymore, got pretty tired of the purity police and the witch hunts. If you want to follow me elsewhere, send me a message.
All this will be for nothing. We will have been for nothing. Defined by their histories, distorted to fit into their narrative until all that is left of us are the monsters in the stories they tell their children.
Most composers spend just 10-12ish weeks working on a film’s music. John Williams spent around 14 weeks on each Star Wars movie, 40ish weeks total for the whole OT……but composing the LOTR trilogy’s soundtrack took four years
The vocals you hear in the soundtrack are usually in one of Tolkien’s languages (esp. Elvish). The English translations of the lyrics are all poems, or quotes from the book, or occasionally even quotes from other parts of the films that are relevant to the scene
When there were no finished scenes for him to score, Howard Shore would develop musical themes inspired by the scripts or passages from the book. That’s how he got all Middle-Earth locations have their own unique sound: he was able to compose drafts of “what Gondor would sound like” and “what Lorien would sound like” long before any scenes in those places were filmed
Shore has said his favorite parts to score were always the little heartfelt moments between Frodo and Sam
Shore wrote over 100 unique leitmotifs/musical themes to represent specific people, places, and things in Middle Earth (over 160 if you count The Hobbit)
The ones we all talk about are the Fellowship theme, the main Shire Theme, and the themes for places like Gondor, Mordor, Rohan, and Rivendell…but a lot of the more subtle ones get overlooked and underappreciated
Like Aragorn’s theme. It’s a lot less “obvious” than the others because, like Aragorn himself, it adapts to take on the color of whatever place Aragorn is in: it’s played on dramatic broody stringed instruments in Bree, on horns in battle scenes, softly on the flute with Arwen in Rivendell….
Eowyn has not just one but three different leitmotifs to represent her
Gollum and Smeagol both have their own leitmotifs! Whose theme music is playing in the scene can often tell you whether the Gollum or Smeagol side is “winning” at the moment
The melody for Gollum’s Song in the end credits of the The Two Towers is the Smeagol and Gollum themes smushed together (it’s Symbolic)
And then there’s the really obscure ones. Like there’s a melody that plays at Boromir’s death that shows up again in ROTK in scenes that foreshadow a major death or loss
Shore wanted the theme music to grow alongside the characters– so that as the characters changed, their theme music would change with them.
You can hear that most clearly in the Shire theme. Like the hobbits, it goes through A Lot
Like compare the childish lil penny whistle theme you hear in Concerning Hobbits/the beginning of FOTR with (throws a dart at random Beautiful Tragic Hobbit Character Development scene because there WAY TOO MANY to choose from) the scene when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield, where you hear a kind of shattered and broken but more mature version of that same theme in the background
I could write you a book on how much I love the way the Shire theme grows across the course of these films
Unlike the hero’s themes, which constantly change and grow, the villain’s themes (The One Ring theme, the Isengard theme, etc) remain basically the same from the very beginning of FOTR to the end of ROTK. Shore said this was an intentional choice: to emphasize that evil is static, while good is capable of change
Shore has said that between all the music that made into the movies and the music that didn’t, he composed enough for “a month of continuous listening”……..where can I sign up
