Whoa, this comment thread is wild. Sorry to those who have to deal with shame. I also don’t like being hugged or kissed, but that’s true regardless of their gender. That said, you should be allowed to cry, and you should at least be allowed to express your feelings. It’s not a sign of weakness, and if anything, a sign of bravery.
But, reading your comments, grateful to not have a wife who judges my masculinity. I still gotta do my part around the house and stay respectful, but if I needed to vent over a bad day, she’s all ears. Thanks for that.
The fellowship, especially the human members were made up of aristocrats doing things for honor and Valor. But most humans in 4th age me were living in squalor, a shell of a former great empire and people. Even the movies did a decent job of showing the distrust, violence and squalor and curruptability of average men.
All that said yes show less toxicity and more role model responses to hard situations is a good idea. But drama sells.
Excuse me? Doing it for honor and valor?
They were doing it to save middle earth from a tyrant who would have enslaved everyone under his rule.
That was one of Tolkien’s concepts, that a king should protect his people and lead by example. There is no battle in which Aragorn didn’t lead from the front.
The 4th age was one of peace and prosperity. Please share the source for the peoples of middle earth living in squalor.
Well you definitely right about the motivation. I guess my thoughts were 1. all the elves could have just bailed on ME but some stuck around. 2. Aragon in the books always intended on being king and was further motivated by elronds requirement to marry his daughter so as much as he may have done it to lead from the front it was still a game of houses. 3. Overall you absolutely right about the forth being prosperous i had the industrialisation of bag end in mind in particular. Yes sams family fixes it over 3 generations and it was 1 town trading with sauromon, but it def was the exploitative example I thought of. 4.Other than the wizard and hobbits it was all nobility in the fellowship etc… last is the “height of humanity” were the early numenorians so what was left of civilization by the lotr saga anyway was diminished
Thanks for checking my generalization I should be more careful not to twist tokens intent
No worries. I appreciate you coming back to reiterate and elaborate on your thoughts. And having a civil discourse on Tolkien.
I just want to add on some details about Aragorn for those coming to know more.
That whilst he did intend to reclaim the throne, the way he went about it was about as noble and selflessly as possible. He didn’t do it by conquering or by force. He did it by proving he was worthy of being king. He rescued Gondor from certain destruction. He healed people " the hands of the king are the hands of a healer. " Then when he finally does reclaim it, he ruled in a way basically the opposite of the last millennium of rulership. And worked to undo a thousand years or more of gradual decay.
“Kings made tombs more splendid than the houses of the living and counted the names of their descent dearer than the names of their sons.”
Beautifully said. And honestly I kind of forgot about this and its a major theme. I got prrtty hung up on magic leaving/dying and the fact there were still humans like the haradrim or Easterling. I think aaragon made peace with them? I really dont know how I managed to not weight his reign with more importance, guess it shows my own bias pessimism. He was basically the perfect archetype and all the symbolism of him planting the 4th tree, etc making him more a messiah than hungry for power. I didnt really think he purged humanity of sin though … did he ever go so far to suggest that?
No shaming at all! But I think it’s important to recognize that not all cultures express affection the same way.
One very poignant scene I remember well was when a Disney exec met the famous Japanese director Hiyao Miyazaki for the first time. The American exec rushed forward to hug them and I remember thinking that Miyazaki may have felt pretty uncomfortable with that. As an Asian American that spends a lot of time in both cultures I find that Americans tend to (for lack of a better word) impose their cultural norms on others - either through well meaning ignorance or cultural chauvinism I don’t know.
Edit - replying to Boozilla. Not sure if it worked.
This type of relationship is pretty common in war. You and the squad end up “in the shit” and now you have all crossed the boundaries of what civilians call “manliness”. You are free, unimpeachable, the manliest thing, a real warrior, a soldier in battle. The things you do now define manliness, you are writing the rules. They can call you whatever, you will reply with the sort of laughter that silences fools.
People die around you. The sound of another man’s voice becomes poetry to you. How much longer will you hear his voice? Who knows, tell him a shitty joke. Sit on his lap for a gag, do whatever. Drink in his presence, press his flesh against yours, be alive together, try to keep him in your memory, tomorrow we all may die. Has anybody seen those pictures of soldiers from the American Civil War all hanging out and mugging for the camera? Acting all “gay” with each other? That’s what war does to men, sometimes, probably not that often, I fear.
Somebody online with a military background once remarked about the safest he’s ever felt, including in civilian life, was when he was in some tent in a war zone with the rest of the platoon, everyone in their sleeping bags, crammed in the tent together like a litter of kittens in a box. Sure, they were in the death zone, for real, but he was warm and snug, surrounded by armed badasses who would come to his aid at once if anything nasty went down. He said he slept like a baby, that he’s never felt that sense of security since, not even safe in bed as a civilian, later.
It means a lot to me that this book, TLOR, was pretty much written by the Great War. Tolkien went to that war, against his own will, compelled by shame campaigns, not even the law, in spite of his own convictions, and he did not have some safe posting at the base, no, he was at the Somme. He saw the worst of it, probably missed death by inches several times, saw mud and blood, was deafened and battered, only to survive at last, coming home as changed as Frodo.
He watched men charge into machine guns like mice into a blender, watched them die of trench foot and the stupid ways war kills you without even glory or honor to show for it, saw that sometimes courage is just hiding in your little hole and not screaming when the tanks roll over. He saw Mordor in person. No man’s land.
Then he came home, and did he write some edgy darkness? No. He wrote this thing, this fantasy, with its message of hope that evil can be vanquished, and that men can be good, yes, even when they seem utterly lost to goodness. This is somehow the lesson that the War to End All Wars had taught him. He had nothing left to prove, so he made a pretty, frivolous thing, for children, but couldn’t help it, he couldn’t help making something bigger than that. He knew how intimate men become with each other under fire, and it ended up in the book.
That is the only thing he wanted to remember, that unexpected love when suffering and death are right on top of you. I wonder who Legolas was to him? Somebody young and beautiful, who deserved to live a thousand years, but didn’t, probably. They shall not grow old.
We shouldn’t need the machine guns coming at us to hug our friends, that’s probably what he wanted the world to know.
lotr nerds are the worst
You’re the worst.
Beautifully written and thank you for providing this insight. I have not been to war so it can be easy to miss the nuances
That’s what happens when a gentleman who fought in WWI and dreamt of a cottage writes fantasy.
I’ll never forget the time I ran into an old friend of mine and I went to give him a hug and he awkwardly laughed and said uh, no, and shook my hand.
We’re still very good friends and we send several texts to each other every week.
But it’s a terrible feeling when you instinctively go to hug someone with zero sexual feelings and get instantly and reflexively rejected. I don’t blame my friend. I blame our fucked up culture.
'Murica: where we love our guns more than we love our school children. Is it any wonder men can’t hug here.
I think you have to accept that people have different boundaries on how they want to show affection to different kinds of relationships, and that this doesn’t mean they don’t love you.
I’ve been very clear in my replies that I do respect those boundaries. Some people don’t want to be touched. This has been heard, understood, respected by me, and there is zero counter-argument from me. There is no lack of understanding or need to correct me on this point.
And the incident I recalled did no long-term damage to our friendship. It was a hurtful moment, I got over it, I didn’t push the issue, and we’re still friends.
The point of the OP’s post and my first comment is to try and address how unfortunate it is that the cultural default is: men hugging is icky and gay.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but your last line is ridiculous. Everyone in LotR was armed to the teeth, and that was no hindrance to expressing their feelings for one another.
Well yeah it was a war. Everyone was armed to the teeth because war. Except in the shire where nobody was armed because peaceful land of homes.
Pretty sure the goodly people like humans, elves, dwarves, and Hobbits didn’t mow down their own kids with crossbows on a regular basis like we do with our guns.
My goddamn dad does this to me. Like I made a conscious decision years ago to give him hugs because I felt like it was bullshit to not show him affection. After a few years he started intercepting me and now forces the handshake.
He also became radically conservative in that time…
To be fair, you might be trying to fuck him. A handshake is safe.
That’s fucked up dude. You deserve for your dad to hug you. Everyone does
I don’t hug no matter how non-sexually. No touching pls.
They put the “gentle” in gentleman
I mean, the problem here is that if you want emotionally available men you have to treat men better.
Good luck getting people to do that.
Look up Troy Hawke on Instagram and use his act as a guide.
Who are you talking to?
Please, I don’t accept hugs. I dont want kisses. Please, don’t touch me. There are plenty of other ways to show affection, I can do that, but please, do not touch me, I dont like it.
Nobody should force a hug or a kiss on anyone. As I replied to another commenter on here, as soon as he waved me off I dropped it and did not make an issue out of it. I respect your boundaries. If you don’t want to be hugged, kissed, or touched that is 100% OK and nobody should pressure you into it, ever.
But try to understand that in the vast majority human relationships, hugs and the like are considered normal, healthy behavior. They are not considered a “creepy attack from a creepy creep”. I’m not talking about random strangers copping a feel here. I’m talking about close friends and family.
Human touch is very, very important. Read up on Harry Harlow’s monkey experiments.
I’m fairly convinced the lack of touch and general warmth in our culture is one reason we all hate and mistrust each other. I realize causes and symptoms get blurry in this arena (correlation vs causation and all of that) but it’s fairly obvious people aren’t giving or getting enough love and affection in their lives. There’s so much hostility, repression, and isolating going on.
That’s a pretty Westernized view - it’s absolutely NOT a cultural norm to give close friends of either gender hugs in most Asian cultures. This includes societies that are very Westernized like Taiwan. It doesn’t make people any less friendly or emotionally vulnerable- but hugging is something we just don’t do.
Cultural norms can be good or bad. There are plenty of bad norms in the US. I won’t speak to Asia’s norms, and wasn’t talking about Asia. I was talking about my own culture in the US. Perhaps people in Asia have other wholesome ways of expressing these things. Or perhaps Asia’s cultures are damaged and damaging like my home’s culture is. I don’t know.
But your comparison feels like whataboutism and deflection. Humans wanting to touch and to be touched in non-sexual ways isn’t weird or shameful. That’s what I’m addressing here.
Humans not wanting to be touched is OK, too. I’m not advocating for nonconsensual hugging or touching.
What’s weird to me is how even discussing it brings out instant defensiveness in some folks, which is kind of proving the point that I am trying to make.
No shaming at all! But I think it’s important to recognize that not all cultures express affection the same way.
One very poignant scene I remember well was when a Disney exec met the famous Japanese director Hiyao Miyazaki for the first time. The American exec rushed forward to hug them and I remember thinking that Miyazaki may have felt pretty uncomfortable with that. As an Asian American that spends a lot of time in both cultures I find that Americans tend to (for lack of a better word) impose their cultural norms on others - either through well meaning ignorance or cultural chauvinism I don’t know.
(Note: I tried to reply to this comment but it got put into the main thread. Copying and pasting here for visibility, apologies for duplicate post)
Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!
Ah. He was a merry fellow.
I hear his jacket is bright blue.
Boots are yellow, if I recall correctly.
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