Sunday, May 17, 2020

Fellowship of the Bad Ex-Boyfriends

I figured I needed a change of pace from the All-COVID All the Time posting, a sort of funny diversion from the typical litany of awfulness. Last week, writer Alex Arrelia started a funny Twitter thread about the male (are there any other?) characters of The Lord of the Rings as bad ex-boyfriends:



I shared it with several of my Tolkien nerd friends, and our general consensus was that it was hilarious, but that it was more about the movies. I am on record stating that I am not a big fan of the movies... I seriously think that Peter Jackson really wanted to make a big-budget reboot of Hawk the Slayer, but knew that no studio would greenlight it. At any rate, the LotR bad-boyfriends thread leaves out characters from the books that never made it to the movies. I figure that Tom Bombadil would be a good choice, but would end up just being 'Tim Benzedrine' from Bored of the Rings, plus some incel type tried to portray Bombadil as a good catch. Maybe Barliman Butterbur would be a better choice:

Forgets birthdays and anniversaries
Basement taken over by home-brewing setup
Inferiority complex with regard to tall, brooding types

I know Beorn was a character in The Hobbit, but he'd also qualify:

Sneaks out to bear bars at night
Questionable home decor
Tendency to take in large groups of weirdo wayfarers

The whole thread is a hoot, but the guy who elaborated on Shadowfax was the winner.

2 comments:

  1. Wait!

    Way to bury the lede, dood.

    You're on the twitter machine? When did that happen?

    I thought you hated the very idea of it all.

    Post your @handle so I can follow you, ok?

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  2. I'm actually not on Twitter, mikey. I just check a couple of accounts for headlines. Quarantine might be the thing to inspire me to join, though, but I've been pretty good at staving off boredom so far.

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