Whenever people get to the scenes where the characters are acknowledging how bleak things are - such as Theoden telling his men that they can't defeat the armies of Mordor "but we will meet them in battle nonetheless", or Gandalf saying something along the lines of "there never was any hope, only a fool's hope", or

Gandalf telling Pippin about death - a lot of them will be like nooo why would you say stuff like that, be hopeful!!

And I'm just like. No, you don't understand. If Theoden had tried to tell his men OF COURSE WE CAN that wouldn't have done shit for his men's doubts. It's in acknowledging how terrible things are that the characters support each other in finding the strength to keep going.

You have to acknowledge that shit is super bad but if you don't try you'll still suffer and die anyway, so might as well give it a go.

Because what else is there.

where is the horse and the rider, where is the horn that was blowing

I feel like a lot of people forget (or simply don't know) that Tolkien started writing his Middle Earth stories around the time of his military service in the first world war, and he admitted aspects of Lord of the Rings were informed by his experiences there.

A lot of the reactions I've watched has had someone who has watched the movies and some who haven't, and the one who has watched it often point that out.

Although iirc Tolkien was more like "yes I'm sure my life experiences influenced this story, but it wasn't intentional."

local man writes story about a world consuming war and how 432432 people have trauma that they must learn to live with and struggle with loss of self and being who they were before The Horrors.
"this has nothing to do with the world wars i have NO IDEA what you mean"

this has also been my obsession lately LMAO

my biggest highlight was when a dude was watching rotk and went "gollum youre too old to be acting like this"

does kinda grate whenever someone misses the Big Point like that tho

LMAO I may have watched that reaction too.

also like. i know that people WANT to have hopeful stuff in this current climate but it's the contrast

they have to go 'man, shit's awful' and THEN go 'let's do it anyway' to get the emotional catharsis

Yesss