ofc there’s superficially a tits tits fruit fruit when it comes to james/thomas and silver/madi, which is totally part of why james kept believing in silver and believing he would go on the same path of understanding and enlightenment he did, but the most striking thing about it is how it showcases the stark difference between james and silver, james has a first protective instinct that involves silencing thomas’s ideas and ideals but thomas’s idealism and determination quickly become integral and organic to james falling in love with him, thomas isn’t just that but, just like madi, that is a beautiful and bright part of him, and james come to profoundly understand that, and so he doesn’t just fall in love he becomes a better happier larger person (which maybe is “just” falling in love) whose world suddenly has light and purpose and things that are worth fighting for, and thomas isn’t it, thomas shows him it, and they share it, “he becomes himself with thomas hamilton”, on the other hand silver remains fixed in that initial state of blind protectiveness, he ultimately did not understand, and therefore could not love, a part of madi that is integral to her, her ideals, her choices, to the point that he leaves me wondering who’s the madi he fell in love with, who’s the madi he thought he could take everything from (if i’m cynical i’d say the caretaker focused on him only)
This is right after Gandalf says, “A balrog. A demon of the ancient world.”
I just love how PJ chose to cut to Legolas’ face because he is exactly who you should cut to at this moment. You need an elf to show what it really means. Other than Gandalf, the rest of the Fellowship can sense something is gravely wrong, but they don’t understand just how grave. Like Gandalf, Legolas knows the terror. He understands the gravity of what lies around that corner. He’s got a piddly little bow and he is mere steps away from a demon of the ancient world. This frame shows a kid coming to the realisation that he is way out of his depth, that this mission will take him to places he only knew to exist in legends of the Elder Days, a time long gone, barely history.
He’s probably one of the youngest elves in Middle Earth at this point. He probably grew up on stories of the balrogs, slaying the ancient High Kings of the Eldar and tearing Middle Earth apart, thousands and thousands of years ago. They are legends in old crumbling books, read illicitly by a little elfling who was kept up at night by the terrible tales.They are the monsters under the bed and the shadows in the heart of the forest. They are the beasts behind the winged hordes of hell, that older elves, who’ve seen the worst that Arda has to offer, always assured him were no more than distant nightmares, stories relegated to dust and ancient memory. Except now they are real. They are here. They are coming.
“… I put my hand down in something soft and I looked down. I saw that kid every day for the next two years. Every morning I’d wake up he’d be looking down at me. What about you, Marcus? What do you see?”
“You want to know what’s in my head? Arguing. Mum and dad barking at each other like dogs. Both of them drunk. He’s swinging at her and she’s in a ball on the floor, trying to scoop her brains back in with both her hands. I’m yelling at him to stop, but he cracks her again. And now, now there’s blood coming out of her mouth like a fountain – I’m seven years old. I. I pull his poaching rifle off the back of the door and I shoot a bullet right in the middle of his throat and even as he’s going down his big bloody hands are trying to squeeze the life out of me – that’s for starters. I see this little unwanted boy stuck half-way up an oak tree all the other orphan bastards are trying to knock him down with bricks and balls to send him back to the infirmary so he can spend another night cutting patterns into his arms to send himself to sleep. I see this little boy in Mexico City. His neck is twisted all the way around and his mom is screaming at me from the doorway. I see a housewife in Seattle mixing bleach with tap water and telling her little girl that the water is holy so it burns her when it hits her skin. That is what I see when I close my eyes.”
series 1 flint is my fave aesthetically by series 4 flint is my fave emotionally but series 2-3 flint is also my fave and james mcgraw is my ultra fave but basically i just love james flint
Meg's Mumbles 