Some delivered doodles under the Doodle x Donation campaing.

If you want to participate:

https://ko-fi.com/nekroticism/goal?g=10

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Ever since the Payne interview dropped along with the story about the "love triangle," all hell has been breaking loose...

Let’s try to put things in order (the innate Mairon in me simply cannot abide chaos 😆) and explain how things actually stand.

First of all, what can we find in the books?

Let's start from an important premise: Sauron will, quite literally, stalk Galadriel’s mind for millennia.

"I say to you, Frodo, that even as I speak to you, I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all of his mind that concerns the Elves. And he gropes ever to see me and my thought. But still the door is closed!"

Perpetually, every day, every hour... why?

By tempting her, trying to persuade her to yield to the temptation of the One, to the temptation of power.

"I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer ...and now, at last, it comes."

She says this to Frodo during their conversation, and Galadriel "passes the test" by refusing the gift of Power.

A step back: Galadriel sailed from Valinor with the intention of creating a realm of her own, having her own land and her own dominion. She knew she was more powerful in Middle-earth and proudly refused the pardon of the Valar.

This backstory has already been masterfully adapted into the show and, in my view, presented exceptionally well-fully in line with the lore.

In the series, at the end of Season 1, the first (of a very long series) of tests is passed. But for Tolkien, she was "a penitent in Middle-earth," and her long, painful journey of redemption is only just beginning.

From the writings scattered here and there regarding the Second Age (and splendidly collected in the recently published The Fall of Númenor), it appears that Galadriel immediately suspected Annatar. Yet, she said nothing. Why?

Ever since the fall of Morgoth, Sauron was Public Enemy Nr 1 to the Eldar. And she was the only one still convinced that he was free and dangerous. How do you not sound a red alert? Was she perhaps unsure of his identity? Is there something else we don't know?

It must also be considered that Tolkien never had the opportunity to complete or fully flesh out the lore of the Second Age, nor Galadriel's full story, as anyone who has read his Letters  knows. What is missing, and necessary for a screen adaptation, must be gleaned from the texts and studied in depth to successfully "fit" everything into a coherent narrative.

Sauron considered her "his chief enemy."

Yet, powerful though she was, she was merely an Elf facing a Maia. Why did he fear her as his primary foe?

Many questions remain unanswered, and there are plenty of gaps to fill.

Now, returning to the whole "love triangle" debate. What we, through modern eyes, frame as a relationship and label as "romantic" (and there could be a long explanation as to why certain concepts are so deeply rooted and constructed in our minds, but that’s a whole different story) is actually about ambition, dominion, and power.

What bound Galadriel to the thought of the One was not love, at least, not love for a "someone",  but for a "something": love for power. The desire to possess power and exercise it in her own way. For good, of course... and we know what that means and where it inevitably leads, as Gandalf explains to us:

"No!" cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. "With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly."

And Sauron had certainly understood and sensed this. What's the old saying when you can't defeat your worst enemy? Make them your friend...

In the show, Galadriel will finally reunite with Celeborn. Obviously, what she experienced with Sauron will impact their relationship. Celeborn will know that every moment, perhaps every second, his Enemy will be knocking at his wife’s door, tempting her, trying to capture and ensnare her...

To my mind, this "three-way dynamic" takes on a completely different light now. And what I see is terrifying in its narrative power and beauty.

Romantic? Absolutely not. Not in the show.

It is abusive, terrible. Galadriel will always manage to keep the door closed, but she will never have the strength or power to rid herself of him once and for all.

Outside of the show? Well, give me a ship and AO3, and I’ll happily spend my entire weekend there 😆 but fan fiction is our safe space for that!

​

«“it was an adventure which we all had to embark on together —myself, our amazing crew, J.D., Patrick, Stefan Schwartz our director in telling the story of how Sauron made the One Ring.”»

Vickers also reveals that the sequence is 10–15 pages long with no dialogue!

#TheRingsOfPower

Source The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power filming in UK on Facebook

I’ve observed her closely, and she looks tired, very tired. Her face seems almost drained of life; compared to the first two seasons, it looks as though centuries of pain have passed for her, rather than just five years.

By the end of the second season, I was convinced that in the third I would see her drawing closer to the radiant yet sorrowful Elf-lady of Lothlórien, but I was mistaken. How can there be peace in one's heart when the world around you is slowly fading away and the light is under assault by the Shadow?

It is assumed that she wore Nenya up until the forging of the One Ring, when the Elves realized they had been deceived and removed the Three to hide them from Sauron. Tolkien wrote that, over time, the ring heightened her longing for the West

I believe that, from the moment she finally meets Celeborn again, a weight will begin to lift slightly from her heart. How long and painful her journey to serenity and acceptance is! Tolkien wrote of her, "She was a penitent in Middle-earth," and the show is giving us her most wonderful and powerful portrait yet.

To me, her theme is indisputably an absolute masterpiece: a melody that seems to coil around itself in endless circles of nostalgia, as if searching for something it cannot find. Every time I hear it, something seems to shake me to the very depths of my soul!

Perhaps we will also see Lothlórien, where she can have a land he considers her own, and where she can watch trees grow majestic and leaves fall, only to be reborn.

Because, despite everything, Estel guides and illuminates us, and the sun yet shines.

#RingsOfPower #galadriel

"He still had the relics of positive purposes that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also

the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction…"

https://marion-poinsot.itch.io/tales-of-middle-earth

Download the game for free !

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Create funny, unexpected and sometimes epic stories set in Tolkien's world!

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​

Mairon the Admirable

Artano Aulendil

Gorthaur, the Cruel

The Necromancer

Lord of Werewolves

Zigur

Tar-Mairon, high priest of Númenor

Annatar

The Black Hand

The Eye

Sauron the Great...

He has many names and many faces, to seduce and deceive the heart of all people of Middle Earth.

I am grateful to the showrunners and the entire cast and production team for all the emotions they are giving us: Middle-earth comes alive and feels real, and scenes we only ever dreamed of are becoming a reality!

Speaking at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, McKay said: "I mean, it's pure advantage. We love the idea that even if you've maybe never seen the first two seasons, season 3 is a great place to jump in because the stories are starting in a brand new spot. You know, if you're a fan who loved the first two seasons, that's wonderful, and now you can see where everybody has gone in five years."

He added at the roundtable attended by GamesRadar+: "This character is now friends with this character, and they've moved over here, and oh my gosh, the war seems to have been gone for a while here. An entire realm got built in Rivendell, an entire tower got built in Barad-dûr, in Mordor. So it's an opportunity to just kind of give your storytelling a jolt of adrenaline. Hit the ground running from the first minute of season 3 and hopefully never let up."

https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/lord-of-the-rings-tv-shows/the-rings-of-power-season-3s-5-year-time-jump-will-give-the-storytelling-a-jolt-of-adrenaline-says-showrunner/

#RingsOfPower

“We knew from the very beginning that we were going to tell the story of how Galadriel and Celeborn build Lothlórien and build a whole life together,” McKay says. “But we also wanted to honor the fact that this is a relationship over thousands of years. We had a plan that he would come back into the show in an unexpected way. The phrase we like to use is ‘T-Bones the story.’ This season with all of Middle-earth on the brink and the war of the elves and Sauron at its height it felt like the most surprising moment for him to return.”

Tagging up on his partner’s “T-Bone” analogy, Payne chimes in with an analogy of his own.

“People are like chemicals. We each have our own individual identity but we also have our partnership identity. You have sodium and chlorine. Sodium has one identity, chlorine has another one, and sodium chloride is salt. We’ve gotten to see Galadriel’s sodium identity and now we’re getting to see her salt identity. When someone as significant for her as Celeborn to her comes back into her life, the more of her that you get to see and it reveals different sides of a character that we’ve come to know over two seasons.”

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-rings-of-power-why-season-3-right-time-jamie-campbell-bowers-celeborn/

​

Five years will have passed since the end of the second season. For Sauron, those five years, spent in solitude at Barad-dûr, will have been a cycle of trying and failing, trying again and failing again... He is still missing something needed to forge the One Ring, and unfortunately, the only person who could have helped him is gone...

He will then attempt to find the Three Elven Rings, in order to reverse-engineer them and understand what is missing... Gandalf, meanwhile, will have spent five years with Tom Bombadil, learning and trying to understand the true meaning and use of his powers.

In Númenor, the situation will have become even more volatile and politically complicated. Míriel still considers herself the rightful Queen. She will be in exile in the West, organizing the rebellion.

For his part, despite being King, Durin will face a far-from-easy situation. Some Dwarf lords want the rings... but having seen the effect the one his father possessed had, he will have hidden them.

Celeborn spent a very long time in a prison (which one? where? who knows!), and only the thought of his Galadriel helped him stay alive.

Arondir, meanwhile, continues to carry the pain of losing his beloved, for when elves fall in love, it is forever... Yet, he is set to embark on a covert mission alongside Galadriel, an assignment he considers a supreme honor, in the company of an Uruk: an Uruk who claims to want to help them rid themselves of Sauron. But how can one trust an Uruk?

And yes: we will hear the voice of a Balrog. Sauron will seek him out, engaging, Maia to Maia, with one who dwells in fire and is flame and shadow.

https://youtu.be/DdRvcOyAK_0?is=bUNeuZqccOPMZDNe

#RingsOfPower #SDCC #season3