I am Galadriel, Queen of Lothlorien. I was given Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, but I remained untouched by the Shadow. I gave shelter, gifts and advice to the Fellowship, but I turned green while they were around. My bad. In the movie, I'm played by Cate Blanchett.
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so i'm playing jt's blocks, a yahoo online game that is cool but utterly pointless but still lots of fun, check it out. so anyway i start to think about the books i've just finished, the last two parts of the lord of the rings trilogy, the two towers and the return of the king, i kinda intended, just to read each before the next movie comes out but i just couldnt wait, anyhoo i was thinking of its moral, which if i'm not mistaken is mercy. and what mercy really entails

is it just self-control meets compassion versus vengeance or is it more than that, does this restraint and forgiveness of a sort really draw the line between, the good, as in the people or elves, dwarves and ents and hobbits or whatever else in this world or middle earth you'd like to think of as having the qualities you admire for yourself set against the bad or the evil, types of forces or foes in fantasy stories, ie not the real world of grey in betweens, im thinking of characters that have surpassed the innate humanity in all of us, some more than others of course, but still in the core of tolkien's story even the evil characters that have taken that step beyond what we consider forgivable deserve our pity. and pity is an emotion i don't wish to feel towards anyone because i'd rather not have others feel it towards me.

maybe its just a matter of verbal semantics, the difference between pity and empathy, i mean, but for me its the feelings behind it, there's a sense of knowing that you, the person feeling pity for someone or something, is aware that you are better than that someone or something, superior in some tangible or even intangible way, i would never want to be looked down on, or given a hand out... this probably stems from my reading a tree grows in brooklyn and finding that even though that family was dirt poor and the father was a drunk, the mother never wanted to be pitied or receive hand outs.

but those are two different worlds, apples and oranges, one is fantasy, the other is like moderny fictionional stuff.
damn i go distracted playing jt's blocks again.

so mercy hmmmm... restraint.... sympathy.... forgiveness.... heavy stuff, mostly not in the film, im hoping some of it does stay in it, and i also wished they could have used the dialogue in a more tolkien like way because when you're reading it, his use of language is so eloquent its like i hear the way they speak and i wished that the actors in the movie could sound more like that, but then it wouldn't work well in the mass marketing aspect, too high brow and all that. i guess people that are curious about the books will at least buy them and read them if they've got the time and the smarts to and really learn to enjoy them i hope.

all i gots to say is...... FRODO LIVES!