First of all, I went several years without thinking about "Agua Mala" and now you have destroyed my psyche all over again. :pppp
Part of it could be the hero-worship mentality that only the hero is any good and the people actually putting food on his plate are little robot peons. I, on the other hand, was damn impressed by that rabbit Sam got. I was like, hey, nobody ever talks about that! Superheroes don't need -food-! And so forth.
I would like to point out that the extreme of Sam, Tom Bombadil, was ruled out as a ringbearer as he would just throw away the Ring and it would come back, all Friday the Thirteenth-like. As you said, it was Frodo's appointed task to struggle *directly* against the Ring and hope he wouldn't end up like Bilbo. It's Sam's appointed task to support Frodo. Neither task is any more or less courageous in light of the whole grueling quest.
Being prone to producing ringbearing-type angst, the little conflicts fascinate me. Tolkien did a crafty thing by including both kinds. I can just picture him translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and thinking "But who changed the sheets?!"
I no more like Saint Scully than repressed Scully. But then, most of my ire was reserved for the writers who can't even let her have a near-death experience without her military-daughter mindset resurfacing... that obsessive need for order. *cough* Anyway! I adored her character for herself, though, as it was more Scully vs. her Job (and her I'm-Fines) than Scully vs. Mulder. Mulder, believe me, earned my ire all by himself, no tiny-feet-reaching-the-pedals required.
"The truth, or a white whale?" Scully couldn't have been unaware of Mulder's effect on her. She just couldn't have. I'm sorry, if my partner's stuck in a bug-infested house with a girl named Bambi, I'm going to clean my gun and watch a movie. The writers often drew little squiggly lines between her Faith and Mulder's Belief, and I dunno about Mulder, but I like to think she chose whatever she had faith in.
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more spoilers!
Date: 2003-10-07 06:01 pm (UTC)Part of it could be the hero-worship mentality that only the hero is any good and the people actually putting food on his plate are little robot peons. I, on the other hand, was damn impressed by that rabbit Sam got. I was like, hey, nobody ever talks about that! Superheroes don't need -food-! And so forth.
I would like to point out that the extreme of Sam, Tom Bombadil, was ruled out as a ringbearer as he would just throw away the Ring and it would come back, all Friday the Thirteenth-like. As you said, it was Frodo's appointed task to struggle *directly* against the Ring and hope he wouldn't end up like Bilbo. It's Sam's appointed task to support Frodo. Neither task is any more or less courageous in light of the whole grueling quest.
Being prone to producing ringbearing-type angst, the little conflicts fascinate me. Tolkien did a crafty thing by including both kinds. I can just picture him translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and thinking "But who changed the sheets?!"
I no more like Saint Scully than repressed Scully. But then, most of my ire was reserved for the writers who can't even let her have a near-death experience without her military-daughter mindset resurfacing... that obsessive need for order. *cough* Anyway! I adored her character for herself, though, as it was more Scully vs. her Job (and her I'm-Fines) than Scully vs. Mulder. Mulder, believe me, earned my ire all by himself, no tiny-feet-reaching-the-pedals required.
"The truth, or a white whale?" Scully couldn't have been unaware of Mulder's effect on her. She just couldn't have. I'm sorry, if my partner's stuck in a bug-infested house with a girl named Bambi, I'm going to clean my gun and watch a movie. The writers often drew little squiggly lines between her Faith and Mulder's Belief, and I dunno about Mulder, but I like to think she chose whatever she had faith in.