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give me all your Boromir theories
I'm working on an essay for the August LOTR_Community_GFIC challenge, and I thought I'd crowdsource my research. That's where you all come in.
I've been thinking lately about the way people people view canon and want to explore that a bit, but not with some sort of "here's the right way to approach the books and use them in your fanfic story" screed. I'm less interested in convincing people that my preferred approach is right (where's the fun in fanfic if we can't enjoy people playing with JRRT's stories in new and fresh ways?), than I am with looking at how the different ways of approaching canon impact the way we present different characters. So I thought I'd do a case-study. Specifically: Tolkien tells us nothing about Boromir's sexuality - no wife, no kids, no tragic lost loves. Given that, how do we fill in the gaps? I'm not actually planning on giving my own answer to that question (though I'm sure most of you can guess!). Rather, I want to sketch out some common ways of looking at canon and try to show how those different approaches shape the way people might approach a question like this.
What can I say? I'm a grad student, and a philosopher. I think big. But I think by the time I'm done with it, it will be an interesting look at this topic, and I hope it will be fun to play with for me personally.
Which brings me to the real point of this post. It's been a long time since I've read The Lord of the Rings, to say nothing of the Letters or HoMe drafts or books actually about JRRT. So I'd like some help gathering facts. I'll probably do several posts asking for quotes on different topics, but I'd like to start about Boromir.
When you write think about Boromir, what characteristics come to mind? And more importantly, why do you think of hiim that way? I'm most interested in quotes (and I'll take anything - LOTR, Tolkien's posthumous writings, early drafts, letters, or anything like that is fair game), but if you have other reasoning I'm interested in that, too. And if you don't know why you write him the way you do (or think of him the way you do, if you don't write him), feel free to go ahead and just describe how you see him - and anyone else, please feel free to fill in the gaps for where you think that characterization comes from. Pet fanons are welcome, too. If you think he had a closet passion for Haradric poetry or was infamous in Dol Amroth for that time he got drunk and woke up with a regrettable tattoo, I want to hear it, particularly if there's a why involved (or even not). Links to stories where you developed those ideas are welcome, too.
One other thing. I may include ideas you mention in my essay (with credit, of course). If you don't want me to include your idea, I'd still love to hear it; just make it clear in your comment that you don't want me to mention your idea.
So have at it! What comes to your mind when you think of Boromir? And why?
I've been thinking lately about the way people people view canon and want to explore that a bit, but not with some sort of "here's the right way to approach the books and use them in your fanfic story" screed. I'm less interested in convincing people that my preferred approach is right (where's the fun in fanfic if we can't enjoy people playing with JRRT's stories in new and fresh ways?), than I am with looking at how the different ways of approaching canon impact the way we present different characters. So I thought I'd do a case-study. Specifically: Tolkien tells us nothing about Boromir's sexuality - no wife, no kids, no tragic lost loves. Given that, how do we fill in the gaps? I'm not actually planning on giving my own answer to that question (though I'm sure most of you can guess!). Rather, I want to sketch out some common ways of looking at canon and try to show how those different approaches shape the way people might approach a question like this.
What can I say? I'm a grad student, and a philosopher. I think big. But I think by the time I'm done with it, it will be an interesting look at this topic, and I hope it will be fun to play with for me personally.
Which brings me to the real point of this post. It's been a long time since I've read The Lord of the Rings, to say nothing of the Letters or HoMe drafts or books actually about JRRT. So I'd like some help gathering facts. I'll probably do several posts asking for quotes on different topics, but I'd like to start about Boromir.
When you write think about Boromir, what characteristics come to mind? And more importantly, why do you think of hiim that way? I'm most interested in quotes (and I'll take anything - LOTR, Tolkien's posthumous writings, early drafts, letters, or anything like that is fair game), but if you have other reasoning I'm interested in that, too. And if you don't know why you write him the way you do (or think of him the way you do, if you don't write him), feel free to go ahead and just describe how you see him - and anyone else, please feel free to fill in the gaps for where you think that characterization comes from. Pet fanons are welcome, too. If you think he had a closet passion for Haradric poetry or was infamous in Dol Amroth for that time he got drunk and woke up with a regrettable tattoo, I want to hear it, particularly if there's a why involved (or even not). Links to stories where you developed those ideas are welcome, too.
One other thing. I may include ideas you mention in my essay (with credit, of course). If you don't want me to include your idea, I'd still love to hear it; just make it clear in your comment that you don't want me to mention your idea.
So have at it! What comes to your mind when you think of Boromir? And why?
Re: It depends on the type of story I want to tell, pt 2
However, I tend not to like writing stories about people who just act unwisely because they are unwise; I prefer my protagonists not to be unwise in their very being, but to have reasons for making a bad choice consistently. The homosexuality angle can come in at that point and supply an understandable reason for resisting the smart, dynastically savvy choice.
Alternately, if I don't want to write about unwise sons, period, and I'm not interested in writing personal desire versus dynastic duty in that particular fashion, I tend just to ignore the sexual dimension and write Boromir as a political operator with his own motives, and sidestep why he doesn't want to marry as not contributing to the conflict of the story.
If I'm looking to tell that kind of story, I tend to contrast him with Faramir in that although he's not uneducated, he has narrower tastes (he likes military history and epics, not romances or other genres). He's not untraveled, nor unexposed to other cultures - he's been known to travel to Rohan, and he could've been sent north to Dale and Erebor, or east to Dorwinion, or (depending on how you interpret international politics) to Harad. But his entire focus is on what will benefit Gondor, and he has less interest in delving into what makes people tick outside of that. That puts him in contrast with Dwim!Aragorn, whom I tend to write as no less focused on his goal, but as more cosmopolitan - open to other cultures and ideas because they interest him in their own right, although he knows where his allegiances lie.
He's a very physical character - so are most male characters in LoTR and Silm, but I get a sense he processes best in practice, not theory, and his evaluative grid is less fine-grained than his brother's or father's. Not dumb, just not as attentive to the finer distinctions. Therefore he'll make bad analogies like "Moria is as bad as Mordor" in order to argue against going into Moria. That's personal lived experience trumping other forms of evidence that might be open to someone with a more theoretical, literary-historical and less nationalist bent. In the realm of theory, he's a traditionalist (knows the sayings of Gondor and applies them to snowstorms), and tends to honor what Gondor is at present, namely an increasingly desperate military power, which I think predisposes him to a crippling realism, in a way. He respects authority, and tries to hold to that even when it conflicts with his opinions (the Council, the decision to go to Moria, the decision to go to Lórien) - as long as the proper procedure and proper figures have signed off, he's on board. Except when he really believes Gondor's survival can be bought by using the Ring.