Guest Post: Frodo is a Bratty Twink + Sam is a Bear Brat Tamer

The Lord of the Rings film trilogy is gay. In this essay I will…

The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰✰✰ x ∞

• Romance: ✰✰✰✰ ½ 

• Sex: ✰✰

• Storytelling: ✰✰✰✰✰

• Performance: ✰✰✰✰✰✰✰

• Yearning: ✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰

Today’s newsletter is guest-written by friend of The Yearning and the co-host of this Saturday’s event SPRING CLEANING—Nina Haines! Nina Haines is a writer, freelance marketer & content creator, and the founder of the sapphic book club Sapph-Lit.

Written by Nina Haines

When Ali and Meg asked me to write a guest piece for The Yearning, I immediately knew I wanted to write about Lord of the Rings, aka the gayest fantasy series that straight men love. Ali hasn’t seen LOTR ever, and I have her permission to shame her for that. SHAME, ALI, SHAME! Not good Gay behavior!

I was introduced to LOTR when I was a kid. I grew up in a movie family—we would all go to the local movie theater several times a month and rent videotapes and DVDs from the library to watch on the daily. Now, baby Nina was not as open and adventurous as she is today. You know kids that are picky eaters and always want plain buttered noodles? That was me with movies. I would say I didn’t like a movie when I had never seen it or even knew what it was about. I was resistant at first when my father—an introverted, sci-fi fantasy nerd who had literally once traveled to New Zealand because of LOTR—proposed that it was finally time to show me and my brother the trilogy. But of course, my family knew how to push past this: they told me there were horses in the movie. I was in.

We spent the entire Saturday binge-watching all three movies, eating meals and going for little walks in between each one. What followed was not only a lifetime obsession and appreciation for the LOTR trilogy and world that J.R.R Tolkien built, but also the beginning of my bisexual awakening.

Let’s talk about the moments in LOTR that made Baby Nina realize she was a Baby Gay, as well as the moments that, as I’ve watched from a grown bisexual woman perspective, I’ve come to realize are gay as fuck, while also weaving in how truly sentimental this film series is to me. So sentimental to the point where I knew my partner was the one when we watched the extended editions on our second date while eating Popeyes—it’s true love! 

There is a lot to cover, so buckle up buttercup!

First of all, we have to address the bisexual nature of the casting here. Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn), Orlando Bloom (Legolas), Sean Bean (Boromir), Liv Tyler (Arwen), CATE FUCKING BLANCHETT (Galadriel). Butter my ass and call me a biscuit, these people are BEAUTIFUL. As a kid, I was especially taken with Aragorn and Arwen—I didn’t know which one of them I wanted to be, which one of them I wanted to kiss, all I knew was that I wanted to be in the middle of it all (whatever that was) and I couldn’t stop staring. I loved the mutual respect they have for one another, the sacrifices they’re willing to make and the gentle care and touches and words they pass back and forth. Compared to how violent the fighting and politics in the rest of the films are, any scene between Aragorn and Arwen is a breath of fresh air, a soft moonbeam of love that you bask in straight through the screen, and I was simply melting on the couch. 

Also, as a horse girl, I was enchanted by the relationship that each character had with their horse. There’s an especially sweet scene between Aragorn and the horse Brego, who previously belonged to someone else and refused any new rider until Aragorn was able to connect with him and soothe him. This demonstrated (to little horse girl me) such an understanding of the delicate emotionality of these animals. It’s not a story about horses, but it was clearly written and brought to the screen by someone who loved them. Being able to connect with animals is tender, gentle, and just so inherently queer to me. The scene where Brego saves Aragorn by the river makes me sob every time. Horses deserve Oscars too!!!

Dear Reader, you’re probably thinking, why the fuck is this bisexual bitch talking about horses? I thought we were talking about how LOTR is GAY! Oh my love, they are one in the same. Horses are gay. Horseback riders are gay. Horsemanship is gay. And the gayest horse moment in this movie series, a moment that is so high camp and emotional at the same time it makes me sob even harder than Brego? The moment when we meet Shadowfax.

Gandalf (who is gay in the movie, as is the actor Ian McKellan in real life) WHISTLES and a pure white horse seemingly gallops out of nowhere towards him. Legolas says “That is one of the Mearas¹, unless my eyes are cheated by some spell” (okay GAY ass way to say “am I seeing this right?”). Gandalf introduces the horse as “Shadowfax. He is the Lord of All Horses. And has been my friend through many dangers.” They then ride into the wind fast as FUCK.

Okay LAST gay horse note I promise—fun fact about the movies: most of the Riders of Rohan (the horse kingdom of Middle Earth—yes I want to live there) were actually female actors dressed up in beards as men. Pretty gay if you ask me (no one did).

Now, just a few other notes on some film moments that made Baby Nina a Baby Gay before we move into my Adult Bisexual Analysis—the biggest crushes I had in this movie after Aragorn and Arwen were on Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Eowyn (Miranda Otto). 

First of all, this was Orlando Bloom’s FIRST FUCKING MOVIE. What a slay. This man’s hair is better than mine. I need to know his haircare routine. The way that it flows while he kills people was literally mesmerizing to my 7-year-old brain. I know we don’t trust blonde men, but that simply does not include Legolas. He was the blueprint for Katniss Everdeen and responsible for my lifelong obsession with archery (I own a bow and arrow set because of him). Legolas’s effortless mix of feminine and masculine energy is so long-haired futch lesbian coded. He’s a man of few words, and when he speaks it’s like a haiku (and so erotic)?? The way he touches this ARROW in the first clip where he draws his bow is giving LESBIAN. Also elves are all lesbians. I’m sorry, they just are!

And then…our battle-loving Lady of Rohan, Éowyn (her name means HORSE LOVER) <3 The silent yearning she feels for Aragorn is inherently gay, but the gayest moment of hers takes place in The Return of the King where she disguises herself as a male soldier and rides into the Battle of Pelennor Fields, only to end up facing the Witch King of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgûl. She and the Hobbit Merry were the only riders that did not flee from his gaze. She decapitates his dragon steed and the Witch King laughs, saying, “No man can kill me.” Éowyn takes off her helmet, revealing her gorgeous long blonde waves, and declares “I AM NO MAN,” before stabbing the Night King in the face. Talk about a trans narrative? Just watching the clip of it when researching this piece made my nipples hard. I think this is the moment feminism was invented. (LOTR does not pass the Bechdel Test but Éowyn is the only one who talks to another girlie in the entire movie)

Also she’s just like…really pretty.

OKAY NOW ONTO MY ADULT GAY ANALYSIS.

While I was entranced by the horses and pretty girls and boys as a child, Adult Nina who was a Gender & Sexuality Studies major now sees Lord of the Rings as a prime example of war encouraging male homoeroticism. Historically speaking, war has always offered queerness space to breathe and grow, as it separates men from women for extended periods of time and confines them in intimate spaces (men comfort men, women comfort women, and everyone be fucking!). 

One of our most recent Sapph-Lit books, Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyman, discusses how war also gave space for playing with gender performance, and that some of our earliest records of trans people come from situations of war (for example, male soldiers dressing up as women in theater performances for other soldiers, and Rosie the Riveter showing that women really can wear pants).

The creator of the world of LOTR, J.R.R Tolkien, was an officer in WWI and saw the horrors of trench warfare on the Western Front. Tolkien wrote the series partially as a way to process that trauma, as well as illustrate how his life as a British soldier was made more bearable by the support of his fellow soldiers, specifically the male batman (a personal servant in war). In many ways, Tolkien wrote himself as Frodo and made Sam, the hero of the story, his batman.

Gays famously love walking, and these two walk A LOT together. If Frodo and Sam made a Feeld profile looking for a third, they would put “we love going on long walks” in their bio. Sam’s yearning for Frodo gets progressively more intense the longer they walk, while Frodo’s anguish carrying the ring progresses as well. As an adult, I find this bratty and insanely annoying (I personally am brat-identifying). There’s so much gay energy here that you can watch literal compilations of their most homoerotic moments, my favorite being “It’s your Sam…don’t you know your Sam?” Can someone provide a heterosexual explanation for this? Anyone? No. So we agree the woman (Rosie) Sam marries at the end is a beard? Cool! Okay moving on!

The other gay Hobbit couple is of course Merry and Pippin: proof that incest isn’t just for straight people! These two are obsessed with each other, attached at the hip! It’s giving Bert and Ernie. It’s giving Frog and Toad. Are we all aligned? Lovely.

Legolas and the dwarf Gimli, son of Glóin, have something going on as well. If anyone tries to tell you that LOTR is not gay, you can show them the scene where Legolas and Gimli walk into Minas Tirith and immediately start criticizing the architecture. Having discerning, yet critical, aesthetic preferences is just SO gay. These two are insanely competitive with one another and have the closest friendship, but they probably also fuck sometimes (if you Google Gimli and Legolas, fan art images of romantic moments between the two are quite literally on the first page of results). They share a horse for goodness sake!! Gimli also mentions at one point that dwarf women are often mistaken for men because they have beards, and that’s why there aren’t many dwarf babies. Yet another trans narrative that simultaneously suggests gay sex!

IN CONCLUSION: LOTR is gay in oh so many beautiful ways. I rest my case. I’d love to know what you read as the gayest parts of the movie, or of the books if you read them! 

Feel free to come chat over on IG or TikTok @nina.haines and join my book club @sapphlit! xx

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We hope you’ve enjoyed our bookish, media-obsessed crossover with Sapph-Lit’s Nina Haines. If you want more, come to our party this weekend in Bushwick!

We’re throwing it with Farm To People, and you can use code YEARNINGFORFOOD for a free small produce box or $25 off any of their farm boxes!

I’m so sick of online love. Next week on The Yearning, Ali dives into Netflix’s hauntingly raw Baby Reindeer.

1. Writer’s side note: the Mearas are a breed of wild horses in north Middle-earth that are smarter, faster and stronger than regular horses. The first of the Mearas was Felaróf, who is an ancestor of Shadowfax.