one of these days I might actually write up something for my website about why the Peter Jackson LOTR films rubbed me very much the wrong way, and also using that as a vehicle for reexamining the books and talking about what about them still works for me and what doesn't. I'm not nearly the Tolkien fan I used to be, but LOTR _was_ my "Undertale" for a while, the popular work that woke something up inside me that I hadn't felt before.
@kara_dreamer I would be interested in this. I never understood why people got so invested in LotR; when I saw the movies, my response was basically "oh this is pretty, wait this is D&D." I know D&D along with most of our modern fantasy is heavily influenced by, if not directly adapted from, Tolkien's stuff, so my exposure to LotR is pretty backwards.
@green I can try! It'll be a bit difficult, maybe, after all this time, to try to remember just what was going through my head when I was (I think) 12 or 13 and "The Lord of the Rings" became for me the most important book I'd ever read. It wasn't even my first exposure to LOTR; I read "The Fellowship of the Ring" in its entirety when I was some years younger, maybe 8 or 9, and liked it without falling in love with it.