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elise the great posted:REALLY BAD THEORY TIME. If you haven't yet, read "The Last Ringbearer"
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Sep 13, 2016 06:40
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I like that theory! It's really interesting. And it does remind me of that passage from the Return of the King where Sam listens to the orcs marching and realizes they sound just like any other soldiers worried about war and dying on the battle field. Interesting analysis Elise.
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Sep 13, 2016 07:15
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Huh. I'm post a very bloody night shift, but I'll have to think about that a bit.
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Sep 13, 2016 13:09
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sunday at work posted:Making a good adaption is more about getting the spirit of the thing than the details. Which is why the LoTR movies are good and the Hobbit movies suck. ? The first two hobbit movies are very close to the spirit of the book. The hobbit isn't a very good book tho so maybe they should have deviated even more. Lotr in comparison is very cinematic.
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Sep 13, 2016 13:13
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You're blowing my mind here, Elise. So in this scenario would't the Red Book have had to be censored after the hobbits' death either by Aragorn himself or by a pro-Aragorn faction? Because given Frodo's relationship to Smeagol, and even Sam's thoughts about the Harad soldier, lying about the good deeds of creatures perceived as evil doesn't seem like something either of them would have written.
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Sep 13, 2016 13:41
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Radio! posted:You're blowing my mind here, Elise. The version of the red book Tolkien got wasn't the original but a version edited and corrected in Gondor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_of_Westmarch#Thain.27s_Book
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Sep 13, 2016 14:06
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Radio! posted:So in this scenario would't the Red Book have had to be censored after the hobbits' death either by Aragorn himself or by a pro-Aragorn faction? Because given Frodo's relationship to Smeagol, and even Sam's thoughts about the Harad soldier, lying about the good deeds of creatures perceived as evil doesn't seem like something either of them would have written. I feel like the Red Book was less of a scholarly history and more of a poetic one/collection of tales. Think The Iliad, or The Red Book of Hergest itself. Even the connection to "people who were there" is less authoritative than it sounds. Like one of the hallmarks of medieval fiction was attribution; even if you made up the story out of whole-cloth you always say that you're adapting what someone else told you. This source could be someone unrelated, long-dead, or completely imaginary. There's also the trend you see in Celtic storytelling (probably others too) where people displaced by victorious cultures become mythologized over time. You don't say you murdered some stone-age villagers, you actually outwitted an army of wicked demigods! Tolkien was definitely conscious of these traditions, and it jives pretty well with Elise's theory too. So the truth about free orcs might've given way to speculation about magic bird-men or stray Maiar imprisoned in Mount Doom, and those could've coalesced into a tradition about the Eagles. Whatever fits peoples tastes/conscience.
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Sep 13, 2016 16:37
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The Red Book is an obvious takeoff on the Eddas. The genealogical material, the poetic "Translations from the Elvish", the later scholarly commentaries by Gondorians in the "Thane's Book" manuscript- it's an homage to old Snorri Sturlusson.
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Sep 13, 2016 16:56
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But then, couldn't you take that idea to the logical extreme and say that everything magical or mythological in Lord of the Rings are inventions to spice up the story of the war between Gondor and Mordor (or the actual mythology of Gondor, but not literally real)? Sauron is just some steppe warlord like Attila the Hun (Dark Lord vs Scourge of God). Dwarves are short men who live in underground cities (there are some in Turkey). Hobbits are even shorter men living in houses cut into hillsides (bunch of those in France). Elves are the remnants of a very old culture that is slowly dying out. Orcs are very dirty and malnourished men. The men of Rohan and Gondor are basically as described. They warred against Mordor and their ally in Isengard, which Rohan defeated before helping Gondor against Mordor's attack. As in the books, the victory at Minas Tirith buys them time but Mordor still has more armies. They mount a desperate attack, just in time to witness the earthquake and volcanic eruptions that utterly destroy Mordor (pretty stupid of them to stick their capital or main war camp at the foot of the biggest active volcano on the continent, really).
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Sep 13, 2016 17:38
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Gondor wages war of imperial conquest after volcanic eruption devastates adjacent nation. Eruption is retroactively characterized as heroic act by nation's children.
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Sep 13, 2016 17:47
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Brainiac Five posted:The Red Book is an obvious takeoff on the Eddas. The genealogical material, the poetic "Translations from the Elvish", the later scholarly commentaries by Gondorians in the "Thane's Book" manuscript- it's an homage to old Snorri Sturlusson. name is a nod to the red book of hergest, tho chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 17:54
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Kassad posted:But then, couldn't you take that idea to the logical extreme and say that everything magical or mythological in Lord of the Rings are inventions to spice up the story of the war between Gondor and Mordor (or the actual mythology of Gondor, but not literally real)? Sauron is just some steppe warlord like Attila the Hun (Dark Lord vs Scourge of God). Dwarves are short men who live in underground cities (there are some in Turkey). Hobbits are even shorter men living in houses cut into hillsides (bunch of those in France). Elves are the remnants of a very old culture that is slowly dying out. Orcs are very dirty and malnourished men. The men of Rohan and Gondor are basically as described. They warred against Mordor and their ally in Isengard, which Rohan defeated before helping Gondor against Mordor's attack. As in the books, the victory at Minas Tirith buys them time but Mordor still has more armies. They mount a desperate attack, just in time to witness the earthquake and volcanic eruptions that utterly destroy Mordor (pretty stupid of them to stick their capital or main war camp at the foot of the biggest active volcano on the continent, really). You could take it that far, yes. But I find it more fun to consider how "poetic license" works in a world where dragons, sentient trees, and Tom Bombadil do probably exist.
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Sep 13, 2016 18:15
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Is an orc just anybody an elf doesn't like, or is it a specific group of peoples?
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Sep 13, 2016 18:24
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my dad posted:If you haven't yet, read "The Last Ringbearer"
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Sep 13, 2016 18:58
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If we're going that far, I'd say Mordor never existed in the first place, the Lord of the Rings is a story about how the imperial family of Gondor regained power from the military dictatorship of the Stewards a la the Meiji Restoration, with a bit of "this is why we're friends with Rohan" mixed in
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Sep 13, 2016 19:08
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Bongo Bill posted:Is an orc just anybody an elf doesn't like, or is it a specific group of peoples? they are dismounted huns
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Sep 13, 2016 19:10
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Seriously, it doesn't quite manage to stick the landing after it runs out of energy for running all over Gondor parodying the gently caress out of everything, but anyone who likes this line of thinking should read The Last Ringbearer right the gently caress now because you will love it.
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Sep 13, 2016 19:44
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Trin Tragula posted:Seriously, it doesn't quite manage to stick the landing after it runs out of energy for running all over Gondor parodying the gently caress out of everything, but anyone who likes this line of thinking should read The Last Ringbearer right the gently caress now because you will love it. I don't, it's stupid you should be ashamed for thinking that way
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Sep 13, 2016 20:21
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Has anyone ever given LOTR or the Hobbit the Wide Sargasso Sea treatment? Written from the perspective of say, Sauron, or Saruman, or the orcs or what have you?
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Sep 13, 2016 20:37
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Oracle posted:Has anyone ever given LOTR or the Hobbit the Wide Sargasso Sea treatment? Written from the perspective of say, Sauron, or Saruman, or the orcs or what have you? tha'ts the last ringbearer
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Sep 13, 2016 20:39
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Smoking Crow posted:tha'ts the last ringbearer People in thread were making it sound more like a parody not a serious treatment.
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Sep 13, 2016 20:56
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I read two-thirds or so of Last Ringbearer a while back and really enjoyed it, especially the geological, agricultural, cultural, and political setup for Mordor. Having the orcs just be slightly brown humans was, I think, an interesting choice, and honestly not one I can entirely get behind without departing from the canon to an extreme degree, but one that really speaks to the part of me that's dissatisfied with the Always Only Ever Evil official stance on orcs. Obviously, any time we deviate from the narrative view of what happened, we risk dissolving the entire book. Orcs are just humans, Mordor is a made-up country beyond a conveniently placed mountain range that keeps the army from ever seeing what they're fighting, and there's no actual magic or fantasy in Arda. There's fun to be had there, obviously, or Last Ringbearer would just be silly parody instead of an interesting reinterpretation of the War of the Ring. My favorite theories and reinterps are the ones that only require one element at a time to be changed, especially if the changed item has to do with queasy historians just changing the one little thing. If too much is changed, it just seems like I'm trying to interpret fiction supposedly written by fictional yarn-spinners, and even my backwards brain starts to balk.
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Sep 13, 2016 22:26
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Ok, I don't have my copy in front of me, but I remember the Eagles not only protecting Gondolin's secrecy, but assisting Glorfindel in fighting Balrog's during its fall. Going up against Balrogs seems a bit much for orcs who have a trade interest in keeping Gondolin around, though I suppose if they're afraid that they'll be utterly persecuted by Morgoth now that Gondolin's secret is out, I could see it. That said, if the editors/later writers of the collected works that Tolkien translated decided to substitute eagles for orcs in some, but not all (the rescue of Thorin's company and Gandalf both seem better suited to actual eagles) that kind of implies that they already had an existing tradition of eagles coming to the rescue anyhow, or it'd ring false. All of the "confirmed" eagle rescues come from the hobbit or LotR, and a lot of the guessworked orc theory comes from the Silmarillion era. So, which stories are "older?" Or, where did the tradition of eagles as a deus ex machina device come from?
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Sep 13, 2016 22:58
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Tellingly, all the likely-true cases of actual eagle intervention were mediated directly by Gandalf. And if you're a free tribe of orcs whose entire way of life is about to be destroyed along with the city who supported you so that you didn't end up conscripted as breeders in Morgoth's pits, I don't think it's unlikely to assume that some of them might have been willing to help out at Gondolin. There weren't a whole lot of Gondolinian survivors and if Gondolin was trading and treating with orcs, their kin might have been all too glad to hide their secret shame. It's another way Gondolin might have been moderately sustainable AND have valued extreme privacy.
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Sep 13, 2016 23:36
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Tolkien wrote initial drafts of gondolin in the 20s. Lotr wasn't until the 50s or whenever.
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Sep 14, 2016 00:37
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I personally don't care much for the "ah but what if it was all made up bullshit?" because it seems too clever by half, and it just reduces all these narratives to "and then everyone was insane or cruel, the end!" Like the people who were all "aha, Harry Potter is just the hallucinations Harry has due to his child abuse!" I also find it hard to put much thought into the idea of the whole saga of the books being propaganda for Gondor or whatever, because even taken as an in-universe artifact, it does not really say a lot that is wonderful about Gondor in specific. Aragorn is presented positively, as is Faramir, but why would Boromir be presented sympathetically, or Denethor in such a nuanced way? Yeah, sure, you can start making up political constituencies the book is meant to be targeted at, but it's also being written by hobbits, for hobbits. Given that Sam became Mayor instead of Pippin or Merry I'd say that the Shire wasn't exactly getting fully colonized by Gondorites. Now that said I do like the idea of the Eagles being a half-coverup for the actions of free orcs. I know Tolkien wasn't happy with the orcs to his dying day and one of the standing theories was that they were elves who Morgoth managed to corral and somehow corrupt. There does seem to be considerable evidence that this probably wasn't just "they were black/brown elves," though I could see how it would take relatively modest practices (say, tattooing and scarification) projected out over an indefinite lifespan to make an elf look terrifyingly hosed up compared to J. Random Rivendellian. There were also those orcs who were contemplating desertion that Sam overheard, weren't there?
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Sep 14, 2016 01:00
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I find "orcs are elves" believable, and I also think that the various authors of the books Tolkien translated would have found such a belief intolerably horrifying to entertain, given their opinions on other matters of race and religion.
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Sep 14, 2016 01:32
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Bongo Bill posted:I find "orcs are elves" believable Pretty sure that's canon.
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Sep 14, 2016 01:36
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TildeATH posted:Pretty sure that's canon. There is no canon on the subject of the origin of orcs.
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Sep 14, 2016 01:42
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quote:
http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/o/orcs.html
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Sep 14, 2016 02:07
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"88" updates planned, huh? 
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Sep 14, 2016 03:46
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"it is said"
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Sep 14, 2016 07:10
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InediblePenguin posted:"it is said" So it's gotta be something and elves are the closest match. I'll go show myself into a locker in gym class now.
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Sep 14, 2016 07:24
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Nessus posted:One of the sort of givens of the setting, which I think you have to take into account or you're just not really in the park any more, is that Morgoth etc. can't really "create" a new thing in an absolute sense. They can change and mess with things, and you can argue that this is slandered in the text, but Morgoth couldn't have created orcs (or I guess they would've been like the dwarves were at first - basically just animated puppets he could control). So they have to have come from SOMETHING else, unless Iluvatar was going to let Morgoth create a new form of intelligent life despite the whole Morgoth thing. (If I recall from the Silmarillion, he does this for both Aule and Yavanna with dorfs and ents respectively.) Well the Dwarves at least (Don't remember about the Ents) were created by Aule off of the Man and Elf blueprints. He had the general two arms, two legs, has skin etc. info but had to fill in the blanks with stuff he thought was useful like "good at crafting". So that's not entirely creating from scratch.
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Sep 14, 2016 13:21
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Nessus posted:One of the sort of givens of the setting, which I think you have to take into account or you're just not really in the park any more, is that Morgoth etc. can't really "create" a new thing in an absolute sense. They can change and mess with things, and you can argue that this is slandered in the text, but Morgoth couldn't have created orcs (or I guess they would've been like the dwarves were at first - basically just animated puppets he could control). So they have to have come from SOMETHING else, unless Iluvatar was going to let Morgoth create a new form of intelligent life despite the whole Morgoth thing. (If I recall from the Silmarillion, he does this for both Aule and Yavanna with dorfs and ents respectively.) If you read the snippets of orc dialogue we get closely, it also all implies that they have very long memories. One big question to my mind is whether dead orcs go to Mandos or to somewhere else. galagazombie posted:Well the Dwarves at least (Don't remember about the Ents) were created by Aule off of the Man and Elf blueprints. He had the general two arms, two legs, has skin etc. info but had to fill in the blanks with stuff he thought was useful like "good at crafting". So that's not entirely creating from scratch. Right but even there Eru breathed life into them, ultimately.
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Sep 14, 2016 13:37
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you read the snippets of orc dialogue we get closely, it also all implies that they have very long memories. One big question to my mind is whether dead orcs go to Mandos or to somewhere else.
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Sep 14, 2016 14:28
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If Orcs don't leave Midgard when they die, but reconstitute somewhere "local", like Sauron has his own mini halls of mandos going in, then a lot of their violence is explained too. Life's a big video game to an orc, you just respawn.
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Sep 14, 2016 15:06
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I just bought Children of Hurin.
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Sep 14, 2016 15:27
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TildeATH posted:Pretty sure that's canon. Nope. There is no solid story on it.
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Sep 14, 2016 15:29
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Orc are just one of the handful of things the great Professor did not spend a whole lot of time fleshing out.
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Sep 14, 2016 15:32
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