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Ashcans posted:The only way to stop a bad guy with a ring is a good guy with a ring. This message proudly brought to you by the Numenorean Ring Association
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Aug 15, 2017 20:51
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm bothered less by Sexy Shelob and more by her change in personality. I liked that in the books she couldn't care less about rings or wars or Sauron. Everyone in Middle-earth is (rightly) scared shitless of the Dark Lord she has as a neighbor but he is of absolutely no concern to her. With Durin's Bane and Smaug dead, she's pretty much the last Great Evil of the First Age in Arda. Maybe they read Bored of the Rings by mistake. Schlob, was she now called. For eons she nurtured her pique, obsessively stuffing herself with bon-bons, movie magazines, and an occasional spelunker. At first, Sorhed dutifully sent her monthly alimony payments of a dozen or so narc volunteers, but these gifts soon stopped when word got around what a dinner invitation with Sorhed's ex actually entailed. Hieronymous Alloy posted:It is interesting that there is no alluring femme fatale Ayesha type character i can think of in all Tolkien's work. If you're a girl, you're hot or you're a spider. Mayyybe Queen Beruthiel?
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Aug 15, 2017 20:54
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webmeister posted:This message proudly brought to you by the Numenorean Ring Association Gandalf tells you that you can't make any rings of power, but how does that make sense when Sauron has a ring? And his nine generals have their own rings. Now that rings of power are outlawed, only outlaws have rings of power. It's time that we put that power back onto the hands of the good people of Middle Earth. Would you fear a Dark Rider if you had your own ring of power at hand to defend your home? This November, vote for the Mayor that will let YOU keep the Shire safe, rather than entrusting the future of our children to foreign rangers.
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Aug 15, 2017 21:07
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Just searched "Song of Durin" on youtube. Theres a lot of cheesy crap, but this one hits right home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pISzxdEgDCU
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Aug 15, 2017 21:59
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It is interesting that there is no alluring femme fatale Ayesha type character i can think of in all Tolkien's work. If you're a girl, you're hot or you're a spider. As for "being a mirror to Galadriel" I bet this means something like the phial is gonna come up, huh.
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Aug 16, 2017 09:52
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It is interesting that there is no alluring femme fatale Ayesha type character i can think of in all Tolkien's work. If you're a girl, you're hot or you're a spider. Oh, you can also be an old biddy like Lobelia or Ioreth.
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Aug 16, 2017 15:24
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Nessus posted:It's kind of interesting that while female characters are rather marginalized in Tolkien, he seems almost completely free of the sort of malicious or distrusting stuff we often see in more recent materials. Queen Beruthiel, who is referred to in a story about cats, is the only evil woman with fewer than three legs. skasion posted:Oh, you can also be an old biddy like Lobelia or Ioreth. Good point -- maiden, mother, or crone, but never a witch or evil queen; Always Mary, never Eve (and most definitely never Lillith). (I don't think Beruthiel really counts -- she only even got drafted to fill in the hole created by Aragorn's reference to her cats). You could blame it on his catholicism but I think it comes down to just being someone who reflexively didn't find evil attractive or fascinating.
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Aug 16, 2017 15:33
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skasion posted:Oh, you can also be an old biddy like Lobelia or Ioreth. Lobelia is awesome. I only wish we had the scene where she told Saruman her opinion of him.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:26
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In every way except physical I am not a spider.
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Aug 17, 2017 00:39
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Same, but a whale shark.
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Aug 17, 2017 01:23
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sassassin posted:In every way except physical I am not a spider. [bubbles]
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Aug 17, 2017 01:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Good point -- maiden, mother, or crone, but never a witch or evil queen; Always Mary, never Eve (and most definitely never Lillith). (I don't think Beruthiel really counts -- she only even got drafted to fill in the hole created by Aragorn's reference to her cats).
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Aug 17, 2017 06:53
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Nessus posted:You know, that kind of seems to be the thing when you get down to it, isn't it? He clearly understood evil but he didn't find it alluring. Or even necessarily inevitable (if, of course, very likely). ? Of course evil is inevitable, it's built into the fabric of the world because of the Fall/Marring of Arda
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Aug 17, 2017 17:17
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There's a lot of rigid moralizing in Tolkien's work that I find uncomfortable. It's also why I find Saruman to be his best-written villain as Saruman's fall - why he became what he did - is extremely detailed if you read all the supplementary material. It's extremely realistic and easy to elate to. My favorite little story is the one where Saruman goes to beg Gandalf's pardon when he realizes how deep he's in but Gandalf had already fled. An infuriated Saruman then just kept digging his own grave out of spite. I don't think this is "canon" but it is perfectly in line with Saruman's character. Multiple times he realized he was wrong but a mixture of fear, resentment and pride always mastered him. It was very human, in a way Sauron never was and Melkor only kinda was.
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Aug 17, 2017 20:59
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Sauron definitely isn't supposed to be a relatable villain in the same sense as Saruman. Saruman ultimately is a really petty and pathetic figure, his efforts to become a great tyrant collapse overnight and before you know it he is just a wandering thug who can be sent packing by a harsh word from an even-tempered midget. He is literally humanized, made from a wise angelic wizard who feels obliged to destroy the world to save it into a dirty old man who shits on nice things just because he still can. With Sauron nothing like this ever occurs and he is never reduced to the level of taking a direct part in the character-level action. We know him only by his works: tyranny over his slaves, devastation over his lands, and a enormous presence that literally overshadows the world. When he finally physically appears after the Ring is destroyed it's not as a person who does personlike things, it's as a giant dark figure in the sky, crowned with lightning, who is abruptly blown away by the wind. This isn't a human, but a god; a Power rather than a person. LOTR Sauron is ironically kind of more convincing as a deity than Morgoth, who after his escapades up to the rape of the Silmarils comes off as a sluggardly ogre who sits in a dungeon all millennium scheming ways of doing wicked things without risking himself, while Sil Sauron acts like a spooky sorcerer and gets his rear end whipped by a talking dog.
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Aug 17, 2017 22:00
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Fukken loving these takes on Tolkienian characterization guys ^^ . It's easy to get put off by the flowery and pseudo-archaic language (who would describe someone in a modern piece of fiction as being "mastered by resentment and pride" anyway); but if you reframe the characters using our modern humanized standards these characters are more realistic and varied than a lot of casual readers give them credit for. Just going through the intricate details of the differences in characterization between the various hobbits and Gandalf in the first few chapters (including in the preliminary drafts when they were Bingo and Odo and Marmaduke etc), like the podcast covers, exposes you to more variation in their personalities and more "wait, that seemed really out of character for so-and-so" than I had previously realized. I usually concede to people "Yeah, Tolkien wasn't great at characters", but I probably shouldn't laaaaaandscapes though
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Aug 17, 2017 22:24
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skasion posted:Sauron definitely isn't supposed to be a relatable villain in the same sense as Saruman. Saruman ultimately is a really petty and pathetic figure, his efforts to become a great tyrant collapse overnight and before you know it he is just a wandering thug who can be sent packing by a harsh word from an even-tempered midget. He is literally humanized, made from a wise angelic wizard who feels obliged to destroy the world to save it into a dirty old man who shits on nice things just because he still can. I agree with this, but I also feel like the potential for Sauron to be that kind of villain is there moreso than it is for Morgoth. If Sauron's stint in Numenor before the fall had been written in the same style as LotR instead of in the detached/distant format of the Sil, we would have seen Sauron as a contemptible schemer much in the same vein as Wormtongue (only more successful in the end, obviously). I think Sauron in the Sil at least is a different kind of deity than Morgoth- more of a trickster god (Annatar, him turning into a wolf to defeat Huan) than Morgoth is.
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Aug 18, 2017 01:14
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Radio! posted:I agree with this, but I also feel like the potential for Sauron to be that kind of villain is there moreso than it is for Morgoth. If Sauron's stint in Numenor before the fall had been written in the same style as LotR instead of in the detached/distant format of the Sil, we would have seen Sauron as a contemptible schemer much in the same vein as Wormtongue (only more successful in the end, obviously). Tom Hiddleston to play Sauron in the adaptation of Akallabêth.
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Aug 18, 2017 05:52
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chernobyl kinsman posted:? Of course evil is inevitable, it's built into the fabric of the world because of the Fall/Marring of Arda skasion posted:Sauron definitely isn't supposed to be a relatable villain in the same sense as Saruman. Saruman ultimately is a really petty and pathetic figure, his efforts to become a great tyrant collapse overnight and before you know it he is just a wandering thug who can be sent packing by a harsh word from an even-tempered midget. He is literally humanized, made from a wise angelic wizard who feels obliged to destroy the world to save it into a dirty old man who shits on nice things just because he still can. I also don't think from Tolkien's perspective that what you describe Saruman going through is "humanizing" in the literal sense. He's becoming less and less anything, not somehow more "human." Though dying in the street was probably pretty Man-like of him 
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Aug 18, 2017 06:26
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Tolkien definitely wanted to make Evil as unappealing as possible. Not just in everything is ugly and fiery but also in showing just how miserable these people are. I consider Melkor the star of The Silmarillion and there is not a more miserable being in Arda than him. And of course it's all his fault, another big theme of the series' depiction of Evil. (unless you want to get into the Problem of Evil but let's not) I think the moist poignant thing Tolkien ever said about him was that, even if Melkor had succeeded, he'd never have been happy. He'd end up destroying his own creations and empire alongside the rest of the universe but he'd still be unhappy because things exist and he can't do anything to change that fact. I pity Melkor in the same way Frodo pitied Saruman.
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Aug 18, 2017 06:40
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Radio! posted:I agree with this, but I also feel like the potential for Sauron to be that kind of villain is there moreso than it is for Morgoth. If Sauron's stint in Numenor before the fall had been written in the same style as LotR instead of in the detached/distant format of the Sil, we would have seen Sauron as a contemptible schemer much in the same vein as Wormtongue (only more successful in the end, obviously). Yeah, the bit where he's sitting in the temple laughing his head off about Ar-Pharazon and his fleet heading West and then SPLAT has a lot of the trickster-tricked flavour.
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Aug 18, 2017 08:35
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Enough parallels are drawn in deed between Sauron and Saruman and Gandalf that the same "humanized" qualities can be inferred for him. The only time we sort-of see him (Gollum's recollection told through Gandalf... so no biases there) his missing finger is emphasised. He's a wounded figure, and driven by fear of that wound (see: Aragorn with the Palantir). Several characters also operate as "his voice" (The Mouth, the wraith that visits the dwarves), claiming to speak in his words. There's more there than just an overshadowing, godly presence/great fiery eye. Nessus posted:In the sense that power does not inevitably corrupt, you can make good decisions, choice is meaningful, etc. Like, arguably the entire Council of Elrond is literally a bunch of wise people behaving in a way that is actually kind of wise, viz: "We understand what the Ring means, and now we have to figure out what the gently caress to do with it, without taking the obvious course that we all know is gonna be doomed." The Council of Elrond is more literally a bunch of toffs sitting around endlessly telling stories and getting nowhere until a plucky old hobbit (also a toff) decides to 'ave a go. Also Legolas crying about how useless his people are.
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Aug 18, 2017 11:54
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This made me laugh: http://r-navy.tumblr.com/post/118074165045/mirkwood-daily-d
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Aug 27, 2017 15:47
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Okay so there are two things about the LotR that have bugged me ever since I first read it as a kid. Small things, the kind of things that don't have any bearing on the story or anything, but they just make me go all  whenever I think about them, and I can't understand why nobody else finds them weird or talks about them.1) "Farmer Maggot". WTF is up with that name? Is there some bucolic innocuous 19th century meaning of "maggot" that I'm not aware of? Or is Tolkien deliberately naming a guy after fly larvae in your rotting meat? 2) The horn-call of Buckland. FEAR FIRE FOES AWAKE. How is that a "horn-call"? Why are there words in it? Is it like a giant megaphone attached to an alpenhorn or something? Is it supposed to be, like, musical notes that evoke words through their sound? Or like the fire department whistle that blows in a sequence that you're supposed to look up on a sheet on your refrigerator, "Two long honks then a short, that means FOES" Having listened to like 60 hours of Tolkien Professor podcasts by now which cover the relevant scenes in great detail, in which he's talked at length about every single little aspect of these two things and taken countless questions from his listeners about them and yet not actually addressed these two simple yet seemingly crucial questions at any time, I'm left to wonder whether I'm just hopelessly dense and am missing something horribly obvious. He talks about how Farmer Maggot was conceived in a variety of different ways, like this ominous threatening Mr. McGregor figure who threatens to murder Frodo and pals for stepping on his mushrooms and for killing one of his dogs when he was a kid, and Tolkien waffled back and forth as to whether he should be an adversary or an asset to them; and he talks about how the horn-call is so evocatively described that "you can just hear those words, can't you? Fear! Fire! Foes! Toot-toooot!" —but apparently this is plenty for everyone to just go "Mmyep, that's our JRRT  "
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Aug 27, 2017 18:18
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People in rural communities get weird namesData Graham posted:
I've always assumed that it was a combination of 1) First you blow the horn, then you shout "fear fire foes," then you blow the horn, etc. 2) If it's like the standard Alert call then they probably teach all the kids what the specific horn pattern means so they associate the words with the notes. Like, everyone knows what a siren means. 3) Hobbit are basically rabbits and rabbits have like stomp alert pattern calls 4) Gondor horn magic
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Aug 27, 2017 18:27
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Data Graham posted:Okay so there are two things about the LotR that have bugged me ever since I first read it as a kid. Small things, the kind of things that don't have any bearing on the story or anything, but they just make me go all 1) Hobbits have goofy names that Tolkien chuckled sensibly over. But it's an unpleasant sounding name that you associate with his story of how he kicked Frodo's rear end so it's priming you to think he is bad, but he is actually good and like the most competent guy in the Shire apparently. 2) Hieronymous Alloy posted:2) If it's like the standard Alert call then they probably teach all the kids what the specific horn pattern means so they associate the words with the notes. Like, everyone knows what a siren means. This basically, Tolkien is representing the sound of their horns (you can't do this more literally in text without resorting to onomatopoeia) by the symbol of a guy shouting "Fear fire foes" because that is the meaning of the signal they are blowing. e: While we're asking questions, here's a geography thing that I've never understood: is there a passage through the mountains into Mordor IN Minas Morgul, or do they just use the Cirith Ungol path whenever anyone needs to go through? skasion fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Aug 27, 2017 |
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Aug 27, 2017 18:40
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Yes, I believe there is a path directly through Minas Morgul to access Mordor; the hobbits don't take it because it means passing directly through the fortresses and in the busiest areas, where they are very unlikely to get through (maybe Frodo on his own if he was using the ring). Especially because at the time they arrive, the forces are mobilizing so there is lots of traffic/people running around. Gollum leads them on the path through Cirith Ungol because it is a very narrow and difficult way that all the armies will avoid, and they can hope to squeeze through unnoticed (well, also because he intends to get them eaten, but he also wants to avoid having them found/captured by anyone else as well). The pass is known, but not heavily watched because its too small for a sizeable force to use and is also guarded by Shelob.
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Aug 27, 2017 19:51
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Fear Fire Foes Fum
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Aug 27, 2017 20:41
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Ashcans posted:Yes, I believe there is a path directly through Minas Morgul to access Mordor; the hobbits don't take it because it means passing directly through the fortresses and in the busiest areas, where they are very unlikely to get through (maybe Frodo on his own if he was using the ring). Especially because at the time they arrive, the forces are mobilizing so there is lots of traffic/people running around. I don't have the book in front of me for the quote but as Sam approaches Cirith Ungol (and I think as they leave) they can see the main road from Morder below them in the cleft of the pass.
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Aug 27, 2017 20:54
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Fear fire foes awake is like how the hammers in the deep "said" DOOM a whole lot.
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Aug 27, 2017 21:08
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SHISHKABOB posted:Fear fire foes awake is like how the hammers in the deep "said" DOOM a whole lot.
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Aug 27, 2017 21:18
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Actually here's another Brandybuck question: why did they leave the Shire for Buckland? The Brandybucks were the original Shire-thains, back when they were the Oldbucks, but despite this they seemingly migrated out of the Shire and abdicated that office to the Tooks. Always struck me as just a weird thing.
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Aug 28, 2017 02:04
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Lebensraum for the hobbit master race
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Aug 28, 2017 07:22
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skasion posted:Actually here's another Brandybuck question: why did they leave the Shire for Buckland? The Brandybucks were the original Shire-thains, back when they were the Oldbucks, but despite this they seemingly migrated out of the Shire and abdicated that office to the Tooks. Always struck me as just a weird thing.
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Aug 28, 2017 10:21
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Not at all hot take: There's probably a slow-burn Thorin/Bilbo romance fanfiction somewhere out there that's better than the actual Hobbit movies.
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Aug 28, 2017 10:25
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Nessus posted:Yeah, this and the horn call code was probably a thing. Even if foes and fear were rare, the hobbits occasionally had fires, so without modern technology a good way to get warning of a big ol' forest fire spreading would be horns from hilltops. Yeah, it just means UNSPECIFIED BAD poo poo HAPPENING WAKE UP AND HELP.
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Aug 28, 2017 10:59
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PMush Perfect posted:Not at all hot take: There's probably a slow-burn Thorin/Bilbo/Azog three-way romance fanfiction somewhere out there that's better than the actual Hobbit movies. FFY.
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Aug 28, 2017 11:00
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If only.
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Aug 28, 2017 11:15
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PMush Perfect posted:Not at all hot take: There's probably a slow-burn Thorin/Bilbo romance fanfiction somewhere out there that's better than the actual Hobbit movies. Wouldn't be too difficult for a sufficiently dedicated fan, I think.
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Aug 28, 2017 15:35
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Seriously, if Bilbo isn't gay, I'll eat my Proudfeet.
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Aug 28, 2017 15:43
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