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Yeah Fall of Gondolin is the one with APC dragons. It’s not a general thing across Book it Lost Tales though, in “Turambar and the Foaloke” the proto-Glaurung is just a big old worm like regular Glaurung, or Smaug for that matter. This got me thinking, what is the first text in which Ancalagon features? He’s namedropped in LOTR as the most bad rear end dragon of all time, but he can’t be in the Lost Tales because the War of Wrath doesn’t happen.
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Feb 12, 2019 14:30
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As far as I know, Tolkien never wrote a full text of the war of wrath. It would probably be in one of his outlines or summaries, but I can't for the life of me remember if it was in the 1930's silmarillion or later.
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Feb 12, 2019 16:52
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In Lost Tales it’s not so much that it wasn’t written as that it doesn’t happen at all. At that stage we’re still in Tol Eressea = Britain mode and there’s no chance for the battle at the end to be particularly cataclysmic, it’s just the elves getting their asses kicked by the orcs and possibly romans. Flipping around HoME it looks like the first time the name comes up is in the early 30s — I don’t see it in the Sketch of the Mythology, but the idea of Morgoth coming forth with his dragons to battle the gods is already present. So it’s probably in the Annals of Beleriand that we first get a named dragon for Eärendil to kill.
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Feb 12, 2019 17:57
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What are the differencies between the original and the 60s Hobbit?
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Feb 12, 2019 19:01
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Hogge Wild posted:What are the differencies between the original and the 60s Hobbit? 60s Hobbit is basically a completely different book about the same plot that gets right up until they’re about to reach Rivendell. The point was to bring Hobbit into more total consistency with LOTR by messing with stuff like how the Last Bridge is dozens of miles away from the trolls in LOTR but apparently right there in The Hobbit. The result is really weird and does a hatchet job on Bilbo in particular, he comes off as a gigantic retard because the narrator isn’t willing to indulge his silliness the same way as the original. The tone of the narrative as a whole is much closer to the relatively withdrawn voice of LOTR, a lot of the narrator’s whimsical little asides are axed. Tolkien asked a correspondent if she thought the result was any good and she politely conveyed that it ripped the guts out of the book.
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Feb 12, 2019 19:15
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skasion posted:60s Hobbit is basically a completely different book about the same plot that gets right up until they’re about to reach Rivendell. The point was to bring Hobbit into more total consistency with LOTR by messing with stuff like how the Last Bridge is dozens of miles away from the trolls in LOTR but apparently right there in The Hobbit. The result is really weird and does a hatchet job on Bilbo in particular, he comes off as a gigantic retard because the narrator isn’t willing to indulge his silliness the same way as the original. The tone of the narrative as a whole is much closer to the relatively withdrawn voice of LOTR, a lot of the narrator’s whimsical little asides are axed. Tolkien asked a correspondent if she thought the result was any good and she politely conveyed that it ripped the guts out of the book. So it wasn't printed?
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Feb 12, 2019 19:22
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He wrote it as though he were under orders from his editor to "take out all the fun stuff"
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Feb 12, 2019 19:22
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Hogge Wild posted:So it wasn't printed? No, not even close. The modern edition of The Hobbit dates from 1966, but it’s just an update of the revised 1951 version (the one that changes the Gollum scene to accord with LOTR). The 1960 Hobbit is an orphaned thing that never got even close to completion before he decided it sucked.
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Feb 12, 2019 19:24
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skasion posted:No, not even close. The modern edition of The Hobbit dates from 1966, but it’s just an update of the revised 1951 version (the one that changes the Gollum scene to accord with LOTR). The 1960 Hobbit is an orphaned thing that never got even close to completion before he decided it sucked. nice
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Feb 12, 2019 19:40
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According to Olsen, you see the same thing in a lot of the stuff he was fiddling with toward the end of his life; like there were some late Silmarillion-mythos revisions he was working on that attempted to reconcile the Straight Road and the Sun and Moon stuff in a more "naturalistic" way consistent with real-world cosmology. And to his mind, the results were... really not very engaging. None of the whimsy or inventiveness of the wacko early stuff. He got all practical in his old age, and forgot how to Tolkien 
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Feb 12, 2019 20:17
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Randomly writing a bunch of poo poo because it occurred to him without any concern for whether it would be good or bad or please his “fans” is the most Tolkien thing of all though.
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Feb 12, 2019 20:40
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Christopher Tolkien has more or less said that his father's tinkering was the main reason he never finished the Silmarillion. If he'd just concentrated on writing coherent narratives of all the stories he'd done so far, he probably could have finished in a couple years. Instead, he kept trying to make everything fit perfectly. J.R.R. Tolkiens post LOTR writing career can be summed up by the adage 'perfect is the enemy of good.'
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Feb 12, 2019 22:15
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sweet geek swag posted:Christopher Tolkien has more or less said that his father's tinkering was the main reason he never finished the Silmarillion. If he'd just concentrated on writing coherent narratives of all the stories he'd done so far, he probably could have finished in a couple years. Instead, he kept trying to make everything fit perfectly. J.R.R. Tolkiens post LOTR writing career can be summed up by the adage 'perfect is the enemy of good.' JRRT thought he had gotten a decisive rejection from his publishers on The Silmarillion (they had only decisively rejected the Lay of Leithian it turns out but there was some miscommunication). He was writing only for himself precisely for that reason.
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Feb 12, 2019 22:23
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sweet geek swag posted:Christopher Tolkien has more or less said that his father's tinkering was the main reason he never finished the Silmarillion. If he'd just concentrated on writing coherent narratives of all the stories he'd done so far, he probably could have finished in a couple years. Instead, he kept trying to make everything fit perfectly. J.R.R. Tolkiens post LOTR writing career can be summed up by the adage 'perfect is the enemy of good.' Oh, I'm sure he was enjoying himself.
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Feb 12, 2019 22:24
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Hogge Wild posted:So it wasn't printed? What there is of it is printed in John Rateliff's The History of The Hobbit book 2, Return to Bag-End.
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Feb 12, 2019 23:07
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Runcible Cat posted:What there is of it is printed in John Rateliff's The History of The Hobbit book 2, Return to Bag-End. Good point. Everyone should read History of The Hobbit anyway, it’s a fun book. Just reflect on how Tolkien could have chosen to name his wizard loving “Bladorthin” and then no one today would ever have heard of him.
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Feb 12, 2019 23:24
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There's that quote from CS Lewis that Tolkien's response to criticism is generally to completely ignore it, or to scrap the entire work and start over. Which I imagine results in a less than speedy workflow.
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Feb 13, 2019 00:49
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Tolkien started like seven or eight retellings of the mythology and finished like one in his entire life. And that one was the epitome.
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Feb 13, 2019 00:59
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Feb 13, 2019 16:00
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Stupid sexy Shagrat!
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Feb 13, 2019 18:34
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Orcs are one of the only creatures in Middle-earth that verifiably wear pants. Made of unclean beastfells of course Elves? Pantsless Rohirrim? Wearing no pants, but singing many songs Gondorians? All in skirts like the ancient Greeks Tom Bombadil? Jacket and boots only, like a subway flasher Gandalf? You better bet he’s commando under that robe.
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Feb 13, 2019 18:42
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Ah so that's where that one Oglaf strip came from
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Feb 13, 2019 18:53
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skasion posted:Wearing no pants, but singing many songs This paints a surprisingly vivid picture
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Feb 13, 2019 23:39
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Some AI researchers created an AI that wrote some fanfic. https://blog.openai.com/better-language-models/#sample5
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Feb 16, 2019 03:43
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Ynglaur posted:Some AI researchers created an AI that wrote some fanfic. https://blog.openai.com/better-language-models/#sample5 its comforting that Tolkien-derivative fantasy will be written by robots soon
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Feb 16, 2019 05:44
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my bony fealty posted:its comforting that Tolkien-derivative fantasy will be written by robots soon True AI is just another name for a Maiar of Aule.
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Feb 16, 2019 08:17
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my bony fealty posted:its comforting that Tolkien-derivative fantasy will be written by robots soon I'm not sure "close to human quality" is a very high bar in this case.
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Feb 16, 2019 10:03
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It does feature Gimli's murder-amnesia.First paragraph posted:it took only two words before their opponents were reduced to a blood-soaked quagmire, and the dwarf took his first kill of the night. Third paragraph posted:“I’ll never forget it!” cried Gimli, who had been in the thick of the battle but hadn’t taken part in it.
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Feb 16, 2019 10:09
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Does it say anywhere that elves have long hair usually? Nearly all depictions of them are in that cliched long haired pointy ear style but that's now how I picture them at all. I picture just regular people except with no features associated with aging.
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Feb 16, 2019 11:00
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Shibawanko posted:Does it say anywhere that elves have long hair usually? Nearly all depictions of them are in that cliched long haired pointy ear style but that's now how I picture them at all. I picture just regular people except with no features associated with aging. "[Glorfindal's] golden hair flowed shimmering in the wind of his speed" and "the hair of Lord Celeborn was silver long and bright" Plus a few other descriptions of hair shimmering or glimmering.
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Feb 16, 2019 11:23
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Shibawanko posted:Does it say anywhere that elves have long hair usually? Nearly all depictions of them are in that cliched long haired pointy ear style but that's now how I picture them at all. I picture just regular people except with no features associated with aging. The ears Tolkien seems to have assumed rather than described (of course elves have pointy ears, they’re elves, let’s not waste words about it). The long hair is a generalization from a few examples, because if Tolkien describes someone’s hair at length (haha) he usually describes it in a way that makes it seem pretty long. But I’ve never imagined Legolas for example with long hair since I read JRRT’s bad-tempered defense of him as a jacked badass, though nothing in that passage actually precludes it. On the other hand, I can’t really imagine what an elvish barber would have been like.
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Feb 16, 2019 13:10
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My favorite elf is Saeros because he's just a huge dick and I picture him as a kind of frat boy type from an Abercrombie & Fitch bag except immortal and with a harp or lyre
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Feb 16, 2019 15:05
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Turin throws a red solo cup at him
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Feb 16, 2019 15:15
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skasion posted:
Somehow, I suspect Tolkien elves didn't actually need to ever cut their hair. Their hair just grew how they willed it to.
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Feb 16, 2019 15:31
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Somehow, I suspect Tolkien elves didn't actually need to ever cut their hair. Their hair just grew how they willed it to. Given their love of arts and crafts I can't imagine Elven hairdressing would have been anything less than insanely elaborate. It's a travesty that Peter Jackson's made them robots with hair straighteners. Tolkien Elves aren't hippies who would let nature take its course, either. There will be landscaping.
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Feb 16, 2019 15:36
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Luthien had long hair for one and elves have scissors. Behold  She had used magic to grow her hair before that Luthien is kind of special tho euphronius fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Feb 16, 2019 |
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Feb 16, 2019 15:49
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Shibawanko posted:Does it say anywhere that elves have long hair usually? Nearly all depictions of them are in that cliched long haired pointy ear style but that's now how I picture them at all. I picture just regular people except with no features associated with aging. They do have pointy ears, here Tolkien describes hobbits: I picture a fairly human figure, not a kind of 'fairy' rabbit as some of my British reviewers seem to fancy: fattish in the stomach, shortish in the leg. A round, jovial face; ears only slightly pointed and 'elvish'; hair short and curling (brown). The feet from the ankles down, covered with brown hairy fur. Clothing: green velvet breeches; red or yellow waistcoat; brown or green jacket; gold (or brass) buttons; a dark green hood and cloak (belonging to a dwarf). The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 35 (#27) Here Tolkien also uses "elvish" instead of "elven".
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Feb 16, 2019 17:55
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skasion posted:But I’ve never imagined Legolas for example with long hair since I read JRRT’s bad-tempered defense of him as a jacked badass, Where is this written?
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Feb 16, 2019 19:01
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Ynglaur posted:Where is this written? It’s a random note he made on an illustration of Legolas which was too twinky for his taste. Sadly we don’t know what illustration, but the remark is cited in Lost Tales 2 (quite out of context, but Chris is using it to show that Tolkien’s early concept of the elves fading away to wimpy little Victorian fairies did not last into the later work): quote:He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship.
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Feb 16, 2019 19:27
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skasion posted:It’s a random note he made on an illustration of Legolas which was too twinky for his taste. Sadly we don’t know what illustration, but the remark is cited in Lost Tales 2 (quite out of context, but Chris is using it to show that Tolkien’s early concept of the elves fading away to wimpy little Victorian fairies did not last into the later work): Nice! Twinks using longbows is one of my pet peeves. You need much more strength to use a proper warbow than a sword or an axe.
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Feb 16, 2019 20:12
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