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skasion posted:Sauron and Durin's Bane may have been allied in some way. There were black uruks of Mordor in Moria when the Fellowship passed through, and they were pretty recent arrivals: they were the ones who came east up the Silverlode, killed Balin, and besieged the dwarf colony there. This sure sounds like either an alliance or a relationship of military dependency where Sauron sent troops to DB and had reason to believe they wouldn't immediately be run off by the Moria orcs. Perhaps it was in preparation for his planned stroke at Lothlorien as well as just getting rid of DB's dwarf infestation (though you would think DB could deal with it himself). I don't think Sauron would necessarily need to control Smaug directly. Just having Smaug around would be a big threat to that part of Middle Earth and him being there means the Dwarves aren't which puts Lorien more at risk to be attacked by Sauron's Dol Guldur armies and whatever other forces he could muster in that part of the world. The same thing is true of the Balrog. Whether Sauron is directly allied or not, having the Balrog there puts in an implicit backdoor threat to Lorien and blocks a good potential pass through the Misty Mountains. If the Ring is found and attempts to go to Mordor, Sauron knows that it's very unlikely Gandalf and co will be foolish enough to try Moria. Of course, they end up doing just that because Gandalf's policy for the ringbearer is generally to try the absolute riskiest thing possible because surely Sauron/Saruman would never expect it  .
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Jul 19, 2020 23:22
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Goes in the same vein as the relationship between Sauron and Shelob. Unless I misremember things, Sauron liked to have that passage into Mordor guarded by a fiendish being, but he wasn’t technically ruling over her.
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Jul 19, 2020 23:32
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Nessus posted:They should cast a range of people as Numenoreans IMO. I think the one requirement would be that they ought to be tall and grand and Elendil should probably have a vague appearance to Viggo Mortesen if he appears. (Also apparently Elendil was eight feet tall? lol) I wonder if the Balrog came up from the deeps because it sensed the Ring.
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Jul 19, 2020 23:50
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Ynglaur posted:I wonder if the Balrog came up from the deeps because it sensed the Ring. It’s quite possible, but IIRC, someone caught a glimpse of it after the battle of Azanubizar, which implies that it was near the surface during that event. It’s quite possible it’s just not a fan of loud neighbors. I can also see it being drawn towards Gandalf. I don’t know if Maiar are beings that can “sense” each other in such crude ways, but it’s possible.
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Jul 20, 2020 00:28
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BigglesSWE posted:It’s quite possible, but IIRC, someone caught a glimpse of it after the battle of Azanubizar, which implies that it was near the surface during that event. It’s quite possible it’s just not a fan of loud neighbors. Something made the Watcher in the Water focus down on Frodo pretty hard at the Gates of Moria. It's probable that certain powerful evil beings can sense the Ring in some way even if they don't know what they're sensing.
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Jul 20, 2020 00:48
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Gandalf tries to lock a door behind them after Balin's Tomb using a spell and a more powerful force defeats him and blows up the door, so I think that that was the Balrog using its magic to beat Gandalf and would know that there's someone magical to be chased down.
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Jul 20, 2020 01:02
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SHISHKABOB posted:Gandalf tries to lock a door behind them after Balin's Tomb using a spell and a more powerful force defeats him and blows up the door, so I think that that was the Balrog using its magic to beat Gandalf and would know that there's someone magical to be chased down. Do you think it could sense Gandalf before that, or was that the point of it being aware of his presence?
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Jul 20, 2020 01:19
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Within Tolkien's own stuff, there is never actually a requirement the Elves have white skin, so that can be ignored right away. As for the Numenorean's, their island is drat near the equator, and they dealt with all kinds of people from the global south, all the time. There is no reason that they also can't have a variety of skin colors represented within the greater label of "Numenorean" since their long lives and poo poo are a direct result of Elvish origins and a literal gift from the Gods, so that also can be easily ignored. I mean sure, yeah, but i dont think flat earths have equators? But anyways numenor setled Umbar for centuries right, there is your in universe explanation. Or just expand the druedain to be one of the houses thats gifted numenor, bing bing so simple.
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Jul 20, 2020 01:56
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It’s just the best scene in all of fantasy If nothing else Jrrt goes in the hall of fame for that one scene
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Jul 20, 2020 02:11
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SHISHKABOB posted:Gandalf tries to lock a door behind them after Balin's Tomb using a spell and a more powerful force defeats him and blows up the door, so I think that that was the Balrog using its magic to beat Gandalf and would know that there's someone magical to be chased down. It was, but it's an open question why it bothered to show up in the first place. The dwarves of Balin's company were killed by just orcs as far as we know, there's no sign that the balrog chipped in. I think being drawn to the ring is a pretty plausible explanation. Gandalf (at least the original Gandalf) is kind of incognito, I don't think the balrog could necessarily tell he was there until it encountered his spell. After all, Gandalf is of the same order of being as the balrog and he sure couldn't tell it was there. He couldn't even tell for sure what it was until he physically saw it.
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Jul 20, 2020 02:22
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:I mean sure, yeah, but i dont think flat earths have equators? the Girdle Of Arda runs just south of Numenor, while the world may have still been flat at this point, i think climatically speaking, it functioned as the equator still and Numenor would have been in a climate zone similar to those places on Earth. Also if i was wrong and Tolkien did explicitly claim elves are all white, gently caress that, we can let that go.
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Jul 20, 2020 02:23
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"Drums, drums in the deep" in the journal of Balin's colony to me implies that their last stand was against something more than just orcs coming in from outside. Especially since Gandalf mentions several times that the lower halls are drowned in fear, that the dwarves awoke something more evil than orcs way down there, etc.
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Jul 20, 2020 02:27
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Imagined posted:"Drums, drums in the deep" in the journal of Balin's colony to me implies that their last stand was against something more than just orcs coming in from outside. Especially since Gandalf mentions several times that the lower halls are drowned in fear, that the dwarves awoke something more evil than orcs way down there, etc. There were probably orcs deeper in Moria too — from the behavior of the “northerners” in “The Uruk-Hai” some of the Moria orcs are politically unengaged and just follow the fellowship to get revenge, and Balin’s colony was always small and only drove out the orcs from the upper levels. I’m not sure if the drums are supposed to have anything to do with the balrog.
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Jul 20, 2020 03:38
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sweet geek swag posted:Because stage performances are inherently fake, the very nature of them is an artifice. Acknowledging that a stage performance is performed by actors isn't a problem for suspension of disbelief because you are already in a theater watching a stage. Most movies and TV shows try to pretend to be showing something that looks real, and casting a black dude as Thomas Jefferson or something in a movie that looks real is gonna give people a shitton of cognitive dissonance.
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Jul 20, 2020 04:22
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skasion posted:The dwarves of Balin's company were killed by just orcs as far as we know I’m pretty sure the watcher in the water got one of them
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Jul 20, 2020 04:40
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I seem to recall that one of the backup hobbits threw a rock down a hole to see how long it would take to land and that is what got the whole party started. If they hadn't done that, wouldn't have been a problem.
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Jul 20, 2020 04:59
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Zoran posted:I’m pretty sure the watcher in the water got one of them Yeah, Oin. But the rest that were with him must have gotten back to Ori and the rest of the company and presumably got chopped up by goblins in the chamber of records. There's nothing about the situation the fellowship finds there that strongly implies to me that the balrog was previously present there, like idk, everything in the room being burned to ashes or something
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Jul 20, 2020 05:04
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Nessus posted:I assume Durin's Bane could have probably matched Sauron without the Ring Blood Boils posted:DB probably out ranked Sauron in the old days I doubt either of these is true. Only Gothmog might have outranked Sauron among the balrogs, and I doubt he was actually more powerful, since he seemed to be about the level of the strongest elves in single combat (and was killed by Ecthelion, a big elf from Gondolin whose most notable feature was having a “bent sword”) while Sauron seemed to be somewhat stronger than any but the mythic tier elves like Luthien or Earendil. It’s never really clear what Durin’s bane has been doing or what its motivations are, but presumably if it had the ability to carve out a domain larger than the misty mountains it probably would have, but likely Rivendell, Lorien and even Mirkwood were strong enough to keep it bottled up underground. SHISHKABOB posted:Gandalf tries to lock a door behind them after Balin's Tomb using a spell and a more powerful force defeats him and blows up the door, so I think that that was the Balrog using its magic to beat Gandalf and would know that there's someone magical to be chased down. Just to be that guy, the Balrog’s counter spell was enough to make the door leave Gandalf’s control, but it didn’t blow it up. When he realized we was losing control of the door, Gandalf spoke a “word of command”, which proved too much and blew up to door and collapsed a big area around it.
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Jul 20, 2020 06:32
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Nessus posted:I seem to recall that one of the backup hobbits threw a rock down a hole to see how long it would take to land and that is what got the whole party started. If they hadn't done that, wouldn't have been a problem. Maybe the Balrog was passing under that right then and went up to check who dumped a mummified dwarf on his head.
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Jul 20, 2020 06:34
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skasion posted:Yeah, Oin. But the rest that were with him must have gotten back to Ori and the rest of the company and presumably got chopped up by goblins in the chamber of records. There's nothing about the situation the fellowship finds there that strongly implies to me that the balrog was previously present there, like idk, everything in the room being burned to ashes or something Maybe it's the presence of Narya that causes the Balrog to ignite
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Jul 20, 2020 09:16
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Shibawanko posted:in children of hurin you get the impression that glaurung is just an extension of morgoth, like when he talks he basically just says what morgoth wants him to, they're more like automata than living creatures In the older versions of the Fall of Gondolin the dragons were pretty much machines.
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Jul 20, 2020 11:26
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Daikloktos posted:Has there ever been a movement to ground the film experience in that same inherent artifice? It took films decades to stop being that, but it wasn't because of some movement, it was just doing the things in the traditional way. The only movement I remember that tried to revert back was the Dogme 95: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95
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Jul 20, 2020 11:33
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ChubbyChecker posted:In the older versions of the Fall of Gondolin the dragons were pretty much machines. Things not created by iluvatar dont have a soul , so dragons work as alegories for pure id? So...great eagles too?thats weird. Although tolkien realised that and hinted that the eagles are actually maia. The whole soul thing is kinda badly constructed after the elves and men .the dwarves being the adopted sons of iluvatar kinda works,but having the eagles, ents and animals like huan be maiar works better.or just give souls to every sentient being, jrrt. I know a lot of that stuff is imbued with his catholicism, but hell, there was a donkey saint, bill the pony totally has a soul my dude. Edit: oh poo poo it was a greyhound aparently? Man, a lotnof people from Assisi talk to animals, that seems like a pathology good buddies. Antifa Poltergeist fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Jul 20, 2020 |
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Jul 20, 2020 12:07
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webmeister posted:Maybe it's the presence of Narya that causes the Balrog to ignite I suspect balrogs are more like Diesel fuel, in that they can ignite spontaneously.
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Jul 20, 2020 12:31
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Legolas helpfully identifies it as a balrog for Gandalf
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Jul 20, 2020 12:35
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I was thinking the other day about the animistic universe apparent in Legolas talking about the spirits in the rocks and trees of Eregion, and how odd that felt in a world of immortal beings who have personal knowledge of the Gods. But then I got to wondering, well, why NOT have a synthetic, emergent religion believed by the people even though it's demonstrably not true? Why shouldn't the Elves be all like "Yeah of course the rocks and trees have spirits, wanna fight about it?" And not just because they haven't talked directly to the Valar in forever. It would be an interesting commentary on the nature of humanity (and Elves I guess) that we WANT to believe in something we have to take on faith, because it's reassuring to us, or scratches some kind of primal itch. By creating a world where the inhabitants have direct personal knowledge of the deities who created the world and know more or less exactly what happens after death, Tolkien is short-circuiting humanity's familiar behavior in confronting the unknown questions about those things, making it impossible for his characters to HAVE religion in the traditional, familiar sense. So.... what do they do? They have religion anyway! There's some evidence of course that this animism that Legolas alludes to is "real"—Old Man Willow, the Ents/Huorns, etc.There's a whole spectrum of what the spirits created during the Music eventually turned into, and Tolkien basically confirms as much. But just as a matter of thought experimentation, what it might look like when in-universe characters are faced with a world that doesn't present any ineffable mysteries ... might be saying that dammit we'll just create some ineffable mysteries because we like them.
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Jul 20, 2020 12:38
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Also the balrog stops burning when it fights G on the bridge
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Jul 20, 2020 12:40
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Well, they would spend all their lifes getting better at their vocations, make really cool gems and then wage world shatering wars when someone steals them. Feanor is a huge dick. I guess we could look at their animistic reverence as trying to understand iluvatars song , but elves seem to spend a lot of their time just pinning for what was.i think thats their animus."this forest was here before the noldor, it must be really special." I dont think theres anyone mentioned trying to do something new.except celebrimbor.whos also a dick. Actually, everyone who tries to create something new is a huge dick. Man, lotr is regressive as gently caress. "This guy invented the plow!war!" *Wrecks seven diferent kingdoms*
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Jul 20, 2020 13:00
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skasion posted:Yeah, Oin. But the rest that were with him must have gotten back to Ori and the rest of the company and presumably got chopped up by goblins in the chamber of records. There's nothing about the situation the fellowship finds there that strongly implies to me that the balrog was previously present there, like idk, everything in the room being burned to ashes or something The Book of Mazarbul is "partly burned". But it seems pretty clear from the encounter at the bridge that Balrogs aren't automatically on fire, though it doesn't bother them when they are; its hair catches alight when it jumps the flame chasm: quote:Something was coming up behind them. What it was could not be seen: it was like a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe, yet greater; and a power and terror seemed to be in it and to go before it. But yeah, I agree there doesn't seem to be anything in the description of the Chamber that says anything other than the remaining dwarves fought it out with a shitload of orcs and lost. Antifa Poltergeist posted:Things not created by iluvatar dont have a soul , so dragons work as alegories for pure id? Iluvatar can presumably bestow a soul on whatever it wants; maybe it has occasional fits of generosity and randomly hands out souls like lottery wins. Hi tree! You get a soul! Good doggie! You get a soul! Nice rock! You get a soul too, why the hell not! Data Graham posted:There's some evidence of course that this animism that Legolas alludes to is "real"—Old Man Willow, the Ents/Huorns, etc.There's a whole spectrum of what the spirits created during the Music eventually turned into, and Tolkien basically confirms as much. But just as a matter of thought experimentation, what it might look like when in-universe characters are faced with a world that doesn't present any ineffable mysteries ... might be saying that dammit we'll just create some ineffable mysteries because we like them. I thought Ents were created by - Yavanna? as tree-herds? Though I suppose that runs into the no-soul problem. Hey Iluvatar, you gave Aule's dwarves souls, stop being a dick and soul up my tree people too! Old Man Willow is presumably an old and nasty Huorn - left behind by the Entwives when they moved north of the Shire to be spotted by occasional drunks? And Caradhras is implied to be aware and antagonistic on some level as well.
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Jul 20, 2020 14:09
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You know what could have solved the soul problem for Tolkien? If he had said that during the Music of the Ainur the Ainur put a little of their souls into the music, and those souls became mixed and is the well from which the nature spirits and orcs and dragons get their souls. And maybe orcs and dragons are evil because they are made from Morgoth's own soul. Just a thought.
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Jul 20, 2020 14:58
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Daikloktos posted:Has there ever been a movement to ground the film experience in that same inherent artifice? There's no kind of unified "we are the Theatricalists" movement I can think of, though, at least not one that anyone outside their art school friendship circles ever paid any attention to. Some of the BBC Television Shakespeare productions consciously abandoned conventional film techniques. Dennis Potter also played around with the medium quite a bit by screen standards, with devices like in Blue Remembered Hills where the characters are all about 7-10 years old but played by adults. They're the most mainstream things I can think of off the top of my head, unless you want to start counting devices like flashback and playing scenes out of order. Rashomon and stories inspired by it are also coming to mind, where the whole thing becomes a comment on the inherent subjectivity of memory and representation. There is an it-stands-to-reason thought process going on in my head right now, actually, about how if you're ever going to try to do it, now would be the ideal time. Something like, the audience that goes to see live theatre, especially the kind of theatre more likely to do radical stagings, is by and large going to be the kind fo demographic who 50 years ago would have taken pride in not having a television in the house, or only watching the news, or not watching channels funded by advertising. Except (a) times have changed and that demographic now raves over Fleabag or The Wire as well as going to the theatre, and (b) it's still going to be stuck at home for God knows how long without any hope of getting to the theatre this calendar year, and one of the things it is watching on TV is recordings of classic productions...
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Jul 20, 2020 15:09
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Runcible Cat posted:The Book of Mazarbul is "partly burned". But it seems pretty clear from the encounter at the bridge that Balrogs aren't automatically on fire, though it doesn't bother them when they are; its hair catches alight when it jumps the flame chasm: Nice catch on the burned book, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that. Yeah I agree balrogs aren’t necessarily on fire all the time but DB at least has a burning sword of some kind. Runcible Cat posted:Iluvatar can presumably bestow a soul on whatever it wants; maybe it has occasional fits of generosity and randomly hands out souls like lottery wins. Hi tree! You get a soul! Good doggie! You get a soul! Nice rock! You get a soul too, why the hell not! Iluvatar tends to be pretty hands-off when it comes to letting spirits choose what they want to do. If he could indulge his prize pig deciding to become an edgy nihilist tyrant, he can indulge the 100000 relatively insignificant weirdos who want to spend millennia as a rock/tree/whatever.
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Jul 20, 2020 15:09
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Heithinn Grasida posted:
Thank you for being that guy. Runcible Cat posted:
I know that I loved the Balrog in the Peter Jackson movies when I first saw it as a kid, but I get the feeling that a lot of big LOTR fans must have been pretty disappointed in it. Tolkien's description is a lot more deeply terrifying than just Diablo from the Diablo video games.
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Jul 20, 2020 15:24
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SHISHKABOB posted:Thank you for being that guy. I know that I loved the Balrog in the Peter Jackson movies when I first saw it as a kid, but I get the feeling that a lot of big LOTR fans must have been pretty disappointed in it. Tolkien's description is a lot more deeply terrifying than just Diablo from the Diablo video games. [/quote] No, I was young enough when the movie came out that I pictured the Balrog as being a lot like Czernobog from the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia but somehow more dreadful. Jackson's Balrog was pretty great for me at that time, even if in retrospect and with more experience reading, a bit disappointing in terms of imagination. But Tolkien does so much with dread, and hope, in some pretty inspired ways, thay Jackson never seemed to fully get. Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Jul 20, 2020 |
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Jul 20, 2020 15:59
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The lotr mmo literally has a hope and dread mechanic iirc
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Jul 20, 2020 16:18
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Things we know about balrog: - man shape - can change size - has a shadow aura that fills space - has nostrils - does not have wings
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Jul 20, 2020 16:24
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euphronius posted:Things we know about balrog: wings, schmings, the important thing is if they have pointy ears
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Jul 20, 2020 16:29
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euphronius posted:Things we know about balrog: Also has a mane
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Jul 20, 2020 16:35
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euphronius posted:Things we know about balrog: Oooh boy, them's fighting words, good thing this isn't Usenet in 1992 or you mightn't be leaving town alive 
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Jul 20, 2020 17:27
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SHISHKABOB posted:I know that I loved the Balrog in the Peter Jackson movies when I first saw it as a kid, but I get the feeling that a lot of big LOTR fans must have been pretty disappointed in it. Tolkien's description is a lot more deeply terrifying than just Diablo from the Diablo video games. yeah i didnt like it, it's over the top and cliched looking, i picture a large sinister man shaped shadow creature which is on fire, like the monster from ju-on but with fire
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Jul 20, 2020 17:36
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