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Nessus posted:This is an interesting interpretation, although his protection is not levied for long nor is it nearly as all-comprehensive as the elves'. It's an interesting suggestion, but Aragorn specifically says the Rangers protect the Shire, so I reckon if Gandalf has anything to do with it it's only at the remove of keeping fire kindled in their hearts and so on.
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Jan 16, 2021 14:38
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When I find myself in Shelob's trouble, Mother Elby comes to me
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Jan 16, 2021 15:14
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Nessus posted:On the other hand, he got the job done, while Elrond and Galadriel were standing around with their dicks in their hands for thousands of years. Well, to be fair, Middle Earth Inc. had seen disastrous drop in revenue and there was a really toxic culture in the air. Gandalf was hired and brought on to middle-manage the Men's Department meanwhile the disgruntled overpaid engineers in the Elf Department were wondering when best to hand in their notice of resignation. Burnout is real folks
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Jan 16, 2021 15:15
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ChubbyChecker posted:huh, never thought about it before, but yeah it definitely is One of the traditional epithets given to Mary is 'Star of the sea'. Probably based on an ancient typo but it's very pretty.
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Jan 16, 2021 15:20
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Gats Akimbo posted:It's an interesting suggestion, but Aragorn specifically says the Rangers protect the Shire, so I reckon if Gandalf has anything to do with it it's only at the remove of keeping fire kindled in their hearts and so on. Yeah, the problem with the "Gandalf used his Ring to protect the Shire" is that then the Shire's protections would have collapsed at the end of the Third Age, and they . . . . well they kinda did? And kinda didn't?
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Jan 16, 2021 17:02
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I thought it was the rangers going south with Elrond’s sons to meet up with Aragorn that let Saruman’s ruffians get in to the Shire.
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Jan 16, 2021 17:42
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Omnomnomnivore posted:I thought it was the rangers going south with Elrond’s sons to meet up with Aragorn that let Saruman’s ruffians get in to the Shire. That was let them take over completely, but they were already there even before Frodo left the Shire. Lotho had been buying up land left and right in the South Farthing with Saruman's assistance, and the ruffians had already begun causing enough of a ruckus that there were rumors of problems at the Southern Bounds even as Frodo was leaving.
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Jan 16, 2021 18:41
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Something I've been enjoying on my readthrough is the formal structure of the books. The narrator mostly being tied to the perspective of a single character for any given chapter helps get into the mindset of that character without it being fully constrained to a first person narrative. You as the reader don't know where Gandalf is before Rivendell, you don't know if the Ring quest is continuing while the rest of the Fellowship is in Rohan and Gondor, you don't know if Merry and Pippin are okay for a couple chapters. The biggest breach I can think of so far is when he narrator goes back to Buckland to tell the story of what happens when the Riders get to Frodo's new house. Breaking of the Fellowship jumps viewpoints, which contributes to the feeling of things unraveling. The theme of hope in hopelessness and uncertainty gets lost in the more conventionally interleaved version of the story in the movies, where you are never more than a few minutes away from being reassured about what the other main characters are up to.
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Jan 16, 2021 23:22
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Yeah the breaking up of TTT into two completely separate and parallel storylines is one of those things that I forget was so freaking weird when I first read it, but now seems completely unremarkable
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Jan 16, 2021 23:38
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sweet geek swag posted:That was let them take over completely, but they were already there even before Frodo left the Shire. Lotho had been buying up land left and right in the South Farthing with Saruman's assistance, and the ruffians had already begun causing enough of a ruckus that there were rumors of problems at the Southern Bounds even as Frodo was leaving.
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Jan 17, 2021 00:06
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I mean the arrival of the Corsairs was never about how their numbers could turn the tide of battle. The Corsairs arriving meant that the rest of Gondor west of Minas Tirith had presumably fallen, otherwise Dol Amroth and the coastal provinces would have repelled their assault. The omplication is that Sauron launched a multi front war against Gondor to isolate the provinces from one another. To tie it to your point about all the places we don't see, it goes to the writing using incidental exposition to hint at locations that aren't visited. It adds a sense of scale to the world without bogging the story down by going into great detail about what is happening elsewhere. That's what the appendices are for.
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Jan 17, 2021 00:19
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Following on the incidental exposition and the split structure of the books, there is a universe with an odd version of Lord of the Rings that *only* follows Frodo and doesn't tell the stories of the rest of the characters. It isn't too wild to consider because of how The Hobbit had Gandalf disappear every so often without really explaining what he was doing in the interim.
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Jan 17, 2021 03:54
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Nessus posted:One of the things that's interesting to think about is all the places we don't go or see. Arnor is presumably not entirely a howling wasteland: there wouldn't be an inn at Bree of some size JUST to harbor hobbits and the locals. There don't seem to be a ton of Dunedain but there's more than like, fifty of them. There's presumably an entire country in Gondor, the viewpoint just never goes past Minas Tirith. etc. Not to mention the entirety of the far east where men and dwarves awoke. It's entirely left blank after the elves leave Cuivienen. The kind of story I wish a good, talented author would make is a story that deals with the Blue Wizards and a totally new story from that side of the world, but with the contiguous features of Dark Lords loyal to Morgoth or Sauron, and good people still influenced by like Orome or Aule. WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 04:02
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Tolkien actually has a tendency to slide between the perspective of the different hobbits in the earlier parts of the story, sometimes without a scene break. This actually continues all the way through Moria. This actually makes sense, because there was a huge gap in between when Journey in the Dark and Bridge of Khazad-Dum were written. Post Balin's tomb the perspective is generally set for the entire chapter, at least until after the ring is destroyed.
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Jan 17, 2021 04:13
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Not to mention the entirety of the far east where men and dwarves awoke. It's entirely left blank after the elves leave Cuivienen. I too have longed for this. The reality could never possibly be as good as the phantom we long for, of course.
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Jan 17, 2021 04:50
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Not to mention the entirety of the far east where men and dwarves awoke. It's entirely left blank after the elves leave Cuivienen. Like basically every other goon I played a lot of tabletop RPGs growing up (and still do from time to time). I didn't ever get to be a good enough GM to run it but I always dreamed of putting together a game set in 4th Age Middle-Earth. It would start with the apprentice of one of the Blue Wizards coming west to find Radagast, and ask him to come help against a new evil that had awoken in the East. This would turn out to be a fallen Maia, servant of Morgoth like Sauron that had slumbered through the Second and Third Ages and had now awakened. Where Sauron was a spirit of craft and fire (having once been a servant of Aule), this one would have been under Ulmo, and would be a a manifestation of decay and corruption. The PCs would have traveled (maybe with Radagast, maybe he's too far gone to help) into parts of Middle-Earth not yet seen in the Legendarium. I wanted to get that travelogue feel and explore how different cultures of Elves, Dwarves, Men, Orcs (freed of Sauron's control), and even Hobbits could have developed differently from what we saw in just the one corner of the world. I'm sure it would have collapsed in disarray and never gotten very far - tabletop rpgs in high school, after all - but I still think about it from time to time.
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Jan 17, 2021 06:00
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Goblin Craft posted:I too have longed for this. The reality could never possibly be as good as the phantom we long for, of course. "Phantom" is an apt word choice, in that we should remember what happened when George Lucas came and filled in some blank spots for a different beloved trilogy... I wouldn't read something set in Middle Earth that wasn't written by Tolkien, it just wouldn't be right and I guarantee you'd feel it from the first page. Either they'd imitate Tolkien, and it would feel like an imitation, or they'd abandon the style and have the Elves saying "gently caress" etc.
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Jan 17, 2021 17:00
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Hell for that matter, Tolkien writing in his later years probably wouldn’t be able to match the style or the feel.
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Jan 17, 2021 17:06
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Pham Nuwen posted:"Phantom" is an apt word choice, in that we should remember what happened when George Lucas came and filled in some blank spots for a different beloved trilogy... I wouldn't read something set in Middle Earth that wasn't written by Tolkien, it just wouldn't be right and I guarantee you'd feel it from the first page. Either they'd imitate Tolkien, and it would feel like an imitation, or they'd abandon the style and have the Elves saying "gently caress" etc. Other people's mileage may vary, but I find that the works of the fan author bunn, particularly their Return to Aman series (in which Maglor is pardoned at Elrond's request and allowed to come back across the sea with his foster-son, Galadriel, Gandalf, Bilbo, and Frodo), does an excellent job capturing the feeling of the world without seeming to work at it.
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Jan 17, 2021 18:59
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Data Graham posted:Hell for that matter, Tolkien writing in his later years probably wouldn’t be able to match the style or the feel. He tried to go back and rewrite The Hobbit to match the tone of Lord of the Rings, and gave up after the first chapter because it just wasn't any good.
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Jan 17, 2021 19:57
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Lemniscate Blue posted:He tried to go back and rewrite The Hobbit to match the tone of Lord of the Rings, and gave up after the first chapter because it just wasn't any good. Yeah he got as far as the Trolls and showed it to a friend of his who was like “..... well it’s ... certainly more LOTR-like I guess  ”E: not to mention all the later attempts at rewriting the Silm, where the more he tried to make it work mechanistically and be consistent with our observed reality (round earth, sun and moon, etc), the further it got from the magic-pixies/just-so stories from the Book of Lost Tales era and the less fun it was. Data Graham fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 20:14
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I saw an ad for an article saying the new lotr show was gonna be about "the fall of morgoth" and I'm like hmmmmmm no thanks.
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Jan 17, 2021 20:38
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A dickhead spirit getting mad that nobody likes his music wouldn't be able to carry a whole show.
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Jan 17, 2021 20:59
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sweet geek swag posted:That was let them take over completely, but they were already there even before Frodo left the Shire. Lotho had been buying up land left and right in the South Farthing with Saruman's assistance, and the ruffians had already begun causing enough of a ruckus that there were rumors of problems at the Southern Bounds even as Frodo was leaving. That's a pretty interesting element - it shows from the very beginning that Hobbit isolationism was doomed to fail, rather than just having them show up at the end to a "what, you thought your folks could just sit this thing out?" twist.
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Jan 17, 2021 21:37
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quote:’I cannot imagine what information could be more terrifying than your hints and warnings,’ exclaimed Frodo. ‘I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can’t a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?’
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Jan 17, 2021 21:43
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euphronius posted:Gandalf uses his ring to make the Shire a (relatively) magical and protected place . I think that had quite a bit more to do with the Rangers...
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Jan 17, 2021 22:13
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Hasselblad posted:I think that had quite a bit more to do with the Rangers... Rangers don’t change the Nazgul out of Brandybuck or have the power to resist them in general
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Jan 17, 2021 23:57
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Saruman :: Uruk Hai Gandalf :: the Hobbits
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Jan 17, 2021 23:58
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Has he blended the races of Took and Bywater? That would be a dark act indeed. But yeah I don't think Gandalf could be read as having protected the Shire in the same way that Elrond or Galadriel protected their realms. However, he did in a sense protect them, because hobbits ended up winning the table
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Jan 18, 2021 00:07
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euphronius posted:Rangers don’t change the Nazgul out of Brandybuck or have the power to resist them in general What? Are you suggesting that the Nazgul had been kept out of the Shire up till just before Frood left, because of Gandalf?
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Jan 18, 2021 00:53
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Hasselblad posted:What? Are you suggesting that the Nazgul had been kept out of the Shire up till just before Frood left, because of Gandalf?
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Jan 18, 2021 01:15
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Hasselblad posted:What? Are you suggesting that the Nazgul had been kept out of the Shire up till just before Frood left, because of Gandalf? The hobbits chased the nazgul out of brandybuck and also seem to have the power to resist them (in the Shire )
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Jan 18, 2021 01:18
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euphronius posted:The hobbits chased the nazgul out of brandybuck and also seem to have the power to resist them (in the Shire ) Are you trolling? Fairly certain that Sauron simply did not want them stirring up unnecessary poo poo while searching for the fat pipe smoking hobbit. He had them on pretty strict orders, as evidenced by them being forbidden to cross the river Anduin until given the go-ahead. I mean, are you SERIOUSLY sugesting that they had some magical powers, imbued upon them by Gandalf, to "resist" the Nazgul? FFS Hasselblad fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 01:38
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Hasselblad posted:Are you trolling? Fanning the embers of hearts to resist evil etc. e: or to make another example: Sam is shown as strong because he resists the pull of the Ring, the Ologhai are shown as strong because they throw rocks at Minas Tirith. This is not an assertion that Sam could beat a troll in a deadlift competition.
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Jan 18, 2021 01:43
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skasion posted:I mean, I love Bakshi’s movie for what it is, but no way would it have been better than John Boorman filming a scene where they bury Gimli alive and beat him Did anyone have a link to the proposed script?
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Jan 18, 2021 01:55
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Hasselblad posted:Are you trolling? I’m just describing what happens in the story !! The leap in making is saying its part of Gandalf’s magic . That’s just an inference as mentioned above. But the hobbits do resist the nazgul in the Shire.
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Jan 18, 2021 02:00
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Nessus posted:I think you can make a literary case for the broad impression of what euphronius is saying but I don't think it is diegetically literally present in the text in the same way that characters specifically say, if in nicer language, "Galadriel is using her Elf ring to preserve Lorien from the passage of time." We are talking about the suggestion that hobbits are magically resistant to nazgul because of Gandalf and his ring. Sam was resistant because when the ring gave him visions of grandeur, he just wanted to be a simple gardener with a small piece of land to tend.
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Jan 18, 2021 02:00
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Hasselblad posted:We are talking about the suggestion that hobbits are magically resistant to nazgul because of Gandalf and his ring. Sam was resistant because when the ring gave him visions of grandeur, he just wanted to be a simple gardener with a small piece of land to tend.
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Jan 18, 2021 02:02
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euphronius posted:But the hobbits do resist the nazgul in the Shire. Hasselblad posted:Fairly certain that Sauron simply did not want them stirring up unnecessary poo poo while searching for the fat pipe smoking hobbit. He had them on pretty strict orders, as evidenced by them being forbidden to cross the river Anduin until given the go-ahead. The hobbits didn't magically scare away the Nazgul and "resist" them, by virtue of Gandalf's ring. Let's scroll back up, shall we, for a refresher of what started all of this: euphronius posted:Gandalf uses his ring to make the Shire a (relatively) magical and protected place . Let me sum up my response: no Nessus posted:Yeah, but Sam is in the position in the first place because he was inspired by Bilbo, who was in turn Also: no
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Jan 18, 2021 02:04
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Hasselblad posted:Let me sum up my response: no
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Jan 18, 2021 02:07
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