'Is this troll country?''No!' said Strider.
'No!' said Strider.
two days later they find a door built into the rock of a hillside. Strider: 'It is certainly a troll-hole.'
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:26 (four years ago) link
all i'm saying is, teach the controversy
in a terrible scenario its very ilxy of you to focus all your judgement of the guy on your side trying to do something to avoid almost inevitable disaster who is already too hard on himself for the imperfections inherent in the attempt
imo
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:29 (four years ago) link
xp no im enjoying it
fresh lotr takes are good. the book is quite vague in a lot of aspects!
lol i'm not mad at strider. it's just that as a kid i'd imagined him as kind of impossibly competent - the quiet hero who could follow any trail, who could suss out any danger. and now i'm reading it and just see him making all kinds of bad calls! just straight up wrong about stuff.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:33 (four years ago) link
Strider is running up against the limit of the usefulness of the guidance he received when he was captain of a stolen Nazi U-Boat and his master chief advised him “Don’t ever say ‘I don’t know!’ Those words will kill a crew, dead as a depth charge!”Now Strider finds himself on land, in charge of completely untrained amateurs, he realizes he still can’t say “I don’t know,” even though he really absolutely does not know. Except about which fights they are guaranteed to lose.
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:36 (four years ago) link
There's a deep cut.
Anyway thank you for potentially contributing a subject to a future episode of the podcast hey did I mention I have a Tolkien podcast thanks great you're all wonderful people.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:38 (four years ago) link
the quiet hero who could follow any trail, who could suss out any danger.
i think tolkien in LOTR is big on even these guys being fuck all use against a cohort of witch kings who know where you are going while you are carrying four gravy babies who think they are on a daytrip to bath.
also fwiw and iirc strider is v much aware that hes heading where hed rather not go but its gandalf fucked that up
its all good general/sergeant comment on how it is once the feet hit the ground
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:45 (four years ago) link
ofc silmarillion and legends in lotr and elsewhere are full of the heroes that just did it and were legends (obv) or even whose failures were grand, decisive simple events
imo thats him being a bit meta about nature of legends and distilled tales and what they are used for vs "oh fuck we're here now and its not beowulf its wilfred owen oh fuck oh fuck ohfuck"
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:48 (four years ago) link
dulcimar et decorum est pro patria moria, as i shall title the essay on the topic
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:49 (four years ago) link
nb none of my apologies for strider should be taken as discouraging the continued attacking tracer, this court martial is v invigorating imo
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:57 (four years ago) link
pippin is for the fuckin noose if we're going to be consistent, mind
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:58 (four years ago) link
Imagining if Gandalf just threw him down the guard room shaft.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 00:25 (four years ago) link
strider/aragorn's transcendent heroism is something literature can't convey, implies one of the greatest 20th century professors of english literature. see 1) all the references to post-hobbit - pre-fellowship northern ranging, 2) however the hell he and the phantoms commandeer the ships of the corsairs to win the day at the battle of the pelennor fields, and 3) he and faramir taking it to the dregs of mordor and the southrons in the return of the king appendices detailing the dawn of the fourth age
― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 00:27 (four years ago) link
helms deep worth a mention youd say
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 00:30 (four years ago) link
that and 2 & 3 all disasters (albeit heroic doomed-to-fail let's try anyway attempts) salvaged by deus ex machina resolutions mind you
lucky generals and all that
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 00:32 (four years ago) link
To be fair he is revealed as a master aromatherapist toward the end of the last volume, is there no lack of strings to his bow? He probably gives a great massage too.
― sing, for song drives away the goves (Matt #2), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 00:34 (four years ago) link
wait had he a bow
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 00:47 (four years ago) link
Deems is a big LOTR fan, eh? Surprising.
that sense of being hunted and lost, the "behind enemy lines" vibe of the first book through rivendell is so great.
Yes, that harrowed, paranoid, doomed flight from The Shire is my favorite Tolkien, no, favorite fantasy sequence, of all time (with the possible exception of The Children of Turin).
i think strider being somewhat obscure in his abilities- capable, trusted by gandalf, sure, but unsure, imperfect, certainly not up to taking on the forces hes up against and knows it- is critical to the shift from hobbit-sized danger to a story that becomes a young adult/adult touchstone.
I think another element in Strider and Gandalf's approach is that by revealing oneself, you give Sauron the ability to move directly against you. This limits his options to basically, run, quickly, as your little Hobbit legs will carry you.
― Fetch the Bolt Thrower (PBKR), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 01:43 (four years ago) link
the war of the ring was primarily a guerrilla campaign, in thus lecture i-
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 01:50 (four years ago) link
Insurrection of the rings, you were going to say
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 05:35 (four years ago) link
whole escapade is a black op, the only reason the reader doesn’t catch on at first is because you start in a place so removed from the emperor’s touch that he’s forgotten about it. Everything else is just moving from one supposed safehouse to another until the game is up. The Bourne movies? Ronin? Just remakes of fellowship with some acronymic mooks in place of orcs
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 05:43 (four years ago) link
Office of Reclamation of the Claims of Sauron
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 05:50 (four years ago) link
playing D&D is what taught me rangers are garbage
― avellano medio inglés (f. hazel), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 06:25 (four years ago) link
That’s some ouroboros right there
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 07:52 (four years ago) link
playing dundee taught me the same thing
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 09:04 (four years ago) link
tracer
i appreciate that you have a lotnon your plate right now
but tbh i was somewhat expecting another aragorn competence review by now and am a little put out
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Friday, 1 May 2020 09:40 (four years ago) link
I did think that Théoden sorted himself out a bit sharpish, all Gandalf needed to do was unleash his staff and say "remember you're a womble king" or whatever, and then Théoden's all like "begone Gríma I am Lord of Rohan" and the problem's solved. Far be it from anyone to say the books should have been even longer, but I think JRR could have padded that sequence out a little.
― all things must pasteurize (Matt #2), Friday, 1 May 2020 09:55 (four years ago) link
sorry, that was meant to be womble, oops
― all things must pasteurize (Matt #2), Friday, 1 May 2020 09:56 (four years ago) link
lol darragh i've been saving those up. my kids make it about 5 minutes before they conk out. this is the longest council of Elrond EVER.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:01 (four years ago) link
thats one of the moments in the book that may actually be helped by the visuals of the movie, bernard looks right fuckin pasty at the start and hes a new man be the time the magic words are through
tolkien has a lot about the power of words, but its possibly fair to say that his dialogue doesnt quite carry the load he thinks it does so those passages that rely on stirring-do fall a bit flat
plenty of "and it seemed to all who watched that his majesty shone through and all were in awe so they said yes to his plan" which yknow is a handy resolution
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:01 (four years ago) link
xp
oof and the council of elrond is one you really wanna get over quickly
mind u, no blame on them for falling asleep during tbh.
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:02 (four years ago) link
'and then he softly began to chant a song...'
GROANS
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:03 (four years ago) link
'do you expect me to remember all these NAMES??'
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:04 (four years ago) link
i hope you're giving it the full peter falk throughout
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:10 (four years ago) link
for a thousand page fantasy, LOTR is actually light on names tbh
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:11 (four years ago) link
frustratingly little is said about Cirdan The Shipwright
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:20 (four years ago) link
im not one of our scholars of the rest of the legendarium but he may well show up in some of the other scraps
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:26 (four years ago) link
shipwrong moar laik
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 10:26 (four years ago) link
círdan does very little iirc, basically arrives in the shipyard in the [whateverth #whocare] age, starts building ships to leave again, sucking air in over his teeth any time an elf turns up to say i'm going back west in june have a ship for me then
also he looks after one of the three elven rings until gandalf arrives then hands it over pronto (which again is not a wearisome task imo)
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 10:29 (four years ago) link
i need to write these things down on my hand in biro for when my kids ask
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:31 (four years ago) link
mark s with the typical bourgie disdain for the overheads and planning schedule required for oceanic travel imo
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:34 (four years ago) link
i am merely following tolk's lead here
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 10:35 (four years ago) link
the elf payment plan is cloudy at best, everyone has treasure hoarded or weed for sale
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 10:37 (four years ago) link
everyone else i mean
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 10:38 (four years ago) link
Are the elf ships reusable? I forget.
― all things must pasteurize (Matt #2), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:42 (four years ago) link
everybody's tolkien don't @ me
― kim rong un (darraghmac), Friday, 1 May 2020 10:42 (four years ago) link
i imagine when they reach the blessed west they just fall apart like a clown car in the circus, seeing as at a key point in the voyage theyve had to FLY
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 10:52 (four years ago) link
also who is going to bring them back, after the istari there is no traffic whatsoever in the other direction
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 10:53 (four years ago) link
See those ships? I built those ships with my own two hands. And do they call me Cirdan The Shipwright? Do they fuck. But you shag just one sheep...
― all things must pasteurize (Matt #2), Friday, 1 May 2020 11:53 (four years ago) link