Lord of the Rings

we have ofc had the discussion about where to go after tolkien if its the adventure and not just more middle earth detail you're after

For my money its still jordan, from all contenders. Wolfe never ignited for me and the other pretenders never brought me back again (save robin hobb, whose books are very different nb absolutely read them)

Should we have a fantasy book club tho nb im bad at reading

Could be interesting...

All of the posts about the new sun stuff on ilx make me want to go at it again but i found it sawdust-dry and the wrong kind of acid/trippy for me.

But as i said, erikson is actually sticking this time so never say never

Went to wiki there to even remind myself how far i got into it and jesus, nope not for me. A collection of random events happening, very US SF mag stuff sorry lads

Anyway, Twitter is undefeated

denethor making denethor making
breakfast for breakfast for
boromir faramir pic.twitter.com/N7Kl9XJdI3

— eli ceo of frodo (@enbyfrodo) January 26, 2021

Bear facts bruv

The Rolling Speculative threads over on ILB might provide some palatable fantasy series, but LOTR, which I read in one volume, is one of thee few extended fantasy-tagged experienced that's stayed with me---otherwise it's mostly Leiber, Vance, urban fantasy in some collections edited by Datlow and Martin-Dozois, DG Hartwell, and one I already mentioned way upthread, Douglas A. Anderson's Tales Before Tolkien (ones JRRT read and mentioned, ones he might well have read, and excellent ringers). Also Naomi Novik's Uprooted and Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip, some anthologized stories of hers, some of Peter S. Beagle's as well.

XP Ned that tweet is fire

I liked the NK Jemisin broken earth trilogy pretty well. Definitely worth a read if you’re a fantasy fan (I’m not, particularly, outside of LOTR & Earthsea & Narnia & Pullman & ... ok, maybe I’m a fantasy fan?)

I mean that's a pretty good range. Would definitely include Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books in that clutch (in fact frankly I'd replace Narnia with them) and yes to Jemisin.

Oooh, I LOVED the Prussian books.

Dammit autocorrect

*Prydain

To the best of my knowledge I have never read a Prussian book

I was thinking of giving Zelazny a try as my next fantasy read.

Dunno if I want to spend time on Eddings after finding out about his conviction.

first eddings series is fine, if wholly predictable. zelzany's amber is shorter and much more fun

little bit too drunk to fully parse the last 50 posts, but:

patricia mckillip's riddlemaster is better. laurel has my back

Yup, it's great.

Dunno if I want to spend time on Eddings after finding out about his conviction.

Well, prompted by this I just looked that up and yeaaaaaahhhh they sure hid THAT.

(Though I will also say that in strict terms it really is David and Leigh both -- in terms of coauthorship of all the books AND the convictions.)

One of my prized possessions is a first edition printing of The Silmarillion. TIL you have quite a podcast on LotR lore, Ned.

I also just re-watched the Jackson trilogy recently and had some interesting observations from it. For all hand wringing of the latter two films, only a few scenes really got to me - and I kinda feel that had they merely been edited out, you'd have a significantly better experience:
- Aragorn's "temptation" of the ring at the very end of Fellowship
- Aragorn's fall and fake death during the warthog skirmish before miraculously arriving at helm's deep right before battle
- The elves coming to help at Helm's Deep
- Faramir taking Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath before "coming to his senses" and letting Frodo go...
- Denethor throwing himself off the front face of Minas Tirith.

I love the history and lore of it. It's what got me obsessed with history in general. The Fall of Gondolin would make an incredible movie experience I think, if done right.

I was also struck by how the journey and the bleakness of the vibe for most of the films truly echoed our current collective experience. Boromir's fear and hopelessness. The corruption of men. The faceless, yet ubiquitous and all encompassing enemy. The end of an age, etc. The recent election and now vaccines starting to be administered feels like that moment at the end of Two Towers, when Aragorn and Denethor ride out and meet Gandalf just as hope and survival is about to be extinguished. Still a long way to go, but there's hope. Anyways... in the past, this connection didn't go as deep when watching the films. I had not lived through WW1 or WW2 (which no doubt inspired the content, despite Tolkien's denials, how could it not?), but it sure hammers home how significant these times are.

It's not some sort of prophetic moment, but the fact that the film Fellowship ends on Frodo remembering the exchange with Gandalf re "I wish none of this had happened" etc., shortly after it was clear the 21st century wasn't going to be like the 1990s (in American terms, at least) is one of those things that resonates a lot year after year now.

Woof, eddings

Luckily by the time i was 15 the wheel of time was already three books in and i never looked back

yes yes but in the films aragorn gets to kiss a horse

Barrow Downs:

http://i.imgur.com/hR3QfWW.jpg

The road goes ever on:

http://i.imgur.com/GbFMoqg.jpg

I love this thread.

We're about an hour or so into "Two Towers." So far my kid (13) likes it better than the first one and yeah, so far I wouldn't change a frame. Gollum fx hold up, as do the sort of surreal puppets/stop-motion/whatever is going on with the tree people.

It's cheating, since this is actually New Zealand, but here is an enormous hawk on a funny looking rock in front of snow-capped mountains, clouded in mist:

https://i.imgur.com/bIOOXlV.jpg

Josh is peter jackson imo

Anyway while we're doing all this, legal Twitter is on one:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eswamv9U0AAp0c6?format=jpg&name=large

Inspired by this thread, I just read The Hobbit for the first time in 30+ years. What a great little book! I’m sure Tolkien had his regrets, like the characterization & names of the trolls & a couple of tonal blips, but otherwise it’s pretty unimpeachable. There are episodes and passages of genuine menace & genuine wonder. The shift to a less immediate narrative voice after Smaug gets pissed off & leaves is probably its biggest flaw, but it’s not a fatal one.

Jackson ought to be sued for the violence he inflicted on its integrity.

Now: on to LOTR proper.

Hobbit is pretty magnificent

What do y’all think about how LOTR starts with an extended bit of pedantry? I don’t think I’ve ever skipped it, from my first reading at age 10 or so til now, but I never remember, from reading to reading, that it’s how the book begins. Does the way the preamble winds from an explanation of hobbits, thru a little dissertation on the origins of pipe-weed, and the (perhaps necessary) recounting of how Bilbo got the ring from Gollum, & then bangs on for some pages about the various history-books that were derived from Bilbo & Frodo’s writings & then presumably used as source material for LOTR itself actually add anything, or set us up properly for what’s to come? Or is it an authorial indulgence? On re-reading I enjoy it as a bit of suspense, knowing I’m about to be plunged into a fully absorbing story, but on first reading do people just skip it? Is it a weeding-out tactic (if you can’t hack this you’re not gonna make it to the third volume, sonny)?

I wonder what the Dwarves cocks are like
― Mike Hanle y, Thursday, November 15, 2001 8:00 PM bookmarkflaglink

xp it is a hobbit writing like a hobbit, wrapped up in local affairs, stuffy, finicky

Tolkien's tonal shifts arent random accident imo, even if i wouldn't claim they were planned, but he is a master storyteller and storytellers change voice instinctively as required

What do y’all think about how LOTR starts with an extended bit of pedantry?

I don't think there's a sentence wasted in the early chapters, it's a masterful piece of worldbuilding that humanises (hobbitises?) its subjects by grounding the descriptive passages very firmly within the hobbits' society. One of the most egregious pieces of writing advice you see nowadays is to begin a story with 'action', which all too often means some kind of violent conflict. Tolkien's 'action' is to draw the reader into an unfamiliar world by examining the minutiae of his characters' lives, thus laying a solid foundation for the story to come.

We're talking about the "Prologue," right? I don't personally consider it essential to a complete reading of the book. I've read LOTR 8 or 9 times and the "Prologue" many fewer times.

otoh, it's very important to make sure the reader has all the information on pipeweed

The Prologue is key and always a lovely treat, for the reasons outlined above. Heck, the film even had a brief nod to it in the extended version.

And yes The Hobbit still works in its own right. I do find it interesting that he attempted an early sixties rewrite to make it tonally more like LOTR but after a couple of chapters a friend read it and said that while it was good it just wasn’t The Hobbit — he took it as a sign and abandoned it. Some things you shouldn’t mess with.

We started the third (extended) film last night. Stand by what I said, wouldn't change a thing ... about the first two. This one, though, a few things irked pretty immediately, but mostly the Extra Evil One-Eyed Orc, which the film clearly tries to elevate to Big Bad status, no doubt because in the (theatrical) version there is no follow-up with Christopher Lee and Sauron is still just a big eye. Extra Evil Orc annoyed me the very first time I saw the movie, in fact.

Even so, for being the most over-stuffed, relatively speaking, there were a couple of really striking, iconic scenes I was reminded of, like Liv Tyler seeing her son in the future, or the gross king feasting like a monster during the hobbit hymn scene. My daughter keeps asking questions that I am not qualified to answer, like how Gandolf can apparently die and come back but not Christopher Lee, or why Sauron can't just make another ring, or what even *are* the rings, anyway? What can the One Ring even do besides turn you invisible? I know these things have answers, and some of them are pretty convoluted, but it's kind of a testament to the writing and acting that the focus remains on the characters, and the magic and the ring specifically is almost a MacGuffin. There's a lot of weeping and whining, but as has been said it's really largely Sam's story, and Sean Astin sells it pretty well.

It’s a smart question she asks because there’s no true answer. The protean nature of the Ring is what is truly key about it. The only specifically ‘magic’ thing it does is invisibility and even then the result is, per the book, something that makes you feel horribly and uniquely visible. Beyond that, everything scales, though the book makes this clearer by example than the movie.

Gandalf won his industrial tribunal and was reinstated, whereas Saruman was bang to rights, is how I break it down

The ring is kind of like Blairite "third way" centrism, once you've pretended to be all things to all people and it turns out you're a sinister control freak and not actually anything anyone likes at all, you can't just fool them the same way again a couple of years later

Also, Sauron put his will, anger, power into the ring, linking himself to the ring, so that without it he is diminished, with it, his power is magnified, and with it destroyed, so he is.

it's a remote control for all the other rings, is how i break it down to an extent

Yes, that too.

little bit too drunk to fully parse the last 50 posts, but:

patricia mckillip's riddlemaster is better. laurel has my back

― mookieproof, Wednesday, January 27, 2021 4:15 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

u get me. New McKillip is good, but old McKillip is magic.

Gandalf was considered fit for upcycling by the powers that sing the world

We can only presume that Saruman was fit for the skip only

Note that in corporal death Gandalf was revealed as a strong being of purity

Saruman melted immediately into the semblance of a corpse long dead iirc

Standard enough christian message on the caretaking of one's soul, really

i remember when reading as a teenager i was kind of obsessed with the wizard judo belts.

is there a specific section that deals with that or is it all just inferential?

cos reading it now, i just think yeah radagast is brown because of the trees and nature and stuff. not because he's still learning.

Yeah i reckon assignation not grade

The Blue Wizards do not feature in the narrative of Tolkien's works; they are said to have journeyed far into the east after their arrival in Middle-earth, and serve as agitators or missionaries in enemy occupied lands. Their ultimate fates are unknown.

Saruman's a traitor, Radagast's a simpleton, the Blues are off god knows where. Gandalf is like the only Maiar doing his job.

Work colleagues thread

the relationship of the ring to power isn't that it has it. it is it.

a shot in the first movie i like (tho could respect others finding a lil on the nose) is the hisperidian image of the quarreling (suddenly racist) council reflected in the inert surface of the ring. it's the distress caused by this image that seems to make up frodo's mind to take on the burden to destroy it. immediately the council, on the volcanic point of fission, fuses into fellowship. i don't read this as the ring's malign influence literally casting a spell of discord. yet its influence is there.

when we see people covet the ring we don't necessarily understand what they would physically do with it. possibly they don't either. (possibly gandalf does.) yet we understand that they all have problems they know it would solve. instead of weeping and whining and swallowing loss, they would sweep aside obstacles like sauron in the movie prologue, absurdly hurling elves around mordor.

in this sense it is a macguffin-- but the word macguffin only refers to a role an object plays in a story. the ring, in addition to (irl) being a macguffin, is (in middle-earth) literally power. no less and (more crucially?) no more. the limits of power are indicated to frodo in the gandalf line fizzles quotes upthread-- "can you give it to them?"-- and in a line i think is in the same conversation: "he hates and loves the ring, as he hates and loves himself". this is why, in the places where you would expect the story to put demonstrations of the ring's abilities, we really only see people's desires. often, the desires seem to make them angry. one exception is (again) gandalf, the world's wisest man. he seems frightened.

on those few occasions when we do see someone (always a hobbit iirc?) put on the ring, what they desire is to disappear. (to keep their nose out of trouble, so no trouble will come to them.) yet instead-- in the context that matters-- they appear. the ring is a trap disguised as an escape. the only person for whom it isn't a trap is the person whose desire is a world made-- like the ring-- coterminous with himself. the only effective strategy against him is fusion and renunciation. it's difficult because renouncing the possibility of exerting your will unimpeded can even for a hobbit be like cutting off a part of the self. but if you're not sauron, or final-stage gollum, it's not very much of the self. it is a strange thing that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.