Lord of the Rings

wait had he a bow

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.

the war of the ring was primarily a guerrilla campaign, in thus lecture i-

Insurrection of the rings, you were going to say

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

Office of Reclamation of the Claims of Sauron

playing D&D is what taught me rangers are garbage

That’s some ouroboros right there

playing dundee taught me the same thing

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

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.

sorry, that was meant to be womble, oops

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.

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

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.

'and then he softly began to chant a song...'

GROANS

'do you expect me to remember all these NAMES??'

i hope you're giving it the full peter falk throughout

for a thousand page fantasy, LOTR is actually light on names tbh

frustratingly little is said about Cirdan The Shipwright

im not one of our scholars of the rest of the legendarium but he may well show up in some of the other scraps

shipwrong moar laik

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)

i need to write these things down on my hand in biro for when my kids ask

mark s with the typical bourgie disdain for the overheads and planning schedule required for oceanic travel imo

i am merely following tolk's lead here

the elf payment plan is cloudy at best, everyone has treasure hoarded or weed for sale

everyone else i mean

Are the elf ships reusable? I forget.

everybody's tolkien don't @ me

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

also who is going to bring them back, after the istari there is no traffic whatsoever in the other direction

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...

Well, the things I miss when I'm asleep.

thread

1) A stranger than fiction Roman ring mystery thread: this enigmatic Roman gold ring was found in a ploughed field near Silchester in 1785. The square bezel has a portrait of the pagan goddess Venus, inscribed backwards SUNEV for use as a signet ring by the owner. Curiously... pic.twitter.com/Ls0QcDVNzq

— Gareth Harney (@OptimoPrincipi) July 10, 2020

Yeah we were just discussing it over in our blog network channels -- an interesting supposition but not a conclusive argument I think.

watched the first film last night with my other half (she'd never seen it). Very strange seeing this again 20 years after it first got released(!). I remember thinking it was absolutely marvellous when it first came out, like the future of epic entertainment was spooling out in front of me.

I have to say, while some of the seams are a bit more visible than they used to be (certain scenes look very green-screened/super-imposed, and the bit where Cate Blanchett's character is declines Frodo's offer of the ring now comes across as unintentionally hilarious), it does hold up for the most part. I still found the scene in the Dwarf mines with the Balrog very exciting.

I was much more aware this time round of a lack of female characters and no people of colour (save, as my partner pointed out, from the Orcs, which is certainly problematic).

as well as the orcs the getup of the sallow-skinned human followers of Sauron is sort of a pan-asian hodgepodge. samurai bedouins. id assume this is an issue with the source material, though ive never read LOTR.

i watched the trilogy for the first time 2 years ago at christmas. i enjoyed them very much but there is a bit of an issue with overlong battles in the second and third films, did find my mind wandering a little bit when it just becomes monotonous. i do think the films also do look very shit in parts, but there's some millennial nostalgia in me for the early 00s visuals so i wasn't too bothered by it

the orcs and their “black speech” very turkish/central asian to my ears in the book

gollum is often called a little “black” fellow

it’s not great

iirc the nazgul are often called “Black men” by fearful naive hobbitses who don’t know who they are; when i read the story to my kids i translated as “Black rider” in real-time which still isn’t great but at least to my mind emphasises the rider-ness, the horses, the black cloaks etc rather than their actual bodies (of which there is none actually iirc apart from the GLOWING EYES) (no, not “gloin” eyes quiet in the back)

Definitely an issue with the source material - I imagine the offending passages are easily findable online with a simple search for “Tolkien racist”.

I personally don’t find Tolkien’s eurocentrism too problematic; given his era it’s very mild, IMO. But as a middle-aged white guy, I’m happy to be overruled on this.

I like the recent trend of race-blind or race-positive casting in historical & fantasy movies, but 20 years ago the approach/context was very different. I’ve heard that the upcoming Amazon “set in the world of middle earth” series will take the contemporary approach.

Tracer Hand OTM

I have to say, while some of the seams are a bit more visible than they used to be (certain scenes look very green-screened/super-imposed, and the bit where Cate Blanchett's character is declines Frodo's offer of the ring now comes across as unintentionally hilarious)

All true and notable at the time tbh

Yes the other peoples and lack of girl warriors is from the fantasy book written in the early-middle last century by an aulfella

I would say that "black men" for nazgul is v v v readable as in fallen/evil members of the overall race of men tbh tho

Wheel of time series looks to be addressing the inbuilt issues here as they develop for screen, tho obv the issues jordan wrote in between the genders are legendary to readers too

Galdalf kills the Goblin King in the Soviet version of THE HOBBIT, 1985. pic.twitter.com/7Mp2pRHKJo

— Humanoid History (@HumanoidHistory) January 18, 2021

Lol how have we not heard about this til now

It's exactly like I always imagined as a kid. ;_;

watched the second and third films back to back last night. noticed how the orcs coded a lot "whiter" by the third film, but they managed to go unnecessarily orientalist in the final epic battle scene with the oliphaunts and their riders

Forgot to chime in on this earlier! But suffice to say, yeah, issues are existent while at the same time the source material could have been a lot worse. (His big 'out' in many ways was the flash of thought about the dead Haradrim warrior that Sam has in TTT, transposed in the film to a short speech by Faramir -- basically wondering if said dead warrior was truly evil, had been threatened to participate, etc. I read that as mostly a war veteran (from the winning side, of course) thinking back on his experiences and what he saw.)

Our next podcast episode will be about orcs in general and my cohost Oriana, who is leading the discussion, has thoughts and a half. The last one she led was on Eowyn and it's one of our best episodes, I think.

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/20

That glorious Russian epic is here with subtitles. Best Smaug Ever.
https://archive.org/details/TheFantasticJourneyOfMr.BilboBagginsTheHobbit