Lord of the Rings

Well at the same time we have to remember we're dealing with something that has a patina of reality only. The closest equivalent to Gondor in real world terms -- a geopolitical entity that survives over three thousand years with only one relatively quickly resolved civil war of note and, that interruption aside, one dynasty of kings and another dynasty of stewards -- is *maybe* China, and said country has not exactly had that path over any randomly selected three thousand years of its own history.

It's a bit Death Stranding, tbh. Nature has largely taken back over and what's left are ghosts, ruins.

Probably a thread germ here but i have an irrational (pls note i freely lead with the admission) reaction to criticism (accepting that the good drs is mild as can be and not exactly the perfect application of what im talking about) that criticises a new or purely creative attempt for what it *isnt*

No doubt this is already thoroughly explored in some course or module ive missed

xpost but with the caveat that some fell machinery (and good) remains, lurking, activateable

nb growing up amidst medieval and earlier ruins and an infrastructure overgrown and crumbling compared to its heyday left little imaginative work required in this area for me perhaps

dmac, yknow, fair point! easy to riff and take potshots. i would generally take the stance that the criticism i'm most interested in is getting me to love/appreciate something i didn't before.

lemme say that i didn't really intend my remarks here *as* criticisms of the books... more turning over in my head things i've gotten out of them over the years. my mind since childhood has been rich with the concept and image of places like moria, bree, shelob's lair, minas tirith, mirkwood, and on and on. the short version of my long posts is: and i realize that some of these other places don't have that stickiness for me; i have pictures in my head but they don't link up with the lore in a way that "clicks." so this is 39-year-old Casino thinking about 12-year-old Casino's imagination and trying to put some specifics on why that might be.

Nope, i thought it was a good post and raising at interesting point and as i said the allergy i have to the /handwave/ type of thing /handwave/ was merely a mild itch from your example

We have had posters who will remain anonymuos who filled every thread they could on "what i would have done" and yrs wasnt, tbf, that

tbh those between-spaces in the book often feel like a blurry/dream quality travelogue vs the type of clarity and detail tolkien lavishes on his hobbywalking as discussed above so there's definitely *something* going on there

If we think that tolkien is as aware of how and why he/his characters are travelling, the trudge of a campaign through foreign and somewhat already defeated lands is going to have the sort of fug and lack of detail youve spotted, the same way that the orc-driven/orc chasing nightmare of the third book has an intensity despite being unpleasant, or the amble through the first few miles out of the shire has quite the opposite

it is, after all, a book about walking

Alan Lees most evocative illustrations are, for me, the landscapes and scenarios i dont see vividly from the book, which maybe does chime with what you're saying there too

and we go on such walks, maybe, to *not* be in town and making conversation with the various Farmers Maggot. to be one of the great writers of wilderness perhaps *makes* it unlikely you would also be a great novelist of the town or the city. they are different beasts...

and trying to write halfway in the voice of legend seems relevant too. the greeks - at least, the townish ones - wrote great plays about townish problems of people and their failings. but their legends and myths (passed down from the pastoral days?) didn't really linger there. odysseus certainly stops in some towns, but i think in the same way that aragorn stops in edoras. and i don't think the odyssey would be improved if the human world around the wine-dark sea made more "sense."

youve to balance that with the random battles that occur outside towns, and the lack of save points

so irritating that iirc tolkien NEVER stops to tell us how much gold the Fellowship takes off any of the orcs they kill! ned can back me up on this, but i believe an early draft of the Lothlorien section did include them paying for training in various walking and climbing skills --- tbh that would help the later books make a lot more sense to me

Gold can't buy doughtiness

circling back to my above comments: i think perhaps what i'm rubbing up against is the difference between legend and history. and the books happen in a legendary world, admittedly with a novel's worth of detail such that the vague bits could be sort of noticed, maybe.... whereas the appendices and the maps are a lot closer to history, and maybe they'll never really completely be one thing in my head.

also forget Jackson replacing my imaginary pictures: i wonder how much differently i'd picture Middle Earth, what's close to what, how far apart things are, if i'd never had those maps!

re agriculture: i think there is (very) passing mention of south gondor as the market garden of minas tirith while mordor is fed by the slave-tilled fields of núrn on the sorrowful shores of the bitter sea of núrnen. the heady wine in the hobbit (which gets the wood elves drunk and sleepy) is from dorwinion by the sea of rhûn, which suggests that trade exists between easterlings and our guys

and don't forget the contraband pipeweed that winds up in orthanc

yes but saruman is very much a would-be indie hipster in this regard (early adopter and influencer gandalf: "oh so you like pipeweed? name three of their leafs") and -- as noted above -- even the best-informed in rohan and minas tirith and edoras are fully ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ abt the tobacco industry

lmao yes

maybe they'll never really completely be one thing in my head.

Cant let one thing rule em all tbf

hahaha

Gold can't buy doughtiness

It could in 1st ed AD&D iirc.

i wonder how much differently i'd picture Middle Earth, what's close to what, how far apart things are, if i'd never had those maps!

i know people say tolkien wrote these stories to build a world for his languages, but i kinda think he also wrote these stories to serve his maps haha

He said as much in his own way. I am glad both he and Christopher had the mania for them.

ned can back me up on this, but i believe an early draft of the Lothlorien section did include them paying for training in various walking and climbing skills

Hm, I don't immediately recall this but I'll have to think about it and do some digging in the relevant volumes. Monetary systems in general, like organized religion, are one of those things notable in LOTR for their absence. There's that exchange between Aragorn and Frodo in Bree where the former, still in Strider mode, says he has his 'price' and Frodo momentarily worries in that he didn't bring much money with him, for instance, and that itself builds on the fact that Frodo specifically sold Bag-End to Lobelia and then bought Crickhollow, which of course he stayed in one night and never again, making him the original flipper. Next on 'House Hunters: Buckland'...

haha I was definitely 100% kidding, but this is a great subject to open up! i'm pretty glad there's no exposition laying out what the currency of middle earth is and how many Ranger shillings go into a dwarf-dollar. tho i'm sure rpgs have done this many times over...

kind of funny that our plucky underdog heroes are also mostly landed gentry and men of leisure, plus one of their butlers.

but also this is part of the "how much has changed in our heroes" aspect of the Scouring of the Shire --- the dispute with the wretched undeserving branch of the Baggins family would have been such a big deal for them at the start, and is now very easily resolved and indeed the Sackville-Bagginses (iirc) are now just sort of pitiful and handled with a much lighter touch. a very different Frodo than the one who wished Bilbo had killed Gollum when he had the chance.

Right -- and that'll doubtless feed into our next episode: we're talking about the Scouring of the Shire.

Meantime, speaking of episodes, another podcast on our network, The Spouter-Inn (a general literature podcast, cohosted by our network founder and one-time ILX board vet Chris Piuma), has a new episode up specifically on Fellowship:

We conclude our cluster on Land with a look at the many lands in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien's foundational fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. #Tolkien #LOTR

Listen on your podcast app or at https://t.co/xbeSYwzfOD pic.twitter.com/pcU1ueQPdQ

— The Spouter-Inn (@TheSpouter) April 20, 2021

oooo sounds very relevant! downloading. and looking forward to the Scouring episode - easily one of my favorite parts of the entire series; i definitely align with those who see it as really really really crucial to everything.

Big fan of Merry bringing low the enemy's hated, hitherto-invincible captain with a one-in-a-million sword he plundered from a place of great danger and carried south for many miles, preventing Eowyn from being splattered into paste in the process, and then goes up to a dying Theoden and immediately apologises for not doing anything useful while in his service

lol

"oh, no, no, that was just beginner's luck, really"

You gotta underplay, you see.

I still picture that whole scene with the fairly corny Nazgul from Rankin Bass, with the floating eyes/crown and metallic echo Skeletor laugh. Not exactly as effective as their Gollum or Smaug, but striking in its way.

The translation of how to do the eyes visually has always been a bit of a trick. Rankin Bass did that while the rest of their Nazgul were more withered skeletal types, Bakshi did the red eyes in the hood deal from the start but of course never did that scene, and Jackson used the helmet/crown as a bit of a visual trick for their version.

Meanwhile at Rivendell, Glorfindel spits his drink out

Our new episode next week but another Spouter-Inn episode on Tolkien with my cohost Oriana so check it out!

But we're not totally done talking Tolkien! Oriana Schwindt (@Schwindter) from Tolkien podcast @BytheBywater joins us for a bonus episode, where we discuss rivers, stars, and, OK, a little bit more about Tom Bombadil.

Listen at https://t.co/64cg3Yo00f

— The Spouter-Inn (@TheSpouter) April 30, 2021

Christine Kelley at Eruditorum Press (Elizabeth Sandifer's mob) has a psychogeography of Middle Earth going on as well, not as far as I can tell linked itt yet: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/category/nowhere-and-back-again

Oh that looks good!

Just reread the bit in Sam and Frodo's initial scouting of Gorgoroth where the diminutive, big-nosed tracker orc tells the big mean orc to fuck off with his criticism because it's his own fault for being slow and shit at his job, and furthermore he hopes the Witch King really is dead because he's a twat, and then shoots him in the eye and runs off when he tries to attack him, and let me tell you that guy has main event charisma

That guy is your billion dollar Amazon show right there

I'd be down with that.

Anyway, our new episode is up!

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/26

oh boy! just listened to the Denethor family showcase and working on the Ent one today. :) relevant to my above comments on legend/chronicle/lore: i like your observation that maybe Denethor's attachment to the traditions, politics and details of the office sort of marks him apart from the way others in the universe relate to the past. and so perhaps me reaching for more concrete, graspable history is a bit Denethor-ish, and not really encouraged by the text.

Denethor is a civil service

The only other character we see attached to such a position is the guardsman showing ?pippin? around Gondor's barracks

Denethor is also that most overplayed archetype, the cautious governance that has kept the place running in between would-be inspirational leaders actually getting it right as opposed to wrecking the fucking gaff

Big fan of Merry bringing low the enemy's hated, hitherto-invincible captain with a one-in-a-million sword he plundered from a place of great danger and carried south for many miles, preventing Eowyn from being splattered into paste in the process, and then goes up to a dying Theoden and immediately apologises for not doing anything useful while in his service

― hiroyoshi tins in (Sgt. Biscuits)

Merry Sue nest pas

Just listened to the latest episode of By-The-Bywater, on the scouring of the shire. Cracking ep, one of the best yet!

Thanks kindly! We do our best.

‘Mortal Kombat’ Star Accuses Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ of Lacking Asian Actors
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-diversity-1234953348/

The most recent of the Eruditorum posts makes me think that's probably a good thing...

I finally watched the “Tolkien Edit” of the Hobbit movies, a fan edit that chops the trilogy down into one 4-1/2 hour movie.

It’s decently watchable, if not actually anything like good. About on a par with most of the Marvel movies I’ve seen (which is not high praise). But if you take it as canon, at least it doesn’t taint & stain the original LOTR trilogy the way the theatrically released Hobbit movies did.

Whoever put that together is kind of a hero.

area fan

There are a couple of those Hobbit edits floating around -- I have two, plus a separate one that's just the Dol Guldur arc. One of those edits did a pretty great job of reducing it down to three hours that followed as closely to the original text as allowed and basically did what I felt could have been done at the start, just tell the story in one film. From the moment they announced it as two films I had my doubts and we all knew what happened after that.

yeah, i’d prefer a single hobbit movie and a dedicated dol guldur movie