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First time reading the Hobbit for the kids. Got to 'Riddles in the Dark' with my 7 and 5 year old last night. Gollum is creepy, I had to lie with them to get them to go to sleep, and today I was repeatedly quizzed on the exact wording of the dark riddle by the oldest. They are desperate to know what happens next. Another generation hooked.
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Feb 7, 2014 23:17
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Imagine her ballooning and welcome to your worst nightmare.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:36
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He didn't leave it, he lost it. Its established the ring is sentient and trying to get back to its master and it left Gollum of its own accord (fell out of his pocket or what have you). Its also why later Frodo wears it on a chain, because Bilbo tells him it has a disconcerting habit of changing size and falling off and that's why he put it on a chain in the first place. edit: beaten like Gollum in a riddle contest
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Sep 9, 2014 15:53
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Levitate posted:Tolkien's life work was really the Silmarillion and he worked long and hard on that but it was never quite to his satisfaction. Then one day he sat down and wrote "In a hole in the ground lived a Hobbit". He didn't know what a Hobbit was, or if it even related to Middle Earth, but he started from there and wrote a book. Suddenly that book became a success and people were clamoring for a sequel, and he realized he could join this all together with his work on the Silmarillion. The Ring became something more than it was originally intended and things took off and suddenly the Lord of the Rings is known as his major achievement, while he's still really trying to get the Silmarillion just right.
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Dec 13, 2014 06:38
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I remember the first time I read LOTR and getting to the end of ROTK and being confused and pissed off. 'Well, I'm home.' Frowns, turns page... but there's still like a fourth of the book left? What the hell is an Appendix? (in my defense I was like 11/12).
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Dec 14, 2014 05:18
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:There is a formula for determining the quality of any given fantasy work: Counterpoint: Percy Jackson, which is pretty mediocre.
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Dec 17, 2014 16:21
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Greek and Roman mythology out the wazoo!
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Dec 17, 2014 16:42
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Tolkien was very, very very Catholic. Like raised by a priest Catholic. If he could have reasonably swung it I'm pretty sure there would have been no sex at all in Middle Earth.
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Dec 18, 2014 21:16
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Heironymous Alloy posted:How on earth did they leave anything out at all with that running time?
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Dec 18, 2014 21:23
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HIJK posted:I always thought that too. There are lots of hobbits like Sam who have dark skin. I like to take those passages and point them out to people who try to tell me that Tolkien hated brown people. Every person I've shown it to got really mad. Ironically enough, it switched sometime in the Roaring 20s where office work/factory work all day made you pale and sickly while having the free time to lay in the sun and work on your tan meant life of leisure.
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Dec 18, 2014 21:25
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Upon re-reading Fellowship to my son I was surprised to (re)discover that Galadriel was Celebrian's mom and thus Arwen's grandma, and Elrond was her son-in-law. That blew my mind a lil bit.
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Jan 6, 2015 21:50
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Josef K. Stardust posted:I know LOTR's draft has been published in annotated form in a series of volumes but has there ever been a move to publish the final draft as a single volume?
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Jan 8, 2015 17:03
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Yeah, once they left Bree Strider determined that between the 'swarthy half-orcs' that were giving them the stinkeye there and the black Rider attack afterwards their best bet was to head for the hills and take the scenic route to Rivendell. Then after the Council of Elrond the whole secret mission thing necessitated they take yet another long, circuitous route to avoid any settlements, bad guy, good guy or ? (see: Orthanc). So while they could've gone across the Misties where Bilbo et al went and hit up the Beornings and sailed on down the Anduin the whole way they decided that way was too populous/watched and went for Caradhras (which Sauron was able to throw snow at them and make them back down) then finally settled on Moria, since going through the Gap of Rohan would take them way too close to Saruman for Gandalf's liking and he didn't know what was up with the Rohirrim either since rumors of them selling black horses to Mordor were being bandied about and Gandalf and Aragorn were paranoid as all heck. Not to mention Boromir's growing obsession was probably not a good sign about going anywhere near Gondor. Then after Lorien the river was the easiest way to avoid having to make a decision to go straight for the Black Gate or detour to Gondor and it went through what was basically no man's land between the orcs on one side of the river and the Rohirrim on the other. Boromir I think mentions that the orcs had been raiding villages on the Rohan side of the river and that's why it was so deserted, people had all pulled back to the towns and fortifications. But yeah, Middle Earth was pretty depopulated compared to when say, the Numenoreans held sway or the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor were at their peak. I think it was supposed to be more of a post-Roman pre-midieval period.
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Jan 10, 2015 05:12
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No Pants posted:It isn't explicit in the book. Boromir says he hears voices in the wind and thinks the falling rocks are aimed at the party, Aragorn doesn't think there are voices but mentions old evils in the world not necessarily aligned with Sauron, and Gimli gets tinfoily about the actual mountain hating dwarves and elves. The movie takes Boromir's voices and attributes them to Saruman. Aragon says something like 'Sauron's arm has grown long indeed if he can hurl snow at us from 300 miles away' and Gandalf replies in typical Gandalf fashion 'His arm has grown long' which I always took as confirmation that Gandalf at least thinks its Sauron behind it, but yeah ultimately its left up to the reader which they believe.
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Jan 10, 2015 18:46
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I also think Tolkien's take on PTSD (for lack of a better term) wrt Frodo was also incredibly nuanced and unprecedented both for its time and today and is also rather overlooked in any analysis of his writings. I believe Tolkien himself suffered from 'shell shock' and kind of made himself sick to avoid going back to the front. Frodo's story really is probably the most tragic of anyone's in the books.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:52
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Hogge Wild posted:Tolkien didn't "kind of made himself sick to avoid going back to the front", and he didn't get 'shell shock', he had trench foot. There are Forces War Records, National Archives posted:Tolkien was suffering from trench fever, which is transmitted by lice, and causes fever. His records detail he had “pyrexia of unknown origin” – headaches, rashes, eye inflammation and leg pains.
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Jan 16, 2015 22:19
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images of that online if you want to see what it looks like. He served on the front for only a few months before being invalided, but that was quite common.
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Pong Daddy posted:Nah, the Scouring was cool in the books and all but I can see how it would be jarring and detract from the climax in the films. The greatest tragedy was ghosts at Minas Tirith. All they do in the books is scare the poo poo out of some pirates at Pelargir, living men do all the real work.
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Jan 16, 2015 22:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Maybe most elves are utterly un-ambitious, like as long as they have wine and a tree they're cool. We only see two Elven societies (not counting Rivendell) and both of them seem to just like party in the trees all day long while occasionally taking pot-shots at passing orcs.
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Jan 22, 2015 21:19
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Bendigeidfran posted:murdering lazier Elves who refused to do something depends on their mood.
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Jan 22, 2015 22:34
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Hrm. Question. Is the horn that Eowyn gives Merry one of the horns that gets blown on the Pellennor Fields?
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Jan 23, 2015 15:23
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Still pissed about Haldir and the Lorien elves showing up at Helm's Deep.
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May 4, 2015 13:46
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Nessus posted:I believe the Noldor had been able to kill Balrogs through force of arms at times, Galadriel could totally have made Sauron eat the mat.
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May 10, 2015 20:53
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Nessus posted:You would think they might have perhaps cut it, that's what's typically done with gems...
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Jun 21, 2015 17:15
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Trin Tragula posted:Has anyone ever tried to explain what's wrong with a nice deep dungeon? Surely the Numenoreans would have had use for one, even if Saruman himself never had the time to get round to digging one out.
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Dec 1, 2015 15:55
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joat mon posted:Granted. How about express trains?
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Jan 12, 2016 04:31
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End Of Worlds posted:the elf vagoo post is an outstanding work of scholarship and merits publication in a peer-reviewed journal
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Sep 9, 2016 18:33
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Has anyone ever given LOTR or the Hobbit the Wide Sargasso Sea treatment? Written from the perspective of say, Sauron, or Saruman, or the orcs or what have you?
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Sep 13, 2016 20:37
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Smoking Crow posted:tha'ts the last ringbearer People in thread were making it sound more like a parody not a serious treatment.
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Sep 13, 2016 20:56
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Ashcans posted:The weirdest thing about that (I mean besides the obvious) is that he's claiming descent from the Kings of Wales, not England. So even if he could prove it, all he would be demonstrating is a claim to the theoretical crone of Wales, which hasn't existed since it was annexed by England. I mean he could return to Wales and claim his birthright and try to raise an army to seize independence or something, but nothing about his claim entitles him to the throne of England. Isn't one of the titles of the crown prince Prince of Wales?
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Mar 2, 2017 17:39
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Why would you go to all that trouble and not at least claim the right lineage?
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skasion posted:This much is clear, but Tolkien doesn't really say whether it was a functional state or more of a northern vacation spot for the King. The north kingdom doesn't ever seem to have been very populous or well founded: it doesn't seem to have had any major population centers besides Annuminas and later Fornost, which is more a fortification than a town (contrast Gondor with its major city and two large heartland castle towns, as well as the major port cities of Pelargir and Umbar and another fortified town at Dol Amroth). The fact that Annuminas was abandoned either before or at the same time as the partition of Arnor suggests that the kingdom, or certainly the successor principalities, had no especial use for it; possibly its construction was never more than a boondoggle on Elendil's part.
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Jul 25, 2017 19:58
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sweet geek swag posted:One of the hallmarks of Tolkiens 'wise' characters is that they seldom tell anyone exactly what to do, but instead lay out the situation so that what needs to be done is obvious. But as Frodo pointed out to Gildor, this leads to real problems when the right course of action isn't clear. But part of the wisdom of the wise is that they can't make people's decisions for them. That is really what separates Saruman and Sauron from Gandalf. Saruman and Sauron want to control, while Gandalf is content to be an advisor and helper. This is also why the ring is such a threat to Gandalf, because it would make him want to contol people.
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Feb 13, 2018 17:31
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My 11 year old told me the other night he liked the Eragon series more than LOTR. I told him to get out of my house. Some things are just inexcusable. But he's a dumbass 11 year old I'm sure as he matures he'll come around.
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Apr 12, 2018 16:41
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Nessus posted:I feel like Denethor is more about semi-willing embrace of defeatism. If you want a Hitler in the story you’ve got about five better candidates. Denethor is the personification of the mortal sin of despair. Tolkien's Catholic as gently caress.
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Jul 11, 2018 18:49
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Ravenfood posted:Glorfindel also has weird poo poo going on since he explicitly died in the Silmarillion iirc. Elves are reincarnated, they're bound to the 'circles of the world' and thus do not enjoy/suffer the Gift/Doom of Man (e.g. to leave the circles of Middle Earth after they die. And go where? Nobody knows, but its why its such a big deal for elves to choose to marry a human and why only three had done it in the recorded history of the elves.) IIRC they chill out in the Halls of Mandos for awhile before being reborn.
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Jul 27, 2018 22:43
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Wasn't there something about Saruman using foul magics to make half-breed men-orcs also though? WHich would explain why the Isengard orcs were taller and able to bear the light of day though they still hated it.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:20
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Ravenfood posted:http://pyrrhiccomedy.tumblr.com/post/152255810742/first-things-first-we-actually-do-know-what-elves No idea who this tumblr is or whether its properly credited, but I think this is Elise's original post in full. They do credit elise at the end of the post only its ascribed to the 'ask me about making fantasy dildoes' thread and not this one (where I believe it was reposted or a link was provided).
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Sep 10, 2018 17:04
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cheetah7071 posted:I think that post fails to support the claim that the elven vagina is a mass of tentacles. It supports there being at least one tentacle well, though It'd have to be at least two: one for the cock-ringing and one for the sounding effect.
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Sep 10, 2018 20:52
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I took it as an article of faith; Men and Elves don't know where Men go when they die they just know Man's fate isn't tied with the world itself which will eventually end forever, whereas the Elves are 'bound up within the circles of the world' and so Middle Earth's fate is theirs as well. It was called the Gift of Man because to undying elves they get to escape this never ending circle of life death rebirth thing, later it became the Doom of Man because WHO KNOWS and at least knowing what's going to happen is better than not knowing at all and just having to take Manwe or whoever's word for it that whatever happens is a blessing.
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Oct 8, 2018 02:42
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skasion posted:Doom isn’t necessarily negatively connoted word in Tolkien either (it comes from OE word meaning judgment or decision rather than like, inevitable disaster). The doom of men is what was foreordained for them, it’s only as terrible as fear makes it. This still ties into faith, though. The first thing every messenger of the Lord in the Bible says upon first showing up and scaring the piss out of whoever they're there to talk to is 'Be not afraid.' They KNOW they're scary as poo poo to mere mortals. You just have to take their word for it they're not there to hurt you. Also when you're using 'Doom' as a counterpoint to the original 'Gift' that does seem to hint at a bit of forboding. Nobody likes to be judged, even if they think the judgement's going to go in their favor.
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Oct 8, 2018 13:34
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skasion posted:This is a surprisingly common take, but it’s factually inaccurate as to how Tolkien composed LOTR. Its world and history were made up on the fly to service his plot. The world and its history were made up years and years before he started writing, the man was an utter nerd and this was a lifetime hobby of his. He liked languages so made up his own then wanted to make up a people who would speak them and a world in which they would live. JRR Tolkien his own self, in his own words posted:The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. [. . .] It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in ‘linguistic aesthetic’, as I sometimes say to people who ask me ‘what is it all about’ (Carpenter 219-220).
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Nov 24, 2018 20:26
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