Jack Law's Lord of the Rings Thread.

[sus]

Back to the plus side, the very detailed descriptions of the landscape they traverse, which funnily enough is exactly the thing I found unbearably dull when I first tried to read this, gives the world they're in a real palpability that you don't get in other fantasy worlds.

This really serves a story about a long, arduous journey through a perilous mysterious landscape.

Yes this one of my favorite parts of Fellowship. The descriptions of landscapes rival the cinematic shots of Jackson's films, which are obviously gorgeous.

The way the land routes them (as if inevitably) to the Willow, pre-rescue by Bombadil, is so lovely. The landscape really does work that way, route you and rut you. But there's a slight air of enchantment to it as well.

Or the way that Tolkien highlights hilltops as vistas, these rare glimpses of the surroundings that help orient you. Versus getting lost, becoming near-sighted, in the valleys.

 

[Corpsey]

Tolkien's attitude to the Black Speech is revealed in one of his letters. From a fan, Tolkien received a goblet with the Ring inscription on it in Black Speech. Because the Black Speech in general is an accursed language, and the Ring inscription in particular is a vile spell, Tolkien never drank out of the goblet, and used it only as an ashtray

 

[Corpsey]

Never actually seen him talking before

 

[Corpsey]

Lad of the rings

 

[Corpsey]

 

[Mr. Tea]

Never actually seen him talking before

He was from that generation where you could be dirt poor (and he and his brother actually were for a while, after their mum's family cut off all financial help to them when she became Catholic, their dad having died years before) and still end up sounding posher than the queen if you got a scholarship to that kind of school.

 

[Mr. Tea]

This is the most @Corpsey thing ever.

 

[Corpsey]

Boromir: "The wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears."

"True!" Said Aragorn, loosening his sword in its sheath. "But where the warg howls, there also the orc prowls."

 

[Corpsey]

Despite stuff like that, it gets SO GOOD again as soon as they leave Rivendell and start doing five day long hikes again. It's the ultimate hiking book, really. And those bits really put me back in touch with a primal, pre/pubescent part of my brain, which loves to imagine things. You start looking at the map of middle earth with interest. It's crucial that you don't know everything about it, just enough to make you imagine what else there could be.

Currently they're in the mines of moria and its much cooler than in the films cos it's essentially pitch dark and they're in there for days. Obviously the film had to compress it all into a short sequence which made it feel like they were in there for a day max.

 

[sus]

Never actually seen him talking before

Interesting to see him following, and quoting approvingly (in identification!) Simone de B.

Love the bits about the beer and the bath

 

[Mr. Tea]

While out trick-or-treating with the wee lad earlier I thought one of our neighbours had gone out wearing a really great Nazgûl costume, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a motorbike draped with a black tarpaulin.

 

[william_kent]

While out trick-or-treating with the wee lad earlier I thought one of our neighbours had gone out wearing a really great Nazgûl costume, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a motorbike draped with a black tarpaulin.

I've been cowering behind the sofa for the last few hours in fear of 'trick or treaters", all LIGHTS OUT

I'd carefully assembled an ensemble of tangerines with razor blades inserted and then I injected 25I-NBOMe research chemicals into the pulp but I got second thoughts and crapped out of a tabloid headline

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25I-NBOMe​

 

[Mr. Tea]

I love these Tolkien books from Cuba, dating from (I guess) the 1970s.



Not my photo, I should add, in case anyone was also admiring the Batman duvet cover.

 

[Mr. Tea]

@Corpsey

 

[Mr. Tea]