transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:30] Welcome to Shelved By Genre, a show about types of literature and the worlds they are imagining. No? Sure, actually, they are imagining those worlds.
Speaker 2:
[00:41] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[00:43] We are continuing our unit on JR Tolkien with The Fellowship of the Ring, part two, which is book two of The Lord of the Rings. We are reading the last few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring, book two of The Lord of the Rings. I think it's chapter eight through, I just didn't know what the last one was. Hold on, hold on. Ten.
Speaker 2:
[01:15] You got it.
Speaker 1:
[01:15] Of The Fellowship of the Ring. I am Cameron, and with me here are two elves mourning, Michael and Austin.
Speaker 3:
[01:28] Check out my awesome swan boat. I'm so sad.
Speaker 2:
[01:32] I'm sad that this is probably only the, I don't know, 150th last time I'll ride your cool swan boat.
Speaker 3:
[01:40] It is so hard to think of how all things pass except for the swan boat.
Speaker 2:
[01:46] Perhaps the swan boat will lead us one day down the river and to the sea. And then, I don't know, west, I don't know. There might be another, another continent out there maybe. Maybe we can go hang out there.
Speaker 1:
[01:56] This bread's really, really good.
Speaker 3:
[02:00] I love this bread. Now, excuse me, you need to quiet down and listen to my song. There's a lot of lore in it. Here's a story of a tree in Valinor. That was gold. And then some other stuff happened. It was very vague, but everyone in the world understands, so I don't need to explain that.
Speaker 2:
[02:23] Yeah. That was the song, right? That was the one song we got this time was that there used to be trees of gold, and now there are trees of not gold or there will be maybe one day. We got to get on the boat.
Speaker 3:
[02:36] Yeah. Yeah. Galadriel singing about a really cool tree that she saw once and is not allowed to see anymore.
Speaker 1:
[02:44] Yeah. It couldn't be me.
Speaker 2:
[02:50] No, I'll see a tree more than once all the time.
Speaker 1:
[02:52] That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[02:53] I live near a bunch of trees. Yeah. We did it. We got through the first second book, the first of The Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 1:
[03:02] The first two books of The Lord of the Rings published in volume one.
Speaker 2:
[03:09] In volume one. That's what we're, yes, yes, yes. That's the key I was missing, volume one.
Speaker 1:
[03:19] In the back of our copy of the book too, there's some maps.
Speaker 2:
[03:23] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[03:24] I have always been under the impression, and this is just me not thinking, that these were all drawn by John Ricky Ronald Tolkien. But wouldn't you know, I read this little damn note on the maps and it says, maps accompanying The Lord of the Rings were drawn by Christopher Tolkien for the original edition published in 1954, five?
Speaker 2:
[03:50] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[03:50] Drawn by who?
Speaker 3:
[03:51] Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 2:
[03:53] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[03:55] That's interesting, actually.
Speaker 1:
[03:57] I've always thought that these were Jim Ringgold, George Washington, George John Paul Ringgold Tolkien. That's right. Now, he would never be associated with those villains. I read the letter. Yeah, you know, I don't I mean, I'll have a point to make about that, but I am I the only one? Did y'all know these were by Christopher Tolkien?
Speaker 2:
[04:20] I did not.
Speaker 3:
[04:20] I would have I did not that they were by Christopher. I did not think that they were by Tolkien himself. I figured he like, I don't know, commissioned someone or whatever. I didn't think he pressed gang to his own son into doing it.
Speaker 1:
[04:33] Well, it isn't good to find out how much of these things are just you made his kids do it.
Speaker 3:
[04:39] Yeah, press gang might be a strong, strong word, but also like.
Speaker 1:
[04:43] No, I think that kid with a broken hand was forced to do it. I don't think. Oh, God. I think he was forced to type that.
Speaker 2:
[04:49] I also did forget about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[04:52] I think about it all the time. It's like there are two things that we've learned so far that are like really hard for me to shake while reading and it has fully shattered the mystical man with the perfect mythology from on high. The first one being the kid with a broken hand typing the Hobbit and he didn't even use that draft. Then the second one being all those things about him just being like, I need money. I don't get. Just publish it. Publish the God forsaken thing. I don't care. I just need the money. I'm retiring soon. I need the money. I just think about that constantly. I've really thought about it because Austin, you were doing the Lord's work of trying to drag us on to the actual topic.
Speaker 2:
[05:34] I was doing my best. I am going to drag us way off in like a second. So finish your thought and then I'll do my best.
Speaker 1:
[05:38] I'm going to bring us back and then you can take us out. Okay, good. We call this the Fisherman's Podcast.
Speaker 2:
[05:44] That's right.
Speaker 1:
[05:47] But the thing being is like, by the end of this book, I feel like I've seen a bunch of different types of books working out over the course of this book.
Speaker 2:
[05:57] Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 1:
[05:59] There's a lot of different vibes shaking out here. Whereas, for the most part, The Hobbit had mostly one vibe. I think we were... There are some spikes of interesting and different genre stuff in there. I think The Bard of Dale blasting that dragon is a little bit different than the hijinks with the dwarves and learn about what Bilbo Baggins hates, but it feels all of a piece. And I don't know if I think that the first 100 pages of this book feel of a piece with the Lothlorien stuff. They feel really different to me.
Speaker 2:
[06:35] Do you think that's because the Lothlorien is meant to feel so different or because the book is shifting in genre more broadly here? I know it's maybe hard to untangle those two.
Speaker 1:
[06:48] Yeah, I think the break is at... And I'm poisoned by knowledge a little bit here, right? You got to try to bracket the stuff, but I do think that this does impact some of the way I read it, which is the book does feel like it changes when they get up on Coradurus and then they go down into Moria. That feels like some different stuff happening in the book.
Speaker 2:
[07:09] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[07:09] And knowing that basically he kind of wrote the shyer pieces and got a little ways and dropped it for a long time, and then got up to Moria and then dropped it for a long time, and then after Moria just kind of blasted through the rest of it, all in, not in like two weeks or anything, consistently worked on it from that point through to finishing. And I kind of, reading that, I'd assumed, and knowing a little bit about the production, I was like, oh, but he must have gone back and like, you know, tinkered and edited because it was all meant to be one thing. But coming through and reading it closely and reading it slowly like we have here, it doesn't feel to me like the stuff before Moria was re-edited to bring in concert with the next like 600 pages we're going to read. It really does feel like Moria, and probably Gandalf's death, right, is like a real significant break point in style and tone and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:
[08:06] I'm going to finish your thought, Michael, your real good thought.
Speaker 3:
[08:11] Yes, I would say so, right. Like the loss of Gandalf is the neatest button you could put on signaling to the reader, the Hobbit's over.
Speaker 1:
[08:25] Oh, right.
Speaker 3:
[08:25] And even for Tolkien himself, like pushing this character out of the way, and a new story grows out, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:
[08:35] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[08:36] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[08:38] Hey, has anyone ever thought about writing a book or like a para-fictional thing about the three Christophers? I know what you're thinking. Who are the three Christophers? Do you have any guesses?
Speaker 1:
[08:51] Well, one's Christopher Robin.
Speaker 2:
[08:53] That's correct. That's, yes.
Speaker 1:
[08:55] No, I know. I'm on your wavelength. I'm with you.
Speaker 2:
[08:57] Yeah. The other one is?
Speaker 1:
[08:58] Christopher Tolkien.
Speaker 3:
[08:59] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[09:02] Is it a triangulated, is it as far distant from both of these other two?
Speaker 2:
[09:09] It's further by 10 years. Or by, it's further by, it's, so, Christopher Robin Milne is born in 1920. Christopher Tolkien is born in 1924. And the third Christopher is born in 1940. So younger, but not so young that they wouldn't have a funny overlap, you know, as adults in like the 80s or something. You know what I mean? Or even the 70s.
Speaker 3:
[09:34] Chris Carter, creator of the X-Files.
Speaker 2:
[09:36] No, British, British. Is Chris Carter British?
Speaker 3:
[09:39] No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1:
[09:40] I don't think so. I wish you were. I wish that were a piece of information that just like hit you over the head.
Speaker 2:
[09:45] I would have just absolutely, yeah. I'll give you this, the child, the son of another absolute pillar of British literature. And in fact, in the same business as both of these people, to a degree, maybe not talking so much, but The Hobbit, The Hobbit for sure. And certainly Winnie the Pooh. I have no idea. I'll give you a little hint.
Speaker 1:
[10:19] Yeah, give me more of a hint.
Speaker 2:
[10:20] Has recently been involved in some fandom drama.
Speaker 1:
[10:26] Has recently been involved in fandom drama? Is it fandom drama I'm aware of?
Speaker 2:
[10:30] I'm probably not, but Michael Lutz.
Speaker 1:
[10:32] It sounds like I'm not.
Speaker 3:
[10:33] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[10:34] It's a really funny fandom. It's kind of an overlap of two fandoms.
Speaker 1:
[10:39] Can I hit you with one that I know isn't true, but would be really funny?
Speaker 2:
[10:42] Tell me.
Speaker 1:
[10:43] Christopher Plummer.
Speaker 2:
[10:44] That would be very funny. No.
Speaker 1:
[10:47] These two guys were like dads that really had this huge fan, and then Christopher Plummer, the actor. Okay.
Speaker 2:
[10:52] Christopher Audrey, the son of Wilbert Audrey, the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine, sorry, of the Railway series.
Speaker 3:
[11:02] Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:
[11:04] Who also likes...
Speaker 3:
[11:05] This is good.
Speaker 2:
[11:06] Like Christopher Tolkien inherits the series and has recently been like the... Has recently gotten asked a bunch of deeply annoying questions by a bunch of fans in a way that was like meant to be hostile. And then as like an 80 year old, he like tried to answer them genuinely, or like parts of them genuinely. And it's basically like someone was like, we got you. A bunch of your stuff doesn't add up with your dad's stuff about what Thomas, the lore of...
Speaker 1:
[11:35] These are like canonicity questions.
Speaker 3:
[11:38] There is like a deeply Tolkien-esque like geography. Cameron, if you open Steam right now, literally a Thomas the Tank Engine driving simulator just came out that is all about mapping this stuff.
Speaker 2:
[11:50] It is called the Island of Sodor.
Speaker 3:
[11:52] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[11:53] Which is like a deep history. It has like a deep history with like pre-Christian, you know, history with like the Vikings and stuff that has its own fictional native language.
Speaker 3:
[12:04] And a lot of it, it's kind of like a situation that Audrey developed to explain why steam engines would still be used on this one specific island.
Speaker 2:
[12:16] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[12:16] What?
Speaker 2:
[12:17] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[12:18] I really felt like I've been like, before we began recording, Michael hit me over the head with a giant cartoon hammer, with a piece of information that he's been keeping from me for like five years. And now, secondary to that, I'm being... You're both telling me that you're like deeply enfranchised in the fucking Thomas the Tank Engine.
Speaker 3:
[12:37] I just didn't know his son was named Christopher.
Speaker 1:
[12:40] I just didn't know.
Speaker 2:
[12:42] I've never watched Thomas the Tank Engine in my life. I haven't seen a full episode of this ever.
Speaker 1:
[12:46] Well, I've watched a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine. I just assumed it had just exploded fully formed from the mind of someone at PBS. I didn't know there was a...
Speaker 2:
[12:54] There was a whole book series. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[12:59] The island of Sodor is not real, right? That's true.
Speaker 2:
[13:01] It's a fictional island.
Speaker 1:
[13:03] I wanted to make sure. Well, England is on the map here. And I was like, is that landmass I've just forgotten about over here?
Speaker 3:
[13:10] He made up an island and placed it off the coast of England, so it could still have steam engines.
Speaker 1:
[13:17] I can't believe this is all happening. I can't believe he knew about this Thomas the Tank Engine driving game that came out.
Speaker 3:
[13:23] I was scrolling through steam the other day, and I'm like, oh, the Thomas the Tank Engine driving simulator.
Speaker 1:
[13:29] I do have to tell you, I'm on the front page of steam. It's not on here for me.
Speaker 2:
[13:32] So now you got some other stuff on there that's not really in the race.
Speaker 3:
[13:36] I'm pretty sure maybe it came maybe it came through my recommendations because it's like, oh, we saw you played the truck driving simulator.
Speaker 1:
[13:45] Oh, yeah, that's probably good.
Speaker 2:
[13:46] Thomas and Friends, Wonders of Sodor.
Speaker 3:
[13:50] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[13:50] Wow. Sodor.
Speaker 3:
[13:52] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[13:53] Yeah. Cool. Cool.
Speaker 3:
[13:55] Join Thomas and his friends on a special journey across Sodor. Hop into the cabs of Northwestern Railway's classic steam team to enjoy nostalgic stories and all new narratives right from the driver's seats. Explore the wonders of Sodor. Fun and magic await.
Speaker 1:
[14:09] This is cool. I like the I like the way the Thomas the Tank Engine like trains look. With faces you like the yeah, you like the faces or is it like the kind of you know, like you could really mess this up. It could be a lot scarier than it is.
Speaker 2:
[14:23] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[14:24] Although I did find it scary when I live as a child, I saw that one guy get get boarded up like the cask of Monchi. Oh, yeah. Being too grumpy and people not looking at him. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[14:38] It's Henry, I think.
Speaker 2:
[14:39] So, yeah, anyway, I think some sort of story where like that, Christopher, who's the youngest one, it's like, how did you deal with being the children of these great figures of British literature?
Speaker 3:
[14:53] Alan, Alan, I know you're listening. I know you've got another graphic novel in you, Alan.
Speaker 1:
[15:00] Well, this is more of like a Mike Carey, I think. You know what I mean? This is a little bit more of like the guy who I think does a better job doing all this. Do you ever read the unwritten?
Speaker 2:
[15:13] No.
Speaker 1:
[15:14] We should maybe do that. Maybe, maybe in the future. Maybe we could do like a really quick, like three episodes because we could read it very quickly.
Speaker 2:
[15:23] Yeah, we could probably blow through it. It's not that long, right?
Speaker 1:
[15:26] It's like 80 issues or something, but they go quick. Like they're not, you know, I think I read it in less than one class.
Speaker 2:
[15:32] I think I started it when it was coming out. Someone was really high on it. It was when I was working in a comic shop.
Speaker 1:
[15:37] So I had the same thing. I started it when there were like 30 issues out. And I read all of those and I was like, this is great. And I was like, oh wait, I forgot. This is a comic book. You get 24 pages a month. I think I'll wait several years for this to be over so I can read it all. But it's got some of this in the mix in it in a really fun way. I think that's a great idea. I think you should do it.
Speaker 2:
[16:05] Me?
Speaker 1:
[16:06] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[16:06] I'm putting it out in the world. Someone else can run with it, I'm giving it away, put me in the thanks. Special thanks Austin Walker.
Speaker 1:
[16:15] Do you think? What do you... Let me do a little search here. I'm going to do a little Christopher Tolkien life rights. You know, is he enough of a public figure that we don't have to pay for it? Um, hmm. I don't know. Oh. Hard to know. legacy.com says Christopher Tolkien was the unheralded caretaker of Middle Earth. I have to tell you, his name is on the cover of enough books. He was heralded.
Speaker 2:
[16:49] Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[16:52] Um, that's great. That's a great idea.
Speaker 2:
[16:55] Yeah. All right. Thank you.
Speaker 1:
[16:56] All right. Fisherman's Podcast. We got to drag it back in.
Speaker 2:
[17:00] That's real.
Speaker 1:
[17:02] Take it back in. We got to get it back in here. We didn't read very many chapters this time because we wanted to. Did did did Christopher Milne, did he serve in a war? Did he serve in World War Two?
Speaker 2:
[17:16] Oh, no. Oh, yes. Milne did. Could they have served together? There's no way.
Speaker 1:
[17:24] That's what I've really, Oh, right. While reflecting on the different thoughts about war that Boromir and Aragorn had is what I was about to say.
Speaker 3:
[17:34] Right, and so the setup is they know each other and they invite the Third Christopher. That's the title, the Third Christopher.
Speaker 2:
[17:40] Whoa, this is wild. Okay, when the Second World War started, this was, I found this on a scroll an elf gave me, Milne left his studies to try and tried to join the British Army but failed the medical examination. His father used his influence to allow Milne to join as a sapper in the Second Training Battalion of Royal Engineers. He was commissioned in July 1942 and was posted to the Middle East and then to Italy where he was wounded as a platoon commander the following year. After the war, he returned to Cambridge University and completed a degree in English.
Speaker 1:
[18:10] I have to tell you, there's nothing more like, I'm a guy whose dad is famous in England than I failed the medical exam and I ended the war as a platoon commander.
Speaker 2:
[18:21] As a platoon commander.
Speaker 1:
[18:22] What are you talking about? That's wild.
Speaker 2:
[18:28] That's wild.
Speaker 1:
[18:30] So you could really do it. You could cut you could cut the story. You know, it'd be like kind of like the way that the battle stuff and atonement happens. You know?
Speaker 2:
[18:36] Yeah. I don't think they were ever in the same place at the same time, but we could cook it up.
Speaker 1:
[18:41] Christopher was in South Africa.
Speaker 2:
[18:44] Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. He was like being deployed there or like being moved from one base to another, and they wound up in the same place. You know, this is good.
Speaker 1:
[18:52] This is good.
Speaker 2:
[18:53] This is good.
Speaker 1:
[18:57] I this is good.
Speaker 3:
[18:58] I got nothing other than we need our own streaming network, really.
Speaker 2:
[19:02] Oh, my God. Can we please? What are the what are the vertical video? The shorts call for the shorts.
Speaker 1:
[19:09] We can make it as like 180 chapter.
Speaker 3:
[19:13] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[19:14] Just make it like deeply homoerotic between the two of them.
Speaker 3:
[19:17] Of course.
Speaker 2:
[19:17] Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[19:19] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[19:19] And then and then Christopher Audrey is like coming to them later. No one understands me. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's good.
Speaker 1:
[19:27] Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, even better. So Thomas the Tank Engine Kid and Winnie the Pooh Kid, their thing is no one understands me, right? Because Winnie the Pooh Kid, Christopher Milne, Christopher Robin, he's in the middle, right?
Speaker 2:
[19:38] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[19:39] And Christopher Tolkien, he's on the other side and he says, I'm as much of a creator as my father ever was.
Speaker 2:
[19:46] Right.
Speaker 1:
[19:47] And he gets to kind of be Sauron, you know what I mean? Like he's a little, and it's like, oh, stupid, sexy Sauron, you know, it's one of those.
Speaker 2:
[19:54] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[19:54] He is right though. Like what if you just did it? What if you controlled Winnie the Pooh?
Speaker 2:
[19:59] Right. Well, and then this is the stakes, right? It's like Christopher Tolkien is like trying to convince them both to take over their father's empires, and Milne refuses it. But in the end, Audrey is like, I can do this the right way. I can do this, you know, a different way than Christopher Tolkien did it. But he had the right of it. You should try to do it.
Speaker 1:
[20:20] But what if we could control it? What if we could use Thomas the Tank Engine?
Speaker 3:
[20:24] Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:
[20:29] We're noblemen. We served.
Speaker 2:
[20:31] We served. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[20:32] For God's sake, Christopher Robin, you are a platoon commander. You don't think you could use Winnie the Pooh for good?
Speaker 2:
[20:41] I think he did go on to write a book about being Christopher Robin.
Speaker 1:
[20:45] I think he did. I don't think it was good.
Speaker 2:
[20:47] Yeah, sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[20:48] Yeah. The reason it came up is that I think that is the because the unwritten, like the plot, that's the reason that made me think of the unwritten a min ago, is that the unwritten, the pitch of that is that there's like an author that writes something kind of like Harry Potter. It's that kind of like big, you know, fantasy school, you know, like magical kid kind of story, right? And it like completely changes all of fantasy literature. And it's based on a real kid and his dad disappears. And so he becomes this like famous person. I think it's based on the Christopher Robin kind of relationship to being Christopher Robin.
Speaker 2:
[21:25] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[21:25] Which I think kind of sucked.
Speaker 2:
[21:27] God, the Thomas the Tank Engine also started as a story for the kid, for Christopher. The story began in 1942 when Wilbert Aldry's son, Christopher, had measles and was confined to a darkened room. His father told him stories and rhymes to cheer him up. One of Christopher's favorite rhymes was, early in the morning down at the station, all the little engines standing in a row, along comes the driver, pulls a little lever, puff puff, chuff chuff, off we go. It's basically an elf song.
Speaker 1:
[21:56] That's better than two thirds of what we read in these books. Let's be real. I want that over what Bilbo Baggins hates every single day. Every time.
Speaker 2:
[22:05] I need that. Every time. Off we go.
Speaker 1:
[22:07] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[22:08] Puff puff, chuff chuff.
Speaker 1:
[22:10] Just reading an elf song about Valinor. I wish we were puff puff, chuff chuffing right now.
Speaker 2:
[22:15] God. Oh my God, this is kind of dark. A third story is origin of Limerick, which Christopher was fond of, and was used to introduce the sad story of Henry. This, this Limerick here is, once an engine attached to a train was afraid of a few drops of rain, it went into a tunnel and squeaked through its funnel and never came out again.
Speaker 1:
[22:34] So that's damn, that's the original shit.
Speaker 2:
[22:37] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[22:38] Oh my God.
Speaker 2:
[22:40] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[22:40] Primal scene breaking that guy up.
Speaker 2:
[22:42] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[22:44] Wild. This is good. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[22:48] One of the place names on the Isle of Sodor is Church of the Devil.
Speaker 2:
[22:53] Whoa, what's going on there?
Speaker 3:
[22:55] But it's in the it's rendered in the fictional language, which is a it's called Sudrik or Sudrian. It is a Goodellic language similar to Manx. So I don't know how to pronounce this, but the what it is on the map is Kiel-e-Digon, which apparently means Church of the Devil.
Speaker 2:
[23:15] It's apparently Kildane. K-I-L-L-D-A-N-E is one of the ways that it's written out in like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:
[23:23] Yeah. This this other other place is called Companion of God.
Speaker 2:
[23:27] The standing stones are there. This is one second. Netley, look at this image. Look at that. That didn't put the image in. I'm going to copy and paste the image. It's, it's, it's a henge in the distance from a church.
Speaker 3:
[23:48] This is where that damn kid from Pin to Spin was.
Speaker 2:
[23:51] Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 3:
[23:52] He's playing the organ in this church.
Speaker 2:
[23:53] It's all connected.
Speaker 1:
[23:57] Netley.
Speaker 2:
[23:57] Drawing the line from Hobbiton out somehow to, to what is this, the Standing Stones and Kildane in the Isle of Sodor.
Speaker 1:
[24:07] Yeah, the weather top is right off screen.
Speaker 3:
[24:10] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[24:12] An elf tower.
Speaker 3:
[24:13] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[24:16] Wow.
Speaker 2:
[24:16] All right, well, we should talk about the book we read.
Speaker 1:
[24:19] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[24:20] We're recording a lot late and so we're punchy. Apologies.
Speaker 1:
[24:24] That's right.
Speaker 2:
[24:24] That's how it goes sometimes around here.
Speaker 1:
[24:26] We've all had a week too. Yeah, that's true. We were talking about off mic, but we've all had like a real humdinger of a time.
Speaker 2:
[24:33] So true.
Speaker 1:
[24:34] It's true. They got to leave Lothlorien. I forgot. I'm going to own it right in this very moment. I've got to write a summary.
Speaker 3:
[24:44] As if the energy of the podcast weren't erratic enough.
Speaker 1:
[24:49] Yeah, this is me doing it off the dome. It's actually the summary for this episode. I mean, I'm the one who made the schedule. I made this episode short on purpose in terms of the reading. Presumably, the episode will also be a shorter one. But because I did want to give some pause time at the end of this book for just to talk about where we are with Lord of the Rings, how we're feeling about it, kind of as a little bit of a shorter summary, given that we're reading one big thing all year. I thought there'd need to be maybe a couple more check-ins than we would normally do, like we would do at the end of a unit, but we don't really have that. But in terms of big summary stuff, I can say, the Fellowship minus one Gandalf has been spending time on the last episode. Everyone was spending time at Lothlorien, being with Gladriel, Celeborn, doing all these different things. In the Chapter 8, Farewell to Lorien, they leave Lothlorien. They have a lot of elf conversations and stuff like that. We might have things we want to speak about there, but that's the big pitch. Several of them get gifts that come from, or maybe everyone gets a gift from the elves of Lothlorien. Then Chapter 9, the Great River, they all get on the river and they start be bopping down south, and there's a huge amount of description of things that they're looking at. There's some weird stuff in the sky. There's a lot of uncertainty about what is ahead. And finally, Aragorn kind of steps into being Aragorn son of Arathorn. He's the big, the king's returning, y'all, in a big way. In Chapter 10, The Breaking of the Fellowship, they leave the river and are hanging out for a little while. And the Fellowship does break. Boromir comes under the sway of the ring, I guess you could say. He starts openly talking to Frodo about, well, why shouldn't we be using the ring? And he ultimately really offends Frodo, and Frodo makes the decision. Not like if you're familiar with the films, not because he just doesn't see it working out, but because Aragorn literally says, we don't know what you were supposed to do here. Gandalf had an idea, but even he probably didn't know. So figure it out. And based on some of the interactions that Frodo's been having with everyone and interactions and thoughts he's been having himself, especially after looking in that mirror of gladrile from last time, he decides to cut off on his own. By cut off on his own, I mean leave with Sam. So the end of what we read for the day is them shooting down the river in a boat, Frodo and Sam. They set off on the last stage of the quest together is explicitly what's said.
Speaker 2:
[27:45] That's what Michael's dad told me to.
Speaker 1:
[27:47] Yeah, that's right. Yeah, this is Michael's dad summary. And everyone else from the whole Fellowship is off screen. And we don't know what is happening to them.
Speaker 2:
[27:59] Yeah, there are some orcs nearby or nearing like near enough that that sting is like has like a light glow.
Speaker 1:
[28:07] OK, we get a we get a very cool revelation that that sting has like proximity glow. Yeah, it's it's a fully an analog technology. It's not digital. It's not on or off. It is progressive from the edges based on proximity. And like you could probably I bet you could hold it out in certain directions and turn around in a circle and you could like, you know, use like a compass.
Speaker 2:
[28:31] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[28:32] Oh, awesome. Gollum is there.
Speaker 2:
[28:34] Gollum is there. Also, there's a voice, there's an eye, and there's also a voice that Frodo interacts with briefly. Capital V. There is.
Speaker 1:
[28:44] Yeah, I thought we would just talk about that scene.
Speaker 2:
[28:46] I think we'll get that whole thing. Yeah, yeah. It's really great. It's so good. Something that you did just say, though, a lot of, that is actually not said in the book very much, there's a word you're using.
Speaker 1:
[28:58] Fellowship.
Speaker 2:
[28:58] Fellowship.
Speaker 1:
[29:00] Yeah. Well, it's in the chapter title.
Speaker 2:
[29:02] It is, but it's not, they're not the Fellowship.
Speaker 1:
[29:05] No.
Speaker 2:
[29:06] They're the company, and they move in Fellowship. They don't move in oath. They move in Fellowship, and the Fellowship breaks, because they never took an oath. The Fellowship between them breaks. They're not the Fellowship. That never gets said in this book. It gets used twice in this book. They say, we've traveled so very far in Fellowship, and they say, shall we break our Fellowship? But the group's name is not the Fellowship. It's the company.
Speaker 1:
[29:40] They're the company of Elrond. Yeah. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[29:45] I'm not mad about it. It's a cool word. I've just somehow, you know, in whatever the 20 years it's been since I've read this, I've been like, oh yeah, they're the Fellowship.
Speaker 1:
[29:52] Yeah, it does seem to fly into the face of basically everything we know culturally about The Lord of the Rings. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[29:59] I mean, not to talk about the movie, but in the movie, doesn't Elrond like point them all and be like, and you are now the Fellowship of the Ring?
Speaker 1:
[30:07] I'm pretty sure, yes.
Speaker 2:
[30:08] I don't remember, my guess, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[30:10] I'm pretty sure it's at the very end, he like points it out and we cut around the whole table. He's like, you're all the Fellowship now. No, I think it's, I'm glad you're bringing it up. I think it's a great thing to note and point out how this kind of maneuver has warped over the years. Especially post movies, you know?
Speaker 2:
[30:30] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[30:32] I'm gonna try to find, I'm gonna see if that's in the movie. I'm gonna try to find the clip.
Speaker 2:
[30:36] Yeah, try to. And I'll double check that I'm not wrong about this. I thought I checked and I thought I saw, I didn't see it at all being used in the body text as Fellowship.
Speaker 1:
[30:45] Michael, I can hear you laughing. Yeah. And I swear to God, if you're learning more about the Island of Sodor, it will haunt my whole life.
Speaker 3:
[30:51] No, I just happened to glance across something else that I had open and noticed the lines, Galadriel as she appears in The Lord of the Rings, the card game, the Celebrimbor's Secret Adventure Pack.
Speaker 2:
[31:08] Okay. Here's one use of it. In Notes on the Shire Records, this is the only use. This is before the first chapter. This is in the notes, the notes about Hobbits. Remember that? Or maybe this isn't even notes about Hobbits. This is, what is this? This is of the finding of the ring. What is the actual start of this section? This is the prologue. This is Concerning Hobbits. In Concerning Hobbits, it says, it uses the words, the Fellowship of the Ring to mean the group. But that's the only use of it.
Speaker 1:
[31:38] You are one billion percent correct, Michael. He's Elrond's.
Speaker 3:
[31:45] I thought you said I was correct about Caleb Ember's Secret Adventure Pack.
Speaker 1:
[31:50] I don't know. I don't really know who that is. I think he's only showed up one time in the books. You might be right about his secret. I don't know. Elrond literally looks at everyone and they're like, high school club photo standing with one another. And he says, you shall be the Fellowship of the Ring. And that's when Mary Andor Pippen says, where are we going? And we all laugh. Because it is funny.
Speaker 2:
[32:20] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[32:21] That's all we have to offer on this.
Speaker 1:
[32:24] I do like, Austin, that you've introduced a kind of recognition of the fellowship thing here.
Speaker 2:
[32:31] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[32:32] That is very similar to like, what does an exultant look like?
Speaker 2:
[32:36] That's right, yeah. Well, I just think that it's interesting because like, I think there was something importantly, I was really taken when they left Rivendell and it was said to them very clearly, like, now remember, no one here took an oath. No one promised, no one vowed. If you decide you want to leave, you can leave at any point. Because it's like, there is no duty keeping, there's no official duty here, there's no, you have made no promise. You don't have to think of yourself as breaking a vow. You're here in fellowship and the fellowship grows through the journey, and then is challenged at these key points. When Gandalf dies, when they get to Lothlorien, anytime Boromir is like, well, what if we use the ring? And here it finally, it breaks. It's not that the company breaks. The company hasn't really broken here. I mean, I guess the fact that Frodo is going forward alone with Sam, it broke, but the rest of them are all together and they're all gonna go to the same place at the end of this book, as far as we know. The company exists, but the fellowship has broken between them. And I think that that's like, you lose a little bit of that when you collapse the two into the same thing. You know, it opens the possibility that there are many companies. Any adventuring group could be a company, but they are a company in fellowship. And that's like, the stakes are different there.
Speaker 1:
[33:58] Yeah, because like fundamentally they, there is this great opportunity. Or you can imagine a different world. And I think it's hard if you've seen the films or if you've read the books before, it's hard to like put yourself in the mindset of like what else could have happened. You know, like what alternate universes could have happened.
Speaker 2:
[34:18] Sure.
Speaker 1:
[34:19] But you can imagine that there is a separate possibility. And the book, I think if you just read it straight, presents possibility to you, which is there is the chance that Frodo could think all these people could make it there together.
Speaker 2:
[34:35] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[34:36] Right, and that's, I mean, that's what Aragorn says at the end. He's like, I think Gandalf thought you were gonna leave, but I don't think he really knew because maybe he would have told me, you know? Like, and so there's this, you know, I just imagine sitting down, you've got this book, you're the first person to read it, not talk to someone else about it, you know? And you don't have this massive cultural weight on you, around it. I think you could get to the, this could be surprising, you know, that this is falling apart because there is a real opportunity. I mean, think about Coradris, right? Like being on that mountain and how everyone used all of their different capabilities from their different kind of modes of engagement of the world, you know, like Legolas being able to scout up ahead, and Boromir and Aragorn like just digging through the snow to trying to find their way out, and Gimli like trying to make the fire and failing to do it, you know, all these different things and you're like, oh shit, like the mountain defeats them, but it's because they can work together that they don't die. It's the same thing that happens in Moria, right? Like it's because they're all working together, and importantly because Gandalf dies, you know, he like sacrifices himself to keep it from doing it. And he does that in the act of like being the keeper of the secret flame and stuff, right? Like he's doing wizard shit. It's the, his whole self as Gandalf doing that thing that makes it all work. And so like, there's all this push to be like, oh, the way we were introduced to all these people is that they're all disparate of different lands and different desires, but they're brought together to do this thing and they're succeeding in doing it. In the last instance, the answer is, no, they will not succeed at doing it together. And it's all figured through Boromir. I mean, it's deeply sad. I'm Boromir guy. You know, what can I say? I find it's deeply tragic what goes on here, but Frodo makes this decision. And I think probably if you had no context for it, it could probably be really shocking.
Speaker 2:
[36:31] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[36:33] I remember it being pretty shocking when I first read these books for what that's worth in the sense of, I think I had kind of the picture that you're describing, Cameron, that these characters would continue to hang out together. Let me think. Hold on. Doing some math in my head. Definitely I would have seen like Star Wars, right? So I was expecting something a little more like Star Wars where it felt like the group like hung out together over the next three books.
Speaker 2:
[37:00] Now here's the thing about Star Wars. There's a guy watching through Star Wars right now on a more civilized age. One of the very funny things about Star Wars is that they don't hang out together ever. They're barely on screen together, but it produces the effect, the same effect. I mean, it's the same trick Star Wars uses. Yes. As you leave the beginning of Star Wars, they don't meet each other fully until like the back third of A New Hope of Star Wars and then in Empire Strikes Back, they go their separate ways about a third of the way through the movie when they leave Hoth. Then when Luke returns, Han is frozen in carbonite and they're separated again. The stakes of return start with can we get Han back? In a way, it is mirroring this shape of like, oh my god, we've gone our separate ways, now what? I'm not dismissing what you're saying, but I think that in the same way that you would think that going into Empire Strikes Back, you would think it coming to the end of this book the first time.
Speaker 3:
[37:53] Right. A different way to put it, I think, would be like, maybe I imagined it more as like the weekly TV serial. I imagined it like Sliders, where it's like, ah, what zany adventures is the crew going to get up to this week? And yeah, no, and then we get to the end here. And I mean, the chapter title just tells you, even if you have no idea what's going to happen, and I didn't, it's just like the breaking of the fellowship. Oh, that's not good. That's where the book is ending. Not good.
Speaker 1:
[38:19] Yeah, I think I knew before, I don't think I was ever like able to experience this, like naturally, you know, I think, and you know, this is classic stuff. Cousin Jeff, Lor.
Speaker 3:
[38:33] I knew it.
Speaker 1:
[38:34] I think my cousin Jeff told me.
Speaker 2:
[38:35] Damn.
Speaker 1:
[38:36] So I think I knew, I think he told me about the book before I had gotten there. And I believe the cover of, I was like, why is there an elf and a dwarf on the cover of this Two Towers book? Why is it not all my favorite guys all on the cover of this book together?
Speaker 3:
[38:57] I'm glad you also had that cover with the handsome 80s hunk, Legolas, if I'm remembering correctly.
Speaker 1:
[39:03] He's like hands on the shoulder of, or they're taking a senior portrait together or whatever, they're taking prom photos. Yeah, it's great. Good stuff. But yes, I did have that one. And so yeah, I don't think I got to experience it that way. And I also wish the title wasn't The Breaking of the Fellowship or whatever.
Speaker 2:
[39:23] Yeah, for that reason.
Speaker 1:
[39:26] Frodo's choice, you know?
Speaker 2:
[39:27] Frodo's choice. What choice was it? Because that's part of the thing that right away we get, right? Coming out of, in Farewell to Lorien, one of the things that we get on like the second page is basically, which side will you journey? The way to mean is to write that Tirith lies on this side, upon the west, but the straight road to the quest lies east of the river, upon the darker shore. Which shore will you now take? That is like the question that hangs over these three chapters.
Speaker 1:
[39:54] Yeah, I really love the very easy geographic split. Like whatever side of the river you're on, because you can't cross it by, you need a boat. So the minute you make a decision, you can't go back because you're not going back to get your boat. You know, who burned all the boats behind them? Sir Francis Drake?
Speaker 2:
[40:22] I'm not sure. I think of the Battle of, I think it's Shibie or Chibi, as I learned in Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors, where, of course, the combined forces of the Wu and the Shu set fire to Chow Chow's boats by chaining them together. A little battle of the wits between Zhou Yu, Zhuge Liang, and whoever Chow Chow's, or sorry, not Chow Chow, Cao Cao's strategist was. Was it Sima Yi at that point? I don't remember. One of those guys.
Speaker 1:
[41:01] The guy who wore green?
Speaker 2:
[41:02] That's Zhuge Liang.
Speaker 1:
[41:04] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[41:04] Yeah, at the Battle of the Left.
Speaker 1:
[41:06] He's the guy who wore green and has like a big mustache. But I think I think also the other guy also wore green.
Speaker 2:
[41:11] Yeah, well, it's the. So all of the green side were green, you know.
Speaker 1:
[41:16] You know, you make a really good point. Yeah, I'm going to think about that.
Speaker 2:
[41:20] You got to think about that.
Speaker 1:
[41:21] You got to think about you got to think about the way the Dias do warriors is fundamentally warped my imagination. But ancient China was all about.
Speaker 2:
[41:28] Yeah, you were you were green, red or blue, or you're part of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[41:34] And and they were, you know, they were yellow around.
Speaker 2:
[41:37] Yeah, I mean, it is.
Speaker 1:
[41:37] I mean, it'll really it'll really mess up like the 12-year-old mind when you're like, there's a Yellow Turban Rebellion. It's historically real. They were yellow. And you're like, well, everyone else must be color coded also. Right. Like, why wouldn't they also color code?
Speaker 2:
[41:52] Anyway, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1:
[41:54] I grew up in Georgia, the blue and the gray. You know what I mean? Color coding is a big part of the whole deal. The but yeah, I mean, I think that's a really cool thing. Like this series of choices about where to go. And that's pre-sage, like you're saying, like for all of these chapters. And like it's only at the very end that Frodo himself makes the choice to go the way that no one else could or that no one else wanted to, I guess. They get a bunch of stuff. Like this is, I gotta tell you, I think that Farewell to Lorien is maybe my least favorite chapter in the whole wide book.
Speaker 2:
[42:30] Say more, why?
Speaker 1:
[42:31] Because it's like this weird inventory chapter where we just learn about stuff they get. And then we learn, and then we just have this like series of conversations where they talk about the gear they got. And that's fun from like, I like reading the IM descriptions too, you know? Like I like hitting R3 or whatever and reading the IM descriptions. But it's not what I'm really in this book for. And so when I sat down to read the section, I was like, I forgot about this chapter. No wonder they cut all these from the movies. And that dastardly expanded edition, put it all back in. There's some funny stuff in here. So they get cloaks.
Speaker 2:
[43:12] They get cloaks and get the bread.
Speaker 1:
[43:13] Were we talking about magic? Was it the last episode we were talking about? Like, what is elf magic?
Speaker 2:
[43:17] Yeah, we were. Because then I was also asking, like, what's the ring do? Which it says outright here, I think, finally, right?
Speaker 3:
[43:25] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[43:27] Someone says it and then someone else goes, hey, you shouldn't be talking about that.
Speaker 2:
[43:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[43:33] Don't talk about the elf rings. But yeah, they get these cloaks from the elves.
Speaker 2:
[43:39] Yeah, I remember now what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:
[43:41] Yeah, each cloak was fastened above the neck with a brooch of green leaf veined with silver. Are these magic cloaks, says Pippin, looking at them with wonder? I don't know what you mean by that. It's written in the leader of the elves. They are fair garments, and he just describes them for eternity, right? But there's a real, like, I don't know. I think you think everything we do is magic. It's just stuff we make.
Speaker 2:
[44:01] Which I like. You know, we've talked before about, like, the centrality of, like, making stuff as being both a stand in for, like, is this culture good in this world? Because, of course, we know that orcs can make nothing of beauty, et cetera, et cetera. But still fundamentally, the power is in making things. You make the ring. You make you make Lothlorien. You make the cool cloak. Making is magical.
Speaker 1:
[44:23] You make Galadriel blush.
Speaker 2:
[44:25] You make. Oh, that does happen. Is that this chapter? That's this chapter.
Speaker 1:
[44:29] I think, yes, this chapter. And it's but and the reason I mentioned that is you. She explicitly brings up in the like in the frame that you're talking about.
Speaker 2:
[44:38] Right.
Speaker 1:
[44:38] Because she says something like, you know, they say dwarves are good with their hands. And I was like, Galadriel, yeah, what are you doing here? And she's like, well, you're good with your mouth. I was like, Galadriel, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:
[44:50] It is said that the skill of the dwarves is in their hands rather than their tongues. She said, you know, that is not true of Gimli, for none have ever made to me a request so bold and yet so courteous. And how shall I refuse since I commanded him to speak? But tell me, what would you do with such a gift? The gift being a single lock of her hair, a single strand of her hair, not even a single strand of her hair, which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mind.
Speaker 1:
[45:24] Some sort of new Arkenstone.
Speaker 2:
[45:25] Yeah. Gives him three hairs.
Speaker 3:
[45:29] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[45:32] That's cool.
Speaker 2:
[45:33] That's cool. You know?
Speaker 1:
[45:37] But yeah, they get these things. Sam gets one of the most important things.
Speaker 3:
[45:41] Yeah. Ropes. This is the part I was looking for. Yes.
Speaker 1:
[45:44] It's all 362 midway down.
Speaker 3:
[45:47] Yeah. Because you get ropes. And he talks about, he's, I came without any, he's talking to the elves. And I've been worried ever since, but I was wondering what these were made of, knowing a bit about rope making. It's in the family, as you might say. They're made of Hithlain, said the elf. But there is no time now to instruct you in the art of their making. Had we known that this craft delighted you, we could have taught you much, but now alas, unless you should at some time return hither, you must be content with our gift. I just loved, like, if we had known you loved making ropes, we would have taken you to the rope making class, Samwise. He would have had such a great time here in Lothlorien with the rope making classes.
Speaker 2:
[46:29] What do we think of when they're like, hey, listen, don't go into the Fangorn Forests. There's some weird stuff going on there. And Boromir's like, that's old wives tales. And then Kelliborne is like, do not dismiss women's experience or the immaterial labor and knowledge work of the marginalized.
Speaker 3:
[46:48] I thought that was very smart of Kelliborne.
Speaker 1:
[46:50] Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:
[46:51] I thought that was very good job, dude.
Speaker 3:
[46:56] That is something that I do. I do like that warning, though, right? Yeah. So like, you know, this was a thing that I was thinking about in this reading. The way that Middle Earth is both filled with magic and skepticism at the same time is very fascinating to me, right? That Boromir is out here calling whatever's going on in Fangorn Forest, Old Wives Tales, when he's also the man who's like, by the way, there's a madness-inducing shadow that flies in front of the moon sometimes, which is real. Like, it shows up in this reading, like it happens. And if Boromir had not been so obsessed in the ring, he could have been like, I told you guys, I told you guys about the moon shadow.
Speaker 2:
[47:37] I warned you about the moon shadow, bro.
Speaker 3:
[47:44] But yeah, like that's something.
Speaker 1:
[47:45] It does keep happening.
Speaker 2:
[47:46] It does. It keeps happening.
Speaker 3:
[47:51] But like that's a thing that I find very interesting about Middle Earth as Tolkien writes it, right? That there's that not just like that there is like magic or whatever we want to call magic and skepticism, but also like the like the thing that Kelliborne says about like, well, don't dismiss that, right? That there's a charge to it, that there's a there is a reason I don't know what he specifically says, but it has something to do with like, you know, the old wives remember things that men have had the luxury to forget or something like that. So, the idea being that like, there may be something in Fangorn that is older than you think, Boromir, right? The sense that time can pass in such a way that, yeah, there's a madness inducing shadow that flies in front of the moon right now where I live. But like that forest, like, come on, I've been here, I've lived here my whole life and nothing weird has ever happened with that forest.
Speaker 2:
[48:47] Yeah, one other thing I really liked in this chapter is we get a little Legolas Gimli back and forth about the nature of memory and how it's experienced. This is like basically the right towards the end. They are, is it Gimli who's the one who's like, oh boy, I didn't really know, I didn't know what we were getting ourselves into, basically, I thought this was going to be a hard quest, but I didn't know, I would not have come had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my word. Oh, this is right. What he's saying is like, I can't believe how hot and cool Galadriel is.
Speaker 1:
[49:30] I think it's really important that you should say, this is really important. The travelers now turned their faces to the journey. The sun was before them, their eyes were dazzled, for all were filled with tears. Gimli wept openly. And then what you're talking about, that didn't happen.
Speaker 2:
[49:45] You're right. They're openly weeping because they're leaving Lurien behind. They're leaving Galadriel behind. That's right. Listen, I don't want to read too much. I don't want to get this banned term.
Speaker 1:
[49:55] Look, heads up, y'all. Spotify might not be the best place to listen to the rest of the Lord of the Year, given that they seem to believe for every single episode, anything we read is us trying to make a pirated book. We're in the age of AI horse shit, right? Like true maximal AI horse shit. The reason that we do a podcast, it's not the only reason, but one of them is it uses one of the oldest fangorn forest ass old wives' tales technologies, which is a fucking RSS feed, and you can put it into anything. You could probably put it in a shoe, and it will allow you to listen to these episodes. So I'm begging you. I hope you get to listen to this on Spotify, because I know it's convenient, and it's helpful, and all those things you like, although please see the last episode where we talked about what's up with Spotify. I know it's convenient for people. I don't want to dismiss the convenience, right? I know that's true, but all you gotta do is download a different app.
Speaker 2:
[50:54] You can go into a different app and just search for it. We're still in.
Speaker 1:
[50:57] That's what I'm saying. We're in everything. You know what I mean? So just literally get any other app, and they will not be auto-taking down our episodes. Apple Podcast is not doing this. No one else is. It's just Spotify. So if you're having a spotty experience, get off of Spotify. Oh, I see.
Speaker 2:
[51:14] Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this quest? Little did I know where the chief pair lie. Truly, Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the Dark Lord. Alas for Gimli, son of Gloyne. Nay, said Legolas, alas for us all. And for all that walk the world in these after days, for such is the way of it, to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed, Gimli, son of Gloyne, for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise. But you have not forsaken your companions and the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lafloren shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale. Maybe, said Gimli, and I thank you for your words, true words doubtless, yet all such comfort is cold. Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror, be it as clear as Keled-Zeram, or so says the heart of Gimli, the dwarf. Elves may see things otherwise. Indeed, I have heard that for them, memory is more like the waking world than a dream. Not so for dwarves. And then, anyway, let's get on the boat. We got to get out of here.
Speaker 3:
[52:51] In my head, they both were reading, they have like Bill and Ted dialogue here, right? Nay, alas for us all, and for all that walk the world in these after days, for such is the way of it, to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. Like, just the, like, abusive positivity of, like, the bros hanging out here.
Speaker 2:
[53:13] They are the bros hanging out here. They are.
Speaker 1:
[53:15] It's his companion. Yeah. And he's on the leg of his companion. Like, the fact, look, I know that I'm going to say this a million more times, but we're going to get to this goddamn movie. It's going to be like, and one more for me. We're going to be like, what the fuck? They were just talking about their memories and how they experience memories differently. Yeah. And Michael Lutz says some of the most beautiful stuff about immortality that's ever been written.
Speaker 2:
[53:39] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[53:40] For it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream, and he's like, my boat's not on, I'm rocking the river.
Speaker 2:
[53:45] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[53:46] I'm not on the running stream.
Speaker 2:
[53:47] I'm not on the, I hear that you can move through memory in your mind. Like, it's as if it's fresh to you. Not to me, you know? But also, Legolas kind of suggests, like, the loss I am feeling is not one that I get to choose. I have to leave here, you know? You're at least choosing to walk away from here.
Speaker 1:
[54:07] Great. Well, it's also, part of the way that he seems to be describing, like, the way that they experience, or that he experiences immortality is that Lothlorien is, because he is eternal, it is always its thing until it isn't. Right? So like, everything, if you go through life and you have like, like an arc, right? Of like experiences and you move through things and you do stuff and you have all this, you're constantly coming in and out of things, entering your life and leaving your life and entering memory and leaving memory. But for elves, there are things in the world until they just dead stop. There's no forgetting or knowing them. And that's why he says at the beginning, and for all that walk the world in these after days, like the elves live in the post apocalypse. And they have for thousands of years since like all the stuff that we're going to read in the Silmarillion happened, you know, like all of the stuff that was good in the world stopped back then. And they still remember it as clearly as anything else. And like that, you know, look, I like an elf. I like, I love the idea of the loss of the goblin wars, right? Being as fresh in this moment as it always was, you know, the day it happened. Yeah, that's cool to me.
Speaker 2:
[55:27] I love it. Um, and we are on to them being in the big river.
Speaker 1:
[55:34] Capital R River, Capital R River, Capital W West.
Speaker 2:
[55:38] Yeah, we also get like almost immediately some more memory stuff. I don't want to jump ahead. We just I just want to hit this before we come back, you know, to the top of this. But there's a bit where like the heart of Legolas is running under the stars of a summer night in the northern glade amid the beach woods. It's when they're like they're like all in their own thoughts on these boats, you know, and it's like, oh, yeah, is he is he's feeling it. He's feeling that time that you were just describing. You know what I mean? Like he really is experiencing it. So we get Gimli saying it in the previous chapter, like I've heard this is true about elves. And then we like five pages later get like, like doing that. So a little confirmation for us.
Speaker 1:
[56:19] Yeah, like this is that this is like the great wash of all stored time. Yeah. You know, just kind of getting in an elf.
Speaker 2:
[56:28] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[56:29] I really also love that, like the next because it's just like, yeah, they're riding on the river. Everyone's having their own thoughts. You know, hey, and is it Frodo's like, I really wish it were getting warmer, aren't we further south? And you're going to has to be like, you don't know geography. My man, it's like we have simply moved. We have simply moved like east. We have not gone south basically at all. Sorry to report it's going to snow again.
Speaker 2:
[56:59] Yeah, I love all the description of this, just kind of like wasted, blasted. Like area that they're that they pop out into between like Merckwood and whatever the hills are after that.
Speaker 1:
[57:12] Yeah, when the brown lands rise into the bleak walds over which flow to chill air from the east on the other side of the meads that have become rolling downs of withered grass amidst the land of Finn and Tussock. You know how much nonsense this made to someone from rural Georgia?
Speaker 3:
[57:29] You don't have Tussocks and walds?
Speaker 1:
[57:31] We don't. We have the holler. We have in the cut.
Speaker 2:
[57:36] Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:
[57:37] You know, you could be in the cut.
Speaker 2:
[57:38] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[57:39] We got in the cut over.
Speaker 2:
[57:42] What's the cut over?
Speaker 1:
[57:44] It's just a different word for in the cut.
Speaker 2:
[57:46] Oh, OK. OK.
Speaker 1:
[57:46] OK. Yeah. We got the valley. Sure. But that's kind of it. We got the ridge, of course.
Speaker 2:
[57:54] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[57:55] But we didn't have Tussocks, I got to tell you.
Speaker 2:
[57:58] No, I don't. I'll be honest. I barely know what a Tussock is now.
Speaker 1:
[58:01] I don't. Wait, Michael, you know what a Tussock is?
Speaker 3:
[58:05] Not really.
Speaker 1:
[58:06] This is the classic, three guys don't know. You know what?
Speaker 2:
[58:10] Let's make a pact right now. Read me the passage again. Read me the passage. I bet we can get that.
Speaker 1:
[58:14] No, no, no. We need to make a pact.
Speaker 2:
[58:15] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[58:16] We'll never learn.
Speaker 1:
[58:17] We will never learn. But we don't want to find here.
Speaker 2:
[58:20] OK.
Speaker 1:
[58:21] We've done great in our lives up to this point.
Speaker 2:
[58:23] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[58:23] And we don't need to learn. In context clues, we could figure it out. But we should not learn it.
Speaker 2:
[58:29] OK. I, you know, go back to take back to Lord Lord of the Rings, Jesus, to go back to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. We're making our our peach garden oath here.
Speaker 1:
[58:44] That's right. This is the peach garden oath.
Speaker 2:
[58:45] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[58:46] Is to remain ignorant forever.
Speaker 2:
[58:48] That's right.
Speaker 3:
[58:51] Learning is for squares, we scream. That's right. We throw our textbooks into the ground.
Speaker 2:
[58:57] That's right.
Speaker 3:
[58:57] Break our glasses.
Speaker 2:
[58:59] And then we go beat the damn yellow turban rebellion back.
Speaker 1:
[59:01] You know? That's right.
Speaker 3:
[59:03] That's right.
Speaker 1:
[59:05] Ah, when they call them dumb, people don't remember the peach garden oath. They won.
Speaker 2:
[59:09] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[59:12] They created the modern state. I think. I don't know. I don't remember the end.
Speaker 2:
[59:17] Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[59:18] Yeah. I don't want to think about it too hard. Actually, we get. Is this where Gollum shows up for the first time?
Speaker 2:
[59:26] Yeah, because they describe him as a log with eyes first.
Speaker 1:
[59:30] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[59:30] And then he really does like show the hell up.
Speaker 1:
[59:35] And that I won't, said Sam, because they're talking about it was the eyes that made me sit up, so to speak. I saw what I took to be a log floating along in the half light behind Gimli's boat, but I didn't give much heed to it. Then it seems as if the log was slowly catching us up. And that was peculiar, as you might say, seeing as we were all floating on the stream together. Just then I saw the eyes, two pale sort of points, shiny like on a hump at the near end of the log. What's more, it wasn't a log, for it had paddle feet, like a swan's almost, only they seemed bigger and kept dipping in and out of the water. That's cool, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[60:11] And Sam is like, I think that was probably Gollum. And Frodo was like, yeah, I was pretty sure for a little while now that he's been following us. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[60:22] Yeah. Then how does he tell? He tells Aragorn, Gollum is following us and Aragorn's like, yeah, he's been following us for quite a while. I think he was hanging out in those trees outside of Lothlorien and he picked us up when we left.
Speaker 2:
[60:37] No, he says he padded after us all through Moria.
Speaker 3:
[60:40] Oh yeah, padded, yeah. And right down to Nimrodel, since we took to boats, he has been lying on a log and paddling with hands and feet. I have tried to catch him once or twice at night, but he is slyer than a fox and as slippery as a fish. I hoped the river voyage would beat him, but he is too clever a waterman.
Speaker 2:
[60:56] Too clever a waterman.
Speaker 1:
[60:58] Yeah, too clever a waterman is really good.
Speaker 2:
[61:00] Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:
[61:02] He is too clever a waterman. That's true. We know about him. We know about his history. We read that intro. There's something in the tone of Aragorn here that, I know that I said it in the thing I'm in to go, but there's this passage that is like, oh yeah, once they get on the river, he is Aragorn. He's like, Aragorn, Aragorn, Strider is dead. He is Aragorn. There's something really like kingly about the way, this, ah, said Aragorn, the thing you just read, Michael, right? Ah, said Aragorn, so you know about our little footpath, dude. You know, like, there's this kind of like, you know, I don't know, like very, what would come to dominate the like, I don't know, like finger wagging king?
Speaker 3:
[61:48] Yeah, I mean, it's Link, my boy. It is, it is. Right? It's that paternalistic like hand on the back, ah ha ha, so you figured it out, have you?
Speaker 1:
[61:58] Yeah, there is something. Do you think the hunt for Gollum will continue all the way up until Gollum meets?
Speaker 3:
[62:04] It's gonna cut off at the, like from his perspective, the bit where he peers through like the Ballestrata or whatever in Moria in that.
Speaker 2:
[62:13] Yeah, I think that you're right. The question is though, like, because it's movies and they can do tricks on you. And so it could be like that we get, you know, a number of little vignettes across time and it's all, like, evenly spilled out. Or it could be like the one really intense moment of the hunt and then a sort of montage of the rest of the gap between escaping the elves and here. You know what I mean? Or like even the escape could be part of a montage at the end, you know?
Speaker 1:
[62:45] I just think it's gonna be so like Marvel movie. I mean, it's in a positive way, right? Like only time I've ever used this in a positive way. But like the, is it whatever the time travel movie was, the first one they did, Infinity War, the second Infinity War movie, where there's some time, where they went to the other movies, right? In game, yeah. Where they end up going to the previous films and like redoing things in different ways, or like moving things in and out. It seems so tempting to like show the golem side of everything up till they meet again, you know? He had to actually kill 800 orcs. You remember that scene? I know you remember the scene from-
Speaker 3:
[63:29] When he kills 800 orcs.
Speaker 1:
[63:30] Well, from Revenge of the Sith, where R2-D2 kills all those robots. They're going to do that with Golem, right?
Speaker 2:
[63:36] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[63:38] He's going to shoot hot oil out of his mouth.
Speaker 3:
[63:39] It turns out that there was a second Balrog, and Golem accidentally killed it.
Speaker 2:
[63:44] Yeah, Mr. Lutz used it to that.
Speaker 1:
[63:46] Yeah, I know I've recommended this in the show before, but if you haven't seen The Lion King, one and a half, it is legitimately worth watching because it is this. It's the only boomba is Rosencrantz.
Speaker 2:
[63:59] That's really good.
Speaker 1:
[64:00] And it's them like defeating Scar. That's really tough, like off screen.
Speaker 2:
[64:05] It's going to be the Balrog falling in the exact same way that Golem does, you know, or the way Scar does at the end of the line. Spoilers for the Lion King, I guess he falls a little bit. There is a bit, I'm seeing him kingly. I had a note here that was like, Oh, Erichron just wants to go to all the cool old kingly places.
Speaker 1:
[64:26] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[64:27] Do you not know Boromir? Or do you choose to forget the North Stair and the high seat upon Amon Hen that were made in the days of the great kings? I at least have a mind to stand in that high place again before I decide my further course. There maybe we shall see some sign that will guide us.
Speaker 1:
[64:42] This is King Arthur, right? This is The Ones and Future King. Does The Ones and Future King come after this? I actually don't know.
Speaker 3:
[64:49] Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:
[64:50] I think it was the 30s, but I don't.
Speaker 3:
[64:52] I think it is earlier. I feel like it's gotta be.
Speaker 1:
[64:55] I believe there are multiple editions of The Ones and Future King, which makes it tricky. Yes. Yeah, shorter novels from 38 to 40, and then the whole thing gets done in 58. Okay. I was going to get that mixed up, but I feel like this is in one of the Ones and Future King things of Arthur having to go to these ancient sites.
Speaker 2:
[65:24] Gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[65:26] Yeah. So I wonder if this is like a folkloric kind of thing of like, good king's got to go collect all the... They got to go like become the gym leader or whatever for all the different ancient king books.
Speaker 2:
[65:38] Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[65:41] They got to check in on Foursquare for all of them.
Speaker 2:
[65:44] God. I also hear...
Speaker 1:
[65:48] Is this where Legolas shoots that damn thing out of the sky?
Speaker 2:
[65:50] It is. It is. And that's the moon shape, right?
Speaker 1:
[65:58] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[65:58] Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[65:59] Mm-hmm. This is the second time we've seen it in the book.
Speaker 2:
[66:01] Yeah. The winged shape. A harsh, croaking scream as it fell out of the air. There's a bit before here. Oh, it's great, because it actually opens with the elf equivalent of saying, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Elbrith Githoniel, sighed Legolas as he looked up. Jesus Christ, said Legolas as he looked up, even as he did so in dark shape like a cloud and yet not a cloud, for it moved far more swiftly, came out of the blackness in the south and sped towards the company, blotting out all light as it approached. Soon it appeared as a great winged creature, blacker than the pits in the night. Fierce voices rose up to greet it from across the water. Croto felt a sudden chill running through him, and clutching at his heart, there was a deadly cold, like the memory of an old wound in his shoulder. He crouched down as if to hide. And then Legolas was like, I got it, I got it, I got it. I mean, knock this thing the fuck away. Let me just knock him out.
Speaker 1:
[67:00] Yeah, the great bow of Lorian Sang.
Speaker 2:
[67:02] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[67:03] He does that damn, the special move that Ironheart or whatever his name is from Night Reign has, where he blasts that huge bow.
Speaker 2:
[67:13] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[67:15] It's cool. Neither Shaft nor Cry came again from the East that night.
Speaker 2:
[67:19] Because I like this a lot. They're going down this river on these boats, and anytime they get to the Eastern shore, which would be there right because they're traveling south, they get close enough orcs start shooting at them because they're too close. They're close enough that the orcs can reach them with bows and arrows. Yeah. Like again.
Speaker 1:
[67:39] They can see them too. They're like, what is that?
Speaker 2:
[67:41] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[67:42] And they're like, that must be orcs.
Speaker 2:
[67:43] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[67:44] So, and yeah, the thing too that's like, and this is purely like, you know, the films like, you know, buried in my head, the river's really wide. It's a big river, actually. Because they can get, they can get, they can get in the middle of the river far away from bows and not be close to the other side. You know, this is not the Mississippi, but it is pretty big. Is this right before they, today? Oh, this is where we get to, the moon's the same in the shire and in the wilder land, or it ought to be, but either it's out of its running or I'm all wrong in my reckoning. You'll remember, Mr. Frodo, the moon was waning as we lay on the flat up in that tree, a week from the fall, I reckon. And we'd been a week on the way last night when up pops a new moon, as thin as a nail paring, as if we'd never stayed no time in the elvish country. This is Sam, of course, speaking. And yeah, they've like lost time. They got they got abducted by the Greys.
Speaker 2:
[68:50] Yeah, yeah, it is like that. They lose time in that way. And that is what what Legolas says is like, you know, you change and growth is not the same in all places alike, even though time does not tarry for the Elves, the world moves.
Speaker 3:
[69:10] For the Elves, the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift because they themselves change little and all else fleets by. It is a grief to them. Slow because they do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long, long stream. Yet beneath the sun, all things must wear to an end at last. But the wearing is slow in Lorian, said Frodo. The power of the lady is on it. Rich are the hours, though short they seem, in Caras-Galadon, where Galadriel wields the elven ring. That should not have been said outside Lorian. Not even to me, said Aragorn. Speak no more of it. But it is so, Sam. In that land, you lost your count.
Speaker 2:
[69:55] And yeah, here is, we had this conversation last time about like, hey, do we know what these rings do, these elven rings do, at least in part? And I was like, you know, I was like, I don't know that I can answer that yet because I know it, I know I'm poisoned by knowledge. And here we get at least this confirmation, you know, the elven ring, rings, question mark, allow for the wearing of all things of this, this previous age to slow in places like Lothlorien. Which raises questions about what would happen if the one ring were destroyed, huh?
Speaker 1:
[70:32] Uh-oh, the whole age might be...
Speaker 2:
[70:35] The whole age might be done, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[70:39] I do have to say, you know, I don't struggle as much as Michael does with this, but I do struggle some amount with it, which is like, I don't like when the one true king starts acting like the one true king. That's not interesting to me.
Speaker 2:
[70:54] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[70:55] Like when he's like, because that should not have been said outside Lorian, not even to me, that's not even to your king. Right. Like, like I'm the I'm the important and smart guy. I'm the protagonist of reality. I know all the elf lore. But you shouldn't be talking about it to anybody, not even me, the elf lore guy. I don't like that. That's a bad look.
Speaker 2:
[71:20] Well, guess what? We're about to get more of that.
Speaker 3:
[71:24] I find it somewhat charming when they pass the. Oh, hell, what are the statues called?
Speaker 2:
[71:30] I'm going to read that section right now.
Speaker 1:
[71:32] So, OK, I thought that would be the next place. Yeah. Can I say one thing before that?
Speaker 2:
[71:36] Please.
Speaker 1:
[71:37] I can't abide fog, said Sam.
Speaker 2:
[71:40] Sam is so good. Sam, is that funny?
Speaker 1:
[71:43] All right. Yeah, these statues are like I think these statues are actually a huge turning point in the book.
Speaker 2:
[71:48] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[71:49] Or an inflection point, maybe. And I never really paid attention to that before.
Speaker 2:
[71:52] Yeah, well, and this is the Aragorn point for real, right? Yeah, yeah. Behold the Argonath, the pillars of the kings, cried Aragorn. We shall pass them soon, keep the boats in line, and as far apart as you can, hold the middle of the stream. As Frodo was born towards them, the great pillars rose like towers to meet him. Giants, they seemed to him, vast gray figures, silent but threatening. Then he saw that they were indeed shaped and fashioned. The craft and the power of old had wrought upon them, and still they preserved through the suns and rains of forgotten years, the mighty likenesses in which they had been hewn. Upon great pedestals founded in the deep waters stood two great kings of stone. Still with blurred eyes and crannied brows, they frowned upon the north. The left hand of each was raised, palm outwards, and a gesture of warning. In each right hand there was an axe. Upon each head there was a crumbling helm and crown. Great power and majesty they still wore, the silent wardens of a long-vanished kingdom. Awe and fear fell upon Frodo, and he cowered down, shutting his eyes and not daring to look up as the boat drew near. Even Boromir bowed his head as the boats whirled by, frail and fleeting as little leaves under the enduring shadow of the sentinels of Numenor. So they passed into the dark chasm of the gates. And Sam is like, oh my god, what a place, what a horrible place, just let me get out of this boat, and I'll never wet my toes in a puddle again, let alone a river. Fear not, said a strange voice behind him. Frodo turned and saw Strider, and yet not Strider, for the weather-worn ranger was no longer there. In the stern sat Aragorn, son of Arathorn, proud and erect, guiding the boat with skillful strokes. His hood was cast back, and his dark hair was blowing in the wind. A light was in his eyes, a king returning from exile to his own land. Fear not, he said. Long have I desired to look upon the likenesses of Isildur and Anarion, my sires of old. Under their shadow, Elisar, under their shadow, Elisar, the elf-stone son of Arathorn, of the house of Valandil, Isildur's son, heir of Elendil, has not to dread. Okay.
Speaker 3:
[74:36] Is that us?
Speaker 2:
[74:38] Yeah, it's him, right?
Speaker 3:
[74:39] Is that all of us?
Speaker 2:
[74:40] Yeah, do we? What about us?
Speaker 1:
[74:44] Is that me? Is that just Boromir?
Speaker 2:
[74:48] I think it's just him. It's just Aragorn, right?
Speaker 1:
[74:50] Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[74:53] I don't know.
Speaker 1:
[74:54] This stuff is not as good. Can I ask a real practical question?
Speaker 2:
[74:56] This goes from like the best section. That section of them crossing through kicks ass.
Speaker 3:
[75:00] It's so good. It's great.
Speaker 2:
[75:02] And part of the reason it's so good, and I know that this is the trick he's doing, but part of the reason it's so good is because it like infuses this great history of kings with a sort of terror. And then we get a guy who's like, that's our terror, buddy. Don't worry. That's the terror of men and we're men.
Speaker 3:
[75:21] It's another version of what you said, Cameron, right? The post-apocalypse, like the elves are living in it constantly. And like, it turns out, man has also had a weird apocalypse. And Aragorn's response is, don't worry, baby, like the future is looking bright.
Speaker 2:
[75:38] Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[75:41] Can I ask a really practical question?
Speaker 2:
[75:42] Please.
Speaker 1:
[75:44] What are these things doing? Like, the Argonath, it's two big kings, and they are standing with their, like a big warning sign, like do not, you know, like, don't, it's like the school crossing guard, you know, like, stop. Right?
Speaker 2:
[76:04] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[76:05] And it's facing north, right? Cause they see the faces. Yes.
Speaker 3:
[76:10] And it's said that they're facing north.
Speaker 2:
[76:12] Yeah. It says it pretty outright.
Speaker 1:
[76:13] Does it say that directly?
Speaker 2:
[76:14] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[76:14] Yeah. The, are they saying, like, is the, is the, the symbology here, right? Is the, is the message here. Be forewarned you're entering the kingdom of these people.
Speaker 2:
[76:28] That's my, like, stop. Yeah. Not, don't go any further, you're leaving the kingdom.
Speaker 1:
[76:34] That, okay. Yeah. Or, or don't go any further. Don't come here, you know, cause it's bad. I was also thinking, because we know that the, the Ingmar and all of that stuff and right, the Goblin War, all that stuff happened in the North. And so is this like a, Oh, interesting. You know, because the enemy is in the North, we know that for, you know, I don't know where in the timeline that happens, right? But I was just confused. Like, I've always just taken this for granted as a thing. And I was like, what is actually being communicated? But I guess, right, it's just like, you're entering our zone now. It's a level 45 to 51 zone.
Speaker 2:
[77:08] Where does this river start?
Speaker 3:
[77:12] The Anduin, it runs quite a while.
Speaker 1:
[77:15] I'm going to look at one of these old maps here.
Speaker 2:
[77:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:
[77:19] Begins in Arid Mithran.
Speaker 2:
[77:22] OK, OK, so it's not like it begins. I was wondering, is like, maybe it begins like far to the east and then runs across Middle Earth and then down or something, you know, but it doesn't look like it does.
Speaker 3:
[77:34] That's interesting. This is it almost looks like this would be about like the midpoint of the river, really, because they haven't hit fangorn yet. They've just passed Lorian. So they're like a little bit south here. Yeah, the brown lands right there.
Speaker 2:
[77:46] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[77:47] Huh.
Speaker 2:
[77:48] That's a very funny.
Speaker 1:
[77:49] Yeah, because they tell them to get off. They're like, if you're going to Boromir's house, you need to stop at the Falls of Rauros, right? Which is like right south of where we are here. And get going. But I do see, I do see, because part of what the conversation they have is like, look, if we just stick to the river and like navigate the Falls of Rauros, we'll just go straight to to like Boromir's zone.
Speaker 2:
[78:14] Right. Which is which is right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll pass. They've already passed through. They've already they've already gone past Gondor at this point. Right. No, no, no, it's not to their right as they pass through this place. Not sorry, not kind of Rohan, Rohan.
Speaker 1:
[78:36] Yes, Rohan, Rohan.
Speaker 2:
[78:37] I flip the two of the two of my hand. The riders are to the to the west.
Speaker 1:
[78:41] They're like perfectly parallel to it right now.
Speaker 2:
[78:43] I think I said right before I meant left before on the map that we have.
Speaker 1:
[78:47] They're kind of I believe they're at South Undeep. OK, this is not even Mule, right? It is really weird. This is not on the map.
Speaker 3:
[78:57] I know that they didn't mark the Argonath on the map.
Speaker 1:
[79:02] Bizarre. Thank God I know where the world is. You know what? I'm going to go. I'm going to say it. I'm a truth teller on this issue. This map sucks. Yeah, Chris, you beefed it. This map is I know it's iconic. It's very cool. You know, like it is such an important map. It is neat to look at. It's just not a good map. Thank God I know where Cyril is in Gondor. But yeah, so Rohan is directly on their right on their right.
Speaker 2:
[79:29] I think I said right was east earlier. I meant right was west because they're going south. Or so I meant. Yeah, right was west and left is east because they're going south. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[79:39] And then Gondor will be although looking at this map, I do think I had Gondor like wrong in my head.
Speaker 2:
[79:45] In what way?
Speaker 1:
[79:45] You love looking at Mordor. You love looking at Mordor. It's just a box. It's they put all this effort in there like, I don't know. Mordor is a box. It's a big square. It's Montana looking at us.
Speaker 3:
[80:02] There's like a whole other country or region beyond it.
Speaker 1:
[80:06] Yeah. There's a rune and khan and near Harad. Presumably, Far Harad is also in here somewhere.
Speaker 3:
[80:12] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[80:13] Probably. Looking at the thing you have. Presumably, we'll learn about these places later. But the end of the book does say, hey, look at all these cool maps. They're neat.
Speaker 3:
[80:21] I just did find out that the Argonath is like right before the Falls of Rowers, I guess.
Speaker 2:
[80:28] Yeah, that's right. That's because that's where they pass through. That's what's so funny about this is like, oh, by the way, there's just a little bit of mountains here so that we can put these big statues up.
Speaker 1:
[80:37] Yeah, important.
Speaker 2:
[80:39] Well, they go through there and yeah, I don't know. I don't love King Lear Aragorn right now. I get it, you know.
Speaker 1:
[80:52] Maybe it'll be more interesting in a context. I mean, kind of the weird thing about it is he's still just Strider, like not in his being, right? Like something like some immaterial transformation has occurred. But in terms of like the context in which we're reading this guy do stuff, he's still just doing Strider stuff. He's like navigating a boat good.
Speaker 2:
[81:11] Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[81:13] He's not commanding an army yet. Although I guess maybe what we're supposed to see here is like, oh, this is the kind of guy who could command an army. Yeah, I don't get that. But I could see maybe that's what's being pushed here.
Speaker 2:
[81:25] Yeah. It's a little, and I'm guilty of this. This is very funny. It's a little, we get this whole page that's this great description of a place and the awe. It demands from any who pass before it. And you're so bought in. And then there's a guy who the book says, and that guy also demands awe. But I'm not gonna actually put any, not effort, but I'm not gonna really put the same sort of power, literary power, behind him in this moment. But trust me, the light was in his eyes, his hair was blowing in the wind. And we were just poisoned by years and years and years of kings in fantasy fiction. And being like, yeah, okay, I guess the light is in his eyes. Who the fuck cares? Look at these two sick old giant statues. Now that's all inspiring. It reminds me of when I am GMing, and I describe a place that everyone thinks is cool. And then I'm like, and there's a cool guy there, and everyone loves him. And my players are like, well, I don't love him. That guy sucks. Why would anybody like this guy? And that's kind of happening here for me. Or I'm like, I don't, yeah, the statues are sick, but this guy doesn't make me think of the statue. Like, no.
Speaker 3:
[82:42] He's like, I've got a really cool brooch that belonged to my girlfriend's grandma. She gave it to me as a favor. It's an elf stone.
Speaker 2:
[82:56] Well, if she likes him, then, you know, I guess he must be cool.
Speaker 1:
[83:00] Was that comic book guy? Yes.
Speaker 2:
[83:04] Aragorn as comic book or comic guy as Aragorn.
Speaker 1:
[83:09] Now, this is good. This is something good.
Speaker 2:
[83:11] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[83:12] This is good fan art.
Speaker 2:
[83:13] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[83:15] Normally cram two things together. Not my thing. Aragorn is comic book guy. That's that's such a rare, you know, occurrence. Maybe I do need it.
Speaker 3:
[83:26] Would that gandalf for here? How my heart yearns for Mina Sanor and the walls of my own city. But with her now, shall I go? But with her now, should I go?
Speaker 1:
[83:39] The Simpsons in 20 years.
Speaker 2:
[83:42] It's still happening, I think. I'm pretty sure it is still happening.
Speaker 1:
[83:45] I was going to interview with like one of the current showrunners. I was like, I'm glad they're making The Simpsons, I guess.
Speaker 3:
[83:50] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[83:52] Have you heard, I'm sure Michael. I feel like Michael, you've seen The Simpsons recently. Is that true?
Speaker 3:
[83:58] No.
Speaker 1:
[83:59] Really? Apparently, who is that? Is it Nancy Cartwright? Nancy Cartwright does Lisa. Who does?
Speaker 3:
[84:05] No, Yardley Smith does Lisa.
Speaker 1:
[84:07] So Nancy Cartwright is Marge?
Speaker 3:
[84:09] Yeah, it's Barge.
Speaker 2:
[84:10] It was Barge. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1:
[84:12] Barge. Okay. Who plays Marge? Do we know?
Speaker 3:
[84:15] Julie Kavanaugh.
Speaker 1:
[84:16] Julie Kavanaugh is still playing Marge, and apparently her voice is because she's very elderly at this point. Her voice is just shredded.
Speaker 3:
[84:22] Right.
Speaker 1:
[84:23] And I have heard some samples of it recently, and it's pretty wild.
Speaker 2:
[84:27] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[84:27] You maybe shouldn't have to do that your whole life.
Speaker 3:
[84:29] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[84:30] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[84:30] Oof.
Speaker 2:
[84:31] Well, that's why she was in Ella McKay, you know? Trying to spin out. Everyone's favorite movie, Ella McKay.
Speaker 1:
[84:39] Yeah. Everyone's favorite movie. You couldn't have a deeper poll.
Speaker 2:
[84:43] The James L. Brooks 2025, Ella McKay. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[84:47] Political comedy drama film.
Speaker 2:
[84:48] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[84:51] Yeah. I never saw it.
Speaker 2:
[84:54] I only saw bits of it, but it didn't seem very good, I got to be honest.
Speaker 3:
[84:58] Oh, you actually saw bits of it?
Speaker 2:
[84:59] I saw bits of it.
Speaker 1:
[85:00] I was going to say, I did know it was like a thing one could watch.
Speaker 2:
[85:03] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[85:04] I thought it was the kind of thing where it was like, they did make a movie and everyone goes, yeah, they did.
Speaker 2:
[85:08] Yeah, that's about right.
Speaker 1:
[85:09] Yeah, OK.
Speaker 2:
[85:12] Anyway, they get to this island, right? This like set of mountains?
Speaker 3:
[85:20] Yes. Behold, told Brandeer, said Aragorn, pointing south to the tall peak. Upon the left stands Ammon Law, and upon the right is Ammon Hen, the hills of hearing and of sight. In the days of the great kings, there were high seats upon them and watch was kept here. But it is said that no foot of man or beast has ever been set upon Toll Brandeer. Ere the shade of night falls, we shall come to them. I hear the endless voice of Raurus calling.
Speaker 2:
[85:46] I like it because it's like he's like a lore master. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:
[85:49] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[85:49] He knows all the lore.
Speaker 1:
[85:51] Yeah. You imagine if Gandalf were here, he'd be telling people this stuff.
Speaker 2:
[85:54] Yeah. Because presumably Gandalf maybe was the one who told Aragorn some of this.
Speaker 1:
[86:00] I mean, Gandalf would be like, I know a guy there. I know a mouse there whose name is Gary. He's lived there my whole life. You know, like he would do one of those.
Speaker 2:
[86:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:
[86:10] Or he'd be like, I've been here before. It would suck then too.
Speaker 2:
[86:13] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[86:13] You know, it's never been good here. Gandalf would have a little bit more character. This Aragorn is reading the Wiki page, you know? Yeah. He's telling me, like, facts about the Iraq War derived from the dead middle of a Wikipedia page.
Speaker 2:
[86:31] What they did, what they have to do is they park their boats. At this little island, right. And is this the point where they're like, OK, we're going to have to move the boats across the island to this, like other side of the river?
Speaker 1:
[86:47] No, I think that happened later. I think it happened the last time that they got off the thing. Because there's the thing about Aragorn and Boromir moving all the boats.
Speaker 2:
[86:58] Right. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, exactly. They're going to move all the boats themselves. Yeah, right, right, right. Because there's the bit where maybe this is a different time. There's a bit where Gimli is at first, he's like, I'm strong enough to do all this. And then, at some point, someone is like, yeah, we all need more sleep, except of course Gimli, of course Gimli could just go all night, you know? And as Gimli made no reply, he was nodding as he sat. He was already going to sleep. Sleepy ass dwarf.
Speaker 1:
[87:31] That's fun.
Speaker 2:
[87:31] That's great.
Speaker 1:
[87:33] That's the kind of good stuff. You're like, you know.
Speaker 2:
[87:35] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[87:36] You're ribbing your guy for going to bed too early.
Speaker 2:
[87:38] Yeah. But yeah, they're they're trying to figure out which where are we going? Which way are we going? And Frodo at some point is just like. I got to go think about it, man.
Speaker 3:
[87:49] No, because they turned over to Frodo. Yeah, we're yeah, yeah, because because Aragorn is like, listen, as again, as we've been talking about throughout this whole episode and great distinction to the film, Aragorn is just like, yeah, like we don't really know what we're doing, man. And since you're the guy who's holding the ring, like you probably should make some sort of choice about what we do here, because it's coming down to you, man.
Speaker 2:
[88:17] There's that bit in chapter nine where they're debating back and forth and Tolkien writes that, you know, they would have followed a leader in the Mordor, but Frodo didn't speak up and say that, and Aragorn was still divided. And that's like, okay, here are two de facto leaders, you know, it's Frodo and Aragorn. And then here, Aragorn defers to Frodo as the ring bearer, you know? And Frodo is like, I don't know. I know we got to move fast. The burden is heavy. I have to go to the Garden of Gethsemane.
Speaker 1:
[88:55] That's right. And I got to speed run that whole night one hour.
Speaker 2:
[88:59] Yeah. And or the desert where the devil will tempt me for 40 days and 40 nights, you know? Sorry to do the Shelved By Genre Catholicism thing again. I know, I know, I know.
Speaker 1:
[89:10] Hey, that story, dozens of sects of Christianity respect that one, you know?
Speaker 2:
[89:18] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[89:19] There's all kinds of, you don't need a church father to do that.
Speaker 2:
[89:21] You don't, you know? So he goes out there.
Speaker 1:
[89:25] Martin Scorsese is all about that one.
Speaker 2:
[89:27] That's so true. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[89:28] That guy's never seen a church in his life.
Speaker 2:
[89:30] Yeah. He goes out to, at this point, he's just like out in the woods, right? He hasn't climbed up all the way yet.
Speaker 1:
[89:40] Yeah, he like walks across the lawn thing, the lawn of, it's got a name, Cragathor. It's like that, Parth Galen. It's close enough to Cragathor. OK. It is the lawn of Parth Galen.
Speaker 2:
[89:58] That's kind of a Cragathor situation.
Speaker 1:
[89:59] It's a Cragathor. Yeah, it might as well be Cragathor. Cragathor is good. That's fun. Yeah, it's a little upland lawn. Yeah. Yeah. So he's just like wandering around. He's near, tall, brand-near, and then Boromir shows up. And they're kind of like back and forth here.
Speaker 2:
[90:21] He felt unfriendly eyes, but his face was smiling and kind.
Speaker 1:
[90:27] The conversation here is so good, right? So I think I already know what counsel you would give Boromir, said Frodo. And it would seem like wisdom, but for the warning of my heart. Warning? Warning against what, said Boromir sharply? Against delay, against the way that seems easier, against refusal of the burden that is laid on me, against, well, if it must be said, against trust in the strength and truth of men. If that strength has long protected you far away in your little country, though you knew it not, I do not doubt the valour of your people, but the world is changing. The walls of Minas Tirith may be strong, but they are not strong enough. If they fail, what then? We shall fall in battle valiantly. Yet there is still hope that they will not fail. No hope while the ring lasts, said Frodo. Ah, the ring, said Boromir, his eyes lighting. The ring! Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing? So small a thing. And I have seen it only for an instant in the House of Elrond, could I not have a sight of it again? Like, this is so good. Tolkien is just like, he's playing the xylophone at max speed. You know, he's just doing a feed of strength. It's wild.
Speaker 2:
[91:41] And you know, we have said a lot of times while reading these books so far, you know, the reactionaries who come to this book and draw names from it, it's like they're drawing on nothing. However, never has it been louder that those guys are wrong. You know, because Boromir is making the case here. Boromir is making the strong men case here.
Speaker 3:
[92:06] Gandalf, Elrond, all these folk have taught you to say so. For themselves, they may be right. These elves and half elves and wizards, they would come to grief, perhaps. Yet often I doubt if they are wise and not merely timid, but each to his own kind, true hearted men, they will not be corrupted. We of Minas Tirith have been staunch through long years of trial. We do not desire the power of wizard lords, only strength to defend ourselves. Strength in a just cause. And behold, in our need, chance brings to light the ring of power. It is a gift, I say, a gift to the foes of Mordor. It is mad not to use it, to use the power of the enemy against him. The fearless, the ruthless, these alone will achieve victory. What could not a warrior do in this hour, a great leader? What could not Aragorn do? Or if he refuses, why not Boromir? The ring would give me power of command. How I would drive the hosts of Mordor, and all men would flock to my banner. And then narration, Boromir strode up and down, speaking ever more loudly. Almost he seemed to have forgotten Frodo, while his talk dwelt on walls and weapons and the mustering of men, and he drew plans for great alliances and glorious victories to be, and he cast down Mordor and became himself a mighty king, benevolent and wise.
Speaker 2:
[93:28] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[93:28] Suddenly he stopped and waved his arms, and they tell us to throw it away, he cried. Right? I love it. I find it so compelling as a portrait of someone who could never understand how wrong he is, because of like every part of his life has built him to a place to never be able to understand why this position won't work. And it's in the intro. Like, I think everything you just read is actually, it's so clearly drawn and so clearly persuasive, in terms of the position that Boromir sees, and the people he's representing see themselves in. But it's been dismantled already. It's dismantled in that conversation a second ago, right? Where, as you're saying, it's so finely drawn, Austin, where Frodo says, you know, I'm afraid that if I gave it to you, the world would end. And then Boromir says, yeah, we would die. It would be great.
Speaker 2:
[94:28] It'd be great. We would fall in battle valiantly.
Speaker 1:
[94:32] Yeah, we would die.
Speaker 2:
[94:33] Okay. Yeah, all right. You're ready for that.
Speaker 1:
[94:37] Yes. Like, it's just a fucking death spire all the way down. And like, like you're saying, like the people, the reactionaries who come in and use these languages and defend the capital W West and all this stuff, they're not wrong, but they're forgetting the one line, right? Like all that stuff's in the book, but it is all predicated on the idea that, look, we're all just gonna, we will be dead. We will make the world a tomb.
Speaker 2:
[95:02] We will make it right, exactly. I am, I, you know, I have, my heart is warning me against the trust in strength, in the strength and truth of men. And then I love how this wraps, this part of it wraps up, this part of the conversation before, the kind of big dramatic final push, where he says, surely you see it, my friend, he said, turning now to Frodo again, you say that you are afraid. If it is so, the boldest should pardon you. But is it not really your good sense that revolts? No, I am afraid, said Frodo, simply afraid. But I am glad to have heard you speak so fully. My mind is clearer now. Then you will come to Minas Tirith, pride Boromir, his eyes were shining in his face eager. You misunderstand me, said Frodo. And it continues from there, but what Frodo is saying is like, ah, I've heard you go through it all. I've heard you say everything you just said. And while I was wavering before, I have now gotten the clarity of what would happen if I came with you, even if I kept the ring. The case you are making is the case of men and of strong men. And your world is filled with strong men who want to go to war with Mordor. They will all make this case. I can't even go there because the ring will fall into their hands if I do. Like, I see clearly now. I see what your position is. Thank you. And in that way, by the way, thank you to anyone who names your company something like Palantir or Anderil. I see what is in your heart, you know? No more are you the goofy guy on the cover of Time magazine. So, like, the clarity of Vision is extremely, extremely sharply rendered here. And again, the bravery of Throtto in the face of that is the heart of the book. And the companionship of Sam, which we'll wrap back around to momentarily.
Speaker 1:
[97:03] Well, and also the thing that, like, it never pulls its punches with Boromir.
Speaker 2:
[97:07] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[97:08] He is a true bully. It's not cynical. He's not a Saruman, right? Where this is about, you know, like, I'm gonna become the guy of many colors, you know?
Speaker 2:
[97:20] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[97:20] Like, this is not about, like, Boromir's cause is not Boromir Plus. It is Minas Tirith Gondor Men, right? He truly is someone who wants to win and make the world better. And he is so limited in what his vision of that could be, right? It's just like, who gets to throw the biggest rock? And that's not, it won't work, right? Like, it is just death drive all the way through. And that, you know, look, like you said, it's a clarifying thing of how people use this book, because it allows you to understand what they took from it.
Speaker 2:
[98:03] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[98:04] And I mean, if, Bormir, my favorite character, unquestionably in the thing, I think it's great, I think it's awesome. I think that if this is like your unalloyed vision of the future, you're an impossibly large dumbass, right? Like, just literally, actually, definitionally, an apocalyptic dumbass. And, you know, it's also the thrill of literature is two of those things being true at the same time.
Speaker 2:
[98:31] Yeah. And then Boromir really, truly does do. You've been out here in the desert for so long. What have you just had? What have you just had, like, a little water and a little food? You haven't eaten for 40 days and 40 nights? Come with me, Frodo. You need rest before your venture if you must. If you go, you must. He laid his hand on the hobbit's shoulder in a friendly fashion, but Frodo felt the hand trembling with suppressed excitement.
Speaker 3:
[98:58] Frodo runs off and he puts on the ring and then Boromir, like, loses it.
Speaker 1:
[99:03] Yeah. Like falls down.
Speaker 3:
[99:05] Well, and like he starts like calling out, you know, it's after a miserable trickster, he shouted. Let me get my hands on you. Now I see your mind. You will take the ring to Sauron and sell us all. You've only waited your chance to leave us in the lurch. Curse you in all halflings to death and darkness, right? Just total derangement, like so far from anything that is like reasonable based on what he has actually experienced, but demonstrates like how this thing has like worked itself up in his mind. And then he falls down. He catching his foot on a stone. He fell sprawling and lay on his face for a while. He was still as if his own curse had struck him down. Then suddenly he wept. He rose and passed his hand over his eyes, dashing away the tears. What if I said, he cried, what have I done? Frodo, Frodo, come back, a madness took me, but it has passed, come back.
Speaker 2:
[100:01] You know, he, Boromir actually really genuinely kicked that stone and broke his toe. When the book was written, yeah.
Speaker 3:
[100:11] Yeah, Christopher Tolkien wrote that down.
Speaker 2:
[100:14] Yeah, he did. And then we get Frodo.
Speaker 1:
[100:19] He really winnie-ed that poo. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:
[100:24] Frodo goes up to the sickest place in the world. He goes up to this hilltop and there's this big flat circle with like big flagstones and a big battlement. And he sits up in this like throne, this carven throne, this ancient chair. Quote, he's feeling like a lost child that has clambered upon the throne of mountain kings.
Speaker 1:
[100:53] The seat of scene on Ammon Hen, the Hill of the Eye and the Men of Numenor.
Speaker 2:
[100:59] And he starts seeing some shit.
Speaker 1:
[101:01] He starts seeing some wild shit. I mean, it is like a big magical chair that you sit on and look at stuff with.
Speaker 2:
[101:09] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[101:09] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[101:11] Why is this, was this in the extended edition or whatever?
Speaker 1:
[101:14] No.
Speaker 2:
[101:15] This is so sick. I don't know how I haven't seen more art of this.
Speaker 3:
[101:19] Yeah. Well, it's like he, so to read it all out loud would take forever.
Speaker 2:
[101:24] And we're doing nothing but reading because this section, this chapter has so much good writing in it.
Speaker 3:
[101:30] Yeah, but it's like a, it's like a textual montage, I think, is how I would describe it.
Speaker 2:
[101:34] Yeah, that's right. Right, because he's getting little shots of all around the world, basically.
Speaker 1:
[101:41] The misty mountains were crawling like ant hills. Orcs were issuing out of a thousand holes. Under the bows of Mirkwood, there was deadly strife of elves and men and fell beasts. The land of the Bjornings was aflame. A cloud was over Moria. Smoke rose on the borders of Lorien. Horsemen were galloping on the grass of Rohan. Wolves poured from Isengard. From the havens of Harad, ships of war put out to sea. And out of the east, men were moving endlessly. Swordsmen, spearmen, bowmen upon horse. It just keeps going, keeps going, keeps going forever. Yeah. I love how many, by the way, we get so many damn updates on these Bjornings. In this reading. We learned about the Bjornings cakes that they make and give to the dwarves. Yeah. I guess their lands are aflame now. I don't really know what happened there.
Speaker 2:
[102:30] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[102:32] I mean, I think he's also seeing like forward, right?
Speaker 2:
[102:35] I guess so.
Speaker 1:
[102:36] I think it's all happening. I think it's all happening now.
Speaker 3:
[102:38] Oh, OK.
Speaker 1:
[102:40] I think it's like the next two books are coming quick.
Speaker 2:
[102:43] I guess so.
Speaker 3:
[102:43] That's true.
Speaker 2:
[102:43] Yeah. Then at last.
Speaker 1:
[102:46] Past the ruined bridges of Osgaleoth. That's already happened. We know.
Speaker 3:
[102:49] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[102:50] That's true.
Speaker 3:
[102:51] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[102:51] I think this is all occurring like today.
Speaker 2:
[102:53] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[102:55] The haunted mountains. And it looked upon Gorgoroth, the valley of terror in the land of Mordor. Darkness lay there under the sun, fire glowed amid the smoke, Mount Doom was burning and a great reek rising. Then at last his gaze was held. Wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant he saw it, barren duur, fortress of Sauron. All hope left him. And suddenly he felt the eye. There was an eye in the dark tower that did not sleep. He knew that it had become aware of his gaze. A fierce, eager will was there. It leaped towards him, almost like a finger, he felt it searching for him. Very soon it would nail him down, know just exactly where he was. Amon Law it touched. It glanced upon Tol Brandier. He threw himself from the seat, crouching, covering his head with his gray hood. He heard himself crying out, Never, never, or was it? Verily I come, I come to you. He could not tell. Then a flash from some other point of power there came to his mind another thought. Take it off, take it off, fool. Take it off, take off, the ring. Who the hell is that?
Speaker 2:
[104:09] That's the voice.
Speaker 1:
[104:11] The voice?
Speaker 2:
[104:13] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[104:15] If a voice pops into my mind and calls me a fool, it's game over for the voice.
Speaker 3:
[104:20] It's my high school gym teacher.
Speaker 2:
[104:24] That section, that bit you just read, Michael, it's just so sharp. And there's some stuff going on here.
Speaker 1:
[104:30] The paragraph that birthed a thousand metal albums.
Speaker 2:
[104:33] Yeah. Well, that section, that line, wall upon wall, battle upon battlement, black and measurably strong, a mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it. That's not a mode we have seen talking in, in this book, I don't think.
Speaker 3:
[104:50] That huge string of the positives there is, like he's not really done it, at least this extensively.
Speaker 2:
[104:58] Well, and certainly not after two pages of the other montage things, right? East where he looked all like, this is like the craft of it for me, right? At first he could see little. He seemed to be in a world of mist in which there were only shadows, colon. The ring was upon him. There and here, then here and there, the mist gave way and he saw many visions, colon, small and clear as if they were under his eyes upon a table and yet remote. There was no sound, only bright living images. And we get a slow hewing in bit by bit, right? Eastward he looked into wide uncharted lands, nameless plains and forests unexplored. So we're still reading full sentences at this point. And then bit by bit, we get to the stuff that you started on, right? Horsemen, just an image, right? The land of biornings aflame, horsemen galloping over the grass of Rohan, the gridding gates of Menes Morgil. We go from longer sentences to shorter phrases. And then eventually we get all the way to just, like you said, the string of a positives, these kind of the string of commas. And then like a piece of punctuation, like a period, Barad-dur, the fortress of Sauron, you know? It's just good.
Speaker 3:
[106:15] It rules, it rules. And then the, like, I mean, so then the question here, right? The never, never, right? That's what he hears in his head. Or was it, verily I come, I come to you? Because he's making the decision that he's going to, you know, lit out for Mordor. Like he's gonna run, he's gonna run straight across all this land into Mordor. He is in fact bringing the ring right where the ring wants to be.
Speaker 2:
[106:41] Yeah, which is of course the part of the Boromir's argument that we did not voice. Boromir is like, are you for real? You're gonna bring it to Sauron? How do you think that's gonna go? We'll have to find out.
Speaker 3:
[106:55] Yeah, we will. Seems hopeless to me.
Speaker 2:
[106:58] And so he, yeah, he says, it is, you know, we get him, neither the voice, capital V, nor the I, capital E, free to choose. And with one remaining instant in which to do so, he took the ring off his finger. He was kneeling in clear sunlight before the high seat. A black shadow seemed to pass like an arm above him. It missed Amon Hen and groped out west and faded. Then all the sky was clean and blue and birds sang in every tree.
Speaker 3:
[107:27] I love that too, right? This sense of like the momentary, like you don't even notice it at first, but then the lights come up a little bit and suddenly the birds are singing again.
Speaker 1:
[107:38] I think it's really sad that he can't trust Gimli.
Speaker 2:
[107:41] He can't? He says it. He says, I can't trust Gimli.
Speaker 1:
[107:44] He's like, I can trust Sam, Mary, Pippen and Schrader. That's it.
Speaker 2:
[107:50] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[107:50] Not Gimli. You shared all that stuff with Gimli. You don't think you can trust Gimli?
Speaker 2:
[107:54] Not Gimli, not Legolas.
Speaker 1:
[107:55] Not Legolas. I mean, I get not trusting Legolas. He's taken the elf lord's name in vain and stuff.
Speaker 2:
[108:03] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[108:05] But Gimli, they looked in the mirror mirror together.
Speaker 2:
[108:08] I know. It's sad.
Speaker 1:
[108:10] He took you to his like ancestral thing and didn't steal the ring from you there.
Speaker 2:
[108:13] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[108:14] Sad. But yeah, this is truly rad. And then Frodo leaves.
Speaker 2:
[108:21] Puts the ring on to sneak away again. I wouldn't have done that part. Maybe. But, man, you know, maybe I'm not. That's why I'm not Frodo.
Speaker 3:
[108:30] And then it scatters because everyone's like, wait a minute, Frodo's disappeared. Let's all go look for Frodo. And Aragorn's like, wait a minute, hold on. But Mary and Pippin are running into the woods going Frodo, Frodo.
Speaker 2:
[108:41] Yeah. Well, first, they're like talking and someone's like, well, what's Boromir think? And everyone's like, wait, where is Boromir? And Boromir comes back and he's like, I'm right here. Yeah, I went I went to go find Frodo and I told him he's you should probably come to Minas Tirith. That's what I said.
Speaker 1:
[108:59] I don't know.
Speaker 2:
[109:00] He got really mad over something. He must have put the ring on. I wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1:
[109:06] Yeah, I would never agree. I grew angry and he left me. He vanished. I've never seen such a thing happen before, though I have heard of it in tales. He must have put the ring on. I could not find him again. I thought he would return to you. Is that all you have to say? Said Aragorn, looking hard and not too kindly at Boromir. Yes, he answered. I will say no more yet.
Speaker 2:
[109:30] This is bad, cried Sam, jumping up. I don't know what this man has been up to. Why should Mr. Frodo put the thing on? He didn't ought to have. He didn't ought to have. He didn't ought to have. All right, Sam, that's fine. It's just not where I'm from. You say it different.
Speaker 1:
[109:47] He didn't ought to have put it on.
Speaker 2:
[109:48] Yeah, I get it. I know what he means.
Speaker 1:
[109:51] It's just not good.
Speaker 2:
[109:52] I don't think it's bad.
Speaker 1:
[109:53] It kind of feels like sometimes with Sam, it feels a little bit like Tolkien's being like, yeah, I know how these people talk.
Speaker 2:
[109:58] It is a little bit like that, but maybe that's how they talk. I'm not from there.
Speaker 1:
[110:02] They might. But it's in the same way of like all that oral history you can read from the 1930s in dialect. Yeah, you start going, come on now. Yeah, I guess we'll praise famous men now or whatever. Okay, fine.
Speaker 2:
[110:14] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[110:15] I know you know how they talk, but we're belaboring them a little bit here.
Speaker 2:
[110:20] So then they all run off to try to find him. And Sam is like, oh, I know where he went. That's actually not what he says. What he says is, whoa, Sam Gamgee, your legs are too short, so use your head. Which is sweet. Let me think it through. Okay, he's going to go. He's made up his mind at last to go where to? Off east. Not without Sam. Yes, without even his Sam. That's hard, cruel hard. Think if you can. He can't fly across rivers, and he can't jump waterfalls. He's got no gear. So he should go back to the boats, back to the boats, back to the boats, Sam, like lightning. And here we get him running into the river, flinging himself onto the bank, catching the boat.
Speaker 1:
[111:07] The way that you read that makes Sam sound like the way Tom Cruise talks, like in the Mission Impossible movies, when he's like really getting going and like defending American imperialism.
Speaker 3:
[111:18] Yeah, he's like working through it. Yeah, he's coming up with a plan to save Frodo right there.
Speaker 1:
[111:22] Yeah. Back to the boats.
Speaker 2:
[111:24] Back to the boats.
Speaker 1:
[111:25] That's what Tom Cruise's thing to do.
Speaker 2:
[111:26] Yeah. He's like thinking about all the options. He's in his like, you know, Ethan Hunt doesn't have a mind palace, but he talks like he does sometimes.
Speaker 1:
[111:35] Yes.
Speaker 3:
[111:37] It's like the Sam Gamgee mind palace like explodes around him. We see like the Hall of Rope over to the left there. The whole wing dedicated to Bill the Pony.
Speaker 2:
[111:46] Yeah. Oh, and he goes over and he almost he says he's drowned.
Speaker 3:
[111:54] You know, save me, Mr. Frodo, I'm drowned. For those not reading along, it much is made of the fact that hobbits in general don't like water or boats. Yeah. And that is that is Sam's deal entirely.
Speaker 2:
[112:08] And simply by reappearing here, you know, he's he's convinced Frodo to let him come with. Also, this is all in the middle of all this, I guess maybe just before it. But I do love the bit where Mary and Pippen are like, you know, he he should know by now that that even though he can't bring himself to ask us to go with him, that we would never leave him, you know, and that that, you know, and if we can't stop him, we'll go with him. It's such a good rerun of the, the conspiracy stuff in the very beginning of the book, you know, and get thinking on them boat. Now they're going to request, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[112:48] To the land of shadow, shouldering their burdens, they set off seeking a path that would bring them over the gray hills of Eamon Mule, Mule, and down into the land of shadow. And here's 40 maps to look at.
Speaker 2:
[113:03] I can't wait to see what that boar mirror gets up to when it all comes out, you know?
Speaker 1:
[113:09] You know, there's a lot of opinions about whether or not the Jackson movies kind of correct the ending of this book. We'll know what that is in our next bonus episode, actually.
Speaker 2:
[113:21] True.
Speaker 1:
[113:22] Our next bonus episode will be The Fellowship of the Ring because we've now finished it.
Speaker 3:
[113:25] Hooray.
Speaker 1:
[113:26] I think I like this more than I like the ending of The Fellowship of the Ring film.
Speaker 2:
[113:30] Interesting.
Speaker 1:
[113:31] Because it brings like the first two chapters of The Two Towers into The Fellowship of the Ring. Happens pretty quick. But I think I like this more. I think I like more like everyone's standing around, you know, the like they've all got like a little like sim bubble over their head. Like Boromir's Plumbob has turned yellow. And he's just got like inarticulate rage up there. You know, just like little shout lines happening or whatever. Mary Pippen, of course, got hungry. You know, everyone's just kind of milling around like their AIs broken a little bit. And then Sam and Frodo are like off doing an adventure. And I think that's a great place for the book to end.
Speaker 2:
[114:14] It is.
Speaker 1:
[114:14] I understand maybe why a movie wouldn't.
Speaker 2:
[114:19] How how much time was there between this and Two Towers being published?
Speaker 1:
[114:23] I think they came out all at the same time, right?
Speaker 3:
[114:25] No, no, no, there was it was like a year between the first and the second book. And then the second and third books all came out within like six months of each other. I say all of them. There were many.
Speaker 1:
[114:36] Was that different in the original, like in the English publication versus the US publication?
Speaker 2:
[114:44] I don't know.
Speaker 3:
[114:46] Now that I'm saying that.
Speaker 2:
[114:48] Okay, I'm seeing again on the scroll.
Speaker 3:
[114:53] Oh, I had it wrong.
Speaker 2:
[114:54] Yeah, that the first one was published, that that Fellowship is published in July 54. Two Towers is November 54. And then Return of the King is October 55. So you had it like flipped a little bit.
Speaker 1:
[115:11] Yeah, you got to get them hooked with the first two.
Speaker 2:
[115:15] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[115:15] And keep them hooked for the last one.
Speaker 3:
[115:17] People will spend that entire year thinking, is the King coming back?
Speaker 1:
[115:24] I hope the King comes back.
Speaker 3:
[115:29] What would really tie this all off is if the King returned.
Speaker 1:
[115:33] Gosh, I hope the King returns.
Speaker 2:
[115:36] I heard he's back.
Speaker 1:
[115:39] I do, I saw him look in here. Because they all came out in England, and then they came out in a different publication thing, right? In the US. Okay, so October in the US., it went October 54, April 55, Return of the King, January 56.
Speaker 3:
[116:04] Huh.
Speaker 1:
[116:05] So yeah, that's even weirder, honestly. So like six months, and then nine months. Interesting. Tolkien wrote that the title The Two Towers can be left ambiguous. This is a thing that is worth holding on to. This is something that was pitched to me by a friend of the show, Jerry, that I had never thought about. When we read The Two Towers, you should think, what are the two towers being referred to?
Speaker 2:
[116:36] Okay.
Speaker 1:
[116:36] Because it is not clear.
Speaker 2:
[116:38] Interesting. Okay.
Speaker 1:
[116:39] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[116:40] I remember turning this over in my head during my first reading, as a matter of fact.
Speaker 1:
[116:44] Yeah, I think I've been poisoned definitely. And like, I guess, probably the first time I read the book, I didn't even think about what the hell the Two Towers might be, but in subsequent readings, I've been definitely poisoned by the films, which make it pretty clear what the Two Towers are. But apparently in the book, way less clear. Interesting. And I find that delightful. It also means that the book could have been titled Some Towers.
Speaker 2:
[117:07] Oh, there's more towers.
Speaker 3:
[117:09] I see.
Speaker 1:
[117:10] Oh, there's like a lot more towers.
Speaker 3:
[117:11] Of course.
Speaker 2:
[117:11] Of course. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:
[117:14] All these locations. And the way that The Fellowship of the Ring could have been called Some Ruins.
Speaker 3:
[117:21] See, you build three towers and you label them one, two and five. And then everyone will be spending the rest of Middle Earth's history trying to figure out where the other two towers are.
Speaker 1:
[117:31] You unleash them on the third age.
Speaker 3:
[117:33] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[117:35] And then, you know, people are gonna be looking for them. Yeah. Well, I like The Fellowship of the Ring statement.
Speaker 2:
[117:43] Me too.
Speaker 3:
[117:44] I had a good I had a good time.
Speaker 2:
[117:45] Yeah, a great time. I really did.
Speaker 1:
[117:47] Great.
Speaker 2:
[117:49] Simple.
Speaker 3:
[117:50] I'm looking forward to the rest. It is striking to me, I guess, upon review, like not that this feels slight, but really like not a whole lot happens in Lord of the Rings. Now that I think about it, I mean, a lot happens, but also a lot doesn't happen. It's wild that we're a third of the way through this thing, I guess, is my point.
Speaker 1:
[118:09] I mean, they they mostly just kind of went down a river. They met up with a guy, they met up with several guys they already know, and they went down a river. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah, basically one chapter of any of these witcher books I'm reading covers more territory and ground. But I do, I mean, I think it's great. I'm really interested in how that accelerates in the next book. Yeah. Because to my memory, we're going to a lot of places and a lot of different areas with a lot of different people over a longer period of time, I think, in the next book. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's my memory of it. And so I do want to think about that in relationship to the time scale stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[118:57] Well, well, he already mentioned that the next bonus episode will be on The Fellowship of the Ring theatrical cut. So you can get that if you go to patreon.com/rangetouch, and you'll get all of the other previous bonus episodes as well, such as the one just before Fellowship on 2001's The One, starring Jet Li. Had a great time talking about that. And you would also get all of the bonus episodes for things like Just King Things, the show where Cameron and I read the books of Stephen King in publication order. We're in the final stretch of that, Just FYI, if you're not a Just King Things listener, we're within like, I'd say, like 15 books of the end of that particular journey, which means that we have a whole lot of bonus episodes about various Stephen King adaptations.
Speaker 2:
[119:47] If you're already supporting us at Patreon, thank you so much, patreon.com/rangetouch, because even though the show like this one is free and anyone can listen to it, it takes a lot of time to read these books, do the research, set everything aside. So thank you so much for supporting us. That's what lets us keep doing it here at RangeTouch, the Patreon, patreon.com/rangetouch. If you're already supporting us, and again, thank you so much. You want to help out in other ways, you can tell people about our network, about these shows. We only spread by word of mouth, so that really does help. Let your Tolkien-loving friends in on the journey that we're undertaking. They're both making together this year. And then you can also let Total Strangers know how much you love the show by reading us, or reading us, leaving us reviews on your podcast platform of choice. And as long as that review is five stars and also funny, there's a chance that Cameron might read it out loud on air.
Speaker 1:
[120:49] That's right. Quick thing about the bonus episode before I read this. The bonus episode of The Fellowship, The Theatrical Cut, I got a nice message about this from a listener. I don't have it right in front of me, so I can't read from it. But a nice message that was basically like, hey, which Theatrical Cut are you doing? Uh-oh. Because there are three separate transfers that have been done and they're all bad in some way. Now, I know that that is what is true for the fandom. I know that's what's true for serious cinephiles. But I've done my research, meaning that I've seen all of them. And in fact, I've seen all of them within the past like two years. I gotta tell you, they're not different. You're fine. You'll be fine. Watch any of them, you're good to go. But not the extended version. Just not the extended version. Just watch a Theatrical Cut. Getting a DVD is really easy. The Theatrical Cuts are all on HBO, I wanna say, on the HBO streaming platform, whatever that is called now.
Speaker 2:
[122:00] It's HBO Max again. The return of the king, baby.
Speaker 1:
[122:04] That's right. The old ways are the best ways. And I think that one is the one that was done for the 4K, which people got real strong, like I think, color issues with. Again, I've watched it, it's fine. You're not missing a huge amount here. But if you're really specific and you care about stuff, they are all critiqued pretty heavily in different ways. This is from Ray Gore, an amazing podcast. I can only assume the Fellowship took Pippin over Glorfindel for his free throw game. That's funny.
Speaker 2:
[122:42] Yeah, shut up.
Speaker 1:
[122:43] That's good. That's good. I like it. It's hard to follow up on a joke and like make it better. It's like a skill. Good job. You did it. Yeah. There's also a good one here from Catzakimbo. It's mostly just like a story that they're listening to this and Lord of the Rings while being sick in bed. But apparently they fell asleep when Coat and when Smaug died. And so they had to go backwards because he dies so fast. Leave us a review on any platform of choice. Might be hard to leave a review on Spotify right now, because if you listen to this in the first 24 hours it would be up, you probably got to hear it. If not, you might not have. As I told Michael earlier, I'm in like hour 15 of trying to get our stuff reinstated. The chances of us doing it are like 50-50, I would say. We're in real two-face mode on this one.
Speaker 2:
[123:41] Please, two-face, save us. I think that's what they say to him, right?
Speaker 1:
[123:45] I believe in Harvey Dent. I love two-face. Two-face is great. Two-face is so good. What a good. I like Batman a lot, like big picture. Of course, I could beat him up because I'm real and he is fake. Could you beat up Two-face? Unfortunately, I could, but I wouldn't probably. Okay. I think it's not cool to beat up Two-face. But yeah, so I like Batman, but I got a real ranking of the villains, right? I'm not a penguin guy at the end of the day. I like when Danny DeVito played the penguin. That was a unique and good experience, but just big picture. I'm not a penguin guy. But I think universally, I'm a Two-face guy. I was listening to the episode on Arkham Asylum, the Grant Morrison, Dave McKean comic that Iron Age Comics did recently. And they reminded me, because I haven't read that comic in probably 15 years or something like that. They reminded me that the therapy that Two-face goes through or is going through in that comic, which is that his therapist take away the coin and give him a six-sided die. And then he's worked up to the e-ching, I think, by the time the comic starts. And so it's still a finite amount of stuff. Yeah, but it's getting him away from buying everything and going towards, he used to do some interpretive work. Yeah, that's right. But it's not working either. It's like making him, I think he's experiencing catatonia at the beginning of that, right? So he's just like...
Speaker 2:
[125:16] Choice paralysis.
Speaker 1:
[125:17] Yes, yeah, that's what's happening, right? You know, it's not every time that Grant Morrison makes a decision that I'm like, yeah, but that's one that I think is, I think that one's quite good. They do reveal in the episode that that came from one of Grant Morrison's friends, it was someone else's idea that is explicitly put in the comic. So that's what it is. Anyway, Two Face, you know what? We're holding it down for Two Face here. Michael? I think it's time for the poem. It's poem time, baby.
Speaker 2:
[125:47] Amid these stacks so straight and tall with tomes lined to end, how are you to find your way? It's Shelved By Genre, friend.