THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - CHAPTER 6 - The Old Forest I do not remember any ponies from the films. In truth, I remember them like one would imagine a standard adventuring group who has a Bag Of Holding or three, but do not, in fact, have a Bag of Holding. Aka, where do you keep your stuff. Aah, the fabled Brandybuck back door into the forest. 20 boonbux that this BREACH OF SECURITY will be fatal to this place. At least it has a lockable iron gate, even if it isn't manned. You guys are going to need a compass, because I'm fairly certain the paths are made by the trees moving out of the way, and they will confound you because they're assholes. Also, I knew the trees were capable of picketing the Hedge. They just got burned for it. Yknow, you guys could ask nicely if the trees could let you through. Yes, onto the hilltops where you can check your path, but will also be visible for fuckin miles. Wonder if the trees can feel the Ring, and are refraining from messing with the Hobbits too much for that reason, or because of the rising sun. Might that the river valley is the most eerie place as the forest draws its water from it, and it is the river that carries the strangeness? Wonder what that would say about the folks up- and downriver of that valley. And then they just go and wait for over an hour in the most visible place of that damn mist soup. aaaand the forest starts fucking with them for real. something that makes them sleepy, but they had to go deeper into the trap, and will now have to survive a night in a forest that doesnt really like them. dudes, just tell the damn trees that if they don't let you through, there'll be trouble searching for them, and that trouble will tear down the whole damn forest just for a piece of bling. carnivorous trees. i like. See, the tree can talk. you just need to ask nicely. also, tom bombadil, you meter is off by a syllable each. fuckin spirits, man. not even due to the spoilers, but it's pretty obvious tom bombadil is a spirit of sorts. not in the ghost sense, but in the anthropomorphic manifestation sense. the forest respects him. (and that was when i had just finished reading his song, before he started talking.) he's a bit fey. even more than the elves. a lot more than the elves. too bad it's rude to refuse food when offered hospitality, but eating food from fey people in their magic abodes in their magic forests tends to cost you a few centuries... what happened to the ponies? ah well, they'll magically show up at tom bombadil's house. also sounds like it's tom who's making the paths. always somewhat different, wonder if he goes down to the hedge some times, there's paths there. but no one there knows him, i think? or merry woulda recognized him. night forest, night forest, night forest (although my night forest mythology is based on the german forests, not the british ones. no less magical though, and no less likely to up and eat people.) Honestly, as someone somewhat familiar with the old German Fair Folk stories, that house? Is dangerous. Very, very dangerous.
There was a ginormous mushroom field in an episode of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, but those were psilocybin.
I mean, that sounds like hobbits. also holy shit i didn't catch the pun until it popped up in autocorrect when i quoted this, A+
Ok so I planned on doing this drunk, but a bottle of cheap lychee wine and homemade burritos equal me maybe being tipsy. I fail at this. ANYWAYS. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - CHAPTER 7 - In the house of Tom Bombadil Maan these books-of-the-films really expand on the worldbuilding. I wonder how much of this is from the notes of what they couldn't cram into the films! Good job whoever wrote those, I hope they become famous with their own book series some day. /bricked A low room? For whom? Because Tom has been described as somewhat taller than the Hobbits, and if it's low for them, Tom would need to stoop. "Here long yellow hair rippled down her shoulders;" Is this a typo. Did I find a typo in an 80 year old book. Or is this some kind of weird grammar bullshit. "Here, you can see really long hair, don't do that, it tangles like a motherfucker" Aaayup that's a fairy. She seems nice. -squinty eyes- (yes I know Tolkien was like the father of "yeah no the fair folk are totally ok people and not out to eat you, bear with me here", but still. Of course they're afraid, Goldberry (I was going to make a Gen 2 Pokemon Joke here, but I couldn't find a good picture), it's almsot night in a place they know is really really dangerous at night, and they found a house with two people who very nonchalantly live in said really, really dangerous place and don't even seem to care, because they eat said really, really dangerous place for fuckin breakfast. Which makes you two the most dangerous beings around. It's called self-preservation instinct. Aye, Frodo, that's a Magical Being TM, and one of those who might as well be staying because they're like cockroaches and won't be run off. The place belongs to them, y'all else are just temporary tenants. Wait, she sang about herself? Also apparently introduction time has to wait. Man, now I wanna write a work that has introductions as a central theme, and you can follow character growth and the progress of the journey by how the focus characters introduce themselves. Thank you, Goldberry, because I think your explanation explains exactly nothing. Tells me a lot though, because I'm familiar with the terminology of "Thing is." In KSBD terms, Tom Bombadil is a King. The Hidden King, maybe? Eternal and Liminal sound strange in that context, although they might fit a bit better. The Singing King? The Incarnated King? My brain keeps trying to interject "The Wandering King", but he keeps to this patch of land, iirc? Unless Bilbo met him somewhere else and he's just wherever the fuck he wants to be, wife and cottage included. I need a more sesquipedalian word for "constant", because he's somewhat of a constant of the world, but "The Constant King" sounds, quite frankly, stupid. More things that I've also seen in KSBD: drinking coupled with singing instead of talking, but that was during a drinking contest with an ebon devil. Yay, more prophetic dreams. I'm guessing the winged creature is one of the eagles, and the person with staff and white hair is Gandalf? Everyone had weird dreams. Sam slept like a log. So those two want something from our hobbits, and are thus delaying their departure. Fair folk, man. -reads on- Oooor just laundry day. Ok so there's exposition here, but we're not getting it, even though we're getting so much else? Rude, Tolkien, rude. GIVE ME MY FORESHADOWING, DAMNIT. Really, if this were the bible, and it is, in some places, only marginally easier to read, we'd get a full genealogy. Item #3 on the "This is an Old Fairy House" list: Wonky passage of time and lessened hunger. Wonder if y'all will age a hundred years upon exiting as well. But at least the Dark Riders can't reach you here, because the place is liminal AF. Wonder what Tom would make of the ring, and if he could contain it. Considering today's track record of questions, I might just get that answered next paragraph. The Darkness came from the outside, huh. They're not hindering each other because they're basically married and know each other well enough to not bonk into each other like goofs, except when they want to. I don't relly care what these people are wearing, and Tom keeps sounding like a fashion disaster. Considering the Hobbit's much-repeated fondness of eating, I'm fairly impressed Tom Bombadil was able to make them forget it for a while. Hm, so either the ring doesn't mind going over to Tom, or he's done something to at least temporarily fuck with the 'not giving it up' compulsion, huh. Ok, so not quite next paragraph and not quite an explanation on what it does to him, just that she shrugs off the compulsion effect, and can see through the Hobbitibility. "Dodge the barrows and mind your own business" Hmmmm is this going where I'm guessing it's going
When you're a mysterious spirit of the land living in a house in the middle of the spooky ancient forest that hates humanity, you don't usually have to worry about the fashion police coming knocking, okay. :::PPP
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - CHAPTER 8 - Fog on the barrow-downs Place descriptions, yay. Sounds like a photo opportunity of twenty. Man, imagine Frodo with Instagram, liveblogging his journey. "How do they keep finding me, I'm not location-tagging. Am I location-tagging?" - "Stop taking pictures of landmarks you dunce" The barrow-downs sound like some sort of fractal stonehenge type of deal. #lol Guys, remember what happened last time you walked around in the mist? You might wanna set up your tent and hope the night passes you by. Also how the hell did you sleep through the whole second half of the day from noon until sunset? (Ok, that depends on the time the sun sets, But even my forced naps never go beyond 2 hours) Y'all also might wanna hold onto a rope so you don't get separated. Yes, this went where I thought it would. Fucking barrow-wights. Haven't got the foggiest idea how this coulda happened. Although it does get the Deus Ex Machina of being able to call on Tom Bombadil out of the way. "Till the world is mended", huh. And then he goes and plunders it. Ah well, I suppose someone like Tom can do that... But if they lost all their clothes, where did the damn Ring end up that Frodo habitually keeps in his trouser pocket? Tom decides he needs to hobbitsit a little longer. Ah, Tom Bombadil is bound by the natural borders of the land that gav rise to him. Also, it occurrs to me that we are now out of the part of the Shire depicted on the map, and soon out of the Shire proper. And they remembered the travel name, good. Although they might want to invest in travel names for all of them, if it could be known that the Misters Brandybuck, Gamgee, and Took are friends of Mr Baggins, and that if it were be known they are out and about, they might just know where Mr Baggins has ventured.
Nah nah nah, see, it's Merry and Pippin who liveblog on Instagram. And Twitter. And Facebook. Everywhere, really. Frodo posts rambly meditations about travel and adventure and leaving home to his Wordpress, and even though he never technically posted any specific details, it's under his real name and everyone reading his blog could tell when he was going to leave, like, weeks in advance by how increasingly maudlin he sounded. He then posted a poem about hiking, complaints about camping, a poem about elves, a long rambly post about the fears, sins, and regrets of youth and the forgiveness of all of the above, a comment about how nice warm baths are, and a big long thing about the hostility of wilderness, then dropped off the face of the internet for several days before coming back to post that he really wishes he hadn't lost his favorite pants. Sam just follows gardening memes on Facebook.
Since my birthday and the flu have passed, and I still have booze, I think it's time for me to tipsy-read LOTR again. Fun fact: drain-cleaner level cheap sake becomes drinkable if you mix it with cassis juice and lime juice. Sake with cherryy juice is also ok, but pomegranate syrup, maple syrup, and coconut don't help it any. And I should probably put an alcohol mention in the tags. See, I usually don't do alcohol, especially not alone. Wonder if I could drum up a few of the big guys, get their alcohol recs, and then do that thing where you read shit out loud while you're drunk. I know that's got a name. I just can't remember it. ANYWAYS. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - CHAPTER 9 - At the sign of the Prancing Pony The fuck kinda bar name is that. Thefuck, hobbits. Who ever let you name shit. Yes I know it's an inn, but still. The Prancing Pony. Sounds like one of those dickhead beasts that have dickhead riders who need to get acquaintanced with the dirt, face first. With gusto. Which doesn't even closely have the flow and impact of MIT SCHMACKES. Mit Schmackes inn Dreck, Fresse vor. And I haven't even read the first sentence of the chapter proper yet. JUST THE DAMN TITLE. Rejected name for Bree: Assfuck of nowhere Like, this is literally the ass end of the world. You can probably smell it. Or is that just the ponies? And then there's the Shire, which is even farther out, so far that it's the leg end of nowhere. Maybe that's what made the fellowship walk out. Because they're from the leg part. Bree is THE LAND OF THE FREE. So's the Shire, but the Shire is like, bible belt, whereas Bree looks like the bible belt, but is more like, idk, not New York but maybe Berlin, if Berlin were in the USA. The Bree people are like weed. Maybe they're also so chill because they smoke it. Oh, no, wait, the Men keeps being capitalized so it's like, not HibbotsHobbits, but humans. Still tiny tho in comparison to the normal humans so maybe they're all secretly half-hobbit or some shit. Or some neanderthalian branch of the humans that involved into homo sapiens hobbitensis and homo sapiens breeensis. So the Rangers are basically what got made into D&D rangers, like fucking template 1:1 YOINK this is now a thing you can be in D&D, but really they're probably just some kind of unshaven hippie druid kind of bullshit. No one knows where they came from, but they like, set up shop. Possibly because of all the weed. "Eeey I heard you got the good stuff praise the earth praise the sky praise the stars praise the sun--" "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT I DON'T UNDERSTAND PLEASE LEAVE" They're like literally the weird af hippie uncle who lives out of a van that comes around every year in summer and offers everyone but you brownies, smells strange, and tells the weirdest fuckin stories. WE DON'T LIKE THESE PEOPLE OVER YONDER. THEY LIVE ACROSS THE RIVER. THEY'RE WEIRD. "My name is Brandybuck" "Like the other five hundred souls living across that river?" "....Yeah" "Go on through" Frodo, I'm halfways convinced that one of the damn riders got there before you, because y'all, you know, CAMPED OUT WITH OLE BOMBADIL, and asked for some Hobbit named Baggins. They's weird folk, the Bagginses, one came round here an age ago, me granpappy told me, with dwarves and such, and slew a dragon and came back with riches. Them hobbitfolk live long, but me granpappy was young then and is dead now, so I don't think that Baggins is still 'round. That's one hell of a difficulty slipping away, if everyone in the tavern already knows each other and is actually interested in newcomers. I thought the Breefolk minded their own business, but I guess the innkeep's such a gossip that he needs to... Frodo, you might've wanted to think of bringing a notepad. Breefolk. There is LITERALLY NOTHING except for your four flyshit sized villages. If the dwarves go north into the overgrown lands and settle there, there will be LITERALLY NO PROBLEMS. Strider? (If I were any less drunk and low on battery, I'd look for the image/flash in which Dave puts the SBURB machinery all over Rose's house, and she just yells STRIIIIIIIIIIIIIDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER) Strider be like "the fuck that guy is an Underhill, he looks like a... whatshisface... anyways not like an Underhill" (the joke being that Frodo is a mutt) "Yknow he's gonna blab out your secret in three seconds, you might wanna do something" "Im gonna... I'm gonna... JUMP ON A TABLE" "Dude it's not Thursday. That's a Thursday thing." I like this song. It's got a nice rhythm. Also sounds like Disney nabbed from it for Beauty and the Beast. Goddamnit Frodo. Keep that damn ring off your finger. No one likes you that much. (Maybe except for Sam) (But I think he has better taste in jewellery) ALSO WAY TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM YOURSELVES I hope tomorrow these idiots will be so hungover that they'll accept a "No I totally backflipped over the remains of the table and behind them" because they were SO FUCKIN DRUNK. As the old adage goes: PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN
I personally always read it as like a gay bar kinda name. Maybe it's just that prancing has that connotation when applied to humans :p
I was about to say, yeah, I've seen a lot of jokes about the Hobbits having accidentally wandered into the local gay bar.
Man up until now, this story has just been "Well that didn't work: The Book by Frodo Baggins, I mean, Underhill, no Bagginses here" THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - CHAPTER 10 - Strider It seems our selection of emoji has increased, but they're still not sorted. Travesty. Thank fuck Frodo is finally displaying half a lick of sense and not just going "oh hey quest giver npc who wants to tag along, what could possibly go wrong" (The answer to that, classically, being "Everything.", which usually happens anyways, but if you're just prepared enough you can have someone pat you on the back and say "Hey, it's not your fault, you tried your best.", instead of the ghost of said someone standing at the foot of your bed and saying "Yo, that literally shady dude in Bree? Stupid idea, fuckin stupid idea.") Strider, just pack the grimdark emo bullshit away, that's so 1990's and you don't want to be a hipster, now, do you. I gotta say, that is one hell of a job interview. I got the feeling that someone's been eavesdropping. Wonder if there's more delays coming. Fellers about who heard they're leaving on the morrow, or just who close down on the roads the moment they heard. Huh. Sounds like Butterbur is one of Gandalf's, that was his idea. HAH I knew it a whole 2 phrases before it was confirmed. You guys need photography. THREE MONTHS. YOU SAID YOU'D DO IT TOMORROW. WHAT THE HELL. THREE . MONTHS. If you wanna escape shit like that, you either gotta be way ahead of it, or in an unassuming capsule in the middle where no one's looking. GANDALF TOLD YOU NOT TO ASK QUESTIONS YOU FUCKWIT Lookere I don't trust this Strider fellow none even though I theoretically know who he is and that he's one a the ~good guys~, but damn, at his point Id team up with him on the old thing of "you got something i want, i got something you want, let's be professional about this" Ok so the letter starts on the next page, but I'm willing to bet, before I turn this page, that it says something about how Strider might be an ally, and everything will thus turn out alright. Ok? Ok. Turning the page. Fuckin knew it. Why is there a poem there. Why. Though I do like the phrasing of "Not all those who wander are lost", and all the other lines. Also omg I phrased the "and everything will thus turn out alright" as snarky commentary from my side, but it was in there as well. Motherfuck. I really need to be drunk to read this. ... The crownless again shall be king, huh I am reminded of a Nightwish song On further inspection, Nightwish remains pretentious goth metal without nerdy influence Unlike Blind Guardian Ok so I remember Strider, then hella unnamed and just some dark figure that did not have the metaphorical stench of a Rider slipping through the shadows, but at this point I fear that I'lll need to reread LOTR to catch foreshadowing once I'm through, and I kind of already don't want to.
Yes of course, vague prophecy, translates into perfectly rhyming english LET'S HAVE MORE THIS SHOULD'VE BEEN AN EPIC POEM AT THIS POINT I'm not fucking drunk enough for this SILENCE I WAS REFERRING TO CROWNLESS
