Look, Tolkein didn't really have a lot of leeway. Hobbits and dwarves and elves sing all the damn time. Given the text he was given to translate, Tolkein could either cut out valuable cultural insight into both the world and the narrators, or he could interrupt every third page with a song. It's not Tolkein's fault that the people who wrote the Red Book all broke into song at the drop of a hat.
Alternatively because Frodo and Bilbo wrote the two big stories in it that we know of we just happened to be subject to the two weird shits that do that all the time and who felt a need to record cool ones they heard. Little did we know but the Bagginses had a kickin' band.
Basically every Tolkien adaptation ever skips past or speeds through large chunks of early Fellowship. It took Tolkien a while to find a good balance between "Hobbits walking across the landscape very slowly while looking at things and occasionally singing" and "actual plot happening." I will personally fight Peter Jackson on behalf of the entire House of Denethor.
I love that the TES art you mention is the Lusty Argonian Maid and not the million other books you can read. (I'm still mad they TOOK THE PICTURES OUT of the Skyrim version of The Firmament and I'm similarly mad that Legend of the Dragonborn, which added the porn back to The Real Barenziah [as separate books, The Real Barenziah (unabridged) with bookcase displays for both series] didn't put the pictures back and make a display for it like they did for The Aetherium Wars and others. I liked my pretty constellations! But that's for another thread.) Re: the movies, the part that makes me irrationally mad is the complete and utter lack of TOM FUCKING BOMBADIL. Tiny!Laz fucking loved Bombadil and Goldberry. Weird fae shit peeking at the larger scope of the world has always been my jam.
Bombadil is great. The best bit being that Tolkien admitted that he serves no real narrative importance. That is not his importance. Thematically? Aesthetically? He's paramount there. Plot wise though? Not so much. That is, in a way, the point of him. Part of it. also i mean why would i not pick lusty argonian maid that is obviously the best book
And Peter Jackson's reason for cutting him out of the movie was literally "he doesn't progress the plot" no but he's still important goddammit. It is! It has a sequel too. Damn hard to find in game though. Also a spin-off (The Sultry Argonian Bard) and LotD adds displays for all of them and adds (the writings of) a fan club
oh man, i remember little me loving the songs. what do people do when they wander around fantasyland and have either nothing or something important to do? they sing! perfectly logical. and the entire tom bombadil sequence is just goode. petition to rename the books "professor tolkien's fantasyland musical badtime frolick"
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - CHAPTER 3 - Three is company "You have to go ASAP" - "I need to check the stove! Did I cancel the milk? The windows need repaired, what if there's a storm --" Frodo, if you're at least preparing and not just planting your heels... Honestly, with all these gossips it'll either be vanishing or telling everyone you left, results are the same. Frodo, just tell them that you're going to visit some family or leave on one of your nature hikes and just don't return. Can't be that hard. "Towards danger, but not too rashly, nor too straight" - HobbitExpress here with a delivery for one Mr Sauron, please sign here. Cozy place you've got here, a volcano as floor heating system? Would be a shame if something happened. Oh no, I tripped, terribly sorry, please don't kill me--" So basically he needs to confound his enemies. Elrond... Half... elven...? I think I missed something thar Omg Frodo. You couldn't have made the "Yo I'm leaving" any more obvious? Oh, social subterfuge, no one would know if he never arrived, except the Brandybucks. "Frodo did not offer her any tea" ruuuude ::D And they're leaving the washing-up to Lobelia lol So, someone's inquiring, and their voice can't be made out. The answers are shrill. Obviously not a hobbit. Too bad the trail hasn't long since gone cold, although the opportunity to slip away before getting there. "I wonder if I shall ever see that valley again?" Congratulations, this along with Gandalf's ramblings about resting easy with the image of the Shire as Safe Haven have elevated it to Doomed Hometown Status. It will burn and the hobbits will be slaughtered because enslaving them isn't worth it, Sauron has stuff with higher horsepower in his command. This is all your fault. You monster. Pippin, RUDE. Ok so while I can acknowledge that Frodo and his party are troublemakers and accustomed to sneaking about, but the whole racial stealth thing is at most a bonus and not an autocrit. Frodo. Gandalf told you about the big bad wizard who was only barely banished by a lot of very powerful people, who is now looking for you and your bling, and you heard an unintilleligible stranger harass one of your neighbours about you, and you're not feeling the danger yet? What the fuck is wrong with you. How to wake Pippin up: Manhandle him out of his cocoon. Also, be nicer to poor Sam and don't make him prepare a bath in the middle of the wilderness, what the hell. The road is Life. Very rewarding, yes, but it ends with Death, and you can't go back. Also, song! Nach dem Essen sollst du ruhn Oder tausend Schritte tun (Rest after eating, or walk one thousand steps. The hobbits obviously chose resting) Gandalf has a cart, you idiots Ringwraith, ringwraith So the Ring was trying to do what, exactly? Send out a signal 'heyyy my powers are being used right HERE'? What kind of flaky GPS bullshit is this, that it needs the Invisibility App running to do that? You'd think if you didn't want to lose something 5ever, you'd give the damn thing a decent tracker and not whatever the fuck this is. Sauron, you're a terrible villain. Do you need to track your own position while you're invisible. IS THAT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. Sam's memory to the rescue! Also, hissing, and spoke funny. Really, Gaffer. Really. Well he ain't no dwarf for sure. Don't think there's many more roads from Hobbiton to Bucklebury than the one you're taking. And he missed you, too. "Your talk of sniffing riders with invisible noses has unsettled me" NO FUCKING SHIT SHERLOCK Hiding tree, hiding tree. Man, I'm still sore that was a one-time thing in Digimon for like, the second episode, and they never referenced it again. It's been like 15 years, but I'm still mad. "...and they no longer listened for the sound of hoofs" BIG MISTAKE "Yo let's hide off the roadside so we're not easily spotted" "Yes and also LET'S SING A SONG" Wait, a hobbit song that talks about passing by nuts and apples and food? What kind of strange parallel universe did this come from Elves Ex Machina inc So the Dark Rider came crawling towards them, sure that they weren't just squinting at the ground and looking at the tracks you made? And the elves have officially joined bollywood. Song's a bit somber. High elves? So there's more than one type of those? Or, maybe, Frodo, with their obsessing over their past, they haven't forgotten all about their damn history and their songs. Like, you know, the hobbits. The elves are glimmering under the moonlight? So they're like, either the proto-meyer-vampire, or nightlights. Or both. Wonder how they deal with insomnia. "Yo Elrond brother I love you and all but can you dial your moonshine down so I can fucking sleep" And of course one of them knows Frodo. How tho, I thought Frodo had never left the Shire that far. There was no talk of chilling with the elves and their moonshine. Tolkien you can't just pull shit like that out of your ass. (... On second thought, I'm not going to continue that metaphor) Ah, they're just plain arrogant creeps. Gotcha. "Can we hang out" - "Nah hobbits are dumb. But hey what are you doing here anyways" Instant friends just speak elvish, so they know they need to watch their tongues since you obviously understand it. Also come here in the middle while we hobbitnap you. Seriously you idiots, you've seen Frodo with Bilbo from miles away but you missed dark riders right under your noses? What kind of sad excuses for snoops are you. Sheesh you asses let them sleep. Omg. The elves are fucking hippies, but like, arrogant hippies. So probably more along the line of a hard-drinking frat party. There must be weed involved, I swear. Seriously, difficulties remembering? Strange sights and delicious foods? There's drugs involved here. "So yeah I know what these are but I'm not gonna tell you. Nope. Not even something you can do to protect yourself from them. Also I'm mopey and we don't caaaare about anyone else" I do not like the elves.
Elrond has a human father and an Elvish mother. He chose to be an Elf. His brother Elros chose to be a human. Elros' line is that which from Aragorn is descended. This is Kind Of A Big Deal. Also the Ring is consciously attempting to get back and yes it being worn makes that easier to manage. Partly because it allows the Ring Wraiths to home in on you and partly because it makes you more susceptible to its evil. Though simply possessing it begins to corrupt you wearing it frequently and using it makes it even worse. It also doesn't really make everyone invisible from what I understand. Or invisible at all honestly? It's more like...you're now visible from the "other side" so to speak. Which is why the Ring Wraiths can see you better over there. That's the realm that they normally see and now you're in it and blinking like a big red dot. As far as Elves go...we have many varieties based on lines of descent and where they moved. These have their own cultures, languages, and histories though these often intertwine. The High Elves are Elves that saw the light of the Trees of Aman and lived in the Unending Lands. They are also called Amanyar and Caliquendi, Of Aman and Light Elves. The High Elves are specifically Noldor, Deep Elves, which are known for their particular love of carving and technical knowledge. They are the most technologically advanced of the Elves, having learned from both Aule, a Vala which is kind of like a god, and from Morgoth, who is another Vala and Sauron's boss that was banished from reality until Elf Ragnorok. In LotR you'll be meeting two distinct kinds of Elves. Namely the High Elves you've already met and Sindar, or Grey Elves. The Sindar are who Legolas comes from. I think you hear about the Teleri, the Sea Elves, in this book but you don't really see them. All Elves enjoy language and art more than anything, are highly resistant to change, have issues with arrogance and feeling special because they are the First Kindred of Illuvatar, and love alcohol. Few people get as fucked up as the Elves do. Well, no, most of Arda is getting shitfaced on a regular basis, but no other race has a plot point in their history that is literally "We were too busy throwing a sickass party that the Dwarves' guard got blackout drunk and they escaped". The Elves' major thing, especially in LotR, is that while they are more inherently magical and wondrous than us they are not fit to survive in Arda. The ravages of time take too much, and the Elves are too unwilling to give things up. They're basically walking depression metaphors with a love for linguistics and Catholicism.
I think part of the reason I'm not that fond of Tolkien is that I always feel so judged, because lets' face it I am an elf not a hobbit.
I can get that. Though even the Hobbits get fucked over. Though it's more that they're forced into hiding and now just done with us more than "And we literally couldn't take this reality deal so we fucked off to a magical island where nothing ever changes". The real and sole MVPs of Middle Earth itself are Men. And even then, even when our world is no longer magical and wonderful, we still have so much trouble with it. The Elves were simply the least well equipped to deal with depression. And that is part of why I like Tolkien so much. His world isn't perfect and it's damn sure not fucking happy. Even the end of LotR isn't entirely happy. Frodo has PTSD that he can't get over, Gollum died crazy and addicted, the Third Age's ending takes all the magic of reality with it, and so on and so forth. Life is just sublimely fucked in so many ways, and yet it is somehow worth fighting for. For little things like nice warm baths and silly songs, and lovely stories that you tell. But life's still unbelievably fucked. The more unhappy I get the more I like Tolkien, and the Elves in particular.
Once you run it through the parser of "this culture is a Small Gossipy Town, writ large", it makes a little more sense, I think? In parts. They're clannish, in that everyone's very particular about which families they consider acceptable to associate with and that results in some really weird shit on the social level. They're clannish and reclusive, the same way folks from the Maritimes are - no one really is interested in going out and finding new people and bringing change in, but if you show up, you'll be guaranteed somewhere to sleep and a table to eat at until you leave - you don't treat guests rudely, hospitality is important. "We don't have history" is - mm. Run that one through the filter of the hobbits themselves saying it; it's not technically true, but it feels true to them. They've got the kind of history of people farming the land and being peaceful smalltown folk; there's no big battles between hobbit kingdoms (there are, for that matter, no hobbit kingdoms that would claim the name), there's no high royalty, there's no epic tales sung about hobbits prior to Bilbo and Frodo. Plus, if I remember right, Bilbo had a huge library and one of the gifts was to a guy who kept borrowing everyone else's books and never returning them in a timely fashion; the hobbits definitely have writing, there's no way that they're just importing all their books from human towns. More likely, it's that the personal libraries don't "count" - those are cookbooks and leisure reading and records of how their gardens did this year and what they're knitting for winter gifts, those aren't Important historical records. But the family trees are Important historical records, they can't pretend like those aren't. Craft-loving, but distrusting machinery is definitely A Trope, but I can also see it making sense for the Wholesome Smalltown Folk that Tolkien was picturing; if I remember right, he would've been of an age to have seen the cottage industries around weaving and related crafts collapse when mechanization came in. If I remember right, it just implies that the relationship between Frodo and Bilbo is a bit more distant than would usually be covered by that term. Similar to how you might put quotes around it for someone who's a family friend that the kids regard as Aunt Jane. (In this case, I think it's closer to how Garion in the Belgariad always calls Belgarath his grandfather and Polgara his aunt; the terms aren't technically inaccurate, but they leave out the jillion and a half 'greats' that would need to be put in there to properly describe just how far back the familial tie goes - Belgarath and Polgara are, respectively, the father and sister of the woman who married the guy who started Garion's family line, but they're sorcerers who've been kicking around for centuries. Everyone in-character agrees that it just speeds up the conversation to drop all the 'greats' that would need to be added for accuracy's sake, and no one wants to offend Polgara by pointing out just how old she really is.) In this case, I think (but am not sure) that Bilbo is technically Frodo's great-uncle once removed. He just likes Frodo the best out of all the other kids who can claim him as family. It is! On the other hand, it's a question that Bilbo blurted out while under pressure and being menaced by Gollum. He immediately thought of two better riddles he could've asked as soon as he finished speaking; he was trying to come up with something difficult enough that Gollum couldn't win, so he'd have to be allowed to leave unharmed. Eh, could be that Bilbo going out and doing it made it cool and mainstream enough to be considered a valid lifestyle instead of the sort of thing that gets side-eyes or sympathetic "oh - maybe it's just a phase" comments from the neighbours. Okay, so - hobbits definitely don't autocrit on the racial stealth thing, no. But they are really good at it, and every race of Middle Earth has their own mystical Thing. Elves are immortal and shiny, dwarves are long-lived and good at digging and creating, humans are your basic wildcard who's good at creativity, orcs are strong and good at war. The hobbit Thing is "being ordinary" - that is, they tend to have a low-grade "don't notice me, everything's normal" field going on most of the time. I don't think it quite works on other hobbits, but it definitely works on everyone else. The Ring does what it does by taking your racial Thing and amplifying it, if I understand correctly. This is why Galadriel and Gandalf both go on about how they'd be all-powerful and able to do anything if they had it, while all Frodo gets is invisibility. (Invisibility at the cost of being in a side-dimension, and really, really noticeable to anyone who's looking there.) I forget if anyone's mentioned yet (probably they have), but part of why the Ring is such a problem child isn't just that it's an evil piece of jewelry - it's a sentient piece of evil jewelry, and it really wants to get home to Daddy. Failing that being an option available to it at the moment, it'll settle for causing as much havoc as it can for anyone trying to use it or hold onto it.
He did see the rise of industrialization, yes, and he seems to have been horrified about it. While nothing is a one to one allegory because the man hated those you can see bits of this in the nature of the Hobbits versus that of the highly industrial Orcs, and in the existence of Tom Bombadil. Also in the nature of Aule versus Morgoth. They're very similar in that they're the most technologically inclined of the Ainur, but where Aule remained faithful Morgoth became an evil shitfuck. But they don't really show up in LotR proper, though their kids do I guess. Those being the Dwarves and Orcs, though only the Dwarves were properly adopted by Illuvatar that we know of. I like to think he's adopted the Orcs too, partly out of compassion and partly out of his running spite game with his rowdy son. Also I haven't outright mentioned that it's sentient but I've implied that it is. Which it is. When I say it's trying to get home I do in fact mean that it is, with all its little ringly powers, is in fact willfully attempting to get home to Sauron.
While y'alls discussions are really, really interesting and informative, I would really, really prefer it if I could get to those passages and conclusions myself. The conclusions especially are a second readthrough thing for me and I'm not even through once.
