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Ep 34- Reflections and Rules of Fantasy
29 Plays3 months ago
Having reached the end of the books, we take a minute to reflect on this journey and its stages, check in to see if our Definitely Universal Rules Of Fantasy hold up, talk about Sam Gamgee as The Everyman, and dig into our remaining lingering questions!
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Transcript
Culinary Adventures and Identity
00:00:00
Speaker
That bread we made this weekend was fucking phenomenal. Oh, my God. it was amazing. We need to post pictures of it on the socials just so that everyone can see. Oh, on our and our podcast socials?
00:00:11
Speaker
Because i have fully removed Instagram from my phone, so I haven't checked. But good. It is. It's so beautiful. It was fucking stunning. And it was really easy. It was surprisingly easy. And then i I took the last hunk of it into work the next day.
00:00:26
Speaker
And one of my coworkers slash friends slash listener of the podcast was wandering by and I just went, hey, and like beckoned them over, tore off a hunk and was like here. And they were like, they took a, they kind of looked a little skeptical, took a bite and went, oh my God.
00:00:44
Speaker
um And then one of my other coworkers who like I'm not like friends with but I'm friendly with was was ah like getting her lunch. And I went hey.
00:00:55
Speaker
And I just like tore off a little hunk of the bread and handed it to her. It was like. you're here, so i you don't have to, but I'm making you try this. And she was like, that's that's my purpose in life, is to stand close to bread.
00:01:11
Speaker
That's beautiful. I should and should embroider that on a pillow. I feel like there are definitely some people who if they just shove something in your face and said, eat this, you would say, no, I have questions. But you are definitely a person who if you hand someone something and say, eat this, you should just eat it immediately because it will be good.
00:01:28
Speaker
And it might be a golden Oreo with balsamic vinegar on it. But that is also good. i don't know if we've talked about that on the podcast. I do think that's that's one of those instances in which I think I've had one or two friends, I've shoved that in their face and they've been like, great, cool, no questions. And I'm like, what the fuck is this? This is incredible.
00:01:50
Speaker
And then a couple of people who have shoved it their face and they've been like, what the fuck is this? And I'll explain it. And then they start having more questions. i'm like, no, no, no, no. Don't ask questions. Just put it in your face hole.
00:02:03
Speaker
You've got to open your third eye. You have to really be open to the experience, but it's really good. Listeners, if you want to try, if you have balsamic glaze, that's good.
00:02:15
Speaker
But I don't buy store-bought balsamic glaze, so I don't actually know if that's good. But just a couple of drops of balsamic, like three drops of balsamic vinegar on the filling cream part of the golden Oreo.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yes. Well, and that was that was the thing is it was a balsamic glaze. It was a store-bought balsamic glaze, I think. Okay. So it was, you know, you could functionally do that on your own, either with like a store-bought balsamic glaze or like just reducing down a good balsamic vinegar.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, because that's usually what I do is I just reduce it myself. But now I have the fancy balsamic that you brought me from Italy, and I have not yet used it to anoint a golden Oreo, but I will at some point. and I felt a little like ratatouille with the strawberry and the cheese. Like, I think there was some Tumblr post ages ago but was asking, if you were Jesus, what would your body and blood be? You would be a golden Oreo and balsamic vinegar.
00:03:12
Speaker
Absolutely. I don't know what mine would be. Oh, I mean, I guess that's like that's the most practical form of the host. hmm.
00:03:24
Speaker
I would probably be an aged white tea and focaccia. Not really a good flavor pairing in the same way, but I think that's my most representative liquid and most representative carbohydrate.
00:03:36
Speaker
Fair. Yeah, i I do think my more representative carbohydrate is is more of like focaccia or some sort of like crusty bread. Yeah.
00:03:47
Speaker
Oh, that reminds me. I need to make the starter for a ciabatta later. Don't let me forget. We can keep that in the podcast if we want. But have to start it and then leave the...
00:03:58
Speaker
pre-ferment at room temperature to beer overnight and i want to do that because i think the same co-worker who ate some of your bread also recently made ciabatta and i want to make ciabatta you know who's also making lots of bread i'm sure now that he's back in the shire hopefully well do you think frodo can cook or you think sam does all the cooking I was gonna say Sam. Okay, good.
00:04:27
Speaker
Sam is the one baking the bread. Absolutely. he knows his way around the buns.
Journey Through Middle-earth
00:04:33
Speaker
Hello, everyone.
00:04:51
Speaker
everyone And welcome back to another episode of The Fandom Apprentice. We here on The Fandom Apprentice have spent the last over a year now, year and a half, going through the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien.
00:05:11
Speaker
This series was a massive part of my childhood. My dad started breeding me The Hobbit when I was like four or five years old. And it shaped my love of fantasy. It shaped my, how I interact with literature in general.
00:05:28
Speaker
And so during the deepest, darkest parts of the pandemic, I began to share this with my friend who did not have the same experience. My name is Rin.
00:05:40
Speaker
I'm one of your hosts. um And I'm here with my good friend, Sam, who has now finished the Laura of the Rings. Hello, I'm Sam. I'm the other one.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yes, this is the last stage of our journey. That's going to become part of my sign-on now, is just that everything is the last stage of my journey. But yes, we have finished the books, and today we're just going to do...
00:06:07
Speaker
kind of a retrospective victory lap reflecting on the experience of reading the books the experience of diving as deep into them as we did if we have any sort of unanswered thematic questions so yeah this will be this will be interesting to see what we have left to say after all of the exhaustive analysis we've done so far Yeah, I can safely say i have never done a close read of any other book to this level.
00:06:43
Speaker
If we were still in undergrad, this would have been a year-long senior thesis project. This is an incredible amount of work. I have never read anything this closely.
00:06:54
Speaker
But it's been really fun. i I've enjoyed it. It's been really nice because I... didn't take a break from Tolkien before we'd started this project, but I kind of hadn't read a lot of his stuff in recent years.
00:07:08
Speaker
And then the summer before we started this project, I took a Tolkien class on Tolkien and classical literature, which was a lot of fun and sort of reignited my interest in Tolkien.
00:07:23
Speaker
um So that was that was sort of my start of the return to it. And then when, I honestly don't remember how you and i got to discussing the fact that you hadn't read The Hobbit.
00:07:34
Speaker
But when that came about, we decided that we were going to do that. I wonder if I look in our Discord messages, that might have been something we discussed over the phone, but I wonder what the earliest mention of The Hobbit in our messages is.
00:07:48
Speaker
But yeah, I think timing wise, we also kind of mentioned this back last June when we released our queer books episode. The timing of this whole process also kind of aligned with me getting back into reading in general after college.
00:08:04
Speaker
So it was a good time to be open to a big reading project after I was back in the swing of things that I'd recovered from the undergrad reading burnout. Yeah.
00:08:15
Speaker
So I guess just just on the surface, now, having read the whole series, how do you feel? like what How do you feel about the story? How do you feel about the characters, the your place in this in this in the cultural zeitgeist?
00:08:34
Speaker
That's such a big question. i know, but that's why we're here. That might be our overarching question for the whole episode. But I think... The main thing that I feel is surprised, and I have mentioned this at various points throughout the book, that I had sort of a loose understanding. i mean, everybody knows what a hobbit is. Everybody knows who Gandalf is, that there's a ring and it's my precious and you have to take it to Mount Doom.
00:09:00
Speaker
So the vague general awareness The story was not totally alien to me, but there was so much that I just didn't expect and had no idea what was coming.
00:09:13
Speaker
Like the fact that Frodo fucking dies or any of the various twists and turns and intricacies of the plot it just existed in my mind as something that was so vague so i just had no idea what to expect at any given point and that was really fun to be able to discover something that felt so fresh despite how much of it is just out there in the world and don't really know why there's not as much specific plot details I mean we've
00:09:48
Speaker
talked before about comparing Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter, which was both of our other big fantasy things growing up. And I feel like maybe just because that was when those books and movies were coming out, there was a lot more cultural discussion about specific plot points from specific books and movies.
00:10:07
Speaker
And that was a lot easier to just call to mind in general. But it was fun. It was a journey of discovery. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think... The Lord of the Rings books are famously dense, you know, and so for, you know, sort of casual reading for kids, things like the Harry Potter books were were definitely more our speed. Yeah.
00:10:33
Speaker
I didn't get the same thing out of this in, you know, when I read it as a 10 year old, as I did when I read it in high school, as I did when I read it after I took that class, as I did when I read it with you.
00:10:51
Speaker
I got different things out of it at every point. I feel like as a kid, my perception of Lord of the Rings was that it was for the super nerds. It was for the homeschoolers, which really was specifically influenced by my good family friends that I knew who were homeschoolers who were super into Lord of the Rings. so But...
00:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think that denseness kind of put me off. I was not really interested in something that was that opaque when there was so much else that was way more accessible to me. There was the Turf books. There was Percy Jackson. there was...
00:11:28
Speaker
ah The Charlie Bone books I really liked. It was another oh oh god i read the British magical school. I should reread those because I don't remember much about them, but I remember really liking them. There was Artemis Fowl. There was all kinds of amazing y a fantasy stuff that was right at my fingertips. So I didn't really feel the need to do the deep dive into super nerddom and I identified as having nerdy interests I was a pretty alternative kid but Lord of the Rings was just another level that I did not feel interested in exploring and there was nobody in my life who was really into it one of my friends very longtime friend also listener of the show hello told me that I apparently got her a copy of the Hobbit as a birthday present one year when we were in school
00:12:14
Speaker
I have no memory of this whatsoever. It sounds like the kind of thing I probably would have done, but it wasn't like she was a super huge Lord of the Rings fan or we were reading it together. It was just, oh, here's a book that my friend who likes books might like.
00:12:27
Speaker
I think, too, because the movies came out when we were so young. We were elementary school age when those came out. By the time that a lot of our peers would be developing interest in the Lord of the Rings books, what were that to have been a thing, the movies were sort of there and more accessible. And yeah, they were long. They were dense. Yeah.
00:12:51
Speaker
but And we will get into the movies very soon. Peter Jackson did a phenomenal job. It remains, I think, one of the best book-to-movie transferences ever ever done in cinema.
00:13:09
Speaker
um And we'll discuss that in future episodes of the podcast, obviously. But I think because of that, there was sort of, i think the i think the perception of you know Lord of the Rings as being for the you know quote unquote super nerds was definitely a thing like in my school growing up too.
00:13:32
Speaker
But there was almost a couple of levels to it. there was like There was like the movie nerds, the extended edition movie nerds.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah. And then the people who read the books. Because also it was like, it was at the time where it was like, reading isn't cool. Yeah, your school was also much larger than mine. My graduating class had 64 people in it. So we didn't have as many strata of nerds. All the alternative kids were just kind of in one pod and there was like five of us.
00:14:06
Speaker
But... The Hobbit did narrowly pass me by because there were different, you know, all schools have different levels of classes. And so the English class that I was in in the eighth or ninth grade, was reading something very boring and old, and I don't remember what it was. But the class level below us was reading The Hobbit. And so I remember seeing a bunch of copies of it around and being kind of curious because it looked way more fun than whatever stupid thing we were reading.
00:14:34
Speaker
And I did try around that point to watch the movies, but I just got so bored looking at beautiful aerial shots of New Zealand for a minute and a half. I just gave up because I was in the eighth grade.
00:14:47
Speaker
It's like, I'm not doing this. So I could have ah been introduced to Tolkien earlier, but honestly, I'm glad that it wasn't in the context of a school assignment because then it would have been way less fun.
00:14:59
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. And I know we've read through this as if we're your college English class, but like filled with more assholes.
00:15:09
Speaker
And discussions of things that people are doing. Never mind.
00:15:16
Speaker
Listen, ah so I never took a college English class. Me either, actually. but Like I never took a college literature class. But my ex and very good friend was a ah creative writing.
00:15:30
Speaker
major. And from what she's told me, the kinds of things we discuss on this podcast would not have been out of ah out of the realm of discussion in many a poetry class.
00:15:46
Speaker
That sounds... So fun, honestly. And that reminds me of two things. The first thing is that I did take literature classes, but they were in French because before I was a religion major, I was a French major.
00:15:57
Speaker
But I was just going to so many religion major events and taking so many of their classes. People thought that I was in the department and they would ask me, oh, are you doing this department thing? You're doing that department thing.
00:16:08
Speaker
And I would go, no, I'm not actually in this department. People just kind of look at me. I was like a closeted religion major. And then i had to accept that I didn't actually like French that much. But talking about novels and Gothic architecture and medieval art are three things that I can do pretty decently, but only in French because I don't know the English words for concepts. But in high school...
00:16:34
Speaker
one of my very beloved teachers who did end up growing as a person and becoming the advisor of the GSA. We love him. I remember we were talking about the gay themes in one of the books that we read, and he said something about how we weren't allowed to talk about that in high school.
00:16:53
Speaker
And he said, when you go to college, you'll be able to talk about homoeroticism and gay imagery in books. But for some reason, it was just not allowed in my small rural high school.
00:17:05
Speaker
So I don't really know what that was about. i think he was doing his best in that moment. But the idea of in college, you'll be allowed to talk about gay stuff has always been firmly in my mind. Well, and you um talked about many gay things in college.
00:17:20
Speaker
This is true, yes. Found yourself a gay spouse. Indeed. Speaking of gay spouses. Yes, I would love to speak of gay spouses.
00:17:31
Speaker
Frodo and Sam. Yes. Thinking about, guess, the plot as a whole and our podcast.
Fantasy Rules Explored
00:17:40
Speaker
I want to talk about the rules of fantasy.
00:17:43
Speaker
All right. So, so if you've been listening to our podcast for some amount of time, you may have heard us discuss the rules of fantasy. We haven't actually gone over the point of these in a, in a minute. So let's just, uh,
00:17:58
Speaker
quick primer. We decided as we were reading through this very quintessential genre establishing novel, we would also establish some definitely universal rules of fantasy that we will continue to reference throughout anything else we read or watch.
00:18:17
Speaker
And the rules are as follows. Rule number one, Magic makes you dramatic. Rule number two, if there is a tavern, there will be plot.
00:18:28
Speaker
Rule number three, I actually kind of want to tweak a little bit now that we're here. Right now it's listed as time only matters when it matters. And I had the this thought as I was eating dinner before we started recording.
00:18:40
Speaker
I think rule number three is don't ask too many questions about time. Hmm. We'll revisit that. we'll We'll talk about that more when we talk about them all individually. Okay.
00:18:51
Speaker
Rule number four is it all comes back to Beowulf. And rule number five is friendship is magic. Yes. Did we have a rule number six or not? No. Some of these had corollaries, so which we can get to, but I think that those five were the main ones that we had established.
00:19:10
Speaker
Okay. So rule number one, magic makes you dramatic. We established this one way back in book one, like within the first chapter. Mm-hmm.
00:19:21
Speaker
So my question is does this hold up? Oh, absolutely. There is no one who does anything subtle in these books with magic.
00:19:32
Speaker
Everything ah magical is just exciting and over the top and either fun or scary. Even way way, way back in the beginning of Fellowship at the long expected party, when there's all of the little gifts and trinkets that Bilbo is giving out to everyone and the magical cufflinks or whatever, even those have a certain pizzazz to them, a certain delight.
00:19:58
Speaker
Anyone who directly possesses magical items or magical abilities is going to make a big deal out of it. There's also the subtler magics interwoven with the world, and we've talked about that.
00:20:10
Speaker
But in terms of people who have some connection to magic, they're all... You can tell. You can tell. And I believe we had two corollaries to this, which was one, the first corollary is that the level of drama is directly correlated to magical power.
00:20:30
Speaker
And the second corollary was that magical characters speak first in service to the plot and second in service to characters.
00:20:42
Speaker
So I guess the the next question is, do those corollaries hold up? Definitely yes on the first one. the second one, i honestly kept forgetting about and so didn't pay attention to it as closely as we were going through. But I feel like if you think about our most magical people...
00:21:03
Speaker
You've got your elves, you've got Gandalf, you've got Saruman, you've got Frodo, basically. Aragorn. Aragorn, he's pretty magical. The hands of a king are hands are the hands of a healer.
00:21:16
Speaker
This is true. I feel like there are very magical figures who primarily exist to nudge our characters along and keep the plot going. I don't think it's as universal as the other corollary, but yeah, sure, I think it holds up.
00:21:32
Speaker
Are there any standout moments that you remember from the series that um just kind of like slap you in the face with this rule? Oh my god, literally anything Gandalf says or does when somebody's giving him shit and he just goes, I'm Gandalf, bitch.
00:21:49
Speaker
All the stuff with the Balrog. all The Balrog is the greatest scene. Facing down Saruman. Also, apologies for not including the Ents and... Tom Bombadil in Magical Beings. That was is my bad. They are both extremely dramatic.
00:22:07
Speaker
I want a Tom Bombadil Treebeard showdown. What would they even do? What would their showdown be? They would just be vibing. i think that I think they would be vibing, but it it would be like I think the best way to describe what that experience would be like is I walked out of choir rehearsal at one point in undergrad.
00:22:30
Speaker
And I came down to the campus coffee shop, which was beneath the choir room. And there was a gathering in there. And there were four dudes that I knew with guitars, all barefoot. it was I also went to school up in the mountains.
00:22:45
Speaker
So it was cold and constantly snowy. And this was the dead of winter. So just... For your information. They were all barefoot and they were all playing Grateful Dead.
00:22:56
Speaker
isn And my first thought was, you know, do I really go to a small liberal arts college if there isn't a group of men playing Grateful Dead barefoot in the middle of a snowstorm at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday?
00:23:10
Speaker
Yeah. um And I feel like my coming down, seeing that and just going, yeah, that makes sense, is kind of just what would happen existing around Tom Bombadil and Treebeard.
00:23:25
Speaker
I don't know what would happen, but what whatever whatever would happen would have the onlooker going, yeah, that's about right. Yeah, I agree. Do you have any particular magical drama moments that stand out to you?
00:23:40
Speaker
I think Gandalf taking Aragorn up into the mountains to get the tree sapling. Oh, yeah. Because that also, to me, was a passing of the magical drama torch.
00:23:54
Speaker
Oh, you think so? because then Gandalf is, you know, preparing to leave Middle-earth for Valinor.
00:24:03
Speaker
And so he's like, and you will be, you know, the most magical motherfucker left here. So here's all of my magical motherfucker lessons. Fair point.
00:24:14
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So that's rule number one. Mm-hmm. Rule number two, tavern plot. We don't have a lot of taverns here, but we do have three big moments that we can highlight. We have the discussion in the Green Dragon Inn in a long expected party where all of the old gaffers are giving exposition.
00:24:38
Speaker
So that's if there's a tavern, there will be plot. hmm. We have the Prancing Pony where we meet Strider for the first time. So tavern plot. And then we have the Prancing Pony again in Return of the King where Barlow and Butterbur gives them the whole exposition on the goings on in the Shire and things getting weird and queer and dark.
00:25:02
Speaker
So tavern plot. Yes. Any other commentary on that? Not really. I agree. I think that it holds up. At least in these books, taverns really aren't somewhere where people are having downtime.
00:25:16
Speaker
They're somewhere that you go with purpose and we are going to discover something or discuss something with a side character. I'm sure in other fantasy subgenres, if you think of like your cozy fantasies, um your legends and lattes, you know, that may be more of a chill space where you're spending more time.
00:25:38
Speaker
But at least in these books where everyone's on the move, they're going somewhere. If you are stopping at a tavern, it is for a reason. Okay, but here's the thing about the cozy fantasy. Okay. Because the cozy fantasy still has a plot.
00:25:50
Speaker
And so like looking at Legends and Lattes, for example, which if you're not familiar, can skip ahead a little bit if you don't want spoilers for the plot. But the plot of Legends and Lattes revolves around the opening of the coffee shop and the establishment of it as a safe space.
00:26:09
Speaker
Which means so long as there is a tavern, there is plot That's fair. I think that it's a little bit of a different vibe because that's also the primary setting.
00:26:21
Speaker
So you're also having your downtime moments. You're not just exclusively having big things happen in there. But yes, by that logic, that does also work. That's why these are universal laws of fantasy because they're broadly applicable.
00:26:34
Speaker
So true. Not allegorical. Applicable. Applicable. we We don't do allegory here. No. Rule number three. isn't The time rule that ah we have on multiple occasions said we'll return to.
00:26:49
Speaker
And because i know things about what we will be discussing in the future on this podcast, I'm like trying to apply some of these rules forward as well as back.
00:27:02
Speaker
So this this is the challenging rule is we've we've talked a lot about how Tolkien focuses a lot on time. But then when you think about like how quickly things in the Shire change and, you know, like how 17 years go by between Frodo leaving or between Bilbo leaving the Shire and then Frodo leaving and then it's like six months and the ring is destroyed.
00:27:30
Speaker
um And in that six months, they're like the entire world has completely changed. And while we know that can happen in our world, it does kind of strain belief a little bit, particularly in a world In which clearly so much has remained remained unchanged, despite massive magical upheavals for thousands of years.
00:28:01
Speaker
But in spite of that, Tolkien is very, very particular about how long things take and when exactly things are happening. and lining up your timelines.
00:28:15
Speaker
And so, you know, and thinking ahead to other franchises I would like to discuss on this podcast at some point in which time is a lot more wishy-washy.
00:28:26
Speaker
And every now and then you could, but in both of those situations where time is a little wishy-washy and where time is very rigid, I'm still looking at the timelines in both of these and being like, hey, this doesn't fully make sense to me.
00:28:42
Speaker
But I feel like the answer here is just, okay, cool. Ignore it. don't Don't ask questions. you don't yeah Don't ask questions. We don't have answers.
00:28:53
Speaker
I just finished yesterday. I just finished the Broken Earth trilogy, which is very good, very depressing. five Five stars. Definitely recommend it, but it's a lot.
00:29:05
Speaker
And the phrase that immediately came into my mind was, all things change during a season. Time. The speed of time, the rate of time passing changes during the plot in a way that is different from how, maybe be different from how it's progressing in the rest of the world outside of the plot events.
00:29:30
Speaker
So in Lord of the Rings, you have time progressing and all of the ages, the first age and the second age, whatever, and all of that happening. events transpiring societies rising and falling at fairly consistent rates and then during the plot of the book this sort of speed of events happening relative to clear explicit lengths of time varies wildly. Some things happen super fast. Some things happen super slow.
00:30:01
Speaker
All things change during a season. All things change during the plot. And then after the events of the plot, it's kind of implied that life returns back to normal. The pace of things returns back to normal. So maybe there could be something in there about the pace of everything in the world changing during the events of the story, whether that is slowing down and Some things taking longer than usual or some events happening more quickly if there's a time crunch.
00:30:31
Speaker
I see there being something there, but I still don't feel like... Time responds to story. Story does not respond to time. Ooh, I like that. I like that. That's good.
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's the idea that we've been trying to put a finger on is that even in something like Lord of the Rings, where we know exactly how many days each phase of the journey takes, whatever, that's great.
00:30:57
Speaker
That is still in service to the story. Yeah, I think that works. it's a very a I think that's probably the most abstract one. It's the hardest to pin down, but I think that's the best phrasing that we've come up with so far.
00:31:12
Speaker
Okay, so that's rule number three. Rule number four, it all comes back to Beowulf. And this is literal, especially for Tolkien, looking at Beowulf references in his work specifically.
Tolkien's Inspirations
00:31:26
Speaker
But also I kind of mean this in the there are no new stories under the sun type thing of you can always draw a direct parallel from what you are seeing back to an earlier piece of work. You can tell where those influences are coming from if you were educated on the influences.
00:31:48
Speaker
And I think specifically, i don't know if this is something that we pointed out before, because we have spent two whole bonus episodes expounding on the fact that it all comes back to Beowulf. I think we have proven without a shadow of a doubt that that is the case.
00:32:01
Speaker
But specifically in Western media, Western Euro-American media, those influences are very clear. There's... i just keep referencing Tumblr posts because I'm back on Tumblr now. It's the whole thing. All social media is on fire. That's the least on fire.
00:32:18
Speaker
Or at least it's a managed fire. It's a controlled burn. Anyway. There was some post about somebody being frustrated about their English professor talking about the universality of the hero's journey and that all stories are related to the hero's journey. Obviously, they're not.
00:32:35
Speaker
There are so many different types of stories. There's so many different types of fantasy. It's not. this one isn't as universal as we're making it out to be. And there's definitely a lot of other genres and cultural influences that will obviously make Beowulf not relevant. But in the Western fantasy context that we are talking about, yes, absolutely.
00:32:59
Speaker
It's inescapable. Yeah. And, and in, in a more meta sense, this, this is, is the catchall phrase that we'll be using for,
00:33:12
Speaker
Being able to identify the influences of a particular work within the work itself.
00:33:20
Speaker
I mean, i think I think one of the biggest ones, beyond in The Hobbit, which you know we've read but we didn't discuss in depth on the pod, in The Hobbit there's the stealing the cup scene, which is very, very direct from Beowulf.
00:33:37
Speaker
But one of the the big Beowulfian pieces that stood out to me was approaching Meduselt. And if you go back to our episode on that, it might actually be titled It All Comes Back to Beowulf.
00:33:51
Speaker
It is, yes. You can hear, I read out a direct section, I believe, from the Seamus Heaney translation where they approach Heorot Hall.
00:34:03
Speaker
and And then I directly compare that one-to-one with the description of Meduseld. And we've spent so long harping on Tolkien's other influences.
00:34:16
Speaker
And where where they show up in the plot, the Shakespeare references, um there's biblical allusions, there's all sorts of things in these books.
00:34:27
Speaker
And we've we've sort of been talking about this since the beginning with the allusion allegory distinction, right? Mm-hmm. Because in Tolkien's explanation of that distinction, he states that you can't divorce the author from their experience.
00:34:46
Speaker
You cannot stop the author from reading wildly. And honestly, you're going to be a better author if you do read widely. Right? If you are able to incorporate these broad-reaching influences into your work, if you understand different types of story, then you become a better writer.
00:35:11
Speaker
And so for something that evolved out of a bedtime story to his kids, which, you know, as anybody who has ever told a child a bedtime story knows, is going to be wildly made up and pulled from whatever you comes up in your brain first.
00:35:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm. into a broad-reaching fantasy series with a whole legendarium behind it, of course he's pulling from what he the stories he grew up on. Of course he's pulling from biblical tales. Of course he's pulling from his academic work. yeah we can't We can't divorce Tolkien from his influences.
00:35:58
Speaker
And if we did, he wouldn't have been able to write Lord of the Rings. Yeah. And obviously he's a genius. These books are incredible. They're dense.
00:36:08
Speaker
People have whole PhDs in Tolkien studies. But it is very humanizing to remember that he's just a guy and he's a guy who knew a lot of stuff. But when you see the logic underlying how these stories are put together,
00:36:24
Speaker
it I don't know, it just makes it seem more possible. It's not like it just emerged fully formed from the mind of Tolkien God. No, he was just a dude and his process of making these stories make sense.
00:36:37
Speaker
And it's fun to understand that. And it makes at least me feel more confident about being a creative person in general. Not that I aspire to be Tolkien anything like that, but just that, oh God, no.
00:36:49
Speaker
Just that, you know, there's nothing new under the sun. Everybody has influences and you can transform the things that you know about into something that will be new and exciting for someone else. and i think that's really cool.
00:37:02
Speaker
Rule number five. Friendship is magic. Yes. How do you, this, this was, this was your edition Yes, this is fantasy this was mine. I'm very proud of it. I stand by it.
00:37:16
Speaker
Another thing that we have covered extensively on this show is that friendship is very important to us in our lives. And we try to do a lot of praxis about it and really center it in a material way and the things that we do and the things that we believe, et cetera, et cetera.
00:37:32
Speaker
And material girl, material girl. And in these books, and I think in fantasy in general, it is friendship is magic. That's the secret.
00:37:46
Speaker
That is the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, or the people who succeed and the people who fail, is their ability to maintain deep and meaningful connections with each other. And those connections, more than whatever magic MacGuffins they have or whatever plot advantages or disadvantages they have.
00:38:11
Speaker
Those are ultimately the things that determine the outcome for a particular character. And in Lord of the Rings, especially with Sam, we see just his innate goodness and his uncomplicated love being his primary trait and allowing him to just bypass a bunch of evil magic shit and to have him help Frodo get up Mount Doom and overcome all these impossible obstacles because of the strength of their bond.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, obviously, friendship is magic. people who try And in these stories, people who try to isolate themselves cough, Saruman cough. And try to use and abuse other people or who build relationships that are not based on love and trust ultimately fail.
00:39:04
Speaker
And that's a nice, tidy moral. And I like it. I'm on board with it. Yeah, I mean, friendship is magic. Community is strength.
00:39:17
Speaker
One end strength. powerful, but the Ents coming together tore down Isengard in a day and a night. At the end of Return of the King, all the hobbits rise up and overthrow their oppressors.
00:39:31
Speaker
Even these inexperienced little softies who don't know anything of battle, they make it happen because they have a strong community. Even though that community has been tested, they're reminded of their priorities.
00:39:45
Speaker
And they can all come together and rise up against de oppressive powers and take care of each other. and that could be anything from making dinner for your neighbors
00:39:57
Speaker
to giving ICE agents incorrect directions.
00:40:04
Speaker
By the transit of property, if friendship is magic and magic makes you dramatic, this is just that friendship makes you dramatic. Absolutely. Yes. And i think I think this is best demonstrated by Frodo's rescue by Sam.
00:40:22
Speaker
Sam realizing Frodo is alive sends him absolutely fucking ape shit. Yeah. And also, that is when Sam has access to the most magic.
00:40:35
Speaker
True, true, true. Yes.
The Power of Friendship and Character Growth
00:40:37
Speaker
Two, both directly magical items. He's got the file of Galadriel. He's got Sting. He has the ring in those moments. Mm-hmm. So in in those moments, not only is The power of friendship driving him, but also the direct magical items that were once Frodo's.
00:41:00
Speaker
It's a different type of drama than Frodo was was demonstrating, where a lot of Frodo's drama was a little woe is me prior to that. But now Sam's drama is like, okay, cool. I'm about to fuck shit up.
00:41:15
Speaker
Get my man back. I'm also now neurons are connecting in my brain. I'm realizing things. So we had talked way back in the Council of Elrond, still fuck that chapter, I hate that chapter, about who is entitled to the ring.
00:41:34
Speaker
And the fact that Bilbo got it just by happenstance and Frodo got it because he just happened to be born and happened to be related to Bilbo.
00:41:46
Speaker
Sam, more than anyone else that we see in the books, earns slash deserves his access to the ring at that point. He has proven his dedication to Frodo. He's proven his dedication to the quest.
00:42:02
Speaker
He has shown that he is very resistant to being corrupted and he can handle that responsibility. So he's the only one who comes into possession of the ring fully understanding what it is and what it can do and prepared to handle it.
00:42:18
Speaker
he's It's his love and friendship and connection to other people that are the basis of that strength and that conviction. And that's part of what allows him to carry that burden. So, yeah.
00:42:33
Speaker
Yes. it all It all works. It's all coming together. Yeah. Sam is the only one that chooses to take on the ring. without desiring the ring.
00:42:45
Speaker
Everyone else who takes on the power of the the ring either comes into it by desire or comes into it by happenstance. Yeah, and he fully understands what it does to people.
00:42:58
Speaker
Because Frodo is being emo and he's like, oh, I am charged to carry the ring. I must do it. This is my quest. Sure, buddy, whatever.
00:43:09
Speaker
And he kind of loosely understands that it's big and important, but he hasn't seen the toll that it takes on the person. Sam has seen it all and still decides that because of his love for Frodo, because of his...
00:43:23
Speaker
abstract love for the world and wanting it to be a good place and knowing that it's important cosmically decides to do it. Because he's the best hobbit. Yeah. So I guess, I mean, that leads us into our next little piece of discussion that we wanted to talk about is to what extent is Sam the main character?
00:43:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's another thing that I was surprised by in these books. I think And I would hazard a guess that most people think of Frodo as being the main character, because I guess the ring is technically bestowed upon him. But it's really Sam's story. We get so much more of Sam's point of view than we do Frodo's.
00:44:04
Speaker
And I need to check my notes to see at what point this shifts, because I do feel like there is a turning point where we stop getting as much access to Frodo's mind.
00:44:15
Speaker
But yeah, Sam is the hero. Sam is the main character. And I guess, to what extent is Sam the everyman? To what extent is Sam the audience insert?
00:44:28
Speaker
We've talked about how everyone else in the fellowship is a minor deity, a ah you know no a noble. Sam is just a dude.
00:44:41
Speaker
He's just a guy. Yeah. And at the end, you know, when he becomes mayor, he kind of rises above his circumstances a little bit and he becomes a little more important. But being mayor is still a job. He just has a slightly more prestigious job but and a better house. He's still pretty normal at the end of it.
00:45:01
Speaker
At the end of it, everything that he earns is through merit.
00:45:07
Speaker
It's hard work put him there. Yeah. Which is, you know, a very Christian worldview, but also a very 1900s worldview. so true So true. Something bootstraps.
00:45:21
Speaker
don't know. ah Bootstraps when you are... It's married to the richest hobbit in the Shire who leaves you his giant estate. Oops.
00:45:33
Speaker
Oopsie. Yeah. I think that, you know, having things from Sam's point of view helps build dramatic tension because what's going on in Frodo's mind is so opaque. And, you know, it's sort of a classic ah horror story.
00:45:51
Speaker
trope that you hide the monster you hide things in the shadows in the darkness because whatever you imagine is worse than whatever an author or filmmaker can directly show you So having a lot of Frodo's anguish be in silence with just occasional glimpses into the horrors works narratively.
00:46:12
Speaker
But also, i think he's just a harder character to relate to because he's constantly having these big existential emo thoughts happening. I think it might be kind of annoying if we were in his head the whole time.
00:46:27
Speaker
And seeing Sam as a normal person, as an everyman, respond to being thrust into this wild situation just makes for an easier character to relate to.
00:46:42
Speaker
If it was from Frodo's perspective, it might as well be from Galadriel's perspective for how lofty he is all the time you know and i think contrast that i guess against bilbo in the hobbit he's less emo he just he has more fun and more whimsy so he's a better protagonist but frodo is really so the everyman yeah he's also the everyman who you know likes a pipe and a good book and some good food and then gets thrust into this giant quest of epic proportions
00:47:19
Speaker
And so, you know, Frodo as Bilbo's heir almost has an expectation of a quest upon him at that point. And so Sam takes the place of the Bilbo of the story.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah. But I mean, the the other meta piece of this... is at the end of Return the King, Frodo presents to Sam the Red Book and says, the last few chapters are yours.
00:47:51
Speaker
And so in a meta sense, in in the in the sense where Lord of the Rings is not by Tolkien, Tolkien simply translated it from Western.
00:48:03
Speaker
It is actually by Bilbo and Frodo and Sam. When we start getting more of Sam's point of view, I guess, when when do we think Sam was the one who theoretically took over writing? And does that match up with how Tolkien actually wrote the story?
00:48:22
Speaker
m That's a good question. Because we know that Sam is a very humble person. He's not self-absorbed, despite the fact that the picture we see of him is very flattering.
00:48:36
Speaker
I don't imagine Sam writing in the Red Book making himself look amazing. I think he's just being humble, describing himself. And because he's amazing, all of the stuff he does seems amazing. But yeah, I think that does line up that at a certain point he had to take over and he can only be inside his own head. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
00:48:57
Speaker
Another sort of theme that thinking about Sam i among all of these lofty characters made me think of is we've talked about the idea of greatness as this inherent trait that depends on a person's background or species or whatever, that there's certain factors that can lead to someone being born great with a capital G. And through his adventure, I think we can argue that Sam becomes great, where he wasn't regarded as great anyway at the start of the journey. Because by the end of it, he's one of the most famous people in the world. And he's a celebrity and he's powerful and he's done all these amazing things. He has been through an experience that has maybe raised him
00:49:48
Speaker
to that level do you agree with that do you think that he's still because i mean we were just talking about how he's still a normal guy with a normal job if he's in a comfier house do you think that he reached that level do you think that he became great or is that still reserved for other characters do you think frodo is great with a capital g I think the idea is that hobbits aren't great.
00:50:13
Speaker
Hobbits and men don't have this sort of ethereal greatness. Like that is reserved for men of Numenor and elves and the Maiar and, you know, the magics and greatness of old.
00:50:31
Speaker
And that's been flowing out of the world. And so by the end, when the elves and Gandalf and the rin and the elf rings go to Valinor, the greatness that remains in Middle-earth is the kind that isn't inherent as much.
00:50:49
Speaker
The men of Numenor are slowly fading away to be replaced by ah the Western men. The blood of old Numenor is fading away. And so the magic of the elves is fading.
00:51:02
Speaker
And so the only greatness is that which men and hobbits make for themselves rather than that which they've inherited from the gods.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a good point. I like that. And I think that also dovetails nicely into another slash maybe the last big theme that we wanted to talk about, which was about good and evil and redemption in these books and certain people being inherently good or inherently evil morality.
Redemption and Justice in Middle-earth
00:51:39
Speaker
Specifically, I think we wanted to talk about Gollum and whether or not he was redeemed. Man, Gollum is such an interesting character. Even though I think he's really annoying and stupid, I do respect narratively his purpose.
00:51:54
Speaker
He's well executed, even if he's a pain in the ass. And eventually well executed by his own ambitions. So the the question that you had asked me in our Discord when we were planning this episode was, was Gollum redeemed?
00:52:12
Speaker
And I have been thinking about this question and chewing on it. And I don't know if I have a satisfactory answer, but do you have an answer in mind that you've been thinking about? i have not been chewing on it.
00:52:24
Speaker
Gollum has been chewing on Frodo's finger but rather than an answer. I don't know that I don't think he was, but I also don't think Gollum falls into the great cosmic evil of Sauron.
00:52:44
Speaker
I think Gollum's evil is little e evil rather than big e evil. Sauron is big evil. Yeah, Gollum is just selfish. He's more on the Lotho end than the Saruman end of evil. Because I think by the same logic that we were just talking about, if hobbits and men aren't great, they also don't possess that sort of cosmic evil.
00:53:09
Speaker
I would argue even, actually, that Lotho falls under big E evil more. Ooh. Because he enslaves the whole Shire instead of just being ah selfish dick and keeping to himself.
00:53:22
Speaker
Right. his His evil manifests under sort of power and large scale change. Right. Whereas Gollum's evil.
00:53:35
Speaker
Yeah, he does evil things. He he kills his cousin. he You know, uses Shelob to ambush Frodo and Sam. But it was motivated at its core by selfishness and greed, but not power hungriness.
00:53:55
Speaker
Yeah. it's and It's very inward rather than outward. Yeah. I would also agree that he was not redeemed because I don't think he changes. I think that redemption, which then sent me on a whole existential spiral about what is redemption?
00:54:13
Speaker
It requires, I think, some kind of change in the person. And we learn more about Gollum and our perspective on him might change. And we see Parts of his personality come out that have probably been repressed for a long time, like in Herbs and Stewed Rabbit, when we see him kind of giving Frodo and Sam this longing look and perhaps remembering some things about his past and reflecting on his earlier life.
00:54:42
Speaker
That's adding some complexity to his character. But ultimately, by the end, what he wants doesn't change. He is one note. He wants the ring at any cost.
00:54:53
Speaker
And that's, again, fine. It serves him narratively. And we might view him differently as we come to learn more about him. And there's a lot about pitying Gollum and not...
00:55:09
Speaker
Dealing out death to him, even if he deserves it. But yeah, I don't think that he's done anything to fundamentally change himself or fundamentally change how we perceive him.
00:55:22
Speaker
Going back to your thought on ah hobbits not having that sort of big G greatness and also not having the big E evil. hmm.
00:55:33
Speaker
When we look at hobbits that have come into possession of the ring versus how other characters talk about how they'd act with the ring, Bilbo acts like Gollum. He just, it's his precious.
00:55:46
Speaker
He just wants it for himself. Frodo kind of does the same thing ultimately at the cracks of doom when he refuses to give it up. And Sam sort of sees that he could make a big garden and then goes,
00:56:04
Speaker
Eh, I can make a nice garden anyway. Whereas every other character who talks about the ring talks about it on this much grander scale.
00:56:16
Speaker
You know, with Galadriel, you know, in place of a dark lord, you'd have a queen and Boromir talking about, you know, using the weapon of the enemy against him. And, you know, Faramir talking about the same thing.
00:56:30
Speaker
They're all focused, again, on power. On use of the ring for external power. On seeking greatness through that pursuit of power rather than sort of seeking their own satisfaction.
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I have a different way to phrase that. I think that makes sense. Again, dear listener, we're just two dykes with mics.
00:57:01
Speaker
we are We are not high academics here. we're just time. philosophers. new No stones here, philosophers or otherwise.
00:57:13
Speaker
I should have reflected more explicitly on this whole redemption thing. And what even is redemption? Is redemption something that you earn? Is it something that someone else bestows upon you?
00:57:27
Speaker
can some Can the same character be redeemed in the eyes of one character but not in another? Whose duty is it to forgive people for the shitty things that they've done? Is it anyone's duty?
00:57:38
Speaker
I don't know. i don't. And then I guess there's also questions about justice and punishment that we talked about in the scouring of the Shire specifically about what consequences do people face for their objectively bad actions?
00:57:55
Speaker
And is that the same as a person being redeemed? Because I still think that redemption implies some fundamental change that brings them into moral alignment with With some code that we've all agreed is good.
00:58:12
Speaker
And I just i don't know if that happens. I think we see a desire for retributive justice rather than redemption amongst a lot of the hobbits and Frodo sort of shutting that down.
00:58:27
Speaker
And then ultimately it kind of isn't necessary because the retribution is carried out at the hands of Wormtongue. And it it sort of is a little like suicide by Hobbit cop.
00:58:41
Speaker
If I think about redemption, if I think about the best example of a redemption arc from my personal media background. It would obviously be Zuko from The Last Airbent. Oh, it's no question. Obviously Zuko. Because that is a person who you see him change. You see him experience more of the world, change his strongly held convictions, become better and different person.
00:59:07
Speaker
and still have to face the consequences of what he's done. That doesn't erase the hurt that he's inflicted on other people. It doesn't make anyone have to forgive him or have to like him.
00:59:19
Speaker
But he takes in new information, changes his beliefs, changes his actions because of it. I think that's an example of, that's the example, the platonic ideal of a redemption arc.
00:59:31
Speaker
And nobody in this story does that because they're tied to their own natures regardless of whether that nature is inherently good or inherently evil or inherently great or whatever there is sort of an essential core to each character that doesn't really change and then that in some ways makes it interesting to see their place in the world because you have Saruman and Wormtongue temporarily being released to slither around as toothless servants and trying to find a place.
01:00:06
Speaker
And you have the elves at all finding their place in Valinor. It's just interesting. I don't have any specific... Smart brain thoughts, but it's all churning and in my mind. would you say that Would you say that any of the characters that over the over the course... Thinking about this now, I would say that the characters grow, but none of them truly change.
01:00:32
Speaker
Yeah, they all kind of remain inherently who they were at the beginning. Even the Hobbits coming back, having seen all the great horrors, they're not...
01:00:44
Speaker
jaded. They don't really behave differently. They have unresolved trauma, definitely, but they interact with society in pretty much the same way and seem to have pretty much the same values that they did before. Even thinking about Bilbo and the plot of The Hobbit, I mean,
01:01:09
Speaker
thorin changes more than bilbo does thorin fundamentally changes his priorities on his deathbed and talking about valuing food and drink and cheer over hoarded gold and realizing that his perspective was fucked up the whole time and bilbo goes yeah yeah i'm good my values were good from the beginning they're good now thanks for reinforcing that buddy sorry you had to die Yeah, I don't know if anyone's values really... They just have a greater appreciation for what they always had.
01:01:39
Speaker
Which is good. That's not a bad thing. But... Yeah, there's not like a big transformation. So I think that covers... the big thematic questions that we had prepared.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:01:54
Speaker
We're not really going to get into plot threads or trivia because there's enough of that in the world. This is about our reflections on our own experience. But was there anything else that you wanted to cover in this little retrospective slash victory lap?
01:02:11
Speaker
This was fun. This was getting back to my roots of defining fantasy as a central part of who I am as a person and as a nerd. I had a good time with it.
01:02:22
Speaker
Me too. this is Thanks for coming along. This is really special. i have lots of big feelings about it that are just for me and just for us that I won't need to get into on the podcast. But it's been really fun. And I'm really glad that I now have all of this The most thorough and most expert introduction to Lord of the Rings that a person could possibly have. i am now thoroughly inducted into the ranks of Lord the Rings fans.
01:02:51
Speaker
And I'm very excited to watch the movies. So what's next? We've ah had a little bit of a discussion about this. So we are going to, in some order, we're going to do a loose read of the appendixes.
01:03:08
Speaker
They will not be in depth. There's a lot of information there. We'll do a loose read of them. We're going to talk about the influence of Lord of the Rings on the rest of fansy modern fantasy.
01:03:22
Speaker
We're going to do a specific focus on Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons. Because that is how Sam and I came together as nerds. um And it is you know, some of how i first experienced Lord of the Rings out in the world.
01:03:40
Speaker
And I had the biggest, hugest, giantest friend crush on you and was like, I gotta talk to this person more. And now here we are. My plot worked. Well, you didn't have to contrive a whole podcast just to talk to me. oh no, that was D&D was the contrivance.
01:03:58
Speaker
Oh, the game that your spouse and I started? Mm-hmm. Anyway. And then we're going to talk about the movies, which be very exciting. We will talk about how we'll structure those and things when we actually talk about the movies. um But sort of like Sam said with this episode, we're not going to be talking about like big plot threads and thematics and trivia because, you know, everyone knows that Viggo Mortensen broke his toe when he kicked the helmet.
01:04:27
Speaker
And we've also spent... lot of time talking about the plot yeah we want a lot of time we want to talk about things that are more relevant to our expertise and our interests and adding to the conversation rather than just repeating the conversation but we will come up with some kind of structure that we will then apply to all of the movies so So we're going to have a good time with that. We hope you will have a good time with that. We hope you'll join us for the rest of our Lord of the Rings episodes.
01:05:02
Speaker
There may be more, and then we'll reveal what comes next. Don't be too sad. We will remain with fantasy, and I fully expect we'll be talking about Lord of the Rings in the context of all other fantasies and sci-fi as we discuss.
01:05:20
Speaker
In the near future. And the distant future. And a long time ago.
01:05:28
Speaker
Anyway, if you like what you're hearing, if you like what you've heard, if you like what you think you might hear, give us a follow. Leave us a five-star review. Leave us a comment or a written review if the podcast platform you're listening on allows that.
01:05:44
Speaker
YouTube, Spotify allow comments. Apple Podcasts allows reviews. You can leave a comment on our various social medias, which currently are Tumblr, Blue Sky, and Insta...
01:06:01
Speaker
I think are the ones that I've opened in the recent past. So, you know, leave a comment, interact with some of the stuff that we've got ah going up there. Social media is a shit show, as we've mentioned.
01:06:15
Speaker
Send us an email at thefandomapprentice at gmail.com and come on back in two weeks for our next episode. which Which one of the ones I just mentioned will it be? TBD.
01:06:27
Speaker
We'll figure it out. You'll just have to come back and find out next time. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you in two weeks. See you next time. Bye.
01:06:38
Speaker
The Phantom Apprentice is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music was composed and performed by James, and our art is by Casey Turgeon. This podcast is created for non-commercial entertainment purposes, and the opinions expressed therein are our own and are not reflective of the opinions of any other person or organization.
01:06:56
Speaker
The content discussed is the property of the Tolkien Estate and is used here under fair use.