Transcript
Speaker: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Queer Lodgings, the queer led podcast about everything Tolkien. I'm Alicia, and I'm here with my usual co -hosts, Grace. Hello. And Leah. Hi. And today we're joined by Rory and Stuart, friends of the pod who are joining us from the Alliance of Arda to discuss arrow ace readings in Middle Earth. We're so glad to have you both here. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having us. Yes, thank you.
Speaker: So let's gather around the table and bag end, grab some of our favorite tidbits to fill up the corners as we discuss with our gracious host. Before we begin, Rory and Stuart, please tell us a little bit about yourselves. Yeah, so hi, I'm Rory. I have liked talking for about two -thirds of my life at this point. I helped
Speaker: run things over at the Alliance of Arda. And in the rest of my time, I am a botanist, taxonomist, ethnobotanist, student, something. But I've ended up researching fantasy, botany, and ecology quite a lot recently. So I've ended up just putting all my interests in the same blob of tangents. So it's pretty fun.
Speaker: Hi everyone, I'm Stuart. I use they then pronouns. I have been a fan of Tolkien since I was 10 years old, which is quite a bit over three decades now, which is a really scary thought.
Speaker: So I'm a member of the Alliance of Arda and the Tolkien Society. And I'm particularly interested in arrow ace readings of Tolkien because I am arrow ace. I'm also non -binary, I'm agender. So that's why I volunteered to talk to you all today. Awesome. Thank you both so much. So let's like dive straight into this. For people who might not know about what arrow ace is, which one of you care to explain?
Speaker: I find it hilarious that, that we don't actually have a business card explanation given that at least one of us has been explicitly asked exactly such a thing. Yeah. So, Arrow Ace is short for aromantic and asexual, which refers to experiences of romantic and sexual attraction that are not quote unquote normal. I hate the word normal for this, but we have to start somewhere, right?
Speaker: So some people don't experience primary sexual attraction to people. So for people who don't understand that, think about looking at somebody you're not attracted to. That's basically how we feel about everybody. And the same with romantic attraction. And separating these out relies on something called the split attraction model.
Speaker: the idea that there are different kinds of attraction. So there's platonic, there's romantic, there's sexual, there's aesthetic. And for a lot of people, all of those are moving in roughly the same direction. So you don't really notice a distinction. But for some people, they do work differently. So you could be, say, biromantic, so attracted to your own and another gender, but homosexual, so only attracted
Speaker: in a sexual sense to people of your own gender. And there's a whole bunch of different ways you can split this up. It's not a useful model for everybody. I know plenty of people in the ace community who have plenty of criticism for it, but it is, it's a useful one to be across when you're talking about anything ace and arrow. And the other thing that's really important with any ace spec stuff is that these terms are spectra. They do not.
Speaker: just refer to a singular experience. So you get demisexual which is you don't start by being attracted to somebody but after you form a bond with them you do. And various different
Speaker: ways of experiencing stuff. So it's kind of infrequent or not at all or conditional or essentially anything other than straightforward. So it is pretty complicated but hopefully that helps.
Speaker: And to be perfectly fair, most queer things are complicated. Exactly. Lots of queer identities are kind of a mess and complicated. And I think it's really important to emphasize that aro ace experiences and identities are absolutely a part of the
Speaker: the queer identity umbrella. I feel like sometimes in different conversations about queer realities and identities, arrows and ace folk tend to get lost a bit in the conversation because queer doesn't equal sexual, right? Queer doesn't equal sexuality or the lack thereof, really. It's a very broad experience. And I love that we're kind of elevating and bringing these readings to Tolkien because they're a big part of the queer community.
Speaker: Yeah, if anybody wants to tell you that the A in the acronym stands for ally, it doesn't. It really is asexual, aromantic and agender. It covers all three of those things. And I think because people kind of jump to ally, they just, it makes it easier for them to forget us. Cause there's a, you know, what sounds like a logical thing to put in there and yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of relation to that. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and you're talking to three bisexuals, we know all about erasure. That solidarity handshake meme, like, yeah, everyone in the back half of the acronym. And historically, you guys took us in because we were equally not attracted to, quote unquote, both genders. And so for a while we were counted with bisexuals and bisexuals.
Speaker: accepted us and gave us a place to have within the community. So, you know, historically that handshake is very, very literal as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's the end as a demisexual as well as a bisexual. I'm like, yes, I am that the three way sort of like meme of like the two arms basically coming together. So yeah, totally.
Speaker: Yeah, one of the things that I think is interesting is that we're all just considered confused straight people to straight people. We're all considered broken, so yeah. The true irony is that the straight people are confused about us and they're the confused ones. Yeah, very much so.
Speaker: I have definitely heard all of the discourse about how ace people are just, that's how all people are before they get married. Okay. First of all, no. You might have some questions to ask yourself if that's been your experience. Friend, there is an exciting journey that awaits you just outside your door, should you go on it. I'll let you go.
Speaker: There is, of course, our favourite arrow -ace icon in all of Middle -earth. So there we go. Yes. Coincidence? I think not.
Speaker: Why don't we kind of jump into one of the reasons that we really wanted to talk to you guys was because we get really excited about Ace Arrow Bilbo and Ace Arrow Frodo especially. The Baggins boys are, as Tolkien describes them, queer folk. So I kind of felt like they were a really good fit to kind of start our conversation with. So let's kind of get into Frodo and Bilbo a bit.
Speaker: I feel like Bilbo might be a good place to start in terms of being kind of a good example of what perhaps an ace aro existence in Middle -earth might look like. He's famously unmarried, even when Gandalf comes to bring him on his first adventure. And Bilbo's already quite, you know, he's middle -aged at that point.
Speaker: which is a little unusual for Hobbits. I think that we have some quotes actually from Tolkien and from Christopher kind of about this particular status of his. Here in Unfinished Tales, does one of you want to kind of read that and kind of bring us into that?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm happy to do that. So this is from the quest for Erebor in Unfinished Tales. And Gandalf is discussing, for those who haven't read it, he's discussing how he set the quest in motion. It was a chance coincidence he met Thorin Oakenshield in Brie. And then he's talking about how he picked Bilbo. So the quote begins, and now I found he was unattached to jump on again. For of course I did not know all this until I went back to the Shire. I learnt that he never married.
Speaker: I thought that odd, though I guessed why it was, and the reason that I guessed was not the one that most of the Hobbits gave me, that he had only been left very well off and his own master. No, I guess that he wanted to remain unattached for some reason deep down which he did not understand himself, or would not acknowledge for it alarmed him. He wanted, all the same, to be free to go when the chance came, or he made up his courage.
Speaker: So a bit I would highlight in that is that he wanted to remain unattached for some reason, deep down, which he didn't understand himself. And not because, as the other Hobbits were presumably saying, he was well off, he didn't need a wealthy wife, he had a back end, that luxurious hole in the hill.
Speaker: So to me this reads very strongly as Arowas in the wanting to remain unattached. He never really seemed to settle down. He doesn't seem to have had much interest in either a sexual or a romantic relationship.
Speaker: And the idea that he didn't understand himself really chimes true of many people here, I think, who are arrow ways. Because, I mean, at least in the UK, when I was growing up, we weren't taught anything about heterosexuality at school. The idea that
Speaker: you know, sexual attraction wasn't something everyone experienced or everyone experienced in the same way. Really, you know, strikes a chord, especially for someone like me who came to, you know, recognize themselves as always when they were older. And the idea that he wouldn't acknowledge it for it alarmed him. And it's sort of the the idea that
Speaker: People are ace because they are broken. It's something we might want to go into a bit later. So I won't tangent us now. What a pin in that, yeah. The lack of sexual attraction. I mean, from my experience, I didn't understand how it differed from aesthetic attraction until I was in my 40s. And I can imagine Bilbo, who didn't have the benefit of the internet in the Shire, having this
Speaker: sort of something is wrong vibe. I'm not interested in marrying whoever his relatives were trying to pair him up with. I don't want to be attached. That really does come across as very ace to me. I don't know, Laura, do you have anything you want to add? I totally agree. I think that, yeah, would not acknowledge it for it alarmed him. Yeah, like my own process of working it out was actually genuinely really scary because
Speaker: The way we talk about being ace is about lack. It's not about a difference of experience. We talk about lacking attraction. And it's that very kind of deficit -based model where actually, I mean, yes, fine. There is a thing that is absent, but defining it by absence is kind of quite negative. For me, when I was first realizing it, I kind of felt like I was jumping into a void.
Speaker: I was like, well, I'm, yeah, fine. I'm untethering myself from these ideas of how I'm supposed to feel and how I'm supposed to behave.
Speaker: but what the heck am I doing with that? And I, I mean, yeah, I still don't know, but it's much, much less scary than it was. So yeah, the idea that it would alarm him is when you're kicking against the culture that does say, well, yes, you should pair up and you should have children and this is all normal and this is how it should happen. As soon as you start kicking against that,
Speaker: Yeah, it's a whole thing. And I was thinking on the back of this fragment from Unfinished Tales, there's some stuff in Return of the Shadow about previous versions of Bilbo being married. And then I think it's the fourth version. Christopher said, Bilbo's marriage, as was inevitable, I think, has been rejected.
Speaker: And I love that realization that, you know, this isn't just a narrative choice. It would be a perfectly fine narrative choice, but it feels very inherent to the character as well. And I really, really enjoy that. It's not just that Bilbo happened not to get married, that it is actually Bilbo. This is about who Bilbo is and how Bilbo works. And it's a very kind of, well,
Speaker: It sounds like an unconscious decision, but there is a certain level of consciousness within how this has been done. And I think that's the same section where they talk about like the Hobbit tradition of marrying and going off without any kind of announcement or anything and just coming back hitched.
Speaker: You know, it would have been easy for Bilbo to kind of at least visually conform to that. And he still chose not to. And I just, I absolutely love that about his character. I love that about the way that he operates and doesn't operate. I mean, you say we're going to start with Bilbo. Everything starts with Bilbo anyway, certainly in a publication order. Yeah. And actually we start with a confirmed bachelor
Speaker: probably some variety of aroace taking in his nephew, our friend Mercury, who I really hope we're going to get on this thing at some point, because holy shit. But we are... Yeah, don't worry. Yeah. So he has this idea of found family, which is literally the queerest idea ever. It's like the most archetypal beautiful queer experience. And you start with Bilbo. Both books start with Bilbo.
Speaker: And if you want a statement of arrow slash ace acceptance, I think you could do worse than read one into that. Exactly. Like one thing I really love about Tolkien's sort of treatment of Bilbo is that this strangeness and this, you know, weirdness, this queerness about him is kind of a source of gossip and a source of, you know, sort of behind his back talk in the Shire.
Speaker: But there's such an overwhelming amount of affection for Bilbo amongst his neighbors, amongst his friends, his family. Everybody has a great deal of respect for him and not just because he's rich, but because he enacts these really generous values. I feel like he embodies hospitality for me and that idea of found family and hospitality for me.
Speaker: goes back very, very, very far into some of the values embodied in a lot of different Celtic mythologies, where the foster family, a family that would take in a nephew or a niece and raise them,
Speaker: your foster kin would be just as or almost in some cases even more important than your birth family. And so that experience of enacting hospitality and doing things like throwing gigantic birthday parties for half the Shire and
Speaker: gifting everybody from the richest to your poorest neighbors, things from your estate when you leave, and consulting your poorest neighbors about the quote, you know, growing of potatoes and respecting everyone's
Speaker: knowledge and what they bring to the community. I very much agree with you, Rory. Mercury spoke a lot about how Bilbo is kind of a drag mother in that he brings everybody underneath his wing and Bag End becomes a place where not just Frodo comes in, but Frodo's friends are in and out all day. Sam is there learning how to read and write from Bilbo.
Speaker: For me like the image of Bilbo himself kind of being the party tree underneath where everybody gathers and has a really great time and feels really safe and celebrated. To me that's just a really lovely image and for me that's like personal queer goals. I want to be the crazy queer aunt slash uncle that Bilbo is basically in my life. I'd like a library to rival his as well.
Speaker: At least one. Yes. I'd also would like his dwarf riches or his troll riches but that's another story for another time perhaps. But no you're right Bilbo creates this this queer place in Bag End and that is treated affectionately and positively by the text and that's huge. Something that we should never lose sight of. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I do want to like step back bigger picture just for a second and then we can dig back into our Baggins' Boys. Leah mentioned earlier that being queer does not necessarily mean being sexual and it's something that we've run up against a fair amount when we do queer readings of characters because people just assume that we're talking about characters boning each other exclusively.
Speaker: because I firmly believe that there are a subset of straight people who fetishize queerness while simultaneously hating slash being terrified of it. And it is important to note here, ACE readings are one of the reasons why queerness doesn't always just exclusively mean sex.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. And it's quite interesting. When Rings of Power came out and it was revealed they had an intimacy coordinator. Oh my God. And everyone's clutching their pearls. And I'm stuck because on the one hand, no, Tolkien's work is not completely chaste. Unless you actually think that Sam and Rosie planted their 13 children in drills and harvested them the next year without any physical contact between the two. Unless you actually think that, and you know,
Speaker: There are cabbage pad babies. I like to think there's room for the vast majority of readings. But you know, there is sex, there is nudity. And that is a fine, that is a fine thing to notice. And as an waterways person, I'm there just like, on the one hand, to keep talking, chase people, don't want
Speaker: Tolkien goes to Westeros on screen. Fine by me. I don't personally appreciate Martin level detail on everything. You don't want sex position. You don't want Gandalf in...
Speaker: Saruman talking about the dollar school while 60 -90ing or something like that. Thanks for that image. Yes, no thank you. There are heads hanging in dismay all around this room all the time. And they're like, I don't want to be aligned with these people who don't want loads and loads of sex in Middle -earth. But there is. And it's there.
Speaker: trying to walk the line between aligning myself with this like very puritanical keep talking chased thing and then no no we can be chased without
Speaker: actually like erasing everything. And personally, I think Rings of Power did a lovely job of that. We had some lovely relationships. I know that fanfic writers everywhere have had all directions of fun with that and may they have immense joy of it. I just really like seeing the affection and the love between people.
Speaker: I don't need to see what they do about it. I just like seeing people connect and that's, that's so much of what it's about for me. And it goes back again, I think to viewing asexual as a lack of something. No, it's, these are different ways of like connecting with people and different emphases.
Speaker: and connecting with people better once you lose the baggage of things you don't feel and think you should. So yeah, the whole queer is a sexualizing token. Well, number one, no. That's not actually a thing most of the time anyway. But I think it's one of the things that ties into the whole, asexuals aren't actually stigmatized. You don't face queerphobia.
Speaker: No, because you've decided that queer means sexual. So of course you're going to erase us into the bargain while also being wildly wrong. Right. You've brought out a few times that like being asexual is related to having a lack of something. And it's not something I actually ever thought of, but you're right. In the Western world, we have so much attention paid to our romantic, our sexual relationships and
Speaker: the bonds that are formed from that, like marriages, and that's kind of the ideal of the life script as it were. You fall in love with somebody, you get married, you have children, dot, dot, dot, you die.
Speaker: We really don't value platonic love at all in our society, just in general. Yeah. The atomization of Western society and this construction of a nuclear family is incredibly recent, even though a lot of people would have you believe that it's actually the foundation of all civilizations, not just, you know, white Western European ones. That's incredibly untrue. And it's actually a product of
Speaker: But let's hear it again, capitalism. It's because atomizing families to exist in these separate little holds from each other and connecting community connections between each other that aren't strictly
Speaker: romantic partner or strictly producing an heir to inherit your generations of ill -gotten wealth. It's like civilizations that were never founded on that principle. They were founded on connections between
Speaker: community members of all kinds, whether that is romantic, whether that's familial, whether that's platonic sexual. I really strongly feel that emphasizing that asexual doesn't mean lack of love or lack of intimacy, and that platonic love and connection isn't just as strong or just as important to the queer experience. Never mind, you know, the human experience. I sort of feel like
Speaker: ignoring how important it is to build up our platonic love connections in order to create the community that we want and we want to support and support each other. That's really essential. And again, going back to Bilbo, I feel like he generates so much love for his community and between all of his community members.
Speaker: Reading that as like a young kid, I think kind of planted some seeds for community building and for understanding, you know, like, this is the kind of family that I want to have. It doesn't necessarily have to involve just one other person and my, you know, biological descendants. It's my neighbors. It's my friends. It's family members, too. And random people you meet on the road and end up being unexpectedly friends with looking at you, Legolas and Gimli.
Speaker: As you say, or like, you know, some random wizard scratching stuff on my newly painted door and groping me into this crazy, crazy thing, but whatever. I think one place that there is a lack within our culture and popular culture is, and this is like my personal soapbox, this particular span of months.
Speaker: but it's in our popular media and in the media where we see relationships modeled and what the blueprints are for what relationships are supposed to be. And we should recognize that what we've seen on movies and television screens and all this is heavily controlled by censorship heroes. And for the last century, we have very carefully taken
Speaker: everything across all spectrums of gender and sexuality and romantic relationships and everything into an off -screen realm of subtext where you have to read into subtext to see anything and that
Speaker: that flattens down all of the nuance that there actually is to actual real human life and lived experience, rather than what we are seeing selected and put on as representation in our screens. And we're starting to get better there, but there's a long way to go yet.
Speaker: And I think in some ways Tolkien fills a gap that we don't know is actually there. You see a lot of people discuss specifically Frodo and Sam, and I'm coming at this from a Frodo and Sam shipper and seeing people push back against that ship because you're erasing platonic love as if both readings couldn't simultaneously exist.
Speaker: But there's obviously a gap there that people need to have filled and they're finding it in Tolkien because of this. I don't want to say chased because I hate the whole chase Tolkien thing. But when you're talking about romantic and sexual love and Tolkien, what you're talking about is essentially courtly love and all the rest of their relationships are purely platonic as written if you're not looking into the subtext.
Speaker: which is honestly where I am most of the time because I ship everyone because that's just who I am as a person. Yeah, I think it's lovely that people are still coming back to Tolkien and getting this thing that they obviously need that they're not getting in traditional media. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, speaking of Frodo and Sam, we want to kind of pivot a little bit from Bilbo and move into talking about Frodo a little bit more. Always. I would love to.
Speaker: bouncing off of talking about keeping Tolkien chaste and people getting their panties in a bunch about a lot of things about Frodo and Sam. Something that I encounter a lot and am often frustrated with is this idea that if Frodo and Sam are, you know, gay as hell and they're absolutely together romantically, sexually, this takes away from the value of friendship. This takes away from the very real
Speaker: experience of male friendships that are so lacking in today's modern society. So the problem that I have with this is that it's sort of like a yes, but sort of answer where I'm like, yes, we absolutely need more depictions of
Speaker: male platonic intimacy and male platonic friendship because toxic masculinity and patriarchy have robbed us all, men, women, and non -binary, of the very real and healing power of just friendship, right? Friendship is magic. And so it's sort of like, I absolutely feel like we need to, yes, we absolutely do need to see more of these.
Speaker: but and also a lot of what you're responding to is kind of rooted in a gay kind of panic and it also I think it erases the reading of Sam and Frodo as an ace aro as a queer platonic relationship or something like that
Speaker: And I wonder if you guys might, if one of you two, Rory or Stuart, might kind of go into what queer platonic relationship might mean or might look like, especially in terms of Fertil and Sam. I did the last definition. This one's yours, Stuart. Thanks.
Speaker: So I would maybe define queer platonic as, well by exclusion, it's not necessarily a romantic and it's not necessarily sexual. I'm not saying if you think Frodo and Sam are in a gay relationship you're wrong, that's fine. But the idea that there is this platonic bond between them and it is deeper than normal friendship, I think that's how I would go for queer platonic.
Speaker: I think for Frodo and Sam, there's clearly something going on there, which is more than just your casual met them at the pub sitting next to Gaffa Gamgee in the Green Dragon friendship.
Speaker: I think that relationship does evolve. You see, at the beginning, Sam is very much Frodo's servant. It's all, oh yes, Mr. Frodo, I'll go and carry your pack up this next hill. And by the time they get into Ithilien, Sam is taking Frodo's hand and talking about love and things like that.
Speaker: And that doesn't necessarily have to be romantic or sexual love. This could just be an intense form of friendship, which I think is where queer platonic comes in as a relationship. It's a friendship with a deep emotional connection, but not necessarily any sexual or romantic attraction. Yeah, that's where I'd land on it. I think
Speaker: The other important thing with quipletonic relationships is that they are as varied as the combinations of people that are in them. I was in another kind of Aspec space online recently, and there was this comment that somebody made that's like, quipletonic has kind of become the secret third thing.
Speaker: like it's either romantic and sexual or it's platonic or maybe it's just queer platonic and like it's kind of like how non -binary became like the third gender and it there are some really restrictive ways of looking at it but I think actually once you start realizing
Speaker: how many different ways there are to be in a queer platonic relationship. And that relationship doesn't necessarily have to not include any sex or romance because attraction and desire and action are not the same thing. So there's a billion ways that you can write this. And I think one of my favorite readings of Frodo and Sam is that Sam is biromantic and Frodo is aroase.
Speaker: But they have a compatible kind of love that is them. And Stuart and I, I know, have talked about this a lot. The idea that two people in a relationship do not necessarily feel exactly the same about each other. And even in the straightest, most aloe most bog -standard, normal relationship, actually, nobody's going to feel exactly the same. It's about finding compatible levels on which you can work with a person.
Speaker: That's the attraction of looking at asexuality and the split attraction model at all, is actually working out what these connections are, working out what connections we do have with people in general, which is very confusing at the beginning because you're like, oh, hell, I have way too many intense connections with so many people. How am I going to cope with this? And I'm autistic as well. So it does not take much to short circuit my brain on this stuff.
Speaker: But actually once you start looking at it in that expansive way, I mean, I think Stuart and I were saying basically you can kind of ship most not explicitly romantic relationships as ace in some variety. Like there are potentially quipletonic relationships everywhere, just absolutely everywhere from the first age to the fourth, everything in between.
Speaker: And that's like, you've got this word, queer platonic, but it means so many things and also sort of nothing. It's a very difficult one to explain in kind of short, simple terms. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's different to just friendship because I've definitely heard like, oh, isn't asexual love just friendship? I'm like, well, okay. Number one, there is no such thing as just friendship anyway, because as mentioned before, friendship is magic. And number two, for me, it was like, I don't feel this way about every person I consider a friend. So there is clearly something else going on here. I am a taxonomist at heart. Not being able to name it drives me absolutely up the wall.
Speaker: like there is a thing here and I can't necessarily describe it but there is something more, there is something additional. And I think once you start expanding how you look at friendship at all I think even the most entrenched, allo people can actually just kind of look at it and be like, oh hey, actually this is kind of a great way of looking at the world. Because it is, because you get more friendship and more magic and more love and how can that possibly be a bad thing?
Speaker: Yeah, once you start querying identities and relationships, you kind of start querying the rest of the world. And for me, a big thing that kind of helps expand my idea of shipping in the first place was kind of understanding that like the word ship is short for relationship.
Speaker: There's all sorts of relationships, right? I can ship besties. I can ship super duper gay for each other. Lovers. I can ship queer phyphonic, Frodo and Sam as this really beautiful, intimate, deep relationship that's still shipping.
Speaker: But yeah, I love everything that you're saying there, Rory, about how beautifully messy the term queer platonic can be, but how it really comes down to an experience of love and connection. And that to me is the core of Frodo and Sam in particular, but Frodo himself, it's all about love. Like no matter what you might call what is going on between Frodo and Sam,
Speaker: It's love. It's deep, deep love. And that's really beautiful to me. I wonder if you might kind of expand a little bit more into how Tolkien sort of portrays Frodo and in contrast, maybe with Bilbo and kind of his experience of being Ace Ero and what Frodo's experience of being Ace Ero looks like.
Speaker: So I think with Frodo, the nice thing for me is that you actually see this kind of generational thing happening. Like you look at, say all the generations of gay men, say who were, you know, living through the eighties and all the myriad horrors that came with that. But then that way that they paved the way for us today as a queer community.
Speaker: And I think, you know, for Frodo essentially being the next generation to Bilbo, he's seen how you can do this already. He's grown up with this kind of expansive sense of community and what it is to love and be interested and look outside the walls of what you already know in pretty much every sense going from learning poems about Earendil to learning that the gardener's son gets to learn to read as much as you do.
Speaker: And I think there's this really lovely generational thing where Frodo may not totally get it. He may not totally understand what's going on for himself, but he knows that there is space for whatever it is. And I, I really like that because, you know, for me, I'm the first sort of generation, well, I'm part of the first generation in my family to kind of really start grappling with these identities for myself. And there's a bit of me, it's like, okay, but yeah, the young people who are going to come through my life,
Speaker: later, I get to show them that you get to look like me and change your name at 30, because why the hell not? You get to do that. And I think for Frodo, seeing Bilbo model that, I think that is exactly why he is happy to invite Sam and Rosie. Just come live at bag end. This is what makes sense. This is the single most pragmatic thing we can do.
Speaker: You know, he barely thinks about it. You know, Sam's there just like, I feel torn in two and Frodo goes, well, okay, yeah, we can fix that. And I think if Frodo had been brought up by anybody else, I'm not saying he wouldn't have got to the same conclusion, but I don't think he'd got there so easily.
Speaker: I love the Frodo and Sam and Rosie dynamic because I love the idea that they're essentially creating this polyamorous relationship and family structure in Bag End, and it doesn't require anyone to change who they are or live in authentically or anything. There's another model that builds upon the split attraction model, which is the attraction layer cake.
Speaker: where you take the spectrum and put it onto a cube essentially and it adds relationship dynamic or like you're essentially like living style of relationship between monogamy and non -monogamy as well. And envisioning these characters on that cube is just always a delight for me because everyone gets to be exactly
Speaker: who they are and Frodo gets to be that arrow ace reading in a queer platonic partnership with Sam who is also married and like sexually attracted to Rosie and having kids with her. And it's just a beautiful found family sort of dynamic. Totally.
Speaker: Yeah, we've kind of been touching on this a lot, but for anyone who's listening to this who is straight and does not have a bunch of queer or specifically lesbian friends, every queer person wants to live on a commune.
Speaker: And we want to just have a tiny farm and live together and just like kind of bare bones, homestead, but queer. And it's very specifically, lesbians are a big component from that. So I always think that Cottage Court, Holly Emory Group is also on this.
Speaker: Fair enough. Like Cottagecore is really funny to me because I'm like, Cottagecore is inherently queer. It's lesbian core. That's what it is. And it's so universal. Like all of us are just like, let's throw off the fetters of capitalism. Let's just go buy some backyard chickens and goats and let's just all live together. And garden. Yeah.
Speaker: Let's go plant some trees and worry about our roses. There is a reason why the ring tempts Sam with the idea of being able to have a really good garden. Unlike most gardeners I know, Sam's response is, I just need enough that I can do myself. I'm thinking, okay, that is a very unrealistic view of how any gardener actually thinks. Because, yeah, like we always want more. I'm like, I am disabled. I can barely handle the small bit of garden I've got. Still want more.
Speaker: still want all the plants because like yeah they pretty much implant that one in you when you start a horticulture degree so. Yeah like found family however that ends up coming across is it's so big in queer communities and honestly I wish that
Speaker: non queer people had that same kind of drive to build community. But we mentioned it earlier that capitalism keeps us siloed. And so we lose that bit of community trying to build these like nuclear families as opposed to
Speaker: branching out and having villages raise children and all of that. Yeah. This is why this podcast is pretty ostensibly leftist because we always goes back to us railing about how capitalism ruins everything.
Speaker: I think one of the things that draws me to Frodo as similar but different to Bilbo is something that I'm thinking about like when Frodo is healing in Revendell and how his experience of coming to Revendell has been so different from Bilbo's various journeys into coming into the Revendell.
Speaker: His journey was long and difficult and beset by dangers, and he literally gets a wound that lasts him for the rest of his life, which doesn't even get healed until he basically goes to heaven. But how encountering Bilbo at Rivendell kind of makes him reflect a lot on how different he is from Bilbo, and how yet their journeys have kind of landed them here, kind of in the same
Speaker: the same sort of place in Rivendell, like as another great found family sort of community gathering space. Safe space. Yeah, safe space. And I kind of wonder, as Fredo goes on his journey and sort of, for lack of a better word, collects wounds,
Speaker: That's grim. Yeah. In comparison with Bilbo, I kind of wonder if that, if that can also kind of be read as how different generations experience living in the world differently and how, I don't know, different zeitgeists or different sort of political atmospheres might affect our way of being basically. The middle earth that Bilbo steps into is both
Speaker: the same little earth that Frodo is a part of and also very very different. And it kind of makes me think a little bit about how the youth today are stepping into a world that is both the same world that we slightly older queers have been living in and also one that is very very different.
Speaker: Like when I was growing up, I also, you know, living in Texas, I didn't receive Jack about sexuality of any stripe except for don't get pregnant. Don't look at somebody or else you'll get pregnant as I went to a school that had like the highest teen pregnancy in the city. But mine did too. But it's like I didn't have the words for bisexuality, never mind asexuality or demi or aromantic.
Speaker: And kids today have those words. They have friends who are those things. And they can also have this experience of uncovering this identity for themselves in a much earlier age.
Speaker: And also, they are also living in a world that is incredibly hostile to different ways of being and to different identities, especially here in the United States, where trans kids in particular are the chosen battleground for a lot of people and trans kids' bodies are the chosen without consent battleground for various adults' wars on different ways of being.
Speaker: So I guess I was just kind of easing about how Frodo's sort of experience is both really, really similar and also really, really different to Bilbo's on several different layers and kind of how that can kind of be extrapolated a little bit in reading them today and how Frodo relies so much on his various friends to weather living in Middle -earth and burying the ring
Speaker: but also how his experience of bearing the ring is so different from Bilbo's and how bittersweet that is. Yeah, that's a lovely point, honestly, especially looking at it from
Speaker: like a generational point of view because you want every generation that comes after you to have it better than you did. And thinking about how the baby queers who are coming up now simultaneously have it a lot better than we did and also a lot worse. That's a really deep thing to chew on. Yeah, not to bring folks down, but...
Speaker: But I very much relate to Frodo. He's always been not only like my favorite, but the closest hobbit in my heart. So I'm kind of like I'm always sort of thinking about Frodo and his experience and how it's both very joyful and very steeped in love. But there's also there's a bittersweetness to it. There's some stuff to chew on with him for sure. And actually in the midst of everything he's going through, that is when his relationship with Sam really blossoms.
Speaker: And I love that. And if you go down the baggage shield route, which I know plenty of people in the room do, that also does exist, but it feels more kind of subtextual than Frodo and Sam does. And actually got this real contrast where Frodo is going through an absolute physical, mental and emotional ordeal. And that is where he and Sam become
Speaker: so intertwined that after Rosie dies, Satom has to go over the sea to go and find Frodo because he can't be anywhere else. And I think that's what's happening a lot around now. It's what happened a lot in the 80s and it's very much what Tolkien talks about with Eowyn and Faramir.
Speaker: he got criticisms that like their relationship moves too fast and he addresses it in a specifically in one of his letters and said well actually essentially when you are in the face of death it makes your feelings crystallize pretty damn quick and the like the extra layer of real world applicability of that idea to a queer relationship is
Speaker: it lands, it sticks the landing hard because, I mean, we know that when we are up against something, yeah, we are going to do a lot of like emotions and stuff, but historically the queer community has had to do that time and time and time again. So to see a queer relationship doing the same thing along the same lines that a
Speaker: well. Arguably straight relationship. I think there's plenty of queer available for Eowyn and Faramir, but you know, unless explicitly. We agree. You know, just see those processes happening in multiple kinds of relationships on multiple kinds of levels. It's really, really wonderful. And I, I can't see Frodo and Sam as not
Speaker: together anymore. I actually can't. I try to hold like as much space for as many readings as I can. But this one is the hill on which I will happily breathe my lust if it comes to it. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. They're U -Haul lesbians, just like, just like a, sorry, Rory. Oh, it's completely true. I just didn't leave that truth while I had a mouthful of tea. It's like, Aowyn Fairmere, U -Haul lesbians, all the way. One of these days I'm writing that paper. I think I'm going to pitch it to the National Popular Culture Association meeting.
Speaker: Next Easter, I've got this paper is burning a hole in my soul about how queer Aowan and Faramir are. I need to read it. Yes, yes, yes. We all want it. Yeah.
Speaker: I want to come back very briefly to the queer platonic and how that's kind of the catch -all for whatever's between friendship and romance. And you equated it to non -binary and how that's become the third gender. That sticks in my craw so much.
Speaker: Because how can non -binary be the point between a binary? No, and especially for two -way gender people like us. We're just there like, you can put us where you like, but it's going to be wrong. Yeah, we're not going to sit in any of your boxes no matter how many you make. That's the point.
Speaker: Yeah, I have a hard time discussing my gender with people who I'm not sure like where they are up to on like queer issues because I identify as genderqueer and I'm like, I don't even know how to explain this to you. I am just no thanks to gender.
Speaker: And I think it's one of those weird bits of erasure that happens a lot. I mean, partly with agender from actually specifically with being ace and arrow is that because we don't get told about this stuff and like, you know, for us in the UK, it was section 28 saying, no, you cannot learn about anything other than heterosexuality. And that stopped during my schooling. And then by the time it stopped, I was at a Catholic school, so go figure.
Speaker: But we didn't have these touchstones as young people for like, is this a thing? Does everybody experience this? And yeah, because I grew up Christian as well. So I'm there just like, well, I don't want sex before marriage. So I'm doing this right, aren't I? And then they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're a teenager. You're supposed to want it. You need to fight the good fight. And like, there is literally no fight. I'm not having a fight right now.
Speaker: And I can track this back to when I was like 12, 13, 14 and I didn't have the words for it. I knew somebody who was asexual, but I didn't have the nuance. I didn't have the split attraction model. I didn't have anything. And it took me a long time to just be like, oh, so it's not like this for like everybody in some form.
Speaker: And there's that real kind of erasure. And particularly like when you talk about being demisexual, Leah and I were in this, we're in the same conversation in another Tolkien space a while ago and we were talking about being ace and somebody said, well, I waited until marriage with my husband. Does that make me demisexual? And I'm there like, not in and of itself, but there's this total lack of understanding about attraction and choice.
Speaker: And the fact that yes, those things intersect a lot. And like, yes, a lot of asexual people are celibate, but that's not because asexual means celibate, it's because a very valid reaction to not experiencing sexual attraction is not acting on, you know, it's a logical Venn diagram. Don't get me wrong, but it's not, the Venn diagram is not a circle. There are bits that are not that intersection. And
Speaker: there's this idea of like normality and, oh no, it's totally fine. Like everybody finds this a bit weird or everybody has these moments. And I did, I did this until my late twenties. And then suddenly it's like, oh, but people are simultaneously telling you that this is normal, but it's not quite normal enough. Which actually as an, as a late diagnosed autistic and ADHD person is also a very big kick in the feels. There's a lot of it going around because
Speaker: We don't get it. It's, oh, this is normal. You know, we look at the way Tolkien writes about romantic relationships and children and stuff. And it's like, well, this could be a very religious view on sex, which is not an unreasonable thing for a very religious man to hold. Or is this demisexual or asexual or something like that?
Speaker: And actually the way that Mercury again kind of raised this idea, like maybe Tolkien would have called himself Aspec now. And we'll never know. And we can't, we can't assume that. But that commonality, that idea, you know, maybe he isn't just talking about normal religious, allosexual stuff.
Speaker: This is kind of all the way through. And I really love that. But the other interesting thing, and Stuart and I were talking about this a couple of days ago, was the fact that we have loads of people you can read as ace, but not many that you can read as arrow. We were struggling to think of any characters who you could read as allosexual, but aromantic. I don't know if anyone else can think of any, but we were really struggling.
Speaker: Well the closest I got to was Sauron because of the seductive thing but also not. But it's a really uncomfortable reading to kind of even look at because it falls into the sexual degenerate queer baddie. It's really difficult and you need so much nuance with these readings.
Speaker: Because aromantic, allosexual people, they get their own special kind of stigma. Because, you know, for Tolkien, sex and love are part of the same package and separating those two things out. Ooh, hell no. But actually, yeah, it's, I don't think we could find anybody like that definitively aromantic apart from
Speaker: possibly Sauron, but that requires a lot of reading and that's way above my nuance skills to even navigate without falling into some really, really deep, like problematic holes. I love those deep problematic holes. I like that reading. Yeah, I think for me, it's a really uncomfortable one because I am bored of queer body and also, you know, there's
Speaker: The way that empathy and friendship and connection and everything are kind of moralised, you know, as an autistic person, you know, oh, you don't have empathy. Well, number one, yes, I do. And number two, even if I didn't, fine. You don't need empathy to be a good person, but because these things get rolled up with each other so much, it really sucks. And this is something that we find with
Speaker: arrow -ace readings and actually being arrow -ace at all is you can you can really easily pathologize it. And I know Stuart has views on this one. Yeah, before we jump into that, I want to propose Aldarion as someone who is allosexual but aromantic. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm into it.
Speaker: Because his only actual emotional attraction seems to be to the ocean. And I read this, it's like, I will not share you with the lady Ewing. And it's like, well, OK. I mean, there is that whole personification of God's thing that comes into it. So like, maybe not. But I feel like you could potentially read him that way. Not that that is a non -pathologized reading, though.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. Not that there aren't some deep moral holes in everything in that one, given his behaviors. I think there's an empathetic approach, Aldari, on that though. Because actually, I know as an ace and arrow person, I've made a lot of decisions that have not worked out well, because I wasn't working with an accurate framework.
Speaker: I wasn't dealing with what I thought I was in my own head and in my own feelings. And actually when you are in a very kind of conventional society, a very heteronormative, allonormative society, you do end up making some very suboptimal choices because what else have you got? And I think Alderium could be a really interesting example of
Speaker: what happens to ace people when they don't have the space to understand who they are. I know I've caused a lot of mess because I didn't understand and you know it's a really difficult thing when you're sort of navigating who you are but you don't have a framework but you're told this is normal but you're also told this isn't quite normal and actually I can understand why Aldarion might land where he does on that.
Speaker: Because he's facing these pressures and he's pushing against who he is to try and satisfy those pressures. And he can't. And he ends up hurting horrendous badly. But what else are you going to do when you are not allowed to know who you are in all seriousness? Yeah.
Speaker: I really like that reading. Yeah, I think it's a really compassionate read. Because it's the most empathetic I've ever felt toward Aldarion, considering it through that lens, and being able to look at the societal ills as the true villain in that story that everyone is harmed by. I do like that. I can't wait for Tim to edit this part because Tim hates Aldarion so much.
Speaker: Numenor is the problem, Tim. Numenor is always the problem. That's to say, I think it's a really compassionate read. I also want to hold space for its understandable reasons, maybe not the best excuse, or something like that, where it's sort of like, hurt people, hurt people. That's an interesting read to me because I've been thinking about Boromir being a spec for a while now.
Speaker: And the comparison of Aldarion being pushed in that direction to get married and produce an heir and how he had destroyed Arendez versus Boromir being pushed in that direction and Boromir just fucks right off to Rivendell and like, you know, really dives into being big warrior man and just is just like, whatever, I don't even care about producing an heir. Which of course is the other great family metaphor in Middle Earth.
Speaker: Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, he goes to Rivendell, the safe space, and then emerges with a found family of eight other folks who journeys with a whole bunch of them are queers.
Speaker: Yeah, I can't wait for when we're going to get more into Denethor and Faramir and Faramir and all the mess that's going on there because there's so much. There's a lot. There's a lot happening there. It's all bad. It's all bad. Except Faramir and Eowyn. Everything else.
Speaker: Speaking of, I would like to bring us back to those pitfalls of pathologize. Yes. We were talking about, and I would love to hear Stort's thoughts on this. So yes, we were talking about Frodo being our ways earlier.
Speaker: And there is a certain way of reading this that, oh, this is the influence of the ring on Frodo. This is not normal. The ring is damaging Frodo. He is broken. That is why he doesn't go home and find a wife and have 13 kids in the Shire himself. He just lives vicariously with Sam instead.
Speaker: I'm not saying that's not a valid reading, and I'm not saying that couldn't happen, but I think you have to be very careful about letting acephobia enter your reading. So acephobia, for those who don't know, is a version to being asexual or aromantic. So you do have to be careful just how you phrase that.
Speaker: I think making it just about photo sexual orientation isn't actually the right thing to do here. And for anyone listening to this who has only just heard the word asexuality in the last hour or so, you are not broken, there are other people like you, don't worry about it, you're fine. The context that reading came up in was talking with, you know, good people. And it's this thing where like,
Speaker: Sometimes if you like do some kind of boo -boo, like queerphobia or racism or ableism or whatever, and it's really easy to kind of like internalize that. I'm like, oh my God, I'm such a terrible person. I held that reading. I was like, oh yeah, well of course Frodo can't process this because he's traumatized. And actually I do kind of go with, in Ithilien, yes, he is too traumatized to do anything about any feelings he may or may not have.
Speaker: Because, you know, like we do park our feelings when we are going through stuff. But it's that navigation of readings, you know, like with Sauron being allosexual, aromantic, like Aldarion being Aspec, whichever particular permutation of that you look at, it is so easy to fall into queer baddies, moralization of certain kinds of connection and all that. It's so easy to do, but it's okay.
Speaker: And actually, yeah, sometimes ace people can just be straight up arseholes. There is another reading of Aldarion that is like, yes, he's ace. And no, he doesn't know, but he also makes some really, really, really crap choices. Yeah. And then, yes, I think has to be room for that. Whilst also not buying into automatically pathologizing this as a lack.
Speaker: or a deficiency of some kind. And I find this with how talking does disability as well, that the whole physical malformation and mental malformation thing gets way too knotted up for my liking as a disabled person. But it's the whole coincidence, causation, and correlation, and not remotely the same thing. And actually, I've met some real asshole ace people and some really lovely aloe people. So at that point, I think that opens up even more readings.
Speaker: because we don't have to treat queer people like they just have to be automatically brilliant just because they are queer. I mean, it does tend to be true. Let's not pretend it's not. It doesn't make us immune. And actually acknowledging the nuances of that, it has to be done carefully. And I think I feel better about
Speaker: talking about Aldarion as arrow waste because I am arrow waste and I know what those decisions can do. Sauron is allosexual, aromantic and they're just like, that's not my lane and I worry that I would tread on some stigmas there, which is why I would navigate it more carefully. But I do think we also need to be able to ask these questions and actually say, yo, did you notice that you're reading while cool?
Speaker: also has this little thing in it that doesn't actually work in the particular conversation I'm thinking of. We had a great conversation. More than one person in the room had said, oh shoot, I went down that road too. And we got out of it. And we talked it through. And everybody came out of that conversation with more than they went in with. And it's brilliant.
Speaker: has to be the point. That has to be the point of looking at readings like this. And it's really easy to knee jerk. And I was moderating this discussion, so I had to not knee jerk. And I worked very hard on not knee jerking. But actually, when we can avoid knee jerking, if we can do it without hurting ourselves or deny, you know, as long as we can do it like well, if we can take that knee jerk out and actually start picking things apart,
Speaker: we get really nuanced, beautiful readings, which, you know, the fanfic writers of the world can thank us later, essentially. Yeah, one of the things that particularly bothers me about the ring destroying, quote unquote, Frodo's, quote unquote, normal sexuality is that queerness isn't external. Yeah, nothing makes you queer. And that really sticks in my craw right now.
Speaker: being an American and just the general political discourse about transing children as if that's a real thing that happens. I mean, not even to mention that Frodo and Bilbo obviously had these tendencies before they even saw the ring and took possession of it, but also just the ring being an external clearing force is so problematic.
Speaker: Yeah. As much as we joke that reading One of the Rings made me gay or, you know, watching Sailor Moon made me gay, that's not how it works. It's a joke, you guys. It makes us realize it was the lever that allows us to realize something other than the narratives that we are swimming in in our society. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we kind of touched a little bit on Altharion. Do we want to talk about maybe some other readings? Maybe that are less popular or more unknown than Frodo and Dobo, who might be read as Ace or Arrow or both. So I've always liked the idea that Starby were AAA, so Arrow, Ace, Agenda. Yeah.
Speaker: unless you want to make jokes about Saruman and Grievant, what they get up to in Orphan, or would rather not think about it. Saruman and Gandalf. You guys know how visual my brain is. Please stop. Sorry, everyone. I'm going to make this happen. We know to some extent the Einor experience romance as you have people lying.
Speaker: man -win, Bada getting married, Mellie and the Maya has children, and as we've already said sex drive and sexual attraction are not the same thing, but you could maybe say that the idol could experience these things, this wasn't innate to them, or maybe it is, that's maybe a different thing to think about another time, but the Astari, none of them ever showed any sign of settling down.
Speaker: Even, you know, when confronted with Galadriel or Arwen or something Gandalf, there's no sign that he fancies her. I think there was maybe a scene in the Hobbit movies which maybe contradicts that, but let's leave that to one side for a moment. Radagas clearly cares more about animals and plants and trees and things than he does about humans anyway. Saraborn, you know, cares about himself.
Speaker: So I kind of do wonder if their inability to get romantically or sexually attracted to specific people, but are still able to form platonic attraction, experience platonic attraction, was one of the reason the Valar chose them. Gandalf, of course, had
Speaker: friends practically everywhere from Aragorn, Tell Contar Strider, the list of titles, all the way through to Bilbo, the Hobbit in the Shire, Saruman was a neighbour amongst the great and good to the point where, I can't remember, was it Eclerion who gave him the key to Isengard? Vadagast, you know, is thought of well by Bjorn,
Speaker: who is a reasonable chap as wizards go, or words to that effect. So they're clearly capable of forming platonic bonds with people, but if they are aroace, maybe it gives them an advantage, maybe they're not going to get seduced by sexy sauron. Yeah, it's like not like Millian getting seduced by sexy bingo. We're doing the seducing for like 200 years.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Just staring at each other for 400 years or whatever. Yeah, I love that reading. Do you have any headcanon about the blues? The blueses? From what they're doing off in the east? I mean, Tolkien was never very clear about them. Sometimes he wrote that they succeeded in their mission. Sometimes he wrote that they failed. I kind of think
Speaker: You know, they were two blue wizards, whereas there's one grey, one white, one brown. So I think maybe, maybe they had a quipletonic bond between them. That's where I go. I love that. Yeah, Alatav and Palando, I can't remember which way round it is, was it? Orome picked Alatar and Alatar wanted to take his friend, Palando.
Speaker: roommate yes and you know I kind of like the idea of that as such an intense platonic
Speaker: bombed, that you could call it queer platonic, that he wanted to take his friend and they went around as a pair doing whatever they did in the east. And that kind of rings true for like the idea that they failed somehow because one was off in Rune and one was in Harad I think, so they actually did also separate. But there's a bit of his like, I've spitballing this now, I hadn't, I've not thought about this before, but maybe like the fact that they failed was because they split up.
Speaker: and they weren't working as the two blue wizards. They are one of the most frustrating characters that we get because we get so little. Ben and Kia Dan, I need to know everything. It bothers me that I don't. I'm there with Arrowace, Istari. I think also because of the fact that they are, you know, among the Einors.
Speaker: They are canonically non -binary. They're already set outside the experience of gender. I like that Tolkien doesn't make this a necessary factor for absolutely everybody. In Game of Thrones, you kind of know who fancies who, who's done what with it. You get full sexual histories for everybody virtually. Tolkien just doesn't do that. You know who people married. He leaves all these gaps, all these spaces for all these readings.
Speaker: I think that's my absolute favorite thing about it is that actually there's the argument that we all love from the internet, which is like, well, that's not canon because Tolkien didn't say it. I think if Tolkien didn't say it, that's a gap. You can put a reading in there. I am largely a headcanon and let headcanon person, apart from a few really dreadful readings because I'm sorry, the pipe weed is tobacco.
Speaker: not cannabis and botanically I will die on this hill. You know, I'm not saying cannabis didn't exist in Middle -earth, but by the time Tolkien steps out of character long enough to give it a modern -day Latin name. Sorry, Team Cannabis, it's over. Anyway, digressing. I had to put Alejandro and Palando, we're all more up to. They were cultivating cannabis. Given that actually it seems to have migrated from more Eastern lands than here in the first place in the real world,
Speaker: How have I managed to get a plant alert in this? Oh my God. Go back to Ace readings. One of the things I was thinking about actually just this morning, I've not really gone there before. We think of the line after Torka and Nessa get married, didn't you? And Torka slept being weary and content and everybody's like, hey, that's what it is.
Speaker: actually, maybe not. Yeah, there's this idea of like, Tulkis is like, this massive great blonde himbo who needs to be played by Grace Hemsworth, which I'm here for, absolutely here for it. And actually, it kind of came up
Speaker: we've got the Barbie movie out at the moment, and there's all this stuff about Ken and Barbie, and there's all this arrow ways right in there. And I'm there just like, OK, there's a completely different way of looking at all of this. Like, talker sees this very, very, very manly man. And actually, are we just hyper -sexualizing him? Well, not hyper -sexual. Are we just sexualizing him? Because that's kind of what we're told to do.
Speaker: Sitting here as an ace person, realizing that I've done that the whole time was like, oh, okay, cool. My turn to deconstruct a reading that I don't think I actually like that much in myself. But I, I mean, I don't know where I land about talkers because I literally came up with this idea like six hours ago. I don't know. But I do think it's interesting. I kind of love it. I think it's interesting looking at the assumptions we make about people.
Speaker: And as I understand it, asexual men and asexual assigned male at birth folks have a harder job of convincing people that asexuality is a thing for them. And you get it with non -binary people, too. Women are non -binary people as if non -binary is woman -like. And no, actually, it's not. So we have these very skewed views of what these look like. And I think actually starting to look at people like tall castes.
Speaker: who seem very normative. You know, Tulkis is big and he's strong and he's blonde. Maybe he actually did sleep being weary and content because he'd married the love of his life and danced really hard at the wedding and that was it. Maybe that's why he went to sleep weary and content. The wink wink nudge nudge is hilarious, don't get me wrong. I'm not willing to let go of that completely, but I like that we do have the chance for that other reading.
Speaker: God knows what readings are going to come up for me in the next like week or so. I will always love Legolas and Gimli. I have a long fanfic on the go about that, including a conversation between Kierdan and Legolas about like, what are these feelings I have? And Kierdan's like, yeah, I did that. I did that one several thousand years ago. It's okay. You know, there's so much to work with.
Speaker: And while I wouldn't want to erase where Tolkien is coming from as a human being and as a writer, he leaves these spaces that there is space in Arda for people to see themselves. And I can't get enough of that idea. That I think is my absolute favorite thing of the whole lot, that there is space. You can see readings in there. And yeah.
Speaker: I don't like all the readings. I just don't. But ultimately what you do is you learn which tags on AO3 you're avoiding and you just don't read them. It's really, really, really simple. The whole idea of scrolling on by seems to completely miss people.
Speaker: I know. I do really like the idea just to go back to Tulkas. I really love the idea that he is a himbo that just likes naked wrestling. He doesn't feel like he's totally ace and totally aero. And he's just like, I just like wrestling, you guys. Yeah. Maybe the reason he doesn't want to wear clothes while he's doing it is because he's autistic and he doesn't like the sensory experience. Sure. I was going to say, he gets hot, man. Wrestling's hard work.
Speaker: It's one of those times where it's fun to start unpicking the assumptions you're working with that you didn't even know were there. I didn't know that that assumption was there. I was like, oh, shit, maybe I'm doing Tolkien's Dirty on this one. Maybe I could do better for it. I don't know. I think to the point also of people saying like, oh, well, this isn't canon because Tolkien didn't explicitly write it this way through this lens and didn't state that this was his lens in writing. As we all discover that there are things that we
Speaker: look back and are like, oh, I should have realized that earlier on. I didn't know that was available to me or whatever. There are going to be gaps in any individual author's understanding of the world and human and non -human experiences. And simply because even Tolkien as a linguist didn't have some of the language that we have now, it doesn't mean that we need to stop looking at it. Yeah.
Speaker: All right, I just got like kind of excited because I feel like this might be the proper audience to discuss this one really weird ship that I have. I ship Gandalf and Pippin. Oh, yeah. And it's very much like a grandfatherly to grandson kind of ship I have because they're obviously incredibly close. And I think it stems from Gandalf's regret that Keely and Feely died.
Speaker: I would like to hear you guys' opinions on that. I think I just broke Lori's heart.
Speaker: I'm going by that emotional reaction that it's not that weird of a reading. No way. Especially not when you're looking through the lens of found family and forging these different dynamics. It's not just you. It might just be the five of us, but it's definitely not just you. We don't get that. I'm thinking of examples of familial love at the moment.
Speaker: you have Bilbo Frodo, offhand I'm not seeing in my mind many particular, many other examples. You get Elrond's very paternalistic statements around Arwen and clearly being on the same page as his twin sons. I feel like you get a little bit with Galadriel. I was going to say a little bit with Galadriel. Galadriel and Aragorn, that interaction we get a little. Yes.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And then other like familial, I mean, obviously it's kind of more for me and far me or again, but that's kind of, um, Bingo of Luthien maybe.
Speaker: Yeah, you get Imra Hill, which a lot of people I think tend to forget because you don't see him in the Peter Jackson movies, but being like an uncle, etc. You get a little bit of that in the books. That's a more positive dynamic than what we see otherwise in Gondor.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm blanking on the name of the guard in Gondor. Beragont? Beragont and Beragil. Who's son. Bergal and Pippin is one of my favorite friendships in the whole thing. Yes. Yeah. Besties. Bergal and Pippin. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think maybe there's one thing that what I really love about Tolkien is that
Speaker: it doesn't force this kind of very romantic sexual notion of love all the time. And it was the first fantasy I really read. And I was so disappointed later by all the kissing and everything and everything else. And I still didn't work it out until I was 28. But I think Tolkien is a really remarkable author in that, in that he doesn't force everything into these models.
Speaker: And I think that's one of the things that is really underrated about him. We talk a lot about how beautifully he writes friendship and, you know, the conspiracy unmasked and Mary and Pippin and Pippin and Bergill and Mary and Theoden and Eomer and Aragorn. You know, we have all these beautiful friendships going around. Everybody loves that. But I do think there is so much more to how he writes about love.
Speaker: I think he understands love in a way that a lot of fantasy authors do not always demonstrate. I'm not saying they don't understand, but they don't write it down in the same way. And I don't understand what we did to deserve quite such a gift as what we have with Tolkien. You know, it is a total gift. We can see any kind of love we want. We can see any kind of lack of love we want. There is room for literally anything.
Speaker: And I think for me that's why I keep coming back to him, is because actually I could very easily belong in Arda in a way that I don't find myself anywhere else. And very occasionally I'll see an ace character a bit, oh you're like me and then you're actually not very like me because...
Speaker: whatever, but the relatability in Middle -earth, which considering where Tolkien sits and kind of the continuum of the history of fantasy is a really interesting one because like he's the one who was making a lot of the mistakes that people replicate and or fight later on in a lot of ways. Like, you know, how he talks about race, how he talks about disability, sometimes how he talks about relationships. We love Tolkien, but God damn, he does land some real bum notes.
Speaker: And yet he is still, I think, one of the absolute paragons of how to write about relationships that are not purely romantic. I will never stop coming back to him. He was where I really found myself in a big way. And he's where I found my community and my people. And I don't know what I did to deserve that or what any of us did.
Speaker: But like the whole point of this podcast and the whole point of any of this is that. And I love it. So that was quite a big hanging thought really. I didn't think I realized it was hanging until I actually talked on it. Wow, if no one has anything else, that's a great thought to end on. Yeah, I was going to say, what a lovely gift.
Speaker: Thank you so much for that great ending thought. Bury and Stuart, is there anything that you guys would like to plug before we end for the day? Only that we're both in the Alliance of Arda, which is where we have a lot of these conversations. And it's absolutely lovely. I know it's come up on the pod before. I know you guys are really great about telling people to come join us, but we really, really do want people to come and join us.
Speaker: It was the first place I ever said I was arrow ace instead of just ace. It is that kind of space where we work stuff out together and talk about these readings. And I, I love it. It's the thing that keeps me in there all the time. So yeah, like find us on Facebook or like get in touch with the podcast guys and get them to put you in touch with me. It doesn't matter. Just come join us. It's brilliant. It's lovely.
Speaker: It's nice to have a safe space on the internet where you're not going to get your queer readings shouted down.
Speaker: I don't know if you want to include this Rory, but, and also use Stuart because you're both are involved in Oxenmoot. Rory, I don't know if you want to give a quick plug because you are presenting. Oh yeah, I am presenting Oxmoot this year. Um, it's not actually about anything ace, although a paper on ace Aldarion is currently forming for like several years ahead. But this year I'm actually doing one about visual ecology. So this is my other big token deep dive is plants and ecology and fantasy settings.
Speaker: Basically, what it means for New Zealand to play the character of Middle -earth when in the books it's fairly explicitly played by much more Northern European kinds of ecologies, what does that mean? I haven't written the paper yet, so I don't know. So everyone's as in the dark as I am, but if people want to tune into Oxenmoot to hear me talk about plants and yell about why Tradescanti has no business being in the Shire, okay, okay, I know at least one of my conclusions, that's good.
Speaker: Oxenmoot is going to be great. I'm also the accessibility lead for it, which I'm currently working on really hard. Stuart is the high steward and has lots of fun, important and not at all stressful things to do all weekend.
Speaker: But I do play with the walkie -talkie, I hope. So I get to look important with any of us in the walkie -talkie, which is nice. But yeah, so if people want to hear me yell about ecology, hopefully, accessibly, Oxenmute is the place to do it. And there are plenty of queer reading papers in there as well. Those who are going, the paper list is already out. Those who are not, I think it's published in places where you can also see it. I can't remember, but you guys can sort out some links, right? We'll be fine.
Speaker: Awesome, thank you everyone for coming today. Yes, thank you so much. This was a great conversation. Thank you for having us.
Speaker: All right. If you would like to find queer lodgings, you can find us on Apple, Google, Spotify, or stream our episodes directly on Zencaster, which is zencaster .com slash queer lodgings, the Tolkien podcast with hyphens in between all of those words. Please leave us a rating and like share and subscribe. It really does help us. We also are still kind of in the beginning stages of setting up our website, which is queer lodgings .com.
Speaker: We have resources for all of our episodes on there and coming soon transcripts. You can find us on Facebook at queer lodgings, at Twitter for right now at queer underscore lodgings. And if you have any comments or episode ideas, please shoot us an email at queer lodgingspodcast at gmail .com. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
Speaker: Well, like most of the time when we're recording, I'm drinking something. It's usually a cider. But I can't bring myself to drink at 10 a .m. Yeah, cider at 7 a .m.
