Transcript
Speaker: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Queer Lodgings, the queer led podcast about everything Tolkien. I'm Grace and I'm here with my co -hosts, Leah. Hi. And Alicia. Hello, hello. And also, producer Tim is joining us for a few parts of this episode as well. Hi, folks. Nice to be back.
Speaker: Thank you all for joining us. Go ahead and settle into your chair with a warm drink and get ready to open the Quick Post as we bring you some updates from the wider world of Tolkien. In this episode, we'll interview Tim and Alicia about their long -awaited journey to New Zealand and all the wonders to be found there about the process of bringing Middle Earth to life on screen, as well as many other mythic works.
Speaker: And then in addition to that travelogue, we'll be looking ahead to the fast approaching online midwinter seminar for the mythopoeic society, commonly short -handed as OMS, because as much as we adore being loquacious, expediency can also be nice for variety. This seminar is hosted by your queer lodgings co -hosts and the theme is Something Mighty Queer.
Speaker: OMS is February 17th and 18th, 2024, and registration is currently open. We're excited to talk about some of the amazing content that scholars and fans within the many realms of mythopoeia have in store for us. And if you stick around all the way to the end of the episode, we'll pour a round of hot tea and have some hot takes about some recent contributions to Tolkien scholarship. And so we begin. Alicia, Tim,
Speaker: How was the journey to Middle Earth? Long awaited, definitely. A little bit of background, we had planned this trip to coincide with the 20th anniversary of fellowship, but you know, the world was on fire, so we had to push it back for the 20th anniversary of Return of the King.
Speaker: And so there's that part that it was long awaited, but also just the general long awaited that everyone has about going to New Zealand where we watch the movies and fell in love or like, Oh my God, I have to go there. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, 20, 20 years basically.
Speaker: But it ended up working pretty well. Yeah, because we got to do a couple of things that had just recently become available specifically at Hobbiton, which was really like kind of the was the first thing we booked for the trip was our like Hobbiton Christmas Beast, which they only started doing in December 2023. And also they had just opened the interiors of two Hobbit holes on Backshot Row as well. Like the week before.
Speaker: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I was so excited and also so envious looking at your photos from that. Maybe we'll be able to throw a couple of those photos into the comments on the post about this episode. They are phenomenal. It's interesting how they do the part where you walk through, because when you hear, oh, there are two hobbit holes you can walk through, one would think you get to walk through two hobbit holes, and that's not what happens.
Speaker: So yeah, you can split into groups. They're parallel hobbit holes that are very similar. Like they have an actual story to them. So your hobbit hole that you're going into. Yeah, it's two families and they have different professions. Like one of them is like an herbalist or whatever one makes baskets.
Speaker: So like you see that bits of that stuff as you're walking through the actual hobbit holes. But the hobbit holes actually have a story they contracted with Weta to make these and some of the writers for the hobbit and the Lord of the Rings to like make these come to life. So they do feel very in universe. Yeah. And they were just so amazingly detailed. Like we probably could have spent two hours just in those hobbit holes. But I mean, they do.
Speaker: They don't rush you through them. Yeah, they give you a decent amount of time to go around and explore and stuff like that. But I think any serious fan of, especially Jackson films, would be able to spend way longer in there if they really wanted to. They allow you to touch things. I was going to say, I would be finding a basket to try to hide in and just curl up and cry in, probably.
Speaker: And Alicia and I were both in our full Hobbit cosplays as well too. My unnamed Hobbit now has at least a profession. We figured out that he's a cheesemonger. There is a little booth in front of one of the Hobbit holes in the village that had some cheese in front of it.
Speaker: I got my picture taken in. I was like, well, I guess I have to recreate this Cheesemonger booth for any time I cosplay this character. Sure. Yeah, it was like, amazing. It very much does feel like stepping into the movie when you step in, when you go through the I'm going on an adventure gate, and
Speaker: Because that's on like a little hill and right as you walk through that gate you see like Bagshot Row and everything and the hill in front of you.
Speaker: We got there in the evening because we were also, after the Christmas feast, there was a little night tour afterwards. Loosely speaking, a night tour. So we're getting there right as the sun is setting and the sun sets over back end. Oh my gosh. So you're also kind of getting blinded by the sun. It was very J .J. Abrams, if J .J. Abrams did the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies. It's golden hour. Yeah. Just a little lens flare right there for you. Totally.
Speaker: Just the saturation of color in Hobbiton and the more verdant parts of New Zealand is fantastic. When one watches the director's commentaries 75 times, you hear Peter Jackson talk about how hard it was to color grade Hobbiton and get it to be as green as he wanted it to be because the purity of
Speaker: the shire and the innocence and all this that they're leaving behind. But when you go there, it looks like it does in the film. They were essentially like color grading it to match what actually the camera was seeing because the camera like flattens the colors down. And I was not expecting that at all. I wasn't expecting it to look so thematic and so just like unreal in that way.
Speaker: especially having come from winter in Canada. Sure, sure. And then the green dragon they had, I mean, the green dragon itself is absolutely beautiful. And normally you can go in there and have dinner there. And that's kind of the end of
Speaker: of one of the choices for the tours, but just this year they started doing this big Christmas feast kind of thing. So, I mean, not really Christmas in Middle Earth, but there's Yule or whatever. So, you know, kind of fudged it a little bit. And they had a big huge tent like behind the Green Dragon that you go into for the dinner and they have a buffet dinner with very habitish food, kind of, you know, buffet kind of food.
Speaker: music and everything. That was the only downside of our visit to Hobbiton was the musicians. I think they were just local pop musicians that were playing folk songs and stuff. And we were both like, God, play some of the fucking music from the movies, right? Play the Green Dragon song or whatever. And they probably just hired a few weeks before or something and didn't have time to prepare anything.
Speaker: Uh, and then they did sing some Christmas songs, including the fairy tale of New York by the Pogues, which if anybody recalls does have a homophobic slur in it. The song came out in like the eighties, not excusing it, but you know, it was a common insult in the UK at the time, but we're not in the seventies anymore. And they definitely not changed that lyric. So that was a little uncomfortable, considering there were children there. And yeah.
Speaker: but definitely also it sounds like it would sound it would be very jarring of sort of a a mismatch of first world primary world references as well as a primary world slur yeah in the hobbits in context like it i think that sounds like even worse in context yeah
Speaker: Yeah, I would have preferred and I said this, you know, even before they that that song I just said, like, I think it would have been better if they were just like playing like instrumental music, right? Like it was a chorus and a couple like little players, right? I was like, Okay, yeah, just have them playing like, you know, sort of generic, like, Gaelic kind of folk music, and that would fit perfectly with the situation, right? But
Speaker: Yeah, I don't need like lyrics about people getting dicked down and all of that. I mean, they were playing like, you know, like British pub songs as well that had references to sex and stuff, too. And.
Speaker: Not that I feel like sex doesn't belong in Middle Earth. It was very jarring. Most of that music is so hyper -localized to the UK as well. It's hard for me to listen and not be like, I'm just in a pub.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Even if it's a weird pub in a tent and I am dressed up like a hobbit. And they have their own beer and cider and stuff that you just like. Very good. Yeah. That's so cool.
Speaker: Yeah, eggnog, spiked eggnog and stuff that you can just, you know, it was free pouring kind of thing. There were definitely some people that were getting pretty hammered by the time we left. I mean, overall, it was a fantastic experience for sure. Totally worth it. Yeah. I will say I found the merch situation to be a little underwhelming because what I wanted and what I was like expecting was there to be like really
Speaker: specific Hobbiton movie set kind of merch, like, you know, steins and stuff like that. And I knew that you can buy, they were selling the Middle Earth wine there the last time one of the friends we went with was there, but they didn't have that this time, but they did have bottled beer and cider and ginger beer. And that part of it was cool because it is like kind of in -universe. And they did have like steins, but like everything else in that store was just Weta Cave stuff.
Speaker: And you can order from Weta's website kind of thing. There was very little stuff that was exclusive, special to that place.
Speaker: I mean, probably good for us because that was towards the end of our trip and our luggage was already pretty full anyway. Yeah, I was going to say, depending on what your budget is, I guess, and how much space you have in your luggage, it could be a good or a bad thing. But yeah. Well, and I'd expect to see some of that Weta stuff there. Yeah, I would expect to see some things that are specific. I'd love a Stein from Hobbiton. That'd be pretty great.
Speaker: They had some of like the Stansboro Mill stuff as well, like some of the, cause that was the weavers that did a bunch of like the fabrics and textiles for the movies. We did visit that, their mill at one point as well. Oh, that would be so cool.
Speaker: They use old Victorian looms that they've ported over to like modern electricity instead of like the belt drive system. And we got to meet their, like their primary Weaver and everything. Oh, see those rooms being operated and they were actually making like some of the Gandalf cloak fabric on the loom while we were there.
Speaker: It sounds like they just can't keep it in stock kind of thing. They are always selling out of the Hobbit cloaks, the Gandalf cloaks. They had one cloak and that's all they had. So if you're ordering one of those cloaks, they're stupid expensive. But if you order one, it is being made specifically for you because they can't keep them in stock.
Speaker: That's kind of like my dream, I guess, item that I'd like to have, like, you know, like, like a sting sword would be pretty rad to have. But like, really what I want is, is one of those cloaks because, you know, all three of us here are big fiber textile nerds. And I'm like, Oh my God, I just love, I just would love to have one of those. I would have been very tempted if they did have one of them in stock.
Speaker: to pick one up, but that that temptation was removed because they were at a stop. So they just started doing Gandalf's entire costume. Oh, so it's the it's his original cloak, not the lawful wearing cloak, his whole outfit, his mittens and his hat. Like you can buy the whole thing. It's so cool. Just the like robe part of it.
Speaker: is $3 ,500. Oh my god. Yeah. Well, that's New Zealand dollars. So it's still so expensive, but it's completely screen accurate. It's the right pattern. It's the right cloth. It's made out of like,
Speaker: from a really well -loved flock of sheep. So when you go there and do their tour, they show you a video that has Jed Brophy in it. It's narrated by Jed Brophy. That's amazing, of course. That wasn't the only thing that we saw that was narrated by Jed Brophy while we were down there. Jed Brophy literally is an everything down there. One of the things I love about him is that he's just... He's the hardest working performer in New Zealand, I think.
Speaker: For real. For real. Bless his heart, man. He is just the best.
Speaker: Yeah, but like you really like when you go there, like you really get to see how much they love this particular breed of sheep. Like they're selectively breeding the sheep so they become better because they're like the biggest flock of this particular kind of weird Viking sheep left in the entire world. It's fascinating to me. So cool. And I wanted to drop so much money there that I only bought some Gandalf gloves. I got a scarf in the Gandalf weave.
Speaker: extremely cool. And then I think the other biggest highlight of the trip was our trip to the Weta Workshop. I mean, we did do like sort of the general public tour at Weta Workshop, which on its own is really cool because you get to get really up close with like a ton of
Speaker: screen use or replica costumes, like they have a huge sour on armor that you can get right up close to and see all the detail on it. It's not behind glass. No, usually you're not allowed to touch, but they you can you basically get with an inches of it, a bunch of the hero weapons and stuff.
Speaker: But then the day after that, we were treated to a personal tour of what a workshop lasting about an hour by Sir Richard Taylor.
Speaker: So cool. So cool. Because one of the people that we were traveling with is a contributor to onering .net and had just been doing an interview of Richard Taylor and some new licensed merchandise that Weta was going to be releasing. And at the end, like, you know, after the, they'd recorded the episode or whatever said like, Hey,
Speaker: We're going to be down there in a few months. We're so excited. And Richard Taylor was like, well, you have to come visit. I'll give you a tour. You already have my assistant's contact info from scheduling this. Just chill, schedule something. And luckily, he had availability at a time that worked for everyone. So yeah, he took us in and was just the nicest guy. Alicia and I got our Lord of the Rings drinking game rules signed by Richard Taylor now. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. In addition to Elijah and Sean, so yeah.
Speaker: He is just so passionate and so excited about everything that they're doing. And he literally, he took us around and we got to see all the people. And it was like at the beginning of December, so ain't nobody doing shit that time of year, right? Sure. It was like middle of December by that point. They were just like, this was a Thursday or something like that. And I think the Friday was their last day of the year, kind of before they were shutting down for the holidays.
Speaker: Yeah, so we got to talk to a bunch of people like in like the animation area and all of this stuff and like we got to meet the office, one of the office dogs, two of the office dogs. They were both there. I love dogs.
Speaker: Definitely a lot of queer creatives at Weta. Not super surprising. So there's a ton of, you know, sort of people that were gender ambiguous and stuff like that. And then by the end, we left Richard Taylor's assistant with some of the cards for the podcast and said like, we get the feeling that some of your staff might be interested in a queer Tolkien podcast. Hand these out if you feel like it.
Speaker: So cool. We got to meet the apprentice armorer who helps with those like ridiculously expensive hero swords you can buy. So they were like building some of those. So we got to talk to him for a little bit. We got to touch some stuff. Very cool. They gave us hero swords to hold. I had, I think it was, I think it was Theoden's sword and everybody that we were there with a group of about seven people. We all had hero swords and Richard Taylor stood behind us and that was
Speaker: one of the few pictures we were allowed to take behind the scenes, right? Because they're working on stuff that is for projects that are not going to be released for months, if not years kind of thing. We had to sign an NDA. Yeah, it might not even be like public knowledge that they're working on. Sure, sure. In that case, I won't necessarily ask you if you saw things from like other IPs that they are working on, but I will just quickly remind people because it's easy for me to think what a workshop and like specifically thinking
Speaker: the Tolkien Middle Earth stuff, but like they're also working on like Warhammer and Rebel Moon and like the Witcher and Tomb Raider and Stranger Things and like Ghostbusters, like all of this stuff. They do so much now. Yeah. One of the coolest things that we got to see there was Richard Taylor collects face casts like life masks. Oh, yeah. And he has a whole room that just has part of his collection.
Speaker: And so it had like all of the primaries from Lord of the Rings, a bunch of primaries from the Hobbit movies, but also just like historic actors and stuff like that as well. He had Vincent Price. Cool, that's very cool. Bruce Leith, which is apparently a very rare one to have. Yeah, wow. Yeah, a ton of really cool. That was a really, really neat part of the movie.
Speaker: He allowed us to take pictures in that room. He's very proud of his collection. It's a very specific collection, too. I mean, what else is the owner of an effects company going to collect? When we got to hold all the hero swords and take that picture, Richard picked out the swords that he was going to give to everybody.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know what he was using to figure out who was getting what sword, but I thought that was interesting. Yeah. Alicia, what sword did you get to hold? I believe it was Airmur's sword that I got to hold. Okay. I honestly got so excited I blacked out a little bit, which is ironically what happened when we got engaged too.
Speaker: Like the coolest part of that like tour to me was we ended up interfacing with one of the regular Weta tours while we were with Richard because he was cutting through that to get us to another area. So Richard just like pops out of the wall with us with him and like tour group is in the room with the big Sauron armor and everything. And the tour guide got like really starstruck and was like, Oh, that's Richard Taylor.
Speaker: He was so pleasant, he smiled and waved at everybody and stuff. I think he might have taken a couple pictures with people just as we were walking through kind of thing. He's just the nicest guy, so nice. Took us into his private office and everything, and he's just got tons of figures and garage kits and stuff like that that he's done over the years, just lining the walls of his office. You can tell this is a person that is perfectly suited for the career that he has chosen.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. And that was in Wellington. The WEDEC workshop are in Wellington and Wellington itself felt like a very queer friendly city to me. Like it's the capital of New Zealand. It's definitely sort of like the arts and culture hub. So like as we were walking around, like we spent, you know, every night we were there, I think we kind of like went out to a bar or something like that. And I was just getting like a very queer friendly vibe from that city in general, sort of like a lot of theater and that
Speaker: We were staying in kind of an artsy area too. True. We were staying right around the corner. Have you ever heard the story about Elijah Wood peeing into a fountain because he hated it so much during the filming? I don't think so.
Speaker: Well, it happened apparently and it was that fountain was right around the corner from our hotel. We walked past it multiple times. Great. What a, what a landmark. We all took pictures of it. No commemorative plaque. This is one of those you have to know kind of thing. Sure. Yeah, it was, it was great. Obviously we went to the theater, which has been renovated.
Speaker: the embassy theater where they did all the Wellington premieres for all the films and they still have like, there they do have a good number of commemorative plaques and even a couple of costumes and they've put a little cocktail bar in the basement that has a couple of costumes in it.
Speaker: Yeah, I believe it was an orc in a second age elf. Yeah. We went to that theater as well as the Roxy theater, which is not far from Weta. And the Roxy theater is actually owned by Richard Taylor and his wife, Tiny Rogers, who they like, you know, we've been talking only about Richard Taylor because that's who we interacted with. But it was co -founded by the two of them. Like they both equally as much to do with it. It's just Richard Taylor just ended up kind of being the
Speaker: the face of everything and he's the one that got all the interviews on and he's on all the special features and stuff, right? So everybody just instantly recognizes him now. Yeah. The Roxy is beautiful. It's very like art deco. Yeah. There's also been like fully restored and I think they use it for like art house kind of films or like classic, like very influential kind of films sort of thing. Like it's clearly run by two people that just have a deep love and appreciation for the medium, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I will say for anyone planning on.
Speaker: going to Wellington and visiting Weta. Weta is outside of Wellington. You got to drive a bit to get there. Yeah, it's in what they call like the Wellywood area, which is where like Weta and the Lord of the Rings films were kind of the big impetus for the explosion of film production in New Zealand. But now there's this whole area that is all like studios and soundstages and effects houses and stuff like that. Right. And so all of that is in this sort of suburb of
Speaker: Wellington, which is affectionately known as Wellywood. Yeah, we did one of the Around Wellington location tours, which was used to be a... It was Rivendell. Yeah, well, it's Rivendell primarily is where you go, but like you used to be able to do Lothlorien too, but Lothlorien is apparently being sold right now and you can't get onto that land because it was private land. You could only get onto it
Speaker: via a tour and a lot of the people we were with had gone down to New Zealand but hadn't done an actual like tour where you could get into these areas so we decided to do that and then one of the main reasons we wanted to do the tour we couldn't get into anyway which was a little disappointing honestly.
Speaker: privatization and destroying the commons down with capitalism. It ruined this experience. One of the places that they shot just like various shallow river scenes, like when Gandalf's riding Shadowfax through the river or whatever, it's just along a highway. You're driving to Rivendell and there's all these beautiful, scenic, heavily streams.
Speaker: And the tour guy was like, yeah, we shot all along here. Yeah. And I was like, how how can you live in a place that's fucking beautiful? And and they're just like, yeah, whatever. A really popular movie got shot right there on the side of the interstate or the highway. Yeah. Oh, man, I love it. I have had that experience going through Scotland. So yeah. And, you know, in some ways, some similar topography and everything there. So, yeah.
Speaker: It's pretty great makes an odd sort of sense Yeah, and then in terms of other filming locations, this was that same day. We went to like the get off the road Location where like, you know the actual little hutch that they were on like the roots and everything are gone But kind of the actual little indent in the just off the path is still there It's a little treacherous, but you can get down into it There's so much erosion because so many people go there and
Speaker: It's very worn down. We saw Gollum's Pool in a Philean where Fermir and his company find Gollum. There are people that were cliff diving into it. Multiple filming sites that were used for the Anduin River.
Speaker: the Osgiliath woods. So after Faramir and company release Frodo and Sam into this like pine wood, we just, Alicia and I just saw that last night. Cause we saw two towers with a live orchestra and choir and we were like, Oh my God, we were there like last month. And it looks exactly the fucking same except part of that woods has been made into the middle earth adventure park.
Speaker: Which is a good place to go if you want to get tetanus. Yeah, it has nothing to do with Middle Earth because it's like they've taken like an old
Speaker: thingy like an old rowboat and like strung it up on some trees, rope and trees. Yeah. So you can like swing on it and like a snowmobile or a jet ski or something like that. Old one that they've done the same thing too. This is middle earth. That sounds great. That sounds like the, you know, the janky ass, you know, like weird carnivals that you go out like in the country. It's definitely where the local kids go to like get wasted, right? Like the local teenagers go to just get hammered.
Speaker: In fairness, I feel like if Hippen had access to his stupid jet ski experience, he absolutely would take that. It was so hard to get to, too. So, like, you go to this beach, and there's, like, a beach access road, and you go to the end of it, and there's some woods there, and you have to, like, go into the woods and then, like, walk back behind this row of houses to get to the Middle Earth Park is the only way to get to it. So, like, you 100 % feel like you're trespassing.
Speaker: and we're going to get tetanus. It was amazing. I love it. Yeah, it sounds great. What else do we do? We flew into Auckland originally. Everything we did was only on the North Island. We just made it sort of an executive decision. There is a lot of beautiful stuff on the South Island, but like all the Weta stuff at least is on the North Island. And we just were like, we have like 10 days and there's enough stuff to do on the North Island to fill that.
Speaker: There was just barely enough time. Yeah. Yeah. So we flew into Auckland and spent a few days there and Auckland has this experience called Weta Unleashed.
Speaker: which is not really, it has some Lord of the Rings, like Hobbit stuff, but most of it is entirely original based on like original concepts that they've put together. And it's sort of like, this is how we develop these ideas from concept into actual physical things. And there was one that was like sort of a fantasy setting. There was one that definitely had some of their, that Jacksonian
Speaker: flavor to it. And there was one that was very like sci fi and blanking on the third one. It was horror. Yeah, yeah, right. There was one that was like four. They had a full ass cast of Adam Savage.
Speaker: Mythbusters. Very cool, yeah. And you could touch anything. Absolutely everything was designed to be like interactive and that was the cool part about that, right? Like even they did have a room full of like masks and helmets and stuff including like Wurukai helmets and like Power Rangers helmets and stuff like that and it was like, oh yeah, grab those down and put them on kind of thing.
Speaker: Oh, super fun. Yeah, that was really neat because it was a lot more interactive. Obviously at the Weta Workshop, a lot of the stuff was behind glass because it was like screen use stuff. They didn't want to constantly touching it, but this was designed to be just a much more tactile experience. Very cool. You get to touch like the chain mail and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: You get a little bit of that at the Weta Workshop in Wellington too. They allow you to touch some used chain mail. And the stinky orc helmet was at Wellington. Yes, it was. Yeah, so they have a helmet that was used on the night shoots for Helm's Deep and they will allow you to put it on. But it was literally used for the night shoots of Helm's Deep and it smells like it. Yeah. It just lingers there forever now. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, we skipped over the one room fan museum, too, because there we actually got to hold a bunch of screen used stuff from the Jackson films, including a couple of orc like gloves, like gauntlets that were screen used that this woman just has in her house with a bunch of like paraphernalia and like she's been she went to all the premiers and stuff like that. And if you just email her in advance and say, hey, we're coming, she'll just let you come into her house like she's asked you for a little donation or whatever.
Speaker: She's making like a movie about the fandom as well. Like she did make the movie. And if you go, she'll like share it with you. But the crux of that is that you go and then you put on these costumes that she's made. Over the years. Yeah. And she should be like picks who you should be and everything. And she'll take a bunch of pictures. And it was a little strange just because it was like you're just in this woman's living room or whatever. But she was totally friendly.
Speaker: We didn't really know what to expect. Yeah, that sounds great. That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, getting to go to Ruapehu was amazing. The day that we went, it was like really foggy and overcast, which in some ways I was bummed about that because, oh my God, we're not going to get to see like the true natural beauty of this. But also, that's where they shot the M &M wheel and part of the Mordor scenes and all of that. Plans of Mordor and stuff. Yeah. So it being all like foggy like that really helped kind of sell the fact that you're there.
Speaker: Yeah, we were going to do so there's a little ski lodge that you can take a little sky car up to and do quote unquote high tea at the top of the mountain. But the little sky cars got closed the day that we were going to come through. So we didn't actually get to do that. But we did tramp around quite a bit on the side of the mountain. And it just it's it's like walking into a movie.
Speaker: And one of the things that was just, I mean, makes sense now, you know, looking back is just how diverse the landscapes are within such a small area, right? Like you can drive from Auckland to Wellington, which is three quarters of the length of the North Island in less than a day, like it's maybe
Speaker: eight or 10 hour drive or something like that. And within that, you know, you can within an hour or two hours, you can go from like these beautiful mountainous terrains that you can ski on to just flat land, like grasses and like these huge canyons full of lush greenery that have been just 100 feet deep, just worn away by time and everything. And then drive through a rainforest and then you get to like a volcanic beach or something, right?
Speaker: And that makes sense, right, as to why they would want to film there because you can get all of that within a relatively small geography.
Speaker: Totally. Driving into the National Park in particular because you're driving in towards Roopehoo. So like that's on your right. And it's just like fucking volcanic, scarred, dark, stone, awful, Mordor looking land. And then on the left side of the road is rolling plains. Just beautiful verdant grass, rolling plains. It's such a mind fuck. It really is. I love it.
Speaker: That's extremely cool. That's what's really calling me to New Zealand is to be able to interact with the land and interact with all the landscapes that are there. It's just one of those wild places on Earth where it's still relatively young, geologically speaking. So there's a lot happening and a lot still happening there. It just makes me excited as a
Speaker: I'm like, I love volcanoes. I love like, I don't know, I'm kind of endured in that way. But I'm like, I want to see all of New Zealand's landscapes. I desperately got to go to the South Island now. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And there is so much tourism around, like eco -tourism and stuff like that. Like you can go, like we didn't do much, but you know, if we'd been there longer, we might've, but you can go do like, you know, day long tours, like you can do like, was it the Tongariro Pass or whatever, where you go like in between two of the mountains kind of thing on a mountain, you know, like sort of a rugged mountain pass and stuff and, and, you know, guided tours or self -guided like tons of hiking trails and stuff like that as well. And so, yeah, I mean, if we stayed longer, I
Speaker: wanted to do more of that too and we did get to do some of that like you know there were some of the filming locations and stuff that we got to and like okay now you've got to like hike along the path or whatever to get to see whatever it is kind of thing but yeah we didn't do any like you know day -long hikes or anything like that for sure. Not on this trip anyways.
Speaker: Yeah, there's time in the future. Yeah. That's my hope anyway. As you're talking about the North Island and everything too, I know for Our Flag Means Death fans that season two of Our Flag Means Death was also filmed on location in New Zealand a lot on the North Island. I don't know how much on the South Island.
Speaker: But there's just a continuing set of places where film buffs and sci -fi fantasy nerds are going to want to be able to see and be able to connect to from our favorite IPs. Including the last one thing I want to mention, which is definitely
Speaker: Definitely a queer icon piece. And I guess you could call sci -fi. We did visit a statue of Riff Raff in Hamilton, New Zealand, which is where Richard O 'Brien
Speaker: who wrote the Rocky Horror Show and co -wrote Rocky Horror Picture Show and also played Riff Raff in the film. He lived there from like the age of like 15 on or something like that. Weta actually has done a statue of like a big bronze statue of Riff Raff. Right outside of like a museum there. And so we were driving right past it anyways. And one of the other people we were with was a big Rocky Horror fan as well.
Speaker: So like, let's go see Riff Raff, so that was the last thing we saw on our drive back up north from Wellington to Auckland. It's so good. I love Rocky Horror Picture Show so much. It's like the only musical outside of Disney that I tolerate. The statue is too high off the ground, so we couldn't have elbow sex with it, unfortunately. Yeah. I do have regrets about not doing elbow sex in front of the statue, but...
Speaker: Yeah. Rocky Horror participation in Shadowcast, Rocky Horror people will get that joke. Yes. Surely that's not an Atlanta specific Rocky Horror joke. I'm a bad queer. I've never actually seen it. It's like still on my bucket list. Oh, great. I was going to do it last year and I got really sick. So, you know, it's still still going to happen at some point. But one of the things that I appreciate about it is that things are always product of their times, but
Speaker: One of the things that is amazing about Rocky Horror Picture Show is that in so many places around America at least, one of the only places that people can be visibly queer or do anything that is outside of the heteronormative canon or whatever is at a midnight showing of Rocky Horror.
Speaker: picture show and it is something that the heteronormative society accepts or looks away from and is like, okay, fine. And so it's a place of safety for a lot of generations of queer people.
Speaker: Yeah, if you would like to have a little bit of background information about Alicia, my aunt had a recording of the Rocky Horror Picture Show that she let me watch when I was seven or eight years old. And it really informed a lot of my life since then, because amazing. Yeah. Tim Curry in a busier is part of my sexual awakening. One hundred percent. Totally, totally. Yeah. And we before our wedding, we had a whole like
Speaker: wedding weekend thing. And one of the things we did was we took my aunt to an audience participation because she had never done it because we lived in the middle of a cornfield, right? It was so much fun. Oh, yeah. Oh, that sounds amazing. Well, thank you both for sharing all of your your travelogue here and like the tips and things for people to look for, including things that might not necessarily be in a visitor's guide or what have you. So that's
Speaker: Oh wait, before we actually move on from this, that Middle Earth Locations Guide, that book that's been published, it's basically useless. Just use Google Maps. Before the pandemic.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, in the last edition of it was, is like over 10 years old at this point, a lot of things that are in there. Some of them we were able to see and do a lot of them are either inaccessible now or some of the landmarks that they used to get you to them are closed or whatever. So honestly, a lot of what we did was just, we would double check things on Google maps because people have like dropped bins on a lot of the filming sites and stuff like that on Google maps.
Speaker: And so you can use that to kind of get to places and, you know, within those pins, they put information about like, here's where you park, here's where you have to walk to actually see the filming site and stuff like that. So, you know, we kind of use that book as a loose guide, but then from there we were sort of fine tuning using entries on Google maps. Yeah. I mean, the book is good because it does have additional information. It's just, you can't navigate by it. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Speaker: So here we are going to shift gears and peer into the near future instead of the recent past. OMS, the online midwinter seminar organized on the theme of something mighty queer that will kick off on February 17th and 18th on an internet connected device near you is what we're going to talk about for a few minutes here.
Speaker: Here's just an excerpt from the call for papers that we sent out. We said we invite submissions for an online conference that focuses on queerness and fantasy science fiction.
Speaker: speculative fiction or other mythopoeic work. This can be queer representation within the work or engaging with mythopoeia through queer theory. Queerness is an intentionally ambiguous term demonstrating the diversity of queer experiences, the necessity of situating queerness as a liminal complex paradigm. Queer theory is wider than the study of gender identity or sexuality, extending to taking positions against normativity and dominant modes of thought and engaging with the indefinite.
Speaker: And then we talked about the aspects of this topic might include things like otherness, the stranger, outsider, the uncanny marginalization and oppression, liminality and liminal spaces, depictions of people, thresholds, trans theory, gender performativity, readings and research that challenge normative or hegemonic perspectives. Alicia, Leah, why did we choose to put ourselves forward as hosts and why did we choose this theme?
Speaker: Oh, I want to just say your guess is as good as mine. I think that when I think it was you who first mentioned it, Alisha, like, when it was mentioned, the reasons that I was like, yes, absolutely, were the same reasons as why we're doing the podcast, right? Like, that these are perspectives that are
Speaker: important and necessary and deserve attention and space held for them and deserve to be put forward and explored and so often anyone who tries to do that and like ventures out on a limb to be able to do that gets attacked from more regressive corners of
Speaker: fandom or internet or scholarship or what have you. And so I wanted this to be one of the places that is holding space for this type of scholarship. Yeah, there's also a little bit of masochism in it, honestly. Like, yeah, that is generally like we want to open a space like use what we can open a space to have other people have these conversations.
Speaker: But you have to also be willing to make that space. It's so much easier to just open up a door and have someone else walk through it. And knowing that you have to open up the door and walk through it yourself, that part of it is a little masochistic.
Speaker: Totally. I just kind of came along for the ride. I kind of was like, oh yeah, okay, we're going to do this. And since you two are stewards, I feel like you guys are kind of in a really good position to sort of get the wheels turning. And I was kind of like, oh, oh, oh, I'm involved in this too. Okay, sure. That sounds great.
Speaker: And it doesn't hurt that one of the co -hosts is sleeping with the mythical steward as well. That's also also true. Yeah, I just 100 % transparency part of it was just Tim and I were talking like,
Speaker: We gonna have an OMS next year? And Tim was like, I don't know. No one's like stepped up for one. And then I was like, well, shit, I guess we could. And then we started to get really excited about it.
Speaker: I remember as we were talking about like workshopping what the specifics of the call for papers should be and everything just like nerding out about like, oh, like liminality and all of the different things that we were looking at as aspects of queerness and hoping that people would sort of pick up and run with or that would tie into the work that they are already doing.
Speaker: And I think one thing that I was nervous about because I feel like as queer people, folks doing queer scholarship, like you always have to be, is just worrying if we were going to get pushback in the structural phases of setting it up and everything like that.
Speaker: I always assume that somebody is going to get a hold of a list of really cool paper titles and then like make a grumpy YouTube video where they don't understand 90 % of the words in the titles, but they still rage against it. So I expect that will happen at some point.
Speaker: It's not like there's a long history of that happening specifically in Tolkien spaces. That's never happened. I don't know what you're talking about. I was really happy with the support from, you know, everyone in Midsock right from the start and the idea of like, yes, we should we should absolutely be holding the space and seeking the scholarship and all
Speaker: So the response we got to this is the CFP wasn't the call for papers. It wasn't even open that long because we did wait for a long time to actually come down on. Yes, we are going to host this and.
Speaker: the call for papers was only open for like maybe two months. And just the sheer volume of proposals we got over that short of amount of time was shocking in such a good way. Yeah, it didn't encourage me. Yeah, exactly. It was just like, Oh, yeah, this is what the people want, man. And this is what this is what people are already working on. And they were kind of like, Oh, yeah,
Speaker: I've already been floating around a couple of different ideas for other things and you know it's like oh this is a perfect space to to really bring that forward and develop it you know yeah I think it's easy to get wrapped up in hearing all the more negative aspects of Tolkien scholarship and Tolkien fandom especially now when there's so many really
Speaker: politically charged theological books coming out surrounding Tolkien. And you really start to feel like, oh my god, we're alone. There's this group of five people doing queer Tolkien stuff and everyone else is just
Speaker: thinking that we need to go in a hole. So it was like dozens of scholars and even more supporters. And like, we know that, but it's, it's good to be reminded of it and good to hold space for it. And I think every time that there is just something affirming, whether it is mythopedic society or Tolkien society holding a conference or seminar that is geared toward a topic like this or
Speaker: It's hilarious videos from dropout TV with Brennan Lee Mulligan making a bunch of really amazing and inclusive and progressive jokes about Sauron or Sam and Frodo's relationship or whatever. These things just remind us that we exist, the scholarship exists, and we're all doing that work. So we get to hold the space for it and we get to celebrate it and not just
Speaker: be in our own silos, you know? We get to come together to share it, and that's really exciting to me. So for anyone who is anywhere near as excited as we are, you can register for OMS at...
Speaker: You can also find this by Googling OMS and Mythopoeic Society and navigating the web page from there. You can find us on our Facebook pages and all of that. There's a lot of ways to source back to us. But if you need a little bit more convincing of how exciting this is going to be, I wanted to highlight some of the different types of topics that we are going to be hearing from people in mid -February here.
Speaker: There's going to be a lot of trans topics, interrogations of gender, asexuality, disability, representation of various readings, querying texts and landscapes, examining the idea of closet, countering normativity in readings across different religions. Like that's just some of the big picture scope. And then Leah, do you want to talk about some of the IPs that we're going to be hearing about?
Speaker: Yeah, so it's not just Tolkien, though there is a lot of Tolkien. We do have quite a few folks discussing various aspects of Tolkien's legendarium, but we also have papers looking at Octavia Butler's Kindred, Our Flag Means Death, BBC's Merlin TV series,
Speaker: and also the Wheel of Time TV series. We also have folks looking at Star Wars, the Mass Effect franchise, and even our own Tim is looking at Batwoman comics.
Speaker: You will also, if you're a longtime listener of the podcast, recognize some familiar names who are going to be presenting papers, very much including Taylor Driggers, who was our first podcast guest, is going to actually be the speaker guest of honor at this seminar. Taylor has posted on Twitter that his keynote talk will be entitled Cruising Fairy, Further Notes on Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature. Very cool. There you go.
Speaker: Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, I do want to bring up that Rory is extending a conversation we had during the Ace episode that we did surrounding Boat Fucker Aldarion. Not the boat fucking part though. Correct. The nothing fucking part. Yes.
Speaker: There are also going to be presentations from Robin and Reed. We're also going to be hearing from Christopher Vaccaro, who was on that same episode. We also will be hearing from our pal, Mercury Natas, and our hopefully future guests of the podcast, Cameron Boorqueen and Nick Polk will be presenting together.
Speaker: And also Alicia and Tim, again, they will be presenting on you want to guys want to give a little more, a little more of a tease. And we've already started with Tim. Go, Tim. Sure. Yeah. So my primary fandom is not necessarily Tolkien, although I do a lot of stuff in Tolkien spaces. I am more a DC Comics nerd at heart. And so I wanted to use this as a chance to sort of more closely interrogate the
Speaker: reinvented Batwoman character that came out in sort of the mid 2000s and actually made a pretty big splash as being announced as like the first mainstream lesbian character that was sort of ever released. And so I'm going to be taking a closer look at that reinvented version of that character.
Speaker: particularly as the presentation pertains to like a few different like sort of common queer storytelling tropes like things like family dynamics and like coming out narrative and religion and stuff like that she's actually also a jewish character there's not a whole lot especially at the time there wasn't a whole lot of like jewish comic superheroes and stuff like that and so you know a lot of the narratives around queerness and
Speaker: religion have to do with restrictive religions and Christianity and those sorts of things. So I'm just going to be doing some analysis of that. So I've got a big stack of comics right beside me right now that needs to be read in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker: Now I am going to be talking about the gendered nature of evil in Tolkien's Legendarium. And kind of the backbone of that is I was very inspired by some of the work that Mercury and Cameron have been doing around Sauron as a seducer and as a femme fatale. And I got a little niggle in my head about how all of the evil
Speaker: in Tolkien really seems to be heavily feminine coded. And I have not actually formed my argument yet, but I think that it's something along the lines of queer coding villains
Speaker: And the Christian women are the root of all evil thing in meshing within Middle Earth. And I am exploring that right now. I have so many papers open on my computer. So many. I very much looking forward to that. And then we also have a panel.
Speaker: Yeah, we're all going to be coming together to do a panel. Our title for that is the fair and the perilous online experiences of a queer focused Tolkien podcast. So we'll be able to, you know, share some experiences and insights and spill some tea and what have you.
Speaker: It's not going to all be negative. No. Oh, definitely not. Yeah. You, you guys, like our listeners make it the super positive piece. And so that, that keeps us going. The Tolkien truths, they take over, which we've talked about on past episodes. It was really great and positive. We had a lot of positive engagement with. And so, yeah.
Speaker: It'll just be sort of our way to, you know, introduce the wider community to what it's like to do queer focused Tolkien work, especially on social media and the current socio -political climate. Yeah. And then we'll have a fair bit of programming that is not our academic presentations and papers. We'll have some fun stuff in between as well. We'll have some after hours programming, et cetera.
Speaker: That's going to include some things like Cards Against Arta. We often try to watch some example of a less commonly known Tolkien adaptation that they can be very, very interesting, veering toward artistic or interpretive, and that can be a lot of fun. Sure, sure.
Speaker: And we do Mystery Science Theater 3000 slap riff track style viewings of them and tear them apart. Yeah, the last one we did the Finnish version. Yes, we each have to revisit because it's truly, truly something special.
Speaker: Please go to YouTube, search the finished version of the Lord of the Rings. Wasn't it called like something Hobbit? That one's Hobbit. Yeah. Hobbit. And search finish Boromir. Just do yourself that favor. Yes. Just be prepared to be aroused. And in the realm of creativity, no matter what sexuality you are. The same actor very bravely plays both Aragorn and Gollum.
Speaker: It's incredible. Very bravely. Very brave. I can't... I'm tempted just to do a watch -along because it's amazing. You should be totally shy. It sounds like Patreon content. Yeah, at some point. Totally. Totally. And then in addition to that, I will also, during one of our longer
Speaker: breaks be having sort of an open roundtable to discuss the idea of intentionally diversifying our mythopoietic bookshelves. There's a big push in the year 2024 to diversify our reading and see why that is important and necessary on a both personal and societal level. And so we'll definitely want some mythopoietic book recommendations and
Speaker: things to be able to share there. So come prepared for that too. Definitely. Yeah, once again, how can people attend our super exciting seminar that I am getting really pumped for?
Speaker: It's all going to be taking place on Zoom and Discord. Discord is sort of going to be your portal into it. It's all online. It's $20 to register. You'll also have access to the talks afterwards because at least most of them are going to be recorded. So we're able to sort of keep that for posterity and accessing those.
Speaker: So you're just going to go to mittsock .org slash oms slash oms slash 2024 .htm. Super easy to remember everyone. Definitely not obnoxious.
Speaker: You'll also be able to find the link in the show notes here in all of our social media posts about this. And then if you are just really semi trying to get there and it's just not working for you, you can also go to the Mythopoic Society's website and look for OMS there. It stands for Online Midwinter Seminar, and you'll be able to get through there as well. Yay.
Speaker: And now for the last phase of our Quick Post episode here, we wanted to talk about some interesting scholarship that's going on very, very recently in the Tolkien community and sort of looking at a couple different, couple different vectors of that.
Speaker: So Nia, do you want to take away the first one? Yeah. So I just wanted to sort of highlight what's been happening kind of more recently. And we really wanted to shout out Tom Emanuel, who's been doing some really interesting work in the world of Tolkien and is currently working on his PhD, specifically on non -religious Tolkien fans, which you can possibly be a participant and help him with.
Speaker: Hang on for that. We'll come back to that and we'll tell you all about that. But he recently had two really interesting articles come out, one of which is in Mythlore, the MS's open access journal, entitled, It Is About Nothing But Itself, Tolkienian Theology Beyond the Domination of the Author.
Speaker: which I feel like kind of gives you a little taste of what it is kind of confronting and what it is really addressing. Specifically, he takes a recent publication to some deserved task, I think.
Speaker: But I feel like this this piece, if you haven't read it already, I feel like it's kind of it's going to be one of those pieces that I'm going to be sharing and recommending to a lot of people in the future if they want as like a foundational token text. I think it's that kind of important and especially for furthering reader response and furthering
Speaker: queer readings, honestly, and non -hegemonic sort of readings of Tolkien and how we approach Tolkien in our scholarship. It's really something special, I think. And he also, in a different article in the Journal of Tolkien Research, he reviews Holy Ordway's recent publication, Tolkien's Faith,
Speaker: And he has some interesting things to say about it, which I haven't read the new Orway, but I feel like he sort of builds upon a lot of what he says in his article on Tolkien and about how we need to move beyond
Speaker: domination or readings that sort of center particularly dominating theologies and perspectives. And this book in particular, Holly Ordway's book, has gotten kind of a wide range of responses, mainly
Speaker: glowing and enthusiastic responses from a very particular corner of the Tolkien world, the Catholic conservative corner of the Tolkien world. I feel like his review of it is a very necessary puncturing of that balloon and a nice realistic sort of look at it. And he has somewhat of a hedged view on it, which I think is important for
Speaker: Anybody who's interested in reading about Tolkien's religious life and also if you're interested in how a lot of religious people look at Tolkien and look to Tolkien in a very specific way and which informs a lot of their work.
Speaker: So yeah, we really just wanted to kind of shout out Tom. And again, we would love to have him on as a guest. We don't know when that's going to happen because he's very busy with his PhD research, which, like we said before, he's doing a survey of non -religious token fans. If you want to get, he's actually looking for active participants to possibly interview for this research.
Speaker: You can get in touch with him. He has a link to a survey in the pinned post on his Twitter, which is real Tom Emmanuel. He's also on Blue Sky under that same handle. You can also find him at his substack, which is called Queer and Back.
Speaker: The survey closes on February 23rd, so if you are a non -religious token fan and you want to participate, I highly encourage you to go search out Tom on socials and take that survey.
Speaker: I think one of the things that I just want to highlight also in appreciating Tom's perspective on all of this is that sometimes we get pushback, you know, well, you can't possibly know what you're talking about because, you know, your
Speaker: not religious or whatever, you're not the right kind of religious. And Tom is, in addition to his PhD, he's a theologian and a UCC minister. So he is writing on this topic from that perspective and that very informed perspective, which is something that I really appreciate existing within our scholarship right now.
Speaker: Yeah. What he's doing is so important. His voice is just immensely important for pushing back against people who want to weaponize authorial intent, which is essentially what's happening there. Like he's building the case for how certain types of people doing Christian readings of Tolkien set Tolkien up as an authority. And when they're doing that,
Speaker: If you want to break down about reader response theory, please go back to Tolkien would hate this podcast episode one, where I really like dig into this. A lot of the first paper that's in myth lore is focused on reader response theory and like how there can be different types, like author means different things. And some of those things are critical constructions.
Speaker: and some of those things are actually the physical person who lived and how when people are talking about Tolkien and what his intent was, what they're doing is creating a Tolkien specific to them that aligns with their views and then telling people that their readings are wrong because obviously their reading is right and he's really attacking that.
Speaker: Right. And he's attacking it and and he's naming names and names that need to be named names that need to be named like I read the first two pages of that and I needed a fucking cigarette afterwards because I was like I have sat through so
Speaker: So much and I bit my tongue because I haven't wanted to start a huge screaming fight at the end of a conference presentation but God bless you Tom Emmanuel for doing that for all of us.
Speaker: Yes, I very much appreciate his cis white man's shield, and I don't know, the forward thrust of going into the phrase so that us, you know, more marginalized folks can kind of follow in behind him.
Speaker: I think it's incredibly important that this type of scholarship and interrogation and critique exists, especially in the context of how various right wing writers, commentators, et cetera, Christian nationalists, et cetera are trying to use Tolkien as a tool and a battering ram. And I think this sort of work stands up to that. And I think that's hugely important.
Speaker: Yeah, one more thing I really want to like draw attention to is at the end of his review of Tolkien's fate, he points out the institutions that Holly Ordway is affiliated with, one of which is an evangelical institution who is actively using
Speaker: things such as the Lord of the Rings to entice people into the fold. And this is something I think is very gross. Yeah, I feel like Tom does a really important thing that is something that I like to like remind myself is that looking back into people's into different authors backgrounds and again, the organizations that they're sort of affiliated with is it's not like a waste of time and it's not unimportant when you're
Speaker: Honestly, when you're vetting people and when you're vetting your reading, if you want to get a little bit more informed about where somebody might be coming from, read those bios, read what's on their website, read who they're talking to, read who they're being paid by, and you might get a little more insight, possibly more insight than you were expecting or wanting about, dare I say, what kind of agenda they have.
Speaker: And going back to using Tolkien as a recruiting method, which Lord knows, you know, the Holly's organizations are not the only people that have done that or are doing that. But going back to the, it is about nothing but itself paper that what I really appreciated the most in there is how thoroughly Tom uses Tolkien's own words to deconstruct the idea.
Speaker: that Tolkien wanted people to read his works in a Christian fashion. He basically took all of the references that Tolkien made from letters and interviews and stuff like that about any sort of Christian or Catholic influence in his stories and put them all in context and basically was able to sort of demonstrate that all of those were to private audiences.
Speaker: Anytime that he made a comment about like, like the famous one that always gets thrown around is the Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Catholic work. He said that to a priest.
Speaker: in a private letter. And then he took the flip side of that and was able to demonstrate that any time he was questioned about what the stories were about, he was very careful not to ascribe any specific reading to them, any allegory or meaning or anything like that. He basically
Speaker: was very careful to say, he wanted readers to come up with their own meanings and their own interpretations of his works. And that I think is something that a lot of scholars, Christian and otherwise, really need to take into account, that that intentionality of him wanting to leave things open is incredibly important and should be respected.
Speaker: I think I appreciate this too in the context that one of the windmills that I am most likely to tilt at if I decide to go onto social media and spend my spoons there are the assertions that Tolkien is the author intentionally meant for something to be religious in XYZ fashion and was pulling
Speaker: explicitly from that religion, which sure, we can read through that lens and create that interpretation, but not to use it as a hammer. And often when I see people making that assertion, I'm looking at the same thing and going, did we start with the etymology though? Because
Speaker: He was a philologist and I think the words mean more than like are more relevant to the construction of this important question that you're asking and the answer to it than the religious interpretation and like push on top of that. So yeah, I appreciate this kind of work a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, we also just kind of wanted to shout out several of our pals and several of whom will be presenting at OMS, which once again, you can go and register for at the MythSOC website. I wanted to shout out some of our friends who are recently published in Malorn's December of 2023 issue, various notes and reviews. Claire Moore wrote about a recent publication in a different token society publication.
Speaker: entitled, Concerning, Concerning Racism and Token, in which I think she sort of takes that particular article to task in a really engaging way. This whole issue of Malorn, which includes contributions from Robin Reed, Rick Green Addis, Luke Shelton, and Mariana Rindos Maldonado,
Speaker: they were all sort of, all of their work came out of a particular round table at ICMS, the International Congress on Medieval Studies, which was entitled Tolkien and Medieval Constructions of Race. I feel like this issue of Malorn offers a lot of really meaty stuff that focuses on this really relevant and really sort of active topic in Tolkien right now in ways which I think are really important and really
Speaker: interesting and really, again, doing a lot of the same sort of work that Tom is doing. We're all in this together, doing this work together.
Speaker: That issue finally got Alicia and I to re -up our Tolkien Society memberships. It's good enough for that. So again, if you're not part of the Tolkien Society, you won't be able to see this issue of Malorn for a while. Lots of back issues have become open access since Luke Shelton took over, which is awesome. But I feel like it is worth the price of a membership just to read this, this selection. It's a two year embargo.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So you'll have to wait a bit for that if you're not a member. So I feel like it's worth it to read a lot of this stuff. And I guess for our last sort of thing to ride out on, I won't be presenting at OMS because again, I'm like, I'm just along for the ride, you guys. I'm ready to watch everybody else do things.
Speaker: But somehow I kind of got roped into working with Claire Moore on a note for our future publication question mark in Mythlore in response to some recent scholarship in air quotes that was recently published. This motherfucker.
Speaker: So basically, this paper is entitled A Bleak, Baron, Land, Women and Fertility in Lord the Rings, which the spoiler and actually the title alone might give you a wee taste of the author's approach. His name is Dylan Henderson, and he is a doctoral student, which I don't think excuses him from the pretty nasty racism, sexism, and homophobia that was present in this article.
Speaker: basically Claire and I got heated enough somehow I'm collaborating with her on a note which is very weird to me but doing things out of spite and out of anger and righteous fury is what this podcast is all about so so look out for that I guess yeah I really want to point this out this is from the abstract before you even get into the paper he says
Speaker: The novels' few women actually contribute to this impression, for they are all, for different reasons, childless. In what fucking world? In what world are they all childless? Galadriel had a fucking kid. Harwin exists. Kids were had.
Speaker: in the abstract mentions Aragorn's wedding. Now listen, I have my shipper goggles and everything, but I do not know who this man thinks Aragorn is marrying, if not for Arwen, daughter of Calibrian, daughter of Galadriel, like what my dude, we read different books.
Speaker: Rosie Cotton had all of the children. Just all of them. So many. Like, to say, how they are a matriarchal society. What are you doing, my dude? Yeah, it's truly astonishing to me that not only is this sort of perspective being worked on, again, by a postdoctoral student in the year of the Lord, 2023.
Speaker: It made it through peer review. It made it through peer review. And I was like, how is this not only being actively worked on, but actively published? And so it made me very upset. This douche canoe, I was just like, no, I can't. We can't not respond to it.
Speaker: I don't really want to get too much into about all the wrongness because we don't really have time for that here. And that's what these notes are for. Yeah. But I just kind of wanted to mention it because, again, the fact that even though it's still astonishing to me that this got published and got peer reviewed and also got that this person thought that this perspective was
Speaker: one worth developing and writing a paper about in the year of our Lord 2023. And this was the point at the end of that development? Yes. And I guess I'm just like the fact that this exists sort of means that
Speaker: There's necessary work to be done. There's necessary work to be done that we don't live in a post -racist or post -feminist society, that maybe the kids aren't okay.
Speaker: peer review is not perfect. I have peer reviewed things before and I do want to point out when you're peer reviewing something you are reviewing that they have a cohesive argument that they have cited things correctly and they are in general interpreting the things that they cited correctly and like paraphrasing things correctly and so like something can go through peer review and you can think it's the
Speaker: goddamn stupid worthless argument. But if it ticks the boxes, it ticks the boxes. And sometimes you let something go through peer review because you were then later going to write something scathing about it. I did not peer review this paper. In full disclosure, I did not peer review this paper.
Speaker: Alicia was not reviewer number two. Yeah, I'm excited, excited to bring you more about this paper in our notes. And it will be a lot more eloquent than what I initially was wanting to write in response, which was mostly just like a page and a half of the middle finger emoji. And just like,
Speaker: all typing in all caps like fuck this noise fuck this oh my god i hate this i hate it how dare you this is wrong this is wrong this is so stupid and wrong i look forward to this so much because i confess i have not read more than like the first page yeah
Speaker: the source material here. And I just kept screaming about everything in the group chat. Like I have problems with the analysis of the geography of the Shire and Bree. Like we read different books, this man and I. Like I said, just a page and a half of
Speaker: What the fuck basically was my initial note, but Claire and I are making something I think really good. It's so frustrating that shit like this comes out and requires the labor of people that could be writing more interesting shit or doing other, you know, actually useful fucking work.
Speaker: to rebut and disprove and discount and absolutely. So yes, wipe the floor with this idiot so that he thinks twice before ever publishing anything like this ever again.
Speaker: Yeah, we could be doing such interesting work and yet we have to prove that women exist in Middle Earth yet again. And they're not fairing. They're not fairing. Like if he had been writing about the brown lands and the ant wives, sure.
Speaker: A bleak bear in land? Yeah, sure, right about that. That makes sense. He mentions it in passing. That's the only thing that fucking makes sense. Like I said, Alicia's going through the journey that I was going through. There's just so much in Tolkien's notes about such fascinating ideas about
Speaker: elven pregnancy and all of that and for to turn around and be like well that all of the women are barren like
Speaker: There are issues, but you have not identified them. The flames on the side of my face. That was me the entire time. Just like that gift. Just like going the entire time. One more thing and I'll let this drop. The first fucking sentence of this paper, he references Lubelia Sackville -Baggins as if her entire
Speaker: Like existence up until that point is anything more than she is someone's mother and someone's wife. Just a heavy, deep from the bottom of the abyss, a sigh. So anyway, looking ahead to the happy things that we get to do is we get to attend an entire seminar, an entire two day seminar about
Speaker: good and important topics that are the work that we all get to do when we're not proving that women exist in Middle Earth. These exciting papers and everything like that, we're super excited to be able to
Speaker: platform for everyone. And again, you can find that by signing up for the seminar through the OMS website or any of our social media, which I will have Alicia list for us in just a second. I will also just mention, again, the cost of attending seminar is $20. And that's just reflective of the fact that the mythic society really strives to keep
Speaker: both the events as well as membership as accessible as possible, as low cost as possible, so that both scholars and fans and new scholars and all that can try to access these places. And this is also why so much of our like myth lore and everything is open access. So there's a lot of focus on accessibility here. And we hope that in setting all of that up, we're able to
Speaker: to be with everybody online on February 17th and 18th. We hope to see virtually a lot of you guys there. It'd be so much fun if you attended and let us know if you're a listener to the podcast. If you attend, that would be so heartwarming for all of us, I think. It would just make my day for sure.
Speaker: All right, Alicia, would you run through the whole list of places where people can find us and make sure that they can get back to OMS as well if they're interested? Yeah, sure. As usual, you can find us basically anywhere that you stream podcasts, or you can listen to us directly on SinCaster. That is sincaster .com slash queer lodgings, the Tolkien podcast with a bunch of hyphens in between all those words.
Speaker: You can also find us at QueerLodgings .com where we have resources for almost all of our episodes. I'm a little behind on that right now. And transcripts and all of that good stuff. Please leave us a rating and like, share, and subscribe when you find us on social. It does really help us out. We are on Facebook at QueerLodgings, on Twitter at Queer Underscore Lodgings, BlueSky.
Speaker: at queer lodgings. And you can also always send us an email, which is queer lodgingspodcast at gmail .com. And once again, so you don't forget, if you would like to come see us at OMS and go to mythsoft .org and find it there in the navigation or mythsoft .org slash OMS slash OMS dash 2024 dot HTM. Yay. Thanks, guys. Bye. I'm later lodgers to see you in February.
Speaker: I wanted to try out one of my new candles. It's the scent of Oxford Library. Ooh, what is it supposed to smell like? Sandalwood. Sandalwood oak and leather.
Speaker: Nice. I was going to say unwashed undergrads. I don't know. That would be less nice. Way too much Axe body spray. Too much Axe.
