Transcript
Speaker: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Queer Lodgings, the Queer Led podcast about everything Tolkien. I'm Leah, and I'm here with my usual co -hosts, Grace. Hello. And Alicia. Hello. Oh, I just got some Kevin McAllister going on there. I am so sorry. I'm sick, guys.
Speaker: Well, it is winter, so it's the time of getting cold and getting sick. It's raining, it's kind of gross and dark outside, but you know what? We're not staying indoors today, you guys. Grab your thermos, some hot tea, a couple extra layers, and your saddlebags, because today we're heading to the stables, and we're talking about the horse girls of Middle Earth. To help us out, we're joined by our good friend Kate Rotler, certified horse girl, TM.
Speaker: Kate, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. Before we get going, can you tell our listeners a little more about yourself?
Speaker: Um, yeah, sure. I am Kate Rottler. I am an ecologist by day, but in my free time, I spend a lot of time out at the barn with my horse. His name is Rocket. And in any given situation, I will gladly whip my phone out and just start showing you pictures of Rocket for no reason whatsoever. Of course. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, since I don't have kids, I have pets and I just have so many pictures of them and he's one of my favorite things to talk about. So. Oh, fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah, I've had him since he was 16 and he's 24 now. And he's the first horse I've ever had, but I always wanted a horse since the time I was a little kid. So he's kind of like my dream pony that I didn't get to have as a kid. Now I get to have him when I'm older and can actually like
Speaker: form good memories of that. Aw. I'm glad to hear that. Well, that's the whole reason that we brought you on today because you are, as we said, a certified horse girl. And we need you to talk to us about some of horse girls and some of the inherent queerness that's, I think, held in the whole genre and, I guess, trope and stereotype, even.
Speaker: Alicia, you found some pretty great scholarship and also urban dictionary, which I don't know if that really counts as scholarship or not, but in a particular sense, it kind of is. Why don't we talk a little more about what a horse girl actually is? Yeah, horse girls are
Speaker: I mean, I'd never had money to own a horse and therefore never fell into horse girl category. But I've always been kind of like, I've always thought that horse girls were kind of queer adjacent, even though there's nothing like overtly queer about a girl who rides a horse. There's something that always struck me as being queer about it. And I've never really been able to put my finger on it.
Speaker: Right. So when we were doing research for this episode, I thought one, it would be good to just see what Urban Dictionary has to say about horse girls. Just check in on what Urban Dictionary has to say. Always a good move. I'm on Urban Dictionary more than I want to admit when New Slang comes out that I just do not understand because I know Urban Dictionary's got my back. There's one particular definition from 2017 sent me, horse girls.
Speaker: has some deeper than normal connection to riding horses and doing horse -related things since a young age. The reason as to why someone can be so connected to riding horses is not completely clear. Perhaps it is due to sexual arousal from repeated vagina -on -jostling -sow contact. You're doing that. You're riding wrong. Shit. Tell me.
Speaker: Right, that just sounds painful. Tell me this was written by a man without telling me it was written by a man. Exactly. Normally quiet, introverted, socially awkward girls, not nerdy in the traditional term of video games, anime, internet, etc. Nerdy in the sense of odd hobbies.
Speaker: There is a high likelihood of being Catholic or religious. This overall describes a very vanilla and bland person, so horse -related hobbies largely define this person's character in totality. Overall, they can be mildly attractive personally and physically, but not more than average. Of course,
Speaker: personal variations occur between all her horse curls. I'm glad that they allowed for that, you know, variation and nuance. You know, I'm gonna go ahead and skip right past offended and into the utility of this definition, because delightfully, this person has told us
Speaker: that we can like horses as a way to be less attractive to this type of gentleman. I think a perk in my life.
Speaker: Uh, yeah. I think it's interesting that at no point does it mention something that like I'm familiar with, which is that horse go through occasionally painted is like actually kind of mildly terrifying. Yeah. They regularly boss around one ton beasts and they'll just look at it and be like, dude, you're standing in my manure pile and then poke them with a rake and tell them to back off. Yeah. And it's like, it doesn't ever occur, you know, to like me that that's a one ton animal I'm bossing around. It's just rocket.
Speaker: And then other people are like, oh my God, how are you just so comfortable around these giant animals?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I feel like this is what a lot of people kind of think about for Horse Girl. And I'm getting stuck a little bit on the high likelihood of being Catholic or religious. I'm like, where is the book genre, the Venn diagram of the intersection of Christian chick lit and Horse Girl lit? I know that there's a large population of books in that Venn diagram. I wonder if that comes from the more cowboy side of things.
Speaker: sometimes especially in American culture I think it would be different probably like over in Europe or something but I don't actually know because I was around horse folks in Europe a little bit and I know some of them but I it's that's like not part of the culture that I've ever super experienced hmm I think there is an element that makes sense to me where correlation is not causation right like it's not it is not being a horse girl lead you to Catholicism
Speaker: or Catholicism leads you to, of course, girl. But I think there might be an element where if you are in a restrictive social context
Speaker: The freedom and connection to something external to yourself and perhaps the immediacy of your family and your community that you get by riding horses and the time to care for them and the time that you get to set aside in order to do that important task and everything is
Speaker: Potentially, one of the ways that someone growing up or living in a restrictive context like that can take some agency for themselves and find that freedom. Yeah, and I feel like there's the embodied element of in order to ride well, you have to be very aware of your own body and how you're moving with another animal.
Speaker: in more restrictive sort of religious environments, the body is not only something that's sort of put to the side, but it's sort of actively immoral or actively evil and something that you want to transcend. And it's sort of like, actually, there's kind of an element of transcendence, I think, in writing in which you're actually fully embodied with yourself and the creature that you're writing.
Speaker: which I think can be a really strong appeal to somebody who may or may not have that kind of relationship with their body and with other bodies, non -human or human alike. Yeah. I wasn't going to go here yet, but I think I am now. So there's also this element of like, not just in particularly restrictive parts of society, like a lot of parts of our society and over a lot of generations, too, like as socialization changes and everything.
Speaker: talking about like menstruation and things like that not necessarily like super common something that is comfortable for a lot of people to talk about but my mom grew up riding horses at her godmother's house and the quiet rule for all of the girls was when you got your period you went and broke like you went and galloped
Speaker: And then you went in and like you took a hot shower and the deal was like, if you had your period and this is why you were doing this, somebody else would actually take over like caring for the horse after you rode and you'd go in and shower right away. And so that staved off the endometriosis surgery that my mom had to have by a good decade and a half. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker: And so there are emotional benefits and health benefits specifically for people who menstruate, people who are given a lot of restrictions by society. There's a lot of freedom and good health things in being able to interact with horses and ride horses. And there's a reason that hippotherapy is so popular both for physical and mental
Speaker: health or also just like disabilities. I've been told I would have to actually check if this is medically accurate. So I may be spouting like a random old wives tale that we tell in the horse world to make ourselves feel better. But the motion of a horse at the walk strongly mimics the same, it activates the same muscles that you would use in walking without needing to use your legs. So it's a way to work your core
Speaker: If like your legs don't work. So, I mean, I know I've had surgery on both ankles for writing related incidents. And when I was still on crutches, I could at least get up on the mounting block and throw my leg in a walking boot.
Speaker: get like, God bless my sainted horse, throw my leg over my horse, and I could walk him around bareback, walk him around the field. Just like for that half hour, I was not having to deal with the fact. And like this was even over such a short term that I was so deeply frustrated by the fact that just like I was not physically capable of doing stuff. But on my horse, I was pretty much physically capable. You know, like I wouldn't have jumped in a riding boot or anything.
Speaker: But it was very much the physical capability that I was more or less used to. And it kept me in some kind of a shape, even when I couldn't like, you're not going to be getting a whole heck of a lot of exercise when you're on crutches, unless you're going into the grocery store and back, because it's just not pleasant. Right. But that was like physical activity that I could handle. And actually, so was mucking stalls when I was off the crutches and just in the boot. Because it's mostly upper body, a lot of upper body.
Speaker: Totally. So I know that on our social media and everything, we've alluded to like for all of us podcast co -hosts, like life has been a life thing a lot the last couple of months. And so we haven't gotten a reporting session and we've had to postpone plan sessions and things like that. For me, one of those reasons is that I've had some really terrible health issues this year. And one of the big things that I really, really wanted to be able to do is that
Speaker: every year for her birthday. My friend Joanna will bring a few of us to, it's a Girl Scout camp that does an adult horse weekend for the last event of the year before winter. And you spend like a day doing horse care and grooming and like mucking stalls if you want and stuff. And then you also get to do a couple of trail rides.
Speaker: And I was so determined to go and do this because it matters so much to me. And I got my trail rides in and I got to see the horse. He's a little bit of a jerk, so I love him a lot. Aww, you know. And it was also huge. Like I had to have this entire medical care plan because the nearest hospital was 40 minutes away.
Speaker: And I had to know exactly which ambulance company we would need to ask for and things like that. But I wanted to do it. And I had to go. I couldn't eat any of the food. I could only drink and shore the entire time. It was ridiculous. And I still did it. And I felt so much better after being able to both accomplish that and then also literally the riding. It helped so much. So yes. Of course, this is very therapeutic. That's really amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, we've been talking about like freedom in terms of riding horses and stuff. And I really want to talk about Natalie Corinne Hanson a little bit. I found this particular academic while I was looking for a
Speaker: more suitable definition for what horse girls are. And this woman, I am sure is a horse girl because her entire academic publishing history is how to talk to horses, how to ride horses, and then so much stuff about horse girls. Hell yeah.
Speaker: i love it yeah and i just what a thing to like specialize in but bless her because it gives me something more than what did this guy say jostling saddle contact
Speaker: repeated vagina on jostling subtle contact. So like her whole thing is that the horse girl trope is really tied up in the patriarchy's view of female sexuality and like agency and bodily autonomy, specifically as girls are coming of age. So you have that large group who assume that horse girls are lesbians and or are riding the horses for sexual pleasure or
Speaker: tied to that, that the love between a girl and her horse is a transitional developmental stage that will eventually lead to that love being transferred onto boys and heterosexual reproductive sexuality is how she very specifically wears it, which is gross. It's just men herping a Spongebob fantasy. I'm only partially joking. I did read an article about that.
Speaker: Oh boy. Oh no. How interesting. In her book chapter, Horse Crazy Girls Alternative Embodiments and Socialities, she specifically says, this cultural narrative functions to retain the innocence of childhood while also constructing the female subject within a sexually accessible frame. By this, she's talking about the love between horses and girls.
Speaker: Which... Right. Gross. It is incredibly gross, in my opinion. Like, why do you need a frame in which to, quote unquote, safely sexualize children? Yeah, and safely sexualize innocents and innocent children that don't have that kind of agency and autonomy. And you're kind of like, oh, oh, hmm. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't like that at all. And in a lot of her work, what she is working towards is a more feminist reading of this horse girl trope where the horse and girl relationship is as she refers to it, a trans species way of discovering a girl's personhood through a physical bond with another body that allows her to taste freedom through that mutual relationship.
Speaker: that this girl gets on the horse and then as one, they are free? Yeah, they're free together and their bodies are physically free. It's sort of like, you know, nobody can stop them or get in their way. You know, like there's always that moment in the Horse Girl movies where the girl is trying to flee basically and on her horse and it's like, yeah, literally nobody can stop them.
Speaker: That's the whole point. Yeah, I love that trans species discovery. I think that that's and that discovery through the really a very physical relationship is really fascinating and really like empowering. Like I think it was kind of touching back on some of what we were talking about with relating how like our physical bodies
Speaker: sort of relating to each other. I think that that's really cool. Yeah, that's the kind of power young girls don't really have, right? Like we've touched on this a lot thus far that you are wielding a large, terrifying beast. Like what what other time does an 11 or 12 year old girl have that sort of power?
Speaker: never. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it's really huge that a lot of us end up reading a horse girl books when we are that like young age and then like, around
Speaker: puberty and everything. So I'm sitting here with with my wall of books behind me and I'm literally the same wall as all of the Tolkien books is also the shelf of all of the like saddle club books and thoroughbred and like ghost horse stories and everything that I collected and read as a kid because that almost like closer to real life fantasy was just as freeing as fantastical settings.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think we're talking specifically about horse girls, but I think there's also a lot to be said just for like any one that society kind of kind of places in a powerless position. There is like, there is a lot of privilege and nastiness in the horse world. It can be incredibly toxic.
Speaker: But I've also seen like some pretty incredible, there are trainers who specifically have queer friendly farms and like they specifically go looking for students who may not have the money. And so they start a scholarship program that's quite often funded actually by other queer people who wish they had had that growing up. Yeah.
Speaker: And it's wonderful as far as giving freedom to, I guess, anybody who's been put in that really powerless position by society. Yeah, that is something good to speak about right now. We are talking about forced girls. So we are necessarily going to be using a lot of gendered language here, but it doesn't have to be a girl. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: people of marginalized genders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think often marginalized experience in the same way that we often use gender language, ironically, saying like, you know, girl and dude and whatever in this context, we are we are explicitly referencing that as well. But, you know, first, of course, girl is not specifically just cis girls. Yeah. Mm hmm.
Speaker: There's one more thing I want to touch on before we start really digging into the meat of this. One of the places where Natalie Hanson gets kind of the backbone of this like horse crazy girls book chapter that I've been referencing is a visual artist by the name of Deborah Bright who had an exhibit called Horse Crazy Horse Tales American Images and Icons from 1800 to 2000. She's discussing
Speaker: the incoming portfolios of visual art students who are trying to go into art school, and she sees all of these horse -related images and says that she daydreamed of a whole nation of horse girls who shared this obsession, a fierce army of horse lovers,
Speaker: impervious to the contempt, implicit in men's mockery, ignoring the social consensus that they would have moved on from horses to boys. These hopeful applicants were signaling their membership in a subversive sisterhood. If we nurtured their talent and insisted on deviant passion over peer pressure, we could move mountains. That is so powerful to me.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. That hit me like a ton of bricks. I love it. Yeah. So as you were reading that, I just connected to a song that like teenage me was like blasting all the time and it was on Shania Twain's like last.
Speaker: album that she had released it's a song called Juanita and their lyrics are like She's the restless river running through my veins. She rides without the rains. Her name's Juanita She lives in the heart of every woman in the world within the reach of every girl who wants to meet her like the whole thing is a like a horse riding allegory for
Speaker: like freedom and like feminine feminist freedom and rage and frustration with patriarchy and all of that including and this is a country song in the 2000s let me remind everyone when someone tries to take away the freedom of your choice to take away your voice that's when you need her like oh holy shit about all of this men like thanks for unlocking that for me again Alicia thanks for that quote
Speaker: Oh, yeah, that's so powerful. And it speaks to of like, you know, like that reclaiming of power and in so many ways that like, I guess like in ways that a lot of people like dismiss and sort of don't, what's the word I'm trying to say? It's like, it feels very subversive and very, not quite like secret, but like inaccessible to folks who kind of don't look hard enough, I guess, if that makes sense.
Speaker: I'm thinking like the phrase is like the the deviant passion over peer pressure where it's sort of like, oh, embracing your cringe. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's it. Exactly. I love it. Yeah. Embracing that that weirdness and that subversiveness is so powerful and so very queer. I think that that might be part of the nugget that I'm kind of like, I couldn't quite ever have placed
Speaker: my finger quite on why I'm like, I know horse girls are like at least tangentially queer, you know? Like it's kind of getting to that little nugget of weirdness, deliberate weirdness, you know? We want to kind of get into some more of these like tropes, like hate, what kind of tropes have you encountered in like the stuff that you read when you were younger? And I guess, and the stuff that you read now,
Speaker: Yeah, so I actually at the beginning of the pandemic, I had this really brief time where I actually read a bunch of horse books again. Awesome. Yeah, they were for grownups. Well, they were for they were young adult because I could at least count on them to not have a bunch of like, sex and then and that made me more comfortable. So good.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And so I like I genuinely don't remember the plot, but I have a feeling it had something to do with like, Oh, was this course that either no one wanted or no one could deal with. And by some like sheer magic, this girl could deal with this horse. And it became like her best friend and all this other stuff. That's like a super common trope.
Speaker: And it's super like it is super fun to make fun of that trope. But I also think there's something kind of touching about the idea that like it goes back to that power thing. They may not have power anywhere else, but with that horse, like they have power that is not based on strength or on how big and scary they can make themselves. It's based solely on some kind of I mean, in some cases, I guess, literally like
Speaker: almost otherworldly magical, like magic -esque kind of connection that we all know isn't really real, but I would hazard a guess that everyone who has ever had a horse that was special to them, whether it was theirs or not, they were like, I have a bond with this horse that clearly no one else does. Nobody else has, of course. Right. Yeah. And like, Oh, I could get that horse to do things no one else would. And I'm sure in a lot of cases that's actually true because
Speaker: Horses, you know, they learn who their people are and they learn to trust individuals and like, there's some credible research that horses will remember people who were good to them like a decade later.
Speaker: so they have good memories. Yeah so it's one of my favorite tropes but it's also like so genuine and heartfelt a lot of the time that like while I do enjoy making fun of it it also like it's a trope that's close to my heart. I adore it because I'm kind of like I was never really a horse girl. I feel like I'm on the like sort of parallel track of like
Speaker: like animal girl, you know, like in general, like dogs and cats and for me rabbits where it was like, yeah, I will hype, you know, like that's where I will focus, you know. And it's like that trope is so heartening to me because it really speaks to like this mystical magical power really is just like listening and friendship and like genuinely like emotionally connecting with another
Speaker: being and it's like I feel like that that's so like genuinely like touching and sort of special and it's sort of like that special relationship that only this girl and only this horse has is sort of like it's speaking to that experience of like seeing another another being and seeing like their soul and like their like emotional being like they have you know like they're they're a person and they also see you as a person you know
Speaker: Yeah, well, I think that's really lovely. I've always liked that trope, too. Yeah. And I love that horses are one ton creatures. If a horse doesn't want to do something, it's bloody well not going to do it. Even the little tiny miniature horses, they're going to beat me. And any battle of will or strength, the tiny, bariatric horse at the stable is going to beat me.
Speaker: and and this is evidence by the fact that i often can't get him to move out of the way of my car so i can leave for lover money or cookies but there's something that to like a one -ton animal choosing to do something you asked it to do not because it's afraid of you but because it
Speaker: sees something like that it's willing to do that for you like in the end it is willing to it's willing to run at a jump that like is scary and has boxes in front of it and is something that any horse in its right mind and any untrained horse would take a look at that and be like oh hell no
Speaker: But these horses have learned. We've taught them, hopefully through kindness, but we've taught them to do impossible things. And war horses are even more the extreme, the really extreme version of that. Yeah.
Speaker: There's a good horse girl book that's not about a girl. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Warhorse takes my heart out and steps on it. It was made into a movie also, but if you ever have the chance to see the stage play. Oh, it's incredible.
Speaker: I think I cried half the time. The horses are portrayed by the most incredible puppets and puppeteers I have ever seen. When I studied in London, I got a chance to tour backstage at the National Theatre where it was and see the puppets up close and everything. I saw the London production. It's incredible. And there's some really cool videos out there of the various productions meeting like Mounted Patrol.
Speaker: Oh, wow. And like, I think some of the, I don't know, like the power horses or whatever. And the horses, actually, it's so cool to watch them respond to them. The horses for like, as far as I can tell, look completely cool. Oh, really?
Speaker: they do not know that that's not a horse. And the people puppeting those horses are so good at their ears and their facial expressions that they're actually able to make the puppet respond the way a real horse would. And it's just so funny to watch those videos of like real horses interacting with the puppets and like clearly being thrown for a complete loop.
Speaker: because it smells like people and leather and things, but it's like a horse and you can tell you're just kind of like, what the devil is going on here? Oh, yeah, that's amazing. And it's like it's doing things that it's it wouldn't do and it's scared of and it's doing things because it likes you. And sort of like there's like this really like, yeah, it's a really like weird sort of almost selfish, but like really like empowering sort of like nugget there that I'm like,
Speaker: This creature likes me, you know, and it's like, this creature likes me over everybody else. And there's something really kind of like, Oh, I feel really special. You know, even if you're just doing a trail ride for an hour, like this one ton animal would like to eat whatever is around. And I am telling him no. And he's like, well, fine. Yeah. Going along with it because of the training and because of the,
Speaker: the amount of time and human hours and kindness and compassion that is built into horse training, at least if you're doing it. Good horse training. Yeah. Yeah. You always hope that the reason the horse is responding that way isn't because someone beat it last time it did something wrong. You always hope that it's like someone was kind to that horse when they taught it. And that's why it's so willing to do it. Yeah. That's not always a guarantee, but
Speaker: Yeah, not for nothing, though. There are a lot of horse girl books, both fantastical and that take place in like kind of the real world, where like a human character who's been hurt is going on a healing journey alongside a horse who has been hurt or mistreated or whatnot. And it can be
Speaker: really great way for young people especially to be able to externalize and analyze the harms that have come to them and be able to work through some of those things and think through some of those hard things.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Whether what kind of tropes can we visit? Like there's, you know, I'm thinking of like these horse girl movies where it's like either the girl or the horse like kind of saved each other's lives and things like that. There's sort of this like weird kind of survival element to it. Yeah. Oh, I mean like Pit Doggo has that trope.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. We want to talk about other things like that because Mortensen has been in them to say we're slowly sliding into the Viggo Mortensen station. I can see it on the horizon. Yeah, yeah. Hidalgo is very much that like he saves that horse and then the horse later on saves him. And it's just like, I mean, they're just buddies the number of times that like
Speaker: Even in old westerns that like silver or one of the old cowboy horses saves their person from like a mountain lion or a bear or something like that. Or saves a little kid from such, you know. I think one thing that's interesting about that too is that like cowboy culture, like actual historical cowboy culture is
Speaker: very not white and very not straight. So that's not necessarily the norm of the trip that we see now through like more modern westerns and things like that but historically that is what the reality is to the point where it's often very misogynistic so you know not great for girls or whatever but
Speaker: the queerness of that sort of cowboy culture and how the stepping aside from a normative society culture that expects you to engage in heterosexual matrimony and procreation and instead stepping aside and having the strong bond with your horse and the open road, the trail, all of that.
Speaker: those are I think really key horse girls' tropes for non -girls. Yeah. Did you all know that there's actually like an international gay rodeo association? Amazing. It's totally a thing. I need to go to one sometime because I think that would just be a great place to be. Oh yeah. Apparently we have one here. Like there's actually a New Mexico chapter. Oh wow. I just think that would be super fun.
Speaker: But yeah, I thought that definitely merits mention here that there's like, literally, this is not something that us that just like a small number of people are seeing. There's like a whole literal international gay rodeo association. It's international, even it's not.
Speaker: Not just national. Yeah. I think I might end up having to make a playlist of all the songs that I'm going to mention here. I did not even realize that this was a dimension of my Horse Girl list. The video in particular, like the song is great. And then the video in particular for Orville Pack's Queen of the Rodeo then specifically looks at queer and trans people in the rodeo community and everything is phenomenal.
Speaker: And that's a really cool modern piece giving voice to the queerness inherent in the subculture around horses and horse growth.
Speaker: Oh, I love that. Talking some more about sort of the horse girl genre, we've kind of mentioned that there's like these sort of fantastical horse girl books, but it kind of goes even beyond that into dragon books, dragon writing books, which we have kind of discovered as we've been talking, but they're horse people too. Dragon writing people are horse people.
Speaker: But let's talk a little bit more kind of about that sort of genre of book because that's something that has been around forever and ever is books about dragons and the people who write them. And like it's periodically just back in the zeitgeist again and it's having a moment again now. So it's really good to talk about it. Which frankly is like a dream come true for me because I loved it. I mean I was in like mid -school last time dragons were a thing. Yeah.
Speaker: And it was, I mean, it was a little while ago when I was reading Anne McCaffrey as a sixth grader, which whenever, if you're old enough to ask, you're old enough to know, I guess. Um, but I transitioned directly from horse books to dragon books. And I don't think that was accidental. I saw people riding dragons and was like, Oh, dragons are basically just fantasy horses. Right. Yeah. That's it.
Speaker: Well, and as we were sort of prepping for the podcast, we started sort of just fangirlsqueaking over all of the different things we can think of. But we're talking about Naomi Novak's Temeraire series, where all of the grand battleships in the Napoleonic Wars are actually in this imagining dragons who have riders and like a bond or connection with that rider. And what were some of the others that we thought of? Well, how to train your dragon?
Speaker: Oh yeah. And how to train your dragon deserves a special shout out because the horse community got so obsessed with how to train your dragon that there have been a number of different dressage freestyles. So like dressage is the pretty horse dancing that you see at the Olympics. And there's like different events that you can do in dressage, but one of them is freestyle, which is basically a choreographed horse dance that incorporates certain required movements, kind of like a floor routine for gymnasts that's freestyle.
Speaker: Right. And one of the best freestyles that I think I've seen was this incredible dressage rider, her name is Charlotte Dujardin. She did on her horse, his barn name is Blueberry, but I don't remember what, like I always forget this horse's fancy show name, but they did a freestyle to How to Train Your Dragon. The music from that soundtrack
Speaker: That's really cute. And I don't know a single horse person who hasn't watched it and like cried a little bit. Oh, yeah. So funny, like how quickly the horse world really glommed onto that how to train your dragon movie to the extent of like people joking around about how they're going to go train their dragon when their horses, you know, out of control.
Speaker: Oh, your dragon is a movie that is a beautiful Venn diagram of near perfect overlap of cat people, fantasy people and horse people, horse people, all of the right things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's amazing. That makes my heart so happy that there's
Speaker: Well, and like, it literally incorporates, I've been keeping a list in my head of all the tropes we've looked at and also like how many of them are in how to train your dragon. I think actually all the tropes we've mentioned are in how to train your dragon. We save each other, picked up pretty notoriously. That's how he gets freedom and self -expression is through toothless and vice versa.
Speaker: I mean, they're all there. It hits all of them. I love it so much. Yeah, that's so great. Well, we kind of mentioned Burn, which is like this kind of like huge behemoth of fantasy. Y 'all would probably know better than I would. What are some kind of like more recent ones that are kind of coming back and having a moment? The one that you showed us earlier, Grace,
Speaker: Oh yeah. I happened to be in the bookstore and it was after a release for a really popular TikTok book sequel kind of thing that features dragons. And it was the day after and they were breaking down from a midnight release that they'd had. And there was a sign that was like, you know, like this dragon writing book, but yay. And I just picked up the sign and walked over to the customer service desk and pointed at it and was like, hi, this, this advertising is for me. Where do I find this book? And the book they brought me to. Yeah.
Speaker: And then I had a great conversation with the bookseller for like 10 minutes, and it was beautiful and lovely. And the book that he brought me to was Dragonfall by L .R. Lamb. And I'm only about 60 some odd pages into it, but it's a very cool dragon.
Speaker: portals into a different world and ends up in sort of a humanoid form and then is going to have this connection with a human person. And I'm not exactly sure whether romance develops or not, but there's definitely some really cool thinking about gender and bodies and body dysmorphia and things like that already, even before the characters, the two point of view characters meet. So there's definitely some very cool queer things going on there.
Speaker: one of the things that's back is the Eragon series has a new book. So if we remember that, that's right. Yeah, from yeah, 3 million years ago when I was born, basically, like, tell me a little bit more because I think I only vaguely heard about this.
Speaker: So I just know my mom picked it up because she really, really, really loves those. And so it was like, Oh, that, okay, we're back. Like this series that I thought was finished is back with another book. And that's another one where you have sort of the ability to communicate between the dragon rider and the dragon, right? Right. Dallas was like that too, which I think is that Mercedes Lackey?
Speaker: Oh, yeah. We have to talk about Mercedes Lackey in the world of horse girls. Yeah. All the Valdemar series, there are horses who are heralds. They're much more than horses. And they have companions and they bond with humans. They have this amazing psychic connection then and everything. And that's sort of the fantasy version of the connection with your horse, right? Yeah. That's a big trope. Yeah.
Speaker: They're a lot like Bernie's dragons, but they're horse bodies. Yeah, in some ways. Yeah, is I recall? Well, I don't know. I remember the telepathy thing reminded me a little bit of it. But it has been ages since I read one of those. There's a lot of very
Speaker: cool, like female centered main characters who get to have agency and everything. I grew up more on Mercedes Lackey than I did on Tamara Pierce. So like horses are also pretty, pretty important for Alana and all of that's true, right to the Mercedes Lackey one that I really, really, really remember is the first book that I read as a young teenager.
Speaker: that had a queer point of view character was Vanyel in the Last Herald Mage trilogy by Mercedes Lackey. And he's one of the heralds and has this companion and what have you. So that horse girl trope, but the first time I saw it mapped onto someone who wasn't a cis woman, but who was
Speaker: queer and othered from society in other structural ways and that same resonance. I remember that one being huge for me growing up. I know I read that series, but I must not
Speaker: I'm notorious for like having not noticed when people are queer in books when I was a child. It didn't, someone had to tell me years later, they were like, Hey, you remember that Tamara Pierce series? Mark and Rose Thorne are gay. I was like, Oh, shit. That was really funny. I was super excited. I was like, Are you kidding me? I never knew that. They're like, Did you and I do the same book?
Speaker: Amazing. The Last Herald Mage series is actually potentially being adapted into a television show. Oh, so sweet. But if you are like, oh, yeah, I'm going to go pick that up, revisit my childhood or whatever, see what the kids were reading. So many trigger warnings in the first book alone for a lot of unaliving sorts of things and tragedy and travesty. And I reread it this year and was like, oh, dang. Wow.
Speaker: 12 when I read this? Okay, okay. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who was reading books that were probably technically a little too old for her. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It had a horse on the cover. And so I was like, of course.
Speaker: Green Rider? Are you about to mention Green Rider? That was a book that I do not remember any of. I know I can't remember exactly which ones, but Robin Hobb has a number of series actually that go on that same sort of like connection with your
Speaker: creature vehicle or vessel or like ride rider kind of trope there's it's a stretch but it's like live ship traders and then I think there's also green wild chronicles or something that's dragons we definitely have to mention Samantha Shannon priority of the orange tree and I'm forgetting what the
Speaker: prequel is but that is that is sapphic and modern and lovely and also dragons I didn't know there were dragons in it people have told me to read it and was like no that's okay I no one ever thought to tell me there were dragons in it there's at least like dragon eggs and one of the dragons or what have you is more of like a water type and so it's sort of counter to some of the fire breathing
Speaker: Yeah, like the sort of norms of that genre. Well, I'm thinking of like in a lot of East Asian cultures, dragons are associated with water far more than with fire. Exactly. And that's what that is mapped onto there for sure. Yeah. So some not entirely Western centric views of dragons, but still having that sort of like horse crawl connection sort of trope.
Speaker: That was a cool thing that they did in the Timur Air boats is Timur Air is like loosely based on a Chinese dragon. Yes. And very associated with like water and stuff. And there are definitely like very English Welsh flag dragons also kicking around, but.
Speaker: Yeah, I do feel like we're remiss if we don't at least give a shout out to Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. I just never read those. So I never read the books or saw the show.
Speaker: spoilers for an old -ass show and slash book series. She awakens these dragon eggs through magic and her sacrifice of her son and husband and her special blood and then she has an incredibly close relationship specifically with the dragon Drogon which is the largest one. She hatches three
Speaker: Yeah, she literally calls some her children, you know, she rides the mother of dragon. I remember that. Exactly. It's kind of a loose tracking onto the horse girl trope, but I feel like it is still there.
Speaker: I wish that I had something intelligent to say about House of the Dragon, but I have not read the source book for that. And I have only through episode two of the series, so I don't know enough to actually talk about it. But the whole thing about Targaryens is that they're dragonriders. Yeah. Yeah. They have an intimate connection with dragons. This reminded me, I don't know if they fall into the horse girl. Well, the kid definitely does. Dragon Prince.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Um, actually we could also have the separate discussion of their previous media that involved dragons, at least two of them, but dragon prints, like I feel like some of that actually in that too, some of the tropes, although the dragons in that are like very different because they have human intelligence and they're super long lived and all that other stuff.
Speaker: But yeah, I think that's another bit of media that's come out recently that's had dragons in it and has some really good queer representation. Yeah, I love The Dragon Prince. I think it's I love that show. I haven't watched the most recent season yet. Yeah, get to it. I love it. I think it's a very worthy successor to Avatar The Last Airbender. Yeah. In a very different way, a very refreshing. Yeah, it's very different. But like,
Speaker: Some of it, you're like, I can see how the same people made the two, made both of them. I was going to say, it's the same texture, if that makes sense. Yeah. Boomerang jokes notwithstanding, and there's at least - Yeah, Boomerang notwithstanding, and some voice actors crossing over notwithstanding. But it's the same, they use the same storytelling, I think, techniques. And yeah, I think that could definitely fall into the whole dragon thing.
Speaker: So we've kind of been heading towards this. I think every time we start looking at some of these sort of fantastical horse girl dragon rider tropes and look at how they kind of appear in Lord of the Rings. Specifically, we're very kind of deliberately looking at
Speaker: Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn. We're not really looking so much at book Aragorn. I do think that we can talk about horse girls in the books, but I don't think that Aragorn in the books is a horse girl. Right? Just a bit of a peek into how this episode came to be.
Speaker: There is this fantastic article on Polygon called Aragorn is Absolutely a Horse Girl, subtitled only in the movies. Yeah.
Speaker: We talked about this quite a bit and we were like, yes, we are in perfect agreement because it's centered around Vigal Mortensen, who is another certified horse girl. Oh, yeah. And it is manifested in several movies, not just Lord of the Rings. Exactly. So do you want to talk a little bit about that article and kind of what some things got brought up?
Speaker: in the article. The things that I personally think are really interesting in that article is one I would just want to bring it up upfront. The Lord of the Rings movies would not exist without a legion of New Zealand horse girls because they were the army.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Yes, they were literally the cavalry of Rohan, you know, the horse girls and they're like random farm mounts that they usually use to pull carriages and they threw a saddle on them and charge the horses. And then at least one or two scenes you if you watch real close, you can see horses were like, I am extremely
Speaker: We're like, uh -uh, I'm not doing this. Why are we running? There's one in one scene, and I catch it periodically when I watch the movies, that just seems to be running off side. Like, it's going almost nearly sideways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just like, no, ow. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. But this is not where it's at.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a huge one. And famously, they got a lot of beards and wigs on these horse girls so that they would make male male writers of Rohan, which I think is just amazing. But you can see the skill of.
Speaker: of those riders in a lot of those shots. It's absolutely stunning and truly inspirational. I'm kind of like, I feel like there were a lot of horse girls of New Zealand kind of had dreams come true. Oh my God, are you like, yeah, I would give so much money to be involved in something like that. Like that would be so cool. I would also be terrified. It would be one of those where I'm like, oh dear God, I am about to die. Just hold onto the horse and pray that it goes in a straight line because it's written.
Speaker: sort of this like behind every fictional true king of men or several hundred horse girls making sure that the movie happens. Yeah, hell yeah. One of the other things that touches on is how you would think Eowyn would be a horse girl since she is literally a horse girl being Rohiric but like
Speaker: You don't even know the horse's name. We very specifically were discussing this about whether we considered a when a horse girl or not and none of us could remember her horse's name. Her horse just abandons her.
Speaker: And it's kind of the same for all of the Rohirrim. Like, none of them have, like... The only one who has a horse that you remember his name is Theoden, and shit don't go very well for him in his horse. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, his horse is, like, they name it, like, in his epitaph, right? Where they're like, he's directly responsible for his master's death. Master's Bane, sweet Snowmane. You're like...
Speaker: sweet snowmaid you're like oh my god what a way to remember your horse man come on I did look up the names of the horses in Lord of the Rings and in the Silmarillion because of course I did and I was really tickled at the names of all the rogue room horses because they're very much what like a five -year -old kid would name their pony like snowmane and firefoot and just like yeah
Speaker: It's either that or they're warrior cat names. It's like Windufula, who is the one that day when rides into battle, right? Or did I just make that up? Because no one remembers. That's that one's name. And I looked it up and it just means Winduful.
Speaker: That is kind of how most of all of the linguistics for Rohan work though. It is kind of like King man, man, man.
Speaker: There's probably a horse named Horse Horse. People want to pine pine the wolf, it just periodically gets stuck. Moon moons? Yeah. Who is the Rohanian dude who's named the equivalent of Dude Bro? And what is that? Yeah, what is that? I need to know. Someone out there knows. Please submit. Speaking of horse names like Aragorn Horse in the book,
Speaker: Rohiran. Aragorn gets a horse from Aemir as you know, we're guild for their friends who are dead who aren't actually dead. And he gives that horse back up when the Grey Company comes down from the North in the books. And it's his like, trusty steed. It's a Rohiran is what his name is. I don't remember what the horse's actual name was. Aragorn's actual horse is Rohiran and
Speaker: Amir gives Hasafel and Erod I believe. Hasafel and Erod to the three hunters. Which he still does in the movie. He gives them Hasafel and Erod. So here it comes down and Aragorn has this whole horse girl moment with this horse that he already has a relationship with going into the past the dead because
Speaker: In the book, they actually lead all the horses through the Paths of the Dead. And the only way they can do that is through the great love between the riders and the horses. Because it's only the great company whose horses will go through the Rohirric horse that Legolas and Gimli are riding, runs away.
Speaker: Yeah, they can't handle it. And it's a sign. Yeah, it's a sign of Aragorn's, like, great love and will, basically, that his horse will follow him underground, basically. And that's it. Like, that's it. That's it for the book.
Speaker: Which is so different from the movie. Right. Yeah. Where we have Aragorn and Embrego, who in the extended edition gets a lot longer introduction and we get to see Aragorn's work is raised by elves magic on this wild horse that no one else can tame. Can I just read one line from this article?
Speaker: reader. I am begging you to examine the way Viggo Mortensen plays Aragorn like he is one hard cut away from making out with this horse at any given time. It hits every trope. He's like, no one else can ride him. Aragorn's like, we need to set him free. You know, he's seen enough of war.
Speaker: And then later when poor Aragorn has been left for dead, you know, floating in a river. Who comes back for him? Who comes back? Brago. But Brago. To kiss him tenderly on his nose. To kiss him tenderly to life. And fantasizing or having a psychic connection with Arwen. Right.
Speaker: We talked earlier about this weirdly sexualized thing that people do about horse girls, and then we have this discussion where we're like, okay, but actually. Oh, God. Maybe Arwen is literally a horse girl. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That was too brain.
Speaker: So in the movie it's Herbin in the book, in the book it's Elrond who does call forth like the horses made of water. She sweeps away the steeds of the ringwraiths and of the Nazgul. So you know there's there's definitely some some horse girl vibes going through that family line. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: not to bring up traumatizing memories of rings of power, but there's a long way. I did not even watch rings of power, but I watched that one scene when y 'all sent it to me and I was just like, yeah, okay, this is definitely like, it's making me uncomfortable. Yeah, excuse the pun, but sometimes we horse girls need to be reigned in.
Speaker: just a little bit like maybe maybe we're not allowed to have more than like six seconds of slow motion horse riding full seconds like it's too much why why is there
Speaker: so much. I literally have this in our notes as I guess we've got a fucking talk about that Galadriel scene. I get it. Rings of power, Galadriel can be a horse girl, I'm so here for it. Just could we have trimmed at least like 13 seconds out of that scene? It would have been great. Could we have a few less seconds of Galadriel being a horse girl?
Speaker: Yeah. Like we got it. We got it. We got it again. And then we, like, we got it an uncomfortable number of times in that scene to the point where we don't, we don't need to get it anymore. Yeah. Well, I was going to say that like Aragorn comes by his horse coldness. It's, it's no long, the long line of a land deal. They're all, they're all horse girls too. So it comes by it by genetics, you know, I feel like we need horses and Numenor too. And a second after we get here, like,
Speaker: the Lord of the Rings stuff. But can we talk for a minute about how Viggo Mortensen, real life horse girl, actually like went beyond the like, I bonded with these horses on set to the point that he bought two of the horses and brought them home with him. Didn't he? And he also, I don't know if it was one of the two, but also bought one for one of the stunt riders. Jane Abbott. Yep. She was one of the stunt riders for Arwen and she was also a horse trainer on the production.
Speaker: Yeah. And he bought Asphalt. His name is Florian. Florian is of course his real name. Yeah, but it's the words he played as Florian.
Speaker: And he's an Andalusian and just beautiful, beautiful. It's always an Andalusian or if you need a white horse, it's an Andalusian. If you need a black horse, it's a Friesian. Everything else is popped liver. I think Prego is just a plain red horse, which I love. I love this for Vigo too. Right. Because my horse is a plain little red horse. And I'm just like, so I have this fellow feeling for people who like the plain little red horses.
Speaker: Aww, yeah. He bought Florian and gave him to Jane basically, which is freaking amazing. Truly amazing because the piece to consider in that too is like once these horses have been trained as stunt horses. How to train a stunt horse?
Speaker: Yeah, that thing is worth a lot of freaking money. Yeah. There was something that I was reading about as we're talking about war horses and fiction and everything like the sort of equivalent cost or value in our
Speaker: like monetary understanding would be like $150 ,000 to $250 ,000 of like horse and training and whatever. So it's a huge deal when characters have that bond and connection with the horse and we tend not to think of the economics of a fictional world of like who even gets to have a horse or like finds a horse wandering in the woods and bonds with them or what have you but but they're
Speaker: they're very expensive to train. And so that part of the thing for Jane Abbott was that she was never going to be able to afford to buy this horse that she fell in love with and Vika Mortensen was like, I got you. Yeah. And as I recall, he also bought at least one of the horses that played Hidalgo.
Speaker: really might have. I think so. I'm pretty damn sure he bought at least one of the horses that played Hidalgo. I think there were like four or five of them, which is funny because it's a paint horse. So you can actually tell the difference between the different horses. If you like, you watch it enough that you can check that you can pick out the paint spots. But yeah, I think he bought at least one of the horses from Hidalgo.
Speaker: did now. So he bought one of the horses, R .H. Teckentender, which is one of the paints used in the film. And then the screenwriter John Fusco bought Oscar, who was the main stunt horse. Cool. And then another one of the horses went to a ranch in Colorado. Also, the film grossed
Speaker: $18 million on opening weekend, peaking at number three. This is behind Passion of the Christ and Starsky and Hutch. And I do want to make sure that we all know that it was because of Horse Girls and Lord of the Rings girlies who wanted to see Viggo Mortensen with a horse again. I went, I went because of a horse movie.
Speaker: Yeah, I love that movie. It's so fun. And like, so much of the humor is very like it's very horse humor. And you're just like, no one would think to make these jokes except someone who actually lives with horses and is like, you know, given their horse grief. Um, yeah, it's a good one. Should we talk about some of the other horse girls in Lord of the Rings? Yes, let's do that.
Speaker: So the article that Alicia reference does also talk about shadow facts and how shadow facts is treatment in the book is like not not horse girl level like shadow facts is this like
Speaker: untameable sort of like magical horse who can understand the speech of men and everything so like all of the factors should be there but really like the whole description of Gandalf talking about his time with Shadowfax is not very horse girl aesthetic here it's just never before had any man mounted him but I took him and I tamed him that's just not the vibe it's not the vibe so Shadowfax is done dirty by the narrative
Speaker: to like, I would guess like technically Gandalf is a horse girl. He's just not really treated as such in the primary text. You get a little bit more on that in the movie. Yeah.
Speaker: But not a lot more of that. And I think it's just because Viggo was just chewing up the scenery with Breggo, right? Yeah, Viggo and Breggo over here making out and just like distracting everybody else. Viggo's over here literally kissing his horse and everyone else. Yeah, I definitely think like it's there. And I can imagine like
Speaker: fan works and everything really exploring it, but the primary text just sort of drops the ball on any sort of connection there, not even just through our Horse Girl lens, but through any sort of narrative connection and strengthening of it.
Speaker: I think we need to talk about Sam and Bill. I feel like this is one of the most tender and wonderful bits in the books that I think gets the short shrift in the movies, again, probably because they gave a lot of that energy to Vigo, or Vigo took that energy.
Speaker: So I think with Sam and Bill, one of the reasons why it was left out of the movie so much is because Bill was, for the most part, two people in a pony outfit because they had to take this pony to terrain they couldn't safely take a pony to. And I would just imagine it's probably hard to build some sort of like realistic seeming relationship with two dudes in a pony suit. They should have gotten to people for more horse. Exactly. Thinking that too.
Speaker: They need good puppeteers. They need highly realistic puppets that require three people or two. All I can think of is that wide shot in the Midwater Marshes where you can totally see it's two people in a horse suit. I've never even paid that close of attention and I didn't actually know it was two people in a horse suit. Oh well, you're welcome the next time you watch this movie.
Speaker: that it can never be unseen. I think the only time it's an actual horse is right outside at the gates of Moria, but I'm not 100 % sure on that. He actually literally says bye to the horse. Right, exactly. And then they just slap its bum and he trots away. Yeah. Aww. But like in the books, you get a lot more of Bill the Pony and other ponies that the hobbits interact with and debris, and it's just a much bigger part of the culture.
Speaker: yeah around three and everything it's just like one of those really special moments i think between bill and sam is you know sam sort of he went all the way to Rivendell basically with him and he was really distraught at leaving him behind in maria and really
Speaker: that moment when they have just gone through this horrible experience with the Watcher in the water, the doors have crumbled, they're trapped in Moria. He's like, oh God, poor old Bill. He's so worried that poor Bill has been taken by the Watcher and is going to get eaten by wolves. And it's just sort of like,
Speaker: Oh, bless your heart. Like, worrying about your precious pony friend when all of this, like, horrible shit has just happened to you and you have all of your other friends. And it is cruel that Tolkien does not tell you what happens to Bill for hundreds of pages. Oh, it's terrible.
Speaker: But then when that moment does happen, you're just so delighted. Miss Bill the Pony! Oh my god, it's Bill! He's okay! He made it back to Riverdale, man! He's been having his best pony life! Sam writes Bill the Pony to the Grey Havens when he accompanies Frodo to see him off. Oh no! My heart! My heart! Bill the Pony! And Sam, oh my gosh! Hey, Fawn!
Speaker: Yeah. Also, it was Bill the Pony who kicked Bill Fernie as he ran up into the night. Oh, yeah. Good job, Bill. Good job, Bill. Just all around. And what a name for a horse. It's such a good name. Bill. You know, I just realized I have never known a single pony named Bill. Like, I've known Flickas. I've known, like, you know, there's a bazillion Misty's. Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah, I've never known a pony named Bill.
Speaker: We gotta find some. Speaking of other ponies, Tom Bombadil. Tom Bombadil might be a horse. I think Tom Bombadil is. Because for one thing, all of the ponies in the Barrow Downs, they get spooked and run away. Who do they go and find? Will they go and find good old Fatty Lumpkin, who is Fatty Lumpkin?
Speaker: I love Patty Lumpkin. What a name. He's Tom's wonderful pony because they're like, you know, he knows what's up. We'll be safe with him. But also, like, Patty Lumpkin, like, Tom doesn't ride Patty Lumpkin a lot. He mostly hangs out with Patty Lumpkin. So, like, they're bros. He's a pasture pet. Yeah, they're bros. He's a pasture ornament. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. And when Paddy Lumpkin basically brings them to Tom, he gives them new names, which they, I think that the quote is they answer to, you know, for the rest of their lives, basically. Oh, cute. Oh my God. It's like he could see their inner characters and name them the right thing. Exactly. He knew their true names. Exactly. Because they're like sharp ears.
Speaker: wise note, pushtail, white box, and pumpkin. And what?
Speaker: Bumpkin. Amazing. I love it. So I love how there's Patty Lumpkin, who names Bumpkin. I love the name Wise Nose. That's such a good name. I actually love all of those names. Yeah. And they're all great, perfect pony names. Perfect names. So I don't know, ponies are the devil.
Speaker: Wow, hot takes. These ponies are hot. Is this where we get into horse girls versus pony, pony girls? It's this really funny, I don't know, known thing that the smaller the horse, the more you have to watch out for it because it's probably spotting your demise. It's just like dogs. It's just like a running joke that ponies are just people. They just are.
Speaker: I feel these ponies are all very well behaved for literal actual ponies. There's like some weird thing in the horse world. And this is international because Icelandic horses are, oh god, I hope no one from Iceland is listening to this. Icelandic horses are short. And so by like the rules of just height of horses, anything under 14 .1 I think ends.
Speaker: You do not call an Icelandic horse a pony. A pony? Wow. I didn't do that. And it got me in a little bit of trouble because I call all horses ponies. It's like the diminutive of calling all dogs puppies. Yeah, it's like, you call cats kitties. And I said, oh, what a cute pony. And someone's like, that's not a pony. I was like, OK. Wow. I'm not going to explain this. It's fine.
Speaker: is a pony. But if you call
Speaker: And the Arabian horse people get the same way. So there are like literally some breeds of horse that no matter what size they are, they are horses. It's like this weird thing that the horse world has against ponies. Wild. Yeah. And like you mentioned Misty, which is from the book Misty of Chincoteague and Parker Kennedy did a ton of horse girl books. Right.
Speaker: But you actually can go camp on Aztec Island and like camp next to the ponies. And there are cooligans. They're amazing assholes who will just stick their heads right into your tent or camper or whatever. You had best not leave out marshmallows or Doritos.
Speaker: There are so many funny videos of them just like straight up a gang of horses, going through people's picnics, just laying waste to everything, traveling with sandwiches, playing with the blankets, eating. I have watched them like
Speaker: take a cooler because they know what coolers are and they know what's in there and just unpack it and like unpack grocery bags like throwing one thing out at a time with their teeth until they get to the marshmallows at the bottom and then they take marshmallows roll them down on the floor.
Speaker: put a hoof on it and rip them so the marshmallows go flying and like you're not gonna tell a one -ton animal what to do or move or whatever and the park rangers will come up and be like well yeah we told you this is why we told you we'll keep kicking your car we have a big water spray bottle but they're not gonna leave the marshmallows just don't go near them right now
Speaker: And you can actually, you too can own an acetate pony. They still do the pony pinning and the swim every year and they adopt these horses. They do. The barrier island is split between two different states, Maryland and Virginia. And one uses, I believe, hormone darts to control the pony population and the other does, the Virginia side does the pony pinning. I thought it was, no, Maryland does the pony pinning.
Speaker: Maryland does the pony penning. It's a very big cultural thing. No, no, Virginia does the pony penning. Really? Because Chincoteague, the island is on the Virginia side over the Virginia border. Maryland is where you have the better state parks and national parks to be able to camp on the island, though. We usually go every year. I was not aware that more than one barrier island had a rogue
Speaker: herd of horses. So I grew up in Georgia and we had Cumberland Island which has like a Mustang herd, which are also all assholes.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, Mustangs out of the wet, like, we will not get me started on Mustangs because we'll be here for the next, like, hour. That's our next episode with you. Yeah, that's our next episode is just me carrying on at length about Mustangs and because of your ecology and the fact that they're literally tearing the west to shreds. But they, like, they're assholes too. I mean, I think, like, just across the board Mustangs are kind of jerks.
Speaker: I love them. Actually, one of the first horses that I rode like a lot was a Mustang and I loved her to death. So I love Mustangs and the horses that the horse that I learned to jump on was this incredible little Mustang. He was called Surprise Pony. He looked like a miniature Friesian. He was very much a pony and God I love that horse so much. Like God rest his soul. He taught so many people how to jump.
Speaker: They can be wonderful horses, but yeah, they also known for being a little bit persnickety. I also tend to love horses that are a little bit of an asshole. A little bit of an asshole, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. The thing I was going to say with the Assateague ponies or horses though, is that because of the conditions that on the island, if they live on the island, they tend not to grow to a full -size horse, so they're called ponies. The ones that are pended small across to the mainland do typically grow to like horse size.
Speaker: So, yeah, so it's a really interesting like they are horses, but on the island they qualify as a pony ponies. Wow. Very, very cool. Interesting. Yeah, that's pretty wild.
Speaker: Yeah, sorry for that diversion from... Oh no, to great! To great! That's the kind of diversion I learned. You also talked about, like, how ponies, like, we use it as, like, the diminutive, and this is gonna bring me back to Tolkien and etymology, because I forget where it is, but he notes that kin, in terms of, like, fatty lumpkin and pumpkin, is used as the diminutive suffix.
Speaker: So it's just like little fatty lump. Little fatty lump. He's a little bump. He's just a little bump. Oh my gosh. I love that. Oh no. The pony's named after a lipoma.
Speaker: Oh my goodness. Now I'm just like, yeah, now I'm just imagining fatty lumpkin. This is kind of looking like some of my like really older, like senior dogs that just have lots of lumps all over them. Bless you. Oh, precious babies. I don't know why this is to me.
Speaker: But I have a kind of mental link now between Tom Bombadil and Bayorn. And I think it might have to do with this episode and like knowing how they treat their ponies. But just like Tom Bombadil, Bayorn is serious about his ponies. Totally. Like he does not want to lend them out. He will only lend them out. They have to set them free. And he follows them the entire time.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Like, I guess you could call it stewardship, but I feel like that deep relationship between a carer and the caree, the creature that is being cared for, I feel like that's a super strong link between Tom Bombadil and Bayhorn.
Speaker: And Bayorn, as this huge, terrifying creature, is taking care of all of these really gentle prey animals. And a bear is a peak predator. I love that gentleness that is part of his relationship with his herd.
Speaker: two other ponies that I think we should mention that just they're mentioned in the narrative. Mary is given a pony by Theoden.
Speaker: And his name is Stipple, I think? Yeah. And he doesn't get to ride the pony all the way through to battle because the whole thing is that like Eowyn picks him up as Dernhelm or whatever and rides with him. So like the pony stays behind. And then I also, I always forget this and every time I look it back up, I laugh because I think it's hilarious. Frodo gets a pony and he names it Strider.
Speaker: After Aragorn. So what a troll. The pony named Strider to the ship to go to the Grey Havens. Well, like Sam is alongside him on Bill the Pony and this is hilarious.
Speaker: I love it. Oh, ponies. Also, I want to talk a little bit about Legolas and Gimli. Oh, yes. And I think we have a couple different different things to talk about here. But the one I wanted to touch on is that in so many books and movies or whatever, like the romantic trope is that, you know, the one character sweeps the other up onto usually his horse and they ride.
Speaker: together and there's the intimacy of two beings trying to ride the same animal.
Speaker: the touching and the proximity and the intimacy and all of that. And I just love that this is how Legolas and Ghibli just go through the entire book. I love it so much. I just love the romance novel trope there. Sure, it's practical. There was only one bad trope, but there was only one horse. There was only one horse. There was only one horse.
Speaker: We're in the kingdom of people who ride horses! Okay fun! This kind of fits with like the other thing which was that really funny tumblr post that went around about how about Legolas not using tak and like why so like do none of the elves use tak except who's the one who they said like hasn't fendo
Speaker: Yeah, so like, do none of the elves use tack except for Findle because he essentially has as a horse. Or do all of the elves use tack like normal people, but like this is over here being like horse girl.
Speaker: I have a man to move on with my horse. Look at this. I taught it to ride at Liberty, which is like a thing. Watch me Gimli. I can ride a horse without anything. Watch me Gimli. And then he's like got Gimli with him this whole time just so that he can show off even better. Love it.
Speaker: And poor Gimli's like, my ass is, I cannot walk for like days. And he's like, there's no saddle. Are you sure you can steer this thing without rings? Like, what's going on? Oh man, Leah, I'm pretty sure Gimli was like that in regards to Legos regardless. Oh, hey -o. Hey -o. I was like, exercising some of the same muscles there. Exercising some of the same, oh yeah. Training regimen, you know.
Speaker: But I was going to say like at the place where you go to do like the adult course weekend, which sounds much worse now in the context of what we were just saying. There is one of the stable managers, her course Molly is trained that she can be ridden bareback. So we do actually get like bareback riding lessons and you get to like spend like 10 minutes
Speaker: Right in bareback, yeah. It's going back to sexualizing horses.
Speaker: like riding on Molly or whatever like only the super dedicated horse girls will actually show up for that but really it's like you know six of us there time going like yes please this would be amazing I used to uh for a brief period of time before the I don't I think it was before the first ankle surgery Rocket can't jump now because he's older and he's got like he's got a foot thing that makes it so he can't jump but I used to jump him bareback
Speaker: Oh, yeah, which is why like I don't I literally have video of me doing this. And I'm just like, how did I do that? Because like, I mean, well, my back hurt all the time is how I did it. I've got like a bad back. So riding bareback is doubly bad for me.
Speaker: But Rocket can, we can go satellites and it's, yeah, it's really cool. It's a very different experience from riding in a saddle because you really feel the movement of the horse and you feel where the horse is like natural center of gravity is, which is actually further forward of where you're putting a saddle. So like really pull you forward.
Speaker: Kind of under their withers, which is why you don't ride bareback on a shark fin wither course. And you will have that experience that I was saying earlier. I was like, Oh, that would be super uncomfortable. Like on a thoroughbred. And yes, you, that's the experience you're basically having. But riding without tack, if you're a dude, like wireless. Ouch. See how that works. Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I'm sure there are dudes who ride bareback. I mean, actually, you watch Indian Relay, which is this incredibly amazing sport where they ride the horses bareback as fast as they can run, and they do it relay style. But the horses are the relay. So they go jumping off these horses at incredibly high speeds and then jump up on the next one. It's incredible. If you like, yes, it's an incredible sport. It's so cool. You should look it up. And yeah, it's just amazing.
Speaker: I think it's originally from the Lakota, but I don't remember. I just know that it's incredibly, incredibly cool to watch. And I mean, those dudes are like riding horses at a full out gallop. So clearly, clearly you can do it if you have the physical training. I'm sure their legs like, man, they must have the best seats known to man. Like to be able to sit a horse going that fast with no saddle, just mind blowing. Yeah. Yeah. Tip off the side. Yeah.
Speaker: Wow. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah. I do love that Tumblr post about it's like a loss. And and I love the idea that Glorfindel needs to use tack on Asphaloth because he's such an asshole. Yeah, I've been thinking about it. And I think there's a couple of mentions in the Silmarillion about elves having horses with tack, but it is definitely not universal one way or the other.
Speaker: And I do think that it's a show off stylistic choice. Legolas. Yeah. Also in defense of myself, I was sexualizing gigolas, not necessarily horses. That's a different, that's a different play. Yeah. That's a different episode, right?
Speaker: That's a Equus, not anything else. Yeah. Another show that a lot of people went to see because
Speaker: an actor from a movie was that in a very different experience. In a very different experience. Yeah. Yes. Yes. That's right. I like the idea of like that Asphaloth is specifically like an asshole horse that Glorfindel somehow still is still riding when everybody else is sort of like, what the hell? Why would you? Why would you have basically? I killed a Balrog. Fuck off. I can handle this. I can't.
Speaker: I can't handle this dude. He could kill the Balrog because he's used to dealing with Asflog. Exactly. He was like, Balrog, that's nothing. I have this devil horse. That's nothing. Yeah, the stupid horse. Well, because there's also something mentioned in the Summerillion.
Speaker: But it's like splitting the difference, right? Where it's like, well, the elves rode horses bitless, but they had decorative headpieces and maybe saddles and stuff, but they just didn't control horses using a bit. Yeah. So apparently he kept changing his story. And I actually think this is in that Tumblr post where they're like, it's unclear because dude just kept changing his story. Like, and there are times where
Speaker: There was a case where he like said one person wrote with tech and then later said without and like with all kinds of stuff Which yeah, I mean it's talking he had so much in his head. Like how could he keep it straight?
Speaker: It seems like it's the best idea in a war situation, which I mean, what is the Silmarillion than a story of many wars? Endless wars? You would want tack on a horse then, so you would know what side that horse belongs to, right?
Speaker: Well, I mean, unless you can just tell by the person on it is wearing a uniform. If the person is like thrown off of the horse and it's a horse from the opposite side, would you not then want to kill the horse? No, you'd take that horse. That's a horse trained for war. Fair enough. You could just steal that thing. Hell yeah. It might be like spoils. Spoils a war? I mean, stealing horses is like a thing that people have done on battlefields. Yeah. Kill the other side's horses.
Speaker: It's like stealing, you know, like a cannon or like a tank. Yeah. Something you can weaponize basically. Yeah. Fair enough. It's already trained like. Yeah. Side note, two of the letters were Tolkien talks about like how the elves ride horses and tack and whatever. I have looked it up and I haven't pulled the letters yet, but it's a letter 211 and letter 297. He talks about this topic.
Speaker: Kate, I know that you love the Silmarillion far more than Lord of the Rings. I do. I like it so much better. I didn't reread it on the recent read through that a bunch of people did, which I have for - Yeah, we just finished. Yeah, I have obviously forgotten most of what I've ever read, but yes, I love it more than no. Any horses or horse related things in Silmarillion that you want us to make reference to or touch base?
Speaker: If any of our listeners want to go do some research to themselves and join in.
Speaker: I don't think so. I didn't, the times that I've read through so early and I haven't been reading through for horses and I've gotten really hung up on like Juan and yeah. It's been more about the dog for me. The bestest boy? The bestest boy until he's not.
Speaker: And then you're like, how could you betray your person? A horse would never. I'm like, oh, his person's Luthien. That's how I feel it. Once he realizes his person is a dick, he's like, no, I'm good. He's like, oh, this guy's an asshole. I disavow you. I like her. Yeah. I think one of the things that is interesting about the Silmarillion and horses is that
Speaker: A lot of things are sort of oblique references that we have to pull information out of, not just in horses and the Silmarillion, but the Silmarillion is often very big overview of things instead of granular details with a lot of story, right?
Speaker: But you do get that some of the horses that we encounter in Lord of the Rings and throughout Valyrian and everything are descended from horses that come from Valinor or that, you know, one of the Valar are like riding and give to people because I think it's Orame has a horse like kind of right from the beginning and all of that.
Speaker: Yeah, they're a specific breed and like by the time you get down to Lord of the Rings era, isn't it like very few of them are left, but Shadowfax is one of them. And that's why he's the king of the horses is because he's a throwback to these like ancient bloodlines.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Oh look, Tolkien having some problematic ideas about Bloodline and nobility again. What? What? How interesting. But no, I think it is kind of cool that the history of the horses in Middle -earth and everything and that they were
Speaker: like native creatures in Middle Earth as opposed to being brought later and that's just something like being living in America that's something that's interesting to me because like we tend to think of like oh well you know horses all over part of American culture cowboy culture and everything but horses weren't indigenous
Speaker: to this area and they were brought by colonizers and changed the way that indigenous populations interacted with each other and with colonizers and all of that. And so it's very complicated to get into the history of horses in the United States and North America. So it's interesting remembering that that this is based on sort of a European model, right? Yeah, horses were always around. Of course, they're native to Middle Earth. No, no.
Speaker: Yeah, they were literally brought there by Ormee. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is really shocking to me that Tolkien really leans into that. Well. This particular thing went over the sea and it came back and now it's your lord. How many he does that over and over and over and over again. I cannot wait until we do an episode that's just about colonialism.
Speaker: Oh boy. I can't wait. Oh my God. I can't wait to do that noise. There's just going to be so much cringing as we research on that one. Yeah. There'll be a lot of cringing and we'll also have a lot of our friends and their work to look at because they're doing a lot of that research as well. So yeah, a lot of cringing together.
Speaker: Yes. Kate, do you have any last thoughts before we kind of wrap up here? This has been an awesome conversation. As I say, this has been super duper fun. I love any time I get to talk about horses. Yeah. I feel like it's a really rich topic. And yeah, I feel like we kind of don't see enough of people really exploring the nitty gritty
Speaker: sort of implications and stuff of of course girls yeah i'm super interested to read some of the like articles that alicia found like super interesting to me
Speaker: Because, you know, I mean, I talk about the ecological implications of horses. So why not then also take up as a special interest the social implications of horse girls? Why not? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There should be more people digging into that topic other than just that one girl.
Speaker: Yeah, there should be more people. There are so many horse girls. There's they better do some more, you know, more scholarship. Well, and there are so many other like obviously that I assume she's American, right? I'm assuming so. I did look her up, but it's been a minute. Yeah. But like it would be a super interesting topic outside of like Eurocentric
Speaker: I mean, there's like a whole other world out there full of people who have ridden horses way longer than the Europeans. A hundred percent. Yeah. And yeah, that would actually be super interesting, too, is like if the horse girl trope even exists in some of those places. Oh, yeah. Or if it's very much like a product of the culture in which the horse girl trope was born.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, that's a fascinating question. Yeah. Interesting. I want to know. I have one last question for Kate. How accurate do you think Tolkien is in his depiction of horses?
Speaker: I mean, I think mostly he does a lot of hand waving calls the magical horses so that he can get away with it. Sure. Yeah, so like, I mean, um, one of my favorite examples of like poking fun at how
Speaker: fiction of any kind treats horses is, I think, was it Diana Wynn Jones wrote like Survival Guide to Fantasyland or something? Yes. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. And there's something, as I recall, something about horses in there. It's so tongue in cheek. I think that's where it's from. I've since read it on Tumblr. I remember I read that book a long time ago, but yeah, I think generally most fiction gets horses wrong.
Speaker: because it's not very convenient to get them right. Somehow these animals have survived since before the Ice Age, but you look at them with a funny look on your face or change the weather too fast and they get a stomach ache and die. It can float a balloon near them.
Speaker: They're really weird animals because they are so resilient, like mustangs. I mean, are these incredibly resilient animals? You'll, you'll go out and you'll see a Mustang with a broken leg that has clearly been broken for a while and it's been hobbling around three legged. And of course, the reason it's still alive is because wolves don't roam anymore, but still like that, that is a resilient animal.
Speaker: Yeah, I did find that delightful Diana Wynn Jones quote that was being mentioned. And we should put it in the show notes because it's a whole like couple paragraphs long.
Speaker: But the part that I think I enjoy the most is she's talking about they never stumble or in order to make life difficult for tourists by fighting or kicking their riders or whatever. That's right. They never resist being mounted or blown out so they're going to slip or do any of the other things that make horses so chancy in this world.
Speaker: And then she goes into fantasy horse reproduction. Right. That no mare ever comes into season on the tour and the stallion ever shows an interest in a mare. And few horses are described as geldings. It therefore seems probable that they breed by pollination. This theory seems to account for everything since it displays that the creatures do behave more like vegetables than mammals. Yeah. So yeah, I think they may be more realistic slightly in the movie just in that
Speaker: They had to use actual horses. Yeah. They had to use actual horses. And so like, sometimes you'll catch in the background, like a horse pinning its ears at another horse. And that's like super realistic or like, you know, in the cavalry scenes where you've got one horse just peacing out, going up and its rider is clearly like, Oh Jesus, what have I got myself into?
Speaker: You know, to inhale Mary's, but yeah, I think I often just suspend my disbelief when I'm consuming horse media because it is super fun to take the piss out of media over horses sometimes, but then other times I'm just like, no, I want to believe they're magical. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, they are a really fascinating contradiction and like, yeah, they're gigantic prey animals. It's sort of like their instincts are to run away and to get away from whatever is the threat.
Speaker: It's kind of like when I talk about like rabbits to people as like companion animals and like it's a it's a different experience than like with dogs and cats because dogs and cats are predators, rabbits are prey and so it's a very it's a different relationship between the human predator and
Speaker: a prey animal that can be really rich and rewarding but also you have to do a lot of listening to each other and there's a lot more give and take that you kind of need to do to develop that relationship of trust because you're interacting with very different instincts and they're very very different ways of being you know.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's really interesting horses. The human relationship with horses kind of fascinates me because on the one hand, yeah, they're prey animals. And so you have to learn to think more like prey and see the world more like prey. On the other hand, they're the only other animal that we
Speaker: like interact with on the level of a pet or a partner or something like that as something other than just food that is another essentially pack animal. Yeah. Or like a tool, I guess, in a way that's sort of like... Yeah, so they're like, they are predispositioned to form bonds with other animals kind of the way dogs are, like dogs living group, you know, that instinct of dogs is generally
Speaker: to live in groups the instinct of horses is to live in groups to the extent that like if you have a horse without another horse they can get really crazy. Even if they have like a donkey or a goat or something like they still can get pretty unhinged if they don't have another horse. And so I think it's really interesting to like compare and contrast the relationship that we have with dogs to the relationship that we have with horses.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I'm really kind of fascinated by like the domestic animals sort of relationships with humans and kind of all the kind of complications sort of inherent in it. And but also like kind of like on the same level as dogs where they're tools, they're like they're creatures that are used for specific purposes and also as companion animals. Yeah.
Speaker: which is they're very different relationships and that level still exists, you know, when companion animals kind of didn't, weren't really like a super widespread thing. Like, I mean, I think we've been calling dogs, doggies and kitties since, you know, we first came out of the caves, but I mean, it's sort of like, we've had a very, very long relationship with horses and with dogs that I think look a lot like each other.
Speaker: Yeah, there's actually been some really cool research. So if you've ever heard that the last wild horses are the ones on the Asian steppe, they're called in Mongolian, they're called taki. And it's easier to say than the name that the Russians gave them when they colonized. And for the longest time, science said that those were the last remaining wild horses. Mustangs don't count, they're feral. Well, they started looking at the genome
Speaker: of Taki. And they started noticing like signs of domestication in their genome. And eventually came to the conclusion that actually, those are technically long time feral, like long feral. Wow. That's different. That's a different species. It's Equiferus. I can't remember their size, but like they're a different species. Hmm. But they were once belonged to people.
Speaker: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool research in the past, like five years or so about the Taki and how like that they were domesticated and yeah, that kind of thing. That's, that's all that's incredible. Yeah. That's wild. And they recently, they actually recently found, I think also maybe somewhere in Asia, the oldest saddle frame saddle that they've ever found. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Speaker: Do you know how old it was? Let me look it up real quick. It was
Speaker: As you're looking that up, like I was realizing like I think I've just colloquially always used feral and like thought it meant wild. And I'm having this like cool nerding out moment of realize like, oh, no, it actually has a specific meaning of like wild after escaping from captivity or domestication or whatever. Oh, oh, I didn't realize this. I'm learning a thing. This is cool. Yeah. Yeah. It was dated.
Speaker: be to between 727 and 396 BC. Wow. Wow. Which is pretty cool. And I think they've found that's a soft saddle. And then they've also found evidence of being written on like some recent horse burials they've found.
Speaker: They're like, oh, people were actually writing these things, not just using them as pack animals. So it's assumed that the first horses that were domesticated were used as pack animals. Oh, yeah. OK, that makes sense. I joke around that there's almost no doubt in my mind that the first person to ride a horse was a teenage boy who looked at the horse like, hey,
Speaker: instead of putting a bag on that thing I'm gonna put me on that thing hey watch guys look you dare me and his friends are like yeah I dare you maybe it was a you know who knows I want to focus on it stupid teenage boys could have been a stupid teenage girl I was gonna say maybe it was the first horse girl and went and hopped on it and yeah and
Speaker: They had a magical moment. I mean, you have to say, like in favor of this theory, all of the people that I know who routinely like ride horses bareback or have trained their horses to be so that they can stand on them while riding. Of course, girls, not cowboys. So like, you know, just saying.
Speaker: Yeah, force go started at all. I'll say it right now. This may just be my personal bias, but like the bias of my experience, the limitation of my experience. Yeah.
Speaker: Horse girls, domesticated horses. I've definitely tried to stand on Rocket before. Not while he's moving because I don't have a death wish, but I've definitely kicked my shoes off and stood up on his saddle. I don't want to dig my feet and do his back because we both have bad backs. But yeah, I've definitely seen horse girls do their fair share of extremely stupid things.
Speaker: Molly, the horse who will let people ride her bareback is also trained that people can stand on her to ride. This is not something that they let us do when we are just visiting the ranch, but the person who is her person can do this. Wow. I mean, I've ridden Rocket backwards. He's always like, what the hell are you doing?
Speaker: This is the view you're choosing? Okay. Alright. Whatever. If nobody else has any last thoughts, maybe we should wrap up. Kate, this has been such a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. Anytime you want to talk about horses, just let me know.
Speaker: Oh, hell yeah. Would you like to tell our listeners where they can find you on the internet if you would like to be found? I actually don't know that I can still be found on the internet. Okay, totally valid. I haven't been on Twitter in a long time. I mean, if you like, if you search my name, you'll find my
Speaker: LinkedIn and probably my research gate profile. I was going to say, only if you want to share. No, it'll be all my science stuff. But yeah, you can search my name online if you want. Create scientific articles that I've written. That sounds like a good time. You can Google me. That's fine. Whatever. Google me. I had a Twitter, but I haven't updated in a long time. Completely valid. I have a Tumblr. It's a singer of songs.
Speaker: We will be sure to drop a link in the show notes for our listeners, if they are curious, but that's the best way to do it. Yeah.
Speaker: Look for Kate on her Tumblr. I think it's called A Singer of Songs. Yeah, it's a singer of songs and there's dashes between each word. Perfect. Perfect. Yes. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for coming on. This was a great conversation. Yeah. Yeah. So, Alicia, would you like to do our echo? Sure. Just to keep making you.
Speaker: You can find us on Apple, Google, Spotify, and basically anywhere you consume podcasts, or you can stream our episodes directly from Zencaster. That is zencaster .com slash queer lodgings, the Tolkien podcast with hyphens in between all of those words.
Speaker: Please leave us a rating and like, share, and subscribe. It does help us more than you probably know. You can also head to queerlogings .com and see our individual episode resources, our lists of recommended books, and our merch shop, which is brand new. You can find us. And transcripts. Oh yeah, the transcripts. How do I forget about the transcripts?
Speaker: And transcripts. Yeah, the transcripts are for our earlier episodes. We are working on catching them up. It takes a long time to transcribe Tolkien's words. If you listened to our one year anniversary episode, you would know why.
Speaker: You can also find us on social media. We're on Facebook. We are on Twitter at queer underscore lodgings. We are also on blue sky. If you have anything you would like to send to us, you can also send it via email to queer lodgings podcast at email dot com. We always enjoy seeing your emails.
Speaker: Also, we recommend checking out the Mythopoeic Society's online Midwinter Seminar in 2024. It's going to be February 17th and 18th via Zoom and Discord. You can find that on the Mythopoeic Society's webpage, mythstock .org slash OMS.
Speaker: And your podcast co -hosts here also happen to be the co -chairs of this particular academic event. So it's a virtual conference centered around queerness and fantasy, sci -fi, speculative fiction, other mythical works. And our guest of honor is going to be Taylor Driggers, who, if you recall, was our first guest ever on the podcast. So there's a lot of really exciting things coming up for that. And we would love to see you there.
Speaker: Yes, please. Registration is $20 a person. It's an online event and it would be amazing to have you check it out. Some of the papers we've got in for that event are so good and I'm so excited.
Speaker: I'm super excited. It's going to be freaking amazing, you guys. So please don't miss it. Please come and hang out with us because we've got lots and lots of really cool people, lots of our friends, and we're really excited to bring you guys some of this stuff. It's going to be really cool.
Speaker: I should have put in a horse girl paper. This is definitely a moment of be the change you want to be in the world and specifically holding space for the work that everyone is already doing and making sure that we have
Speaker: as many spaces as possible to raise our voices and make sure that we are heard. So we're really excited for all the folks who are presenting papers as part of this. And even if you didn't get a chance to submit a paper idea, we would love to have you come and be part of the audience to share this. Yes! Yay! Thanks everybody, bye!
Speaker: Something's the best left between a girl and a home. Also, we recommend checking out the Mythopoeic Society's online Midwinter
Speaker: online midwinter. midwinter? the midwinter! the midwinter seminar!
