New Testingstan

Jose Arcadio Bakendia wrote:
no you ain't, it's good chatting and being chill and shit

anyways, LOTR is catholic not because of direct correlations so much as the worldview. the characters that resist the ring successfully (sam, faramir) are also the most sexual male characters (and faramir hooks up with the most sexual female character). within catholic (and orthodox) views, sexuality and regular sexhaving is essential to spiritual well-being, as long as you do it within marriage, which is why their (catholic leadership) attitude towards homosexuality is that it's only ok if you're celibate- can't get married, can't be having the good sex. so these characters are sexual and thus complete and grounded and capable of throwing off the ring, while poor asexual frodo falls.

there's also the perception of sin as an action, which is distinct from protestant and orthodox views of sin. frodo sets up his failure not by the ring being irresistible, but by using it actively to force smeagol to work with him- he chooses the easy path of sinfulness and thus is unable to let the ring go. there are probably other examples i'm not thinking of.

Wait, Sam wasn't homosexual?

ehhh

i suppose faramir and sam are in some ways sexual beings

in that sam has rosie and faramir has eowyn

but i think faramir's sexuality is considerably more muted than sam's

and i really don't think you can characterize them as 'more sexual' than aragorn or the elves or what-have-you honestly

i think it's fair to say that both reflect the author the most, in that samwise is tolkein's rustic english ideal of life and faramir resembles tolkein specifically the most

but both being emblematic of tolkein's vision of iconic englishness is distinct from them being emblematic of a more blanketing catholic philosophy

Akhlut wrote:

Jose Arcadio Bakendia wrote:
no you ain't, it's good chatting and being chill and shit

anyways, LOTR is catholic not because of direct correlations so much as the worldview. the characters that resist the ring successfully (sam, faramir) are also the most sexual male characters (and faramir hooks up with the most sexual female character). within catholic (and orthodox) views, sexuality and regular sexhaving is essential to spiritual well-being, as long as you do it within marriage, which is why their (catholic leadership) attitude towards homosexuality is that it's only ok if you're celibate- can't get married, can't be having the good sex. so these characters are sexual and thus complete and grounded and capable of throwing off the ring, while poor asexual frodo falls.

there's also the perception of sin as an action, which is distinct from protestant and orthodox views of sin. frodo sets up his failure not by the ring being irresistible, but by using it actively to force smeagol to work with him- he chooses the easy path of sinfulness and thus is unable to let the ring go. there are probably other examples i'm not thinking of.

Wait, Sam wasn't homosexual?

He was bi. There was the obvioous thing with Frodo, but he also got some action with that plump farmer's daughter.

NUA: Saying that Aragorn (or any Tolkein character, really) is also a sexual character is kind of like saying Pee Wee Herman is in some ways an athletic black man.

Nietzslime wrote:ehhh

i suppose faramir and sam are in some ways sexual beings

in that sam has rosie and faramir has eowyn

but i think faramir's sexuality is considerably more muted than sam's

and i really don't think you can characterize them as 'more sexual' than aragorn or the elves or what-have-you honestly

i think it's fair to say that both reflect the author the most, in that samwise is tolkein's rustic english ideal of life and faramir resembles tolkein specifically the most

but both being emblematic of tolkein's vision of iconic englishness is distinct from them being emblematic of a more blanketing catholic philosophy

the elves aren't sexual at all, though- unless we wish to interpret legolas and gimli as in a relationship, there's hardly any sign of sexuality (arwen is hardly onscreen and barely interacts with other characters, and the rest of the elves are post-menopausal [metaphorically speaking] or legolas) and aragorn is sexual but more mutedly because arwen was hastily added into the story during the writing of return of the king and so she barely has a presence. but aragorn resists the ring as well, though not to the extent of actively rejecting it, and the characters which do fall to the ring (frodo, smeagol, boromir, saruman) are unsexed, and indeed we can interpret the ring as ethereal power to contrast with the natural earth, and the ethereal characters are more vulnerable to it- thus explaining why hobbits, who are the earthiest and lustiest of all middle-earth civilizations (regularly having multiple children makes them lusty within the tolkienian sexuality) are the most resistant to the ring. so perhaps it's more about earth and spirit rather than sex, which fits better with tom bombadil, who is so heavily tied to the earth that he cannot venture outside of borders he has chosen for himself

but i agree with the interpretation you put forward, too

I post a picture of Kanye and Phant isn't in here creaming his jeans yet?

We may need to call the Mounties to do a welfare check.

Jose Arcadio Bakendia wrote:
the elves aren't sexual at all, though- unless we wish to interpret legolas and gimli as in a relationship, there's hardly any sign of sexuality (arwen is hardly onscreen and barely interacts with other characters, and the rest of the elves are post-menopausal [metaphorically speaking] or legolas) and aragorn is sexual but more mutedly because arwen was hastily added into the story during the writing of return of the king and so she barely has a presence. but aragorn resists the ring as well, though not to the extent of actively rejecting it, and the characters which do fall to the ring (frodo, smeagol, boromir, saruman) are unsexed, and indeed we can interpret the ring as ethereal power to contrast with the natural earth, and the ethereal characters are more vulnerable to it- thus explaining why hobbits, who are the earthiest and lustiest of all middle-earth civilizations (regularly having multiple children makes them lusty within the tolkienian sexuality) are the most resistant to the ring. so perhaps it's more about earth and spirit rather than sex, which fits better with tom bombadil, who is so heavily tied to the earth that he cannot venture outside of borders he has chosen for himself

but i agree with the interpretation you put forward, too

yeah, that's fair, i don't really disagree

and in fact i think that contrast of rustic earthiness versus etherealness is a good one

though it makes the fact that both frodo and sam eventually sailed off to the grey havens kind of interesting in a way that i don't really care enough to analyze right now

Darth Fanboy wrote:I post a picture of Kanye and Phant isn't in here creaming his jeans yet?

We may need to call the Mounties to do a welfare check.

i do not have a pavlovian response to images of kanye west

also this thread bored me ages ago

Sorry, i'm not really getting the whole Sam-Frodo riff. There's a phrase "closer than brothers" that is often applied to soldiers' relationships, and it's not a recent phenomenon. Maybe I'm really off, but I've read the books and seen the movies, and what I get from Sam is a total beta male do anything to protect the alpha dynamic in their relationship. Out of everyone Smiegol's the horn dog, but his libido's focused on a ring.

EDIT the Harry Potter series kinda reinforces that impression. Harry and Ron are "best mates," but "mate" carries a different meaning in England than it does here. In the US "mate" is usually a verb; in England it's a noun or pronoun. The differences in connotation are huge.

Count Chocula wrote:Sorry, i'm not really getting the whole Sam-Frodo riff. There's a phrase "closer than brothers" that is often applied to soldiers' relationships, and it's not a recent phenomenon. Maybe I'm really off, but I've read the books and seen the movies, and what I get from Sam is a total beta male do anything to protect the alpha dynamic in their relationship. Out of everyone Smiegol's the horn dog, but his libido's focused on a ring.

i bet you don't get the spock/kirk thing either

asexual (actually repressed walking testosterone bag) pointy eared alien with Pon-Farr instinct to mate with woo-man stuck in a human metal spess ship with non-repressed walking testosterone bag dynamic, gotcha.

good thing it's only once every seven years, and in canon is totally hetero slashfic /= canon. Jimmy boy might have trouble resisting the advances of a trusted first officer who's uncontrollably horny, several times stronger, and emotionally bonded to him.

damn dodged a bullet there TJ Hooker count your blessings

Phantasee wrote: i do not have a pavlovian response to images of kanye west

also this thread bored me ages ago

Pavlovian no.

Travoltan? Maybe.

Phantasee wrote:also this thread bored me ages ago

so why did you post in it

I was just checking if anything good happened

And i saw my name

Had to acknowledge

Wtf baks?

In the 19 bajillion pages Tolkien wrote about lord of the rings, is any of that in there? Seriously, I never read the journals stuff.

Questor wrote:Wtf baks?

In the 19 bajillion pages Tolkien wrote about lord of the rings, is any of that in there? Seriously, I never read the journals stuff.

well 90 per cent is interperative but the factual material comes from the history of m-e parts 6-9, specifically pts. 7 & 8

postin dis from a kindle so no details now but maybe later

You know what they say about interpretive. It tells you more about the interpreter than the author or the story.

I had always seen it as being about WWII and especially WWI.

Found the reference (From wiki, but I was looking for the quote.): "Since the publication of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, a wealth of secondary literature has been published discussing the literary themes and archetypes present in the story. Tolkien also wrote about the themes of his book in letters to friends, family and fans, and also in the book itself. In his Foreword to the Second Edition, Tolkien said that he "disliked allegory in all its forms" (using the word applicability instead), and told those claiming the story was a metaphor for World War II to remember that he had lost "all but one" of his close friends in World War I."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themes_of_ ... _the_Rings

Questor wrote:You know what they say about interpretive. It tells you more about the interpreter than the author or the story.

I had always seen it as being about WWII and especially WWI.

Found the reference (From wiki, but I was looking for the quote.): "Since the publication of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, a wealth of secondary literature has been published discussing the literary themes and archetypes present in the story. Tolkien also wrote about the themes of his book in letters to friends, family and fans, and also in the book itself. In his Foreword to the Second Edition, Tolkien said that he "disliked allegory in all its forms" (using the word applicability instead), and told those claiming the story was a metaphor for World War II to remember that he had lost "all but one" of his close friends in World War I."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themes_of_ ... _the_Rings

Allegory is a one-to-one correspondence where the entirety of the story has a specific, symbolic meaning. Tolkien can say that LOTR is not allegorical, and this is within his power as author, but (as Tolkien himself noted with "applicability") interpretations of the story can be multitudinous without necessarily conflicting with one another. So for example LOTR is, to many readers, very much about war, but also about spirituality, (and for a large subset of readers, hot mansex) and contains various things that we can interpret and read into, some of them odder than others. All are valid for a certain level of validity, and thankfully Tolkien has left everything besides "allegory" open. Anyways, I was considering putting together a thread on Tolkien over at SomethingAwful, thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about this!

So, the stuff I was talking about earlier- initially, Aragorn and Eowyn were to shack up, but this was rejected almost as conceived for the same reasons given in TT. Then Aragorn (going on memory here, as I haven't been able to find vols. 8 or 9 for love of money) ends up going all the way to his coronation single. At this point, Tolkien realized that this was an unsatisfying ending, and quickly conceived of Arwen Elrond's daughter, giving her appearances within the story as reasonable during his final rewriting to reconcile FOTR and TT with ROTK.

Can we talk about canon for a minute? How many of only consider what is in the text to be canon?

What like just the novels?

I'll go with that because it's the only stuff I've read from it.

Aaron wrote:What like just the novels?

I'll go with that because it's the only stuff I've read from it.

Yeah, just what's in the novels. What an author has to say outside of the work that isn't contained on page is not canon.

i'll go with that unless the author retconned in later works.

i have The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Hobbit, and LOTR on my bookshelves. I'm still not seeing the manlove, maybe there's something in A Guide to Middle-Earth that I'm missing.

unless we're talking about bibles i have no dealings with the word canon

Try Pachelbel dude totally baroque canon

Count Chocula wrote:i'll go with that unless the author retconned in later works.

My problem with taking an author's words as canon is that when you analyze a work and notice faults in logic, you can be countered by "The author addressed that in x interview. Therefore it is not a problem."