Man the first ten chapters of Fellowship Of The Rings is so fucking boring. I haven’t read in in years, but the audiobook is like guh. Everyone complains about the movies not following the texts, but fuck. It just goes on and on at that starting part. Tom Bombadil is like the first time it stops being so pastoral long enough to get interesting, and he makes no sense.
Just as an addition to the above now that I’m back here. Tom Bombadil is, like, one of the most interesting things in any of the LOTR books. He was never explained, so no one REALLY knows what he is exactly. He has crazy levels of power in his little area. The ring has no effect on him at all. If you’ve only ever seen the movies you’ve missed out on this truly strange little section of the story. He always sings and virtually all of his dialogue is said in a way that could be sung if you were of a mind to. Of all the singing parts his sections sound the best. The actual origin of the character on some level is that he was a toy that one of Tolkien’s kids had and he told them stories about him. It’s my theory that when he tells Frodo he was the first that he literally means that he was the start of the stories that became LOTR. In the construction of Tolkien’s universe Tolkien is the subcreator. Bombadil is the starting point of that subcreation. He was first in that Tolkien created him first as a character to tell stories to his kids, which is what LOTR also is on some level.
Tom’s power is also displayed as singing which is how the universe itself started out with. The beings that constructed it sang it in to existence. At other points in other stories people do battle via song and song has magical properties in the universe. I can’t remember if they talk about it but I think Frodo asks what would Tom have done if Frodo gave him the ring and Gandalf tells him he’d probably forget about it and lose it because power doesn’t concern him at all, which would lead eventually to it falling into someone else’s hands.
If I could bring Tolkien back from the dead I would really want to make him tell me what exactly Bombadil is. Even thought it would kind of spoil the whole thing.
Anyway, I haven’t been doing anything worth talking about. I’ve been playing Splatoon 2 whenever they fucking let me play Rainmaker. Which means usually when I don’t fucking want to. Nin-godamn-tendo.
