1734 Horse Wagon.

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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.

70 Comments

It’s not everyday that you see someone getting flipped off with the ring finger instead of the middle finger.

Got a little too keen to point out a fuck up, huh? Waaah waaah waaah waaaaaaaaaah.

Are you thumbing your nose at one of the gods again?

He started it, riding in on that goat and all…

Especially as he clearly thought it was your goat :-)

Please give a little kindness to him or her.
Maybe they have had a bad day, and they’re Thor about something. :)

Man you shit on everyone…. you’re an incredibly bitter man.

On a more intellectual level… Yes the Fellowship is meant to be pastoral. It is the set up of a novel. Or, I should say, the novel. Lord of the Rings is meant to be read and was originally meant to be published, as a single novel. Therefore, its narrative structure is perfectly in line with its intent. The fact that people misinterpret that is their own bloody fault.

I am indeed. It’s been hammered in to me from years and years of being treated like shit. That said, I love LOTR, just because I think the starting chapters are slow doesn’t mean I hate them. But if I was actually reading them instead of listening to them I could just read faster. The audiobook goes at the speed it reads and he SINGS the poems and songs… It’s really weird to my ear. I’m well aware that the whole point of the beginning is to show what Frodo is giving up. Along with a lot of other reasons it exists. Honestly, you’re flipping out over some random thoughts I put down to fill space. If I seem bitter in the blog some of that is on you for projecting your own bitterness into the text that wasn’t there when I wrote it.

Man, you’re shitting on someone’s opinion of a book, what does that say about bitterness?

I have to say, even though The Lord of the Rings is my favourite work of literature (and Tolkien is my favourite author), and I’ve lost count of how many times I have read it, these first few chapters are always sort of tedious to me. I can appreciate why they are there, and why they are just how they are. I recognize their narrative function and what they bring to the work’s overall structure. That doesn’t mean they read any less tedious to me.

That’s because aesthetical fruition of a work is different than academical appreciation of it, as I’m sure you know already. And I may be wrong, but I believe Crave was commenting about his own fruition up there – and the fact that he doesn’t enjoy the chapters he mentioned neither express bitterness about the novel nor in any way demean the work itself. Unless, of course, you’re starting from the principle that everyone must have the same opinions about stuff as you do, or it’s a personal attack to what you hold dear. Meh…

I freely admit that, when the first movie came out, I fell asleep for part of it. Seriously. Actually fell asleep in the theater for like three minutes. Woke up somewhere around Galadriel’s screaming shitfit. #neveragain.

Why does she dislike him ?

I’m not quite sure, but- I think that she’s [sometimes?] uncomfortable + unhappy around new people and, [the bearded dude, who’s name I forget now]…showed up at her furries club as just-as-guest…and maybe she would’ve liked it if he had done a more soldidarity-to-the-club-thing, and- joined the club, instead.

Ick. I think I’ve been eating my Emmanuel Kant-style of Wheaties, today! :p

If I had to guess, Evrina may have been badly damaged by someone/something and is reflexively abrasive to protect herself and/or her social group … she reminds me of a little dog yapping its head off when a stranger approaches …

if I can stab a guess, shes very territorial. not only that, she probably has a very good heart towards her friends, so anything invading her space she drives off. People who hang around her have to have some reason to stick around, and from how she reveres nina you can tell she has very big attachment issues, and given the backstory, shes experienced some serious loss, so if friends can’t stick through this much she doesn’t want to commit to them. Ergo, she pushes them away and sees who sticks around, those are the people worthy of being around her and her putting effort into. She is probably especially hostile towards john because shes aware he isn’t there for her, rather only around for others and probably even can feel his ulterior motives and so especially doesn’t want to risk her friends around someone like him.

What does, “horse wagon”, mean?
Is it an insult like- [you have a big butt], or you’re an out-of-touch-country-guy, or something?

I’ve heard someone called a slowcoach – maybe something like that?

I think “slowcoach” is another term for “laggard”; i.e. someone who should hurry the hell up. As for “horse wagon,” no apparent meaning comes to mind. Unless it’s short for “horse-shit wagon” or some such. I am very much a city boy, though.

I’m told that that line is similar to something Rick Sanchez says.
As for the “horse wagon” part, perhaps she’s a fan of Nick Zerhacker from the webcomic ‘Skin-Horse’?

perhaps it’s also just more of a “I don’t even care enough to make my insult coherent” kind of statement?

A common epithet at work is “jack-wagon”. Maybe something like that?

Thanks, T-Ray. :D

I think you might have a close match, to “horse wagon”.

the onlineslangdictionary [dot com] site, that defines slang words, has some things to say about the word, jackwagon :
“…See more words with the same meaning: uncool person, jerk, *sshole (general insults – list of).
Last edited on May 02 2013. Submitted by Walter Rader (Editor) from Sacramento, CA, USA on Jul 03 2010.

A useless piece of equipment, usually military, used to refer to a mule-drawn freight wagon which had been pieced together from discarded or substandard parts, and subject to frequent breakdowns. Jackwagons typically were good for only one or two uses, then abandoned or discarded along roadsides and in ditches, and were often re-cannibalized to create new jackwagons.
Last edited on May 16 2011. Submitted by The Sterd on Oct 21 2010.”
I only took part of that page’s definitions, about, “jackwagon”. -TRA

Oh, bugger her anyways, ain’t her place.

The curse of people: they think they know what’s best for themselves and others. However, omniscience is a trait of the divine, or a figment of fiction (depending upon one’s beliefs). Aside from the handful of wisened individuals, the only person who truly knows you is yourself. You have only to shut up and listen to your inner plight, if any lessons are to be learned.

Some how I feel your comment was meant for someone else. Also, to clarify my statement, literally the building they are standing in doesn’t belong to her family, she does not have the true authority to kick/shoo/enforce people to leave the premise.

But she is the titular head of the furry club, so maybe she feels she can regulate attendance by visitors/guests/trolls?

Omniscience is a trait of the divine regardless of ones personal beliefs, even regardless of whether or not any divinities actually exist. Essentially, if there is one God (in the Judeo-Christian sense), then He/She/It/Whatever is omniscient; if there are many gods, while it depends on the pantheon, there is generally going to be at least one god or another who is more or less omniscient, or if nothing else all knowledge is held collectively amongst the gods’ various fields of influence; and if there are no gods at all, then while omniscience is truly fictional, it is still a trait nigh universally applied to divine characters, and all but naught else.

Tolkien himself didn’t know what Bombadil was. He just is. He ventured so far to say that Bombadil was a personification of the disappearing British countryside, something that Tolkien cared a lot about. But it wasn’t something he wanted to explore. He’s there as a thematic influence, rather than a narrative one.

Ah, I bet he had some kind of deeper idea. He’s just being coy.

People have suggested that Bombadil was Eru Ilúvatar aka God. It’s mentioned in Eru’s Wikipedia article that Tolkien denied this, but I think Tolkien was wrong in this case.

LOTR talks about how Bombadil would fall if the whole world fell. Last, but it still doesn’t sound like Tolkien’s conception of the creator.

I always personally liked to think of Tom Bombadil as a retired Tulkas who just wants to be left alone with his wife and garden.

Well, he’s also said that he doesn’t know what happened to the Entwives, but believes that they went East during the First War of the Ring, and were killed during one of the battles. Kind of grim, when you think about it.

agreed, it’s boring as hell, because tolkien is describing the Shire in great details
I had the same problem reading 10,000 leagues under the sea, with Jules Verne describing the sea fauna and flora, I was 10 and was like “who the hell cares about all that?”

guess it’s for “immersion” ^^

I’ve probably read The Hobbit and LOTR at least a half dozen times, and I’m not someone who usually rereads stuff. I’ve even reread the Silmarillion once or twice. And I totally agree that the beginning of Fellowship is a bit of a slog. Its scene setting and exposition is necessary, but it really didn’t need to go on for so long. Have you read the Christopher Tolkien volumes where they go into the early drafts of what was to become LOTR, though? Some of them are way worse in terms of meandering, over descriptive prose.

I’ve only read about that stuff but not the stuff itself. I’m toying with the idea of reading the children of… Huron? What am I thinking of? Something like that. I think it’s mostly Chris Tolkien who put that together.

Egad, I can’t imagine sitting still for the songs & poetry. I know they are integral to the world-building, but I just can’t, I skip ahead when I get to those parts in the book. (I do that with musicals too, and can’t stand opera.)

Heh. My Uncle walked out of the first LoTR move 20 minutes in because of the lack of “action” and refused to see anything else.

I keep saying “sooo much the action you missed”

Interesting Bombadil theory. :)

It’s weird how different the first part of LotR is to all the rest of it. Even the Hobbit is more like the later parts. I’m thinking maybe Tolkein didn’t figure out pacing until that part was written.

Looking back on it, [years ?] later, maybe “horse wagon” is a cover-up word, for a more obscene term.

Maybe you are a “horse wagon”, is supposed to mean, you are a “horse d*ck”, or something.
Cheers.

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