one of my favorite lotr facts is that gondorians speak sindarin as a first language and yet when faramir was talking to frodo and sam about cirith ungol he was like “we don’t know what’s in there.” like faramir. cirith ungol is sindarin for “pass of the spider.” do the math
some of my favorite tags on this post
Don’t forget that Frodo also speaks Sindarin, which makes this even worse.
Faramir: Hey, don’t go up the Spider Stairs.
Frodo: Why? What’s up the Spider Stairs?
Faramir: We don’t know, Frodo. We just don’t know.
to be fair, you’d assume the name means “there’s a lot of spiders here,” not, “there is one spider the size of a draft horse here.” so you go up expecting to have to shoo a lot of skeeter eaters out of your tent, and instead you have to figure out how to rope and shoe godzillarantula.
Hmmm…
They do live in a world where godzillarantulas feature prominently in mythology and history (Ungoliant plunged the world into darkness, scared the crap out of Sauron’s old boss, etc) and existed within the last century in Mirkwood. Assuming they ever talk to anyone who’s been to Mirkwood. They… probably know they were giant spiders in Mirkwood pretty recently? It’s hard to figure out how much anyone in Middle-earth has been talking to anyone else when we didn’t actually see it.
On the other hand – what if it’s the giant evil spiders’ prominence in history/mythology that’s causing trouble? What if lots of evil/nasty things/places get called “spider” just to indicate how nasty and evil they are, rather than any association with literal spiders, and it’s just… overloaded? Maybe the bad part of town in Minas Tirith is the Spider District. Maybe every tavern trying to be edgy calls itself the Spiderweb.
Actually spider/Ungoliant references could be really appealing to Gondorians trying to be edgy. They’re dark and evil! Plunged the world into darkness! But they AREN’T involved in the war they’re actually fighting, they aren’t directly associated with Sauron at all, so getting too interested in them would be creepy without being potentially treasonous. Because no one’s ACTUALLY going to worship those dangerous but not epic spiders up in Mirkwood, and no one’s heard anything from any proper spawn of Ungoliant in ages and ages.
In fact, spider/Ungoliant references might be appealing to ORCS trying to express that something is nasty and creepy! Nobody likes Ungoliant.
Maybe Faramir’s been to fourteen different Spider Caves across Ithilien, and half of them he didn’t even see regular spiders in, they’re just dark and damp and may have had orcs at some point, or something, and at some point in history someone got spooked. So you know, it’s POSSIBLE Spider Pass has something to do with spiders? But really it just means people don’t like it.
(The problem with this theory is we never actually SAW anyone overusing spider references. But it’s plausible they would!)
“The average spider on Middle Earth is the size of a dinner plate” is a statistical error. The average spider on Middle Earth is smaller than a coin. Cirith Ungol (lit: Spiders Gorge), which contains a spider larger than a horse, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.
Come for the Tolkien linguistics, stay for the Spiders Georg reference
this map, by jonathan hull, shows all the places in the USA named after the devil or hell. assuming big giant awful spiders were a common thing in middle earth, it’s likely that there were a shit ton of Spider Stairways.
you don’t wander into Devil’s Lick assuming that satan himself is gonna give you a rimjob. you presumably also don’t head up Spider Stairs assuming an arachnid the size of a cottage is gonna try and eat your friend.
FUN FACT: A huge portion of the “Devil’s [OBJECT]” names in Wyoming are from a poor bastard called John Coulter, who was probably the first white man to see Yellowstone! He saw it because he got seperated from the Lewis and Clark expidition on their way back east, decided that with winter coming on, he should head south to stay ahead of the weather, rather than east to try to catch up with the party, and instead got lost inside the Yellowstone caldera, the COLDEST fucking part of Wyoming, with its scalding, posionous geysers, earthquakes, massive packs of wolves that weren’t afraid of people yet, and temperatures hitting as low as Negative 40, and naturally assumed that he had somehow taken a wrong turn into the Nnth Circle of Hell.
He lived, managed to get out of the caldera, took extensive notes on the landscape, eventunally met up with some Blackfoot tribesmen who gave him a horse and directions to the nearest european settlement, and he left, naming every single notable feature after hell or the Devil, because Wyoming is clearly His Infernal Country.
So as far as Frodo knows, “Spiders Pass” was just named by a particularly disgruntled and arachnophobic field cartographer.
This is the master post for the 4 Minute Window Advent calendar 2021! (*boggles*) As always, my goal is to tell a little bit of story each day (knock wood) between the Immaculate Conception and Christmas. Explicit eventually, the rest as it comes. Times being what they are, we might be even more loosey-goosey than normal. Apologies if I come in late or there are typos etc. but I’ll get it all done and patched up eventually. As always, feel free to send me your hopes and dreams and I’ll see what I can do!
I note also that this year there’s a secondary, related project being posted on Tumblr called “4 Inch Window” - @melllacita is building a DOLLHOUSE REPLICA of the Coney Island Design & Construction building where Steve and Bucky work and live. She’s posting pictures of it in progress and telling you lots about how to build awesome dollhouses. The prologue is here or you can follow @melllacita’s tumblr for all the 4 inch window updates.
Another year of 4 Minute Window stories!!! So excited! Obviously I suggest you begin at the very beginning if you have not already been reading this amazing universe! I love it so much!!! So much that I had to come log into Tumblr for the first time in ages to reblog. Because Cesperanza asked so sweetly.
great at handling difficult situations, for example, can get his own gloves off WHILE talking to a cute girl AT the same time no problem thanks for asking
so great at witty comebacks
definitely has slept with MANY a lady because, again, Han Solo is a cool guy, and not a grumpy hermit who, were he a person in the world, would spend all his weekends alone in his apartment with his phone turned off watching Ice Road Truckers
definitely not a weirdo with a shitty haircut who talks to his car
no. mister cool guy. always looks so cool. so cool in a fight
so cool. never panics about everything all the time constantly.
people trust him cause he’s got that cool guy charisma
always knows what he’s doing. han solo. an expert.
in conclusion: han solo, a cool space scoundrel, not a nerd. maybe you’re the nerd around here. hmm. looks like it. check and mate
“A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead. A human with a brain and a heart and a desire to be uplifted, rather than a customer with a credit card and an inchoate “need” for “stuff.” A mall—the shops—are places where your money makes the wealthy wealthier. But a library is where the wealthy’s taxes pay for you to become a little more extraordinary, instead. A satisfying reversal. A balancing of the power.”
Just read an excerpt from a productivity/goal setting book that concerned Tolkien.
His publisher mentioned that people wanted more about the hobbits after Tolkien published The Hobbit.
So Tolkien started another novel.
And apparently bounced between the depths of despair and the height of confidence for the entire process (he said that: “his ‘labour of delight’ had been ‘transformed into a nightmare.’”)
He gave up multiple times.
That book? Fellowship of the Ring.
You know what kept him going? C.S. Lewis’ support.
First lesson: if you’re stressing over your book, remember that Tolkien did too.
Second lesson: Writers have to support each other. Seriously. It might be the difference between a book that becomes beloved by hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) even existing or not.
This is fair! This is so nice! I love this!
You know what else kept him going while he wrote Lord of the Rings? Well,
having an income while he wrote, that he didn’t really have to work for. In fact, he held his dream job (Professor of Literature) with a full-time income,
that came with a pleasant private office. He sat at work, for which he was being paid to do something else, and actively avoided doing his actual job while he pursued his own unrelated novel.
having a stay-at-home wife to run his entire home and family for him.
having servants…. that helps….
having a large, pretty house within a pleasant 25-minute walk of work.
never having to do:
household maintenance
laundry
cooking
cleaning
Life Admin
the not-fun gardening
the not-fun childcare
The work day
of Men of His Time ended when they came home. Women of His Time, and
Staff, existed to run the rest of his life. And that’s what they did. Jonald Ronald Rolkien Tolkien was the center of his household universe, which existed to support him in every possible way.
Let’s be real: he was not the person who was up in the night with a teething baby. That was what the nanny was for, followed by the wife. It would have been unthinkable for a man of his time/class to do his own childcare.
Actually, it’s worth noting that he had in particular a Very Intelligent Icelandic nanny, who lived in his
house and looked after his four children all day, and was never given a holiday, and told the children lovely bedtime
stories about trolls and the Icelandic Edda, and who provided a useful
resource for the language and myth he used in LoTR, until his wife became too jealous.
I mean, what could YOU do if you had that much support? Write an epic! probably!!
Because nobody was forcing him to do anything, ever, he slept late and woke up late. sounds nice
Tolkien did not do laundry. He did not cook meals. He did not
clean the house. He did not wrestle rice pudding down the necks of
his screaming babies, while calmly and lovingly answering his schoolchild’s questions. He wasn’t
making a cake while talking to his boss on the phone and wiping up the
dog’s sick. He did not spend hours every day in the process of keeping
his home together, or sorting the affairs of his four children, or sorting out the wifi. The Care and Keeping of Tolkien was outsourced to
wife, servants, scouts, assistants, waitstaff.
He would have received free meals at work, although he usually walked home for lunch, where he was served food and alcohol that he took into his private study. but if he didn’t
want to do that, Oxford profs of His Time could just get free lunch. He could ring a bell to be brought tea and snacks at work. And then he would go home and be served dinner.
Going to the pub with his friends, who supported and admired him! Sure!
not
having to go home in the evening to his four toddlers and children, because he was a Man of His Times! and he could totally
just spend evenings holed up in a pub with his admirers, because he was not required at home to help, or parent, or do anything in the home, except be served a glass of beer and go into his study.
god, imagine spending hours in the pub on a work night with a bunch of highly qualified literature professors telling you how smart and lovely and amazing you are. heck YES you’d be encouraged.
The Hobbit was already popular so it was probably quite helpful to know that while writing the next work.
Working and writing in a place that is generally considered to be an
inspiring setting for academia and literature. Want to write Elrond’s
Council? Sit down at a beautiful old stone table and start writing about the table. Want to write about a tree? Go write under
your favorite ancient tree in the Botanical Gardens. Want a snack? Ring a
bell and a scout will bring you toast and a cup of tea.
I mean, he wasn’t exactly spending his 40 hours a week under a manager’s baleful eye while he manned the self-checkouts at the Tesco in Coventry, or pumped gas for minimum wage in Montauk, scribbling notes into his phone. He floated around The City of Dreaming Spires, dreamily making art, while several people labored very hard so that he would be untroubled by Real Life while he floated.
Let’s be real. Tolkien’s literary accomplishments are very impressive, but he L I T E R A L L Y
was doing them on his work clock with the full support of a pit crew.
To be fair, I love the man. And I love the huffy apologism in the Tolkien Gateway: “Writing [The Fellowship of the Ring] was slow due to Tolkien’s perfectionism, and was frequently
interrupted by his obligations as an examiner, and other academic
duties.”
I’m ??? sorry that writing a novel on the company dime was frequently interrupted by occasionally having to do his job???? oh my god I love and hate this so much,
Dianna Wynne Jones, of Tolkien’s students at Oxford, commenting “of Tolkien, they said he was wasting his time on hobbits when he should have been writing learned articles…”
maybe because that’s what academics are SUPPOSED TO DO, it is their job,,,
He would also deliberately mumble incomprehensibly, ignoring his students, deliberately delivering terrible lectures, so that they would all go away; but Dianna actually wanted to receive some of the education she’d been promised:
“I imagine I caused Tolkien much grief by turning up to hear him lecture week after week, while he was trying to wrap his lectures up after a fortnight and get on with The Lord of the Rings (you could do that in those days, if you lacked an audience, and still get paid).”
God love the man! Deliberately teaching so badly because he planned to alienate his students and collect a paycheck! He would be flayed on social media for less, today. There would be news articles about the Lazy Professor. He would be fired, and buried, and dug up, and fired again.
In conclusion: yeah, CS Lewis was very encouraging and that helped immensely! But probably so did a secure income, freedom from chores and labor, and a crew of support staff. Who knows what we might do, if we all had that kind of encouragement. We’d probably be very productive.
A choice Diana Wynne Jones quote on Tolkien’s mumbling, from her essay “The Shape of the Narrative in The Lord of the Rings”:
“When I was an undergraduate, I went to a course of lectures he gave on the subject—at least, I think that was the subject, because Tolkien was all but inaudible. He evidently hated lecturing, and I suspect he also hated giving his thoughts away. At any rate, within two weeks he succeeded in reducing his substantial audience to myself and four others. We stuck on, despite his efforts. He worked at it: when it did appear that we might be hearing what he said, it was his custom to turn around and address the blackboard.”
It’s a lovely essay about The Lord of the Rings, but you can tell that she was still very salty about the man’s lecture style, however many years later it was that she was writing this essay.
One of my Uni tutors had also gone to lectures by Tolkien, and said more than once that whatever else he had learned, the most important was “This is how not to give lectures”…
And even with all that support, Tolkien took twelve years to write LOTR.
If your writing takes a long time, don’t worry. Value every bit of progress you make. You’re surviving in this world and that’s downright miraculous.
Can someone help me understand I wanna cry to ..I feel something went over my head
The woman in the bathroom is trans and is scared that if she comes out of the stall the women that walked in will insult or harass her. but when she comes out they compliment her on her dress instead. The add ends with saying “stress tested for women.” It means Secret is including trans women in their definition of women.
I have reblogged this three times now, each one mentioning the fact that Secret not only included a trans woman, but that they /had the other women compliment her dress and treat her with respect/. I will reblog this every time I see it because it’s so important. More companies should involve trans people in their marketing - we do exist. Props to Secret for getting in on this movement. It makes me really happy to see more of the trans community represented in daily television.
