Category: Tolkien

Ozmoot 2024 – Day 1

Note: These are my notes from the conference. Will contain poor spelling etc. Also my Elder Days knowledge is a little rough.

Greetings and Opening Remarks – Corey Olsen

  • 3 types of attendees. Onsite, remote and recorded. So must be disciplined with microphone usage
  • Use Microphones. Don’t forget they are always on.
  • Acknowledgement of country by Ilana
  • Around 70 attendees, including around 27 in person
  • If you are remote then please interact

Nothing is Evil in the Beginning – Panel Discussion with Corey Olen, Ilana Mushkin, Phil Menzines

  • This is a fairly central part of the legenderium.
  • See the Silm Film podcast. Who to do everything
    • Isn’t this just fan fiction?
    • Kinda of, but Tolkien sort of did the same thing. Eg addressing text from Beowulf via Hama in the LOTR
    • Sauron is kind of the protagonist
    • s1 – Valar
    • s2 – awakening of the Elves , arrival in Valinor
    • s3 – Fenor’s speech, kinslaying, rising of the Sun
    • s4 – Rescue of Midros
    • s5 – Arrival of Men
    • s6 – Beren , Sauron stiring up trouble in pre-Bree
    • Music being composed for it.
    • Castings including notifying actors they are cast
  • Why did Melkcor go bad?
    • Tolkien doesn’t really duplicate
    • Jilted lover an drawn towards the Simirils
    • Tried to duplicate with a bit of subtlety
    • Love something and desire to possess it is usually seen as bad
    • What Trajectory should we give to Melkor to show his journey
    • Going off on your own is often seen as a sign of going bad in Tolkien. Morgoth ticked that box too
    • Needs some more backstory than what we see in the book. Can’t make him evil right away, it must evolve
    • Halls of Mandos not very visual either.
    • Midpoint of season 1 is the destruction of the lamps. Melkor not being given enough credit for their creation
    • Story has to be parallel to what the music duplicates
    • Creating lamps and wating credit = Has own themes of the music and wants to manage them
    • Backstory of the Balrogs. Started with Glorious Angelic Wings. Melkor gets them to destroy the lamps and their wings get burt off. Now they only have shadow wings
    • “The Mythic Story of How Balrogs lost their Wings” is a highlight of Season 1
    • Melkor’s relationship with Sauron
    • Later we will echo Melkor’s fall with those the fall of other characters
      • What he tells himself vs what he tells other people.
    • Melkor Actor is Michael Fassbender. Has to be Hot
    • Mairon/Sauron is Simon Woods ( red hair is important)
  • Why did Mairon/Sauron go bad?
    • A Keen Student
    • When things get to a crisis in late Season 1 when wanted Manwai and Melkor’s split to feel big
    • Now Mairon has to cross a boundry to talk to Malkor, he has to really choose sides
    • Melkor understands and recruits him. Aula doesn’t see the problem
    • Early version when Ussay(s) goes over
  • Music by Phil Menzies
    • Themes for a “Fall”
    • Need themes for characters an also for things that would happen multiple times in the story. Used a little in the Oath of Feanor
    • Common in Tolkien: Someone thinks they are doing something that is good, but in reality is doing the opposite and are doing evil
    • Melkor Theme. Various versions as his character progresses
    • Corey says Phil’s music elevated Simfilm up a level and made it a bigger project
    • Mairon/Sauron theme is used for the Exploring the Rings podcast theme. Variation of Howard Shore’s Ring theme
  • Long time before the Valar work out the war needs to happen
  • “The War to Begin all Wars” episode title
  • Working through “how would we duplicate this” pushes us to answer a lot of the questions about what Tolkien sort of meant by things
  • “It is challenging casting mortal characters for a 20 year show”
  • Question. The show is a modern way of telling a story vs tolkien told the story in an old fashion way
    • There are a whole bunch of expectation on how modern miniseries work. Have been tempted to resist these expectations
    • Book of lost tales difference is even more. It is not something written by someone just like you
    • Tried to stay true to the essence of the story (although borrowed other versions of some parts that Tolkien wrote).
    • You couldn’t make a TV show is exactly the same as it’s is written. But making it work is part of the fun
  • Question: Is Melkors goal to create things fundimantally wrong?
    • The impulse to create is not evil in itself
    • Feanor is a good example (well at the start anyway)
    • Vardar’s rejection of Malkor. Duplicate as not liking his character (narcasis, bad vibes) not rejected due to fortelling
  • Question: Is redemption a thing?
    • Yes, some examples. Eg Boromir and Gandalf has hope for Saruman (he was in the first draft of LOTR). Ossay, Galadriel in some versions
  • Question: Character’s motivations fore they became evil. Is “Wants to make things easier, impatience” a thing. Other examples might be Gollum
    • Irony of that sort corruption. The thing they want isn’t a bad thing usually. But to get past obstacles in the say they do bad things and then fail to get their goal anyway.
    • Sharkey’s rule over the Shire has little order or even sold “rule”
    • Person who wants to be lord of light become lord of darkness
  • Question: Interaction between Gandalf’s ring Naria and the One ring
    • Going to be hard to do.
    • Elrond gets very defense that Sauron never touched them. But doesn’t mean they were a good idea
  • 12 season to get to the War of Wrath
  • One 3rd age problem to avoid. No palanteri
  • Question: Lots of feedback about Rings of Power. Has anthing in the rings of power inspired you vs those that you havn’t liked.
    • Obviously they stole from us. eg PTSD Galadriel
    • Must have Blood Splashed on her due the kinslaying
    • Various plans for Galadried in the future. He veres Saron but “No Rafts”
    • Can understand time compress and chronolgy shifting. Especially short-lived humans

Tengwar Calligraphy by Jenni Aldred

  • Much of LOTR writings are just english written in a different writing form. Transliterated not translated
  • Tengwar are based on phonetics doesn’t fit 100% with English. Can go either with pronunciation or actual spelling when you write them
  • Advantages and Disadvantages of each.
  • Workshop will use Orthographic or spelling mode
  • Table for characters
    • Lots of detail here that is too much to type. Explaining the tables of characters
    • Sindarin mode, Quenya mode or full mode. Exactly where Vowels are put
    • Sindarin mode works best for English
    • Examples to translate
    • “When you start being a tolkien expert, you get people emailing you for advice about their tattoos”
    • List of useful Tengwar resources
    • www.tecendil.com is a free online tool

Nature Relations of the Legendarium with Muhammed Alpaslan Tandirci

  • This area Heavily analysied in this past by other researchers
  • Wrote Masters Thesis (in Turkish) on this
  • Pre-history:
    • Divine intervention, Geological Transformation, Ecology of War
    • Melkor makes war on Nature as well as beings
  • Second Age
    • Deforestation and Ecology of Imperialism
    • Deforestation of Numenor reduced it’s power
  • The 3rd Age
    • Price of Enrichment and crafts – Dwarfs. Punished for disrupting the balance
    • The Great Plague and The Long Winter – Broke the power
    • Changes in Forests, Uncanny in the Waters
      • Both places are now associated with evil and Danger
      • In previous ages they were associated with Good
  • Conclusion
  • As the ages have progressed the impact on Nature has decreased
    • The laws of middle earth are less magical and more mortal as ages progress
  • Question – How would it work in the 4th age
    • A: Should improve due to Aragorn’s good policies. But things are less magical and getting close to our current world
  • Question: How are spiders represent
    • Answer: Spiders and wolves are seen as always
  • Question: How does forests being maintained vs natural affect things?
    • Answer: In most cases felling of trees does result in replanting.
  • Question: How popular is Tolkien in Turkey
    • Answer: Disappointed since the books nowhere near as popular as Harry Potter. Middle Earth seen as boring in comparison. People into history often like it. A very Niche interest.
    • Author is in Birmingham but hasn’t found as much Tolkien-related stuff as he had expect.
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Reading the Lord of the Rings aloud

The reading project that I am working on is a re-read of the Lord of the Rings. I’ve read the book/trilogy around a The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Trilogydozen times over the years but the two main differences this time are that I am reading it aloud and that I am consulting a couple of commentaries as I go. The references works I am using are The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion and the The Lord of the Rings Reread series by Kate Nepveu. The Companion is a fairly large book (860 pages) that follows the text page by page and gives explanations for words, characters and the history/development of the text. These can range from a simple definition to a couple of pages on a specific topic or character. The reread has a quick synopsis at the start of the article for each chapter and then some commentary by Kate followed by some comments from her readers (which I usually only quickly skim).

I started my read-aloud on February 15th 2015 and I am now ( April 7th ) just past the half-way point ( I completed The Fellowship of the Ring on March 27th) . My process is to read the text for 30-60 minutes ( I’m reading the three-book 1979 3rd edition paperback edition, which amusingly has various errors that the Reader’s Companion points out as I go) which gets me though 5-10 pages. I read aloud everything on the page including chapter titles, songs, non-English words and footnotes. A few times I have checked the correct pronunciation of words ( Eomer is one ) but otherwise I try not to get distracted. Once I finish for the session I open the Reader’s Companion and check the entries for the pages I have just read and at the end of each chapter ( chapters are usually around 20-30 pages) I have a look at Kate’s blog entry. I try an read most days and sometimes do extras on weekends.

One thing I really need to say is that I really am enjoying the whole thing. I love the book (like I said I’ve read it over a dozen times) and reading it aloud makes the experience even better. The main difference is that I do not skip over words/sentences/paragraphs which tends to happen when I read normally. So I don’t miss phrases like the description of Lake Hithoel:

The sun, already long fallen from the noon, was shining in a windy sky. The pent waters spread out into a long oval lake, pale Nen Hithoel, fenced by steep grey hills whose sides were clad with trees. At the far southern end rose three peaks. The midmost stood somewhat forward from the others and sundered from them, an island in the waters, about which the flowing River flung pale shimmering arms. Distant but deep there came up on the wind a roaring sound like the roll of thunder heard far away.

LOTR_Readers_Companion
Nor do I skip the other little details that are easy to miss, like Grishnakh and his Mordor Orcs leaving the rest of the group for a couple of days on the plains of Rohan or the description of country leading up to the west gate of Moria. Although I do wish I’d seen the link to the map of Helm’s Deep halfway down this page before I’d read the chapter as it would have made things clearer. The Companion is also good at pointing out how things fit in the chronology, so when somebody gazes at the horizon and sees a cloud of smoke it will say what event elsewhere in the book (or other writing) that is from. You also get a great feel for Tolkien’s language and words and his vivid descriptions of scenes and landscape (often up to a page long) such the example above. Although I do find he uses “suddenly” an awful lot when he has new events/people break into the narrative.

The readers companion is a great resource, written by two serious Tolkien scholars but intended for general readers rather than academics. Kate Nepveu’s articles are also very useful in giving a more opinionated and subjective commentary. I would definitely recommend the experience to others who are fans of the Lord of the Rings. I’m not sure how well it would work with other books but certainly it enhances a work I already know well and love.

At the current rate I am expecting to finish some time in June or July. The next project I’m planning is Shakespeare’s plays. I am planning on reading each one (multiple times including possibly at least once aloud) and watching the BBC Television Shakespeare and other adaptations and commentaries. My plan is that I’ll cover the majority of them  but I’ll see how I go, However I’d like to at least get though the major ones.

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