roselightfairy | (no subject)

Did some work on a piece of real-life Tolkien Scholarship I am trying to work on and I just had to share some notes that I jotted down that made me go absolutely feral and want to tear paint off walls with my teeth:

Note here: some reflection on the symbolism of Lothlórien itself? Lothlórien is a space that you do not emerge from “unchanged,” a space of mystery to the rest of Middle-earth - even Legolas doesn’t seem to be quite sure whether there are still elves there or not, and so it is regarded with wonder and suspicion by others from other kingdoms. It is significant that they become friends here, in this space of privacy, in this space where reality feels slowed down and time passes differently (especially since time is such a feature of their future, with their mortal/immortal friendship). It is also significant that this wood is where Arwen and Aragorn - Tolkien’s explicit het love story, also interspecies - pledged themselves to one another. It is the place where their journeys leave their expected paths and begin to diverge to follow one another (“two roads diverged in a yellow wood” and they followed each other onto the one less traveled by I am going to LOSE IT)

(yes I am writing Real Actual Tolkien Scholarship on how Legolas and Gimli are in love, I'm not even kidding)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ooooooooooooooooooo DELIGHTFUL

It was a realization that made me go absolutely feral haha, though I doubt that specific last thought will end up in the finished piece :)

More academics should go absolutely feral FAR more often, is what.

One sense I am slowly getting through grad school stuff is that they all kind of are, the ~system~ just isn't really built to support it. But beneath every serious lecturer is an absolutely unhinged nerd, I think.

SO basically we've got to tear down the system & rebuild it to support absolutely unhinged nerdery, is what I'm hearing here.

If academia were just getting to indulge your inner nerd all the time, it would be much better. All this institutional stuff and money stuff is EXHAUSTING.

(It would still be very pretentious though, I think. The best system in the world can't undo human nature.)

oh my god <3 I think you're on to a number of things there!

thank you thank you! I probably won't include all of them, but I do think I need to restructure my analysis to include a little more lingering on the significance of Lothlorien itself! The "road less traveled" thing just made me absolutely lose it because I'm using Sara Ahmed's description of queer phenomenology as my framework, and she specifically puts it into the context of paths and orientations - and Legolas and Gimli are queer because they follow one another, instead of the paths they are expected to follow . . . so then thinking about Lothlorien as the "yellow wood" where the paths diverge and the Robert Frost thing . . . excuse me I'm frothing at the mouth again.

!!!!