Also, they had mayors and stuff, a VERY clear class division and were technically under the rule of Gondor after the Northern Kingdom fell but Gondor didn’t really have the resources or urge to do any ruling over there. Once Aragorn was in they were essentially an autonomous zone under military protection in exchange for maintaining the local roads and bridges.
This tickled something in my brain, and I finally figured out what: Последний кольценосец
jesus christ the western brainpan is absolutely cucked
Literally
in fairness the author’s not a dyed-in-the-wool marxist by any means but jesus christ that’s not what the book’s about
Libs gonna lib
I’ve really gotta read that. I’m a giant Tolkien nerd and interact with some of well known Tolkien academics online and have added ‘Do normal spiders exist in middle earth or are they all descendants of Ungoliant?’ To the discussion with a degree of pot stirring. I’m also generally a pretty sympathetic to the orcs and have some criticism regarding elves.
It’s a page-turner, but what no one ever says about it in the summaries is that it’s like a geo-political spy thriller set in middle earth after the books. It’s so good and not at all what I thought it’d be going in.
fucking baby-brained summary I expect nothing less from natopedia
on the plus side like 85% of the book is set in Umbar, and it’s a pretty cool characterization of the city
I was positive that regular spiders do exist and were servants of Vairë the Weaver, but I guess I was extrapolating from a line that refers to her weavings as “webs”.
The ‘spiders’ that descend from ungoliant can make webs. But shelob for example is said to have compound eyes, a thick hide (weird way to describe an exoskeleton) and a stinger on the thorax. Spiders don’t have these
Shelob herself is only ever described as “most like” a spider.
I guess it’s fair to say that because Middle Earth is a fictional time and place in our world that real spiders do exist, but that they don’t appear in canon
I’m guessing the intent is they gradually diminished into the lil guys we know and Tolkien just didn’t know much about bugs. Whether he was afraid of spiders was addressed by him in a letter, since both of his really popular books have giant spooky spiders. I guess he didn’t have any specific fear of spiders, he wasn’t a fan but wasn’t bothered by them. He just had a rough idea for the whole ungoliant thing, the broad strokes came into The Hobbit spiders and then Shelob kinda reconnected it to the greater mythology.
i’ve heard of it and it does sound interesting, but i’ve always been somewhat wary of the LOTR extended universe since being burned by the silmarillion (its so long and my dyslexic ass has a job 😭) - how knowledgeable about middle earth do you have to be to enjoy it? i loved the original books but i’m a bit of a noob when it comes to fingolfin/feanor/etc
the book gives you the rundown in the first chapter, if you know the og story you’re good