Hi there, I'm Stephanie.

And I'm Lydia. Come along with us as we explore and learn about the world of Tolkien through deep dives on lore, characters, read-alongs, and laugh-alongs.

We are excited to have you as a new friend on this journey with us. Welcome to Speak Friend and Enter a Lord of the Rings podcast.

Hi there, welcome to Speak Friend and Enter a Lord of the Rings podcast. I am Stephanie and I am joined by my lovely co-host Lydia.

Nice to meet y'all.

Well, I am very excited and very nervous. This is our first episode.

Really first recording. Complete noobs here.

And a decent amount of work has gotten into this. Lydia has set up this beautiful setup with our mics and all the beautiful sound tech. And I have mainly just been doing the fun stuff, which is looking up stories and different little tidbits for our episodes. But let's see. How do we want to get started with this?

Yeah, I don't know. So I look at it as two aspects. What's the background? What types of episodes do we want to make? What are our backgrounds? And then what do we want going forward, etc. So maybe what type of episodes?

Is that a rundown? Sure. Yeah, let's start there. Okay. So over brunch today. We decided we would like to have a little bit of a smorgasbord in terms of episodes, right? We want to have some deep dives where we go in depth on a topic. Right.

And to set the stage, I'm the noob. Like, super novice. We'll get into that on background, but I don't know hardly nothing. Steph knows quite a bit. But loves fantasy. Yeah, but I'm way into fantasy. And I've always thought to myself, I really need to appreciate Tolkien even more than I do now, because I recently read Wheel of Time after a long time putting it off.

I was like, Oh, snap. Look at all these like tropes that they picked off that I've seen executed less ably. So it's really fun to look back almost historically to see what's been happening in fantasy. So I enjoy that aspect a lot.

And so with the deep dives, we're hoping we can take different types of topics that maybe we're curious about in Tolkin's world. And I can do some research, Lydia can ask some questions, and we can all come away. And we will all be more knowledgeable.

Exactly. So that's what that's one type of episode that we're really excited to do. Another type of episode, do you want to go into one of the other types? Yeah.

So there are two other types. We've got kind of like riff episodes, because let's be real, not everything can be serious. So I'll just throw out one potential one that will be really fun. But it's ideal baby names from Lord of the Rings, way into this concept. I've already started my list. Stephanie is like way classy, mine's gonna be fricking Gronk or whatever his name is.

So that'll be an example of just like a fun riff. And then the last one would be really the big honcho, right? The elephant in the room, the Silmarillion. And I'm sure other people have done this, but it's really for my benefit. Because I looked at the Silmarillion as you know, it's basically the Bible. And it probably reads a little bit like the Bible, right? It's a little tough. And every time I look at it, I think to myself, I should be reading that, but I am not.

Hence. So we might do read along type episodes, maybe like chapter discussions, just because I have found recently, like this year, I've been like more book clubs than I've ever been in. And I have found that I just really enjoyed that process of reading the theme and getting a chance to chat about it. So those are the three types like the three strong flavors, I'd say. And then there might be others. I'm a movie hater, or rather a TV show hater, I should say. So we might need to do some hate, some rants.

So I mean, long term, if we can get through the Silmarillion, I think we can replace that content with like, watch parties talking about, yeah, TV shows, anything else we want to read and discuss. So that's the brunt of those. But like, let's go into like who we are background with like, our relationship with Lord of the Rings, essentially, or Tolton and or both. Would you like to start?

I can. Yeah. So I am like a big reader, huge reader, voracious, and have been since I was little. And so I asked my dad recently, I was like, Hey, dad, did you read Lord of the Rings to me?

Is that why like, is that my introduction? He says, No, I didn't read Lord of the Rings to you because you ruined reading time. Apparently, when I was little, I just like was not patient enough to like, wait for I couldn't be read to, I was like always reading over the page, or I would steal the books in between sessions, like because he would read us to sleep, right bedtime stories. I would steal the books in between and read them. And like, I guess I ruined bedtime reading. So there's that.

My little sister probably suffered for that. My bad. Anyways, so he did not read it to us. And that was my impression of when I had read it.

But I read it early, probably, I don't know, eight to 10, somewhere around then. And like, your kid, you don't have any clue. You just don't have any clue that this story is different from other stories. It's at least at the time I didn't appreciate it. So for example, I read it and I loved it.

Love the Hobbit love Lord of the Rings. Then say two years ago, I was doing back into running. And I'm like, I'm doing all these long stupid runs.

I need some long stupid audio but to tell him with me. So I picked up Lord of the Rings again after having not read it in probably 10 years. And holy cow, was that prose dense? And I remember I was going on a 10 miler and I'm like jogging through these mountain passes while they are, I think they were leaving the Shire or something and they're going through their mountain passes. And I'm thinking, yes, this is perfect. But at the same time, the density of the prose shocked me because as a child, I just had child memories, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And as a child, I'm like, this was a great story. I remember it. And I guess I did it because I as a child, and this is like very atypical for me, I had a stronger relationship with the movies still do.

And that's just like completely for me. I usually I'm just a TV show hater. I'm usually a movie hater, etc. etc. So that's a flip flop for me. I don't I have almost never come across a movie that's better than book.

And I'll like say the taboo thing. But I'm fairly certain like I have this theory of like perfect mediums. And I just feel like the movies are the perfect medium for Lord of the Rings. Because we'll talk about this later. We'll talk about like how he writes differently, how how his world building is so extensive. And if you were a writer today, and you were trying to write a novel, you would never do what Tolkien did. Like ever. That's just terrible. This is why fantasy writers are forever world building and never writing.

His world building was endless. Yes. It was endless, just like out of control. But obviously, that works really well. That's what he wanted. It's the type of name for the story. I think they're called Milo stories where it's it's really about the journey. It's about the environment. It's about it's essentially what you did in the movies where you did these huge panoramic views.

Anyways, so my relationship is primarily movies, which I'm embarrassed to say as a strong reader. And even worse, even worse. So I recently discovered that when my brother left the house, he took with him his extended version of Return of the Team. It was last year when I have a tiny sister who's like 13 or something, and I'm trying to educate her trying to bring her bring her up right. So I made sure last year that she watched Lord of the Rings before it's too late before it wasn't formative. And so anyways, we were watching the extended versions. And here I am thinking, Oh, yeah, I've always watched the extended versions. This is great. And then we did to the Return of the Team, which I had pirated

and thrown onto my laptop and blooded in the TV. We did to that one. And I'm like, what is this new scene? I have never seen this in my life. And maybe I saw it when it was way little. But like in the interim, he left the house when I was little. Anyways, I've been living off of like, just the basics, just the basics. And I was it was alarming. I felt like I'd been lied to.

We got all that extra good content.

So what a nice surprise. Yeah. So that was kind of like a spark for me. It's like, Oh, crap, I am not as acquainted with Lord of the Rings as I thought, nor am I as acquainted with like the movies I thought. So there I was all cocky thinking I had everything figured out. And I didn't.

But yeah, that's pretty much it for me. I mean, like to show like how impactful it was, like one of my formative memories was I was little enough. I'm trying to remember how young I would have been. I can't remember. But when Return of the King came out in theaters, I was not allowed to go.

Yeah. This is too adult of a movie for me. I had to see Elf. And I have always hated elf ever since every time. Yeah.

Every time I look at I just want to barf because that was they robbed me of my Return of the Kings in theatre. Your experience. Yes. Yes. And probably I would have screamed and died a little bit when Shelob came out.

But like, oh my gosh. Yeah, they robbed me. So in the last scene, like, I feel like I say I have a strong relationship with the movies, which I do. But I think one of the main reasons I have that relationship is because of the music in the movies. And that's where we get back into the whole.

This is my theory of the perfect medium because when you first see Rohan and you're going over that panorama and the theme of Rohan plays, I just don't I feel like if Tolkien could have made a movie, he would have made it with that epic view and that beautiful music. Yeah.

So one time we're in the car doing a grocery run is just like me and like three other siblings, you know, all crammed in the back and my mom gets in she turns on the car and we always had it said to the classical station. So turns on the car and a single note plays. And we all perked up and say, mom, it's from Lord of the Rings. It's the Isengard theme.

And she's like, don't be ridiculous. It's only played one note. Anyways, so it was Lord of the Rings, the Isengard theme. Oh my gosh. Which we recognized from one note. I think we were banned from Lord of the Rings for like two months afterwards.

She's like, yeah, clearly you're watching that too much. She's almost unfanatical. Oh my goodness, I love that. That's my background. Like I'm a big reader. I've just like kind of recently been reacquainted with it because of this touchstone of my little sister. And I'm like, gotta raise her right.

Gotta make sure she's watching all the stuff I watched as it did. All the key gems. Yeah, and that's just kind of how it's been for me. What about you?

I love that. So I resonate with, I started out, I think, man, I probably was around seven. And my dad would reach me, but I did not. You did not read any time. You were a good child. I most definitely really enjoyed it. Cause we did that for many years, but he read The Hobbit to me and that was like our introduction to the world of Tolkien. And then after that, yeah, it's so good.

It's perfect for kids. Later on I wanna talk about the difference between like The Hobbit and The Lorraine's. And his writing. Very different. Cause you always look at the Lorraine's and you're like, Tolkien, why couldn't you write a straight novel? Like why not? And then I look at The Hobbit and I'm like, clearly you could do it.

Like I love The Hobbit. It's a phenomenal story. It's very tight, very well written. And I think it was partially for his children. Yes, it is. So it makes sense, but yes, I loved it. And then after that, we kind of continued on and kept going with the trilogy and just got sucked in as a little kid.

But I remember, I think this was back, like I said, maybe about like six or seven. We were reading The Hobbit and I had this fear, this dread of Gollum, right? Like just, I hadn't seen the movie yet. I just like the descriptions and everything. I was like, oh, like it just stayed with me. And so I remember.

So you made a bond of who was longer with you. It was probably one of my, other than maybe some scary Disney characters. Like this was one of the first things that I was like, oh, that makes me scared. Like that was scary.

And so I remember going to bed, I think this was multiple nights and I would get in my bed and have my blankets all the way to my chin. And there was this fire alarm on my ceiling. I think pretty typical in a lot of houses that has like a little green light on it. Because yeah, because it's like all clear, no smoke. It's a totally normal theme for a normal household to have.

Totally normal theme for a normal house. But for some reason, as I would lay in bed after listening to The Hobbit, I would look at that little green light and I would think, oh my gosh, it's Gollum's eye.

And he's watching me. Yes. And so you had a sleepless childhood.

Yeah. It must have, I had some sleepless nights because of it, but I was also second. I loved it.

And so that was kind of the introduction. But like you said, I was pretty young as well when the movie started coming out and my family would watch the movies like over Christmas break.

Because I have like all grown up watching literally every year. And I think as a kid, we probably watched it. I mean, we only had like five movies in the house.

Oh my gosh, yeah. So we probably watched it a ton. Well, I loved it. So they came out and it was just super intriguing. I also remember being like during the orc stuff, my parents would be like, don't look.

And I would like put a blanket over my head. Oh, good. During like the battle scene. They're like, hey, we want to watch a fun movie with our child.

We will just hide the child from them. Don't look at this. Yeah, so.

Amazing. That's how I started watching them. We all aim to be good parents like that. But then after that, we would watch them every year for Christmas. It became like an annual Christmas tradition. And it really does feel like a Christmas season movie.

I don't know why that is. Yeah, I don't know, but it just. Every year around Christmas time, I also did that hatred. I'm like, when did I want to watch the movie?

I loved it. And we would do like little marathons. We got into like the trivia pursuit game. Oh, right. Nice.

As a family, we would play that. So I just. And you had older brothers, right? So they were way into it. They were also into it. So they would come home for Christmas. We would watch the movies and play.

Yeah, and I think that's part of mine too. Because I have all my brothers are older.

So I think that was part of it too.

Just some siblings that could kind of go in. They're just educating the younger generation. Yeah.

And so I loved it. I think that's what kind of left a mark on my memory in terms of that story and that universe and all of that. Probably a little more than just any other fantasy novel or anything that I read later on.

And then honestly, I've just loved it kind of in the background as I was going through college and everything else. And it was just recently actually when I think when I got married, I was introducing myself kind of to my in-laws and they were like, what kind of things do you like? And what are you into?

And I mentioned a couple of different things. I love ballet. I love this. And I was like, and I really love Lord of the Rings. I listen to some YouTube videos on it. I do. It's just a hobby. I really enjoy it. And they were like, you love Lord of the Rings.

And so after that, I got into that. Wait, into that or wait, not into that. I think I just thought it was interesting, like something that stood out about me. So I've gotten necklaces, dry goggles, like different games for Christmas. I've gotten like all these different Lord of the Rings. You know what is so helpful for the in-laws though, right? They're like, OK, what does this human life?

Yes, yes. Is this one particular animal or is it just this and something to latch

on to to anger to, to for them? And so I feel like because of that, honestly, it's kind of and people would ask me questions. I was like, oh, man, I need to do more research and watch more YouTube videos.

I've got to maintain my reputation. Yes. So honestly, just the last few years, I've been digging into it more and more and more. And I've loved having conversations with people. I love chatting with people about it. I love learning more about it.

And I feel like that's kind of what brought us to this conversation is we were at a friend's house for the weekend. Thank you, Weston Jaclyn. Yes, shout out. We really shout out to you. Best host ever. And we were just. Get your sleep routine in order.

And we were able to just have a really fun conversation about it and be able to discuss. I was able to share some tidbits. I don't even sure what they were, but tidbits that I had found that I thought were fun and interesting. And I think you were sharing some interesting things about fantasy in general and maybe how it's done.

And then we had a conversation about what we hated about the movie or the TV show or rather.

Oh, rings of power, yes. Not afraid to say that that was not great. We might get to that down the road. Down the road, yeah. Not afraid to do that. So it was just a really fun experience. And I had kind of wanted to have some kind of medium to talk about Lord of the Rings, whether it was YouTube or social media or a podcast. But it was really Lydia and her amazing energy and go get it added to that brought us here today.

So it was really the fact that I bought myself a heavy duty chunky mic for dictation. And then I thought to myself, well, I've got the podcast mic. How can I use this? Yes, exactly. It's the Suncost Falsy brought us together.

And I love it. We are so excited to be here. We're so excited to be thinking about this content. Hopefully you guys are able to enjoy it as much as we enjoy talking about it.

And then like, so like going forward. Yes. So that's background. That's kind of where we're coming from. And then the reason for this podcast. So I'm the noob. I intend to stay newbish. But the main theme for me is that like I was at the library recently and I'm browsing or the bookstore somewhere. I was browsing having the time of my life enjoying it. I'm looking at the L such and thinking, hmm, this is where my name would go if I was published.

I knew that as one does. And then you pass the Tolton shelf.

And it's always like an entire shelf. It's like four or five layers deep, et cetera, et cetera. And I looked at it and think, yeah, I'm so good. I've read most of that. And then I looked at Laura thought, hmm, that's so meridian though. And then I had a guilty walk right past it.

I'm not going to make eye contact.

Exactly. Don't make eye contact. It's like when you see your neighbor at the grocery store and you keep on going down the same aisles. Yes.

That's just bad. So I thought to myself, I was like, well, I just talked with like just talked with Stephanie. Really? We should get this going. And for me, some of the deep dives that we're going to do. Yeah. It's just to give me a broader context so that when I go into the somerillian, I'm not blind.

I'm a little more prepared.

A little bit more prepared. It will understand a little bit more. And also some of these deep dives are just going to be fun. Yeah.

And hopefully they'll be interesting too. So like if you guys have any questions that you're like, oh, I've always been wondering about the background of this character or whatever it is, they're easy to find and you can have something just entertaining to listen to about it. Yeah.

I think that's about it. Because like for me, I guess, I guess like the most concrete, I'm a goal person. So like the most concrete goal for me is finishing somerillian. And I understand that that's not the like, that's not the end all be all there's like children of Hurin. There's like, there's so many others.

And all the things that there's so much. Yeah. There's a lot to do. And there's a lot on the list. Yeah. And so Lydia was like, she kind of was like, OK, I'm going into all these questions. This is like your foundation wanting to learn more. And I feel like I have answered some of my questions, but there's so much more to learn. So I am also going into it from a let's grow and figure this out together kind of perspective. So yeah. Yeah. Does that cover it all? I think so.

OK. We talked about different types of episodes. We talked about at one extent who we are. Yes.

What else do we need? Do we want to do any background like who are you, Lydia? What do you do? Oh, man. I don't know. Any other information?

Who am I? Yeah, I'm a engineer. I do a boring job. And so my hobbies have to be extremely vigorous. Very exciting. Yeah. Hands, the beautiful mics. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, I mean, that's the thrust of it. Like I have a lot of hobbies. I've got a lot of fun things I'm doing like today.

Cancel due to weather, but I was supposed to do horseback riding. Yeah. And so fun. The reason I'm doing horseback riding is because the end goal is look, we just got to understand our fantasy books a little bit more.

So when they say and we rode from here to here and it took us three weeks, I end goal for me is I'm going to get good enough at horses that I can freaking go to Mondoly and ride the steps. I love that. I love that.

So I do stupid things like that. Way into fantasy, like way into fantasy. So like background reading, huge voracious reader, but not of like boring nonfiction. We're talking sci-fi. We're talking fantasy and like my sci-fi, I've gone way back. So like sci-fi starting at Asimov. And I feel like that's going to be some really good perspective on the sci-fi genre because he kept off so much.

Well, and that's something I think will make our conversations interesting is I'm going into this kind of purely from a Tolkien lover. Right. And you have so much.

Yeah, I'm going I'm going like from a lower level, like the generations after Tolkien, how did they receive what he did and how I'm very interested in that question? Because when I read sci-fi and I look at the sci-fi of now, it's really easy to trace certain threads back to Asimov or equivalent or Clark or whoever. And it's the same thing in fantasy. It's really easy to trace certain things back to Tolkien. Yeah. And I love doing that.

So that's kind of my aim goal on just like reading and Tolkien in general. I like to see it's amazing if you think about it, how much he has influence. He basically sparked. I mean, every single core tenet and trope of the fantasy genre without even trying. Like, I'm sure that wasn't his intent. He was just writing the book of his heart. Yes. But now everyone else was like, oh, this is also the book of my heart.

You have captured my heart. It's here. I want to do something with it. So that's what I'm all about. I'm really about high fantasy, mostly high fantasy. I also really like sci-fi, but like been way into fantasy lately. And I love looking back and seeing just how did Tolkien change that entire genre and obviously for the better. So one, if not multiple episodes on that. Yeah, I think that would be fun. What about you? Any other background for you? I'm just trying to think. Like what? You did a long while with your in-laws.

Thanks for your perfect presence. Thank you in-laws for helping me along my path. You told them exactly the right details. Let's see. Let's see. No, I am trying to think. So I recently moved in New York City. I'm in grad school.

Really excited about this. It's stressed out of your mind. Yes. This is stress relief. This is stress relief. This is the enjoyable part that I get to kind of do after all my homework and everything else. So yeah, yeah, it's been wonderful. And your goal is to learn more. Right? It's all about reputation for you.

You really concern that your in-laws will find out that you do not know as much as you say you do. Yes, yes, yes. It's keeping up my reputation, obviously. You won't be invited back to painstaking if you can't tell them all the details of, you know, insert detail here that I don't know. It's like a round of Lord of the Rings trivia pursuit. Oh, do you guys still play that? Sometimes, Brian says I'm getting too competitive. Oh, interesting.

He would say that. And I have tried to play with just me and him and he said, no, let's save it for, like,

when other people are playing with him. Oh, yeah, because he's like, we are you competitive? Because I start at only with certain things. It sounds like. So funny. And so I've started like trying to memorize the course. Shut your mouth. You're so bad.

You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do that. You're horrible.

I know, I know. It's not good. So we haven't played that recently.

But anyways, yes. So I would love to see you're not getting the reps in is what you're saying.

You're getting out of shape. I got to get my research in somehow.

OK, well, yeah, you would be rough to play with.

A killer, a destroyer in the board game world. Oh my goodness. But yes, so we're going to go in more depth and it will be wonderful. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, let's call it here because we got a deep dive to do after this, right? Sounds good. We're so excited, guys. I hope you can come on this journey with us and welcome to Speak Friend and Enter. Yeah, the podcast.

Bye. Bye there.