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, beat-a-lons and laugh-a-lons.

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. Alright, welcome.

So this is a bit of a riff episode. The concept is, the concept is something that I feel like comes up very often. And we need to have an answer to this.

So this is the dilemma. Your ESO, your significant other, that person you love and loves you back, they love Lord of the Rings more than you. And they want to drag you into it, kicking and screaming.

So we're going to talk about strategies to survive this induction process. Because, I mean, we love Lord of the Rings, but there are lots of people that don't. And though they are wrong, we should also give them some light avenues of escape.

And maybe, maybe at the end, we should also add in a few things for being a kind and thoughtful partner who likes Lord of the Rings in terms of how do you thoughtfully invite them.

We can either do that in this episode or we can do it in a later one. We can do it in a different way. How to evangelize.

Oh, that could be good. Okay, we'll save that. Yeah, I love that. But this is the other end of it. This is, you've been caught in this horrible trap. And you're not sure how to get out of it. So I've got a couple of methods here for you.

This is, these are the rough categories that I have thrown these into. So how are you going to survive this when you hear a theme song or the movies or something? And your beloved partner turns to you with that look in their eyes and you just know, you just know what's going to happen. So here's what I think happens.

You have a couple of options. The first is deflection. The second is escalation. And those are the ones that I think we have the most to talk about. And there's a couple other smaller ones. You have bargaining, parody or satire. And then the last, which is a nuclear weapon, which we will discuss at the end.

Ooh, okay, I love it. So these are the options. So let's start with the first one, deflection. This is your first defense. If you can use this, it's the easiest way to go about this. One, because there's this element of, what's the word I'm looking for?

What is the phrase where you do something, but you don't have to admit that you're doing it on purpose? Do you know what I'm talking about? What is the phrase for that? I'm not sure. It'll come to me later.

But I love that. I want to know that phrase. Yeah, so I'll remember in a minute. But in deflection, you avoid it without showing that you're avoided. So I think one of the primary tactics here is...

So somebody wants to get you into the Lord of Reigns. I think the primary way to deflect is with a shiny distraction. So you dangle in front of them some other kind of nerd bait, some other fandom. So they want to get you into Lord of Reigns and you just take a look out there and you say to yourself, what other theme is this person into that I could potentially tolerate better? So I made up a little list of some potential ones that if you're not already aware of these fandoms, you should be. And these are potential options.

And this is all to taste. So you can say to yourself, I could tolerate this one better than Lord of Reigns. Therefore, I will say to somebody trying to get me into Lord of Reigns, oh yeah, of course we'll watch Lord of Reigns someday. But first, let's talk about Star Wars is an option.

Don't they're all about movies? Yeah. And it's just like, it's so broadly well known and so broadly popular. I think it's pretty easy. It's an easy bet. It's a safe bet. If they're into Lord of Reigns, they've likely been into Star Wars at some point in their life. Maybe they're not peaked into Star Wars because like, you know, once you get into Lord of Reigns, you never really leave. But Star Wars is just a bet.

An alternative to Star Wars is something called Warhammer 40k, which is basically Star Wars, but grimdark. Actually, it's really cool. This is one of the ones that I've been avoiding personally, not because I have people trying to sucker me into it, but because I saw a phrase online that stuck with me. About this fandom. And it was something about how some group in that world, they have these scenes called tech priests. And the reason they have a tech priest is because technology used to be all known, etc. And then had this like big apocalypse, this big dark age. And now they only know, vaguely, how their tech works.

And so they have these priests that like pray to the machine to keep it running. Hysterical and awesome. And as soon as I read that word, I was like, no, this will just suck me in. I have to avoid everything about this.

So I have avoided everything about this because I wasn't willing to commit to a new and potentially addictive hobby. So, Warhammer 40k signs that they might be into this is they have a few too many board games in the house and a really long beard. So be aware. All right. Another potential bait to Daniel Star Trek.

Yes. There are people who like really like Star Wars and there are people who like Star Trek. And these people do not normally overlap. So you may already have a hint as to like which like, which I don't know what to call it. I just fan them like your significant other might fall into. I personally am not a Star Trek person. For me, this was traumatizing. My parents were watching it and there is the board episode, which is this like hive mind alien creature thing. Oh, yeah.

Disgusting. And I remember being terrified. In my mind, Star Trek is on a level with the X-Files in terms of horror.

I know that isn't true. It's just the only episode I've ever seen. So Star Trek is an option. If you want to go like whimsical and funny, I'm told that Doctor Who is the bomb. It's a little bit too cheesy for me personally. So I can't say I'm into it. My secret confession is that I was way into Star Wars. So, but Doctor Who is an option.

Um, if you have, if you're a significant other has like a weird obsession with like British telephone boxes, this might be a hint that they're into this. There's another one. This one is a very risky card. You could dangle Magic the Gathering, which is a card game that I, and there's other aspects. I think there's books and lore and other stuff, but it's mostly a card game.

And I think it's like Crash Cotain. I've heard of people getting into it. I've never heard of people getting out of it.

Yeah, it's, it's like crack. And the fandom never showers, apparently. So if you have somebody who's into Magic the Gathering, I think your nose would already have told you. So the danger here is that you both descend into like essentially a dreaded itch in.

But you get to pick your poison here. That's the whole point. It's all about picking the poison. Yeah. Yeah. Something that's slightly easier to win here is like superheroes. You can really get into the comics like Marvel. And the Marvel. Yeah. That one's an easy one. Safe Bet is Batman. There's nobody in the world who doesn't like Batman. I do like the Batman series. Right. It's very good.

See, even people who are not into it, like I'm not into comics at all. The Christian Bail ones. I think Batman's really good. To clarify. Sure, sure, sure. So you could do superheroes. Um, this is another risky move. Just almost probably at least as risky as the Magic the Gathering one. But you could go and find an anime.

Oh, there's so much there.

There's so many. Yeah. And so I'll throw out a few like Attack on Titan. What's another one? Shoot, I only know the Japanese phrase because I did all my anime references for my sister.

I think it's called Hero No Boku Academia. Um, and then there's like two others that will come to me. One Punch Man. You could get into one of these animes and every time somebody asks you, hey, you know, tonight might be a really good time to like, we've got five hours to kill. Let's watch a Lord of the Reans movie. All you have to say is, oh, but the new one Punch Man episode just came out. Oh, how about we do that instead? So these are strong deflection.

It's really hard to counter these. I like that these have a depth to them. You know what I mean? Like a lot of, there's a lot of these episodes or a lot of Yeah, these are all different options. I was thinking stuff like Harry Potter or I was trying to think what else was, um, one that I came up with. But even that, like the books are good. The movies are good. The books, I like the books a lot. The movies are okay, but there's not as much depth as like some of these things I think you're mentioning. You could really deep dive.

I think there's a niche-ness here, right? Because what's really happy with Lord of the Reans is that somebody is into something so hardcore that they need to drag other people into it, right? And I feel this need every day. So I know what this is like. And what's going on with these sorts of fandoms often is this is not something you're going to, well, maybe nowadays, but it used to be, you didn't discuss this in public. You kept this to conversations with people you already knew what into this sort of scene is. So what you're trying to mine here is you're trying to, you're like launching out these minds and your depth diving to find out which one of these little fandoms is my significant other interested in.

So much to the point that they haven't mentioned it to me yet. Like, Harry Potter really acceptable publicly. Lord of the Reans really acceptable. Find one of these other hidden interests and then you'll get off the Lord of the Reans strain for at least a little while, you know? Wow. Okay.

So that's my very strong recommendation. And the main thought here is that like, there's so many different flavors of these distractions, you can just pick one. Like if you think that you can handle animation, like maybe you go full anime. Yeah.

If you have like, you really like space, choose a Star Wars or Star Trek, like there's different flavors here. So that was my first one, deflection. I love that. The next phrase or the next phase I guess is deflection isn't working. What can we do? And I thought, well, you can just like lie back and think of England, you know, you could just let it happen.

or we can, we can do a little more. Well, that's too rude. That's a, that's a relationship killer. Sorry for the bad advice guys. I don't know. I, I'm not, I try not to be the watching a movie while on my phone type of person.

Sometimes I fail. But I think the next step here is go bold, escalate. Escalate. So the aim here is they want you to get into the Lord of Reigns. Well, you'll show them how into Lord of Reigns. You frighten them off with your passion.

You frighten them off. Yes. Yes. So I have a couple options here. I'll run some past you.

Let me know if like any of these renabell if you like, some of them are like better than others. But one of the, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the first ones I thought was like, all right, you do a crash course, a crash course in Elvish. There's probably a dual lingo for it. And you start dropping Elvish into casual conversation. Ideally with people that he would be embarrassed by you dropping casual Elvish into conversation with things like his boss at the Christmas party, his cool friends. Exactly.

You show him what's why. Oh my goodness. I thought of one that goes along with this actually.

Okay. I have a pair of hobbit feet slippers. And I was just thinking, I only wear them at home. Usually when I'm watching Lord of the Rings, if my partner like full.

You see, you keep Lord of the Rings carefully segregated the way most people do.

But if my partner like put on the hobbit feet slippers and a full get up and decided to walk around multiple days outside like that, I think I would say, and they were like, oh my goodness, I love this. I'd be like, you know, maybe I need to tone down.

I need to talk about what rings at home. So I have a a couple that like worked their way up to that level, but one of my levels here was cosplay all at all times and in character.

I would be intimidated by that. I'd be like, wow, maybe we need to branch out.

Yes. And that's exactly where it goes. It's like, you are then able to stare them off and they say, um, yeah, I guess we should really get into something tame and publicly acceptable. Um, so learning at Elvish, that's one way. Um, I think that with the abundance of YouTube videos and like, and you can even run these on like three X, you know, just like a nice little subliminal, um, pitter pattern in your ear. I think that it's, it would be easy to learn enough and just stash it in your short term memory to get into some perpetual and very annoying Lord drops. You can always say they say something about Lord of the Rings and you say, wow. Actually, yes.

You know, and if you, I feel like repetition could be good here too. Like maybe you know, only a few like of those facts, but every single time they bring it up, you just drop those same facts. Yes.

Yes. You don't need to learn that many. And actually it might even be better if you drop Ron facts. So they're talking about Bilbo and you bring up some other character whose name also starts with B Baron, I guess. I'm blaming on B names.

But like you can just drop Ron facts. There are ways to escalate even within this, um, which I think is hilarious. I think that having general complaints about things that, you know, you don't actually care about, but you've looked up on YouTube, um, things that you could complain about. So you got to pick some ridiculous ones, right?

You got to be picking things like, wow, I am disgusted at how this movie does not have Tom Bombadilla and you should say this within the first three minutes of the first movie.

Honestly, that might put them in defend mode though. That could backfire. So are there Tom Bombadilla fans? No, I feel like.

Are you one of them? I just feel like I'm so much of a sweet. I'd be like, no, like I would, I would go into like. Okay. No, you are probably right. You're probably right. So this would not deter you.

Well, I'm disgusted that he's not in it. I feel like I would argue. I would argue for him not being in it.

Oh, I see. But it wouldn't throw you off. It wouldn't like to put you out of your career. It's gonna be like, ah, we need to discuss more. My life after this. Shoot. Well, tell me how you think about this because I also had the thought of what if you just gave solidly bad tapes all the time? I'd be just. So you're. Yeah.

So you're like, you're watching the movies or maybe you're reading the books, whatever, and you have tapes like this. Fain or did nothing wrong. He was right about everything. Saruman didn't go far enough. I prefer Dandalf when he was dead. Oh, that would break. The battle scenes are lame. They're totally underwhelming. The legless and dimly friendship is overrated. Eridorn is a Mary Sue.

Oh, gosh, I feel like this would this would

definitely be like, I don't want to watch this with you anymore, but also it could damage a little bit of your heart. Okay. So we got to like, so all of our like defensive maneuvers have to be.

They have to, if they're offensive like this, right? Our defensive offensive maneuvers. You have to toe the line of getting the Lord of Reigns out of your life and keeping the relationship exactly. So this, these sound like dangerous maneuvers. They have to be suddenly done. Yes. Yeah. One of the other bad tapes I thought about was, was a golem is the most relatable character, but honestly, he might be. He's kind of his. He is so quotable.

Honestly, I love him. I, especially when he talks to himself, I think it's hilarious. Like you have no friends.

Nobody likes you. Anyways, so that was facetious, but after I wrote a town, I was like, actually, that's actually a good take. Okay. So deflection and escalation. I looked at these and I think

you're, you're trying to be subtle here. You're not outright saying, no, I hate Lord of the Reigns. I don't want to have partake in it ever, ever, ever. You're trying to be subtle. You're trying to let them down easy. And I think there comes a point where that doesn't work anymore. And so now we, we move on to true and real bargaining. I don't have a lot to say here because I think this is just a relationship negotiation where you straight up say to them, I don't know if it's an ultimatum or not, but you straight up say to them, I will trade your Lord of the Reigns, watching for X, Y, and Z.

And I don't know if that's like never having to take out the trash again or never having to put dinner. Like here's the theme. I think how a note to the wise, you can drive a hard burden.

Somebody who wants to watch Lord of the Reigns with you is gonna pay a high price. And I think it's, yeah, don't underestimate your power here. How motivated are they? I love this. They should be motivated. So I think you could get out of dinner for like a year, potentially dishes for longer.

I love this. That's so smart. I know I wish my partner was more of a Lord of the Reigns person, so I could use that. You're just going to have to find his buttons. You have to find it. You know, it's so funny. I feel like this bargaining piece, I had a couple of ideas here. So one of them that I had, and I feel like yours is saying, I don't want to, like you.

I will do this, but only at a certain price, right? And then you make it nice and steep. Nice and steep.

Mine was a little bit more of the in between of like, Hey, I don't really want to watch the movies with you, but I would be willing to make you a second breakfast every Saturday. So you were like doing like, exactly. I don't really want to rewatch the extended versions with you, but I'll dress up as a hobbit for Halloween.

Exactly. Like, couldn't you do stuff subtly where you're like, I'll participate in this hobby with you, right? Like we can dress up as Halloween. I can make like a fun little second breakfast this, this next. It would be like interacting on the peripherals. Exactly.

Like, right? Okay. That's clever. So like I can, I'm a good partner.

I'll participate in this hobby with you, but I don't necessarily have to go. All the way in. So that was one thing I had. Okay.

The next one I had was a little bit. I don't know if it quite goes in the negotiation part, but I think this is more of like an intervention section. Excellent. It feels like a bargain. I think that fits in the, in the category for sure.

This happened to me in real life. I am growing up. We used to play Lord of the Rings Traveille Pursuit as a family and used to. Used to. And my partner was so sweet. And for the holidays one year, he bought me a vintage version of the Lord of the Rings Traveille Pursuit, like what I had when I was a kid. So we could play. And I'm so excited. I started reading the cards and memorizing the answer. Like anything that I didn't know, just off the top of the head from watching the

movies, I was like, I'm gonna know the next time. And he got to the point where he said, Steph, we've pulled this out a couple of times to play and it's not very fun anymore. You're like trying to so hard to memorize these things. He's like, we can't play with people if you're going to be like this. So I think sometimes you just have to say, Hey, you know, honey, I love that you love this, but we can't. We got it.

Yeah, we got it. So. So I think this is one of those elements or one of those times where you stored up a relationship. Um, I don't know what to call this man. Capital. Yeah. You've intrude relationship points in capital. Yeah. And every once in a while you have to spend it.

Exactly.

Okay. So also in like, you know, on the tell end here, we have just a few more things. Um, also on the closer to open warfare as opposed to subtle warfare. Okay.

Um, we have, we have two tactics here. And the first year is parody and satire. I think this is for the especially clever. Um, but Lord of the Rings has been around for long enough. Like I don't know that I'd be able to come up with my own parody of Lord of the Rings because I love it too much.

Um, but it's been around long enough that people have. So you just got to find like those really funny movies, like, or, or YouTube's or memes, things like that. Uh, like they're taking the hobbits to Iceland. You just seen that around the house all day. Oh, so they're sick of it. So they're sick of it. And they can't abide any mention of it ever again. I mean, that might be a relationship to our nose.

Also frustrate your own mental health. But if you're, if you're into, you know, repeat,

maybe you put your plugs in and you play it out loud, but you don't hear it. So you can weaponize the, the parodies and the satires because they're on the peripheral.

They don't actually have anything to do with the real story, but they're close enough there about Lord of the Rings enough that you might be able to make the whole topic like verboten. Yeah. Um, so this is an option.

And then for the last, I felt like there was a nuclear option. Oh, and I felt like this would be to, this is the ultimate cosplay to only speak and act as golem would and just maintain that until they back down. Oh my gosh. Cause there's got to be some YouTube video that has, you know, however much screen time dolem has, it's maybe 20 minutes. You spend 20 minutes of your life watching that thing. And then you have every, every quote, every matterism that you need to weaponize to get out of Lord of the Rings for the rest of your life.

I may or may not have bought a life size golem poster for a birthday party of mine once and put it in the bathroom. I was decorating and, oh my gosh, I could not.

I, it terrified me every time I went into the bathroom, even though I knew it was there, I put it up and I, yeah, that would, that would definitely freak me out. Yeah.

And I think you should start subtly. Oh, just like with the way you speak. Yeah. Just slowly edge into it.

This is like, start talking to yourself like that.

You start talking to yourself. You know, you're like, I don't know. You're at the scene doing the dishes. You're scrubbing the cast iron. You, you put some oil on it.

You rub it in and as you're rubbing it, you say my prayer. So there are just ways of creepifying everything you do in a golem like manner. And I think it's worth attempting if there is no other avenue out and if your partner is perfect in every other way.

I also just to add an extra piece, the bald cap, a bald cap with a couple of hairs. Honestly, you could just put that on and live with that day to day. And I would ask you to stop.

Actually, I love that. I did not. My vision was too limited. I did not see far enough. You know the rubber ones. You put on. Yes. Yes. It's horrible.

I feel like that would be enough for me to say that's okay. Yeah.

Yeah. How do we can get into? We can watch a different movie. I just went, that's all I had. Those were my first thoughts as like, somebody's trying to drag you to eat and screaming into the Lord of the Reeds. This is how you resist. I do think that we should later do an episode of how to responsibly evangelize and successfully convert people.

I love that. No, this is super fun. Yeah. Excellent. That's wrap for us. Thanks for joining guys. See you next time.

Ciao.