Thread: The Stewards
View Single Post
Old 07-10-2018, 06:22 PM   #9
ArcusCalion
Quentingolmo
 
ArcusCalion's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 525
ArcusCalion has just left Hobbiton.
As this post is very very long, I think I will first make some general responses:

1) First thing first: WOW! This is an incredibly skillful and labor-intensive draft, and I must congratulate you, Fin, on executing it as well as you did! Your draft has convinced me that we can and should include The Quest for Erebor into this chapter.

2) To your point about shifting the short description of the events of Turin and Folcwine's sons to the previous chapter I agree.

3) In terms of Chapter headings and subheadings: I think that we do not need more than The Quest for Erebor (as the chapter name) and Of the Finding of the Ring as a subheading. I know they must both contain a LOT of information, but I think that is ok. The first subheading you suggested, A Well-Planned Party is not needed once we shift the first few paragraphs to the previous chapter, and (as I will argue below) The Broken Bridge belongs to a segment of the draft which I think should be removed entirely. Finally, Sauron Defeated, while it would be nice to have a subheading here, I think it is innacurate. He is not defeated in this case, as is made very plain by the text. He simply retreats before them, which was his plan in the end anyway, so he is in no way defeated. In addition, I think we should avoid creating chapter names from no source (like The Last Alliance) and so [i]Sauron Defeated would be better served there. To combat the length of the chapter, we can discuss making Of the Finding of the Ring into its own chapter dealing with the actual adventure of Bilbo, as opposed to The Quest for Erebor which would deal with the lead-up to the adventure.

4) The Inclusion of the 1960 Hobbit revisions: To begin, I will lay out what is used: 1) the bit about the sorrows of the Dwarves as told by Thorin, and 2) the first few chapters of the adventure from setting out from Bagend to the Trolls. First of all, I think to use the texts of these revisions is very risky. In many places they are extremely similar to the text of the Hobbit itself. As including The Hobbit in the story lies outside the scope of the project, I think to include a retelling in the exact same scope and narrative style and level of detail also goes against the project's scope. However, the two pieces used are not the same. The discussion of Thorin about the sorrows of his house (1) is (I think) different, simply because of the reason you included it: we know it happened at that point of the story, so to assume it was the same account is not unreasonable, and using the draft version is different enough from the published for it to work. However, for (2) I see no benefit to giving a highly detailed description of their adventure up to right before Rivendell, and then summarizing the entire 2/3 of the remaining narrative in one or two paragraphs. If the entire adventure must be summarized, then we should simply summarize it, instead of giving some of it in full and then reverting to summary. In addition, I worry that revising the speech of the characters in the Hobbit is tantamount to contradiction of the published work. For all of these reasons, I am fundamentally opposed to include the revised text describing their adventures (TS-QE-31 to 37).

Aside from these things mentioned, overall the composition of the draft was incredibly good, and any more detailed concerns I lay out will be restricted to differences of opinion about tense changes, or how to present Gandalf's thoughts. In terms of the structure of the additions and changes, it was phenomenally done. In the following post I will lay out my specific comments, and I'll try to have that post up at least by sometime tomorrow. I would still love to be able to see a full draft posted in the private forum, as opposed to simply selections, as it makes the commenting and editing process much easier.

Last edited by ArcusCalion; 07-11-2018 at 12:58 PM.
ArcusCalion is offline   Reply With Quote