The Stairs of Cirith Ungol [Two Towers, Ch.19]

Discussion of The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter Eight

Join Cam and Maggie for a chapter full of character-driven horror and a role-reversal villain introduction like we’ve never seen. Maggie reaches a conclusion about free will that somewhat bridges the gap between her original position and Cam’s. Sméagol breaks through the Ring’s death grip on him and Gollum long enough for us to wonder which one of them is really in charge, and if we could ever really know for sure. Cam attempts to define Frodo’s heroism as it compares (unfavorably) to past Middle-earth heroes, and we parse the Witch King’s introduction in those terms. This is another week full of twisted echoes / perversions of The Hobbit, and we think the Witch King is Frodo’s Azog. Don’t worry, it makes sense once we develop the idea.

In our Second Breakfast, we return to the concept of “fantasy horror” that we stumbled upon during last week’s discussion of Stephen King. Cam and Maggie work together to define the sub-genre and provide some examples (shout out to Brother Cinnamon) and then we explore the differences between horror and fantasy horror. This gets pretty dumb and silly, with Cam at one point earnestly presenting the argument “What if dragon bad?” Maggie steps in with a reasonable point about aesthetics, and then Cam mucks it all up again with a question about happy endings and speculative fiction that leads us to our greatest Game of Thrones hot take of all time.

Lots of love, see you next week.

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