Fantasy writing - why go small?

[0:06] Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy and today I'm joined by our friend Jacob Rennaker and we've decided today to talk about smaller than average folk, the fantasy trope about having the small people, like hobbits, but not just hobbits, and what happens when fantasy takes that direction. So, the first thing I suppose we're asking ourselves as fantasy creatives is what is happening, what is the potential that you give yourself as a writer when you start playing around with scale. And I've come up with a few concepts for this. So Jacob, I'm going to throw at you my first one, which is I think that small usually means vulnerable or childlike. Would you. [1:07] Agree that that's a sort of common outcome if you choose to go small? Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely do, that's you see that in things like Gulliver's Travels, right, where somebody's kind of forced, I guess, especially when a character is forced into a situation where they're suddenly smaller than they're used to be. So, there's certainly something about, yeah, kind of a challenging one's place in the world and kind of opening one up to seeing things from, yeah, a more vulnerable a position, a station, if you will. So yeah, absolutely, absolutely agree. It's, it kind of pulls, seems to pull the rug out from under you and puts you in a position of vulnerability. And I think the hope is humility, but. [1:59] Oftentimes it takes a while for the characters to get to that point. It could be the lesson they learn, of course. But I was thinking where you've got small characters within cultures where they are relatively smaller than everyone else. So, classic situation, the hobbits with men and elves. And I was struck, I went at the weekend to hear the two towers done as an orchestral performance at the Royal Albert Hall, which is a fabulous thing. If you ever get a chance to see the film played with a live orchestra and choir, it's amazing. But one of the lines that came up to me in that film version, which is from, I think, from the books, which is Aragorn saying to Emma, trying to describe the hobbits, he says. [2:44] They're small, they're like children in your eyes. And I think that's really the dynamic with the Hobbits is that they are, in a way, the thing that has to be protected. Traditionally, that was your damsel in distress. But because there is a lack of female characters, as we all know, I think in a way, the Hobbits fulfill that function as the Fellowship gathers around them to protect them. And there is something about them being small, which makes them even more precious, not in the sense of the ring, but everyone feels more of a duty of care, shall we say, to the hobbits than they would have otherwise. So say if some warrior like Aragorn is carrying the ring, the dynamic changes instantly. Whereas with the hobbits, you immediately get this desire to protect, which I think is a really interesting way of getting across that role, that very often is given to a child or back in the day to a woman and the Hobbits are doing that job. The perspective of being small and vulnerable [3:56] Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah, yeah, that's great. And like, I love that line, though, they would only be, you know, children to your eyes. So like, there's something that from their perspective, they don't see themselves as children, but from people from other situations, it's through the lens of the other. And in that case, right, the protector. So I think that, yeah, so eliciting something about someone who is smaller that elicits and someone who's larger and more able, that kind of elicits a desire to protect. Yeah, so I think that's a great dynamic. [4:32] And it led me to thinking about that thing you've just said about they're not small in their own eyes. They're perfectly to scale in Hobbiton. Hobbiton, they call them, yeah. And it made me think of some of the animal characters in the Narnia series, particularly Reepercheep, who is a brave captain amongst... He takes no prisoners. He wants to be out there fighting with everybody. And yet there is the humor that he is a mouse, but a formidable mouse. And you get it in Puss in Boots as well in the version of those stories that Dreamworks have done, the comedy of the small warrior. So that's another line in this where we see them as being more vulnerable, but they're also very proud of their own status and defensive of their status. So there's a comedic potential when someone who's small thinks they're enormous, I suppose, is one way of putting it. Right, the Napoleon syndrome. Yeah, well, not so much though, because by their own light, they are of course, Sareepacheep is a perfectly ordinary sized mouse. So amongst his comrades, he's got nothing to apologize for. He's probably quite a tall mouse. I don't know. Like a tail at one point. [5:55] So moving on for the potential, we've got sort of the vulnerability and the sort of comedy and, emotions around that. I think you've already mentioned Gulliver's travel and that, brings us to another big thing which is the possibility for satire. How do you see the satire playing? Because Gulliver Travel has set up the sort of satire potential of scale really for the rest of literature going forward from there. Yeah, it's a work of satire, right, and looking at the world from different angles, from forcing a different perspective upon you and where you're, right. So if you think that your assumption is I am the norm, I am the standard size, this, is what the universe was constructed around, was not me being this size and in this position station in life and then either really amplifying that, right? So, when Gulliver's visit, you know, he's visiting the Lilliputians, right? So, they're small and he's to scale, he's much larger but there are certain things that he's forced to reckon with himself and is being even larger. [7:12] Better or is there there's the whole, you know, number of problems that come into play there but but then when he's also scale shifts there and he's smaller, yeah, so it's really, again, I think I mentioned that this idea of like challenging your assumptions and usually perspective of being the center of the universe, that there's something about forcing a change size-wise that requires people to shift the way that they view the world itself. Yeah. And you see that, I mean, you see that in like silver chair, right? Where they visit, right, the land of the giants. And just in terms of like their size, they're trying to figure out these cracks in the ground, that turn out to be a large message that when you're to scale that you could see actually what the entire message says, but they just think these are chasms in the ground and the giants, you know, they're obviously being kind of taken advantage of because of their smaller size. But. The narrator gives us a little bit more perspective of later and they themselves understand once they have a little bit of distance they're able to see what the message was. [8:26] That due to their size and proximity to that they weren't able to grasp fully before and the situation itself that they weren't able to understand it took kind of a little bit of distance, to see that. Yeah they also play up on their size don't they when they realize that they're basically being fattened for the pot. And Jill plays up being the little cutie, to enable them to get the opportunity to escape and all that and manipulating the giants. [9:00] Not so much a satire there, but it's just making use of the scale. Another place where it is a satire in famous fantasy literature, of course, is the time machine in the future where humanity has become separated into two kinds of races, a kind of hulky underground race and a sort of ethereal thin overground race. And it's as though the traits within humanity have been pushed. [9:30] Apart. And that is definitely a commentary on the development of society at the time HG Wells was writing industrialization, the industrial worker, and all sorts of things. So a clever way of looking at this dystopian future, this future casting that goes on there. So yeah, satire is definitely there. And then one thing which I think should not be forgotten And it's the whimsy that you have if you go small. Whimsy and the delight of seeing the miniature world [10:05] And I was thinking here of books like The Borrowers series. I don't know if that's well known in the US. It's about a miniature family who live, so they cobble together their environment from matchboxes and safety pins. And they go to sea on the river in a little boat. It was made into a BBC TV series over here. So, it's quite well known as a sort of my era children's book. And there was of course Mrs. Pepperpot, who was just another delightful series when Mrs. Pepperpot gets shrunk, a bit like the Tom Thumb story. So, there's the whimsy to that to suddenly seeing the world and how the world would appear if you were but a couple of. [10:56] Inches high. And that led me to thinking about Beatrix Posser because in a way. [11:01] Majority of her stories, particularly things like the Tale of Two Bad Mice, is definitely showing the whimsy of scale. Whimsy of scale. So the mice hunker munker and. [11:17] The other one, Tomasina? No, that's the name of one of the dolls. Anyway, I've forgotten. Hunkamonka, I definitely remember as the name. They move into the doll's house in the nursery, and then get very annoyed that the fires aren't real and the plaster food is actually not edible and they start smashing it all up. I loved that story as a child because I could really relate to this thing of the disappointment of it not being real and the idea of the mice moving into, what is your playhouse. So there's this whimsy and that connected thought and much more of the current generation. It led me to thinking about Ant-Man. Have you seen the first Ant-Man film? ARJ Yes, I've seen all of them. Yeah. Yeah, of course you got a kiddie so of course you're going to see all of this. But I absolutely adored the way the big finale happened on a train set. I was much more interested in the hilarity of seeing like Thomas the Tank Engine being used as one of the big set piece things at that scale, like the miniature world, and thought that was just wonderful and that's what Ant-Man should be doing in my view. The World of Miniature People Stories [12:33] That uses that scale thing to whimsical advantage. Have you got any other favourite, perhaps over in the US, miniature people stories which I and European listeners might not be aware of? The one that comes to mind is in part the scale, but it's also in terms of the nature of the being, and that is the Indian in the Cupboard series. This is kind of a precursor. In the vein of Velveteen Rabbit, where an animal or a toy story where toys actually have feelings, thoughts, some sort of inner life. And Indian Cupboard series, right, follows the, adventures and misadventures of these small figures as, you know, called cowboys and Indians as they're referred to. And, you know, what happens when the doors are closed, when the children are away, that sort of thing. So, yes, that's another one area to the- and you You see that in the Toy Story films, it's really accessible, in part it's their size. You see the world, the camera is entirely from their angle, right? So what does it look like? Under the bed is their norm, right, where the dust bunnies and everything are, so that's their. [14:01] Odds and ends that have rolled under the bed, like that's their geography. So it's interesting, yeah, so seeing the world from that perspective and how silly some things seem when you're, pointed, when you're on the ground kind of pointing up, seeing what things other people are concerned with, that people that are kind of closer to the ground and smaller don't seem to be as concerned about. That's something they definitely see satirically used in some of those films. Of course, thank you for mentioning Toy Story, because that would have been a big gap if we'd forgotten that. I love how the little plastic soldiers all move. They can't move their legs separately because they're on those. The detail of that is so charming. But because you're convinced by that world as being a complete world, it doesn't mean it's low stakes. The stakes there are high about survival, friendship. [15:01] Being separate, finding your way home. They're all big stakes but within a small world. Yeah, sometimes the stakes are higher because you're smaller. I'm reminded of the film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and not so much the sequels. It's changing perspective. You're shrunk. And so something that seems just everyday, ordinary, like the sprinkler going off like that could have disastrous effects on these children who are the size of the head of a pin. These drops of water become deadly projectiles. Exactly. [15:40] So that's yeah, then that's something that is yeah, just great. I'm saying every day like what does it look like to be an ant like or something that usually you might want to step on or might be a nuisance, how a small creature can actually you can connect with and can actually help. Shifting Perspectives and Reevaluating Assumptions [15:56] If given an opportunity to. So there's lots of things that you can do again with that kind of shift in perspective and make you look at the world, reevaluate your assumptions about something. Is it valuable? Is it trash? Is this worth discarding? Is it something that should be, valorized? All those are questions that when you shift perspective, they really, raise those questions. Okay. And so the last thing I thought of and do come up with any more in this line. The last thing I think that's happening is about access. So, if you go small. [16:32] You get access to worlds which you would otherwise not be able to see. So, you mentioned like the ant colony. So, that reminds me of films like Ants, for example. And then there's the traditional tale of the ant and the grasshopper. So, you get access to little worlds that you wouldn't, otherwise seen. And Grasshopper, of course, is another satyr. So, they can do more than one thing at the same time. But I was thinking particularly of Alice in Wonderland, because that is one of the most famous scenes of shrinking and changing scale. But there's the idea of going through the small door to this magical world. And if only you get it right, that, idea of a secret access if you get to be small enough to slip through down the rabbit hole. Again, it presumably means that rabbit holes aren't person size. So there's a sense of access there. And that leads me to think of the films where I can't remember the name of the film, but I remember watching it where they shrink to go inside a human body. [17:35] That's Inner Space. Well, there's an episode of the Magic School Bus that does the same thing but it was done yeah there's a martin short uh film called inner space yeah where they shrunk down and it accidentally injected or purposefully i can't remember which one it was injected into somebody so you're seeing the human body from the inside of the perils of being microscopic yeah, yeah so again it gives you access to this new world it's a kind of portal in a way by going small. And I think all of this is joined together by the idea that in fantasy, what you're doing by scale is reframing whatever is your ordinary world by changing the scale. It becomes a commentary on the ordinary world. Okay, so let's go back in time and work out when people first started doing this. Any thoughts on that? What's the earliest? Exploring Small-Scale Stories in World Mythologies [18:32] Small-scale story that you could think of? I've got a couple of ones I came up with. Yeah, that's a great question in terms of world mythologies. The Emphasis on Large Scale Creatures in Greco-Roman Mythology [18:47] Typically, in the Mediterranean, Greco-Roman, there isn't, which is interesting in and of of itself is that there isn't an emphasis on small creatures usually, right? So, it's on large scale or standard size and sometimes the humans are dwarfed by the scale of some of these monsters, creatures. So, for example, right? The Odyssey, right? So, you have the Cyclops and it becomes, it's the humans are the ones like they're kind of consistently, put in their place, or they're diminished when set against the gods or some of these larger forces of nature. And it's something similar happening in Egyptian mythology, Middle Eastern mythologies. There doesn't seem to be much of an emphasis on small creatures. It's more like, is the creature ethereal or not? But the scale, they don't seem to be terribly concerned about scale from that perspective, although you do have emphasis on certain animals. Yeah, I think it comes in animal tales, doesn't it? So something like Aristophanes, the frog, frogs using it for comedic purposes. Little People in Celtic and Viking Folklore [20:10] But I think you're right. I think where you go to find small people is probably over into, again, this is if people out there listening are coming up with, oh, there's obviously this, do let us know, it's, you know, we can learn. But I was thinking that the sort of the classic little people of the hills that you get from the sort of Celtic Northern stories and of course in the Viking world you've got dwarves, hooray, here enter the dwarves. So the little people doing the Celtic thing first, Obviously, the little people, the diminutive there. [20:50] That's a whole mixture. So, the other folk, the Sith, you do get the sort of tall, elven, dangerous folk that are the precursors to Tolkien's elves. But you do have a whole kind of realm of the household spirits and sprites that have a diminutive aspect to them. The pixies, The brownies, the leprechauns, of course, we get leprechauns, which then lead into folk figures like Puck and Robin Goodfellow, those things. And they're very much more of a domestic level, interfering in the household, they're making the milk go sour. In that wonderful Elzen the shoemaker story, which is that an enhanced Christian Anderson story, I think. Feels like one. But it's probably picking up on an older tradition of the idea that your housework might be done if you leave out a reward. Wishful thinking there. Wish it worked. [21:56] So, there is this figures which then became used again and again in the sort of Victorian fairy tale tradition and the 18th century tradition were definitely from that kind of fairy tale folkloric inheritance of the little people in the hills. That's where I see it strongly in our own culture. And they're not spirits. So it's different from the idea of a ghost or something else that might have like a frailty to it. They're another kind of creature. The elusive nature of little people and ghosts [22:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that there's, yeah, that is like has physical, it has physicality to it. It's not, yeah, it's not incorporeal, but it's corporeal, but it's so, small or elusive that you can't see it. So like functionally, it's functioning like, like a ghost, a spirit of some sort because you can't see it unless you're the same thing with ghosts. You can only see it if you're catch it almost unaware or at the right time or under very particular circumstances. So yeah, that is interesting that that there is really it seems to be in the you know kind of uh you know the traditions in the British Isles. Uh the little people are largely kind of in some cases agents of chaos, right? So they're they're they're they're fickle, right and that's where you see in JM Barry how JM Barry depicts fairies is they only have enough room for one emotion at a time and it's either you know, they're either angry or they're happy and so it's just it's gonna flip a switch because they don't have room for more complex emotions. So it seems that that kind of seems to be a trend in those stories about little people is they're either angry, livid, terribly offended, or they're happy-go-lucky, cheerful, and singing songs all the time, until you say the wrong thing, and then they hate you, and your four generations beyond. [23:59] You. Yes, because the Tinkerbell character in Peter Pan, obviously Jane Barry is inheriting the whole Victorian building on this. But in that, she's very cruel at times. Yeah, so it's a bit like a sort of like animal or something very small child about that, the tantrum. And as you say, flipping the switch to be kind or helpful at different moments, a bit arbitrary in the way they react to things as well. Chaos and arbitrariness in the reactions of little people [24:38] That's where the chaos comes in. Yeah, and I'm thinking like returning to the hobbits for a moment there, looking at the inner life of hobbits, right? So Tolkien depicts them or they were depicts them at least through the lens of the narrator, which is, you know, if the Lord of the Rings is kind of written filtered through Frodo's lens, looking at the hobbits, they have a very, they're depicted with a very kind of simple life, right? So they don't have this kind of, they don't seem to be within their communities, don't seem to have like a really complex inner life of emotions, that they're simple. You see in the depiction of Hobbiton, right? There's their happy-go-lucky or the certain hobbits are angry, there's no, not much of a middle. Frodo kind of appears to be an anomaly there, but then he kind of expands, his inner life certainly expands as he leaves. That area where these other people kind of have these simple either-or kind of desires and as he gets out into the world and encounters different cultures that have different perspectives and even just seeing that hobbits are not the norm like that that size is not the standard for which the rest of the scale in which the rest of the world functions. So I think you can kind of see echoes. [26:05] Of that in the depiction of the hobbits as being just rather rather simple creatures I don't know if that's tied to the size and that if it's assumed that the larger you are the more complex the more room you have for emotions but you don't have that in say the Odyssey or once you get to an even larger scale then those creatures are depicted as being sometimes buffoons right so they're of like typical giants like in Harry Potter, right? So you have the giants are seen as kind of more foolish. Complexity and foolishness associated with size in mythical creatures [26:40] And you see that kind of in Silverchair to a certain extent and in Narnia larger, but they're not, you would imagine perhaps that if smaller creatures are more simple, then the larger you grow, the more complex you can become and smarter you could become. But really, there's a scale, there seems to be kind of this Goldilocks zone where if you're very small, maybe you're too simple, get to be a size of a human being, then that's kind of where you can figure things out, you're intelligent, but then once you get kind of larger and the farther away you get from that, then kind of the more simplistic kind of like a return to that. So on either ends, either the giants and the very little people in some of these tales, that's where you lack complexity and you're getting kind of to the extremes there. So that's an interesting way of looking at scale and what is significant and who actually has the intelligence in the situation. Emotional intelligence even. I wonder if what's actually going on is that it's more of an Arcadian thing. Inheriting a Bucolic Paradise-like Setting [27:56] That actually they're inheriting the idea of almost like a bucolic paradise that they're in, And a bit like in As You Like It or The Winter's Tale. The Idealized World of Hobbits and Middle Earth [28:12] The idea that somehow living in nature is more natural, and therefore simpler. Because there aren't many hobbits with a drive for power, are there? And there's a lot who... There's a couple of bad eggs, but most people are not that corruptible. There's a few cowards, but, they don't want to take over the world. They're happy to stay within their limits. And even the hobbits are happy, the ones who go abroad, they come back relatively happy to stay within the limits that they've been given. So I wonder if it's that, because I think I think the hobbits are like an ideal person, as opposed to being, they are us. They are the way we relate to Middle Earth, because the other people beyond the borders of the Shire often feel more like mythic figures. They've got these, they speak in a more elevated language and they've got long lineages. So in a way, the hobbits are us. An idealized version of English people, less without any empire. [29:34] That era I think is how I read it. So we've been thinking about the sort of fairy tale aspect and the puck and the pixies and leprechauns. I think there's also a connection here to the sort of world of toys. This is why I think scale is very often associated children's fiction and most of the examples we've come up with so far is definitely aimed at children. And of course, children are obsessed about how tall they are for a very good reason because how you grow is really important and it's remarked on all the time and you personally are setting yourself, you're looking up to the adult world and wanting to join it or not join it, depending if you're Peter Pan. So you can see why it gets associated with children's fiction. [30:23] But I think there's also an element of toys going on here. So, it's like a kind of play. So, children very often will play with dolls and soldiers and things and manipulate them to tell stories. So, I think there's that connection too, that a lot of the fantasy involving this does come from that world. Like Barbie, we just had Barbie film. Barbie is actually not, I don't know how Margot Robbie is, five something, five, six, five, seven, five, eight, maybe. Barbie is that tall. And of course, they're playing that whole film revolved around us all understanding that the Barbie world is a small one. With the play toys, the dog, the house, the boat, everything being the kind of thing you'd played with as a kid. But it also had, there's nothing much beyond beach and house. [31:23] The world is limited. And so I think that another place where we look at scale, and tell stories is to do with toys. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that reminds me of the Lego movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah, great example. Films, right? So another one, so complete like, so it has a consistent set of rules, you know, scenario, culture, but then kind of at the end of the film, that's when things kind of step back larger that you see like this is, you know, you have the, this is all a play, a play world that is being created here. And how does that happen? And it's, you know, some of it's used satirically, But it's, yeah, so there's very much that this is a smaller, this is a world, the smaller world is a world in which sometimes anything is possible and can sometimes show you the unnecessary limits that. [32:23] Adults, standard sized people, place on the world that you don't have in some of these smaller worlds. It's kind of a, almost a microcosm for imagination and the expansive nature of imagination, but you're doing it on a smaller scale. [32:41] And so, that's really, you know, the lesson, in a sense, for LEGOs is that there's, you can do anything, that the possibilities are practically endless, or the number of combinations, the variety is endless, and the problems occur when you try to solidify, right? Right? So, using their- there it's the- the- the craggle, the super glue, um, it's their super weapon and so it's that- that rigidity, um, that the adults, that the father brings in to this world is trying to establish order and just like kind of stasis whereas the child wants to explore and play and so this is a world where that- those kind of ideas of stasis and kind of transformation, change, exploration, where those are kind of pitted against each other, exploring again those concepts in our own life. But yeah, the scale, when we're talking about playing with toys, there's possibilities that are opened up that children have access to because they're not as rigid in their way of this is what you use. This object can only be used as a toilet paper roll is meant for the trash. It's only meant to spool around toilet paper, or could it be used as a telescope? It could be used as the top of a smokestack. [34:04] It could be used as just, you know, the possibilities are endless there, but it's on that kind of smaller scale that children and the childlike have access to, that is kind of being heightened in those sort of kind of smaller toy world settings. [34:21] I'd forgotten there, of course, there is the live action parts in the first Lego movie, isn't there? I'd forgotten that because I only remember, I thought it was a brilliant film, a clever film, the inventiveness. But of course, within the Lego world, everybody is the same size as each other. It's like, that is their world, so therefore that's the norm. But having that outer a real world part of the story where we see it's being built and imagined by the child, adds that meta level, which I think allows for the satire and the social comment and all these other things. Which happens of course in the Barbie movie in more greater length because she goes into the real world and goes out expecting it to be a, you know, women in being able to realize their full potential and finds it's a bit of a bro culture, which Ken. The Influence of Toys and Toy Worlds in Fantasy Literature [35:17] I don't know if you've seen the film, but Ken takes that back into the Barbie world, having discovered because he's been emasculated literally in the Barbie world. And that's where the comedy comes from. Anyway, so yeah, that that's a there's a toy aspect here. And let's turn now to the Hobbit, which of course, is why we're talking about this, because we were always, you know, we tend to go back to thinking about Tolkien. In A Hole in the Ground, there lived a hobbit was where he started. Though Tolkien did say that he was aware that perhaps one of the influences on thinking of these little creatures was from a book called The Land of the Snurks by a writer called Wick Smith, E. A. Wick Smith, something like that. Wick Smith, W. Y. K. E. Smith. That's not to say that he borrowed the idea from Wick Smith, but. [36:12] I think it's more of a sense of this is one of the streams that he had gone into his imagination, one of the sources. Because there are also lots of diminutive creatures in the George McDonald books, which were one of the big fantasy writers of the Victorian period, Christina Rossetti in her poems. Very often, it's a child interacting with these small creatures there. So, the scale isn't so huge between the child and the creature. And I was also reminded of the Charles Kingsley book. [36:52] Water Babies. I don't know if you ever read that. I read a sort of slightly boulderized version because I think it's very moralistic in an unacceptable Victorian way now. But I read a version of this with wonderful, I think it was Mabel Lucy Atwell, illustrations. And that's the story of a chimney sweep who basically, I think he dies. I didn't realize this as a child, but he goes into the river and joins the world of the water babies where everyone is washed clean and it's a kind of very heavy handed religious metaphor. But there's something quite magical about the world he joins of the water babies. I don't suppose they, read it anymore because actually when I think about it as an adult, I'm thinking, my goodness, what's really going on in that book? But anyway, the idea of there being this this world that you go into to escape from a life of being a chimney sweep. [37:52] So all of these must have been familiar to Tolkien because it's very much a cultural phenomenon of the late Victorian period. So what do you think about the successful use of scale within The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings? Having thought of all the things we've been mentioning about vulnerability, satire, whimsy, access, what's he actually, what creative uses making of scale. [38:21] Yeah, so you see it's interesting. Yes. It's a great question to see it's interesting to see, The how the different characters react to the hobbits, right? So you start out in the world of the hobbits This is kind of your natural Setting and then that world, you know individuals from that world are kind of thrust into this adventure But then seeing how others who are not really familiar with them, right because their culture has kind of been, and isolated kind of purposefully. So just kind of minding their own business, like you were saying, like no real sense for drive or aspiration to colonize or really go beyond their own communities. And so seeing how the others, the lessons that the other characters learn from them or in cases where larger characters, underestimate what they're capable of, right? So yeah, for me, that's one of the things that I definitely see Tolkien doing there is if you have this kind of small idealized group. Simple Desires in Conversation with Cultures [39:28] With simple desires, I would say simple pure or pure desires that when that's brought into conversation with cultures. Contrasting cultures: Mechanization vs. Living in nature [39:41] Where there are different priorities, right? when you have the mechanization, right? Where you have Saruman is, right, kind of this kind of stereotypical industrialist. And his concerns and what he is doing is on a real contrast to what the hobbits are doing and they're living in nature, right? And just kind of sustaining themselves off of what they can, not even what they can farm, because they're not like turning themselves into large-scale farmers, it's just small plots of land, exactly what they need, and then seeing how the others are stripping the land for more than they can ever use themselves. So putting those cultures into conflict, into conversation with each other, you see them underestimating the hobbits, right? That there's no way that these hobbits would be any sort of threat because they are so simple. But that's, again, challenging the perspective, challenging the assumptions of some of the people in positions of power from the villain's end, right? So their whole plan is that having a hobbit take the ring to Mordor is something that Sauron would never expect because of Sauron's assumptions about what is brave, who is courageous. [41:05] And the idea that just kind of a full frontal fight and the assumption that they would want to possess the ring for themselves, that's just completely turned on its head by the Hobbit's culture of in a sense, you know, it's a quest to give something away. It's a quest to empty oneself, and you see that in different traditions as well. But like that's, I think that's a big, one of the largest things from the antagonist to the protagonist side. But then you also see that within the protagonists themselves, how the hobbits challenge, you know, the dwarves, the elves and the humans' sense of what is good, what's worth fighting for. Hobbits challenging other races' notions of what is good [41:49] What's worth enjoying in life, and what is life at its core. So I really like seeing that. I think Tolkien's doing some interesting things there with that sense of scale with the other characters and how they view it. I think it's also important politically. So thinking about it as an examination of power, that they would not have been able to agree on anybody else carrying the ring. Hobbiton, the shire is kind of Switzerland. It's small enough so they don't actually stand to. [42:25] Gain. Frodo does actually finally succumb, but even if he earlier on said, right, I'm going to put the ring on, his power would be in proportionate to his size and he'd be squashed like a bug by Sauron pretty quickly because he doesn't have magic like Galadriel or Gandalf. So, he knows that, although of course, the temptation is there. But what he does have is resilience. And there's often, it's mentioned a couple of times by Gandalf that this small race of people with their feet on the ground, people of the Earth, they're able to resist that power. And that must be partly to do with the fact that the temptation is not so huge. If Aragorn could put it on and solve the problems, he could march in and turn over the Dark Tower and all the rest of it, but then was set up as the next tyrant. The Hobbits are outside that cycle and it's part of their smallness and modesty and their limited ambition that actually makes them like that. And I think that's really. [43:41] That's Kenny, that's a good way of showing up the politics and having a joint enterprise that they can all get behind. When I was thinking about this though, because I think we all sort of know that about the Hobbits, but it did remind me that actually in the first book, in The Hobbit. [44:03] They don't spend much time in environments where Bilbo is anything then slightly shorter than everybody else because he's traveling with dwarves and they go to a world with goblins, which doesn't seem but they seem relatively similar scale. And the only place where it really gets noticeable the scale is different is at Bjorn's house. That's like the moment when everything is bigger. And I think Bjorn is bigger anyway. So he's like the equivalent of a giant. And I think the scale aspect is much less relevant in The Hobbit than it is in Lord of the Rings. It fulfills a different function. He's like a... Like the junior, like the little brother who goes along with the dwarves as opposed to. [44:52] Significantly smaller than everybody else. CB Yeah, that's a really good observation. I think the intended audience is, I think, at least one of the explanations for that, right? So if the Hobbit has its genesis in stories to his children, they would be more interested in adventures with other creatures, smaller creatures, and how robust this world of the smaller folks can be, as opposed to Lord of the Rings, which, certainly skews more adult and definitely brings in more of this kind of adultish concerns of politics, of economy, of culture, of all those different things. So I think that's a great observation. So, just to sort of wrap it up, because often people listening to this are maybe writing their own stories or screenplays or whatever, I'm just thinking about the artistic challenge of smallness and scale. [45:56] And I think one of the things that came to me is it is so much easier to do it in a book, than it is to do it in a film or on stage. I think that we have got so many examples of this scale that our imagination immediately connects to, that it is definitely out there as a technique to use. And obviously special effects are making it, easier to do and animation makes it easier to do in film. But I think I wouldn't shy away from it as a writer, if you thought that it would be helpful to use this scale issue, thinking of its possibilities. I think certainly in writing, it's definitely out there as a fantasy trope. [46:46] We haven't explored the world of sci-fi. But for example, there was a recent, I'm trying to think if it's by the Chinese writer, what's it called, I'm trying to remember its title. I'll have to Google its title. A Three-Body Problem. Three-Body Problem, that's right. I don't want to plot spoil it too much, but it does suggest that an alien invasion might be on a different scale from what we're expecting and that was quite a, oh, okay, it's quite a turnaround for thinking of it like that. So I think it's great fun to play around with in fiction. [47:29] Though there is the issue about it being associated with something childish and childlike, which I'm not sure is totally, It's not easy to get away from that, I don't think. Oh, one area we haven't really covered is, of course, dwarves, like Viking kind of dwarves versus people of smaller stature, with dwarfism as an issue and how they are used. But perhaps we should have a whole different section on that side of it. We'll stick to the hobbits this time, because I think that's a big issue to unpack about prejudice in the past and all sorts of things. Okay, so, Jacob, as you know, I always ask you to decide where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something. And this time, of course, it has to be where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to be small. Where would you go? Oh, yeah. And I can't, it's not fair to say Hobbiton. So let's just agree Hobbiton is kind, we both want to go there. So that's just, yeah. We'll put it out there. We'll say, what's the second best place? Yeah. Exploring the Nutcracker and its Miniature World [48:48] It seems, and this is, yeah, I have a hard time really wrapping my head around a single particular place because most of the- Shall I go? Because I've got an answer, which we haven't come up with yet. Please do. It may spark some thoughts in you, which is the Nutcracker. I'm talking about the Hoffman story as opposed to the ballet. And that does play with scale. And in that story, she, I think it's her name's Maria. she enters into... The miniature world of the Christmas tree. And the Christmas tree then becomes a vast world that she can climb up and go and visit the sugar palaces and the world of the animals, which relates to all the ornaments on the Christmas tree. And there's something very magical, very German about that. A bit of German folk culture going on there. So I think the world of the nutcracker, would be a really fascinating place to be small in because you have to be small to enter it. [49:54] I said it has to be a single fantasy location than I would say Wonderland. Yes, because you would be small to get in through the door. Right, and then the world that opens up within that just for its pure inventiveness and the scope of imagination specific because in so many places, it's the natural world that we live in, but just seen from a smaller perspective and it shows you, in a sense, it kind of renews your sense of wonder of the natural world and where you live. But yeah, so if a fantasy, specifically fantasy location, Wonderland would have to be my answer. I will accept that answer. Thank you very much, everyone, for listening. And if we've missed out your favorite story about smaller people, there's so many out there, do let us know. And anything you want to draw our attention to for future conversations, also we're very eager to pick up on your suggestions. But for today, thank you very much for listening.