Pulling together most mentions of Tolkien from previous posts in the last few years for easier pulling up (excluding themed posts, e.g. Get Woke, Go Broke for Rings of Power):
John Sierra's answer to If Frodo put on the one ring, could he control the wearers of the lesser rings (Galadriel, Gandalf etc) assuming they didn’t take them off immediately? - Quora - "Galadriel instructed Frodo as to the true use of the ring, domination over others. Frodo asked if he could do that, not really wanting to do it, but I suppose what Frodo was really asking was if anyone who picked up The One Ring could have access to this power. Galadriel stated that it was indeed theoretically possible for Frodo to this, but he must train his mind in the dominion over others and grow more powerful. We actually do see Frodo using The One Ring to issue a command to Gollum in Book VI that if Gollum were to attack or hinder him again, he would cast himself into the fire. Of course Gollum did attack Frodo, biting his finger off and reclaiming the ring, and he did cast himself into the fire, though with a little help from Eru Iluvatar. Frodo’s command was strong enough to get Gollum to back off in the moment, but not strong enough, he was both too weak and too good to really use Sauron’s power, and this is why Tolkien insists that Gollum’s fall was divine intervention."
George R.R. Martin | Facebook - "The Adaptation Tango...
Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and “make them their own.” It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone. No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and “improve” on it. “The book is the book, the film is the film,” they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. Then they make the story their own. They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse. Once in a while, though, we do get a really good adaptation of a really good book, and when that happens , it deserves applause. I can came across one of those instances recently, when I binged the new FX version of SHOGUN. Must confess, I was dubious when I first heard they were making another version of the Clavell novel. It has been a long time, a long long LONG time, but I read the book when it first came out in the late 70s and was mightily impressed. (I really need to give it a reread one of these days, but there are so many books, so little time). And the 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain as the Anjin was a landmark of long form television, right up with with ROOTS; why do it over again, when that version was so good? I am glad they did, though. The new SHOGUN is superb. Better than Chamberlain’s version, you ask? Hmmm, I don’t know. I have not watched the 1980 miniseries since, well, 1980. That one was great too. The fascinating thing is that while the old and new versions have some significant differences — the subtitles that make the Japanese dialogue intelligible to English speaking viewers being the biggest — they are both faithful to the Clavell novel in their own way. I think the author would have been pleased. Both old and new screenwriters did honor to the source material, and gave us terrific adaptations, resisting the impulse to “make it their own.” But don’t take my word for it. Watch it yourself. Acting, directing, set design, costume… it’s all splendid here. Along with the writing. And if SHOGUN is a big enough hit, maybe the same team will adapt some of Clavell’s other novels."
George RR Martin, Neil Gaiman Hate Hollywood Changing Source Material - "“I spent 30 years watching people make ‘Sandman’ their own. And some of those people hadn’t even read ‘Sandman’ to make it their own, they’d just flipped through a few comics or something.” Gaiman added that it was a “joy” getting to make Season 1 of “The Sandman” on Netflix, and Martin energized the crowd by saying, “We want Season 2!” Martin continued, “There are changes that you have to make — or that you’re called upon to make — that I think are legitimate. And there are other ones that are not legitimate.” He recalled adapting Roger Zelazny’s “The Last Defender of Camelot” for an episode of “The Twilight Zone” and, due to budget constraints, being forced to choose between having horses or an elaborate Stonehenge-esque set for a battle scene. (He didn’t want to make the decision, so he called up Zelazny, who chose to scrap the horses.) “That, to my mind, is the kind of stuff you are called upon to do in Hollywood that is legitimate.” An example of an “illegitimate” change, Martin said, was CBS making him include an “ordinary person” who just “tags along” in the episode in order to appeal to a “high concept.” “I was new to Hollywood,” Martin said. “I didn’t say, ‘You’re fucking morons.'” Martin related the topic to the Iron Throne in HBO’s adaptation of his “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels. “Why is the Iron Throne in ‘Game of Thrones’ not the Iron Throne as described in the books? Why is it not 15 feet high and made of 10,000 swords? Because the ceiling in our soundstage was not 15 feet high! We couldn’t fit in in there, and they weren’t willing to give us St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey to shoot our little show in.” Answering a question about the multiple perspectives that make up the Targaryen history in “Fire & Blood,” Martin said there is no one “true” account — something that reflects our real history. “The joy of history and history books is we use the word ‘probably’ a lot,” Gaiman said. Martin responded, “A lot of people don’t want grey characters — they want heroes, they want villains. And we see that in real history. Especially here in America, we grow up and we hear about the Founding Fathers and various people in the past, and they’re our heroes. They’re wonderful, they’re flawless. And then we find out later that maybe they weren’t flawless. Maybe they had a flaw here and there. Maybe they did some pretty bad things occasionally. But they also did good things.” He continued, “There seems to be a lot of people who cannot accept that. If they find a flaw, they immediately move shining hero to absolute dirtbag, and now we have to despise this person. Really, most human beings are somewhere in the middle. And we should just accept that.” Asked if the Targaryen dynasty “deserved” to fall, Martin said it’s up to the reader. “There were Targaryens who did something good on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday did something reprehensible. Also, of course, our standards of what constitutes ‘reprehensible’ change.”"
Fraser MacWilliams's answer to Who do you think is the most misunderstood character(s) in Tolkien's Legendarium? - Quora - "Sauron isn’t some mustache twirling villain who wants evil for evils sake. He doesn’t want to kill everything. He doesn’t appear to delight in murder and cruelty. He’s a Maia on a mission. And that Mission? Remake Middle-Earth in His image. Not even Melkor’s image - Sauron’s. Melkor is more your stereotypical villain. He destroys for destruction’s sake. He wanted to destroy the world, but got a taste for ruling and was ensnared by it, and weakened thereby. Sauron though - Sauron wants to build. Sauron is the hero of his own story. He wants to make the world a better place. He’s just accepted that doing so will require some ‘evil’ actions. He is in his own view a classic utilitarian - the ends justify the means. As long as the ends are good enough, as far as Sauron is concerned any means necessary to achieve them are acceptable."
John Sierra's answer to Why were the orcs more advanced than other creatures in Middle-earth? - Quora - "The in-story reason is that the ancestors of the Orcs were elves, twisted by Morgoth’s torture, they lost their immortality and their magic. Orcs could not make beautiful things like Elves or Dwarves, but they could make crafty things, clever machines that replaced the magic they had once lost.There is also an out-of-story reason for this. Tolkien was somewhat of an environmentalist, and hated machines and how they were replacing all of the green in the world. Orcs, as the evil race, hated green and loved machines. They represented the inevitable industrialization, and furthermore they represented accelerationist extremism, marching forward to doom."
Meme - "Alan Moore on Lord of the Rings: "Imperialism, racism. class snobbery [and] the air of misogyny throw me off."
Meanwhile, Tolkien...
Makes an unseen imperialist the main villain... Makes two common folk the unlikely heroes of the story... Makes two racists put aside their differences to help their fellow man... and writes one of the greatest female heroes in all of fantasy."
Left wingers just know how to throw their buzzwords
Meme - "CS. Lewis: You have convinced to me to become a Christian.
Tolkien: *happy*
CS Lewis: but I'm gonna be a protestant, not a catholic
Tolkien: *shocked*"
Sci-Fi & Fantasy Author Fonda Lee Criticizes Barnes & Noble Stocking J.R.R. Tolkien & Robert Jordan Books: 'We Are Competing With Dead Guys' - "Sci-fi and Fantasy author Fonda Lee, who's best known for her Green Bone Saga, criticized Barnes & Noble for stocking books by popular fantasy authors J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert Jordan.Over on Twitter, she shared a photo of Barnes & Noble Fantasy & Science Fiction shelves with the caption: “This is what modern fantasy writers are up against. In my local B&N, most authors are lucky to find a copy of their book, super lucky if its face out. There are 3.5 shelves for Tolkien. 1.5 for Jordan. Here’s who we compete against for shelf space: not each other, but dead guys.”"
Entitlement is being unable to compete against the classics, and trying to shame bookshops which are trying to stay afloat by stocking what readers want to buy
When you can't compete, lobby
Meme - Fonda Lee: "This is what modern fantasy writers are up against. In my local B&N, most authors are lucky to find a copy of their book, super lucky if it's face out. There are 3.5 shelves for Tolkien. 1.5 for Jordan. Here's who we compete against for shelf space: not each other, but dead guys."
"NooOoO Why are old dead men more popular than meeeee"
"Write better books"
Meme - "*JK Rowling* Has a good idea and writes a book.
*George RR Martin* Has a good idea and writes a book.
*JRR Tolkien* Creates a language, feels like it needs a story and writes a book."
Why You'll NEVER See Movies Like The Lord Of The Rings Again. - YouTube - "Hell, even Peter Jackson couldn't remake the Peter Jackson Trilogy... with the rise of technology, particularly CGI and the current climate of entertainment, movies like the Jackson Trilogy are like the Latin language. They might have built the groundwork for and influenced almost everything that came after, but it is ultimately unsustainable... only the biggest studios in the world. Even if by some miracle you find this hypothetical studio you then have to convince said company to spend more than is technically necessary to execute the feature... good luck convincing a studio to spend half a billion on an adaptation that's not yet been adapted for the Silver Screen in any way. And it's not just a financial problem. The rise of CGI is nothing short of a marvel... though CGI was available, used and pioneered in the production of the Jackson Trilogy, it had much higher limitations and was far less capable. And as a result the vast majority of these movies were shot practically... with what you can achieve with CGI today good luck convincing a studio to film anything practical... it seems that studios have begun to forget about phrases like long-term investment or creative risk... studios have begun to forget about their obligations to the art form itself: movie making. That without they wouldn't have a penny. Disney in particular has mastered the art of fast food movies. These things, you know, they might not have any real substance to them but they're cheap, they're quick, and they're easy. And the problem with that is people really like fast food... No pre-existing props were used in any way, in any scene. In any movie, every single barrel, every single pipe, candlestick, wheelbarrow, cup, fork, butt case. Everything you see on screen was designed and handmade from scratch exclusively for these movies. And it goes even deeper than that because at times they had to shoot at two different scales because of the hobbits. So a large number of these props were not only handmade but handmade to scale in two different sizes and of course it goes even deeper than that because some of the sets like the Prancing Pony for example were also recreated in two different scales. I'm still yet to come across that level of care and attention to detail in almost any other movie... this movie should be praised for is the fact that many noted Tolkien Scholars were consulted throughout the production of these three movies including the real life Maiar that is Tom Shippey... I'm sure that the makers of the Rings of Power gave it a pretty good go. Remember when they sacked him?... that show was so cataclysmically awful it gave me a career on YouTube. That's how bad it was... they spent a whole year building the entire town of Hobbiton before they even began shooting any of the movies. Which is a gargantuan amount of work to put into what ended up being actually very little screen time. But it speaks to the ethos of the movies. No corners were cut. They persisted down the path of most resistance for the sake of us, the audience... Tolkien would have been more than a little perturbed by the notion of pulling down real trees for the sake of a shot in a movie. So in this scene for example they buried an artificial tree and yanked that met down. Very respectful... the problem we so often see today is not necessarily the writers changing the source material. It's when writers lack respect and understanding of the source material... the guy responsible for making all of the chain mail that you see on screen was making this armor for about two years straight and spent so long hand joining it all together he ended up wearing out his fingerprints... I can remember when Morfydd Clark needed counseling because she didn't like filming scenes where other actors were holding prop swords... if Christopher Tolkien thought that the Peter Jackson Trilogy was bad, lord knows what he would have thought about Rings of Power...one of the most epic scenes from Modern Cinema. And that is the Ride of the Rohirrim and I personally consider this to be the true climax of the trilogy... they spent days scouring the field where they were going to film this scene making sure that there weren't any rabbit holes... Rings of Power killed a horse. That's actually not a joke"
20 Years On, Lord Of The Rings Will Never Be Equalled - YouTube - "It's easy to forget now just how much of them were filmed in real locations using practical effects. How many towering cities and castles were actually just intricately constructed miniatures enhanced by CGI. And that's the key thing to remember here. Enhanced CGI has definitely got its place in film making but it's supposed to be used to enhance rather than replace real locations. It should be used to do the things that are impossible with practical effects, not as a lazy crutch to avoid having to step outside that lovely airconditioned sound stage and maybe get your hands dirty once in a while... just take a look at the cast interviews for Rings of Power where everyone involved is so young and soft and diverse and artificially happy that it reminds me more of an HR commercial than a serious insight into a landmark film project. Everyone's so blandly agreeable, so non-confrontational and careful not to say anything offensive... they seem a lot more interested in discussing how groundbreakingly diverse they are or the activism that's apparently so close to their hearts that they barely have time to talk about the characters they play or the experiences they've had. Hollywood used to depict heroic actions. Now they can only see heroic identities. They used to champion escapism and wonder now they push allegory in agendas. Compare this to the cast interviews or the behind the-scenes footage from the original Lord of the Rings and you really get a sense of how focused and dedicated everyone was to doing this right almost to the exclusion of all else... these guys really seem to want to do Tolkien's work justice even if the process was long grueling and physically demanding. The actors and writers and showrunners of today seem to actively despise everything he was and everything he represented and they certainly don't seem interested in putting in the work needed to represent it properly on screen...
'We we didn't want to put any of our own, certainly in terms of the thematic material. we didn't want to put any of our own baggage. I mean we had no interest in putting our messages into this movie, but we thought that we should honor Tolkien by putting his messages into it.'
This right here is why Lord of the Rings got it. This is why people still talk about these movies two decades later. This is why they're going to be beloved by generation after generation. And it's why I don't think we're going to see the likes of Lord of the Rings ever again because the conditions that allowed those films to get made simply don't exist"
Why the Ride of the Rohirrim is SO EPIC - The Stories that Really Matter - YouTube - "Frodo is captured by the Orcs of Mordor. Denethor in a fit of madness and despair is about to join the still living Faramir atop a funeral pyre. The gates of Minas Tirith are broken and its walls overrun. The foes of Gondor wreaking havoc and death within the streets of the White City. Gandalf himself is unhorsed, his staff broken, his failure appearing complete. But then Rohan has arrived. The sun, previously hidden behind the black pall that spread from Mordor across the land of Gondor is beginning to rise. It appears there may yet be hope for the world of men... This, is not a fight the Rohirrim can win. Nonetheless Eowyn tries to embolden Merry... Theoden steels himself and pushes away the fears that have assailed him. He knew that riding to Gondor's aid would mean a swifter end to the war one way or another and he cannot retreat now, even though it means leading only 6,000 Rohirrim against the whole host of Mordor... This is it. This is the end, and they will ride to meet their end head on. The men of Rohan will not sit and wait for the forces of Mordor to come for them after Minas Tirith is thrown down and Gondor destroyed... At first Eowyn flinches, pulling close to Merry, instinctively wanting to protect him from the dark and somber chorus, from the inexorable doom that approaches. But then. Merry joins in. This hobbit, this simple halfling who loves pipe weed, beer and five meals a day adds his voice to those of the war hardened Riders of Rohan and inspires Eowyn to join them as well. The whole host now with one voice proclaiming their refusal to fear, their acceptance of their fate. And this moment is so much more beautiful than that. And maybe even more beautiful than Jackson even intended. Death in Tolkien's world is not merely an inevitability for men, it is a gift to them. Tolkien writes in the first chapter of the Silmarillion, But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world... Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar... Men are meant for something more. Death is not the end for them but merely a passage from one life to the next, in which they, perhaps not until the end of time, will participate in the second music of the Ainur, the creation of a new and perfect Earth. Men were supposed to embrace death, but their view of it was twisted by Melkor, so they feared it seeking long life and even immortality such as belonging to the elves. These discordant desires would cause the downfall of Numenor and weaken the race of men, degrading their ability to resist the dark lord and his servants. Though they may not even know it, the Rohirrim, with their cry of death do not simply defy their own fears, do not merely declare in one word with one voice that Melkor the corrupter and deceiver has no power over them, but they accept the gift of Ilúvatar their creator and father who has destined them for far more than they know... This is why we read and watch fantasy. We do not want these stories and characters to reflect our own world: we want them to inspire us, to give us hope, to make us want to be more than we are... in barely four minutes Peter Jackson, Howard Shore, Bernard Hill and every actor or extra involved in this scene inspires us in a way that I've never seen before nor since"
Garit Boothe's answer to In Lord Of The Rings, why doesn't Aragorn allow himself to have fun with Eowyn and sleep with her when she clearly wants his affections and is a beautiful woman? - Quora - "Everybody seems to get some action in GoT. There’s whoring a plenty, adultery, even incest and rape. On the other hand, The Lord of the Rings barely even has women in it. LOTR is a an epic tale. Think Beowulf. It tells a story with lofty ideals and legendary heroes. Aragorn is an ideal - he is not real. He is the perfect medieval king. His lineage is flawless, ancient prophecy foretold him, and he’s blessed by the gods (Valar). He always chooses the morally correct thing to do. So Aragorn is as likely to sleep around as Sir Galahad the Chaste was... I think the practical, in-universe explanation would be that Eowyn was a princess, and that taking her to bed and breaking her heart could have resulted in a serious political mishap. Beyond that, many women are not real in LOTR. They are a mythic ideal. Arwen is like an untouchable goddess that really only exists in the Appendices of the books. She is an idea in Aragorn’s head for most of the story, nothing more... The Lord of the Rings was Tolkien’s war therapy. He fought in the World War I meat grinder. There are no women in LOTR because there were no women in the trenches. Women are the goddesses you dream about going home to if you survive the war. That’s what Arwen was. Eowyn was the mythic ideal of an Anglo Saxon princess. And in Tolkien’s mind, you don’t mess with her. Because Tolkien was a die-hard Catholic obsessed with epic poetry and medieval tales. His Legendarium isn’t going to see princesses deflowered. Even by the hero. Remember that Tolkien was born in the 1800s. When he was growing up, it was inappropriate for a man to kiss his wife in public. There were still plenty of all boys schools and all girls schools. The sexes had a lot less interaction with each other than they do now. Romance movies with nudity and internet porn were not available for public consumption like they are now. So no, Aragorn and Eowyn didn’t have premarital sex. I wonder if it even crossed Tolkien’s mind."
The best Lord of the Rings Easter eggs are quotes hidden in dialogue - "Tom Bombadil, who appears early in the novel version of The Fellowship of the Ring and baffles lore experts, and one of the distinctive ents of The Two Towers, the (relatively) sprightly Quickbeam, are two characters who wound up cut from the movies. But Boyens, et al. honored them by slipping their dialogue into the mouth Treebeard - another guardian of nature. In addition to singing Quickbeam’s song (“O rowan mine!”), Treebeard also speaks aloud some narration from Tom Bombadil’s chapter, with his line about the “destroyers and usurpers!” who go about biting, breaking, and burning the pristine wilderness. Tricks like that highlight just how much restructuring of the story Jackson had to do as a director to keep the story in the shape of a film trilogy rather than a novel trilogy... In some cases, Boyens, Jackson, and Walsh chose quiet moments where Tolkien’s prose could breathe, and better evoke the books’ bittersweet tone. Frodo’s lament to Gandalf about wishing he were not the one to live to see such times has become a memetic touchstone, especially during this past year of constant doom and gloom. Jackson plucked it out of an exposition-heavy chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring and found a quiet moment for it, as Gandalf and Frodo rest in Moria, a lull before a major swell of action. It’s not unlike another lull during the movies’ climactic siege of Minas Tirith, when Gandalf and Pippin take a breather and Gandalf soothes his fears about death. He actually sneaks in a line of narration from the very end of The Return of the King, describing the last thing Frodo sees aboard the ship as it bears him to the shores of Valinor: “white shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.” Jackson and his co-writers also made a valiant effort to preserve the many songs and poems that pepper Tolkien’s work but that would have absolutely torpedoed the pacing of the movies. On his way into the Shire in The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf sings the song that is so often reprised throughout the series, “The Road goes ever on and on…,” for instance. Particularly dramatic, too, is a poem of Rohan that begins “Where now are the horse and the rider?”, originally recited by Aragorn in The Two Towers as he, Legolas and Gimli arrive in the land of the horse lords. In the movies, Theoden delivers a portion of it in solemn voiceover over a montage of characters gearing up for the siege of Helm’s Deep. It’s a change that shows a deep understanding of the text, tying Theoden’s character to his culture, and in a way perfectly in line with its fatalistic theme... The extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring includes one short scene that sets up a major callback to the novels for Aragorn’s character. In an early scene in Rivendell, he visits his mother’s grave. Readers would know that Aragorn’s mother lived a hard life, hiding from a dark lord bent on killing her son. And so, when Elrond visits Aragorn at the end of The Return of the King to deliver the sword Anduril (a scene that does not happen in the books in the same way or at the same time), it means even more than some viewers may know when he says “I give hope to Men” and Aragorn answers, “I keep none for myself.” Those two lines are a paraphrasing of the poem Aragorn’s mother spoke to him the last time he saw her alive. Put in context with the extended edition scene by the grave, Elrond’s visit isn’t just handing off a plot device: He’s admonishing Aragorn to remember his duty. It’s a triumph of the film adaptations that scenes like this sometimes feel like improvements on the original work."
The Most Underrated Scene in The Lord of the Rings - YouTube - "'We, we didn't want to put any of our own, certainly in terms of the thematic material, we didn't want to put any of our own baggage. I mean we had no interest in putting our messages into, into this movie. But we thought that we should honor Tolkien by putting his messages into it. He, he cared passionately about certain issues. And we thought what we should do to honor him is to make sure that that that his what he cared about ends up in the movie'... Gandalf telling Pippin you'll go to Valinor when you die is inaccurate in the lore of Middle Earth as we've established, but if we loosen our interpretation of those words to be not quite so strict, we can imagine that Gandalf is not telling Pippin literally what will happen but instead is simply imparting a message of hope. In this Jackson gets Tolkien perfectly, beautifully right. The temptation to despair is a central theme throughout this story... yet time after time our heroes reject that temptation... almost every every notable character in the story faces a crucial moment in which they must choose between despair and hope. And with the exception of Denethor they all choose the latter"
Meme - "The world: Nobody could ever bring LOTR to the screen.
Peter Jackson: For Tolkien."
The Phantom's Lair | alloverthegaf: thranduil-stormborn: ... - "Tolkien died in 1973. Reverse it and you get 3791. Three rings for the elven kings under the sky, seven for the dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, nine for mortal men doomed to die, and one for the dark lord on his dark throne."
Harvard: "Yo that's you top G": Netizens compare viral Harvard human Gollum photo to Andrew Tate - "A viral claim has surfaced online, according to which scientists at Harvard University have drawn digital images to show what Gollum from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings would look like if he were a human. A digitally drawn image was also shared along with the claim, and surprisingly, it resembled controversial social media personality and business mogul Andrew Tate. It did not take netizens much time to realize that this claim was meant as a joke and that the creator had solely created a digital painting or an AI-generated image mixing Andrew Tate and Gollum's facial features."
Meme - Sam Gamgee: "You know, it's okay to like a work of fiction even if you don't share all the authors values and ideals. Tolkien grew up in another time, and it's not realistic to expect him to have the same worldviews as we do today."
Gollum: "No! I hate people who don't think like me, and must boycott them! So it's a good thing Tolkien totally shares all my opinions. I have at least 2 out of context quotes from his letters that proves it!"
Meme - "Me in my 30's hanging out with people in their 20's: *Gandalf, Merry and Pippin*"
They Lied About Tolkien - "The editor rejected J.R.R. Tolkien’s draft of The Fellowship of the Ring because Tolkien had used “dwarves” instead of “dwarfs.” So said a meme that popped up a lot on my Facebook page. A pastor I know posted it with the note, “Which he did.” Very quickly 29 of his friends shared it. Who knows how many dozens or hundreds of times friends shared it on. According to the meme, the editor appealed to the Oxford English Dictionary, saying that the word “dwarves” didn’t exist. The meme ends with Tolkien saying: “I wrote the Oxford English Dictionary. Don’t correct me.” It makes Tolkien look like a jerk. It is also completely wrong. Ridiculously wrong. And I think dishonestly wrong... People seemed to love the meme. Rarely have I seen a meme pop up on my Facebook page so many times. People who should have known it was false dropped their guard. Like my friend the pastor, who not only believed it but pushed it (“Which he did.”). Why would someone make up a meme this obviously false? Why would so many people who should have known it was a crude fake believe it? And share it? For the usual reasons we believe untruths, I think: We want to believe them because they make us feel good about ourselves, and let us look down on others."
Tolkien F***ed Up First - YouTube - "you know how to leverage spoiler culture to your advantage. you understand that creating a convoluted and lore heavy narrative no one understands guarantees lots of coverage in the cottage industry of online explainers which provides more free promotion for your show"
Terrible video, but one good line
Ask About Middle Earth - "All elves are described as having fair/white skin. (to be honest, I’m not sure if it’s straight-up, explicitly stated, like “all elves are white”, but every elf we meet is described as white, and so many scholars - including those who were writing during Tolkien’s lifetime - state this, so I can’t imagine that Tolkien wouldn’t have corrected them if this is false. If somebody has found anything on this topic, please let me know!) The most variation we see among elves is their hair or eye color. In this post I talk about the different groups of elves, but most of those groups developed later on in history. The three fundamental (as in, they were born different) groups of elves are the Vanyar, the Noldor, and the Teleri, and they are all fair skinned. I see no reason why other skin colors would develop later on, so I think it’s pretty fair to say that even in the Third and Fourth Age, all elves have fair skin... This lack of racial diversity in Middle Earth has motivated some to accuse Tolkien of being racist. And while that is a very interesting debate that there isn’t space to get into in this post, in the case of ethnic and racial representation in Middle Earth, it’s important to keep in mind that Tolkien was creating an English mythology, so there’s some truth to the argument that, for the time period he wanted the stories to take place in, it simply wouldn’t make sense for there to be much racial diversity."
Did Tolkien himself ever address the supposed plot hole concerning the eagles in his Lord of the Rings books or is that discussion reserved for the movies only? - Quora
tl;dr:
The eagles are not an airborne transport service - they can't go so far and have their own agenda and don't do what you want
They'd be seen and brought down (e.g. the Nazgul on fell beasts)
They're not supposed to interfere usually and are corruptible (remember even Frodo couldn't destroy the ring)
It wouldn't have resolved other threats - the ring might be destroyed but Saruman would be still around, Rohan would be under Grima (effectively), Aragorn wouldn't be King etc
Orcs and Men: How Tolkien helps us understand what’s wrong with Russia and its people
This does not seem to be satire. So much for dehumanisation being bad
Addendum: This is on the Ukraine war
Why J.R.R. Tolkien was denied the Nobel Prize in 1961 - "Tolkien was rejected because The Lord Of The Rings had 'not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality'."
Antidepressants or Tolkien - "Can you guess if the word is an antidepressants drug or a Tolkien character?"
15/24
J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis bonded over their mutual hatred of Walt Disney, private letters reveal - "J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were close frenemies when they were both still alive and kicking, operating within the same dusty Oxford literature circles and bantering over lofty subjects like theology, personal faith and their own fantastical writing. But if there was one subject that truly brought them together, it was their shared dislike of Walt Disney... the fantasy legends sling bitchy insults and put-downs like a stuffy, academic Gossip Girl, decrying Disney's creative choices in 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and referring to the man himself as an ill-educated "boob"... [Tolkien] pledged to never work with him or his company."
Christopher Tolkien dead: Son of Lord of the Rings author JRR dies aged 95 - "Christopher Tolkien, the son of Lord Of The Rings author JRR Tolkien, has died aged 95, the Tolkien Society has said.Christopher continued his father's work after his death and was an accomplished author in his own right.He has been credited with keeping his father's legacy alive and spawning the field of 'Tolkien studies'. Without him readers enraptured by the stories of Middle Earth may not have had any more than the four novels from JRR to enjoy... Christopher was also a translator and helped bring epic legendary sagas from historical periods to modern readers.One of these works was the Saga of Hervör and Heidrek, a legendary saga from the 13th century which Christopher translated from Icelandic.It was one of the historic works which inspired JRR's mythical legends of Middle Earth... Christopher criticised director Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy in an interview with French publication Le Monde, even doubting whether they could retain the beauty and essence of his father's books. He said: "They gutted the book, making it an action movie for 15-25 year-olds."
Peter Jackson To Honor Christopher Tolkien With 578-Film Adaptation Of 'The Silmarillion' | The Babylon Bee
