Tolkien general thread

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

I'm still not entirely convinced either way, but it might be that the shit we're seeing now is more of these types hijacking Tolkien and his legacy instead of it being his own original intent.

It's weird how people read that he had an occult book collection and a heavy metal band and assume he was a Satanist himself when he was actually, according to himself anyway, a devout Christian. People tend to misunderstand Lee pretty often, but who knows at the end of the day.

Do you have corroborating sources, Mr. Nonconvinced?
It's a big fucking statement to say that one of the brightest Christians in literature was actually a satanist, then wave that shit of as 'meh'.

 

[Andrew Neiman]

Has anyone ever looked into the rumors about Tolkien being a Satanist? I read a claim that he organized occultist orgies via the Tolkien Society, which I'm not sure I believe, but I do know that one of the main European Tolkien Societies' top selling points for members is it hosts something called "castle orgies." Just the idea of it's turned me away from Tolkien's works for a while now, to be honest. I don't know if any of it's true or not, but I can't help but feel like my opinion of him and his work's hurt.

Has anyone ever looked into the rumors about Anton LaVey being a tradcath? I read a claim that he organized Latin Masses via the Church of Satan, which I'm not sure I believe, but I do know that one of the main Church of Satan's top selling points for members is it hosts something called "community food drive."

 

[Haffhart]

Has anyone ever looked into the rumors about Tolkien being a Satanist? I read a claim that he organized occultist orgies via the Tolkien Society, which I'm not sure I believe, but I do know that one of the main European Tolkien Societies' top selling points for members is it hosts something called "castle orgies." Just the idea of it's turned me away from Tolkien's works for a while now, to be honest. I don't know if any of it's true or not, but I can't help but feel like my opinion of him and his work's hurt.

Cool, an old-fashioned troll. I haven't seen one in a long time, really takes me back.

So my brief reading led me to Åke Ohlmarks, a Swedish scholar who published some really, REALLY bad Swedish translations of Tolkien's works. He'd take a number of extreme liberties with in-universe words and their meanings (as an example, if I recall correctly he referred to Rivendell as something like "River-dale"), as well as just simply not being good enough at English to translate any of it well. He didn't much care for Tolkien's work either, since he considered it juvenile. It was really not well-received, with even Tolkien declaring it pretty shit.

Some time in the 70s-80s he got a bit salty about all the flak he was receiving for it, developed a bit of a complex against the Tolkien estate, and released a book detailing Tolkien's links to "Nazi occultism", which I suspect is where the accusations of satanism and castle orgies come into play. The book's name is Tolkien och den Svarta Magin (Tolkien and the Black Magic) and I'll award one (1) Kiwifarma-karma to anyone that can find the PDF or some other scanned version (2 if you can find it translated). From what little I've read and managed to deduce through the language barrier is that it has some prime Jack Chick-esque cow material in it.

But if you're still worried, let me put your mind at ease and say no, Tolkien, and everyone associated with him, were categorically not satanists, never hosted orgies, and never tried summoning any qt3.15 succubi. The unquendor are yankin' yer chain.

TL;DR early example of modern attitudes to localization.

More information:
Goodreads - (Archive)
Article from the Kingly Bibliotech (Royal Library) of Sweden - (Archive) (in Swedish, it won't go through Google Translate's website feature, you'll have to use copy paste)

Pictures:

The fabled tome's cover (it would make a great KF avatar)


STOPPA SEX-ORGIERNA (modern Swedes think the exact opposite):


All in all a fascinating little rabbit hole. It seems the only sure way of reading the book itself is to become fluent in Swedish and go to the Swedish national library at Stockholm. Pity.

 

[BiggerChungus]

Do you have corroborating sources, Mr. Nonconvinced?
It's a big fucking statement to say that one of the brightest Christians in literature was actually a satanist, then wave that shit of as 'meh'.

I'm not trying to shitpost, I read about Åke Ohlmarks and ran into a Tolkien Society Europe post talking about hosting orgies, which to me lined up with what Ohlmarks claimed. Looking into it further, according to a few Swede reviews of it, his proof of Tolkien organizing them was based on a kid who apparently got killed by his dumbass D&D group in the 80s because they took a Satanist larp too far. Ohlmarks namedropped him, but the case didn't seem to have anything to do with Tolkien, the Tolkien Society, or anything sexual, just D&D. It's what leaves me on the fence, because on one hand, yeah, we have apparent proof the Tolkien Society hosts orgies in one region for some reason which is what Ohlmarks claimed, but on the other there's no proof Tolkien ever encouraged that in his lifetime, there's no telling if Ohlmarks had any evidence because the book's not digital and only in Swedish, and the modern Tolkien Society's full of retards who think Saruman and Gandalf had a secret gay relationship and Frodo was Indian. It could absolutely be coincidence that I've taken too seriously.

 

[Romeo]

Reviving this thread.

This video gives a good analysis on this question: "The main criticism of changing things that is brought up for Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power could easily be applied for the Peter Jackson trilogy: how accurate they are to the lore, the characters (the treatment of Faramir and Aragorn in the books vs the Jackson trilogy), and key plot points (Scouring of the Shire and Tom Bombadil)."

It analyzes the criticisms of the Jackson trilogy in a fair manner but also shows how Jackson tried to make an adaptation closer to what Tolkien has envisioned while trying to adapt a novel (moving people's dialogue around from the books to other characters in the movies, re-adding Tolkien's poetry in the films, and trying to make characters have plot developments from their first scene to the book version.

Why Lord Of The Rings Feels Like Tolkien (Even When It Doesn’t)​

YouTube Link | Archive​

---

Speaking of books. Following the great Christopher Tolkien's passing, there was another edited collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's passing (similar to Christopher's The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Gondolin books) edited by Brian Sibley titled The Fall of Numenor released on 15 November 2022.

​

As the plot suggests, it's about Akallabeth and other stories pertaining to the Second Age, with art from the great Alan Lee. I was wondering how good this book is to put up in my reading list and how devout Sibley is in containing the essence of Tolkien like Christopher did.

 

[AeroGavin Rossdale]

This video gives a good analysis on this question: "The main criticism of changing things that is brought up for Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power

Oh Lawd Dem Ringz made me realize why Christopher hated the movies. I still adore them, but to someone as faithful as Christopher, I get it. Jackson knocked it out of the part with the Battle of Amon Hen, don't get me wrong. But I get why Tolkien only showed the aftermath.

 

[Desu Mountain]

As said earlier, The Hobbit was rewritten to fit more with Lord of the Rings as he was writing the latter.

The only thing that was re-written in The Hobbit was the Riddles in the Dark chapter, where in the original version Bilbo was given the ring by Gollum, but while writing The Lord of the Rings Tolkien realized that there was no way in hell Gollum would ever even consider giving up the ring willingly, which is why it had to be re-written. The re-writing of the Hobbit was acknowledged in The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is meant to be a book written by Bilbo Baggins himself, and in the beginning Bilbo Baggins lied about how he got the ring, claiming he acquired the ring by winning it in a contest of riddles. In the re-written version, written after the Council of Elrond, he tells the truth, that he fucking stole that shit. In the Council of Elrond he says "I will now tell the true story (The Hobbit-re-write), and if some here have heard me tell it otherwise (The Hobbit-original) I ask them to forget it and forgive me."

Anyway, I found a Tolkien Youtuber who actually knows his shit to an extreme autistic detail that I hardly believed possible. Check him out. You won't find any wiki-reads here, this guy is the real deal. I've been binging his videos for the past couple of days.

Just ignore his earliest videos where he tried some faggy rainbow pseudo-vtuber thing.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

The only thing that was re-written in The Hobbit was the Riddles in the Dark chapter, where in the original version Bilbo was given the ring by Gollum, but while writing The Lord of the Rings Tolkien realized that there was no way in hell Gollum would ever even consider giving up the ring willingly, which is why it had to be re-written.

https://www.ringgame.net/riddles.html https://archive.ph/ko1hN

The "rewrite" is way less than you might expect from all the howling and fooforah around it - a couple pages at most.

Interestingly, as a side effect, the rewrite makes Bilbo more of a badass and less of a bumbling fool.

 

[JJLiautaud]

The only thing that was re-written in The Hobbit was the Riddles in the Dark chapter, where in the original version Bilbo was given the ring by Gollum, but while writing The Lord of the Rings Tolkien realized that there was no way in hell Gollum would ever even consider giving up the ring willingly, which is why it had to be re-written. The re-writing of the Hobbit was acknowledged in The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is meant to be a book written by Bilbo Baggins himself, and in the beginning Bilbo Baggins lied about how he got the ring, claiming he acquired the ring by winning it in a contest of riddles. In the re-written version, written after the Council of Elrond, he tells the truth, that he fucking stole that shit. In the Council of Elrond he says "I will now tell the true story (The Hobbit-re-write), and if some here have heard me tell it otherwise (The Hobbit-original) I ask them to forget it and forgive me."

Anyway, I found a Tolkien Youtuber who actually knows his shit to an extreme autistic detail that I hardly believed possible. Check him out. You won't find any wiki-reads here, this guy is the real deal. I've been binging his videos for the past couple of days.

Just ignore his earliest videos where he tried some faggy rainbow pseudo-vtuber thing.

Darth Gandalf is also pretty cool:

 

[AeroGavin Rossdale]

Anyway, I found a Tolkien Youtuber who actually knows his shit to an extreme autistic detail that I hardly believed possible. Check him out. You won't find any wiki-reads here, this guy is the real deal. I've been binging his videos for the past couple of days.

I love that you can tell he absolutely got into LoTR through 'pipe weed lol 420' jokes and decided to take it seriously. Just an old head throw back Hippy Tolkien fan.

 

[AeroGavin Rossdale]

Good evening. I'm drunk and thinking about Tolkien. After much consideration I've come to the conclusion LoTR rules and should be talked about more.

 

[Registration]

Watched this cool video about english lit fantasy before tolkien

 

[Arpharp8976Fire]

View attachment 4315052

How I learned to stop worrying and love the cock in my ass

 

[JJLiautaud]

Watched this cool video about english lit fantasy before tolkien

Misses Urania so straight to the trash it goes

 

[Hitman One]

The only thing that was re-written in The Hobbit was the Riddles in the Dark chapter, where in the original version Bilbo was given the ring by Gollum, but while writing The Lord of the Rings Tolkien realized that there was no way in hell Gollum would ever even consider giving up the ring willingly, which is why it had to be re-written. The re-writing of the Hobbit was acknowledged in The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is meant to be a book written by Bilbo Baggins himself, and in the beginning Bilbo Baggins lied about how he got the ring, claiming he acquired the ring by winning it in a contest of riddles. In the re-written version, written after the Council of Elrond, he tells the truth, that he fucking stole that shit. In the Council of Elrond he says "I will now tell the true story (The Hobbit-re-write), and if some here have heard me tell it otherwise (The Hobbit-original) I ask them to forget it and forgive me."

Anyway, I found a Tolkien Youtuber who actually knows his shit to an extreme autistic detail that I hardly believed possible. Check him out. You won't find any wiki-reads here, this guy is the real deal. I've been binging his videos for the past couple of days.

Just ignore his earliest videos where he tried some faggy rainbow pseudo-vtuber thing.

Rainbow Dave is based and I love him.

 

[Felis Meanis]

I know this is very much a Tolkien-thread, and not a Howard Shore-thread, let alone a Peter Jackson-thread, yet I still feel that this video deserves mentioning in this thread on account of its absolutely magnificent detailing of the orchestration of this soundtrack from the movie "The Fellowship of the Ring".

I really do feel that Howard Shore was absolutely intstrumental (no pun intended) to the success of Peter Jackson's trilogy, and that he has kept true to Tolkien's vision of the sheer terror that is the Balrog in this particular soundtrack, which he has conveyed through not only the notes and tones themselves, but very much the lyrics as well.

Arrâs!

Urus ni buzra! (Fire in the deep!) (Arrâs! [Flames!])!
Lu Lu Lu Lu (No No No No)!
Tanakhi tanakhi (It comes, it comes!)
Urkhas urus ni buzra! (Demon free in the deep!)
Urkhas tanaki (The demon comes!)
Lu Lu Lu Lu (No No No No)!
Urus ni buzra! (Fire in the deep!)

And so on and so forth! :-)

The score of Khazad-Dûm is just absolutely amazing. No wonder the trilogy was, and is, a hit.

 

[Rembrandt]

Question: could the Hobbit trilogy be saved by a fan edit?

An attempt was made and I'd say it worked out well. Its last update was a few months ago, it trims a lot of the fat, a lot of the dumb additions and places the focus back on Bilbo and the dwarves. Goes as far as reorder dialogue in scenes to make them more faithtful to the book.

https://m4-studios.github.io/hobbitbookedit/

The website describes all of the changes in detail, but this VFX reel is a great introduction. Goes to show the pedantic attention to detail that went into this overhaul.

 

[Felis Meanis]

Fucking give me some of the Old Toby brought by the good lad Tobold Hornblower.

 

[Hitman One]

I really do feel that Howard Shore was absolutely intstrumental (no pun intended) to the success of Peter Jackson's trilogy, and that he has kept true to Tolkien's vision of the sheer terror that is the Balrog in this particular soundtrack, which he has conveyed through not only the notes and tones themselves, but very much the lyrics as well.

Shore's score is one of the parts which elevates the trilogy to a 10/10 piece of filmmaking. I'm sure that every Tolkien fan has a gripe or two with the adaptations, but as I grow older it is more obvious to me that the films came from a place of love and respect for the genius who created them and the messages he was trying to express in his works. That makes it easier to forgive any apparent mis-steps, as they did not happen for hateful or vain reasons but because Jackson and Co. felt they were needed to to do justice to LotR on the big screen.

Sam's speech at the end of The Two Towers is an example I often use. It's not a 100% faithful adaptation of what is written in the book, but it was written, acted and scored with such care and understanding that none of the effect is lost.

Spoiler: Speech

Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

 

[Felis Meanis]

Shore's score is one of the parts which elevates the trilogy to a 10/10 piece of filmmaking. I'm sure that every Tolkien fan has a gripe or two with the adaptations, but as I grow older it is more obvious to me that the films came from a place of love and respect for the genius who created them and the messages he was trying to express in his works. That makes it easier to forgive any apparent mis-steps, as they did not happen for hateful or vain reasons but because Jackson and Co. felt they were needed to to do justice to LotR on the big screen.

Sam's speech at the end of The Two Towers is an example I often use. It's not a 100% faithful adaptation of what is written in the book, but it was written, acted and scored with such care and understanding that none of the effect is lost.

Spoiler: Spoiler: Speech

Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

You're not wrong at all. Indeed, as I watch some of the scenes from The Fellowship of the Ring, quality rather than begrudgement is to be found. No wonder I watched The Fellowship of the Ring two or three times back when it was released onto the cinemas in the early 21th century! :-)

I remember when I was in primary school, and I had an outing with my school on a fair. On this fair, there was a man who sold items pertaining to The Lords of the Rings (I believe he sold various assortments like figurines and such). When I conversed with him, it was evident that this man was somewhat cross with Peter Jackson's trilogy. After all, shouldn't the Orcs look like Elves, rather than some form of monsters, since Orcs are Elves corrupted by Morgoth? He really did go off on the deep end with the lore. As you say, one can kind of understand where he was coming from on account of the cherished deep nerd lore, but his nitpicking does no justice to the incredible craftsmanship that is Peter Jackson's trilogy. It really cannot be understated what incredible work Peter Jackson & Co. did with the trilogy.

Above all else, Peter Jackson's fantastic piece of cinema holds true to the core moral concepts of Tolkien's story, and for that alone the trilogy should be considered worthwhile.

I mean, I kind of agree that Durin's Bane maybe shouldn't be depicted as having horns and stuff, and should rather be portrayed as a "fiery spirit", but that is very much besides the point (Durin's Bane looks absolutely awesome in Peter Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring", by the way), and it discredits the fans of the franchise to be so upset of minute details such as this. The fact that Peter Jackson & Co. revitalized interest in Tolkien's work is proof enough of their genius.