Lord of the Wrongs

[Büge]

The LOTR Amazon show's worth its own thread, right?



Especially when stuff like this is coming out

[Crick]

That wink has such comedic timing, it completely defuses whatever weight the rest of the figures could have conveyed. Coupled with the guy at the end going "c'mere, check this out", it's like the opening to a weird 90s kid's fantasy show.

[Mongrel]

I'm just so tired of any non-book Middle-Earth material sorry to sound like a snobby purist (which I am, so there), but none of the adaptations ever came very close to understanding many of the key underlying themes and messages of Tolkien's work; none captured their essence or their ethos.

Not all fiction needs to teach of course, but Tolkien had messages which he felt were valuable and not only did he say them quite elegantly, he wove them into a magnificent tapestry of story.

I don't begrudge Peter Jackson his popcorn trilogy, but these wretched things have only become more and more grating to me since then, and like the Star Wars sequels I just want them to not fucking exist.

[Friday]

I really he does turn out to be a robot actually

I'll withhold judgment until I actually see an episode or three, but "hey let's write some LotR fanfiction and film it" is usually not a recipe for success.

[Thad]

like the Star Wars sequels I just want them to not fucking exist.

Just not watching them remains an option.

There's entertainment I wish didn't exist, but usually it has to cross over into territory where it's, like, actively harmful. Like, racist or something.

But that's more of a Prequel Trilogy thing.

[Thad]

I mean on balance I'd say Twitter is a net negative for human civilization but that doesn't stop you form posting seventeen tweets a day

[Mongrel]

I'm not sure where you got the idea I was watching any of this.

I wasn't aware that that was a prerequisite to disapproval; it's not like I need a party membership to make fun of the Republicans.

As for Hellsite, well shit, the whole damn internet might still turn out to be a net negative for human civilization, but here we are. Just let me know when everybody shifts to a less-awful default social media platform. Because that's what it is at the moment.

[KingRoyal]

LotR is great and all but it's still just fiction. The Jackson trilogy straight up rocks, a phenomenal adaptation

Anyway I hope Rings of Power fails because watching Bezos sink half a billion on it is hilarious. I can't get over how the CGI looks pretty decent but all the actual, physical costumes look like they're rentals, some community theater production of Fellowship type shit

[atog]

It looks like he didn't learn any of the lessons from the flop of the Wheel of Time series. Big-budget CGI, lavish sets, amateur-hour casting and writing, and plot holes bigger than Tom Bombadil.

I have not watched any of this shit beyond the teaser, but when a third of the characters look like they're passing peach pits and another third look like their costumes were spray-painted on, it's already cringe. And then Dildo Baggins wink wink point point just had me roflin'

[Büge]

Okay, it turns out that was actually just some b-roll footage for Entertainment Weekly

But it's deliciously memeable

[Brantly B.]

Shit looks like a knockoff version of Xena.

[Büge]

[Mongrel]

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! Fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!
Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My darling!

[Friday]

Sauron is totally a virgin yeah. So is Morgoth. The only bad guy in Tolkien who fucks is Tevildo, Lord of the Cats, who fucked so goddamn much that he fucked everything up and had to be deleted from the canon.

[Friday]

You may ask "what about Ungoliant? she specifically had a lot of babies in the text" but remember that she's the first of her kind and also nobody would want to fuck her anyway she's that goddamn ugly. She def just reproduced asexually like an amoeba.

Carcharoth would have fucked but he was too busy being a guard dog in front of Angband and then later insane from having a red hot soul-searing Silmaril inside him.

The closest thing to a canonical villain who fucked in Tolkien is Fëanor, who had seven sons. And yeah that guy is a total asshole.
However when he left Valinor to chase after Morgoth and the Silmarils (thus switching from "just an asshole" to "full blown kin-slaying villain asshole shitfucker") his wife Nerdanel was like "dude you are never getting any ever again" and he never did.

[Mongrel]

On the other hand, without Sauron the eternally frustrated virgin, we wouldn't have all that sweet Angbang fanart.

[Brantly B.]

I always assumed Morgoth fucked Ungoliant, but I guess when it said Morgoth rode her it meant, like, as a horse. Hmph.

[Friday]

Specifically those two hated each other and only had an uneasy alliance in order to kill the Trees, which Morgoth hated because they were the symbol of Light and Good and Eru Ilúvatar, and Ungoliant just wanted to eat.

Morgoth bribed her to help him by saying she could have "all the treasures of Valinor he could carry in both hands" and after the Trees were extinguished he raided Fëanor's vaults and stole a shitload of jewels + the Silmarils. He kept the jewels in one hand and the Silmarils in the other, and after they escaped Valinor Ungoliant was like "okay bitch time to pay up" and Morgoth gave her the jewels which she ate and grew even larger, but kept the Silmarils. Ungoliant was pissed and actually was so large and powerful at this point from eating the Trees that she actually 1v1ed Morgoth and won. He couldn't die, being Divine, but she webbed his ass and started eating him anyway. Anyway he started screaming and all his Balrogs and shit heard him and came to save his ass and drove Ungoliant away.

So yeah it's unlikely they fucked, though I guess it -might- be implied in some sort of victory celebration. In any case Ungoliant fucked off, spawned, ate most of her own brood except a few who escaped (including Shelob and the forerunners of the Mirkwood spiders) and then eventually herself in her unceasing famine.

This has always led me to believe that Shelob was actually playing Gollum in the same way Ungoliant was playing Morgoth. Gollum thinks he can have Shelob kill Frodo and Sam for him and then pick through their bones to find the Ring, thinking "oh this spider won't care for trinkets like that" but I actually think she was perfectly aware of what was going on and was playing along with Gollum so she could just eat it.

Now, I doubt that would have ended well for her, as the Ring could not be destroyed save in Mt Doom, so eventually Sauron would have come along and cut her open to retrieve it. In any case Shelob instead eats shit when Sam stabs her a lot and then shoots the light of a Silmaril directly into her brain. Which since the Silmarils were crafted by Fëanor to capture the light of the Trees, is sort of full circle. That's the reason the Phial of Galadriel is such a big deal, because it channels the star of Eärendil, which in turn is literally the single recovered Silmaril, set into the sky, that was reclaimed by Beren and Luthien and as such the last glimmer of the light of the Trees in Middle Earth.

The other two Silmarils were also recovered by the last two surviving sons of Fëanor at the end of the War of Wrath, but drove the sons insane as their sins made the Silmarils burn them as the one recovered by Beren and Luthien had burned Carcharoth. Eventually one of the sons jumped into a volcano, and the other into the sea and drowned, losing their Silmarils forever.

anyway thats why riding the eagles to mordor wouldn't have worked

[Friday]

Also I occasionally get flak about claiming that Shelob is the direct daughter and not some distant descendant of Ungoliant. The text of the book says "last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world" which because of the existence of the Mirkwood spiders, I assume means "last direct child" since the Mirkwood spiders are clearly made out to be diminished descendants.

In any case, there's nothing specifically stopping Shelob from being thousands of years old in the text. She's certainly the most powerful and largest sentient evil Spider left. Sauron keeps her around as "his cat" (though she owns him not) out of amusement, which also implies a long-standing relationship, or at least familiarity.

[Brantly B.]

We're talking about Young Satan and an eldritch spider goddess who eats her mates, and your logic is that they're less likely to have fucked because they hated each other.

I can't even make a dumb joke about spider sex here without somebody fighting me. Fuck. This.