EPISODE 728: THE REAL PROBLEM WITH FREE WILLY

What is with all the feet?

Sep 06, 2022

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

so hey not to be rude or anything but where were you guys last week? i was here, right where we agreed to meet, i had my phone on and i didn’t get a single text from any of you. i mean, sometimes i don’t get texts until the next day, or sometimes they go to my computer instead of my phone, but still.

For the first time since I started this newsletter 7 years ago, I missed a week without any warning to you. So sorry! It was my birthday, the dog ate my homework, my hard drive was hacked by the Russians, I have a note from my doctor.

I’m thinking I will do an extra issue in the next month or so to make up for it. I don’t know what it will look like but I am going to do my best to make it cool and special. Stay tuned.

THE TROLLS HAVE ARRIVED

This week Amazon debuted its mega-super-massive series The Rings of Power, a Lord of the Rings prequel, I guess, if you consider Ancient Egypt a prequel to today. And the biggest story coming out of the release has been…

*drum roll*

…people complaining that there can’t be black Hobbits in Middle-Earth.

*sigh*

It’s a very silly argument on a hundred different levels, pretty much beginning and ending with sure it can because it’s fiction you big goofs. In fact, Tolkien himself described the ancestors of Hobbits as darker-skinned. So you know, what are we even doing here?

But then I was thinking about Tolkien himself. His most famous books are filled with trolls and a hundred other monsters. And there’s two things to be said about Tolkien monsters: first, they’re pretty much always a corruption of something that was originally good. Orc were originally elves that had been kidnapped and tortured into this other horrible form. Tolkien actually has this amazing line in the Silmarillion about how every orc actually hates Melkor/Morgoth (who is basically Sauron before Sauron) even as they fight for him, because he ruined them.

“Deep in their dark hearts the Orcs loathed the Master whom they served in fear, the maker only of their misery. This it may be was the vilest deed of Melkor.”

The other thing is, pretty much every monster is obsessed with possessing treasure of one form or another. They all have their own precious, the thing that drives them. And in fact that obsession is the bridge between them and everyone else. In the Silmarillion not only Morgoth and this crazy cosmic spider which seems like it could have been inspiration for Stephen King’s villain in It but a bunch of the elves are just OBSESSED with these beautiful jewels called the Silmarils. And they do terrible things as a result of it.

Some of the dwarves likewise get obsessed with their jewels and inventions and isolate themselves. Boromir gets obsessed with the ring. So does Gollum and to a lesser extent Bilbo and Frodo.

The point is, when it comes to good and evil Tolkien puts everyone on the same continuum. And even the most noble of creatures is capable of getting dragged into insanity. (Also, there’s a twist in Silmarillion where Morgoth steals the Silmarils and starts staring at them. Their beauty moves him so much that he actually shed a tear for their beauty. And he realizes he has to stop looking at them, or else they will change his heart for the better. So the reverse can also be true; what is evil can travel up the escalator toward goodness.)

Many online trolls are racists, misogynists, homophobes and a lot of other terrible things. And when they swarm someone, which is generally how these things work, some Uber Troll retweets something they want their minions to attack and then they do so en masse.

But I’m struck by the underlying obsession of it all, too. Trolls are always seeking attention. They want us reporting on how they’ve tanked Rotten Tomatoes yet again —seriously, can anyone tell me, what is the point of Rotten Tomatoes at this point, other than to be hijacked to draw media attention?—and the terrible things they’ve said to actors who are people of color and/or women and/or queer and the reactions of those actors and other people. It’s almost as though they’ve been cursed to exist only insofar as they behave in an absolutely pathetic way in public.

How did they get to that point? What corrupted them? What would help them to repent the darkness and cruelty of their lives? And how do we avoid getting sucked into their madness ourselves?

TOLKIEN’S FIRST TROLL

It’s a little known fact that Tolkien’s first editor on “The Hobbit” absolutely hated the manuscript. In fact he was so horrible that he became the basis for Saruman in “Lord of the Rings.” He was removed from the project quickly, but Tolkien always held onto his series of suggestions.

Why is everyone on this planet so into the elves, they are clearly the French.
If this is Middle-Earth, where are Upper- and Lower-Earth? C’mon, Homer, think your sh#! through before you submit it to the big boys.
All in favor of an all male cast #BroTimeisforBros, but we have got to find a way to make it clear none of those dwarves are into each other.
Also Bilbo’s constant calls for tea seem super sus. He needs a lady that he’s leaving behind at home. I think her name should be more normal, too. Let’s agree to Linda.
Dude: What is with all the feet? Jesus.
Bilbo most def needs to kill the lizard guy. He gross.
Naming the dragon after air “pollution” is way too political. And what, is the gold all the money energy companies are making? Give your knee jerk leftyism a rest, Captain Planet, and give the beast a real name, like Clytemnestra, Burn Mother or Sarah.
So wait, at the end of the book, Biblo…goes home? After all he did? No. He should be like, in charge of a kingdom now. Like he’s ruler of Asgard or something. Or Linda gets killed by orcs while he’s away and then he decides to take on the way of the samurai and hunt every single orc down. Actually, that’s it. This whole thing is a set up for Revenge for Linda. (Also, since she’s not around anymore, we can finally hook him up with some young elf or something.)

IT’S A SERIES ABOUT

You know that point when you’ve been reading a book for a while, and it’s been sort of leisurely, maybe you’re only checking back in every couple weeks, nibbling out a chapter here or there, and then suddenly Something happens and there is just no putting the book down, or talking about anything else, or making dinner, because this is my life now?

Over the weekend I hit that point with a fantasy book I have been reading for months. And I was with friends, so of course then I’m trying to explain the book to them, and not because I want them to read it as much as because as I am now so completely blown away by what is happening that I am desperate for some kind of release.

But the thing I discovered is that the book, which is the second book in a series of four, involved so much stuff that has to be explained to make any sense at all that I actually could not in any coherent way describe it.

Which was sort of like racing to the faucet to get water and finding the tap had been turned off because you didn’t pay the bill again, WARREN. Even now, having finished the book, I’m sort of desperately gasping to talk about it.

At first I thought that was a failure of the writing, but now I think it might be the opposite. The writing is so good that it was able to ease me into very complicated concept bit by bit without me even feeling like that’s going on.

By the way the book is called Harrow the Ninth. It’s preceded by Gideon the Ninth and followed (as of next week) by Nona the Ninth. They’re all by Tasmyn Muir, and I guess really what I’m saying is that I wish you would read them even though I have told you nothing about them so I could feel less alone.

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