J R R Tolkien

Linkdump for March 31st through April 2nd

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Sometime between March 31st and April 2nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Rosie’s Phenomenal Precision Insult Machine!: Don't reach for those old, tired gendered, ableist, or otherwise lazy and harmful insults. Trust the machine to help you find the perfect, targeted insult for your specific needs! (Does not contain gendered- genital-based insults, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, dis-ableism, body-shaming, slut-shaming. May contain peanuts.)
  • Joss Whedon’s obsession is not feminism: The problem is that at some point in his career, Joss became so intent on the masochistic fantasy of being hated by strong women for being a nerd that he spent a decade writing stories about violating those women to ensure they would hate him.
  • Of dwarves and gender: So one day a dwarf is talking to a human and finally realizes that when humans say woman, they generally mean “person who is theoretically capable of childbirth” because for whatever reason, humans assign social expectations based genital differences.
  • On Wm. Golding’s Lord of the Flies: Basically all the good Golding scholars agree that Lord of the Flies is intended as a condemnation specifically of western positivism and superiority, not a condemnation of human nature.  Golding believed that good societies were possible, but that he was not living in one.
  • What’s Wrong With Using The Word “Gypsy?”: TL;DR: It's racist. Here is a list of myths and realities about the Romani/Roma people.

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

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First off — wow.

I thought I’d read The Lord of the Rings a long time ago. Now that I’ve just finished reading it, I’m not sure if I ever actually had or not. It may well be that I’d read The Hobbit a long time ago and over the years thought that I’d read the entire LotR series. It could also be that I’d seen the animated version and assumed over the years that I’d also read the book. Now I’m not as sure, as far too much of what I read was entirely unfamiliar to me.

Either way, though, I’ve now read it — and if I hadn’t read it before, it’s a shame it took me this long. It really is as good as people say it is. Not that I ever really doubted that, however, it’s far different to have so many people hold it up as a masterpiece of fantasy, and to be able to actually form that opinion for yourself.

There’s a lot more information and reviews of LotR available on the ‘net (a quick Google search for “tolkien lord of the rings -movie” turns up around 125,000 hits) that are very likely to be much more well-written and in-depth than this little bit of babble is, so I’ll just stick with what I’ve got.

I was promped to pick it up and (re?-)read it after watching Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (which I apparently didn’t post any comments on, though I did mention it a couple times beforehand…). I’ve definitely got a lot more respect for Peter Jackson‘s ability to translate the books to the screen — and I’m really jonesing to see the rest now! Just seven more months until The Two Towers comes out, and nineteen until The Return of the King. Going to be a long wait, that’s for sure….