There is a Lord of the Rings MMO (like World of Warcraft) and a guy made a video recording a walk from the Shire to Mordor. Like you can just walk from the Shire to Mordor in the game. And it's almost 10 hours long in real world time to do that! But on top of that the whole journey is narrated by the Lord of the Rings audio book, with the relevant parts of the journey.
Oh man, something to watch and listen to in the evenings to come, thank you!
I don't have experience with the LotR Online outside of small clips here and there, but for the past 5 years or so I have been enjoying a bit more retro LotR "mmorpg", a free-to-play MUD that has been in development since 1991 or something: https://mume.org/
In MUME (Multi-Users in Middle Earth) getting from Bree to Mordor by walking won't take you 10 hours, but maybe 10 minutes at most. However, the trip and the destination will be full of dangers, whether it's from pve or pvp side of things.
As a side note, MUME is being developed by volunteers, and I believe the game itself is still ran on some Swiss University servers, where it all began, heh.
Even the LOTR adaptation is questionable. Gandalf kicking Pippin (the exact opposite of what happens in the book), the lack of the scouring of the Shire, and super-Legolas right out of a Marvel movie...
I wonder what Tolkien would say of so much of the symbolism from his novels being used to bootstrap a horrible dystopian control grid? Would he approve or disapprove? The way that orcs are dehumanized you have to wonder.
Tolkien’s orc dialogue in TLOTR is actually very humanised in some ways – the orcs moan about their bosses, complain about rival teams, are concerned about completing their tasks, being punished for failure, etc, etc. When they aren’t fighting, they come across as petty functionaries in a totalitarian state.
That's both a very good description of Tolkien's struggles with orcs, and a writing style that feels out of place in an encyclopedia. The Halls of Mandos are described as a halfway house.
It's a fantasy novel written primarily for entertainment. It's hard enough to write dwarves and elves, orcs are a necessary plot device. If you want you can imagine them as pitiable creatures who have been deprived of free will and have no choice but to act the way they do and loath themselves for it.
>>The way that orcs are dehumanized you have to wonder.
If anything, it's their portrayal in the Rings of Power that is idiotic(trying to humanize them) - they aren't human, they don't have families or friends or internal lives and psychological doubts going through their heads - they are meant to be a force("force" like in "force of nature") of evil, not a misunderstood and exploited race of intelligent beings.
For an actually interesting take on "hey what if the orcs are actually intelligent people" there is The Last Ringbearer by a Russian author, presenting LOTR from the perspective of Mordor(it's not a good book, but was an amusing read)
I will however agree with you that it's truly insane how we have a global survailence company that is used to spy on citizens and destroy democracies worldwide that is literally called Palantir. Like, no one working there is seeing it?
I've not seen Rings of Power and I don't plan to, but I'd just point out that the Silmarillion describes the origin of orcs as being an exploited race of intelligent beings, elves who were captured and tortured until their forms became what we know as orcs.
"... all those of the Quendi [elves] who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes."
And as this wiki article posted in other comments very nicely explains, Tolkien never came to a good and final conclusion on how this all really worked, with different explanations in different works of his. The "they were just evil force that could be killed without remorse" theme is the dominant one, because it works in the context of the story and the worldbuilding that he did for it.
To me it sounds more like he really wanted to give them some agency and the ability to speak, but then was unable to resolve the moral dilemma that came out of it - with different works suggesting different "solutions" to it. As the Wiki article points out, Tolkien was a devout Christian and part of his world view included beings which were wholy and irredimably evil while still able to speak and reason on some level. When you look at Christian iconography, you don't really have theologians saying "well when you have angels slaying demons, are the demons really evil or are they just misunderstood". That's your orcs. Since Tolkien really cared about world building he wanted to make it fit neatly in the myth of creation but as far as I can tell - he was never able to do it neatly.
> we have a global survailence company that is used to spy on citizens and destroy democracies worldwide that is literally called Palantir. Like, no one working there is seeing it?
The Palantir are not evil creations in the book iirc. They were used by the great kings to see whatever they wished.
Heck, even in the book Aragorn uses the Palantir to make a critical decision turning the tide of battle.
In the book the Palantir are technically neutral devices for Seeing things, that, it turns out, are inherently prone to misuse and once used for Evil, are incredibly difficult to use in any other way.
A better metaphor (accidental or not) for surveillance technology I've never seen.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)
"Because Pharaoh is paying daddy, and we need the money." - Unknown laborer at the Pyramid of Djoser, c. 2660 BC, explaining to his son why he's making a giant pile of rocks in the desert.
Zip file with mp3 in it:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b2aPKgVVguOKMOOqWskaliOviYr...
Best enjoyed on a rainy afternoon in an armchair with a cup of tea.
Reserve audio versions for when you genuinely can’t look at the book because you’re doing something else.
There is a Lord of the Rings MMO (like World of Warcraft) and a guy made a video recording a walk from the Shire to Mordor. Like you can just walk from the Shire to Mordor in the game. And it's almost 10 hours long in real world time to do that! But on top of that the whole journey is narrated by the Lord of the Rings audio book, with the relevant parts of the journey.
https://youtu.be/LYipECdYpXc
Incredibly relaxing
I don't have experience with the LotR Online outside of small clips here and there, but for the past 5 years or so I have been enjoying a bit more retro LotR "mmorpg", a free-to-play MUD that has been in development since 1991 or something: https://mume.org/
In MUME (Multi-Users in Middle Earth) getting from Bree to Mordor by walking won't take you 10 hours, but maybe 10 minutes at most. However, the trip and the destination will be full of dangers, whether it's from pve or pvp side of things.
As a side note, MUME is being developed by volunteers, and I believe the game itself is still ran on some Swiss University servers, where it all began, heh.
Orcs aren't human, though. If anything, they were deelfized
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma
If anything, it's their portrayal in the Rings of Power that is idiotic(trying to humanize them) - they aren't human, they don't have families or friends or internal lives and psychological doubts going through their heads - they are meant to be a force("force" like in "force of nature") of evil, not a misunderstood and exploited race of intelligent beings.
For an actually interesting take on "hey what if the orcs are actually intelligent people" there is The Last Ringbearer by a Russian author, presenting LOTR from the perspective of Mordor(it's not a good book, but was an amusing read)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
I will however agree with you that it's truly insane how we have a global survailence company that is used to spy on citizens and destroy democracies worldwide that is literally called Palantir. Like, no one working there is seeing it?
"... all those of the Quendi [elves] who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma
The Palantir are not evil creations in the book iirc. They were used by the great kings to see whatever they wished.
Heck, even in the book Aragorn uses the Palantir to make a critical decision turning the tide of battle.
A better metaphor (accidental or not) for surveillance technology I've never seen.
"We are easily corrupted"
[1] https://www.westword.com/opinion/opinion-palantir-technologi...
[2] https://www.pogo.org/investigates/stephen-miller-conflicts-o...
Back in my day, LotR names were used for cool metal bands like Gorgoroth, Amon Amarth, Cirith Ungol, Carach Angren, Burzum, etc.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)
"Because Pharaoh is paying daddy, and we need the money." - Unknown laborer at the Pyramid of Djoser, c. 2660 BC, explaining to his son why he's making a giant pile of rocks in the desert.