Lords of their Dingalings: Men’s Rightsers outraged at Time writer for noting the lack of female characters in The Hobbit
Can you find the woman in this picture?
Uh oh! It seems that some woman is offering some opinions about Tolkien!
Over on Time.com, Ruth Davis Konigsberg has a brief personal essay reflecting on the almost complete lack of female characters in the new Hobbit film, and in Tolkien’s ouvre generally. As she notes, it’s not until about two hours in to the nearly three-hour movie that “we finally meet someone without a Y chromosome,” namely Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel — and she was added into the originally all-male story by the screenwriters. Blanchette’s is the only female name out of 37 named in the cast list – though there are a couple of unnamed female characters who make brief appearances.
“I did not read The Hobbit or the The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a child, and I have always felt a bit alienated from the fandom surrounding them,” Konigsberg observes.
Now I think I know why: Tolkien seems to have wiped women off the face of Middle-earth. I suppose it’s understandable that a story in which the primary activity seems to be chopping off each other’s body parts for no particular reason might be a little heavy on male characters — although it’s not as though Tolkien had to hew to historical accuracy when he created his fantastical world. The problem is one of biological accuracy. Tolkien’s characters defy the basics of reproduction: dwarf fathers beget dwarf sons, hobbit uncles pass rings down to hobbit nephews. If there are any mothers or daughters, aunts or nieces, they make no appearances. Trolls and orcs especially seem to rely on asexual reproduction, breeding whole male populations, which of course come in handy when amassing an army to attack the dwarves and elves.
Yes, yes, as she admits, Tolkien’s few female characters tend to be powerful. But that hardly changes the basic fact that the Hobbit, and Tolkien generally, is overloaded with dudes.
These fairly commonplace observations have, naturally, sent the orcs and the elf princesses of the Men’s Rights subreddit into an uproar. Naturally, none of them seem to have bothered to read any of Konigsberg’s brief piece before setting forth their opinions, which sometimes accuse her of ignoring things she specifically acknowledged (like that whole powerful-female-character thing), and completely miss that the bit about reproduction is, you know, a joke on Konigsberg’s part.
Here are some of my favorite idiotic comments from the “discussion.” (Click on the yellow comments to see the originals on Reddit.)
Uh, Jane Austen’s books are filled with dudes. Especially Pride and Prejudice 2: Mr. Darcy’s Revenge, which was later adapted into a buddy cop movie starring Robin Williams and Danny Glover.
EDITED TO ADD: Somehow forgot to include two of my favorite comments:
Oh, and if you were unable to find a woman in the picture above, try this one instead:
Posted on December 31, 2012, in all about the menz, antifeminism, dozens of upvotes, I am making a joke, misogyny, MRA, no girls allowed, patriarchy, reddit, straw feminists and tagged gender, lord of the rings, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, reddit, the hobbit. Bookmark the permalink. 792 Comments.
That poster in the OP, really?! Ok, Bombur is “twice the size of the other dwarves” and they kept him as a fat dwarf, I can live with this (it does become relevant), but they’ve got him with a pastry half in his mouth? Really?!.
SPOILER-ish — Bombur gets stuck carrying Bilbo, because he’s the largest. So his size is actually relevant to the plot.
I was hoping they’d cut some of the fat jokes…clearly not.
I mean, we can see he’s fat from the poster. Why do we also need him to be holding a plate of pastries while demonstrating his poor table manners?
On the whole “feminine” thing with the elves, um, I guess they have long hair? I could almost see their point if they were talking about Orlando Bloom, but the Aussie dude who plays Elrond? Really?
I thought that comment was funny too. “No fair! You forgot to mention the feminine dudes!” They’re operating on another plane of reality.
“Aragorn, while being correct about her being in love with an illusion, was still a meanie”
Oh yeah, he kind of was, a bitter meanie, but a meanie all the same. Of course, I do think him rejecting her was part of why she rode to the battle of middle earth, which would’ve gone a whole lot worse without her there. As for “this is mans work”, I’m pleased that they basically got that handed back to them on a dead witchking shaped platter.
Only thing feminine about Elrond is that’s he’s a high elf with fancy hair!
And no problem, my Doctor Who is better than my Tolkien, but my sponge memory collects many useless bits of trivia XD
A can of fantasy gender worms: http://imgur.com/mDhLa
I may be bitter.
I got annoyed pretty quickly by the dark-skinned slanty-eyed orcs and the dark-skinned slanty-eyed Uruk-hai and the dark-skinned slatny-eyed men from the East.
Which is also linked in with the “pretty people are good, un-pretty people are evil” thing that shows up in fantasy all the time. We know that the orcs are super-evil because they’re ugly! And the elves must be good because look how damn pretty they are!
I feel like this is one of those things that the movie didn’t actually need to duplicate. They already decided to make changes, sometimes even quite radical changes (Arwen being far more of a bad-asss than is canon, for example), so why not try to fix some of the racist crap while they’re at it? But nope.
Well, in the movie they added the “Men of the West” speech, which not unsurprisingly has found its fans among a certain group of people.
“I got annoyed pretty quickly by the dark-skinned slanty-eyed orcs and the dark-skinned slanty-eyed Uruk-hai and the dark-skinned slatny-eyed men from the East.”
Even in universe it doesn’t make sense — orcs are basically allergic to sunlight, so shouldn’t they be vampire pale? (And more so for the “we literally live underground” goblins)
“Why do we also need him to be holding a plate of pastries while demonstrating his poor table manners?”
Idfk, they have decent to excellent table manners in the book, they even do Bilbo’s dishes! But hey, Bombur is fat, so let’s make him eating and a slob! *sigh* No, let’s not.
“I feel like this is one of those things that the movie didn’t actually need to duplicate.”
They really didn’t, even if they kept the high elves as absolutely gorgeous, no reason the orcs at al couldn’t just look like normal people (well, normal with pointed ears I guess?) iirc, the elves are so damned gorgeous because they’re magical, so I guess I can understand the justification there
That kind of needs the tradition of fae as gorgeous and terrifyingly powerful to really work though. If they are that tradition, they should make even Gandalf fear them, which he only sort of seems to — he defers to Elrond out of respect it seems, not fear (respect as old friends and simply because Gandalf is a guest in Rivendell) Basically they’re too damned peaceful to be fae.
Well that became a rant! Sorry!
And my italics were only supposed to include “and terrifyingly powerful”
@Argenti Aertheri:
“That’s Saruman inspecting his new creation, the Urak-hai. Yeah, he created those, doesn’t really help the implications any >.<
I think he was going for light = good and dark = bad in the day/night sense (the long standing religious motif) but failed miserably. Doctor Who got that one right with the Vashta Nerada *shudders*"
I don't think the movies are entirely misguided when it comes to their depictions of evil racial Others. Like the origin put forth in the first one is that they were elves who were tortured, enslaved and made 'inferior' (I don't think we're ever shown elves being turned into orcs, only told, unfortunately). So there's some grasp at people being the results of societal forces beyond their control (hence the white handprint on the black orc face).
But yeah it's very half-formed and I think it's done much better in King Kong and Jackson's production, District 9.
Have you read Pratchett’s book about elves? It’s a pretty good take on the whole thing.
And yeah, I can see keeping at least the big name characters gorgeous (Arwen, Legolas, Galadrial), but there’s no reason the orcs have to be dark skinned. For the goblins surely they should be fishbelly white with a greenish tinge to their skin as a nod to tradition?
The books did go on a lot about how dark all the bad guys were, if I remember correctly. I think the movies are better at that point, except for the uruk-hai.
In the movies, “normal” orchs are gray rather than brown. And now in the new film we have a big bad orch with porcelain-white skin. I think the goblins in the LOTR movies also looked gray rather than brown, while the goblins in the new movie had a skin colour rather like regular white people.
The uruk-hai, yeah, they’re dark-skinned… However, I noticed on re-watching the movies that they actually have not just straight but also blonde hair. Only their hair is so muddy that it’s hard to spot, except in a few strands here and there. So here’s what I imagine going through the minds of the designers…
“Okay, the uruk-hai tolerate sunlight, so they should have pigmentation! Let’s make them brown!”
“Yeah, good idea! And this also shows how evil they are, since everyone knows that dark=evil!”
“Um… guys… isn’t that kind of racist?”
“NO! They’re NOT black people! Because…. they can have blond hair! Yeah!”
“And everyone knows black people have BIG lips, so let’s give them NO lips instead!”
“Yeah! Totally non-racist then!”
I mean… they do have almost no lips. And as I said, blonde hair under the mud. BUT IT DOESN’T HELP.
When it comes to beautiful=good and ugly=bad I don’t really care that the orchs look grotesque and the elves are all beautiful. I can buy that elves as a species are distinguished by a sort of ethereal beautiful look, and that the tortured orchs look terrible. What bugs me is that Grima is like a hundred times uglier than all the good Rohans, and the only one in the entire kingdom with dark rather than blond hair. That’s just weird.
“That’s just weird.” *dies* You put that well, if simply.
“Have you read Pratchett’s book about elves? It’s a pretty good take on the whole thing.”
I have not, wonder if I can iBook it… (Thank the gods for digital books, much as I love that old book smell, my shelves are overflowing)
*looks at white bellied fish* it already is a sort of green grey.
“Like the origin put forth in the first one is that they were elves who were tortured, enslaved and made ‘inferior’ (I don’t think we’re ever shown elves being turned into orcs, only told, unfortunately). So there’s some grasp at people being the results of societal forces beyond their control (hence the white handprint on the black orc face).”
How much of their origins made it into the movies though? The books it was clearly meant as an almost biblical “fall from grace” — iirc that’s barely mentioned in the movies. And I don’t recall the origins of the Urak-hai being in the movies at all.
“How much of their origins made it into the movies though? The books it was clearly meant as an almost biblical “fall from grace” — iirc that’s barely mentioned in the movies. And I don’t recall the origins of the Urak-hai being in the movies at all.”
Like I said, I never read the books so I have no idea. Saruman has the line:
“Do you know how the Orcs first came into being? They were elves once, taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life…”
So it is barely a mention, which is why the movies don’t really succeed when it comes to this. That this information is relayed to us in a small bit of expository dialogue, it’s practically forgettable. As for the Urak-hai, all I can recall is that scene of full-grown ones being born right out of the earth, literally created by their environments.
Re Pratchett, I liked his scary elves, but I can’t say that they’re a better take on elves than Tolkien. I don’t think you can compare the two, they’re such different concepts.
.
That wasn’t my impression from the books. If you want to compare anything in the elves’ history to a fall from grace, I think Feanor leaving Valinor would be a better example. But he and his gang, after being corrupted by Morgoth’s lies, rejecting the Valar and even murdering their kinsmen were still elves and nothing else.
The orchs weren’t elves that were TEMPTED by Morgoth or Sauron, but elves who were captured and then subjected to some terrible process that turned them into orchs. Or at least this is presented as a theory in the books. It’s never told that this is definitely the case.
It gets a longer explanation in the books, but only early on. As for the Uruk-hai, they’re born from the earth, and might be a hybrid of orcs and humans, which means I really don’t want to think how they’d have been born if not born from the earth. I just checked and “tree beard speculates” is all I can find regarding their origin.
(I googled, is that intellectual dishonesty? XD )
Something that never made sense to me about the orc origin story – if they’re transformed elves, how are there so many of them? As in, far more of them than there are actual elves?
“The orchs weren’t elves that were TEMPTED by Morgoth or Sauron, but elves who were captured and then subjected to some terrible process that turned them into orchs. Or at least this is presented as a theory in the books. It’s never told that this is definitely the case.”
Fair enough, that is an important part of the biblical fall.
Scary elves = fae elves, you have my interest!
“Something that never made sense to me about the orc origin story – if they’re transformed elves, how are there so many of them? As in, far more of them than there are actual elves?”
Orcs and men? This bothered me too. I guess maybe there used to be more elves and most left already?
Sample!
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
That book also has possibly my favorite Pratchett line of all time.
“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
Which book? All I’m finding is the entire Discworld series.
They remind me of white wolf’s changelings, which are definitely my favorite take on fae.
The one about elves is called Lords and Ladies.
I think there’s some point in Silmarillion where it says that once the first orchs were created, they then reproduced, or something like that. Like, the species was first invented by an evil transformation of elves, but after that they reproduced and made more orchs the old-fashioned way.
Now one would think that orchs would get elf-children, not orch-children, because if you merely abused and tortured someone until zie looked grotesque and were evil zie would still have normal children. BUT the laws of nature are clearly different in this world… I mean, there’s magic and stuff… So somehow, once the elves had become orchs, they could have orch kids.
What bugged me about “Lords and ladies” was how Nanny and Granny couldn’t just straight-out tell Magrat that “look, elves are sometimes portrayed as nice in fairy-tales, but they’re actually evil”. You know, just SAYING that early on would have saved them SO much trouble.
But Magrat’s moment of ass-kickery is really cool.
The bit where she points a bow at someone and says “Bake my quiche” is pretty funny too.
It is on iBooks, in what looks like German *sigh*
Worst part is I was at B&N two days ago!
I think my favourite part of Lords and Ladies is in Magrat’s ass-kicking – the little dig at Schrodinger’s Cat, where the possibilities are Alive, Dead or Bloody Furious, and what that means when Greebo meets elf.
I’m glad other people have been side-eyeing the Hobbit poster a bit. It’s not just Bombur, to me – though the pastry business is really off – it’s the whole way they have the dwarfs looking. They just look like stupid caricatures to me, except Thorin and (I presume) Fili and Kili. They seem to have gone for a grotesque, point-and-laugh look, and it just annoys me.
They do look very different to the dwarves in LOTR. I’m all for adding a bit of humor, I’m just not convinced that “LOL the dwarves are goofy looking” is the best way to do that.
Yeah, it strikes me as very heavy handed, to say the least. I don’t seem to remember that Aule (?) made grotesques with the first seven dwarfs, just small, strong beings. Now there’s an oddity about reproduction, too. They’re the dwarf fathers in all the references. When did the first dwarf women appear? They do exist, one at least is mentioned by name, briefly, in the LotR appendices. Did Illuvatar fix up Aule’s curious oversight? It’s not like the Valar were sexless.
I like Pratchett’s take on dwarves better too. Especially Cheery – I’m very fond of Cheery.
(And yes, I realize it’s unfair to compare the two given the difference in eras. I feel like Pratchett would have been more feminist than Tolkien even if he had been born in the same era, though, and probably better about race too.)
The dwarves in the hobbit are portrayed as merry, they do a lot of singing and forgetting that there’s a dragon at the end of their journey — they’re generally happier than “great, we all might die” Gimli. And the two in the back are Fili and Kili, so no, they aren’t immune to ridiculous expressions.
The facial hair seems par the course for dwarves though.
Does this prachet guy write good women characters?
Yes, he does. Granny Weatherwax may well be the most awesome older female character ever written by a man.
Awesome!! I have a new book on my reading list.
If it’s specifically Pratchett’s feminist side you’re interested in the book I’d suggest starting with would be Monstrous Regiment. Any of the books centered around the witches would be good too – I like Lords and Ladies and Witches Abroad.
Cool, thanks Cassandra!!
Sorry, blockquote fail. It’s my text from “the Silmarillion” onwards.
I like Granny, but I have a problem with the way Pratchett himself seems to ADORE her and everything she does. She’s pretty nasty sometimes, the way she manipulates people around her and do things behind people’s back “for their own good” without their consent. I don’t have a problem with her being this way, but I dislike how Pratchett seems to think she can’t do anything wrong.
But yeah, overall he writes great female characters.
That’s not how I read his attitude towards that character at all. I think he’s very aware of her flaws – in fact I don’t think he’s ever written a character without obvious flaws.
@CassandraSays
My take on “fantasy can of worms”. I may have had a little too much fun doing it.
Ooh! I like WormDalf.
Well, take stuff as when she sent a letter to Verence telling him he’s gotta order Magrat to marry him or else it’s never gonna happen – and she also describes Magrat in that letter like she’s some little pet of hers. All this completely behind Magrat’s back. Magrat understandably gets pissed off about this when she finds out, but Nanny tells her more or less that Granny was right because thanks to this letter Magrat did end up with Verence. And it seems to be Pratchett’s attitude too, that at the end of the day it was okay for Granny to act this way, because she had Magrat’s best interests at heart and it worked out for the best.
So maybe I exaggerated when I said Pratchett seems to think that Granny can do no wrong – but it clearly seems as if he excuses some really bad stuff she does, because he loves the character so much.
Also! It’s interesting to me to look ay Granny and Vimes as sort of parallel characters, one female and one male. Both of them are nasty as hell at times, and it’s part of what makes them work as believable characters, imo. The fact that they could easily be every bit as bad as the people they’re fighting if they had just a little bit less of a conscience.
“She’s trying to find something to get offended by”
WHHOOOOSSH
There goes the irony, flying unnoticed above your heads.
Sybill Ramkin-Vimes gets very little facetime in Pratchett’s books, but she is still a remarkable character. I like her a great deal.
She really is. The Vimes books keep growing on me over time.
Also, in terms of great characters in general there’s the Patrician. Not nice, obviously, but a great character.
*sigh*
Elrond is NOT Priscilla. Priscilla was the bus, you idjits.
(Sorry, pet peeve.)
@Cassandra, funny you should say this, because there’s one other character in the Discworld series that often annoys me because I get the feeling that Pratchett is SO IN LOVE with his own creation when it comes to this one – and that’s Vimes. :-P
I think my favourite Pratchett character might be Nanny after all. I love how she’s a big, old, fat, jolly slut, who’s much cleverer than she lets on most of the time. Actually, how often do you see big, old, fat, jolly, clever sluts in litterature? Movies? Comic books? ANY medium? There’s Nanny… and no one else.
I like Sybill too btw. Although the portrayal of her and Vime’s marriage sometimes annoys me… There are places where he sneaks around and do stuff behind her back… Like she wants him to eat healthy food and he sneaks down unhealthy food when she isn’t looking… the tired old cliché of heterosexual marriage being a kind of ever-lasting conflict between the boring but responsible woman and the more hedonistic man.
Overall though I like her character.
I like Nanny and Casanunda. They’re fun, and oddly believable in context. Go for it, at any age!
It’s the combination of Nanny and Granny that really tips you off to just how feminist Pratchett’s worldview is. Can you imagine any other current male author writing those two characters and being so fond of both of them? Plus, if you’re a Brit, you probably have someone like Nanny Ogg somewhere in your family tree (I have several).
I love both Granny and Vimes, probably for the very reasons that you don’t like them!
OT but hey, happy 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation!
Also if we’re talking about an entire category of characters rather than an individual I’ve always been very fond of the Igors.
@Cassandra: I wouldn’t say I dislike them. I’m sort of conflicted when reading them. Particularly Granny. I LOVE it when she beats up bad guys. Literature should have more old wrinkly women being all bad-ass and beating up bad guys!
Oo, Tolkien and Pratchett, two of my favorites.
If you want to read a perfectly brilliant deconstruction of Tolkien’s orcs, and other problematic issues, I can highly recommend Mary Gentle’s Grunts! which is a lovely satire of the race, gender, and class issues in Tolkien’s work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunts! Trigger Warning for graphic rape, violence, mayhem, etc. (In this novel, the female orcs fight alongside the male orcs–just beause the men and elves cannot tell a female orc from a male orc isn’t their fault!).
I didn’t mean to imply that all orcs were created from prisoners–it’s as others have said, MOrgoth (who was a Vala, and who is sort of an analog to Lucifer in the creation myth) took prisoners and tormented them and brainwashed them into orcs–but yes, they could reproduce, and even maintain their own cultures (and different languages, though Tolkien never created much of the Orcish languages–he creates parts of 14 different languages, spending the most time on Elvish). This is not in the major fictions of the legendarium: you have to go to the HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH and Tolkien’s letters (and the theories changed over time: after the US bombed Japan, Tolkien wrote bitterly that Orcs had to have descended from men).
There are goblins (which JRRT had in THE HOBBIT) as well as orcs — and then the Uruk-hai–all fairly hostile to each other. And since the orcs were enslaved by Morgoth, then Sauron, the idea of forced breeding doesn’t disagree with anything I’ve read–and there are bits and pieces in LOTR where it’s clear that many of the orcs resent their servitude and want to escape from Sauron (and from under the Nazgul)–granted, it’s to set up on their own as a gang of robbers, but still!
Elves reproduce rarely (immortals, after all), and as someone said, Tolkien has a whole long essay on their habits and customs. I think, if I recall the numbers correctly, that only 1 in 3 dwarves is a woman–so there again, marriage is fairly rare. Still, when the timeline is thousands of years (First Age and Second Age and into the Third Age), populations can build up.
There’s a definite sense of asexuality in Tolkien’s worlds/characters: he just wasn’t writing about love and romance and sex in any way.
The SILM is also pretty clear that men can fail/be corrupted as well as Elves — in fact the “Black Numenoreans” refers not to skin color but to Numenoreans who went over to Sauron by choice, and there are references to the negative impact colonialism/empire building has in the histories of both Numenor and Gondor. (Tolkien thought everything went pear-shaped after the Normans invaded England in 1066 and started empire-building). Dwarves, also, have historically worked with goblins and orcs and others–different groups of dwarves might ally with the goblins–others were allied with the Elves (the inscription on the gate of Moria refers to a time when one group of Elves who were very interested in building and technology–the ones who worked with Sauron on the Rings–were allied with the Dwarves, before the balrog was awoken). Sauron (and Morgoth) could take very fair forms, and often worked through seduction/persuasion until they were defeated in certain ways and sort of blasted out (Sauron was a Maia–like Gandalf–so it’s more accurate to think of them as spirits taking bodily form temporarily than as an elemental aspect of their being).
Since a bunch of this information is dealt with only in the SILM or his letters and other unpublished writings, it has to be dug for (although there’s scholarship on it all), and it doesn’t in any way change the impact of the more popular texts!
I don’t at all disagree that Tolkien’s work is racist and sexist (and elitist! and classist)–I just disagree with the idea that he himself is uniquely bad/worse than just about anybody else living during the time he did. This relates to the tendency in literary studies, still, to see the so called great/canonical literature as universal and GOOD, and therefore not at all racist or sexist (when it is), and to dismiss popular genres as bad not only in writing but ideological apparatus.
Oh, and someone married Tolkien marrying late: sorry, am sneaking in to comment in between work and getting ready to leave for conference, so am not looking it up.
No, that was C.S. Lewis who married late.
Tolkien met Edith Bratt (also an orphan, at the boarding house they both lived in), when they were both adolescents, and she was three years older than him, and they fell in love–but when the priest who was Tolkien’s guardian saw him having tea with her in a public tea shop, he extracted a promise from JRRT to not do anything until he was an adult. Tolkien agreed, but wrote her immediately upon turning 21–and they were married fairly soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Tolkien
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#Courtship_and_marriage
She died before him, and he had “Luthien” engraved on her tombstone; “Beren” is on his–there’s evidence in the letter that that story was sort of his myth for their relationship.
Oh and while I’m on the subject of LotR, being in the middle of my annual rewatch, I really want to smack Eomer around for dismissing Merry’s readiness for battle in “Return of the King.” At that point in time, Merry had been kidnapped by the Uruk-hai, fought goblins and orcs and the freaking Black Riders, rousted an entire species into going to war on Isengard, witnessed several of his friends die or nearly die, saw Gandalf fall to the fire demon and oh yeah FOUGHT A FUCKING CAVE TROLL. So fuck you Eomer for treating him like he’s going to piss himself in a fight.
(I have issues.)
Oh, but Merry’s just a little hobbit, not a big strong human! (Eomer has the issues, not you.) :-)
“Oh and while I’m on the subject of LotR, being in the middle of my annual rewatch, I really want to smack Eomer around for dismissing Merry’s readiness for battle in “Return of the King.” At that point in time, Merry had been kidnapped by the Uruk-hai, fought goblins and orcs and the freaking Black Riders, rousted an entire species into going to war on Isengard, witnessed several of his friends die or nearly die, saw Gandalf fall to the fire demon and oh yeah FOUGHT A FUCKING CAVE TROLL. So fuck you Eomer for treating him like he’s going to piss himself in a fight.”
Seconding all this, even if battle was unknown to most hobbits, Merry had seen quite a bit of it already. He and Pippin basically defeated fucking Saruman by simply being awesome. Sure they had help with the battle, but it only happened because of them. Not to mention the way they just straight up jumped on tha cave troll all “fuck if we die, this thing just killed Frodo!” (Go mithril armor!)
Mysteries in the world of Tolkien: Where did the hobbits come from? They don’t have a creation story of their own. Illuvatar made the elves and men, Aule made the dwarves and then Iluvatar gave them souls. But what about the hobbits? Now in various places Tolkien suggested they’re not actually a separate species like dwarves and elves are, more like a sub-species of humans. Okay… So you’d think they might have evolved out of regular humans somehow. Only creationism rather than evolution is true in the Tolkienverse.
As far as I know Tolkien himself hadn’t worked that bit out before he died.
In the movie, the uruk hai are explained as Sauruman breeding them from Orcs and Goblin men, presumably through some kind of evil sorcery.
OT, but Jacksons film ‘Forgotten Silver’ is a masterpiece of hoaxing, and a level which all trolls should aspire to.
I kind of want to talk about Pratchett’s take on orcs, but I don’t want to give away a major plot spoiler for one of the books.
“Come on, if you think you’re hard enough!” Good book.
Actually that book sort of illustrates the quality (other than humor) that sets Pratchett apart from a lot of other fantasy writers, but I’m not quite sure what to call it. Compassion, maybe?
Empathy.
Empathy works.