Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Tag: Tolkien

  • Why Is Durin a Man?

    There has been a lot of racist backlash against the decision to cast some non-white characters in the new Lord of the Rings tv series. Tolkien fanboys and fascists (a not very distorted circle on a Venn diagram, it would appear) are very angry that a few new characters – some Harfoots, Durin’s wife, a…

  • Initial Reactions to the Rings of Power

    Having spent a lot of time writing about Tolkien and racism on here, and having watched fanboys consistently misread Tolkien’s novels in various ways to justify their racist and anti-semitic imagery, I was looking forward to the inevitable backlash at the new Amazon Prime show, the Rings of Power. Being a big Tolkien fan, I…

  • Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth, a Fascinating Review of Tolkien’s Life and Work

    Last week I visited the Boolean Library in Oxford to see the Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth exhibition. This exhibition combines work from Tolkien’s estate, material from various museums, and published material to produce a detailed description of his life and the process of producing his seminal work, The Lord of the Rings. It includes…

  • The One Ring 1: Heroics in the High Pass

    The fellowship was composed of five members: Tywyl Neidr, a hobbit and the sole survivor of the sacking of Rhosgobel Eisa the Axe, Dunlending, an Eye of Saruman and Neidr’s oldest adventuring companion Simir the Swan, a Wainrider from the East who sought the secret to his people’s troubles with the Shadow Mercy, a Barding…

  • What a Remarkable Coincidence!

    I have begun a new campaign with a new group, playing The One Ring. This is Cubicle 7’s Middle Earth role playing game, which seems to have been broadly well-received and is certainly a thoughtful and beautiful work. We’re playing on Wednesday nights for about 3 hours, and so far we’ve only managed to complete…

  • The Battle of Five Armies: The Final Hobbit is Great Fun, but Too Gorgeous

    One of the English loan-words that Japanese people misuse slightly in a really cute way is gorgeous (ゴージャス). In Japanese gorgeous refers not to something really nice, but to something that is overdone or just a bit too much – not necessarily unappealing or unattractive, but just a bit too much. I’ve heard the word…

  • Tolkien’s Accidental World

    Popular perception of Tolkien’s world-building efforts seems to be that they were the product of a determined and methodical visionary. I think this perception arises because his worlds are so detailed and carefully constructed, so complete and internally consistent, that it’s impossible not to imagine that they were constructed systematically out of a guiding vision.…

  • Tolkien the Flat-earther!

    I have been reading Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits, by Dimitra Fimi, in an attempt to get a broader insight into some of the background of Tolkien’s world-building and the ideas underlying it, and it has been presenting some interesting and I think new ideas about how Tolkien’s world developed, some…

  • Will the Industrialization of Mordor Cause Global Warming?

    The Guardian reported recently that a researcher in the UK has developed a climate model for Middle Earth. Apparently he developed a climate model and ran it over six days in a super-computer at Bristol university, and has been able to identify different climate zones in Middle Earth. We now know that the Shire had…

  • Peter Jackson’s Hobbit: Too Many Goals for One Movie?

    In the last week I have watched the Hobbit twice, first with my partner and then as part of an end-of-year party with my players. In both cases, the people who attended the movie with me gave it the thumbs up – we all really enjoyed it – and I can definitely say that it…