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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • I will not stand for this Pippin slander!

    He resisted the will of Sauron himself for a bit, and even when hurt by him he told him a little as possible. Pippin very intentionally told Sauron nothing of their quest or of Frodo and Sam.

    He’s a fool, but a fairly intelligent, strong-willed and kind fool.

    Good meme though.


  • BearGun@ttrpg.networktoLord of the memes@midwest.socialBalrog lore
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    4 days ago

    The cry of Morgoth in that hour was the greatest and most dreadful that was ever heard in the northern world; the mountains shook, and the earth trembled, and rocks were riven asunder. Deep in the forgotten places that cry was heard. Far beneath the ruined halls of Angband, in vaults to which the Valar in the haste of their assault had not descended, Balrogs lurked still, awaiting ever the return of their Lord; and now swiftly they arose, and passing over Hithlum they came to Lammoth as a tempest of fire. With their whips of flame they smote asunder the webs of Ungoliant, and she quailed, and turned to flight, belching black vapours to cover her.

    It doesn’t actually say anything about how fast they got there. “In that hour” simply means “at that time” here. On the other hand, they travelled “as a tempest of fire”, which certainly implies magic and speed. Either way, with such inherently magical creatures as the Balrogs, saying that they cannot travel very quickly without flying seems somewhat naive.

    Good meme though, always appreciate something that makes me go back to the scriptures.










    1. Those are some nice claims, got any sources for them?

    2. If your claims are true, it would be a quite kind depiction of stereotypical jews for the times. Dwarves were a very hardy and highly skilled people, who were quite generous with their craft. Almost the only bad traits they had were because of the incredibly powerful magic rings Sauron gave them, which were designed corrupt them and make them his slaves. They almost fully resisted that corruption, just becoming greedy and isolationist instead.

    3. The story transpires in a world where there are actually good gods that help people and an evil god (Morgoth, and later demigod-ish Sauron) that is trying to corrupt and rule the world. I don’t think the decline of Men is a metaphor for growing secularism (Tolkien was famously a BIG hater of metaphor and allegory as story telling devices) as much as it is a direct consequence of their in-universe growing secularism and the same happening earlier in the world.

    4. “Eastern/Southern men given to evil on brown people” What do you mean? The Eastern/Southern men are the brown people. The reality of it is that the story is one of war, and we’re seeing it told from people on one side of the war. That means we’re gonna get mainly negative views on the other side. Even so, the first time we see a Man of Harad in the books, the first thought we’re given from one of the characters is Sam thinking this about him:

    He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.”

    This is to me a nod towards the Men of Harad (at least, likely all the easterlings) not actually being evil but only being decieved by Sauron (the Deciever).

    In general, Tolkien was born in 1892. He likely wasn’t a paragon of equality, but i also don’t think he portrays any kind of racism or xenophobia if you look past the very surface level of his writings.


  • To be completely fair they lived in a world where there actually were real differences between the races. In our world racism is silly because there aren’t any actually relevant differences between the races, but the differences between elves, men, and dwarves are very real in middle earth. Not enough to pull everyone over a comb (to use a swedish proverb), but at least there’s some substance to it.



  • We used to be “neutral” (even though even then the argument was threadbare at best), but then we went and joined NATO. Can hardly call us neutral now. Even outside of that though, neutrality should not mean you can’t call out countries/organisations for doing horrendous shit like war crimes and genocide.

    We’ve publicly condemned Russia for the invasion of Ukraine (among other things) and i think China for something else (was it about Taiwan or Hong Kong or something? I don’t recall). There’s no real reason not to do the same with Israel outside of not wanting to anger the US.