I was thinking how it must be bewildering for Orcs, caught up in marches to war for specious reasons, involved in pointless battles that have nothing really to do with them, but a mad tyrant's desire for power, and I got this Tolkien-inspired parody. @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com
So, @franksting.bsky.social very kindly pointed out that orcs from Isengard were at Helm's Deep. The Mordor Orcs fought at Minas Tirith... so this is the corrected version. (For people with accessibility issues, this is identical to the one above, with "Gondor" replacing "Helm's Deep" in the title.)
For people wondering if there are more of these Tolkien inspired poems / skits / monologues, a thread of them begins here, with an intervention on spelling by Neil Gaiman himself. Enjoy...
bsky.app/profile/life...
Well, after taking a couple of days off to dance among the stones at the henge, and see the solstice sunrise, I've done another of these silly Tolkien homages. If you've ever wondered why there are no Entwives, this is the answer, actually. Enjoy, @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com
I've been doing a series of Lord of the Rings inspired poems - there's a whole load of them on this thread. Some are silly, some a little darker, some satire, some comedy. Today when I woke up, I thought about Wormtongue, that weasel figure, and decided this was for him,
@neilhimself.neilgaiman.com
So, if I'd had a bit more time, I'd probably have evened out the metre on this one. The final lines irk me, so I'd prob go with:
Some (like some in Rohan), spit and label me Wormtongue.
But others shout “Good on you, Nige” - and wave their flags and cheer.
But overall, I think it's a fair effort!
Okay, the irking wouldn't let me go, so I rewrote this with better meter and a revised rhyme scheme. Sorry if you saw the earlier version, but you know, this is how writing works, I guess... :)
Yes, the allegory for the time is so very clear... but I'd never drilled down into whether this might be Lord Haw-Haw or Oswald Mosley, or some other such figure. I wonder when he was writing the Wormtongue section...
Bored of the Rings is a 1969 parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. This short novel was written by Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney...It was published in 1969 by Signet for The Harvard Lampoon, and, unusually for a parody, has remained in print for over 50 years...
This is why Pratchett's examination of orcs in Unseen Academicals (and later goblins in Snuff), was so important. Fantasy as a genre bumbled along to empty stereotypes for too long; it was refreshing to see that challenged with his signature humour and empathy.
Thank you! With this one I was thinking of some of the bewilderment combined with defiance in the court statements of Jan 6th insurrectionists, so not one thing in particular, but a vibe...
