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Comment by swayvil | Hacker News Reader

It's a beautiful example of the story (the "true account") bending to the gravity of desire.

(The ring is a desire singularity with 1000 gravities.)

That's a big deal. I mean, the story is basically everything to us. Our whole reality.

That the story is just a squishy thing that gets smashed around by desire is a very big important point. A shocking revelation.

In the context of LOTR, all the narrators are now untrustworthy.

Maybe things weren't so black and white.

I think that's the point that's getting underlined and belabored here.

Beware desire and its effects upon reality.

Also, LOTR is a history. History isn't what happened. It's a story about what happened. And it's a story written by the winners.

I think JRR Tolkien saw a lot of this in the war.

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Glen Cook has an absolutely fantastic series called The Black Company where the entire series is framed as being the recorded annals of a mercenary company, with who is writing them switching occasionally between books to different characters, which let's you see the narrating character who usually writes them from a different, and sometimes less flattering, perspective.

In any case, unreliable narration is obviously a big of the series, and the concept that just because something is written down doesn't mean it happened that way is pretty central, and I think it's outright brought up by the narrator at least a few times, and reading between the lines/making inferences that don't line up exactly with what is recorded is pretty much necessary to understanding the plot of the series sometimes.

Cook also served for 10 years, not sure if he ever saw active combat but the series is constantly praised by veterans for it's accurate portrayal of what life in the military actually feels like.

I don't see the Black Company brought up often, but it sure is a good read. I rank it akin to Malazan, though markedly different.

.. and Roger Zelazany (Lord Of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, Isle Of The Dead).. - have such distance feel of time, myths and world creation that I won't look for other worlds and tales, thanks them.

> In the context of LOTR, all the narrators are now untrustworthy.

I think that's a common misunderstanding of the 'untrustworthy narrator' concept. All narrators are untrustworthy, the question is not a binary one: 100% or not. The question is how trustworthy, and where and when can we trust this narrator?

Like real people, nobody is perfect - everyone tells >0 lies and >0 truth - but putting them all in the same basket is meaningless and aburd. Some are far more trustworthy than others.

Tolkien was very clear that knowledge had great power (Gandalf, for example) and that deception and untrustworthiness were works of the enemy, of evil. Bilbo's lie was driven by the Ring, the ultimate corrupting evil. The protagonists, including the hobbits, Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, Legalos, etc., were exceptionally trustworthy and took it very seriously; look at Sam's faithfulness to Frodo, for example. Boromir was depected as flawed, and ultimately broke trust and was corrupted by the Ring.

There is an alt history version of The Lord of the Rings written by a Russian author named Kirill Eskov called “The Last Ringbearer” and it is fantastic.

In it, Mordor and the Orcs are a science advanced nation and the southern countries are the aggressors. It’s a great “history is written by the victor” take on the mythos. I highly recommend checking it out.

Thanks.

I sort of recommend Khraniteli, the Soviet Lord of the Rings Soviet TV movie from 1991. Delightfully bizarre in small doses but a little hard to sit through the whole thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xluxT4fj2U8

While we're talking alternative LoTRs, it's worth having a look at The DM Of The Rings https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 which manages to use all stills from the LoTRs films and tell a completely different story, in the same vein as Darths and Droids https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0001.html .

I just downloaded it. Thanks :)

Curious to know what you think. :D

Well I hate it.

Is history written by the victor? Maybe. But the lord of the rings is not intended to be read that way. I find it tiresome to have someone come out and say this nice fantasy story, that is not a hard deep dive on morality or political reality, is actually something entirely wrong; and to then have it implicitly suggested that if I don’t buy it that I don’t get “the point”.

Our post modern society has truth written by whichever side validates your beliefs at this point. I’m not convinced that “written by the Victor” is even an accurate take.

Good point. I totally appreciate it as excellent epic fantasy too.

BUT the whole "reality is distorted by desire" thing is dead seriously real, and it is a big deal (The Buddha himself ranted about it). And the ring IS a total solid desire macguffin. People go crazy over it. And Bilbo DID change his story. So... it makes an interesting line of thought, you gotta agree.

Also : You ever read Lord Dunsany, CS Lewis or Lovecraft? They were all sorta on the same page as Tolkien.

Sure, reality is distorted by many things. It happens every day. But these days we see it happen evermore by bad actors, who are not necessarily the victors and in fact often are not.

Is this book promoting critical thought? Or is it promoting the idea that conspiracy is correct? I won’t care to guess about the author’s intentions although I have my opinions.

But assuming a best faith Interpretation, I feel strongly that the Lord of the Rings is not the setting where this ought to be explored. The more time we spend debating conspiracy and political theory within the lord of the rings, the less we focus on what Tolkien intended to embed within the story.

One of the newer Star Wars did this. In a world where one faction identified as the dark side, fueled by hatred, the director thought to ask who was the bad guy? Maybe it was the rebels, purchasing weapons from arms dealers that had slaves?!? Contrived and polluting an otherwise clear narrative world. Imo it is artistically lazy to thrive in controversy where it doesn’t belong. We should be more willing to criticize artistic themes.

It’s a fanfic that’s an alternate take on the story. It’s great. If you don’t like that sort of thing then ignore it?

I do ignore it, thank you. I’m merely sharing my opinion and reasoning that it is, conceptually, bad.

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