I Apparently Live in Mordor

 At least, I do according to Rings on Prime. 

Trying to figure out distances in the Rings on Prime's maps is almost as bad as trying to figure out distances in my books. (Oh believe me, I know, but my excuse is I was a teenager when I planned them and I didn't have tens of millions of dollars to hire expert cartographers!) But according to Microsoft Copilot, and yes, that is the best source I have for this:

The distance between Ostirith and Mount Doom in Middle-earth varies depending on the map used, but it’s roughly 100 miles or 160 kilometers. The Tower of Ostirith, perched high on a cliff, overlooks the settlements of Tirharad and Hordern¹². Mount Doom, also known as Orodruin, stands alone in the Plateau of Gorgoroth, rising about 4500 feet with its base approximately 3000 feet tall³. So, while the eruption of Mount Doom would indeed be powerful, the Southlands should be well within a survivable distance from it. Remember, though, this is all in the magical realm of fantasy! 🌋🔥¹.

So, 100 miles? It was 100 miles from that water-started pyroclastic flow to the Elven watchtower?

According to Rings on Prime, water kickstarted a pyroclastic flow from Mount Doom that devastated the entirety of Mordor, including the watchtower a hundred miles away and other lands even further, and that explained why the land was ruined for thousands of years. This is the point--the pyroclastic flow from Mount Doom is supposed to be so strong that it blocks out the sun so the orcs can walk around without being burned by the sun. 

I know very little science, but I know this is silly because of where I live. 

My apartment is about 120 miles driving distance and 44 years away from Mt. St. Helens. So, according to the show's logic, I should be living in Mordor in an ecosystem the orcs would be happy with. 

I don't. Because that's not how volcanoes work. 

By the way, I have heard tell (although I can't find a written source to corroborate) that St. Helens was a vent for multiple volcanoes all around the Ring of Fire, and that it relieved pressure of multiple volcanoes. Therefore, one would think its eruption more powerful than the eruption of a single volcano that isn't part of a range. 

Also by the way, I remember hearing from a very young age that the truly dangerous part of a volcanic eruption like St. Helens was not the pyroclastic flow, although that was deadly, but rather the mudflow, when all the glaciers on the mountain suddenly melted and the water mingled with ash and dirt to slide down the mountain at incredible speeds and sweep away anyone and anything in its path. Like, I remember, in first grade, the teacher reading to us a picturebook about St. Helens during reading time, and someone asking if all of this one guy's sixteen cats died in the mudflow.

Look, I realize this is shoddy reference work, but that's because I'm referencing the lore and legend of my home. My mom and grandparents lived in Washington during the eruptions. Mom scraped a bunch of St. Helens ash off of her car in a peanut butter jar, and I think she still has it somewhere. I have three figurines carved out of St. Helens rock sitting on my shelf. I don't remember a single year in elementary school when I didn't have at least one lesson about St. Helens. In sixth grade, the much-hyped overnight field trip was visiting St. Helens. I remember, with vivid clarity, my fifth grade teacher telling how when the mountain erupted, she filled her bathtub with water to make sure she had fresh water, sat holding her child wondering if she was going to watch her family die horrible deaths, and then hearing God promising His strength to her if it came to that. 

And now I live in places where they all lived, in green, flourishing, beautiful lands that look more like the Shire than like Mordor. So I don't have to have a degree in science to know how stupid this is. 

This was St. Helens in 2018, a few months before I went to China. 

In the books, Mount Doom was not a natural volcano; instead, its eruptions were directly connected to what Sauron was doing. But if you had the misfortune of watching Rings on Prime, you may have noticed that Mount Doom went off because some water spilled onto the magma which caused a pyroclastic flow--meaning that they tried to make this make sense with science (by the way, read that entire article, because that headline is not what the scientist said! He describes exactly what kind of eruption happens, and nowhere does he mention a pyroclastic flow!). 

And before you (and by "you", I don't mean my average reader, I mean whoever at Amazon may be reading my blog) say that the water only started the volcano but Sauron's power can continue the volcano, maybe, but the point of the volcano in Rings on Prime was to create a new homeland for the orcs--a place they can call their own and not have to worry about the sun. That kind of implies the characters thought the water on the magma would continue an eruption for the foreseeable future, doesn't it? 

It feels weird to write this post because of how limited my scientific knowledge of volcanoes truly is. But in the end, none of my favorite reviewers mentioned Mt. St. Helens compared to Mount Doom, so I decided it was worth the post. 

Time to Reread the Darth Bane Trilogy

 Disclaimers right off the bat:

1. The book series I'm talking about is better for older teens than middle-school teens. 
2. I am not particularly a Star Wars fan. My favorite of the original trilogy is Return of the Jedi. I never finished the prequels. I never finished the sequels. I never finished the Clone Wars animated TV series. I read almost none of the novels that predate or postdate the original trilogy. If I saw someone commenting on Lord of the Rings with this amount of knowledge or experience, I might be rather annoyed. So, if you're a Star Wars fan who's annoyed with my commentary on something I know comparatively little about, I certainly do not blame you. 
3. The books I'm referencing are books I haven't read in at least thirteen years, possibly closer to fifteen. I'm not at home as I write this, and even if I were I'm pretty sure Mom donated those books because I bought them for Karl and he didn't care, so they probably aren't even there. (And school just got out, and I haven't had time to read them again, so here we are.)
4. This idea has stewed in my brain for awhile now, and it's very much based on scattered ideas that have evolved over more than a decade. In other words, my memory is probably a bit off. 

With that out of the way...

When I saw the trailer for the most recent Disney Star Wars show, which seemed to be told from the point of view of the Sith, I was kind of intrigued. The Sith make for interesting villains.

As a child, Mom used to tell me that Star Wars was the return of stories with clear villains and clear heroes--even though there was more than one way to be a hero, you knew who was a hero and who wasn't. Prior to Star Wars, there were a lot of anti-hero stories, a lot of no-hero stories, etc. 

All that said, I remember thinking Mom would be very upset when the Star Wars sequels first came out. You see, there was a trailer played in movie theaters about whether you, the viewer, preferred the light side of the Force or the dark side of the Force. One invisible character said, "Of course I'd choose the light side!" and the other, more knowledgeable invisible character said, "Are you sure? The dark side is about self-actualization, ambition, reaching your full potential, being the best version of yourself." (Not those words exactly, but that was the idea.) The trailer played it off as not evil, exactly, but hyper-individualist and ambitious. Of course, it is evil, but it doesn't advertise itself as evil. 

A few years before the sequels came out, I had read the Darth Bane trilogy, which I didn't love enough to get into Star Wars much at the time but over the years began to have more respect for. Bane spends most of the books talking about using the Dark Side to find strength and power, in order to be rid of his own weakness. This matches with what the trailer said. 

The key thing about the Bane trilogy, though, is that it portrayed the Dark Side as enhancing your power while destroying you--without delivering on the freedom the Sith promise.

Now, when Disney's newest show was announced, I remember a lot of the reviewers I respected bemoaning the fact that it was about the villains, making the villains sympathetic, etc. I wasn't as disheartened as they were, because again, I remember the nuanced take in the Bane trilogy, where the villain was absolutely a charismatic character but still clearly, clearly, clearly a villain. I wouldn't have minded something like that put on a screen. 

I doubted Disney's ability to pull it off (and from what I've heard, I wasn't wrong to doubt them), but the principle itself intrigues me. The thing about some of these new movies is that they seem to think they can't have a real villain, or that they're somehow obligated to make the guys everyone thinks are good actually be bad guys and the villains are actually heroes. Seriously, that's in everything new, it seems (even Rings on Prime!). But the Bane trilogy had you in the perspective of the villains, made them relatable and interesting, and still made it clear they are villains. Honestly, that's what annoyed me so much about this guy's comment--there already is a Star Wars series that lets you see yourself in the villains. 

To quickly summarize the Darth Bane trilogy: the main character starts out as a miner in a highly depressive planet, he leaves and joins the Sith armies to save his own life, he eventually works his way up to a high rank as a Sith lord, he destroys all the other Sith but takes on one apprentice named Zannah, teaches her to be a ruthless Sith sorceress, develops the "One Master, One Apprentice" rule, and spends most of his time teaching Zannah to become strong enough to kill him, which she eventually does, and then she takes on an apprentice who she has to train to kill her, and so on, and so on. (You can see how this culminates in Luke and Vader fighting for the position of "apprentice" in the Return of the Jedi.) Throughout the books, Bane develops a number of relationships, including with his childhood mentor, his fellow soldiers, one of his Sith masters, and a Sith woman, but none of them stand up against the pressures of the powerful, leaving Bane to conclude that power is all that matters and bonds are only there to serve your purpose for a little while. He believes (and Zannah agrees) he has created the strongest order to defeat the Jedi and perfectly embody the Dark Side of the Force. Through this apprentice-kills-the-master plan, each Sith master will become more powerful than the one before, eventually making them strong enough to destroy the Jedi. 

But in their quest for extreme power, the Sith are destroying themselves. There are several key points where this stands out, but the one that really hits home hard is Bane's insane parasite armor: he gets these bugs all over him, which are strong enough to withstand a lightsaber and wildly enhance his Dark Side abilities, but at the same time are leaking toxins into him that mess with his brain and his ability to control his power. Eventually, they come very close to killing him and Zannah has to save him (murdering her cousin in the process), but even though he survives, throughout the third book he is ravaged by the side effects of those parasites and worrying constantly about his own weakness and premature aging. 

Remember that line from that one trailer about how the Dark Side is all about self-actualization? Bane, in his constant attempts to strengthen himself, lost himself. His attempts to improve his power almost killed him. That whole self-actualization part of the Force was actually self-destructive.  

Incidentally, while Bane is laid out with the parasites killing him, Zannah is talking with her cousin, reciting the Sith mantra that ends with "Through victory, I break my chains", and her cousin says something like, "But you haven't broken your chains. You're still scared, you're still vulnerable." I find that line fascinating, because it shows the lie to the Sith code. While that Disney Star Wars trailer talked about reaching your full potential, the true nature of the Dark Side is to lose yourself completely. (Now, does that indicate that Disney doesn't understand the destructive nature of the Dark Side? Probably.) 

Which brings me to my favorite part of the trilogy. In at least the last two books of the trilogy, there's one character meant to serve as a foil to one of the Sith masters: in the second book, it's Zannah's cousin, whom she murders but who previously demonstrated real wisdom developed from his traumas and is not afraid of what his cousin can do to him, and in the third book, it's either Princess Serra who faces death peacefully after nearly falling to the Dark Side, or it's a character who I'm not going to spoil but I will just say faces certain death calmly while still trying to bring out the good in Bane. Even though these characters are antagonists (because the villains are the protagonists), they have freedom that the Sith can't have, even though their code promises it to them. It's a very clever way of letting the reader see why the Sith are wrong without the Sith themselves realizing it. You, the reader, see things the characters absolutely do not, despite the fact that you are inside the characters' heads. 

The Dark Side being self-destructive isn't exclusive to the Bane trilogy, either; it's been a running theme in Star Wars since before Disney took over. Darth Vader is an obvious example--he became more of a machine than a human when the Dark Side possessed him. Also in the prequels and that one Clone Wars TV show, there was General Grievous, and... yes, I had to Google him to make sure I had this right... he lost most of his natural form to become essentially a droid. Does he become more powerful? I guess. But who is he? He's lost himself. 

I was sincerely hoping for that kind of storytelling from the newest Star Wars show. The intense self-actualization leading to self-destruction in the Sith is fascinating and tragic, and it makes for interesting villains. From everything I've heard, that's not what we got from the newest show, so I think that means it's time to reread the Bane trilogy. 

I Believe You Have Missed the Point, Sir

 I have a lengthy post about Acolyte planned--I haven't seen it yet, but some of the marketing reminded me of a trilogy I read years ago--but as I was cooking something today and listening to YouTube, one of my favorite reviewers posted a review of the first episode, and part of that review sent me off in a tailspin of a different direction. 

One of the actors in the show said something like, "There is no good or evil in Star Wars, it all depends on what side you're on; you're supposed to be able to see yourself in all the characters, from Darth to Luke."

Laying aside the misuse of the title "Darth", I wanted to break down this quote a little bit. 

First off--I grew up listening to my mother telling me how the years before Star Wars were the years of the anti-hero in movies. A lot of those movies, although well-done, didn't really have any good characters. The wealthy, established villains were corrupt politicians, or gangsters, and the protagonists were thieves, other gangster, etc. Sure, they may have been on the right side of that particular fight, or they may have been sympathetic, but there were no heroes. Then, along came Rocky, and then came Star Wars, when there were, indeed heroes. 

Then the prequels came along, and the Jedi order weren't shown to be perfect or flawless, even if they were a step above the Sith. Nonetheless, my point stands--the irony of saying that Star Wars had no good or bad side, when in reality, not only did it have a clear good and bad side, it was also one of the few movies at the time to have a good side. 

Having been a child during the release of Lord of the Rings and my early twenties during Phase II of the MCU, I can't especially relate to my mother's fondness for Star Wars. I must admit that I haven't heard this point of view corroborated by another source; but even so, the idea that there isn't a clear moral distinction in Star Wars is silly. 

But the real point, the especially amusing point that sent me here, is this: the way the actor said this quip, it sounded like he made "seeing yourself in all the characters" to be in tension with there being "evil" in Star Wars. In other words, he made it sound like you can't see yourself in evil characters. 

Which is a major, major problem, because that is one of the main points of evil characters: for you to see your dark traits and be warned about them, for you to understand how tempting it is go to down unrighteous paths, for you to see how tempting and close to you evil is. (I'm thinking of Princess Serra, a character in a book series that will figure prominently in my next post, but pause that for now.) 

You know how The Lorax has the Onceler never show his face, as a symbol that anyone and everyone could become him? Same idea. You should be able to see yourself in villainous characters as a warning. So how odd to say otherwise. 

Darkness Will Bind Them?

 English lesson! 

In that poem, there are four verbs: "rule", "find", "bring", and "bind". A verb must be done by a noun; so, dear reader, which noun is doing those verbs? Is it

a) One Ring, 

b) Darkness, or

c), Them? 

Well, according to Rings on Prime, the answer is "Darkness":

The real answer, of course, is a), the One Ring. The One Ring will bind the other rings in darkness. 

Seriously... did an AI create this trailer? 

By the way, if my add-on is to be believed, yes, that trailer is approaching a 1:5 like-to-dislike ratio. 

Is Someone At Amazon Reading My Blog?

 Like everyone else on Twitter, I knew that Rings on Prime's second season's trailer would drop today. I have watched the thing, and of course I have thoughts, but the thing that stood out the most to me was this one shot of The Main Character:

Does this mean somebody at Amazon was reading my previous posts about her hair not being in a crown?!

Probably not, but just in case some person is, in fact, reading my blog, here's the one thing I want to say to you the most: stop messing with stuff. Stop giving Pharazon's character traits to Miriel. Stop inventing characters if you can't include the already-existing ones (hey, was Anarion even in that trailer? He wasn't in the first season. What about Cirdan the Shipwright? I'm pretty sure they promised us Cirdan). Stop giving new powers to the Silmarils, as if they weren't already epic enough. 

We love Tolkien as his works are. You want to win an audience back? Stop messing with Tolkien to the point that your show is unrecognizable as Tolkien's works. 

If This Is Lore, It's Bad Lore

I think I've read somewhere that the two Rings on Prime showrunners really know their Middle-earth lore. Every once in a while, something flashes through in the show that supports this claim; the problem is that the lore is used so badly that it makes no sense. In addition to the rough and pointless explanation of the Silmarils and the invention of an elf fighting a Balrog on the Misty Mountains instead of near Gondolin, there was something else that gave me pause.

I'm not saying it's unreasonable, per se, but in the context of the show...

To set the scene, The Main Character is in an elven graveyard, looking at the images of dead elves carved into living trees. The scene flashes by a few dead elves, and this one grave caught my eye:

At no point does the show give a name for this dead elf, but upon my first viewing, I saw this glimpse and immediately thought, I know who that is! In the Silmarillion, there is one infamous elf-dog duo, and I can't think of another one. 

Then I decided that my knee-jerk reaction might be wrong, so I did some digging just to verify. 

What do we have in the picture? An elf that we know is dead and a big shaggy dog. That star on his shoulder is worn by all the elves in this show, and I remember fans arguing over whether that was the star of Feanor or the star of Finarfin (this article explains why it's really neither). One of Feanor's sons was Celegorm, and because he was a renowned hunter, the Valar Orome gave him a mighty hound dog named Huan. 

That dog in the picture first gave me pause, because that is not a hound dog. My brother has a hound-shepherd mix, and she has short hair and enormous eyes, which is about the opposite of that dog. Then I remembered that while Huan is called Huan the Hound, he's actually a wolfhound, not a hound... and a wolfhound looks pretty much like that carving! He's also too small to be Huan--if you've ever seen the Silmarillion cover that has the woman riding on the dog, that's Huan:

Image source, ironically, from Amazon.

Regardless, I think it's reasonable to assume this grave is Celegorm and Huan, yes? If it's not, and the show just invented another wolfhound-elf duo purely to be in a tomb, then I don't think that's my fault for guessing wrong. 

Having said all that... why was Celegorm buried with honor when he was so evil that Huan abandoned him? 

Most of Feanor's family had severe moral shortcomings, but a serious argument can be made for Celegorm being the worst of them. His primary role involved manipulating the people of Nargothrond (the city of Finrod, Galadriel's beloved brother) away from their true king (which was Finrod); lying to Luthien and then imprisoning her to force her to marry him; and then egging on his brothers to the Second Kinslaying (where he died fighting Luthien's son). 

Hang on, hang on, hang on... the show wants me to believe that The Main Character is Galadriel. The Main Character--in that very scene the screenshot is taken from--is mourning her brother Finrod. Celegorm undermined Finrod and tried to take his city and his people from him. Why, why, is he buried next to Finrod? Why would The Main Character allow that? 

I could be wrong (I don't have the book with me at this moment), but... but didn't Celegorm specifically mean for Finrod to die in Sauron's dungeons? As much as The Main Character hates Sauron for murdering her brother, shouldn't she also despise Celegorm for abandoning her brother to die? And yet, here we have his statue next to Finrod's, and even a line about how The Main Character thought she'd be buried next to all the dead elves there, including Celegorm? 

By the by, after it was revealed that Celegorm and one of Feanor's other sons had lied to Luthien and... possibly abandoned Finrod to die, on purpose? I can't remember... the people of Nargothrond turned them out, and even Celegorm's nephew was so disgusted that he refused to go along with him. That nephew was Celebrimbor, also a character in the show. 

Furthermore, in that second Kinslaying, Celegorm's servants captured Luthien's grandsons and deliberately abandoned them to die in the forest. Maedhros and Maglor, two of Feanor's less objectionable sons, heard about this and were horrified, so they searched for the two boys but never found them. I... won't say that's as severe a rejection as Celebrimbor's, but that's certainly not an honorable memory. 

All of this is to say that it makes no sense for these two to be memorialized next to each other, and given how soundly Celegorm was rejected by even the other Noldor, I don't know who would have built his memorial in the Noldor capital. 

It also makes no sense for Huan to be memorialized with Celegorm, because he abandoned Celegorm and devoted himself to Beren and Luthien instead. 

It is not impossible for Gil-galad to have built this as some peace memorial between the elves, or for some other powerful Noldor lord to want to honor both of them, or for someone to have decided that every Noldor who fought against Morgoth should be honored, and that that was more important than any of their infighting. All of this is possible. I would love for that to have been explained. 

But really, what was the point? What was the point of hinting at Celegorm and Huan, but doing it so perfunctorily and badly? 

Evil Races? Let's Look At Two Fantasy Examples

This post does not have a point. It's just a series of my observations. 

One of the key points of Rings on Prime was their attempt to humanize the orcs, which is interesting because Tolkien himself also struggled with the idea of having an intrinsically evil race, like orcs. This video, from about 14:10-14:45 or so, does a great job explaining why RoP failed. 

I've heard things (but it's 10 PM at night and I have work tomorrow, so I'm not researching them now) about Tolkien having a hard time reconciling an "evil race" like orcs with his values of redemption. I've also read a lot of headlines about Tolkien's creation of an evil race being racist and problematic and so on and so forth. I remember also hearing about evil races being reevaluated in other forms of fantasy media, such as D&D--hence this song, for example. 

Something I realized recently, though, is that there is another "evil race" in fantasy that I have never heard this kind of theorizing about: the dementors from Harry Potter. Dear reader, I wonder why this might be? Why are fantasy readers uncomfortable with the orcs being an "evil race", but not uncomfortable with the dementors? 

I mean, I haven’t seen any D&D stuff rewriting the dementors to be sympathetic characters who have their own perspective, and NO, that is NOT A SUGGESTION. Please don’t do that! Having the unsympathetic villain makes the story more interesting, and when the characters spend the entire third book wondering about the morals of compromising with something so evil because it’s a way to punish other evil people… I mean, that’s very interesting and thought-provoking. (Especially when it turns out that they had no compunctions about punishing innocent people, because they are unrestrained evil.)

But I do have to wonder, why are intrinsically evil characters not even noticed in one series, but make lots of other people (including the writer) uncomfortable in a different series?

I suppose one possibility is the context of the story. Rowling’s books have a lot of discussion about unfair treatment to other creatures, so when she trots out one irredeemable creature, everyone kind of gives it a pass. 

Perhaps also because the only things we ever see dementors do are things that humans can’t do, and therefore we have no investment in them being redeemed. Orcs, on the other hand, engage in cruelty and violence, things that humans do and can be redeemed from, so we have an investment in their redemption.

However, I think the biggest difference is that the dementors are clearly some kind of animal, but the orcs in Tolkien were once other creatures. (The movies say they were once elves who were tortured and corrupted, and Rings on Prime really leaned into that; I’ve heard somewhere that Tolkien changed their backstory into something else, but I don’t remember what it was, and that’s not the one that everyone’s thinking of anyway, so…) Orcs are on one level the Elves are on too, while dementors are more in the category of wolves, sharks, and other animals that haunt our nightmares… except that the dementors in the book clearly talk to humans, so theoretically they should be on the same level as humans. 

To be honest, I don’t really care. There are other creatures in Tolkien’ legendarium that no one feels the need to redeem (Balrogs, barrow-wights, and Nazgûl all come to mind), so maybe I’m wasting my time wondering over this question. But I thought it was an interesting difference, and I haven’t posted in a while, so there it is. If anyone has thoughts, then the comments should be working!