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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15920 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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Amazon's execrable Rings of Power

They're going to give us a talking Balrog and a poetry-reciting Orc. It's going to be so bad. I can't wait.

E.g. Sauron is stymied in his efforts to make the One Ring because he killed Celebrimbor, the only guy who knows how to make the magic rings. You remember, the guy he had to teach about "alloys" in season one? Car crash train wreck doesn't even begin to describe how effed-up this disaster is. It will be spectacular. I'm already anticipating the video reviews, I have no idea if Critical Drinker's liver will survive 😁

A poetry reciting orc isn't so strange, they may be crude, but they are still intelligent beings with cultures of their own, they even come up with and sing songs.

It really is a shame that the people who write and make these shows have no real interest in fantasy, or at least not a Tolkien’s particular style of dark age fantasy, I've always been fascinated by the glimpses we get of the cultures that fall under the dominion of Sauron (and the Witch King). But you really need someone with a deep appreciation for history to pull that off in an interesting way, I suppose that's why a lot of the OG Warhammer guys did such a good job with their writing when creating their settings and cultures.

A poetry reciting orc isn't so strange, they may be crude, but they are still intelligent beings with cultures of their own, they even come up with and sing songs.

Missed opportunity to link to the biggest banger in Middle-earth.

The orc artisans who made Grond always go tragically unappreciated.

The poetry-reciting Orc sounds like something in the tradition of Douglas Adams' Vogons. Except it won't be funny.

poetry-reciting Orc

They've re-invented Vogons!

We'll have to wait and hear what the little rhyme is before we can compare the poetic output.

I've gone through all the stages of grief out the other side. Now I can calmly contemplate that this is not a Tolkien adaptation, this is bad original character fanfiction. Watching and reviewing it on its own merits just makes it fun ('So the monster living under the mines is going to tell us its back story? Can't wait. No more Harfoots? What happened, did they get eaten by the Balrog?') I'm just hoping we'll get something as hilariously terrible as floomp-monster Sauron from the second season.

(Glads was snuggling up to that. Yeah. Lovely.)

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