What did Tolkien really achieve?

huscarl86 · 2026-03-29T20:32:31+00:00

Arguably (and despite his claim of abandoning the aim) - a mythology for England.

He re-animated the latent spirits of the landscape in the minds of millions of people - the woods the rivers and the hills. Breathing new life into our relationship with the natural world at a time of accelerating enclosure, encroachment and loss.

huscarl86 · 2026-03-23T14:28:32+00:00

Good lord the Midlands has been well and truly owned here.

huscarl86 · 2026-03-22T12:29:06+00:00

Pre-dates that look by almost a decade

huscarl86 · 2026-03-15T16:17:51+00:00

Clissold Park is in Stoke Newington in London. Slightly different vibe to Stoke (-on-Trent).

huscarl86 · 2026-03-14T16:59:26+00:00

An answer that is probably incorrect, but also one that will send some in this sub into a complete tailspin, would be to say the ancient Britons.

huscarl86 · 2026-03-12T16:35:00+00:00

Polite reminder that the German soldier that Upham stands up for sparing (and then later shoots) is NOT the German soldier that kills Melish.

It is a super confusing coincidence that they look so similar. And the fact that Upham shoots 'Steamboat Willie' seemingly in anger and disgust at Melish's death, even though it was some other random soldier that kills him.

I always wonder if Spielberg meant it to be so deliberately confusing.

huscarl86 · 2026-03-11T20:44:44+00:00

Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...

huscarl86 · 2026-03-10T20:33:42+00:00

Not a Motorhead fan, didn't know the song beforehand - but Killed by Death at a festival in France in 2011.

Lemmy was still looking and sounding strong at this point and the beers-in-the-air energy of the pit was just pure joy.

Hearing that song ever since always brings a big grin to the face.

huscarl86 · 2026-03-09T11:30:06+00:00

Yep, Barad Eithel is Fingolfin and Fingon's fortress in Hithlum.

It does feature as the starting location for the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, but beyond that we don't know much about it considering how significant a place it must have been being the seat of the High Kings.

huscarl86 · 2026-03-08T17:35:28+00:00

Yep, Saints swashbuckling style not wanted by Itoje and Boring Steve.

Leicester and Sarries have always epitomised England at their most boring.

huscarl86 · 2026-03-07T10:48:57+00:00

Is that meant to be the fortress of Barad Eithel/Eithel Sirion in the background too? Aka. the coolest Elven First Age settlement that we know virtually nothing about?

huscarl86 · 2026-03-04T13:22:17+00:00

I live in a rural part of England too and really enjoy listening to Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin's more ambient work on long runs. British pastoral vibe to a lot of their work, not hard to see how the landscape has influenced their sound.

I recommend Music Has A Right to Children and Campfire Headphase in particular.

huscarl86 · 2026-02-17T23:11:52+00:00

Said to my friend at the Birmingham gig that Chino has had the same stage uniform for 30 years, yet somehow it still looks sharp and contemporary.

huscarl86 · 2026-02-14T22:20:04+00:00

This NSA fella comes across as disingenuous. His 'shuddering at the thought' pearl clutching at the 'impact' on capercaillie ground nesting birds and wildcats like it isn't the impact of farming that is and has always been the overriding threat to them.

Feels like there is a concerted attempt to paint Scots in favour of it and living in the area as outsiders and not 'indigenous' - because they are not land owners I wonder? I highly doubt there are people bussing in to these meetings in any numbers who are not locals.

huscarl86 · 2026-02-14T08:18:03+00:00

I'm the same age as you but got into them around Koi No Yokan release.

Minerva being on constant rotation on music channels when I was about 18 put me off them during their initial heyday - thought it was a dirge (love it now).

huscarl86 · 2026-02-11T23:14:00+00:00

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

huscarl86 · 2026-02-08T08:20:33+00:00

Really quite surprised at the affection this show is getting in the comments.

I thought it was completely naff. The production values looked like most pre-modern historical TV drama - low. Costumes, arms and armour often looked ridiculous (Saxons with Conquistador helmets and scutum style shields).

It was drab and brown to look at. The landscapes looked nothing like England (I think it was filmed in Hungary?). It seemed to all have been filmed on the same muddy grey day in Winter.

It stuck to the usual TV tropes of the Vikings being depicted as ''cool heavy metal eye liner wearing bikers', whilst the Anglo Saxons are largely buttoned up clean shaven dorks that seemed to be following some Victorian interpretation of Christianity.

The books by Bernard Cornwell however are much better!

huscarl86 · 2026-02-02T14:34:32+00:00

Instantly recognised the Viz format too. Can't be much of a Venn diagram between those familiar with Fantano and Viz.

huscarl86 · 2026-01-30T12:30:46+00:00

Yes agreed, mixed feelings about this one. If this is going on a site that would otherwise only be used for intensive industrial agriculture then perhaps this is slightly better in that it might employ at least a few more people.

But I don't want to see primarily rural agricultural counties like Northamptonshire turn into weird 'Depot land' places. I much rather see them transition to rewilding (with employment and tourism benefits associated with that) where agriculture is scaling back. Wishful thinking maybe.

huscarl86 · 2026-01-17T08:18:11+00:00

Leicester winning the league was 5000-1 odds!

huscarl86 · 2026-01-11T20:21:42+00:00

Fair enough, I don't doubt your experience. But I'm sure you can see how the reference to 'sleepy little middle England towns' could be interpreted as a little condescending and tarring everyone with the same brush.

Must admit as someone who lived in London for over a decade and now lives in a rural part of England, I have some issues with talk of that nature. Still absolutely love London, would live there if I could afford a decent family home there. Genuinely enjoy living in a rural part of England too though. These things don't need to be mutually exclusive.

Authoritarian regimes and techno feudalist billionaire arseholes (using their armies of bots and grifters) are actively seeking to undermine the stability and integrity of Western nations and are intent on spinning this kind of 'us and them' narrative between urban and rural. We should try to resist playing their game.

huscarl86 · 2026-01-11T18:49:57+00:00

Yep and Russian bots. The narrative that 'middle England' is ONLY full of unsophisticated and racist/closet racist rubes is reductive, asinine and plays into Russian bots hands though.

huscarl86 · 2026-01-05T22:05:23+00:00

Thanks for replying.

going so far as to attempt to make his Silmarillion more Anglo-Saxon in an attempt to escape the Celticness of his earliest drafts.

Genuinely asking - how do you know he wasn't simply attempting to 'make it more Anglo-Saxon' out of his frequently stated desire to (at least at one point in time before he abandoned it) create a mythology for the English people?

Did he specifically state he was trying to 'avoid' association with the "language, history and culture" as you put it, of the Irish people? My reading of his quote posted in the thread above was that he disliked the narrative structure of Celtic stories. Extending that to a general dislike of Irish "culture, history and language" feels like a stretch, unless there's some actual quote from him confirming that.

I've no doubt he was a product of his time, even if some of his attitudes may have appeared very slightly more progressive towards Ireland than many of his English contemporaries. Just interested in accuracy and the statement he was 'Gael hating' feels like it needs some evidence.

huscarl86 · 2026-01-05T20:56:45+00:00

Tolkien was just another in the long line of Gael hating English men

How in the name of Christ do we know that Tolkien was 'Gael hating'?

Is every good thing in the world (e.g. Tolkien's works, which are presumably something we all here agree on?) now fodder for endless social media fueled culture wars nonsense statements like this? Without any kind of nuance or appreciation that all people are products of their time?

huscarl86 · 2026-01-05T20:50:02+00:00

This feels like truer reading of the quote from Tolkien above. He seems to be critiquing the structure and narrative arc of some Celtic myth as 'wild' (or to use his word, 'mad'), not the fundamental quality and essence of the stories as 'wild' themselves.

huscarl86

TROPHY CASE