COLLEGIAAAAAAAAATE!

tdmccall:

I’m reading The Last Ring Bearer (Post on this can be found on my other blog here), which is a re-telling about the events during and after The Lord of the Rings.

It becomes evident as to why Yeskov never intended for it to become a fanfiction. As a scientist he wrote it as a record seen by the losers. It seems silly since it is a spin-off of The Lord of the Rings, but it has some realistic elements added into the telling. An easy way to explain this would be to give a modern day example.

If an American were to travel to a place such as Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, they’d see an account on history praising the kamikaze and cunning of Japanese generals, and portraying American tactics as both cheap and unfair. As enraging as it was to personally witness this, I had to keep in mind that whatever fluff I was fed in history class all these years has also been twisted. Those crazy kamikaze pilots were more often than not forced to go through with their actions. An example of such altered history can be seen here on the Nanking Massacre.

Back to Middle Earth, Yeskov writes The Last Ring Bearer portraying an orc’s point of view of the war. It’s extremely off-putting to see Gandalf being portrayed as a manipulative war-monger, Eomer as a drunkard, and Aragorn as a cheap duelist, but the reality is that realistic war stories are manipulated by perspective - something that Yeskov sought to create with his essay. If that’s not strange enough, it’s incredibly bizarre to view orcs as a people, having family expectations, doing their job and fighting for a cause not completely revealed to them or apparent in The Lord of the Rings. It’s actually really brilliant. If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan and have an open mind, I seriously recommend taking a look at it.

^ Creepy man-slaughtering servant of Sauron? Or maybe just a misunderstood soul who couldn’t fit in as a child and is just trying to get back home to his orclings? You decide.

I want to read this.