Eskov bases his novel on the premise that the Tolkien account is a "history written by the victors".[2][3] Mordor is home to an "amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic", posing a threat to the war-mongering faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude is described by Saruman as "crafting the Final Solution to the Mordorian problem") and the Elves.[2]
Macy Halford, in The New Yorker, writes that The Last Ringbearer retells The Lord of the Rings "from the perspective of the bad guys, written by a Russian paleontologist in the late nineties and wildly popular in Russia".[4] The book was written in the context of other Russian reinterpretations of Tolkien's works, such as Natalia Vasilyeva and Natalia Nekrasova's The Black Book of Arda [ru], which treats Melkor as good and the Valar and Eru Ilúvatar as tyrannical rulers.
This comes up every time when lotr discussion goes deep and I love it every time. Good reads and fun perspective exercise. The books that is. Not puddin'.
If someone goes from Aunulindale and the Silmarillion to the third age in 30 minutes, they skipped waaaay too much. Probably skipped over the War of Wrath, or at least one of the drownings.
I actually watch the whole damn thing. For me, Putin went from highly intelligent evil dictator to highly stupid evil dictator. I hope I get the chance to spit on his grave one day.
Damn I was gonna say I appreciate your comment because you used the double equal sign operator to mean equality " == " and I thought it was cool to see that in a non-programming context.
But you actually did " = \ = " and Lemmy markdown interpreter thought you were trying to escape something because of the backwards slash.
Anyhow, to address your comment...
Yes, normal !== perfect but nobody was claiming otherwise. Neurodivergent also !== special
What's crazy to me is Putin had such an opportune chance to control the narrative and try to pull the far right to his side. He could have done this by speaking to anti-LGBTQ stuff or talk about traditional families. But instead he spent his time talking about a perverse Russian history that some how blames Poland for Hitler's aggression.
Putin had a chance to control the narrative, but instead ranted on like a crazy old man. So win for the west, but what a strange story.
Unfortunately, I don't think it matters what he spews. One-in-four Americans already have a positive view of Putin. I think he's got the crazy demographic already locked down.
But instead he spent his time talking about a perverse Russian history that some how blames Poland for Hitler’s aggression.
This was a message towards German fascists; he's dangling the Königsberg-carrot (and other former German territories in the east) in front of them. He'd really like Germany to be on his side.
It becomes more clear what Russian strategy is when you consider Medvedev's interview where he speaks about Lviv and he mentions how Poland could support an Ukrainian remnant with Lviv as its capitol. Complete and utter bullshit, the message is simply "Poland and Lviv".
And I'm betting that Putin promised Orban he gets the south-western parts of Ukraine.
Well Orban seems 100% on Putin's side regardless. I guess I don't know enough about Germany to know if that's something their far right wants, but wouldn't surprise me. And I suppose that all makes more sense since the far right in USA is clearly on his side already.
Because he knows it doesn’t matter, he’s taking a figurative verbal shit on fucker carlson and it’s a flex on his part. He knows it’s bullshit, he knows that we (non qult idiots) know that it’s bullshit and it’s him basically going “look at these imbeciles swallowing the shit I feed and what are they going to do about it?”
The interview was several hours, very few people actually watched it. The only thing that matters is that "Putin was open to being interviewed" even though that perspective is missing the important details like how Putin has avoided interviews from anyone else for the past few years because anyone but Tucker Carlson is going to ask hard questions and confront him with unpleasant facts.
Putin cares infinitely more about Russian domestic opinion than American public opinion. He had a few good moments in there where he belittles Tucker that are going to be clipped and shared all over Russian media.
He started this off very quickly with calling Tucker a talk show host causing Tucker to laugh awkwardly amd nervously. Speaking of that, I was surprised at Tucker's nervousness. I guess he felt the whole world was watching him or something and he choked a bit.
Not as easy to seem like you're centered and wise when you're not reading a script on your own TV show.
