The Ninety-fifth Roving Ranger

This is the the last Roving Ranger for this year and I'll be back in early January.

Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter - and do let people know about it 🤗

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, a Happy New Year and all the best for 2024.

Life and Works

Some incredibly great news on Tolkien (and C.S. Lewis.)

Read up more on this via Tolkienguide.com (Öffnet in neuem Fenster):

Walter Hooper collection of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien manuscripts and books and personal possessions of CS Lewis

Events & Shows

Pacifica Christian High School (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) in Orange County has obviously founded their Fellowship of the Tritons, planning for their Inaugural Tolkien Retreat (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) at beautiful Leonard Lake Reserve (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) in Northern California.

Scholarship and Fandom

TolkienGuide.com (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) have provided a 2023 Year End Roundup for TolkienGuide and Tolkien Collecting (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Youtube]

Several Tolkien-related podcasts (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) have been made available by the University of Oxford.

Martin Simonson gave a talk on The Modern Tolkien: The Keys to the Enduring Appeal of Middle-Earth (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Youtube]

The Past Daily (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) seems to have unearthed an hour long radio piece from NPR which in itself seems to be based on a 1974 BBC production according to Tolkien Guide (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Franchise and Merchandise

We have reached a moment in time where a rather regular letter by Tolkien will cost you $37,500 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Manhattan Rare Book Co.]

You know it’s a slow news day when outlets the world over spend time on Demetrious Polychron and his fan fiction: Washington Post (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) | Guardian (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) | Bookseller (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) | BBC (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) | Variety (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Every time I see a ‘map artist’ sell things online my left eye is twitching with that’s something you could be sued for but this one looks impressive - and it is 3d to boot: Middle Earth Map (Commercial Use) (Öffnet in neuem Fenster); this gentlemen even quit his Aldi job for this (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Inter alia & Back in the day

British politics increasingly seem to use Middle-earthian Metaphors in everyday life: Boris Johnson is like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, says George Osborne (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Telegraph; paywall]

It has finally happened: Tad Williams’ Otherland (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) will get the series treatment.

It is always lovely to see old Star Trek material resurface - such as this interview with Majel Barrett (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

How Italy’s hard-right claimed JRR Tolkien (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) is a good podcast by the Times with their Italian correspondent explaining the exhibition’s abuse by the extreme right.

Hayden Christensen wants to play Darth Vader in more Star Wars projects (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Entertainment Weekly]

John D. Rateliff shares some information (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) on the upheaval at Hasbro which owns Wizards of the Coast with Magic: The Gathering as well as Dungeons & Dragons.

Warhammer is finally ‘happening - including Henry Cavill (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Wertzone]

xkcd will always be one of my favourite sites.

Fandom clickbait - this is how it works. An example.

I would like to take a moment to show you how you generate a lot of online interaction while delivering no relevent information and/or insights whatsoever.

And I have just the post for you. 😅

You are most welcome to have a look at the articles (I loathe to call them that) but trust me, your clicks are more valuable elsewhere. As with most fandom-related posts these days.

First of all, it is a post by the Daily Mail (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), a tabloid newspaper that is not worth your time (exceptions apply occasionally).

The headline is catchy as needed:

Most bingeworthy TV shows of all time revealed with FRIENDS not even in the top five.

Now, we all binge great TV shows
(no, we don’t. Some of us are happy to watch in installments; emotional response triggered.)

Of all time
(well, that is, until December 2023. Next year’s is certainly going to be different but you need an ultimate claim to generate discussion; all ultimate claims are by definition illogical, wrong, or temporary but will make temperatures rise.)

with FRIENDS not even in the top five
(well, what a coincidence. I recently did another edition of my Tolkien References Project (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) - about FRIENDS. There was a reason to that - Matthew Perry (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) died. So not only is there another ultimate claim - FRIENDS is one of the best series of all times, if not THE best, but there is also an incredibly emotional component for everyone who loved the show or like Perry suffered from depression and/ or addiction. So having the death of Perry in a post that has NOTHING to do with his death - bingeworthy TV shows, FRIENDS not included, triggers an emotional response.)

Second, the post in itself is not Daily Mail material but from another website: Ranker - a train wreck waiting to happen.

According to Wikipedia it is a “website that features polls on entertainment, brands, sports, food, and culture” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) but what it does not say is there is no curation, challenge to nonsense, or any non-biased approach anywhere. (Please note that when a huge website like this does not get a decent WP treatment you know there is something wrong with it.

It is CLICKBAIT IMPERSONATED in the sense that any ranking needs to be competitive and because it now holds so much sway in the online world there is a self-inforcing shit loop happening: Ranker does crap polls, crap media report on it, Ranker can claim it is relevant because their crap polls are in crap media.

And puullllleaaaz, don’t visit the Tolkien Universe Ranker channel 🤮
(I know you will, I am just quietly assuming it is a waste of your time 🤪)

Third, the post in question is a link fest embracing as many different films, shows, fandoms etc. as possible.

Search engine optimization (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) is the death of good search results. With a gazillion websites vying for your attention content farms repeat post things that include a lot of:

• headlines

• links to relevant topics and/or websites high up in the success chain

• tags that are relevant to recently searched topics

• images and videos on the topics mentioned etc.

So they can get up the attention ladder with Google - which makes for colourful posts without any quality “content”.

It may be only me but going through that post made me angry - and I only skimmed the comments on the DM page. But there you are. And kudos - FRIENDS is at #6. Lovely twist to that story.

I am also glad to say that many of my favourite are not even on that list 😂

An excellent, nay, even prime example for a clickbait shitpost.

According to German law I have to infom you all links to enterprises, artists, products etc. are [unpaid advertisements.] Some purchase links may earn me a small commission from Blackwell's, the bookshop of my personal trust.

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