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 (Opens in a new window):

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

Events & Shows

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

Scholarship and Fandom

TolkienGuide.com (Opens in a new window) have provided a 2023 Year End Roundup for TolkienGuide and Tolkien Collecting (Opens in a new window) [Youtube]

Several Tolkien-related podcasts (Opens in a new window) 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 (Opens in a new window) [Youtube]

The Past Daily (Opens in a new window) 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 (Opens in a new window).

Franchise and Merchandise

We have reached a moment in time where a rather regular letter by Tolkien will cost you $37,500 (Opens in a new window). [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 (Opens in a new window) | Guardian (Opens in a new window) | Bookseller (Opens in a new window) | BBC (Opens in a new window) | Variety (Opens in a new window).

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) (Opens in a new window); this gentlemen even quit his Aldi job for this (Opens in a new window).

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 (Opens in a new window). [Telegraph; paywall]

It has finally happened: Tad Williams’ Otherland (Opens in a new window) will get the series treatment.

It is always lovely to see old Star Trek material resurface - such as this interview with Majel Barrett (Opens in a new window).

How Italy’s hard-right claimed JRR Tolkien (Opens in a new window) 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 (Opens in a new window) [Entertainment Weekly]

John D. Rateliff shares some information (Opens in a new window) 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 (Opens in a new window). [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 (Opens in a new window), 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 (Opens in a new window) - about FRIENDS. There was a reason to that - Matthew Perry (Opens in a new window) 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” (Opens in a new window) 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 (Opens in a new window) 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.

If you are interested in my other Tolkien-related work please have a look:
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