Ichor and Potatoes

 

Episode 13 of The Forge of Tolkien, ICHOR AND POTATOES, is now live on #UATV.

After chanting his verses about Eärendel the Mariner in the Hall of Elrond at Rivendell, Bilbo challenged the Elves to determine which bits he had written and which were written by Aragorn. The question was a trick, as Aragorn only added a bit about a “green stone”, but it was also serious: why should the Elves be able to tell the difference in poetic style between a Hobbit and a Man? 

In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown explores Tolkien’s use of poetic style as a way into the problem of writing fantasy. Drawing on Ursula K. LeGuin’s advice to aspiring fantasists, she considers the importance of speech in the act of imaginative creation and how style is critical to the composition of Christian literature. Which is better when writing fantasy: ichor or potatoes? A style reaching for the sublime, or a style willing to humble itself even unto Hobbits? 


This is why UATV is necessary

 In case you still haven’t subscribed to Unauthorized because YouTube content is free:

YouTube has scrubbed many popular “QAnon” and independent news channels from its platform after announcing new rules that prohibit what it deems to be “harmful conspiracy theories.” The channels collectively had millions of subscribers and some of the many channels that were removed during this purge include:

  • X22 Report (952,000 subscribers)
  • SGTreport (630,000 subscribers)
  • Edge of Wonder (467,000 subscribers)
  • Praying Medic (391,000 subscribers)
  • And We Know (385,000 subscribers)
  • Amazing Polly (375,000 subscribers)
  • Joe M (367,000 subscribers)
  • Dollar Vigilante (304,000 subscribers)
  • Mouthy Buddha (296,000 subscribers)
  • JustInformed Talk (281,000 subscribers)
  • RedPill78 (269,000 subscribers)
  • The Patriot Hour (248,000 subscribers)
  • In Pursuit of Truth (242,000 subscribers)
  • Destroying the Illusion (238,000 subscribers)
  • TRUreporting (215,000 subscribers)
  • Alice Down The RabbitHole (174,000 subscribers)
  • Spaceshot76 (159,000 subscribers)
  • World Alternative Media (154,000 subscribers)
  • McAllisterTV (127,000 subscribers)
  • Sarah Westall (125,000 subscribers)
  • Radio-Québec (120,000 subscribers)
  • Truth and Art TV (113,000 subscribers)
  • Dustin Nemos (113,000 subscribers)
  • Blessed To Teach (109,000 subscribers)
  • Woke Societies (108,000 subscribers)
  • Stroppy Me (83,400 subscribers)
  • Patriots’ Soapbox News Network (80,000 subscribers)
  • Angel Wallace (63,000 subscribers)
  • Titus Frost (44,400 subscribers)

YouTube claims that it’s introducing this new policy to remove conspiracy content that’s “used to justify real-world-violence” – a claim that’s similar to those used by several other tech giants when justifying their arbitrary QAnon bans. For example, Facebook framed its QAnon ban as a crackdown on “potential violence.”

Under YouTube’s new policy, content that “targets an individual or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify real-world violence” are banned. Of course, YouTube doesn’t explain how it determines when a conspiracy theory is being used to justify real-world violence.

Subscribing to a free channel under SJW control is not going to accomplish anything. Supporting a channel that is providing a save haven to creators who are unauthorized by the thought police will.


A Taste for Tongues

 

Episode 12 of The Forge of Tolkien, A TASTE FOR TONGUES, is now live on #UATV.

What flavor is English? Is it the same as Welsh? What does it mean to love many different languages, and yet to have a “native” language that is different from one’s mother tongue? Can Elves tell the difference between Man and Hobbit? Can Hobbits understand Elvish even if they don’t know the words? In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown explores Tolkien’s theorizing about language as something we are born with and yet learn; something that has flavor as well as sense, that might come in dreams as well as with our blood, and yet is at once personal and inherited. We meet Alwin Arundel Lowdham and his linguistic “ghosts.” And we learn the difference between Avallonian and Adunaic—and how to say “gods” in both. 

In other Unauthorized news, if you’re interested in understanding why you should ignore the polls and reviewing the non-poll evidence that a Trumpslide is in the making, check out 654 DEMORALIZATION SEASON and 655 THE EVIDENCE THAT TRUMP IS WINNING on The Darkstream.


Norman Castles

Episode 11 of The Forge of Tolkien is now live on Unauthorized.

Tolkien famously insisted in the Foreword to the Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings that, “in the intention of the author,” the story had no “inner meaning or ‘message’… It is neither allegorical nor topical.” Rather, Tolkien said, he had always preferred “history, real or feigned”—without explaining which he thought he was writing in the story of the Ring.

In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown tackles the puzzle of what Tolkien meant by history and its relationship to myth through a close reading of Night 64 of The Notion Club Papers. We meet the barber Norman Keeps and his stories about the Dark Ages, compare the barber’s version of English history to the history everyone remembers in W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman’s 1066 and All That (1930), and look out with Lancelot and Guenever on Arthur’s Merry England in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (1939-1958). Was Tolkien simply crafting an elaborate joke claiming that he was writing history—or did he have a more serious purpose in interweaving the mythical with the historical?


Falling Wide Asleep

 Episode 10 of The Forge of Tolkien, FALLING WIDE ASLEEP, is now available on #UATV.

What did Frodo mean when he said that returning to the Shire at the end of the hobbits’ journey through Middle-earth felt “like falling asleep again”? What kind of journey had the hobbits been on? In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown reads Night 61 of The Notion Club Papers, following Ramer as he describes his experiments with time-travel—and dreams. Ramer’s exercises are shown to have a curious similarity with T.S. Eliot’s invocation of time in Burnt Norton (1936):

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future.

Thereby raising the question of what Eliot and Tolkien had been reading about the nature of time. As a bonus, we learn what meteorites remember—and why it is dangerous to dream-journey without a guardian.

In other Unauthorized news, the first exclusive episode of The RazörForce Offensive, podcast is now live and available for listening or download to UATV subscribers.



A Deeper Delve

 

The Forge of Tolkien episode 9, A DEEPER DELVE, is now available on Unauthorized.

Are you the kind of Tolkien fan who reads the Appendices in The Lord of the Rings and is still hungry for more? What if you had Appendices for Tolkien’s life? In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown takes a tour through Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond’s 3-volume J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (2017), delving deep into the Chronology, the Genealogies, Bibliographies, and Guide. What is the difference between trivia and knowledge? How does knowing what Tolkien did on 7 September 1955 help us understand his creative work? And what does “Ae Adar Nín” mean in Sindarin?


A Notion of Time

 

Episode 8 of The Forge of Tolkien, A NOTION OF TIME, is now live on #UATV.

What kind of frame would it take to write a convincing time-travel story? What if you were a scholar and wanted to travel back in time? What if your friend had written a space-travel story, and you found the frame unconvincing? In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown introduces The Notion Club Papers, Tolkien’s second effort at writing a time-travel story, and reads them for what we can learn about Tolkien’s own desire to travel back in time.


Why Logos matters

Professor Rachel Fulton Brown interviews E. Michael Jones on Unauthorized.

Professor Rachel Fulton Brown sits down with Dr. E. Michael Jones to ask some hard questions about his new book Logos Rising: A History of Ultimate Reality (Fidelity Press, 2020). What is Logos, why is it necessary, how do we discover it, and why is it anathema to the current cultural debate? What is our best evidence that Logos is rising, and where does the Virgin Mary fit in the story?

In other Unauthorized news, we’re now caught up on Wranglerstar, with 40 more of his videos now available on the site. Don’t miss those about his experiences fighting the Antifa fires. And Barcelona Life is back, with yet another Cocina Quarantina special you’re going to want to try!

Unauthorized now features 1,348 videos that comprise 1,426 hours of viewing time. This includes the two latest from WRANGLERSTAR as he battles the Oregon wildfires: “How We Survived the Oregon Wildland Fires” and “How To Protect Yourself From Wildfire Smoke” as well as The Legend Chuck Dixon contemplating the four options presently facing Marvel boss Kevin Feige.

It would take you two straight months just to watch all! One subscriber says: Every one of those videos is worth watching. Not one of those videos promotes the evil, the ugly, or the false. So, if you haven’t subscribed yet, what are you waiting for?


Tolkien and Time Travel

 

Episode 7 of The Forge of Tolkien, TIME TRAVEL TOSS-UP, is now live on Unauthorized.

Frustrated that no one was writing the kinds of stories they liked to read, Tolkien and his friend C.S. Lewis did a toss-up: Lewis agreed to write a space-travel story, and Tolkien agreed to write a time-travel story. Lewis went on to write—and publish—his Space Trilogy, but Tolkien got lost…wandering along the Lost Road with Bliss-friend and Elf-friend. In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown reads the first chapter of what was supposed to be Tolkien’s time-travel story for what it tells us about Tolkien’s own autobiography as an author.

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