Parody!

Mike Schilling 26 Comments

There used to be a web site dedicated to “What if Lord of the Rings had been written by X”.  It died, some time ago, taking with it this answer to “… Raymond Chandler”:

The sun came up over the ridge like a fried egg on top of a burnt slice of toast. Then the trumpets sounded. Lots of them, as if Sauron had paid for a lifetime supply and wanted to get his money’s worth if the world ended today. The night shift went back to the holes they had crawled out of the night before, and the day shift started to straggle in, lugging their swords, as if they didn’t know which they hated more, Sauron or themselves. I didn’t know any of this crew, but cops are cops, even in Mordor.

“Well, here we are!” said Sam. He liked to tell you things you already knew. I didn’t mind, most of the time, but here in front of the Black Gate of Mordor, I could think of one or two or a hundred more useful topics of conversation. He talked about his father a lot too, and his garden, and he seemed to think that if he ever got back to them, everything would be like it had been. I kept quiet about that. It wasn’t my job to tell him that seeing the wide world changes your shape so that you don’t fit in the places you used to. He was a little guy, but I liked him.

Mike Schilling

Mike has been a software engineer far longer than he would like to admit. He has strong opinions on baseball, software, science fiction, comedy, contract bridge, and European history, any of which he's willing to share with almost no prompting whatsoever.

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    • It sounds like they’re describing The Last Ringbearer, a very much unauthorized sequel written by a Russian author in 1999. (No one was willing to publish it in English for fear of lawsuits, so that translation is free for download.) Mordor, as the most technologically advanced human society, represents a threat to the Elves’ dominance, so they destroy it in the name of traditional values.

      My favorite bit is when Aragorn challenges the chief Mordoran general to single combat and treacherously has him stabbed in the back:

      “You cheated,” repeated Commander-South, trying not to cough with the blood from his
      pierced lung slowly pooling in his mouth. “Even the knights of the North will not shake
      your hand.”

      “Of course they won’t,” laughed the Dúnadan, “since they will be kneeling before the new
      King of Gondor! I beat you in an honest fight, one on one – so it shall be written in all the
      history books. As for you, they won’t even remember your name, I’ll make sure of that.
      Actually,” he stopped in midstride, hunting for the stirrup, “we can make it even more
      interesting: let you be killed by a midget, some tiny little dwarf with hairy paws. Or by a
      broad… yes, that’s how we’ll do it.”

      • It’s a pity that more Russian works haven’t been translated into English.

        Their culture is one that has a *LOT* of stuff that we could learn a lot from… (not to emulate, of course… but the philosophies would sharpen the hell out of our own)

        • Imagine everything cold, dark, alcoholic, and painted deeply and broadly in fatalism, and you get pretty close.

          • One of my friends married a lovely Russian gal and he said that nobody smiles over there. If you smile, he told me, they think that you are either an idiot or an American.

  2. Ooh, funsies! I call dibs on David Foster Wallace:

    Frodo stepped out, blinking, into the brilliant daylight. After the darkness of Moria, the sun hit him like a punch landed by a heavyweight fighter — a crazed drunken Man from Bree had once challenged Frodo to a fight but tall as Frodo was he had not been nearly as drunk as the Man, but why, Frodo chastised himself, was he thinking of such things at a time like this with Gandalf (Gandalf!) so recently dead and taken! — square between the eyes.
    “Fly! Fly!” cried out Aragorn. “The goblins yet come and soon it will be nightfall! Down the hill and into the forest of Lorien!” But Frodo, blinded as he was by the setting golden sun and the tears of rage and grief, salty on his apple-cheeked hobbit face, could see no forest, only misery and pain and self-recrimination.

    • Guilty.

      What brought this to mind was your comment on TNH. She picked a few and did a “guess who this is supposed to be” contest here. (Don’t miss Kate’s Dortmunder series parody at comment 128.)

  4. We must be thinking of different sites. These links still seem to work:

    http://io9.com/5936032/what-if-ernest-hemingway-or-oscar-wilde-wrote-the-lord-of-the-rings

    http://www.changingthetimes.net/samples/brooks/alternative_authors.htm

    The best is P.G. Wodehouse (second link), because it seems so very similar to what JRRT actually wrote:

    “Sam, I’ve decided to go and overthrow the Dark Lord by tossing his jewellery into a volcano.”

    “Very good, sir. Should I lay out your crazy adventure garb? I presume that this will pose a delay to tea-time. I would remind your Hobbitship that your Great Aunt Lobellia Sackville-Baggins is expected for tea.”

    “Blast! I say, bother! How can a chap overthrow the Dark Lord? I suppose I will have to delay my campaign.”

    “Very good, sir. I believe you will be free in about a decade.”

    “I’ll do it then. Make a note, Sam.”

    • But wouldn’t Sam disapprove of his crazy adventure garb?

    • There was a rather jarring knock , and I was pleased to see it was Belladonna, my good aunt. (If you are familiar with the Baggins chronicles, you might recall my bad aunt, Lobelia, who can make orc-bands run away screaming as if Morgoth himself were after them. Fortunately, she was on a long cruise down the Anduin, and with any luck would be eaten by some sea monster from the First Age. Belladonna, a woman of quite astonishing physical dimensions, was no mean orc-huntress herself, but in a fashion that projected jolliness rather than hatred of all living things, and her threats to maim me were rarely meant seriously and almost never carried out ) I hastened to welcome the Aged Relative.

      “Pip, pip, A.R,”, I said. “What brings you to my humble abode this fine day?”. In reality, it’s not all that humble, being a double barrow in one of the better sections of Hobbiton, but lese majeste and all that.

      “I need you to sneer at a ring”.

      “Are you feeling all right, Old Thing?” I asked with a concerned eye. Both eyes, to be perfectly accurate. “It sounded like you wanted me to cast disdain at an inanimate, if that’s the word I’m looking for, object.”

      She sighed, a fairly majestic operation, and looked about for a blunt instrument of some sort. Knowing her of old, I had carefully steered us into a room containing nothing more deadly than the odd throw pillow. Her eye, lighting on one and calculating the ratio of energy expended propelling it to damage inflicted, resigned itself to further explanation.

      “Otho, as will no doubt have escaped the sieve that is your pea-sized brain, is a collector of Eregionish rings. He is going to look at one today in Gandalf’s shop, and I especially wish him to get it for a good price. Thus I need you to go there right away and insult it. Tell Gandalf it’s Mordoran. Apparently that’s a bad thing for a ring to be.”

      Now I had the plot. Aunt Belladonna published a quarterly about interior decoration called Milady’s Hole, to which I once contributed a piece about what the well-fed hobbit is frying bacon in. Unfortunately, it had never found the success it deserved, and about once a year it become necessary for her to ask Uncle Otho for funds to keep it above water. That time was clearly approaching.

      “Never fear, Old Thing, your Frodo is on the case. Sam!” I bellowed, thinking some advice from the Faithful Retainer would not be amiss. “Rally ‘Round! Milady’s Hole is in want. ”

      I had evidently interrupted some deep train of thought, as Sam’s worried expression bore no resemblance to his usual imperturbable (that’s the right one; I looked it up) gravity.

      “Sir”?

      “Aunt Belladonna’s magazine. We need to rescue it. Now, what’s the best way to sneer at a ring?”

      Sam began to look calmer, if no less puzzled, and Aunt Belladonna, visibly restraining herself from some mayhem upon my person, filled him in.

      “Yes, madam. I think “Mordoran” is indeed the mot juste for disparaging this particular item.”

      Given the still purple hue of Aunt Belladonna’s countenance, asking for further clarification seemed unwise, but Sam’s tone strongly implied that he was agreeing with her. “Mordoran” it was.

      “Very well, Sam. Lay out my best sneering clothes, and we’ll be off.”

  5. I always liked the one for JD Salinger.

    There is of course the Warner Brothers version of “Kill the Wobbit! Kill the Wobbit!”

  6. I’m quite fond of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s riff on LoTR. It’s too long to drop in a blockquote, but here’s the start of it:

    Frodo glanced at all the faces, but they were not turned to him. All the Council sat with downcast eyes, as if in deep thought. A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken. An overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo’s side in Rivendell filled all his heart. At last with an effort he spoke, and wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice.

    “We cannot,” said Frodo. “We must not. Do you not see? It is exactly what the Enemy desires. All of this he has foreseen.”

    The faces turned to him, puzzled the Dwarves and grave the Elves; sternness in the eyes of the Men; and so keen the gazes of Elrond and of Gandalf that Frodo almost could not withstand it. It was very hard, then, not to grasp the Ring in his hand, and harder still not to put it on, to face them as only Frodo.

    “Do you not question it?” Frodo said, thin like the wind his voice, and wavering like a breeze. “You have chosen, of all things, to send the Ring into Mordor; should you not wonder? How did it come to this? That we might, of all our choices, do that single thing our Enemy most desires? Perhaps the Cracks of Doom are already guarded, strongly enough to hold off Gandalf and Elrond and Glorfindel all together; or perhaps the Master of that place has cooled the lava there, set it to trap the Ring so that he may simply bring it out after it is thrown in…” A memory of awful clarity came over Frodo then, and a flash of black laughter, and the thought came to him that it was just what the Enemy would do. Only the thought came to him so: thus it would amuse me to do, if I meant to rule…

  7. I keep thinking I could do a pretty funny 50 Shades of Gandolf.

    And then I keep thinking it best not to do so.

    • Are you kidding? I think you’d beat out the “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” guy for instant fame. THIS IS GOLD, SOLID GOLD!

  8. Okay, I’ve got another one:

    The Elves’ fair valley
    Bejewelled in waterfalls
    Ah, fair Rivendell!

    …is the best that Samwise Gangee can do on short notice – he’s woozy and barely conscious, walking behind the mule carrying the incapacitated Frodo, gripping his sword (really a long dagger) with one hand and the other free to keep Frodo from overbalancing with the other. Is “Ah” as a syllable cheating? Certainly the view is beautiful, so why not? The mule finally makes up its mind not to shake Frodo off, and steps up its pace to move closer to Strider’s horse, turning the corner around a tall tree. The view – and the moment – are lost. Sam can hear the Elves singing, though, and now too there’s the murmuring of Pip and Merry as they, too, catch a glimpse into the valley which gave home to the great Lord Elrond and they slow their pace in astonishment. Could Pip be becoming entranced? And, yet unanswered, is the question Sam had been panicking about for hours now: where is Gandalf? Walking behind a mule is hardly good atmosphere for composing travel-poetry, Sam concludes. “A donkey’s ass” needs a short adjective, or the meter is lost.

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