"To the hosts of Hell his head then he turned:
'Let thy foul banners go forth to battle
ye Balrogs and Orcs; let your black legions
go seek the sweeping sword of Turgon.
Through the dismal dales ye shall be driven wailing
like startled starlings from the stooks of wheat.
Minions miserable of master base,
your doom dread ye, dire disaster!
The tide shall turn; your triumph brief
and victory vanish. I view afar
the wrath of the gods roused in anger.'"
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Children of Hurin (one of the middle versions)
(yes, it's all in verse... and people complain about the Silmarillion being old-timey, sheesh)
Most of you will notice something quaint about that passage, but for anyone who merely skimmed (shame on you) those eleven lines: FouBaFoBa / DisDaDri / SeeSweeSwo / MinMisMas / TiTuTri / ViVaVi. Alliteration is a valuable tool for wannabe amateur dilettantes like myself incapable of valid creative effort, but to see one of the greats leaning on such a flimsy crutch always feels like walking in on Saint Francis masturbating. I mean, geez, reaching for terminology like "stooks" raises the effort put into this gimmick to the level of farce.
I had been quote-mining The History of Middle Earth for a post about Falmer and Orsimer but could not escape, for the twentieth time since I started leafing through it, the momentous realization that Tolkien was not born a masterful spinner of epoch-transcending yarns.
Look, to some of us it's a shock, alright?
I mean, when I giggled my way through this post five years ago I thought I was just having some fun with a paltry adaptation of a genre-defining classic, not parodying the master himself!
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