Or, you know, this from the 2014 fifth edition monster manual. I find this really weird, personally! When I play dnd I can just ignore this or make up something better. Musk/Thiel/etc have calcified imaginations and so are entirely limited by their belief in innate and fundamental structures.

So yeah it's not a big leap from reading Tolkien's works to the AD&D Monster Manual describing Orcs as "fecund" and prone to creating "mongrel" races, or the 3.5e Monster Manual talking about "successful" half-orcs as "the ones with enough self-control to live in a civilized land."

Hitler was the tails to Tolkien's heads, if you follow me. Hitler - and the new nazis, Musk/Thiel/Vance/etc - believe very much in a mystical order to the races of the world, and believe in the fundamental innateness of identity. They believe in that "noble northern spirit," same as JRRT.

He once said about the old British language: "For satisfaction and therefore for delight – and not for imperial policy – we are still 'British' at heart." But we can't just say "not for imperial policy" like a magic spell and ward off doctrines of racial superiority.

He famously despised the Nazis -"wholly pernicious and unscientific," he called them, but specifically despised Hitler ("that ruddy little ignoramus") for "ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed that noble northern spirit."

I think about Tolkien a lot. I love the lord of the rings, and have great admiration for the professor. And I think there's also a real tragedy inherent in his chosen field of study and areas of interest. He believed in the immutable racial power of language - *tongues* and soil, rather than blood.

imagine if i hadn't logged on tonight but instead kept reading The Claw of the Conciliator. history itself could have been different

omg my post worked bsky.app/profile/purr...

yeah i'm corbynposting in 2025. what of it. i'm Shelleymaxxing or whatever.