I have been accused of placing myself as certain heroes in fiction. It is always true in part. Pozer Sensky and Randy Bracken were 20% me—one my bright side and one my dark. Mostly they were composites of people i know. Haft is about 60% me as a youth. The thinking was that the idiocy of youth would be the ork intellectual ceiling and that the brutes when fully mature would become become less intelligent and aware...like Boomer Americans.
I got the idea for Haft when I found myself cheering on the two ork chiefs at the end of the Turd Hobbit movie and the other people in the theater were offended. The dwarves as written by Tolkien were economically twisted and had devolved to a subhuman level despite outwardly endearing artifice. It was they I saw as cautionary tales of greed corruption alongside the power corruption of the Ring Wraiths, in combination representing the ruling elite of Modernity as undead and the money slave of Modernity as a bitter, grubbing will to riches, stunted in form.
The character of Haft is roughly:
-60%: Author at age 13
-20%: Utah Bob at age 18
-20%: Mister Grey at age 27 when I met him
I have Haft mature up that arc.
Lynn will continue posting the saga of the terrible tusked critter as hero on Substack. So be sure to follow the hard link at the top of the main page.
And thank you.
8/23/21
Now, onward to address two Haft readers:
Haft
Sun, Aug 15, 10:32 AM (8 days ago)
to me
James, I never thought I would be cheering on a vile, tusked orc, yet here I am. May I read an advance copy of Haft?
May the good Lord see fit to keep you with the rest of the virtuous pagans. I'm sure Socrates needs a wrestling partner.
-Clued
...
Sir, I am honored that your fantasy literature sensibilities, which are much more refined than mine, have been seduced by my drooling protagonist.
PDF sent.
[James comments in brackets.]
Haft is the Black Pill
Thu, Aug 12, 2:15 AM (11 days ago)
Hi James,
I really enjoyed reading Haft. You've given an interesting perspective, of tribal orcs living simply and brutally in middle earth. I am beginning to see tolkien in a different light. He captured both the best and worst of mankind. Humans are alternatively in tune with nature and consumers of her.
[I have more wonder for Tolkien's inner muse now since writing Haft in his shadow, and at the same time listening to Odipus Rex, Orestes, Prometheus Bound and Herdotus on audio book. I think he wrote a more complex cautionary take than his readers appreciate.]
The forces of Good in middle earth are too good. In other words, there is no mention given to the exploitation and slavery of the feudal era.
[The "good guys" in Tolkien are understood as corruptible as individuals, yet their slavish institutions are obscured and held inviolate. It is the grim fate of the dwarves at Lonely Mountain and in Moria, that gave me the clue that Tolkien was busy in obscuring the darker countercurrents of his subject in order to do the business of fantasy in transporting the modern mind otherwhenward.]
From my understanding, Numenor is a parallel to the Atlantis story. (Have you any knowledge of this legend?) They fought the good fight against the first great enemy and then were seduced and corrupted by sauron. They are the most pure of blood and strongest of will amongst the races of men. However after generations living in middle earth they become like any other empire. For the Stewards of Gondor to live in the top of an ivory mountain (the image of Byzantines holding back the great evil to the east, springs to mind) they would have untold suffering underneath them.
[I am reminded of Tuchman's the Proud Tower. In the shadow of Eddison and the Worm Oroborus, I see Tolkien's fallen super race as a metaphor for the European ruling class that lead him and his into the mass moral suicide of WWI and WWII.]
The rohirrim, are essentially celts and other barbarian nations of western europe, and like you say in Haft, represent mankind at his best.
[These are Tolkien's most sympathetic ethnicity. The Gondor regime is not written with sympathy, but rather an understanding that they have been corrupted within Time while their enemies have been corrupted beyond the bounds of Time.]
This raises the question, of why did the barbaric german tribes want to inherit Rome. Reading Tacitus, once gets the idea they knew exactly what rome was about. They preferred to die than be enslaved. His description of them in ancient days, draws a picture of noble savages.
[The Germans were sucked into becoming pseudo-Roman as one part seduction and one part threat from the Asian horse nomads, who literally trashed Rome remotely in a game of tribal bumper cars. The German tribes had 500 years to be wooed by the predatory transexual whore that was Rome.]
I get a similar impression thats what you were showing with haft. Orks are only monsters to tolkien, mutilated elves. The part about them being created by a eugenicist was pure genius. thats exactly what they are. selectively bred for war and rapine. How could they behave any other way than their nature??
[Whether the great author of The Lord of the Rings intended it or not, I saw his treatment of the orks as fighting under the lash for the dark tower, and as being twisted by magical [industrial] means into pure pitiless soldiers, as the metaphor for the transmogrification of the agrarian European slave into an industrial laborer—semi-free within the machine—and thence forged into the terrible industrial sword of war. For the conscript soldier of democracy, communism and fascism, were all slaves, driven to kill under lethal command with a surety that their fellows would be made to execute them if they refrained from large scale murder of people more like them than those who commanded them. i see the two world wars as ultimate class war, with the elite forcing and seducing 60 million under class people to kill and die, similar to the Bronze Age Collapse.]
I also enjoyed the commentary on human civilisation. Yes its amazing that we have pyramids, but is anyone but the high priest better off for it. In my mind, I picture that Haft is set in some far flung corner of middle earth and the humans are and empire from the fertile cresent.
[I made no larger geographical setting, but rather a deeper time setting, replacing the olden magic with fallen science.]
Without giving more away, the story of prometheus was brilliant too.
[Thank you. That was unplanned. That chapter became three large chapter segments when my eye seizures started giving me nightmares while falling asleep listening to a dramatic reading of Prometheus Bound on a loop.]
Incidentally, I had notes jotted many years ago of a fiction set in a present day middle earth. The elves are gone, the magic along with them, the wild has been conquered and the descendants of Gondorians had conquered the whole world, of course with the inflationary money supply from those gold loving... dwarves. haha
I hadn't penned any thoughts on this for a while, but in these times I have so much material.
[I would like to see that fleshed out. I do think Gondor is the metaphor for Modernity, rescued in times of crisis by the indigenous Western spirit it has crushed, just like the sons of Celtic runaways in America still man the tip of its military spear only to be rejected and reviled when the war is over.]
Hobbits, are of particular interest. I alternate from absolute contempt to altruistic compassion for these folk, for living in the shire down under, I am surrounded by them. People here, just want to live nice and happy lives, not think too much, nor concern themselves with the going ons of the big lords and kings. Which is all well and good until one day you're told that a mysterious plague from the east can only be stopped by injecting yourself with a potion made by cretins in a dark tower.
[I understood Tolkien's use of the Hobbits as surrogate avatars for child readers. However, I see the "adult" meat-puppet as the abused child of Mother Modernity. So I modeled the hobbits of Haft after the pygmies of Africa and their relationship with the Bantu, alternately abusive and symbiotic.]
Either this wizardry was concocted in a rush, which is a reason not to take it, or they had it sitting in the fridge waiting, in which case why take it?
[It was a drug therapy for fighting the gay plague and the disease it is supposedly combatting was developed to test it. I see this as a vast clinical trial.]
I initially wondered why don't these simpletons question anything, and then it hit me - Comfort.
[Hobbits—modern humanity are hobbits, hence the endearing love for Tolkien among fat tech-head, who pine obediently to wizardly commands to "shelter in place," wishing they had a real hobbit hole rather than a sheetrock box. Gandalf is to me—the basis for the Shaman character in Haft, is in Tolkien the metaphor for the media machine, alternately scolding and renewing hope in a vicious mind-screw of manipulation.]
You've harped on about this. Comfort is what enslaves us. Everyone here is so comfortable, fat and happy, living off the accumulated fat of ten generations of colonisers and explorers (and other names given to rapists and plunderers). To go against the narrative risks ostracisation and social shunning. To not be able to travel or eat at cafes (I heard anecdotally, they tried the V pass in Russia for dining in , and after a few weeks of people not going they relaxed it.) Here, they're making it mandatory to work in construction. Its madness.
[Construction workers are being targeted in America locally and regionally, depending on the union culture. Wherever transgender politics—Isengard-like—has placed tranny's as safety officers, shamdemic policies rule. In places were traditional masculine culture is buttressed by Mexican labor, the workmen use the mask to avoid the potion.]
Everyone is comfortable. Enslaved in the rat race. wanting to own land and live the dream, and completely oblivious.
[Government as we understand it, evolved from the conquest of sedentary farmers by cattle herding barbarians. Herd mechanics manipulated by the predatory mind remain at the core of human governance.]
You said to me once, that modern humans deserve the worst of what modernity can cook up. I am inclined to agree. I have more contempt than ever, tempered by a twinge of sadness that many relatives and friends. Yes its all well and good to want to live in peace and be simple and humble, but you should know your history.
[Modern humans not only deserve the worst from the death-machine they made a bitch's bargain with, but we need the worst in order to wake up. As it is, the System has become more self aware than we, its slaves, its food, its bullies and its knaves. We are on a cusp of moral extinction.]
If the Gondorians rounded up all the dwarves and roasted in the ovens, you would think the hobbits would be wise when its their turn.
[No, they would be told that the dwarves had threatened to harm them, and for that reason benevolent Gondar came to their succor.]
From what i'm hearing in the tinfoil hat community, this potion will have crippling side effects. Sterilisation, debilitating illness and death... Well, maybe you should have asked a few more questions before rolling up your sleeve.
[This may be a very eugenic bottleneck event, similar to the Toba super eruption.]
Maybe a clan of orcs wouldn't be so trusting of wizards in white coats.
[That was the subtext i wrote Haft over, as i listened by day to the lies of the Modern media and medical hierarchies and by night to the truths of ancient Greek tragedians.]
The Lord of the Rings is the gift that keeps on giving. The Power of Coercion is magick, and it has more believers than ever.
Marius
...
Amen, Sir...and a plague send.
