Bored of the Rings

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Do you like what thou dost see?" she cooed...

Grundig blaupunkt luger frug / Watusi snarf wazoo!
Nixon dirksen nasahist / Rebozo boogaloo.

"This ring, no other, is made by the Elves
 Who'd pawn their own mother to get it themselves.
 Ruler of creeper, mortal and scallop,
 This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
 If broken or busted it cannot be remade.
 If found, send to Sorhed. (The postage is prepaid.)"

—Inscription on The One Ring

An, and possibly the, outrageous parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings written and published in 1969 by the staff of the Harvard University humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon. (The members of which, not coincidentally, would go on several years later to found The National Lampoon magazine.)

Produced during the first wave of Tolkien's popularity, when LOTR fandom was a hallmark of the counterculture, Bored of the Rings draws a deliberate parallel to the contrast between LOTR's epic, almost academic, style and the bohemians and hippies who typified its fans at the time. In part BOTR accomplishes this by slavishly mimicking the form of the book, both in content and in physical layout -- the original paperback edition copied the design of the first authorized Tolkien paperbacks published in the United States, right down to the back-cover note warning of the unauthorized editions which had been previously published. However, draped over this superficially Tolkienian framework is an over-the-top and frequently hallucinogenic tale that twists every element of The Lord of the Rings into something ridiculous yet still recognizable.

The book manages to find and skewer all the high points of Tolkien's magnum opus with considerable alacrity. In the first few chapters we meet a bevy of under-impressive characters, including

  • Dildo Bugger, finder of the One Ring
  • Goodgulf Greyteeth, a self-proclaimed "wizard" whose only mastery of magic is legerdemain
  • Frito Bugger, nephew of Dildo
  • Spam Gangree, his half-witted manservant
  • Moxie and Pepsi Dingleberry, twin morons
  • Arrowroot, the weak-chinned and bucktoothed ranger who is the heir to the throne of Twodor
    • But he goes by many names.
  • Bromosel, son of the Steward of Twodor, Benelux
  • Gimlet, son of Groin, a deformed dwarf
  • Legolam, an acerbic elf

Together they make up a fellowship intended to see to the destruction of the One Ring of Sorhed, a fellowship which sets forth across the nations of Lower Middle Earth with the dark land of Fordor as its goal, bickering and sniping at each other all the way. Although no one in this story is anywhere close to competent, the fate of the world (or something) depends on their quest being successful.

In a sense, it is one continuous novel-length example of Sophisticated As Hell.

Bored of the Rings is the Trope Namer for:
Tropes used in Bored of the Rings include:
  • Action Girl: Eorache of the Roi-Tanners sits firmly on the line dividing an example and an aversion of this trope.
  • Affectionate Parody: In a kind of "tough love" way.
  • All Germans Are Nazis: The natives of the Plains of Roi-Tan are all German stereotypes ranging from Wagnerian opera to Nazis, sometimes mixing and matching elements.
  • Exclusively Evil: The Narcs
  • Ancestral Weapon: Krona, Arrowroot's sword
  • Apocalyptic Log: Tim Benzedrine's note to the boggies, in which he enters a drug flashback while writing
  • Arcadia: Subverted by The Stye, home of the Boggies. Anything Saruman and Wormtongue could do to this place would only be an improvement.
  • Artifact of Doom: The One Ring
  • Beneath the Earth: The dwarven realm of Doria
  • Big Bad: Sorhed
  • Black Cloak: The Nozdrul
  • Black Speech: The language of Fordor and Sorhed; parodied by being essentially doggerel constructed from 1960s pop cultural references

Grundig blaupunkt luger frug
 Watusi snarf wazoo!
 Nixon dirksen nasahist

Rebozo boogaloo.
—Inscription on the One Ring

Arrowroot looked with darkened face at these ruins of a once fair land. "Look at those ruins of a once fair land," he cried.

In his hand he carried an ancient and trustworthy weapon, called by the elves a Browning semi-automatic.

Goodgulf: Insult not the White Wizard, for I have many powers. Here, pick a card. Any card.

  • Genre Savvy: Most of the characters. It doesn't help.
  • Giant Flyer: Gwahno the Giant Eagle
  • Gondor Calls for Aid: Twodor called for aid, but no one wanted to give it.
  • Got Volunteered: No-one actually wanted to be in the Fellowship.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Some creatures are implied to be such, and the prologue mentions a "halfling", which is defined as "half Boggie, half opossum".
    • Moxie and Pepsi also somehow manage to get two of the Vee-Ates -- who are plants -- pregnant.
  • Hand Signals: Stomper uses them to ask Frito to meet him in the inn's bathroom. (The rest of the inn's clientele think they're playing Charades and offer their own suggestions as to their meaning.)
  • Have a Gay Old Time: Played with when the party are attacked by a group of narcs, the leader of which is wielding a large faggot. You'd think it'd mean a bundle of wood, until the "faggot" cries out "You dieth, G.I!"
    • Similarly:

"This is indeed a queer river," said Bromosel, as the water lapped at his thighs.

  • Healing Hands: Subverted by Arrowroot, who during the siege of Minas Troney shows up in blood-spattered surgical garb, and who appears to have killed Faraslax while "treating" him in order to get him out of the way.
  • Heroic Fantasy: Averted by possibly the first parody of the genre.
  • Hidden Elf Village: Riv'n'dell; Lornadoon is literally hidden inside trees.
  • Hobbits: Viciously satirized by the lazy, slovenly and generally disgusting Boggies.
  • Hollywood Tactics: Subtly lampshaded when Arrowroot stupidly suggests marching on Sorhed's overwhelmingly larger army after the siege of Twodor is over. Goodgulf can't believe anyone could be so cataclysmically stupid and tries to throttle him.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Bromosel dies when he trips and impales himself on his absurdly pointed shoes.
  • Hooked Up Afterwards:

Of the ballhog and Schlob, little was heard either, but local gossips reported that wedding bells were only centuries away.

  • Hurricane of Puns: The endless plant/vegetable puns that lace every sentence uttered by Birdseye, Lord of the Vee-Ates.
  • I Have Many Names: Stomper -- AKA "Arrowroot son of Arrowshirt, True Son of Arrowhead of Araplane" -- actually uses this phrase word-for-word; other characters also have many names, few of them complimentary.
  • Improbable Species Compatibility: As noted elsewhere, Moxie and Pepsi manage to get a pair of giant plants pregnant.
  • Intellectual Animal: The Black Beaver, others
  • Ivy League: A great deal of Ivy League stereotypes get trotted out in the introduction for the sole point of self-mockery.
  • Jane's Information Group: One passage references Jane's Dragons and Basilisks of the World.
  • Jerkass: Pretty much everyone.
  • Lady Mondegreen: Happy fun explosive toys arrive for Dildo's birthday party in crates labeled "with the elf-rune of a fairy whose name was something very much like 'Amy Surplus'."
  • Lady of War: Eorache
  • Left-Justified Fantasy Map: Parodied.
  • Line in the Sand: As the Army of the West approaches the Gates of Fordor, many start to desert. Finally Arrowroot decides to shame them into being courageous.

Arrowroot: "Peoples of the West! The battle before the Black Gate of Sorhed will be one of few against many; but the few are of pure heart and the many are of the filthy. Nevertheless, those of you who wish to cringe and run from the fight may do so to quicken our pace. Those who still ride with the King of Twodor will live forever in song and legend! The rest may go."
It is said that the dustcloud did not settle for many days after.

  • Loads and Loads of Characters: A surprising number for so short a book.
  • Look Behind You!: "Look! The Winged Victory of Samothrace!"
  • The Lost Woods: The Evelyn Wood, once known -- in a happier time -- as the Nattily Wood.
  • Magic 8-Ball: The Mallomar.
  • Magic From Technology: If you define "technology" as "card tricks and con jobs".
  • Mooks: The Narcs
  • Mordor: Fordor
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: Stomper to Faraslax
  • Mushroom Samba: During the boggies' visit with Tim Benzedrine and Hashberry.
  • Narration Echo: Does this, then lampshades it, near the beginning of the book.
  • Narrative Poem: Numerous, often very witty, parodies of the original songs and poems.
  • Naughty Tentacles: The hickey plant that Tim Benzedrine chases off before it got too bad.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: On the flyleaf of the paperback is a passage allegedly from later in the book in which a beautiful, lusty elf maiden is about to seduce Frito. Naturally, it appears nowhere else.
  • No Fourth Wall: Not only are the characters aware they're in a book, they wish the reader would just hurry up and finish so they can get on with something -- anything -- else. Even dying.
  • No More for Me
  • The Obi-Wan: Subverted by Goodgulf, who bullies, cons and lies to everyone, and never explains anything he doesn't absolutely have to.
  • Oh, and X Dies: Bromosel arrives at the Council of Orlon with a prophecy that states "Five-eleven's your height, one-eighty's your weight/You cash in your chips around page eighty-eight." It's off by a few pages.
  • Old Windbag: Goddam, to the point he can almost weaponize it.
  • Only Sane Man: Frito. Not that that's saying much.
  • Opt Out: Arrowroot's entire army opts out just before they reach the gates of Fordor.
  • Original Flavour: Rich Rich Drushel's parodies of The Scouring of the Shire and Appendix A, done explicitly to extend Bored.
  • Our Elves Are Better: Parodied -- wood elves are tacky low-lives who run tourist traps, and high elves are effectively white trash with delusions of grandeur.
  • Parody: And how.
  • Parody Magic Spell: As evidenced by the page quote, there's quite a few of these.

"Hocus pocus, in loco parentis, Jackie Onassis, Dino Di Laurentis..."

  • Parody Names: Pick a character, nation or city from Tolkien, and you will find a parodic counterpart, such as Minas Troney for Minas Tirith.
  • The Password Is Always Swordfish: Parodied by the lengths Goodgulf goes to while trying to open the gates to Doria, before noticing the doorknob...
  • Pick a Card: See Functional Magic, above.
  • Plant Person: Lord Birdseye and the Vee-Ates.
  • Population X and Counting: The village of Whee has a welcoming sign announcing its population as "96 and still growing!" with 1004 and 328 each crossed out before it.
  • Pungeon Master: Birdseye; more generally, the authors.
  • Put on a Bus: Birdseye and the Vee-Ates are conveniently disposed of off-screen.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Black Riders have "perfectly normal red glowing fires" where their eyes should be.
  • Refuge in Audacity: One of the first parodies you read in the book is changing the name of Bilbo Baggins to Dildo Bugger!
  • Robe and Wizard Hat: Both embodied and averted by Goodgulf, who frequently changes into radically different outfits -- like a Nehru jacket and bellbottoms.
  • Rousing Speech: Utterly subverted; it causes the entire army to desert.
  • Running Gag: Surprisingly, there are very few.
    • Legolam and Gimlet's spats, which also mimic Legolas and Gimli's own rivalry.
    • An extremely localized one is found on a page which lists other volumes in the Harvard Lampoon's Classic and Not-So-Classic Book series -- part of every title in the lists is replaced by "Matzoh".
  • Sdrawkcab Name: Numerous examples, although some -- like "Serutan" -- were simply lifted from other sources. In this case, a laxative.
  • Second Hand Storytelling: Subverted by Goodgulf, who deliberately skips the stuff his listeners really want to hear -- like how he survived plunging into a chasm with a Ballhog.
  • Sibling Team: Both subverted and strangely embodied by Moxie and Pepsi who do not so much kick asses as act like them.
  • Sickbed Slaying: Strongly implied when a blood-spattered Stomper appears and explains that Farahslax died of his wounds despite his best efforts -- and despite being almost unwounded.
  • Simultaneous Arcs
  • Sophisticated As Hell: Numerous examples, most notably the overarching contrast between mimicking Tolkien's form while writing deliberately outrageous material.
  • Spanner in the Works: Subverted by Goddam, who turns out to be precisely what Spam and Frito are looking for at the end.
  • Speak Friend and Enter: Parodies the Trope Namer by having Goodgulf only consider using the doorknob on the gates to Doria after hours of futile guessing and spellcraft.
  • Spiritual Successor: National Lampoon's Doon -- a parody of Frank Herbert's Dune.
  • Souvenir Land: Lornadoon. And Serutanland, home of "Dicky Dragon".
  • Spoiled by the Format: Lampshaded repeatedly.
  • Standard Fantasy Setting: Subverted, in the first parody thereof, by all manner of "foreign" elements and intrusions.
  • Supporting Leader: Parodied by Arrowroot.
  • Taxonomic Term Confusion: There is an appearance by "six different phyla of giant insects". Insects, whatever their size, are a single class of phylum Arthropoda -- and you would think Harvard students would know that.
  • Theme Naming: Some of the Parody Names run along brief themes, such as Twodor and Fordor, and Moxie and Pepsi.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: The general reaction of everybody in the book to most everything they encounter.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: Spoofed in the prologue where, after the answer to "What have I got in my pocket?" is demonstrated to be a .38 pistol, the thought behind "pity stayed his hand" is explained as "It's a pity I've run out of bullets."
  • The Time of Myths: All but explicitly called that in the prologue, but judging from the pop culture references, not so much.
  • True Companions: Subverted; nobody actually wanted to join, but were volunteered by other people who hated them.
  • Truth Serums: Goodgulf's method for learning how Dildo got the Ring.
  • Urban Segregation: The rings of Minas Troney.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: Much of its humor is irrevocably tied to the pop culture and politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
  • Vagueness Is Coming: Goodgulf tries to warn Dildo with a series of portentous statements, going from "Evil Ones are afoot in the lands" to "There is a dog in the manger." It takes several rounds of these, until Goodgulf is practically screaming "Doom is here!", before Dildo catches on.
  • Volleying Insults: Gimlet and Legolam frequently trade lame epithets.

"Elf-dog," hissed Gimlet, retrieving his beard.
"Pig of a dwarf," suggested Legolam.
"Toymaker."
"Gold-digger."
"Flit."
"Wart."

  • Weapons Grade Vocabulary: Goddam's war story.
  • We Are Not Going Through That Again: Frito, having returned to his digs at the end of the story, is visited a mysterious stranger who thinks he's the kind of person that takes quests. He slams the door, locks it and swallows the key.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: A number of plot threads are deliberately left hanging for comedic effect, such as Spam and Frito's escape from the lair of Schlob.
  • When Trees Attack: Subverted by Lord Birdseye and the Vee-Ates, who are not trees but giant vegetables.
  • Who Writes This Crap?: "Observing this near impossible escape from certain death, Frito wondered how much longer the authors were going to get away with such tripe. He wasn't the only one."
  • With Friends Like These...: Pretty much everyone.
  • Ye Goode Olde Days: Subverted by a world where pretty much everybody is some variety of scum and most of the animals are rabid.
  • Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Deliberately done for the sake of humor, and to skewer Tolkien's various archaic dialects.
  • You Shall Not Pass: Parodied; Goodgulf tries to hold a rope bridge, but the Fellowship chops it down while he's on it.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings?oldid=2044631"