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''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.
Produced during the first wave of Tolkien's popularity, when ''LOTR'' fandom was a [[New Age Retro Hippie|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 [[media:BotR_650.jpg|original]] paperback edition [http://lotrscrapbook.bookloaf.net/gallery/bookcovers/pages/04.htm 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
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* [[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
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* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Tim Benzedrine
* [[Contemptible Cover]]: The original paperback edition (seen above) parodied the infamous "Hippie Edition" of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''
* [[The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much]]: The first Great Steward of Minas Troney, Paraffin the Climber, became ruler of Twodor after King Chloroplast "apparently fell backward by accident onto a dozen salad forks" -- and many of his relatives "committed suicide" in "imitation" of his method, or were felled by strangely similar tragic accidents.
** The latest Steward of this line, Benelux the Booby, ties himself up and burns himself on a pyre after appointing Goodgulf (who had uncannily foreseen Benelux's suicidal tendencies) to act as his successor.
* [[Cosmopolitan Council]]: Pretty much averted, if not subverted, by Orlon's council at Riv'n'dell.
* [[Creepy Long Fingers]]:
* [[Crystal Ball]]: The ''mallomar'', which turns out to be nothing more than a [[Magic 8-Ball]] with a holographic display
* [[Department of Redundancy Department]]: Used several times, such as:
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* [[Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age]]: Subverted:
{{quote|In his hand he carried an ancient and trustworthy weapon, called by the elves a Browning semi-automatic.}}
* [[Elves
* [[The End of the World as We Know It]]: Threatened result of Sorhed regaining the One Ring.
* [[Evil Tower of Ominousness]]: The Eisentower, Chikken Noodul...
* [[Fantastic Racism]]: Starts where Tolkien left off and runs with it -- everybody seems to hate everybody else in Lower Middle Earth.
* [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]: Most obvious in the faux-German Roi-Tanners
* [[Fantasy World Map]]: Wildly parodying the original map in ''LOTR''. A copy can be found [[media:Bored of the rings map.jpg
* [[Fictionary]]: The samples seen of the various languages of Lower Middle Earth are generally assembled from the names of commercial products, public figures, pop-culture references and nonsense sounds.
* [[Final Battle]]: Subverted; the Forces of Good are hungover and reduced to a handful by deserters, and the Forces of Evil flee and turn into pillars of garlic when the Ring is destroyed.
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* [[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'' -- [[Improbable Species Compatibility|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!"
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* [[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
* [[ISO Standard Fantasy Setting]]: Subverted, in the first parody thereof, by all manner of "foreign" elements and intrusions.▼
* [[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''.
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* [[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.
* [[
* [[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. {{spoiler|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." {{spoiler|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 [https://web.archive.org/web/20110719025512/http://users.stargate.net/~drushel/b_scour.html The Scouring of the Shire] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20140212010830/http://users.stargate.net/~drushel/b_app_a.html 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.
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* [[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]]: ''[[wikipedia:National Lampoon's Doon|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.
▲* [[
* [[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.
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* [[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.
▲* [[Trailers Always Lie]]: 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.
* [[True Companions]]: Subverted; nobody actually wanted to join, but were volunteered by other people who hated them.
* [[Truth
* [[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.
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{{Tolkien's legendarium}}
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[[Category:Comic Literature]]
[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]
[[Category:The Sixties]]
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