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{{work}}
[[File:BotR
{{quote|
''[[Richard Nixon|Nixon]] [
{{quote|''"'''
'''''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 [[
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
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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* 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
* Gimlet, son of Groin, a deformed dwarf
* Legolam, an acerbic elf
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In a sense, it is one continuous novel-length example of [[Sophisticated As Hell]].
{{tropenamer}}
* [[Giant Flyer]]: The "[[Deus Ex Machina]] Airlines" subtrope gets its name from Gwahno the Giant Eagle.
{{tropelist}}
* [[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.
* [[
* [[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
{{quote|''Grundig blaupunkt luger frug
''Watusi snarf wazoo!
''Nixon dirksen nasahist
''Rebozo boogaloo.''|Inscription on the One Ring}}
* [[Brawn Hilda]]: Eorache
* [[Briar Patching]]: Cornered by Nozdrul, Frito performs the entire Br'er Rabbit routine, knowing it's [[The Oldest Tricks in The Book|the oldest trick in the book]]. Naturally, it works.
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* [[The Cavalry]]: Subverted by the Riders of Roi-Tan, who ride bad-tempered sheep.
* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Tim Benzedrine
* [[Contemptible Cover]]: The original paperback edition (seen above) parodied the infamous "Hippie Edition" of ''[[
* [[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
* [[Department of Redundancy Department]]: Used several times, such as:
{{quote|
* [[Deus Ex Machina]]: Liberally employed for humor's sake. Gwahno the eagle is actually labeled "Deus Ex Machina Airlines".
* [[Dirty Coward]]: ''Everyone'', except, maybe, Eorache
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* [[Doorstopper]] Averted; for a book that manages to parody the whole of ''LOTR'', it's surprisingly slim.
* [[The Eeyore]]: Goddam
* [[Elegant Weapon for
{{quote|
* [[Elves
* [[The End of the World
* [[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''.
* [[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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* [[Fourth Wall Observer]]: Bromosel
* [[Functional Magic]]: Thoroughly and enthusiastically averted. Anything presented as magic is usually just a lame trick or worse.
{{quote|
* [[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
** 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!"
** Similarly:
{{quote|
* [[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
* [[Hooked Up Afterwards]]:
{{quote|
* [[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''.
* [[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
* [[Line in
{{quote|
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
* [[Magic From Technology]]: If you define "technology" as "card tricks and con jobs".
* [[Mooks]]: The Narcs
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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
* [[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.
* [[Parody Magic Spell]]: As evidenced by the page quote, there's quite a few of these.
{{quote|
* [[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
* [[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.
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* [[Simultaneous Arcs]]
* [[Sophisticated As Hell]]: Numerous examples, most notably the overarching contrast between mimicking Tolkien's ''form'' while writing deliberately outrageous material.
* [[Spanner in
* [[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]]: ''[
* [[Souvenir Land]]: Lornadoon. And Serutanland, home of "Dicky Dragon".
* [[Spoiled
▲* [[
* [[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.
* [[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.
{{quote|
"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
* [[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.
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{{reflist}}
{{Tolkien's legendarium}}
[[Category:Comic Literature]]
[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]
[[Category:The Sixties]]
▲[[Category:Bored Of The Rings]]
[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
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