Preston Jacobs Tries to Ruin The Silmarillion for Lord of the Rings YouTuber Men of the West 

Check out the Full podcast collaboration we did with Lord of the Rings RU-vidr Yoystan from Men of the West on Patreon: Yoystan's Patreon: www.patreon.com/menofthewest Preston's Patreon: www.patreon.com/prestonjacobs

This collab is the definition of “a surprise to be sure but a welcome one.”

He sounds so optimistic and energetic. Then there is Preston.

carmine be posting prestons content while preston is on paternity leave

Men Of The West is great. Fantastic collaboration.

You'll never ruin them for me Preston, but I appreciate the effort 😏

Preston doesn't like creation myths? I would love to see his take on The Elder Scrolls Creation Myth and the Living Gods of Morrowind and All the crazy stuff about Tiber Septim, Wulfharth and Zurin Arctus.

The One Piece RU-vidr community holds a large collaborative live stream once or twice a year where they hold moderated discussions on the books, show, production, and fan theories. After House of the Dragon wraps up, some of the more well known ASOIAF RU-vidrs should get in touch and hold a "Council of Season Once" live stream. I nominate Glidus as moderator.

If I had ANY spare money, I'd gladly support you and Preston, but I'm disabled and am unable to. I love you guys, and it makes me sad that there's content that's locked behind a paywall. It'd be nice if you considered releasing these videos publicly after 6 months or even a year. There's a channel, SubBrief, where he does these hour long briefs on submarines, and for the most part, they are Patreon only, but he has a policy of releasing them for free for everyone on RU-vid after 1 year. Give it a thought, my dude. I'm sure I'm not the only poor person that would love to support you guys if I could, but can't, and so has to miss out on great content, which makes me sad.

Preston is such a cynical George R.R. Martin

I feel song is the most important element of tolkien's world. Music and song literally made the world, I think that song is fundamental to the "physics" of that world. So the fact that many movie fans are confused or frustrated by all the songs just disappoints me: song is literally woven into all things in middle earth.

I remember there was some teen who created entire family trees based on the writing in the Silmarillion. Imagine the intellect and determination to accomplish that.

Yoystan is my favourite LOTR youtuber, cheers for this collab guys.

We had some jolly dancing from Merry & Pip in that scene. “They come in pints!”

He tries, and fails. Men of the West is a total goat

Preston always reminds me of the paranoid it’s Always Sunny conspiracy meme. Like, everything that has the slightest chance of not being what it seems is what he will latch on to. “You’re saying the Silmarillion could all just be bullshit unreliable narrators and that there is no God because Tolkien made in-lore retcon tools for convenience’s sake?” Sometimes things actually are the way that they seem my dude.

lol Preston is such philistine. "man i think it would be so much more interesting if these rich stories about other worlds actually were all just lies by political propagandists" this is like Christopher Nolan Joker vibes having some pathological need to show everybody is just like him. And he even says it outright here! What turned him off the Silmarillion at the beginning was the God and Devil and angels/lesser gods stuff because they aren't "like us". What's so sad is this proves Preston would struggle immensely with epics that don't proceed from industrial modernity or from at least early modern Anglo sources because this lack of interest in subjects foreign to his own thoughts apparently turns him off. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising, many a world traveler like Preston has went to far off places to fill the shallowness of their minds and emptiness of their hearts but succeed only in making them backgrounds for the playing out of their own unaffected, immovable subjectivities. Truly a phillistine if there ever was one.

The Silmarillion is put together from several complete or near complete scetches of the whole arc of the story, but some narratives are bridged together with earlier narratives that Tolkien hadn't come back to finishing. J.R.R. Tolkien had this weird method of having these more detailed narratives written, but then he would go back to alter it because something didn't seem to work, so he would rework the entire thing from start and often might not finish it into the new form entirely. But there were several whole narratives of the history written in the style of the published Silmarillion, and the more complete narratives would add detail in between these spanning narratives. Some stories, like the later events of Beren and Luthien and their children, and the end of the second Doriath were never quite finished into their modern revision, so that material is written and cobbled together by Christopher, but most of the rest is written by Tolkien into a quite complete version. There was also the problem that Tolkien had been told by publishers that they would not publish his "fairy stories" as nobody would want to read them. Originally Tolkien had planned that the Silmarillion would have been a more complete narrative like book that would have had less detail than the Lord of the Rings but still about the same length and published alongside it. But paper was expensive so the publisher said that they will never publish such a book, so much of the lore in the SIlmarillion was shoved into the appendices. Tolkien was also very disheartened by this decision and did not return to finish the SIlmarillion with the same eagerness as he had done before. There are several things that are left on the "cutting room floor". Like are the eagles maiar, or how did the orcs come to be? These are not mysteries because there is no explanation, but rather because there are several. In some versions the orcs are mutilated and transformed elves, in others, men, in others, the children of evil maiar mixed with elves or men. In some they are animals that are given human shape but no true will or soul.

Sauron convinces the men of Numenor that there is no one true God Eru & that Morgoth is actually the good guy & the evles & Valar are keeping immortality all to themselves & convinces the men to go to war against Valinor & take Immortality by force. Eru then steps in & floods Numenor for violating the ban to sail West. But yeah, Valar are seen my many / some fans are flawed or bad guys in their incompetence

I think I scared my neighbor by gasping loudly out of nowhere while realizing this amazing collab, on my porch. Excitement, I am a Patreon but not podcast time. No one cares but comments help moneys now, right?

I missed the part where he destroyed it? Saying that the story, half myth, given narratively, might be unreliable isn’t saying much.

Near the end of his life, Tolkien talked about the possibility that the world was always round and that the stories involving a flat Earth, e.g., the years of the lamps, were all myths.

People don't talk about how much Guy Gavriel Kay helped working on the Silmarillion

So Preston takes the "fun and magic out of it", is Preston is RU-vid version of D&D?

Should have named the video "Preston Jacobs destroys Silmarillion against ignorant Eru Illuvatar believer with FACTS and LOGIC"

Me, going in with The Silmarillion being my favorite book: here we go...

I mainly like it because the title has my name in it.

“fire and blood is no one’s favorite book” you’d be surprised

Why didn't Preston mention his theory that LotR is a post apocalyptic tale? It is known.

Old man Preston theorises at fandom. Haha never change dudes

Full video is not on RU-vid Membership page

The Silmarillion isn't a book, it's a mythological account of middle earth. And that's why it's so special

-Yeah the big difference is that LotR was somewhat normal people getting wrapped in the epilogue to an esleworld norse mythos, while the Quenta Silmarillion... ...is the elseworld norse mythos. -Come to think of it I would very much love to see Preston dissect the Arda legendarium. Starting with Faramir and Boromir's dream (you know, the one that sent the latter on the quest? after hearing a voice that may or may not be Ulmo. An undersea "deity" whispering in people's dreams, where have I heard that one before...) -Eru : ...yeah, even the supposed Ainur in our story (Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast) don't even say anything about him. Even the Valar haven't showed up in 6400 years. -PS : Why do I have a hunch Preston also knows of the Last Ringbearer? -PPS : the jolly dancing? well that one is hard to pull off convincingly. just ask Ralph bakshi. (the musical did it fine though).

I thought the whole purpose of the fantasy genre was to throw all the crazy stuff you want without the limitations of the real world, magic, wonder, creatures, mystery, gods, etc, you know, being FANTASY, like damn I can't deny asoiaf has collaborated a lot to the genre, but in that aspect has ruined the hell out of it too. Now the majority of authors I read in recent years just shy away from the fantastical element when writting their "fantasy" books, like... why? then just write in another genre then, I personally find these myths and legends filled with magic and wonder just as interesting as character driven stories, and when you combine those two, its just even better to me.

Not putting the House of The Dragon podcast on RU-vid anymore?

I'm actually more suspicious of Aragorn. You are telling me that some northener who spent the past decades in the wilderness suddenly appers in Gondor with an army of men of a distant province, deposes the Gondorian ruling dinasty and makes himself the new ruler. Surely, he would need to legitimise himself by tracing his lineage to Isildur, the whole "raised in Rivendell" thing and the Army of the Dead, which is especially fantastic. Most likely, Aragorn was just an ambitious common northerner who lead a rebellion in Western Gondor when authority collapsed during the war. Oh, and the Arwen thing. She bearly appears in the book, but we are told it is a fairy tail marriage. Totally not a political arrangement he made with the elves.

7:22 "So there's a possibility that there is no God..." Well, maybe there weren't any elves, dwarves or hobbits either.

Preston Jacobs is the Gordon Novel (Look that one up) of Fantasy Discourse.

🔥🔥🔥🔥 2 of my favorite content creators on RU-vid together!!!

Unfinished Tales on the other hand... not so cohesive lmao

Silmarillion is tough, sooooooo many names to wrap your head around

Hi I can't see this in the memberships

Preston returning to form on this one. I was chanting holy shit holy shit when he started on the revisionism

I never felt a lack of trust from either Baggins. To the contrary.

I remember reading Silmarillion, and the first half being so. fuckin’. BORING. But then I get to second half and it gets AMAZING and it’s amazing *because* of the stuff that’s set up in the first half!

The first parts of the book were very good and interesting but more I went into the pages more hard it became to read with hundreds of names, locations, and timelines, so complex it will put all other worlds like a song of ice and fire to shame. It was not my cup of tee to be honest. I love Tolkien lore and world but I prefer to watch lore videos on RU-vid, read the wiki for notes than Silmarilion book's structure sadly

There is actually the palantiri that accurately show you the past and sometimes the future. So you can go and look. But the Valar certainly are real and Morgoth as well. And you can go and check and see that Manwë talks to God so Manwë thinks he exists. So even though questioning the narrative is a fun bit, it actually is unlikely that all the valar are just lying.

I thought he originally made the sil. Before lotr and tried to publish it but nobody would

He talks about the story being unreliable and inconsistent, but then you look at real world history and there's a lot of weird stuff going on that doesn't make sense and we simply don't know the one real answer to, and if we did, the whole intrigue goes to shit

Any mention of conspiracies and Preston perks right up lol

those "R-E-V-I-E-W" letters from IGN xD

Well, if you aren't sure, why don't you keep asking: what if there really is a devil in Middle Earth? In which reality will the people be more fucked? Then modern writers would probably choose that one for dramatic effect.

Preston's interpretation of the story through an atheist lens sounds like projection to me lmfao. Tolkien was a Christian and no doubt that shows in his work. I agree though that it still makes for a good secular story, the noble lie to rally the world against Sauron.

I had such a hard time reading the Samilrion

Go on,.Joosten, make the argument that casting a non-white actor for Elros is totally okay

You can't do this to me make me start believing that the Silmarillion and Lord of the rings have unreliable narrators are were biased by the in universe writers

For my money I'd take songs in inns over pink masts anyday.

Thumbnail is misleading

I have just listened to it on audio, I found it boring to many songs rhymes ect.

Elon Musk said Tolkien is rolling in his grave

Just the clips from this video are reenforcing my view of how bad this damn show is

I can't wait for season 2, all abo hobbits, all the time

Preston's paranoia about these myths is how I feel about religions in general. He's like my spirit animal.

I love LOTR and the Silmarillion, but I have to honestly admit that Tolkien as a writer was not that great. Some chapters read like a biblical passage, with a song lodged in occasionally. It's not said often enough, I feel...

Based Preston

Based and not-Tolkien pilled

Man, I love Preston. Tbh, the first time I listened to Silmarillion, I was posing similar questions. Like with Song of Ainur, I was like "Did elves made this all up?" And before knowing Silmarillion I was like "What if all the people sailing West just die at the sea and no one sees them again?" But then again Galadriel was on th West and saw that all, so then it's just "oh, I guess it's real." Generally, if there are gods in a story lore, I expect them to interact with the actual story and have some agency. Like in Discworld or Malaz. When the lore is like "the gods made this all and then decided to not intervene in the matter of men", or some similar convenient shit explanation (the worhammer emperor corpse on throne comes to mind), I'm imidiately highly suspicious.

damn, Preston over here making my dreams come true, PRESTON KING PRESTON KING PRESTON KING

Nah, not really. He’d have to read it more first.

I love Preston…

LOTR is a chore to get trough in audio format...its *so much singing* lol..its great but its not GOT :) I listened to it long before I heard abt the other though. 😆 Oh ,and Preston I can totally see it from your side bud...lol