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Christopher Tolkien resigned as estate director.
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Nov 15, 2017 18:44
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 07:56 |
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Disney's Simarillion World! Ride with Feanor! Swear oaths he swore! Covet what he covets!
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Nov 15, 2017 19:39
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I've very much enjoyed reading this thread from the beginning but now I am Back Again so answer me these questions three: 1. I love the Ainulindalë and Tolkien's cosmology in general. It's elegant without being shallow, clear in some places, mysterious in others, much like Christian cosmology. But! it also seems kind of....blasphemous? For a devout Catholic like JRRT, did he ever wrestle with the question of creating an alternate world creation myth complete with its own true God and subordinate pantheon? 2. My impression is that one of themes of LOTR is that "Dying is good actually, immortal life on Earth is a problem" and that is demonstrated in the separate dooms of the races of the Children of Iluvatar. If man's doom, which I take to be eternal life in the presence of God (though I don't know if he was ever explicit about that in his supplementary commentary) is so much better than that of the elves, who are bound to the fate of Arda - why'd Eru do elves like that? 3. Has there never been an english language graphic novel treatment of the LOTR? I saw some pages ago a guy was posting translated panels from a German comic from the early 80s, and I'm aware of the incredible fan-made illustrated Ainulindalë, but it's hard to believe that any independent publisher hasn't commissioned a full on comic book version of Lord of the Rings.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:55
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I mean I don't care if it is blasphemous or not because I don't believe that things can be, I was just wondering if Tolkien had ever mentioned it. It may not even have occurred to him. Still, I wouldn't give de Torquemada a copy of the Sil and then let him loose at Oxford.
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Feb 13, 2024 21:48
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Omnomnomnivore posted:When I first read Sil as a Catholic school teen I definitely thought that the setup was a way to do a mythological pantheon while still being a monotheist in good standing. Eru is the Elves' perception/understanding of the Christian God, and all of this is happening before the Incarnation anyway so their information is incomplete. JRRT's buddy made Jesus a lion and people weren't too chuffed about blasphemy with that. I grew up evangelical, which is probably coloring a lot of this, and I recall growing up that people told me that both LoTR and CoN were christian allegory. I know JRRT's opinion on allegory now, but even then I couldn't see how it was supposed to be Christian. With Narnia it's painfully obvious, but in LoTR it's generally thematic and philosophical, rather than "Aragorn is Jesus, the King that is Returning". But I was a kid, I didn't know poo poo.
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Feb 13, 2024 21:55
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Flappy Bert posted:readers would think a literal flat Earth too fanciful, and that it would be improper for the Elvish and scientific accounts to be so far separate. Yeah how tall and how bright were those trees anyway... skasion posted:Tolkien did worry about the compatibility of his fictional myths and his real religious beliefs, but (as far as we can tell) mostly only when LOTR was published and god-botherers started writing him stuffy letters about it. A lot of his post-LOTR Middle-earth writings involve attempts to reread and rewrite his pre-existing myths with a serious eye to Christianity or other external/real-world ideas. Given, you know, the attempted invasion of Valinor by Numenor, we know that at least some humans were jealous of the elves and fearful of death and desirous of eternal life on Arda. What about elves, did they envy Men their doom?
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Feb 13, 2024 22:04
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What gave a Maiar more or less power? Was Olorin known to be particularly powerful? Was Sauron the most powerful Maiar even when he was still Mairon? I know DBZ power levelling this stuff is not really the point but you got all these guys who are the same class of being and it seems like they have wildly differing scopes of power. If Sauron had gone into Moria and tried to hook up with Durin's Bane, maybe get a team up going, would there be a power imbalance there, would Sauron be in danger or would the balrog tremble and quiver before his might?
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Feb 15, 2024 16:01
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I'm not going to thank people for every single great answer to my questions as it would just clog up the thread, but you guys give great and detailed answers that I always appreciate, so assume the gratitude is there. The Once and Future Thank You.
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Feb 15, 2024 16:21
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Did Feonor "fall into shadow" i.e. did he become evil or was he just extra
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Feb 15, 2024 16:57
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So did the Silmarils have some sort of corrupting influence ala the one ring? Because Morgoth wanted them bad even though they burned the gently caress out of him, even refused to give them up to Ungoliant though it imperiled his life, and of course Feanor went on elf jihad about it.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The one that fell into the bowels of the earth specifically. Maedhros: "Fell?"
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Feb 16, 2024 15:45
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Who the gently caress did Celebrimbor think Annatar was? Some unknown rando who happened to possess ringlore that Celebrimbor, the greatest smith of his age, wasn’t aware of? The other elf lords knew it was fishy and sent him on his way.
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Feb 18, 2024 19:38
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sat on my keys! posted:IIRC Annatar was calling himself “Aulendil” also (Aule fan) which is hilarious. He was presenting himself as an emissary from the Valar to help out the remaining elves in ME which was maybe plausible but some of the other elves were like, we’ve never heard of this guy. Motivated reasoning is a hell of a drug. No one who is a Maiar of Aulë could be an evil man.
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Feb 18, 2024 21:30
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90 percent of my problems with the show were having Galadriel as the MC, just make up some elf. Same poo poo as having Yoda flip around with a lightsaber: that's not what the character is.
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Feb 20, 2024 16:03
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"Around the survivors, a perimeter create", Yoda was not that character. Similarly, the version of Galadriel that everyone is most familiar with is an ethereal, intangible and mysterious demigoddess, not some angsty teenager scaling vertical ice cliffs bent on revenge.
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Feb 20, 2024 16:12
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Galadriel was old as poo poo by the end of the Second Age!
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Feb 20, 2024 17:44
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Do we have a sense of how many Maiar there were? I know there’s no definite number since w bunch never even come into Middle Earth (or even Arda itself?) but is it like dozens, hundreds, thousands?
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Feb 21, 2024 04:40
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Is there any discussion about how organized religion works in Arda? I assume the cosmology is well known since you can just go ask an elf about it, but there aren't any churches, or prayers, or any religious practices in LOTR, as far as I can tell. I guess the only kind of religious observance I'm aware of is Morgoth-worship among the black Numenorians.
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Feb 22, 2024 17:19
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Yeah it's just kind of weird that a guy as catholic as JRRT would omit organized religion almost entirely. (especially given the work he did in crafting the cosmology) If I walk into Dale and grab the first guy I see and say "How did the world come to be", is he gonna know?
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Feb 22, 2024 17:44
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And if it did, I would simply leap off the boat and swim back to Middle Earth.
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Feb 26, 2024 17:44
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I was there Banandalf....3000 years ago when the courage of apes failed...
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Feb 26, 2024 18:29
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What did the various peoples of Middle Earth know about Durin's Bane? Was it known to be a balrog? When discussing whether or not to head through Moria, Boromir, Aragorn, and Legolas all agree it is a dangerous place, and there certainly seems to be a subtext that they fear there's something worse than orcs down there. When Gandalf first encounters the balrog through the door and the spell/counterspell thing, he doesn't know what it is, just that it is strong and has something to do with fire. When the entire fellowship sees the balrog, Legolas recognizes it on sight, Gandalf is like "ah, that explains some things" and Gimli just laments "Durin's Bane" and drops his axe. Was Gimli thinking "There's the famous balrog that drove the dwarves out of Khazad Dum, the bastard Durin's Bane" or "Ah, a huge flaming monster, that is probably what Durin's Bane was"? Gandalf knows there's something called Durin's Bane, he discusses it before they go into the mountain, but he didn't know that it was a balrog? He had to know he was dealing with something that was at least a Maiar after the door incident, but he never put two and two together? Did Gandalf not know who or what Durin's Bane was?
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Feb 26, 2024 19:23
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I skimmed the text before I asked the question in case I was forgetting something, and Gandalf definitely refers to Durin's Bane before they encounter it e: Gloin at the council of Elrond implies no one knows what it is quote:Too deep we delved there, and woke the nameless fear. Long have its vast mansions lain empty since the children of Durin fled. But now we spoke of it again with longing, and yet with dread; for no dwarf has dared to pass the doors of Khazad-dûm for many lives of kings, save Thror only. So no one who lived saw the thing? Or dwarves don't know about balrogs? zoux fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Feb 26, 2024 |
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Feb 26, 2024 19:31
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Eh, I think he was being metaphorical, I don't think a balrog was peekin out of the gates during the battle. Though I guess I look out of the window if someone is out there being rowdy and disturbing my rest.
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Feb 26, 2024 20:01
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Whatever they think it is, it's worse than a dragon. There are a limited number of things worse than dragons, so if indeed they didn't know what the Bane was, I wonder what they thought it was.
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Feb 26, 2024 20:09
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I know that the popular conception of what a balrog looks like was driven by that one calendar image, and perpetuated by the movies (It is a great loving design) but I also wonder how much the lifting fact that "balrog" sounds like a hideous monster is doing.  I've seen this referenced as a (more) book accurate depiction of a balrog. It also looks cool, but I don't think it has a patch over the winged, demonic balrog Anyway, PYF balrogs 
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Feb 26, 2024 22:25
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He didn't say "FLAME OF UDUN" he said "whoa, where's the fire buddy"
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Feb 26, 2024 22:35
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Albatrosses have huge wings too but if you drop one off a bridge it ain’t flying off
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Feb 26, 2024 23:04
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I know it's not the point, I know that the designs of the wicked include the seeds of their own destruction, but looking back on it, the whole rings of power plan was a real gently caress up on the part of Sauron. Setting aside the fact that he was killed into permanent irrelevancy with the unmaking of the One Ring, I can't really see how anything worked out in his favor. He thought he'd gain dominion over three powerful elf-lords, seven dwarven kingdoms, and nine kingdoms of men. Instead he got zero elves, and the next time he saw those rings they were on the fingers of two S-tier elves and a loving Maia who used them to drive him out of Dol Goldur, and indeed had used the power of the rings to sustain themselves in middle earth long enough to have the chance to oppose him. He got no dwarves; did he just call that one wrong or what? You can say he got the Nazgul, but was that even what he was after? Seems to me like they'd be a lot more useful as immortal kings and sorcerers at the heads of legions of mannish armies instead of a spooky SEAL team 6. He probably coulda cooked up a bunch of ring wraiths with a lot less of his personal power bound up in a master ring. Was he more powerful with the ring than he was before its crafting? Or was spending so much of his personal essence the price he had to pay in order to craft a ring powerful enough to dominate the wills of the people he thought he'd be binding? Seriously the fact that the elf lords just took off the rings is hilarious, I'd love to be in Sauron's evil workshop for that one. "haha now to control the minds of three of the most potent beings in all middle earth" *Elves immediately take off rings* "Ah. I see. Well..." e: well I guess the three rings weren't part of the original plan but still zoux fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Feb 27, 2024 |
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Feb 27, 2024 16:25
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euphronius posted:We also don’t know much at all about the south and East where suaron spent a lot of attention We know his efforts there availed him not. Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's explained that the rings just had a weird effect on dwarves: they got greedy and gold obsessed and good at drawing wealth to themselves, but they just didn't turn into wraiths like everybody else, version compatibility error sorry Yeah I know, and he also thought that he'd be able to take dominion over Eriador because Celebrimbor went and made three other rings but because they didn't have his....taint on them it didn't work. Sounds like this mf didn't know as much about ringlore as he let on.
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Feb 27, 2024 18:33
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The fact that whatever he did down there didn't stop a hobbit from yeeting his ring into the cracks of doom e: were the Nine ringwraiths by the time of the Last Alliance
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Feb 27, 2024 18:35
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When the hobbits passed back through Rivendell on the way back, do you think Glorfindel was like eh? eh? It was a pun! Pretty good huh?
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Feb 27, 2024 19:21
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Those blacksmiths really loving hated the Nazgul, which counts for a lot.
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Feb 27, 2024 21:54
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Oh we're just believing Saruman are we
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Feb 28, 2024 15:30
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euphronius posted:The white council did at that time yes . Gandalf later says he was a fool to do so So, Gandalf says that he was a fool to believe the things said, these same things that you are relying on for your argument. He said it was rolled into the sea. By whom? By no one, Saruman was lying.
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Feb 28, 2024 15:32
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Feb 28, 2024 20:55
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So Sauron couldn't tell that three of the members of the White Council who drove him from Dol Guldur were wearing the three elvish rings of power?
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Feb 28, 2024 22:02
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I love to wead lord of the wings.
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Feb 29, 2024 04:28
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Data Graham posted:Finally I settled on "Shane" lol
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Feb 29, 2024 15:14
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Look those are just the guy's name in quenya, it's not like he invented the language or anything
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Mar 2, 2024 00:56
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