Although J.R.R. Tolkien famously disliked allegory, he admitted there is always applicability to be found. Anyone who reads his work with any bit of care or critical thinking can find a thousand applications to the troubles of our real world—what he called the primary world. Here is just one I recently across again.
(more…)Tag: fantasy
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This posts blends Dungeons & Dragons, religion, and today’s political climate—that last one being a topic I would like to generally avoid here. But this one eats away at me so I just need to work through it “out loud,” as it were.
So, a long, long time ago while working in a career far, far away, I did a bit of freelance writing for Wizards of the Coast. At one moment in time, I got to cowrite (with my good friend Ken Hart) a D&D article titled “Faith & Heresy” (in Dragon issue #387 from 2011). It was essentially roleplaying advice for players or DMs and it proposed the idea that not all clerics, even those serving the same god, have to be the same, or even believe all the same things.
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Continuing the theme of talking about the good things in life . . .
This is just a short post mostly to redirect folks to this awesome and insightful new article in the “Overlooked No Mere” series in The New York Times—which I’d never heard about before. It doesn’t appear behind a paywall, either. I guess that makes sense, since it’s an obituary series. Anyway, it’s this one:
Overlooked No More: Karen Wynn Fonstad, Who Mapped Tolkien’s Middle-earth
And here’s my quick followup opinion.
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Go not to me for true film criticism, for I will say both “It was great!” and “It wasn’t that great” about almost anything. Almost.
But! It’s 2024, and I got to take my family to see a Lord of the Rings film in December just as it premiered. That felt . . . good, and a tiny bit nostalgic. I still have more enthusiasm in me than disappointment, and as always, more Tolkien is better than less Tolkien. Even poorly made Tolkien adaptations (which this wasn’t) is an excuse to talk about Tolkien . . .
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I aim to talk more about the good things in life here.
Today I’m going to talk just a little bit about artists Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, though I don’t honestly know much about them—that is, beyond this wonderful interview the hosts of The Prancing Pony Podcast had with Greg Hildebrandt a few years ago. Mostly I’d just like to share some of MY favorite paintings from their vast body of work. Tim passed away in 2006 and his brother, Greg, sadly passed away one month ago.
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The finale of season 2 The Rings of Power, quite surprisingly, didn’t terribly disappoint me. I enjoyed it more than I thought it would, and some plot threads ended . . . not as cringey as I expected. But let’s get to it.
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Let’s get to it.
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One of my readers has kindly reminded me of something I previously wrote on the subject of Tolkien adaptations, and I would do well to remember it. They were my closing remarks in my review of the first three episodes of The Rings of Power.
This is from 2022, when the show had only just begun to air . . .
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Just diving right in . . .
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Foreshadowed and Foresung 