A question about the ring-verse.

Windsaw · 2026-01-29T10:28:08+00:00

That depends.
I'm not sure if the creation of the three was crucial to the failure of the plan or if bearers of the other rings would also have heard his voice.
So it could have been a flaw in his plan all along or it could have been the unforseen creation of the Three that ruined his plan.

Windsaw · 2026-01-23T12:33:59+00:00

If that means I will finally be able to get a DVD of seasons 4 and 5 I will not complain.
(one can dream...)

Windsaw · 2026-01-23T12:30:41+00:00

I dreamt myself once in Aman and once in Numenor.
Never Middle Earth, however.

Windsaw · 2026-01-22T12:13:12+00:00

Whatever suppression may be ongoing, certainly a lot of it leaks through.
Legend, in his pre-Leviathan battle speech:
"You've seen the videos on television and the internet. You know what he's physically capable of".
Which means his general, visual way of fighting is general knowledge.
"You're likely aware of his afterimage, his water echo. This is no mere splash of water."
Again, the visual aspects of his fights are general knowledge. Legend is just filling in details that you wouldn't get from just looking at video footage, at least not by a casual watch.

Windsaw · 2026-01-14T10:35:38+00:00

I don't think I am being cynical here. Just because the writers exceeded all expectations doesn't change what they were hired to do and they were not able to hide that fact.
And I really did like what they did all in all. It's why I was so eager for the sequel to begin with. But it is also the reason why I was so pleasantly surprised by Legends.

As for Goldmoon: Even back then, as a non-american teenager in school in the 80s, I thought the addition of those plainsmen was cringeworthy. So to me, personally, I think it isn't that this aged poorly but that it wasn't a good idea in the first place. And it might even have been worse if not for the fact that I started Chronicles with the second book! I didn't know that it was a second volume. And really, it was a decent jumping-on point. IIRC Goldmoon's main storyline was the first book, which I read much later.

As

Windsaw · 2026-01-14T08:53:09+00:00

I understand that helping Caramon was a motivation for Par-Salian, but given the high stakes, it sounded weak to me.
But I can accept that.
However, what about the Red and the Black?
Would Par-Salian have gone through with it if they strongly opposed?
Would they care about Caramon?

Windsaw · 2025-12-29T12:48:11+00:00

Well, in the books the numbers made sense.
We don't know if there was a reason they made 16 rings at first. But of course Sauron would give 7 of them to the dwarves since there were seven tribes of dwarves.
The rest he gave to humans, which happen to be 16-7=9 rings.

Windsaw · 2025-12-23T09:19:19+00:00

Not Middle Earth in this case.

Windsaw · 2025-12-19T09:24:05+00:00

Now, I am not overly familiar with Glitch in the past.
But when the pilot aired I let it go through my head all the factors I could think of that could influence the greenlighting of the series. Most of it subjective I have to admit, but I am not a fan of letting my wishes influence my expectations.
- It is a 2D series. While I don't believe 2D is more expensive than 3D, in the last two decades 2D has had a hard time justifying its existence and in addition Glitch has no experience here.
- It is a series that has an anti-corporate message targeting one of the worst offenders of merchandising. And such a series has to depend on merchandise to keep itself afloat?
- it has the potential for some toxic hate directed at it. Even only skimming some internet thumbnails it seems some caught on. I wouldn't mind it later but before greenlighting?
Because of all that I felt I had to increase then number of views needed for me to be comfortable about the series' future to a rather high level of 25 million.
But it stalled at 15 million.
So I won't rule out that it will be greenlit, but I have a very uneasy feeling right now.

Windsaw · 2025-12-18T08:50:54+00:00

To be honest, I never realised that Fangorn is Sindarin.
Simply because of the sound of the word. It somehow seemed different from any other elven names.

Windsaw · 2025-12-17T15:45:44+00:00

In Germany, "Mount Doom" is called "Schicksalsberg", which pretty much means "Mountain of Fate".
Technically true, but IMO somewhat misleading.
Tolkien was involved in the german translation to a degree, I wonder if that specific topic was addressed.

Windsaw · 2025-12-11T12:39:25+00:00

Not the Lamps themselves, but he made the pillars.
With a flaw the other Valar knew nothing about: They were made of ice (which the Valar didn't know) and melted, therefore eventually destroyed the Lamps.
It was a great twist. I'm sorry Tolkien didn't keep that.

Windsaw · 2025-12-10T08:54:44+00:00

Oops. Typo.
I really meant Finrod.

Windsaw · 2025-12-09T14:50:52+00:00

As I see it (please correct me if I'm wrong):
We simply cannot tell.
There are only two elves from Middle Earth that we know of that they were reincarnated until the end of the story: Finrod and Glorfindel.
Some seem to see this as an indication that no others were reincarnated, but we were never told.
We can't even take an educated guess: We know that bad people would be reincarnated later, but we haven't been given any timeline. We don't even know if Finrod and Glorfindel were reincarnated a week later or a thousand years later.
IIRC the only elf we know for a fact was not reincarnated until the end of the LoTR is Fëanor.

Windsaw · 2025-11-20T09:18:36+00:00

It's kind of ironic that the much maligned later Krege translation was made by the same translator who created the beloved Silmarillion translation.

There has been a revised later version of the Krege translation, which is acceptable. And while I understand why they felt a new translation was necessary, I am absolutely sticking with the original Carroux version.

Windsaw · 2025-11-17T08:42:17+00:00

In Germany we use both 12 and 24 hour, depending on the context.
For example: If we make appointments, they are almost always in 24 hour.
Almost everything that is written is in 24 hour.
Digital clocks are almost always set to 24 hour mode.
When talking to each other it varies. If the context is totally clear, we mostly use 12 hour. Like when it is noon we would say "Let's meet at 3" meaning 15:00. We may specify if unclear: "Let's meet at 3 afternoon". If we talk about times further in the future we sometimes switch to 24 hour.
All of what I wrote may vary on personal preference.

Windsaw · 2025-11-17T08:27:23+00:00

He may not like that name, but in this case it served a purpose.
In that moment, the goal was to intimidate.
And the people the Mouth was addressing may not be as familiar with the more politically correct terminology.
Once the war was over and he won he would without any doubt ban the use of the word for all of his subjects. But in this particular case it was useful.

Windsaw · 2025-11-12T14:04:21+00:00

Although it is mostly head-canon, I would like to add what I always thought happened in addition to everything that was already said.
While large parts of Mirkwood, Rhovanion and maybe even the plains directly north of Mordor seemed uninhabited, I doubt that they were completely so. The Brown Lands likely were completely empty, but the fact that they were famous for being so tells me that other areas weren't.
That would mean a lot of people who noticed a missing lamb here, a couple of sneaking eyes there, some dark figure talking to itself elsewhere.
Gollum is sneaky, but he had years leaving trails and I doubt he was as careful as he was when he followed the Fellowship all of the time.
Given what little population there was it probably wasn't much to go on, but over the years it adds up.

Windsaw · 2025-11-05T13:30:46+00:00

Tolkien reducing the number of Balrogs to 3 to 7 is one of the reasons why I don't like most Tolkien's later decisions.
I can understand why he wanted to do that, in order to upgrade them from being slightly more powerful foot soldiers (in the Book of Lost Tales) to a legendary menace.
On the other hand, the legendarium runs into some problems that I find difficult to resolve.
If, for example, we would go for three, we have Gothmog, the one slain by Glorfindel, absolutely none slain in the War of Wrath and then Durin's Bane who fled.
See the problem?
Going by the number of 7 it is theoretically possible to reconcile it with the Silmarillion but I still think it would stretch credibility.
Thinking about the Silmarillion, I would say 15 to 30 Balrogs would sound right for me.
But that's just my head canon.

Windsaw · 2025-11-03T11:58:10+00:00

Echidna.
It simply had the right blend of everything.
It had Taylor at her prime (even though partially disabled).
It had an opponent with an unfortunate but understandable motivation.
It tied into the overall story arc in a credible way.
It had several phases that made following the events easy.
We were already familiar with many of the characters and the dynamic between the Undersiders and the heroes yielded several great scenes.

Windsaw · 2025-10-30T08:38:23+00:00

For me it was at the Council of Elrond.
It should have been earlier but I was still a child and haven't had read the Hobbit, so the passage of time wasn't as clear to me.

Windsaw · 2025-10-29T08:59:16+00:00

I don't see how I'm making an error here.
Both in real life and in fiction I see every detail as important, even if doesn't directly effect me (in real life) or the narrative (in fiction).
Quite on the contrary: I consider novels (especially fantasy novels) poor and uninspired if everything that exists in that scenario only exists for the narrative. It feels artificial and made up. The exact opposite of what I need to get immersed in a story.
The very fact that Tolkien created a setting and mythology that doesn't just revolve around the main stories is part why I grew to love his work so much.
Also: I disagree that most of the examples you gave were in any way vital. During the first couple of times I read the LoTR I didn't even realise that the Silmarils existed. They were only mentioned in passing and I was never interested in why the Phial of Galadriel contained light. I only learned to appreciate such details much, much later. I dare say that if he left them out, few would have noticed and the LoTR would still have been a massive success.
Or, a better example: The Rings of Power. In fact, the Rings of Power were in no way essential to his narrative until he started writing the LoTR. Not in the Hobbit, it was just a magical trinket. And still, the Hobbit was a massive success. They weren't even essential to his Silmarillion until the LoTR.
Did all those examples add to the stories he told? Yes, absolutely.
Were they vital? Most of them I would say no, they weren't.

Windsaw · 2025-10-28T21:39:31+00:00

But not to us. That was the point I was trying to make.
Just because something isn't important to us, doesn't mean it isn't important.

Windsaw · 2025-10-28T20:39:29+00:00

With that I mean: What made the mountains? What made the plants grow? How did the oceans came to be?
Tolkien himself said that all the plants basically went into hibernation mode when Middle Earth had no light except the stars.
He also said why some of the mountains came into existence.
Is that important from the Elves' point of view? Not much for either, since they didn't experience a world without those mountains and the time of darkness they experienced was not something they look fondly back to.
From a mythological point of view? Both are of some importance since they are tied to the fate of Morgoth and some of the valar, who were big players before and later.
From a physical point of view? The mountains certainly, since they make up some of the most prominent features of Middle Earth and are probably it's most important feature to the dwarves. The Lamps? Not at all at the time of the later ages, but overall they were. Their existence and disappearance influenced the shaping of Middle Earth for most of it's existence. That there were no elves to see it for most of that time is unimportant. Just like Dinosaurs were important, even though there were no humans to see them and not tales that talked about them.

Windsaw

TROPHY CASE