The Hall of Fire

Sorry to bring this up again, but I thought I might at least bring this relatively recent thread to Voronwë's attention... http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?p=669492#post669492 ... in case you care to respond there or here, even though it basically goes over some of the points Mr. Hostette...

axordil wrote: Did I miss a page of discussion?

Which means?

I hate all three ideas - why do we need them? What purpose do they serve in the story? Entertaining the 95% of the movie audience who aren't purists. My answer is that we don't need them, and I can't think of anything about the medium of film that makes them necessary. And if entertaining those who...

On the subject of posts at TORn Darkstone did a little research and discovered that some of the bunny-sled/bird poop ideas are not without precedent within Tolkien's beloved Norse mythology: Norse mythology is full of silly and ridiculous draft animals. Freya rode into battle in a wagon pulled by t...

My opinion is that these visualizations all are effective enough in their places, despite not being technically accurate in all details with respect to the conceit. Yes. I'd be willing to bet that where they are not technically consistent in the films, that's by design and not accident: for example...

About Quenya Tolkien once noted (in a letter): 'Actually it might be said to be composed on a Latin basis with two other ingredients that happen to give me 'phonaesthetic' pleasure: Finnish and Greek. It is however less consonantal than any of the three. This language is High-elven or in its own ter...

(...) I've sometimes wondered, maybe a little mischievously, what Middle-earth would be like if Tolkien had possessed a word processor armed with search and replace instead of stacks and stacks of conflicting manuscripts that could only be searched or corrected by hand. Would he have been able to b...

Ah I see -- concerning Breogan :) Hmm, I think in The Problem of ROS JRRT noted his desire that this story be retained, and thus (I assume) he intended to reconcile it with older texts. And it doesn't seem like a very problematic reconciliation, at least with respect to later brief references to bot...

I have browsed the net searching for information on this topic and I have come across sites supporting both sides... And it's still being confused on the interweb, but that's because of the factors Tyrhael has (in my opinion) correctly explained. And not that anyone has challenged that explanation....

Elentári wrote: (...) and unfortunately, it seems we're stuck with Bifur's axe...

Well he certainly seems stuck with it... oh now someone was probably going to say it!

In the tradition of retelling a story with embellishments, as all the story tellers of old have done, I think PJ told a great story. It's different than the previous telling of it, but its PJ's version of it, not JRRT's. Yet this opens a very wide door: of course it will be Jackson's version, but t...

I too think that's natural enough Ethelwynn; and to my mind this is tied, at least in part, to the art of world-building. Tolkien is a Master at this despite some unintended 'slips' -- and some cases where (it appears) the world class niggler of details just couldn't help himself! Tolkien didn't rea...

Mostly, the kind of contradictions that drive me crazy trying to figure them out are the small ones. OK, but that's not exactly what I meant though. I'm talking about readers arguably creating inconsistency by treating everything Tolkien merely set to paper (or a least large portions of it) as if i...

Hmm, well Hobbits don't have unusually large feet anyway (for their bodies)... I think the Hildebrandts at least might have contributed to this! Both the worlds of mythology and Tolkien's fiction have the same problems as "real" history as far as inconsistencies go. I know I'm one of those...

By raising the Prometheus example, are we meant to compare, say Qenta Noldorinwa with the Later Quenta Silmarillion and consider them variants of the internal legendarium? Or compare two 'equally late' but conflicting histories of Celebrimbor perhaps -- both of which conflict with the implied histor...

Ah, maybe the Amazon detail was the problem... thanks Voronwë!

I'm beginning to think I made a wrong assumption with respect to V. Flieger's response (to the quote in question). So I might be missing something that isn't there!

I do have TS volume VI Voronwë, but also, if I understand things correctly, Carl Hostetter's presentation in this book is not the same as his longer presentation on the subject of fate and free will given at a convention. I base part of this on the citation from Lingwe -- Musings of a Fish below. I ...

I think the answer to your question, Galin, is that the trouble indeed is not with free will but with fate. Both Elves and Men are, as you say (or rather, as Tolkien said), "rational creatures of free will in regard to God." The difference is that while both have free will, the exercise o...

Earlier I asked about... 'According to the fable Elves and Men were the first of these intrusions, made indeed while the 'story' was still only a story and not 'realized'; they were not therefore in any sense conceived or made by the gods, the Valar, and were called the Eruhini or 'Children of God',...

That makes sense, yes

And you hit the target as to why I was wondering too. Thanks.