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It was a full on eruption, with pyroclastic flow, tremors, ash ejections and raining lava bombs. Why is it so important to you that you understand that only people who are "hate-watching" it in order to "pick holes" have any criticism of the show, and therefore such criticism is invalid...

These are certainly some of the more egregious challenges to any sense of verisimilitude which I think any good show requires. Instead, we are left with a show which quite obviously disregards physics in order to provide spectacle - at which it also fails. Contrivances drive the story forward...

I'm not sure that derogatory conveys my statements very well. Although it can be directed toward an object or an abstraction (such as a TV show), it's really a word better suited to describing an attack on a person. Maybe disparaging, or disdainful would suit better. And while I've questioned...

I haven't seen Halo, but I agree that Foundation suffers from some of the same issues with regard to its overall conceits - fixating on developing character arcs for "hero" types, as though this were the only way to make a compelling show. But, for me, it's just lazy writing - and a lack of...

I guess it's lucky that I'm not a critic, but just some random bloke on the internet with an opinion. You should feel comfortable using whatever adjectives you like; it won't inform whether I take you seriously or not. But suggesting that in order to have a valid opinion about an art form, one...

It's unfortunate that you feel the need to construe my comments as hyperbolic; they really aren't. They're quite heartfelt and authentic.

Something which Amazon has executed very effectively is to deflect any legitimate criticism of the show under the very convenient aegis of labelling its detractors as racist. The showrunners have branded any critics as "trolls" and have failed to address more substantive issues, i.e.: The poor...

Relevance to whom? The target audience? It would seem entirely relevant - given the amount of negative pushback RoP has received.

I'm not projecting my views - I'm surmising what his might have been, based on what he wrote. And given Christopher's reaction to the movies - and his insight into his father's perspective, and desire to protect his father's legacy - I don't really think this is terribly controversial. I'm not...

I think the crux of the letter - which was written objecting to Zimmerman's proposed movie adaptation of LoTR - is really about the fidelity of any adaptation to the original characters and themes, regardless of media. Given the obvious parallels between the specific issues which Tolkien raises...

Tolkien tells us exactly what he thinks of adaptations which veer from the source material in letter 210: I suspect his gate would have remained firmly kept after the 1981 BBC Radio adaptation.

Bezos hasn't been CEO of Amazon since 2021, and may not have the final word. He's more interested in his rocket rivalry with Mad Elon these days.

You have stated your opinion on this before; restating it does not make me agree with it any more than I did previously. RoP is currently undergoing a catastrophic collapse in its viewership numbers. The question remains as to whether Amazon allows this Bezos vanity project to succumb to market...

In Tolkien's original conceptions of Numenor - before its stories were anchored to the larger legendarium - Numenor was envisaged as an industrial, steampunk-esque society, with battleships, tanks and flying machines. Some literary vestiges of this "tech gap" remain - e.g. we don't know what...

That's intriguing - I'd be interested if you could point me in the right direction. Re: smithing/metalworking as magical process - very much so. Incidentally, there is a very compelling case made by Nissim Amzallag for ancient Yahwism being rooted in a metallurgical tradition: link But I won't...

This seems highly speculative. As far as I’m aware, only Hephaestus is a lame smith: Vulcan is a syncretized form with an earlier Etruscan deity, Velchans, about whom little is known. And Volund isn’t attested until the 6th century (and that’s dubious), and may himself be a syncretic deity...

I thought it was awful. Even worse than Season 1.

Late to the party, but what the heck. I'm a firm believer in OP magic items which hand over lots of strategic power to players and which push the game in unexpected directions. So the amulet of the planes, cubic gate, and mirror of mental prowess all get my vote. Daern's instant fortress, the...

That's fair enough, but beyond mapping obvious Orientalist tropes onto Middle-Earth (Rhun=Hunnic Steppe; Far Harad=Africa or whatever), I'm not sure what that really involves. I mean Arda is definitely "our world" in as much as its calendar, seasons, celestial bodies etc. So if you mean simply...

@Hriston The characters and events of Tolkien's legendarium represent a "mythic prehistory" - complete with a cosmogony - which doesn't map remotely well onto what we know about established prehistory, any more than the Enuma Elish does; nor did it in Tolkien's own time. Certain events are...