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86. Rintrah Messenger of Oronthon in the previous Aeon; a Planetar Exemplar 87. The Court of Ulao Magathei on the Plane of Air. A noble Djinn; erstwhile lover of Mulissu and father of Iua 88. Shupthul Loquai captain who was slain by a paranoid Mostin, along with most of his retinue...

I believe the showrunners can use any material from either The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings - including the appendices. There seem to be one or two exceptions. - for example, they cannot explicitly use the term “Hobbit.“ The available material includes repurposed dialogue. There’s a fair...

This invites a very Greek tragedy response, but … I’ll resist. I was hoping for something a bit darker - Celebrimbor’s flayed body on a pike used as a standard; Entwives and Entings perishing in their burning gardens; altars running black with blood in Armenelos. There’s still time! Maybe not...

A character with sympathetic human behaviours and motivation, who does not act solely in their own interest, is definitionally grey. The shades may differ. Sauron’s remorse at the death of Celebrimbor - projected through the fourth wall, and not immediately toward the orcs as a means of...

I wish that the "Show don't tell" mantra had been extended further. The reason that I brought up the Miltonic Satan, is that I think that it is very hard to distill a character with real, evil gravitas into an - at least semi-relatable - protagonist without diminishing the mythic status. It is...

The dialogue in the movie is pretty hacked up. In the book, Frodo says: Would you commit your promise to that, Sméagol? It will hold you. But it is more treacherous than you are. Suggesting it will try to pervert the spirit of Gollum’s oath when a literal interpretation suits it. Like a wish...

I don’t disagree. And I’m not suggesting that Sauron doesn’t have a personality. But that isn’t the same as him being personalised in the sense that he has a relatable character for the reader. We know quite a lot about Sauron’s character: he is grasping, petty, malicious, vindictive, cruel...

Sigh. Against my better judgment.., If I were to make a movie about the rise of Mussolini, it would not be necessary to portray him as relatable or sympathetic. There are many perspectives available. This choice - to portray Sauron the way they did - was made by the showrunners. It is not in...

I thought we were talking about why it was necessary to portray Sauron as a “relatable villain” in a story about the rise of Sauron. Now you seem to want to talk about him having a personality when he’s the central character - these are rather different premises. I have observed a pattern...

I don’t really think that millions of writers have taken an archetypal embodiment of evil and successfully cast them as the protagonist in a cosmic drama but YMMV. Sure. But this isn’t about just any villain. See “archetypal embodiment of evil,” above. Absolutely agree. And Mr Vickers has...

The audience need not be modern. Milton does exactly this with Satan in Paradise Lost. The idea is hardly new. The cost is that Satan is no longer a mythotype; he becomes a humanised protagonist. But it’s hard to execute well. Milton pulls it off, but his writing skills were rather better...

This seems to be an argument from silence - which has merit - but I still think it’s a stretch to assert that Tolkien viewed his depiction of Eowyn as “frightfully progressive.”

The point I was trying to make - apparently I did not articulate myself clearly - is that the locus of conflict in a mythic fiction is located in the reader; it is not dependent on external conceits of characterization. It’s the same with any mythology. We don’t need to ascribe internal...

Could you maybe give an example? Not where Eomer, Wormtongue, Theoden, Faramir or Aragorn are articulating what might be considered consistent commentary in-universe with regard to the presumed role of women in Middle-Earth. But rather where you feel the author’s voice is explicitly adopting a...