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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3355593" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm all ears.Quite the contrary.  One of the things that Tolkien brings to the fantasy genera is unprecedented internal consistancy.  He spends a great deal of time figuring out exactly how far everything is from everything else, how much time each 'party' covers in a day, where all the peices are, and so forth.  He brings to the battles an officers eye for tactics, to caves a cavers love of caves, to the language a linguist's love of language, to the flora a naturalists love of flora, and so on and so forth.  We can judge whether something is impossible in a fantasy story based on its internal logic.  Tolkien was very aware of that and did his level best to create internal consistancy.  It's not perfect, but its not going to be blown away by something as silly as 'why don't they fly the ring to mordor on the backs of eagles', which is the sort of question that people ask only when they have a casual acquaintance with the story.  The answer to the question is, "Because it would have been a very foolish plan.", and that is that.  No student of Tolkien thinks that would have worked, and Tolkiens stories are filled with 'therefore as it happened they passed through by the only route that was any good', etc.  There is a serious internal reason in the story why the adventure is by and large what gamers would call a 'railroad'.  Tolkien isn't making the point by accident.Those are fighting words.And likely no one would have cared, so we wouldn't be having this discussion.This is a complete red herring.  Yes, the story has flaws, but this isn't one of them. We enjoy his work despite of its minor flaws, but the reason we read his work is not that it is flawed, but rather because it is so very much not flawed.No one said it was.  I only said that according to the internal logic of the story, attacking Mordor on the backs of eagles just wouldn't have worked.  Whether I or he admit that it is flawed does not detract from my point nor does it prove anything to the contrary.</blockquote>

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