[Quiet Man Cometh]

Heh. Book-Aragorn to me seemed a lot bolder and less broody than movie Aragorn, though I did like the character either way.

I kinda with there was more around about Faramir. I liked him in the film and in the book I thought it was interesting how he was compared to Boromir. They brough up the notion of Westernesse and how once and a while someone will be born who is a throwback to the fancy humans and Faramir was one such individual while Boromir pretty much lacked any of the old blood.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Well, for one thing, there's Prince Imrahil and his household who are vassals of Gondor, the Knights of the Silver Swan. They all have elvish blood in their ancestry and it really shows in the book at the siege of Minas Tirith. They outdo themselves again and again.

About Faramir, though, keep in mind, the men of Numenor, from whom their civilization is descended, all had very thick elven blood. This is a bit confusing for someone who hasn't read the Silm. so I'll spell it out.

Okay, Earendil the Mariner is a half-elf and the one who redeems the elvish race in the sight of the Valar. He's a bit of a messiah.

Now, Earendil marries Elwing, daughter of Dior, who is daughter of Beren and Luthien, who has not only human and elven blood, but also a faint trace of Maiar blood in her as well.

Now, they have two children, Elrond and Elros. These children, like all half-elves, are given a choice: to embrace their elvish blood, or their human blood. Elrond chose to live as an elf, and his brother, Elros, chose mankind.

So, Elros became the father of the men of Numenor, meaning that, through this lineage, Faramir and Aragorn both have the blood of Earendial, Elwing, Dior, Luthien, Beren, Tuor, Melian, Thingol, and all the rest still flowing to some degree through their veins.

Unfortunately, the men of Middle-Earth were not so blessed, and when the Numenorians were exiled from their island, they began to interbreed with the locals, diluting this godly bloodline. So, when they say that guys like Aragorn and Faramir are throwbacks to Westernesse, it's actually sort of a recessive gene, if you want to think about it that way.

Sorry that was so long-winded.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Yeah, I got that much. It was brought up in the book though as a point of curiosity because Denethor, who wasn't much for fancy blood either, held obvious favour for Boromir.

And yes, I'm aware of the half-elf thing, and how Elrond is Aragorn's many times great Uncle.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

I think the Denethor/Boromir thing had something to do with Denethor's late wife, but I'm not positive. It's been while since I looked into that story.

Denethor was mentioned to be pretty lordly in his day, as well.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Okay, new topic. A broader one that maybe more people can contribute to:

Favorite battle sequence in Tolkien's work. And why.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

That's a bit of a toughy for me because I'm not all that fond of Tolkein's writing. Off the top of my head though, the battle of Pelanor fields stands out to me (that's the one in front of Minas Tirith, right?). Hoever, it might also be that one because it's the most recent one I've read. It's been a while since I've read the other books. I remember liking the sequence after the battle of Helm's Deep when Fangorn forest is parked outside the door and waiting to beat up on the orcs. It makes me think if there's any other author out there that could pull off a mobile attacking forest.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Well, when Tolkien wrote that, he was channeling Shakespeare, in Macbeth, where Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, only he wanted a real forest to be attacking. :p

Anyway, for me, the War of Wrath in the Silm. is pretty incomparable. The whole image of the entire host of the Ainur coming sweeping out of the West to depose Morgoth once and for all, only to be halted by Ancalagon the Black and his horde of dragons is kind of stunning. Admittedly, Earendil somehow killing this city-sized dragon with a sword is a bit unbelievable, but the image of his fall smashing Thangorodrim to rubble is one of my favorite scenes out of Tolkien. And then Morgoth gets his feet cut off. What's not to love? :p

[Quiet Man Cometh]

heh. Well, we are talking the same author that killed a dragon with an arrow, so a sword isn't too much different.

I'm sure I would have something more to say if I had read more Tolkein styff besides LOTR and Children of Hurin, which I'd say counts as half-a-book as far as authorship goes. Dunno. Not a lot of spectacular fights in there that I recall, just the odd skirmish. Killing Glaurang wasn't all that fancy either. (Not sure if I have his name right). Although, that little bit did explan Bilbo's question when he was talkig to Smaug, in the movie at least if not the book; the bit about dragon's having that soft underbelly, or was Glaurang cursed with that?

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Well, Smaug was like... god, I don't even know, 1/1000th of Ancalagon, size-wise? Think about this: Thangorodrim, Morgoth's fortress, is 35,000 ft. high, carved from a mountain. That's 4.5 times the height of Mt. Everest. Ancalagon LEVELS the place when he's killed. His wingspan is so vast, that when he's flying, he blots out the sun over all of Beleriand. The beast is just ludicrously big.

I can't remember if Glaurung was cursed that way, but I don't think so. He's a different kind of dragon, anyway, the wingless, worm kind. Although he's called the Father of Dragons, Ancalagon is an order of magnitude more powerful than him. Actually, at that point in time, Ancalagon is probably the mightiest being in Arda short of the Valar, and even some of them might not have been able to match him in terms of combat prowess. The only guy in the War of Wrath who might have been able to take him on legitimately (Earendil is a walking Deus ex Machina, carrying several more DeMs), is Eonwe, the Herald of Manwe who led the Host of the Ainur, who, from what I gather, became some sort of tornado of living blades of light when he went into battle and Tolkien outright says that he's the best fighter to ever live.

...wow, am I a Tolkien nerd, or what?

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Okay, another new topic, since I just a savant at killing these with my nerdy lore.

I was thinking earlier... say Peter Jackson had come up with the idea of LotR on his own and made the exact same movies, and then, afterward, to milk the cash cow, came the inevitable novelization.

What kind of books would those movies make? The foundation of an entire tradition? I'm inclined to think not.

Though, maybe they would resonate more with modern audiences since there are scenes of comic relief involving short men with beards acting like bumbling fools...

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Dunno. It's hard to judge for me because of the tiny details that had significance in the larger backstory that is Middle Earth and I'm not sure how those little details would be interpreted otherwise, unless hypothetical Jackson had larger stories in mind from the get go. I know when he was editting the films it was a given that there would be an extended edition on DVD so he cut certain scenes, knowing they would come up later.

We'd have to think back to the start of fantasy literature though, since, assuming that Tolkein wasn't around in the first place, it's likely that contemporary fanasy novels would be different. It would certianly have an effect on today's fantasy literature that might make imaginary new LOTR more significant.

I suppose one would have to decide how much influence writers like Ursual Le Guin, Susan Cooper, Steven Donaldson, Joseph Campbell (not fantasy but I would say important), etc. would have independant of Tolkein to decide where the current state of fantasy writing would then be.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

That's kind of funny, if you think about it. Almost like LotR is some kind of time-anchor for the innovation of the fantasy genre. If you picked it out of the 1930s/40s and dropped it here, it could still redefine the genre, depending on how fantasy would evolve without Tolkien.

As for the movies as books, I was thinking more just a flat translation from film to paper a la the books for the Star Wars movies. And I just think it would be kind of... surreal to read. Hell, if I could mimic Tolkien's style to any degree, I would consider attempting that, just for how hysterically bad it would probably end up being. :p

As to your last point, I don't think Donaldson would have ended up writing fantasy at all without Tolkien, considering the way he stole from Tolkien and then twisted what he stole into a statement against the state of the genre.

The others, I'm not sure. I think a lot of it would still have been written, but you'd miss out on the whole Tolkien copycat movement in the 80s and 90s. DnD would never have come about, likely, so cut all those books out, you can throw Terry Brooks right out the window, probably Tad Williams, too. Robert Jordan and Terry Brooks likely would still put out fantasy, but it would probably be something different, not the sort of epic-scale, multi-volume world-building they ended up doing.

Then, of course, you probably wouldn't have ended up with the current dark-n-gritty movement, either, without those cliche-fests to rebel against (though... maybe. Hard to plot how much influence Tolkien really had). I think GRRM would still have put out ASoIaF, but it might not have even had the fantasy elements. Without DnD, I don't see Erikson, or Bakker, or Abercrombie even developing their worlds.

So, yeah, if it had worked out that way, I can see Jackson's LotR coming into that market sort of the way Jordan's Wheel of Time ended up hitting the real fantasy genre: working with what was there, but doing it on such a huge, intricate scale that it towered over everything else for quite a while.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

We'd still have fantasy in the children's books area though. Lewis was a contemporary of Tolkein's after all and I think it's reasonable to assume that Narnia would still be present without LOTR involved. With things like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the OZ books, there would still be a fair amount of magic realism going around in the younger books, and it would likely be a matter of time before someone started writing such things for adults.

That sort of skirts the idea of outright fantasy those, since each of those books is effectively world hopping through some mystical or imaginary means from the normal world we live in (hence Magic Realism). The myth structures would still be there though, like the Arthurian Legends and the building blocks for what Tolkein did.

Not sure what would happen with TSR and DnD if LOTR had never been written. I think the concept would still be around, but the details might be different. One might look to the third party stuff that deals with other cultures or specific points in time, mythical stories, etc.

We could hit a domino thing here. If no Tolkein means no DnD as we know it, then that means no Dragonlance since the books were first based of a DnD game, or so I've read, and no shared world stuff. That covers about half the fantasy sections that I've looked through. What would the absense of Tolkein/TSR/DnD also mean for things like Blizzard and Bioware games? I think I should pause here before I get too far ahead of myself. The gamer world as we know it will shift inevitably for want of Lord of the Rings!

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Well, I think it just goes to show how much of an impact Tolkien had. Things would be really different if he'd never written LotR.

Maybe people would be more original, then? :p

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Dunno. Are we talking Tolkein never writing LOTR or are we talking no Tolkein at all? He was still a univeristy prof that had some things to say, and may have still kept company with Lewis and what not.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

*furrows brow* You're making this complicated. :p

Okay, fine, Tolkien's still around, but he never gets that initial impulse to write "In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit..."

So, his essays on mythology would probably still have something of an impact, I imagine.