A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
Hey folks! I am working on finishing up some things this week, so I thought I would post the text of the keynote I gave at the Prancing Pony Podcast Moot earlier this December. I've made some minor edits to conform a bit more to the form of a blog post, but this remains very … Continue reading New Acquisitions: Tolkien and Éowyn Between Two Wars (PPP Moot Keynote)
This week, I want to keep unloading my Tolkien-related thoughts, turning from last week's character study to a look at the way 'magic' and spiritual power work in Tolkien's legendarium and in particular to how contests between fundamentally magical beings in Middle-earth are decided. This is a topic that I think even the best adaptations … Continue reading Collections: How Gandalf Proved Mightiest: Spiritual Power in Tolkien
This week (and probably next) I want to talk a bit more Tolkien, but in a somewhat different vein from normal. Rather than discussing the historicity of Tolkien's world or adaptations of it, I want to take a moment to discuss some of the themes of Tolkien's work, which express themselves in the metaphysical architecture … Continue reading Collections: Why Celebrimbor Fell but Boromir Conquered: the Moral Universe of Tolkien
This is the fourth part of our [five? -ish? I, II, III] part series on the Siege of Eregion in Amazon's Rings of Power. Last week, we took the opportunity presented by Adar's absurd plan to dam a river using catapults to collapse a mountain to discuss the capabilities and functioning principles of historical counterweight … Continue reading Collections: The Siege of Eregion, Part IV: What Siege Equipment?
This is the first part of our [I don't know; a few?] part series looking at the Siege of Eregion sequence from the second season of Amazon's Rings of Power and what we can learn by pointing out its missteps. And I'm not going to bury the lede here: this entire sequence is a mess. … Continue reading Collections: The Siege of Eregion, Part I: What Logistics?
This is the third part of our three part (I, II, III) look at many of the smaller issues of historical realism in Amazon's Rings of Power, following up our mode the major worldbuilding problems the show experienced. Last time we discussed the tactics (or lack thereof) of the Southlanders and Orcs in the major … Continue reading Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part III: That Númenórean Charge
This is the second part of a three part (I, II, III) look at the issue of of historical realism in Amazon's Rings of Power, following on our more substantive discussion of the major worldbuilding problems the show experienced. I had hoped to keep this at two parts (actually, I had hoped this would just … Continue reading Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part II: Falling Towers
This week we're going to return to Amazon's Rings of Power, as promised in the first post there were a plethora of smaller believably and realism issues with in the show that I wanted to discuss but which didn't rise to the storytelling problems of those major issues; this has ended up as a three-part … Continue reading Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part I: Exploding Forges
This week we're going to take a look at the worldbuilding of Amazon Studio's Rings of Power from a historical realism perspective. I think it is no great secret that Rings of Power broadly failed to live up to expectations and left a lot of audiences disappointed. In the aftermath of that disappointment, once one … Continue reading Collections: Why Rings of Power’s Middle Earth Feels Flat
Hey folks! Fireside this week, as we're coming off of the end of what is now my longest post-series, the eight part series on Helm's Deep. It was a blast to write and I don't seem to have worn a hole through my DVDs in the process (though, it will surprise no one, but my … Continue reading Fireside Friday, June 26th, 2020