Épisodes

  • The magical system of Middle Earth is Bizarre...

    The magical system of Middle Earth is Bizarre...
    Oct 4 2025
    One of the things I hear over and over is how Tolkien is creating a soft magic system. I think in my mind I define that just as an ambiguous magic system…one where you don’t see magic all that often and then one that also doesn’t go into detail about some of the things that are happening. So I don’t know if some of you have any answers to these questions because it feels like Tolkien’s work just stays forever at a soft magic system. I would be very intrigued and curious if he ever went into detail about that? To be honest, it feels to me like he wouldn’t but I’m only a tiny percentage into the work of Tolkien.
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    10 min
  • JRR Tolkien is the best perspective shift writer I've ever read.

    JRR Tolkien is the best perspective shift writer I've ever read.
    Oct 3 2025
    When I was in college, I took a writing class. In that class one of the very first things that they taught was to never, ever, under any circumstances, switch the perspective of your writing. Now, there was a reason for why they forced us into this, because they wanted us to stick to either first person or third person for our writing, and they believed that when you switched perspectives too much is messes with your ability to keep that straight, and it messes with the readers ability to follow what you write. But there was another secondary reason that my teacher gave after the lecture. She said, essentially, the reason I want you to not switch perspectives when you write a story is because it’s really hard to do that in any sort of convincing way to your audience. It’s just flat out hard to do it well. Plenty of authors do it, but we needed to learn the rules before we learned how to break them.
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    11 min
  • This was the moment Pippin became a man...or a hobbit

    This was the moment Pippin became a man...or a hobbit
    Oct 2 2025
    I think you can only really know the measure of a man by how they handle adversity and challenges. In this case, you can only really know the measure of a hobbit by how they handle adversity. None of us like to be in those situations, but how we handle them is the thing that matters the most. I think that’s a huge theme of Tolkien’s writing right now.
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    10 min
  • Why the world needs more men like Éomer

    Why the world needs more men like Éomer
    Oct 1 2025
    What happens when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force? And then both of those things meet Gimli? It’s a question that the philosophers have debated for ages, and it was a question that was settled by JRR Tolkien in the chapter The Riders of Rohan, when Eomer meets Aragorn, and then Gimli steps in after something ticks him off.
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    21 min
  • Peter Jackson left out all the tension that JRR Tolkien built...

    Peter Jackson left out all the tension that JRR Tolkien built...
    Sep 30 2025
    The Riders of Rohan chapter of The Two Towers is one of the most tense chapters of literature that I have read in a long time. I’m a movie fan, so I know Merry and Pippen are alive, but if you were reading this with no knowledge of the movies or the fate or Merry and Pippen I don’t know if I’ve ever read a chapter that plays with your emotions more than this one.
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    17 min
  • This was the moment I fell in love with Aragorn

    This was the moment I fell in love with Aragorn
    Sep 29 2025
    It’s time. I feel like it’s that moment in Lion King when Simba ascends Pride Rock…I am FINALLY going to talk about how in one simple chapter…one of the shortest in the whole series so far…Aragorn became one of my favorite characters.
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    19 min
  • The Beginning of the Two Towers is a MASTERCLASS in how to start a story

    The Beginning of the Two Towers is a MASTERCLASS in how to start a story
    Sep 28 2025
    If you’ve read The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien, you know that this book starts off guns a blazing. It is drastically different from it’s film adaptation in that Boromir dies at the beginning of this book rather than at the end of the Fellowship. And the whole Company is in chaos at the end of the last book rather than the movie has, where there’s chaos, but there’s also closure, and a plan.
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    15 min
  • Why you should read the Fellowship of the Ring

    Why you should read the Fellowship of the Ring
    Sep 27 2025
    Having just finished reading Lord of the Rings for the first time and publishing over 10 hours of video essays on the work, I think I am not a certified expert in this text…I am just kidding, please don’t come after me. But I do think I have something to offer to people who have yet to read this book. And for those of you who have, you just get to sit back and enjoy me dote on this book for a few minutes.
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    17 min