Recent content by MatthewW

This isn't really a question about the text, so much as an observation about the course in general that I'd love to get Corey's response to. For most of Exploring The Lord of the Rings, there has been a strong emphasis on being careful not to "go beyond the text." We did our best to take our...

I don't think so, not necessarily. As an intuitive person myself, I often have moments where I am quite confident about my intuitions, even when I can't exactly articulate why. I've learned that certain kinds of intuitions, even when difficult to articulate, are actually based on sub-conscious...

(Finally caught up after 2+ years of listening, so finally joining in the current discussions! Yay!) I don't think this is just an issue of who has the better knowledge of the Valar. Glorfindel does have more (direct) experience with them, and might even know more about them, but the question...

Yes, by all means, let's have them run away from Ungoliant instead of somehow mastering her. That saves the dreadfulness of her power for us to use later on in the Darkening of Valinor (even Morgoth is a bit afraid of her), instead of watering it down by showing that a couple of the Valar have...

I'm not sure I like the idea of Melkor giving himself away with his reaction. It doesn't seem his style, and it doesn't seem quite dramatic enough to cause a significant breach between Melkor and the Valar. I do like the idea of Arien bearing witness against them. Perhaps we can prepare for...

Just wanted to quick chime in and cast my vote in favor of Nárwë or Nárë. It's simple, memorable, and it sounds like a name for a good guy. So that's my vote, unless we do decide to ditch his pre-fallen name altogether. I think that is an attractive option, as we already have a plethora of...

I think I agree with all of the conclusions above...don't have time to go into great detail right now. But I know the episode is today, so I wanted to get one quick thought out there: I think one nice way to make this work is to have Estel looking at the mural with some depiction of the Music...

One important question, I think, is what the rough story arc will be for Aragorn for this first season. After all, we're planning on coming back to him in future seasons, so we're not telling his whole story in one go! Personally, I would love to see Aragorn's story in the first season be a...

Try silmfilm.mythgard.org. You should be able to access all of the podcasts from there, along with the episode notes in text form.

That's good to hear! I look forward to it.

Hey Silmafilm, just wanted to point you to the podcast episodes where the Tolkien Professor discusses the issues you are raising. If you visit this page, you can listen to the episodes, or just read the excellent episode notes if you so desire. It might help give a bit of context for this...

I like what you've come up with here, Timdalf! It's a good transition from the frame to the story. One thing I was thinking, was that it could be really neat to spend more time on Aragorn's childhood. This is hard if we follow your story exactly, since we have to get all of his childhood and...

Bre, this is brilliant...thanks for the layman's guide to plot structure, it's quite excellently helpful! Just a couple of questions. 1. Where do you think the season breaks should happen? Is each major heading (Flight of the Noldor, Beren and Luthien, etc) intended to be a whole season? Seems...

I think to me this would feel a bit contrived, and might be hard to work naturally into the story. I do think, though, that the frame narrator is an important factor in this. After all, the frame narrator is going to be speaking English, yes? So, presumably he would be translating everything...

Yes, yes, yes! I don't think we want to sound archaic just for the sake of sounding archaic, but I think that if we were to "modernize" everything, we would lose a lot of the beauty of the Silmarillion. Tolkien was a master wordsmith, choosing words that fit the occasion perfectly, both...