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One thing that I notice a lot during the analysis discussions is that there's a lot of attention paid to how a particular thing is done in this particular adaptation — character X is like this, this, and this; his line of dialogue has this effect, his actions here have that effect. What I don't...

Listening to Episode 27 now (I'm catching up!) and really enjoying the discussion of developing a vocabulary for the kind of dispassionate analysis that is being slowly made firm in spite of "did you like it or not?"/"how faithful to the source material is it?" Melkor-like meddling. (My facile...

Listening to Episode 16 right now (the one with John Howe), but Corey has brought it up a number of times: the idea that readers/viewers with a critical mind ought to be able to distance themselves emotionally from the idea of a potentially "bad" adaptation coming along and "ruining" the source...

Sorry to once again only be posting when I have a quibbling and non-substantive complaint instead of something to actually contribute, but... Corey, I am begging you on hands and knees: please stop banging on the table with your hands! When you do that, whether you're emphasizing a point or...

Isn't it "tine" as in the tines of a fork? i.e. not pronounced "teen"

Been really enjoying the poetry analysis this whole time, especially the careful and methodical progression through each little piece of each poem, moving from rhythmic shape to phonetic sounds to rhyme to meaning. However, it seems there's one aspect of all Tolkien's poetry and the discussion...

I've managed to let myself get behind by months, but now that I'm catching up again Gollum-like, I heard that the discussion in the field trip of session 196 (talking about the "scornful" names the Bree-folk gave Aragorn) stumbled across "Stick-at-naught Strider", which I had thought surely had...

Apologies in advance for a technical gripe in lieu of something cerebral. I've been noticing lately that there's a deep bass noise thrumming in the background of the audio stream. It comes and goes; you can hear it going gangbusters at 49:00 in Session 171 if you have speakers or headphones...

“Then it was late in coming,’ said Gandalf, ‘as you will see. I was in an evil plight. And those who know me will agree that I have seldom been in such need, and do not bear such misfortune well. Gandalf the Grey caught like a fly in a spider’s treacherous web! Yet even the most subtle spiders...

We didn't cover this phrasing at all, did we? When I first read the book as a kid, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it meant, since as in American English I'm not familiar with this usage of "game". Even now I'm still not sure—the closest reference I have is that Monty Python...

I think this is meant to be reas as of a similar harshness to Strider's previous insults to Butterbur—which is to say he means it, he's pretty genuinely annoyed, but it's also the sort of "you dumbass" kind of ribbing you'd get between good friends. On this note, despite our having spent a lot...

Something I think got overlooked in examining Frodo's whipsawing attitude of trust vs. skepticism toward Strider over the course of their conversation, and how quickly he shifts into trusting Strider as soon as he starts volunteering info about the Black Riders, is this: Remember that the very...

The discussion of the scene of Strider and the hobbits in their parlor made me realize that there have now been two major story points hinging on eavesdropping: first Sam overhearing Gandalf telling Frodo about the Ring, and now Strider catching wind of Frodo and company talking with Bombadil...

Something I'm surprised Corey didn't talk about, when mentioning the "Only a few words of it are now, as a rule, remembered" line: not only is it a rare (post-chapter-1) moment of hearing from the modern-day narrator / translator, it's also one of the few—perhaps the only one—that explicitly...

I know we're doing this whole death-of-the-author/only-read-the-text-and-not-any-potential-contextualizing-related-stuff thing, but are we ignoring the sequels on purpose? I'm talking about things like Agrajag/the bowl of petunias, and the Man who Rules the Universe from his little shack that...

Listening to Corey try at length to explain "mythic significance" in the context of Magrathea and the garden that may or may not have fairies at the bottom—it seems to me that most of the examples he gave kept feeling circular or tautological. It's significant because it's mythic. There's...