So, I have Janice to thank for the following philosophical, not philological, take on Tolkien:
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/318?fbclid=IwAR0kzyqmLWuBXxwtVnO7fvDvn1jY6PTVGVcDP8zHy3Mkx3I-p80QKvJ4XRc
A little poking about reveals that they also do D&D. In fact, it's something of a running theme of theirs, with eight iterations so far:
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/23 [Episode I]
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/28 [Episode II]
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/32 [Episode III]
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/45 [Episode IV]
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/77 [Episode V]
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/127 [Episode VI]
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/195 [Episode VII]
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/305 [Episode VIII]
Silly, but fun.
--JDR
Do you think, after the Witch-king had been destroyed, that anyone ever asked Glorfindel whether he was being deliberately ambiguous when he had prophesied a thousand years earlier?
ReplyDeleteDear N.E.B.
ReplyDeleteGood point, but I'm not sure it wd do any good. They say that elves answer both yes and no. Maybe they're like philosophers that way.
I suspect it wd be like Gandalf's account in THE QUEST OF EREBOR about things suddenly being put in his mind which, once he'd said them, took on an inevitableness.
--John R.
P.S.: note that Tolkien's Semitic dwarves trope works its way into the Philosophers Play D&D in the backstory paragraph on Martin Heidegger.