nature

I'm re-reading The Hobbit. I hope to make 2026 a year to re-read The Hobbit, LOTR, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales. After too many years away, in some cases. Just finished the chapter on Beorn - "Queer Lodgings" - and it has me thinking about the magic of Beorn, and of the animals he...

This is basically an exercise to try and assign 'Dungeons & Dragons' alignments to evil characters in the legendarium. Morgoth is probably clearly chaotic evil, though may also exhibit lawful evil tendencies (for example he commands armies), while Sauron may be described as Lawful evil. Their...

If Shelob is a spawn of Ungoliant, a being which consumed raw practically the entire world's supply of magical light (whatever that is), why is Shelob's reaction to such light not comparable to Ungoliant's reaction to the Two Trees? That is, she should find it a tasty appetizer for her main...

Originally I'd thought that Old Man Willow was a bizarre form of Huorn. However, I've recently read The Ring Goes South, and how the mountain Caradrhas seemed to laugh at them as it spewed snow at them. While there was a hint that Sauron may have had a hand in some of it (there was that...