I thought I had only five readers, but thus far, nine people have thrown their names into the ring. Will they together form a community of commenters who comment on each other, or will the dynamic (which is at least partially determined by yours truly, an introvert) remain what it currently is, i.e., library-quiet, with no real intercommunication? I'd like for a community to form, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
If the final group ends up being more than nine people, I'm going to have to search hard for other Tolkien-related numbers. Thirteen dwarves, fifteen adventurers (with Gandalf and Bilbo)? What about ten, eleven, and twelve?
And what Tolkienian numbers lie beyond thirteen?
You may have noticed that I will very, very rarely comment on a comment by another denizen of the chasms. But I wonder if there are other things going on besides just introversion.
ReplyDeleteFor one, I don't think blogspot comment threads really lend themselves to intercommunication. If you want intercommunication, you need something more like a message board, which allows for quoting previous posts/comments, tagging people, etc. So, just on the structural/mechanical level, it's not an environment that fosters crosschat.
There is also the fact that posts tend to disappear relatively quickly. I will sometimes post a comment on a post and then never get back to check on it because it is way below the fold or somewhere off the first page by the time I remember it. Again, this is something more associated with blogs than with message boards, especially blogs with a lot of posts. People might see the post as they scroll through and comment on it, maybe even commenting on an already existing comment in the process, but I don't think most of us spend the time scrolling back through the posts just to see if someone has commented on something we said. It's a vicious cycle, really.
Anyway, I have dibs on Khamûl the Easterling. I was going to go with the Witch-king of Angmar, but that seemed a little too obvious.
I had to look up Khamûl the Easterling. According to AI, he's the only explicitly named (i.e., with a personal name, not just a title) Ringwraith.
DeleteExactly. I didn't have too many choices, so I figured I'd snag Khamûl while I had the chance.
Delete(For futher context, he's the Ringwraith who goes to the Shire in search of Bilbo and gets sent off by Farmer Maggot, who is much more of a badass in the books than he is in the films. I never liked what Jackson and company did with him, but I understand why they did it--to make the Black Riders that much more fearsome.)
It's been so long that I can't remember how Farmer Maggot acted in the books at all.
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