Did not know where to Ask: Other Tolkien Forums

[Marwhini]

I was just wondering:

I have only run across a few other forums, and they seem to have various "issues."

There is The One Ring Forums.

The members there seem to worship those horrific movies.

And I have found a site called "Telperion and Laurelin."

Yet it seems to be largely inactive, and I get the feeling that the members have another bias that tends to occlude any study of Tolkien's works in an objective fashion (I've been lost in a few threads where suddenly they began discussing Hebrew for some reason).

Are there any other Tolkien Forums/Sites that are worth the time?

MB

[Zigûr]

I think the "The Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza" is okay; just make sure to submit any topics about the books to the "Basic Lore" forum first because the "Advanced Lore" section is by moderator approval only. I haven't made this mistake myself, but I've seen others do it, and oh how embarrassing for them.

http://lotrplaza.com/forum.php

That being said, the only time I ever submitted anything especially rigorous there (an essay outlining what I think the deal was with Sauron's attitude to Morgoth after the First Age, as it happens), no one really cared and only one person replied to it. So I think the amount of discussion there might be a bit inconsistent.

They have no problem with people criticising the films either, as far as I can tell.

[Marwhini]

Thanks for the suggestion.

Finding Tolkien forums that don't worship the films as Gospel is difficult.

MB

[Faramir Jones]

May I suggest the Minas Tirith Forums as a possibility?

www.minastirith.com

I am a member, and can state categorically that it does not 'worship the films as Gospel'.

[Marwhini]

Thanks for the link to the MT forums.

The content looks pretty good, but their registration is currently closed due to what looks like an attempted Bot Attack.

MB

[IxnaY AintsaY]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

That being said, the only time I ever submitted anything especially rigorous there (an essay outlining what I think the deal was with Sauron's attitude to Morgoth after the First Age, as it happens) . . .

/offtopic... This one? http://lotrplaza.com/showthread.php?...es-and-Methods Did you post a discussion here as well in any form?

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by IxnaY AintsaY

/offtopic... This one? http://lotrplaza.com/showthread.php?...es-and-Methods Did you post a discussion here as well in any form?

Yes it was actually. Funnily enough, I used that quote from Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau, that appears in the one reply, in my PhD thesis.

I think I didn't post the discussion here because I thought people here might be sick of hearing me go on about Sauron.

[Mithadan]

Several years ago, Tolkien message boards were as thick on the ground as leaves in autumn. I have a favorites folder of boards and other sites that I now have to clean up periodically as they go off line.

When I first joined here a long time ago, I was considering several different message boards and chose this one because it was the most serious and least deluged in chatter about the movies. While there are still a very few decent options, my allegiance remains here.

[Marwhini]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

Several years ago, Tolkien message boards were as thick on the ground as leaves in autumn. I have a favorites folder of boards and other sites that I now have to clean up periodically as they go off line.

When I first joined here a long time ago, I was considering several different message boards and chose this one because it was the most serious and least deluged in chatter about the movies. While there are still a very few decent options, my allegiance remains here.

In going through the others....

I have found two basic types:

1) Boards/Forums where the movies are the Gospel, and the books are a tiresome bore.

2) Boards/Forums where most of the participants are Evangelical Christians who have attempted to co-opt Tolkien to some end that I cannot even fathom (and usually try to support various Social-Conservative Political Causes). That makes for some very twisted analysis of Tolkien's works.

Corey Olsen's (THE Tolkien Professor) discussions that I have been in often tended to have the latter flavor. I have mixed feelings about his works, as he has this tendency to overly use the movies in too many discussions. He clearly has a deep knowledge of Tolkien's works, but I cannot escape feeling that his religious biases tend to dominate.


This forum seems to have a pretty decent mix of people who have a very deep knowledge of Tolkien's work, and do not seem to have overt biases working in their examinations of his works.

I might be the closest to having one such bias, but that bias is toward establishing an objective coherence to Tolkien's works - which I should beware of, having studied Mythology with Joseph Campbell when I was younger, who would warn me against seeking objectivity in Myth. Although with Tolkien's Middle-earth, it is not just Mythology, but a Mythological History; which complicates things, and is a "Thing" that Campbell's work does not really cover, exactly.

Although his work covering Christianity does apply, it is problematic, because of what the application of Historical Literacy did to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in relation to the Power of the Myths themselves.

But overall... I appreciate that people seem to be willing to textually support their claims and arguments.

As primarily being an academic (currently convalescing, due to a disability to became aggravated just as I was about to start looking at Graduate Schools - although this will be my second time through a University, the first being in the 1980s) I tend to value that kind of thing.

But I do know what you mean about Tolkien forums proliferating over the last decade.

The films really brought about a lot of excitement for Tolkien's works. But it seems to have been transitory for most. Which is, to me, very sad.


MB

[IxnaY AintsaY]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Yes it was actually. Funnily enough, I used that quote from Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau, that appears in the one reply, in my PhD thesis.

I think I didn't post the discussion here because I thought people here might be sick of hearing me go on about Sauron.

I'm not sure I'll post anything coherent in one, but I will lurk the heck out of any Zigûr-going-on-about-Sauron threads.