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Tolkien

gfish: (Default)
[personal profile] gfish
Thursday, March 25th, 2004 01:09 pm
I've had a theory about Tolkien and geeks brewing for some time. I think it all comes down to names. Every proper noun in Tolkien all has at least two different names, sometimes three or four. This is commonly sited as a problem for people new to the universe. My theory is that geeks are naturally more inclined to take this in stride, because most of us have several aliases ourselves. I'm down to only two these days, but in high school I was regularly called by four completely different names. Five if you count the LARP persona. Strider, Aragorn, Elessar and Estel are all the same person? Sure, okay. No problem.
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[identity profile] gement.livejournal.com
Thursday, March 25th, 2004 05:49 pm (UTC)
I've been thinking about this on and off since the movies started coming out; catnip's an excellent summary. Specifically, it's catnip to the developing geek mind. Input. Need input. Need things to put together in as many combinations and complex relationships as possible.

I was much better at that in fourth grade, and had a lot more deadly patience for it, than I do now. I probably couldn't make myself get through Tolkein for the first time at this point in my life. Fourth grade was long before I started my copious online alias collection. There may be a correlation, however. It may just go the other direction. Would geeks be as comfortable with eight nuanced aliases if Tolkein hadn't modeled the behavior for us?

Birth name/Mimble/Gement/Mana/ferretgirl/Pip/Robin/RPG names ad nauseum

[identity profile] shadowblue.livejournal.com
Friday, March 26th, 2004 03:48 pm (UTC)
That sounds pretty much dead-on, at least to me. Things to put into combinations and relationships. Little things that fit together, and big things that fit together, and all sorts of crazy complexity.

Unfortunately I think I have less patience for that sort of thing, now, too. But I'm probably faster at it -- it just isn't a precisely inverse relationship, so the overall amount of Stuff has gone down.

Maybe I should work on that.

Actually, I think now that I learn much more towards 'real life' complexities. Global politics and crap like that. I should be a spy.
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