michael_nielsen

Oh, yes! I can't resist saying: the first 3 minutes of "The Two Towers" are amongst my favourite in all cinema. They brought alive something that Tolkien had just barely hinted at in the books.

Wut One of the reasons (to me) Tolkien is interesting+so good at what he does is precisely that he only gives glimpses in LOTR at the depth he develops in the Silmarillion+elsewhere. . . The movies were acceptable (a compliment). Battle scene at Helm's deep was awesome, though

One of my favourite examples of this is Tolkien's brief use of the phrase "the cats of Queen Beruthiel" in Moria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Ber%C3%BAthiel … His essay on the phenomenon of subcreation has had a large influence on my life:https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/673176819965759489 …

Not just because of the connection to UI design, of course! But rather his essay describes a way of understanding story, and how we understand the world.

This is marvelous. Ofc beyond fiction there's a sinister tinge to it: how immensely flexible our minds are to enter, accept and internalise any story that looks coherent - that seems to provide info on how to lead out lives and what to think - and then exist in it.

One of the things I took from that Tolkien essay is some of the difference between story & myth. It's exaggerated and too blunt, but roughly: a culture has a plethora of stories; myths, by contrast, have cultures.

And much of the detailed difference between story and myth lies in this quality of subcreation. (Reading Tolkien on his beloved Christianity and Catholicism reinforces this point, I believe.)