AmperZand wrote:At the risk of being branded king of the pedants, both Alatar and Pallando were blue wizards who were good (at least initially). Also, Gandalf the Grey's hat, despite the cognomen, was blue. Moreover, the shade of sand blue used by TLC is close to being a shade of grey which, as we known, is the colouration of a good wizard in LotR.
Yes, yes... Morinehtar and Rómestámo. Trust me, I am well acquainted with the
Ithyrn Luin.
My point about the Good Wizard was not that he was dressed in blue, but with the idea of his star-spangled hat in mind. To my way of thinking, this is very un-Tolkienesque, and bears a lot more resemblance to Merlin of the Disney's
Sword in the Stone, that is to say, more of a generic children's wizard than one of Tolkien's Istari.
So your point bears up, insofar as we are talking past each other.
Heir of Black Falcon wrote:It is in Silmarillion. There are plenty of mentions of vampires and werewoves in it.
I think it might be a bit of an exaggeration to say "plenty" of references, but yes, in the
Silmarillion there are definitely mention of Werewolves (Tol-in-Gaurhoth, Sauron's fortress, = Island of Werewolves), and Thuringwethil it is merely said:
"
She was the messenger of Sauron, and was wont to fly in vampire's form to Angband; and her great fingered wings were barbed at each joint's end with an iron claw."
Now, "vampire's form" clearly means (from the text and index note) "bat's form", so one could contest whether or not there are vampires, as we generally conceive of them, in Middle-earth, or just big bats... and Thuringwethil is merely said to take the form (implying she has a choice) and that does not itself necessitate that the form she is taking has instantiation elsewhere... though it can definitely indicate it.
In any case, I never denied the existence of vampires in Middle-earth, so who am I to be arguing against them? If anything, there Middle-earthian existence would prove further the distance between Tolkien and Castle 2007/8. One will note that the latter has no vampires.
As to the charges regarding undead, I will modify my wording for the sake of clarity, to emphasize that I mean reanimated skeletons in the sense used in Castle 2007/8, just in case that wasn't clear, and add...
1.) Nazgûl definitely aren't undead, since they never died, as already pointed out. Furthermore, they are most clearly not reanimated skeletons, since they are invisible, fully-bodied.
2.) The Army of the Dead that Aragorn summons is, again, not animated corpses. And, in fact, they are quite the opposite of Undead (as the name, Dead, signifies). Instead of being mindless, or nearly so, zombie corpses, the revivified
physical element of a dead person, the Army of the Dead is pure spirit, the lingering
incorporeal element of the dead. Quite different entirely.
3.) "For living or dark undead, I will smite you": clearly shows I should have clarified regarding skeleton revivification... but in case it's not clear, this obviously refers to the fact that Witch-king (and the Nazgûl in general) are not dead (=un-dead), when this is an anomalous fact (they, humans, should be by this stage).
As for the whole Knights thing... my whole point wasn't so much the name, as I did concede with the Dol Amroth nod, as the Euro-visored image of a classic, "knight in shining armour", which as a general look never appears in Middle-earth.
~Michael A. Joosten - Official CC Tolkienologist and veering-towards-offtopic Moderator~
