About | Notion

As a youngster, I loved the mystery and magic of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, which pulled me into The Silmarillion. Later, I reveled in how easily the live-action films rekindled my wonder at Tolkien’s world. Fast forward through decades of life and adulthood: the dissociation of adulting in real life tempered my excitement for The Rings of Power, yet the show evoked that long-buried imagination and wonder. It lit something fundamental within me. I realize how silly it sounds, but here we are.

My mind delighted in tinkering with this puzzle of different crafts — music, cinema, storytelling, acting, writing, literature. Inspired by the kindred joy I witnessed among fellow fans, I made a Threads account (@loquendinerdiae) simply to share my joy at rediscovering this core part of my self. For the first time in literal decades, I indulged this silly, joyful pursuit—the first thing I’d done purely for fun, purely for me, in my adult memory.

I spend so much of my life reigning in the natural proclivities of my brain; it feels liberating to fully indulge a hyper focus, to exercise my brain’s capacity for pattern recognition and imagination without restraint, and importantly without judgment. It feels healing to embrace myself in this way, and more so because it connects with this deep childhood experience of Self that existed (in the words of Emily McDowell) before the world got its hands on me.

So I’m writing this for myself, for fun, and for anyone who wishes to engage with the material with joy and enthusiasm. I am no expert on Tolkien. I love making connections between the show and the lore, but I’m rusty and will miss things or get things wrong. I’m writing about my own very specific perspectives on the show, ideas which tickled my brain and inspired me to revisit my love for literary analysis.

Please engage with my work in joy and good faith. I’m not writing this to debate the quality of the show or inconsistencies in the lore. ****I’m writing this for myself, and to share joy.

If you do choose to read this, please interpret all of it through the lens of a youngster for whom this has sparked an important inner journey of re-membering: a literal reintegration of disconnected pieces of myself, long faded in the graying influence of life’s hard realities.

Please set down your criticism, skepticism, and realism. Please bring your unabashed wonder, imagination, creativity, and joy.

To all of the folks who poured their love for the source material into the show, thank you. I cannot begin to fathom the brilliance and creativity it took to create this experience. This fan, for one, is genuinely grateful.

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