You're not saying that the earth would move, are you, alatar? ;)

Umm...It's been a long while since I was repdrunk enough to think that my prose made the earth move.

Anyway, I guess one could read that that way, and the earth is always moving, to be sure, but I only meant that agreement between she and I is so unlikely that it would most likely crash the Earth into the sun.

And as you know, that would leave a big empty space between Mars and Venus...

Thank you for making me even more uncomfortable on this thread ;).

My dear alatar, let me say that, if this discomfort be truly uncomfortable, I am happy to save you from the fate which Tuor in Gondolin has suggested with his quotation from Tolkien about a too comfortable state on the Power to the People thread .

Such is the state of art these days, that discomfort sometimes leads to new vision. Perhaps you might take some time to consider the gendered-ungendered state of things which has been suggested? Because otherwise our dear moderator Estelyn Telcontar will accuse us of vile chatting and Lush will fire off more canons. ;)

Much agreed, and I still await enlightenment in regards to the questions that I posed earlier in the thread. And I am not uncomfortable with the regendering of the LotR; I'm still not what we're all talking about (though, as many will note, that never hindered posting ;)).

My lack of vision is that, try as I might (squinting now), I can only see the world through male eyes. At times I may don female spectacles, yet these are not my eyes. Over the years I've read books that I just didn't get, yet I continued reading them anyway. Is the maleness of LotR that much of an impediment to female readers? My own brother, star quarterback, has yet to set foot out of Bree, and he's only had my books for two years now.

A gender thing? Or maybe he just doesn't get it.

It occurs to me that Legolas and Gimli seem less necessarily male than the other characters in the Fellowship; or am I just wigging out?

Boy, I leave for a few days, and you guys make a number of really interesting posts!

lmp, I think you're right in pointing out that it is Legolas and Gimli in particular that seem the least "gendered" in terms of the Fellowship. At least to me. Perhaps we're both wigging out.

Numenorean provided a number of good points, I'll get back to them later. I was almost crushed to death today in front of Cameron Indoor Stadium, and am recovering from all the Blue Devil "spirit" so I'm afraid that an intelligent post is beyond me at this point.

alatar, you and I probably agree on more things that we realize. I'm sorry if this thread is making you uncomfortable, it was not conceived as a means of making anyone feel bad, but then again, I was three sheets to the wind when I began it.

Esty and Beth thanks for the clever asides! Am going to go ponder them now...

You're not the only one who has thought about that. I always catch myself from thinking about legolas as kind of gender neutral, but when he calls Éowyn "the cold maiden of Rohan" it always emphasises his gender to me and I'm like "Ack! he's a male.".