[Orual]

You guys are so cool. You make me think.

First, foreshadowing vs. spoilers. As a writer I'm eager to settle this matter and show off at the same time. The Merriam-Webster defines foreshadowing as "to represent, indicate, or typify beforehand, prefigure." It alludes to a future event, instead of explicitely stating what will happen--as in a dream, vision, or "strange feeling" that the hero gets while in the course of his adventure. Spoilers generally aren't intentional, and let you know pretty much exactly what's going to happen. To further these analogies, think of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I can't remember quite what happened, but it's something to the effect that Arthur was told that he wouldn't die until X happened. So no matter what awful scrape he gets himself into, we know that he'll make it because X hasn't happened yet. That's more the effect of a spoiler--we KNOW, for a fact, that Arthur won't die yet.

Anyhow. XPhial, great point. I didn't cry when Sam thought Frodo was dead--felt sorry as heck for Sam, but you know what? I was pretty sure that Tolkien wasn't going to kill off his Ringbearer. The cool thing is that Tolkien was able to get Frodo in and out of all these dreadful situations, more or less intact. (One of my favorite of Tolkien's quotes is: "I have gotten the hero in to such a fix that not even an author will be able to extricate him without effort." Or something to that effect.) Though he did have me pretty good with the part that the Saucepan Man quoted, about Pippin...I had to flip forward to make absolutely positive that Pippin spoke again. I was about to die.

But this thread has only brought back to me the thought that you guys must be a lot smarter or more attentive than me; I didn't notice a single one of these! [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

Namárië,

~*~Orual~*~