[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Well, I feel a bit like I'm talking to myself - what was that Gandalf said about speaking to the wisest person present?! But I like this story too much to quit yet...

Whoa, and here I have been waiting for a signal that we are moving to a next part of the story... I have paused at the second encounter with the dragon and waited, assuming we were still waiting for people to discuss about the earlier part.

Okay, I shall catch up onwards and meanwhile just comment on what I wanted to say about the second departure to the dragon's lair...

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Comparisons that remind me of other characters: "Mighty handy this rope has turned out in the end!" Giles' comment reminds me of Sam wishing for rope at the beginning of LotR and being thankful for it later on.

That was literally the first thing I thought about when reading the second part - when Giles is about to go and the parson reminds him of the rope. "Samwise only wished he had such a helpful advisor," I thought.

But that it just another in the line of "strange Tolkien tropes" - I think it might be interesting to list them all when we are done. Swords inscribed with runes, negatively-painted millers, the importance of ropes, wise men who slightly manipulate the main hero into doing something, simple farmers who are very comfortable in their ways but turn very heroic when faced with actual danger.

Oh and speaking of millers and such - somewhere halfway through I realised that my favourite character may very well be the smith. I originally just found it a possibly funny character trait that he took such delight in bad news, but him downright starting to sing when there had been no news about Giles and the royal party for several days, that is just so absurd that it is actually great.

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Some years ago, I realised that there were numerous similarities between the tale of Giles and the movie Shrek. I found the thread in which I shared the insights I found (and lectured on in German), so I won't duplicate them here. Check out Honey, I Forgot to Kill the Dragon

I am not a particular fan of Shrek and it's been ages since I have seen it, but I think when it comes to the tone of the whole story, you hit the nail on the head! And it is not just that these both subvert fairytales - there are many different ways to subvert fairytales, but these subvert them in the same, let's say, style. With very similar "moral points", or how should one say that. Certainly a good and interesting catch!

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Finally, I find Giles's defiance of the king (who comes to reap the fruits he didn't sow) echoed, across time and genres and most likely without any conscious influence, in the end of the manga AKIRA by Katsuhiro Otomo: the apocalypse brought about by a bunch of kids with superhuman powers is over at last, UN forces land in Japan to re-establish peace and order, only for Kaneda (teenage misfit turned into hero), backed by an army of his peers with machine guns and bazookas, to tell them "Get out of our country!" Tolkien being Tolkien, of course, his story ends with a Little Kingdom ruled by a benign monarch rather than the glorious anarchy of the Great Akira Empire, but I suppose that was the best that could be hoped for.

Now that is a kind of comparison I absolutely did not expect, but I'd just say that it is a nice example how far across different genres some themes can echo...

But okay! I shall read onwards and be back with more comments today or tomorrow.