Fantasy, RPGs, Middle Earth and Boring Life

As is my way, I started at the end, and began to appreciate the beginning by falling in love with the end of the story.

I have enjoyed many aspects of a both peaceful and frightening world in a little story playing itself out in a land, or rather group of lands, namely Cyrodill, Morrowind, and the Isles...all of Tamriel. At first this seems a fantasy story with a fantasy theme line unrelated to another so easy to set down and not consider. Sheer entertainment.

Until tonight. They played all the movies, Lord of the Rings; Fellowship of The Ring, the Two Towers, and Return of the King. All day on TV, basically. As I watched these movies, all based on a place called "Middle Earth" and the book The Hobbit and the Trilogy of the Lord of the Rings, and I saw many similarities. Perhaps some inspiration in archetecture and naming conventions. A flavor that fits the story (the movie adaptation of the story).

Now I hope to be forgiven this grave faux pas, as I could not find the original, The Hobbit interesting when I attempted reading it as a teenager, but simply never finished it. I now realize how much more it would explain my experiences than I had ever believed, but I had already passed it on. So no, I have not read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (yet). Or The Hobbit (yet). I was more interested in outer space not inner space. Fantasy just didn't work for me then. Somehow, I have changed. Or the world has. I will now set to reading the novels.

I realize the theme is very similar, and I am now want to read these fine books by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Oddly enough, I do have another book about all this that I am reading; Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth

I found the movies quite inspiring and wonderfully timed with my trip into Obvlivion; even the oblivion parts made sense in middle earth.

Tolkien was greatly affected, apparently, by his experience in "no man's land', the space between the German and the Allied trenches during World War I. Although he didn't write about it directly, the concepts, the scarring, the things he saw, germinated into real wars. The use of machinery, the unholyness and filthyiness and ugliness of it all...and how the human spirit (or rather the Elven, Dwarven, and Hobbit spirit also) can withstand and reach great points of heroism to triumph over insurmountable evil...for Tolkien, it must have been like another day at the front.

How rich and how fertile the imaginary landscape which he has painted, with the colors of the horrors he witnessed, returning to the good that was left, and the hope that existed, and the love that withstood. Always great losses and pain along the way, but such is the payment for truly risking to love thoroughly, so it is not to be avoided.

If there were any way, left in our imaginations, to return the world to some sort of peace that it new before the age of man, or between ages, or some mythic time; should we not bring it out and share the hope for that in some way? All is not lost, at least all need not be. But we will risk all to perhaps save everything worth saving.

Maybe that's why our games get us so excited, as a society, we have learned not to risk, we are told to play it safe, to stockpile (but stockpile what which will be valuable?) and dig our holes and hide, while the experts figure it all out for us and make things nice and safe. We will be safe when everyone feels like they have to carry a part of the risk, when 14 year old boys reach with a sword next to their fathers, against hopeless odds. We have risked nothing like that lately, nor learned how costly such risks are, to those who survive and those who don't; everyone loses much. But our generation isn't too in the habit of losing much of anything.

So we plug in whichever game gives us what our lives cannot; a sense that the rewards feel justified after taking a risk, but that getting something for less (at least risk wise) does not satisfy in the same way. We are made to need to battle and protect, to love and to lose, to win and to die, but the modern world has sanitized it so much that we go looking for the old experiences we know we ought to have.

Feel free to tell me if you think I'm stuck in middle earth. But I think many of us yearn for better stories but live in a world that stifles the living of and or telling of such stories, without great personal risk. And our western society is as risk-averse as anything I've ever seen.

I think I'll head out this spring and risk whatever to get out and see what's left of the old frontier. If you have a piece to share, by all means...let me know.

It's just one woman's opinion, of course.