Tolkien’s Faerian Drama is the Tabletop RPG

“Tabletop RPGs are our modern day Iliad. It’s communal storytelling at its finest[.]” -Marisha Ray

“Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter.” -J.R.R. Tolkien

In my recent exploration of that fascinating narrative form, the tabletop role-playing game, I have found myself wondering what J.R.R. Tolkien would think of the phenomenon. Dungeons and Dragons, the best-known RPG system, draws heavily on Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth; the first edition of D&D even allowed player characters to play as a “hobbit” before they changed the race name to “halfling” for legal reasons. I can’t help but wonder: what would Tolkien think of this unique way to tell stories, that voice actor and D&D player Marisha Ray calls “our modern day Iliad”?

“The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends”: The Scapegoat Mechanism in “Oklahoma!”

The other night I went to see my friend in a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, the popular 1943 boot-stomping, skirt-swirling barnyard dance of a musical. It’s a high-energy show with a happy ending, but I did not come away with my heart warmed. In fact, I found myself thinking less about Curly and Laurey’s beautiful morning, and more about the dark subtexts of the musical.

So buckle your seatbelts, folks. We’re in for a wild ride of over-analyzing one of the oldest modern musicals, with a little help from French philosopher Rene Girard!

I Saw “As You Like It” in a Hay Barn

It’s no secret around here that I love As You Like It. It’s mentioned on my home page and about page. I talked about it when I did the “If Books Were Movies” tag, and Orlando ranks at the top of my list of Shakespearean boyfriends.

7 Shakespearean Boyfriends, Definitively Ranked

If you’ve ever read a Shakespeare play, you know that his comedies are basically Elizabethan chick flicks with puns and comments on the human condition. Here’s your definitive guide to the boyfriends in the best rom-coms of all time. WARNING: contains spoilers (for 400-year-old plays, but still).