I want to know more about the Ontological Shift. What does the animaling mean? What are the parameters of that? But she never really got into it.

I know!! I was really hoping for more worldbuilding since the idea was so interesting.

I want to know more about the Ontological Shift. What does the animaling mean? What are the parameters of that? But she never really got into it

yes. This.

I hope we'll see more from her on the subject.

Wait- do they become animals or have to carry around the animal?

The latter.

There's a sense in one particular scene - at the hospital, with her brother, that it's not the act, it's the guilt that triggers it . That could actually be a very deft handling of a shift. Er, as long as I'm reading the author's intent correctly and not the just rejiggerings of one of her readers.

Marks got "The Fighting Uruk-Hai" chapter up, and he immediately focused on the description of the Orks as "Mongol-type." He went into this speech about the horrible racism and how he's just going to have to forgive Tolkien for basing his evil race on Asians. For a change, most of the comments seem to be challenging his interpretation instead of just agreeing with it. I suspect a different pool of commenters than those who are following Mark Watches.

Well, except I do think Tolkien does indulge in a lot of race essentialism in LotR. Anybody invested in the Aryan ideal would recognize it in all that talk about the True Race of Men/Númenórean stuff. And it's not just the Orcs he describes in terms of the savage other. All of those oliphaunt riders are from the East: swarthy, exotic etc.

Yeah, I've yet to see convincing challenges to the point, and it's not like Peter Jackson fought the good fight.

But I don't have the energy to read Mark to see that particular conversation right now.

Anybody invested in the Aryan ideal would recognize it

Which isn't Tolkien, considering the letter he wrote to a German publisher who wanted to know Tolkien's racial antecedents before translating The Hobbit.

Marks got "The Fighting Uruk-Hai" chapter up, and he immediately focused on the description of the Orks as "Mongol-type." He went into this speech about the horrible racism and how he's just going to have to forgive Tolkien for basing his evil race on Asians.

I just read that chapter. To clarify: he asserts that the racism applies not just to the physical description of the Orcs, but also to their language, personal behavior, and inability to get along--basically he's claiming that Tolkien actually believed Asian people were like that, and applied that to the Orcs.

Which, to me, is a bit of a stretch. Tolkien wasn't particularly unusual in his beliefs for the time, and the racism in LotR seems to me to be fairly subtextual, mostly having to do with the way the bad guys all have darker complexions, whether they're human or not.

The comments I saw challenging him on that seemed to be pretty fair. Mark means well, but I wish he would dial back on the extended digressions.

Anyway, if you want a better chapter-by-chapter discussion of LotR, find Kate Nepveu's index on Tor.com. She doesn't try to avoid spoilers, and as a result you get a really thoughtful discussion of theme and narrative structure.