Thank you, Anerea! I’m glad you enjoyed the boys’ argument, meant to encapsulate the issue of using the power of the Ring to protect their lands and people from Sauron’s evil vs all the frightening unintended consequences that its use would have, linked of course to similar considerations made by Pande’s paper about lunatic physicists and abnegation. In the course of writing this, I realized how much Tolkien’s image of Sauron’s threatening cloud stretching out its impotent hand towards Gondor actually bore a frightening resemblance to an exploding atomic bomb. I know Tolkien said the Ring was not an allegory about the bomb and indeed in many ways the analogy doesn’t fit, but one wonders how intentional that image may have been on Tolkien’s part, even if subconsciously. RotK was written after the bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945 and the UK first tested their own bomb in 1952 before LotR’s publication. His comments about abnegation of the use of atomic power in letter 185 are worth reading. We could only wish that in our world, as in LoTR, that specter was now gone forever.  Thank you so much for all your work on the Mereth Aderthad. The zine design is gorgeous and I can’t wait to get my copy! 

Glad you liked the characters, and especially their teacher, Meril.  Thank you for reading and commenting!