Talk:Magic

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Revision as of 15:30, 17 December 2015 by Elf-esteem (talk | contribs)

Latest comment: 17 December 2015 by Elf-esteem in topic Cleanup

Cleanup

See also: Forum:Eol & Magic pages

I expanded each section, removed information that I could not support with evidence, and extensively referenced each section. This is not a 'defined' topic; it's ambiguous. I hope it's okay now. I have some concerns about redundancy between the sections, but maybe it's okay? Elf-esteem 19:48, 29 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I am happy with the expansions, but I have left the sources and cleanup tags on the article.
Sources - this is a particularly sketchy and difficult area of Tolkien scholarship so I personally think we need to set a higher bar for references as every statement needs to be watertight. So, for instance, "While Aragorn's healing ability may have been regarded as magical, or a blend of magic with medicine, Aragorn is not a pure 'Man' but a distant descendant of Lúthien's line." - who regards this as magical, or a blend of magic with medicine? Who says that his descent from Lúthien is a determining factor in his medical skill? Any statement that can not be specifically references should be removed. Also, there are reference to The History of Middle-earth that need page references.
Cleanup - there are still some parts of this that read like a personal essay ("Tolkien's views") in particular. I have made a start at tightening up the structure but I agree that it isn't coherent. I think we can be braver in removing pre-existing content. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 13:42, 13 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Your corrections were good and your notes are valid. This page does need more work and other eyes with new viewpoints and clear sources will only make it better. Perhaps my best bet is to let it go and leave it to the hands and minds of others at this point. I do not want to be too attached to it.
However, as to the Tolkien's Views section, what I was summarizing about Aragorn was directly stated in Letter 155. I was trying to avoid just re-writing the whole letter. The ref from the appendix about minstrels was removed, okay, but I thought that was a shame.
My question is: why was the ref to the Beren and Luthien chapter not enough of a source? I was trying to be brief and clearly alluded to what the audience would know if they read the book. If they want to know more about the magic or power in songs, here's the chapter where it happened with Finrod and then with Luthien, and they should read the book. I added page numbers, but Silmarillion page numbers don't match up book to book. I'm not sure how to fix it beyond that. It's directly stated in the published edition of The Silmarillion though. I did not even have to dig through the Lay of Leithian or anything.
Finally, the blockquote broke somehow when I was fixing refs in other sections. I tried to fix it, but I can't find anything wrong with it. --Elf-esteem 21:06, 13 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The argument "they should read the book" would imply that the entire Tolkien Gateway should be redundant for people should read the book. We are providing a resource for people to be able to find the information they are looking for.
You broke the blockquote by either undoing my edit or copying the text from my edit; I introduced the blockquote with a spelling error "blockqoute" and later fixed this. You undid this. I have now fixed it. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 10:56, 17 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Whoops! I honestly do not remember what I did or undid to make that happen. If I ever press(ed) undo on one of your edits, I assure you, it's an accident. (Correction: I think I know what I did wrong. I was going through old edits looking for your notes for source and ref as you added them. I must have edited an older edit by mistake and then saved it. I'll be more careful next time.) Thanks for fixing it, and I was not trying to be snarky with the read the book thing. I would hope that what people see here would also encourage them to read the books. --Elf-esteem 13:51, 17 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]