Asking the Wrong Questions

Tom Bombadil by Dan Wolff 'Good morning, merry friends!' cried Tom, opening the eastern window wide. A cool air flowed in; it had a rainy smell. 'Sun won't show her face much today, I'm thinking. I have been walking wide, leaping on the hill-tops, since the grey dawn began, nosing wind and weather, wet grass underfoot, wet sky above me. I wakened Goldberry singing under window; but nought wakes hobbit-folk in the early morning. In the night little folk wake up in the darkness, and sleep after light has come! Ring a ding dillo! Wake now, my merry friends! Forget the nightly noises! Ring a ding dillo del! derry del, my hearties! If you come soon you'll find breakfast on the table. If you come late you'll get grass and rain-water!' Fucking Tom Bombadil. Look, I try. Every time I reread The Lord of the Rings , I tell myself that I'll give "In the House of Tom Bombadil" a fair shake, and maybe this time I'll find myself appreciating it. Afte...

"Old Man Willow is Tamed" by Ted Nasmith At length they made up their minds to go on again. The path that had brought them to the hill reappeared on the northward side; but they had not followed it far before they became aware that it was bending steadily to the right. Soon it began to descend rapidly and they guessed that it must actually be heading towards the Withywindle valley: not at all the direction they wished to take. After some discussion they decided to leave this misleading path and strike northward; for although they had not been able to see it from the hill-top, the Road must lie that way, and it could not be many miles off. Also northward, and to the left of the path, the land seemed to be drier and more open, climbing up to the slopes where the trees were thinner, and pines and firs replaced the oaks and ashes and other strange and nameless trees of the denser wood. There's a gag that appears several times in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels: a chara...

For those of us who follow pop culture, January 2026 marked a significant anniversary. It was five years ago last month that Disney and Marvel premiered, with great fanfare and a tremendous marketing push, their inaugural streaming collaboration, WandaVision . A glossy puzzle box of a show, WandaVision enthralled audiences and reviewers alike, inspiring fan theories, thinkpieces, and memes (remember when "what is grief, if not love persevering?" was the most moving line of dialogue ever uttered on screen?). And, because entertainment news in the 2020s is always also business news, WandaVision was a critical component in Disney, Marvel, and the MCU's realignment post- Endgame . It was intended as a proof of concept for a brave new world in which every movie studio in Hollywood had their own streaming platform, in which mega-franchises could stretch across movie and television screens, and in which a franchise like the MCU could continue growing endlessly (and also, in wh...