![\"eclipse\"](\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/eclipse.jpg\" "\\"eclipse\\"")
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Of those who like The Lord of the Rings<\/a> trilogy, only some can stomach The Silmarillion<\/a>.\u00a0 Tolkien was able to keep people rapt with attention in the former, but the latter is for die hards who wanted to understand how it all fit together.\u00a0 I fall into the latter camp, but even so it took me several tries to get through.\u00a0 Here now is an imaginary interview with the head honcho of that book, Eru Illuvatar, copied without permission from Gods Gossip, the god trade rag.<\/p>\n GG: <\/em>So Eru, what makes you different from other gods?<\/p>\n E: Well, to start with, I give away the ending in the beginning.\u00a0 Most gods try to keep all their cards to themselves, revealing only obliquely their designs.\u00a0 Not me.\u00a0 You get through the first chapter and you know where we end up.\u00a0 I’m a little cagey about where things end up, of course.<\/p>\n GG: <\/em>For example?<\/p>\n E<\/em>: I all but told that schnook Melkor what’s going to happen.\u00a0 He had a choice.\u00a0 They all had choices. He could have not gone into the world.\u00a0 Others didn’t.\u00a0 He had the crap kicked out of him.\u00a0 Twice!\u00a0 I guess I gave him mush for brains.<\/p>\n GG: <\/em>Your colleagues approach creation differently.\u00a0 Are you a moral god?<\/p>\n E<\/em>: I like to think so.\u00a0 But I really don’t need to be in the bedroom of every elf, man, or (so help myself) dwarves.\u00a0 And really to me it has never been about who kills who.\u00a0 If it were, the theme would have been sedate, and I probably would have fallen asleep creating the world, and that wouldn’t have been good.\u00a0 And all this praying.\u00a0 I mean really.\u00a0 Does anyone think I really am not paying attention?\u00a0 No sycophants for me in my world.\u00a0 Except for Manw\u00eb.<\/p>\n GG: <\/em>You say you don’t care who kills who.\u00a0 But then what was your goal?<\/p>\n E<\/em>: I like balance.\u00a0 Perhaps it’s not balance between good or evil as my unofficial biographer had put it, but just about power.\u00a0 Melkor set himself up to topple everyone else, and then his successor tried the same thing.\u00a0 In the end it was a close call in both cases.\u00a0 I know it looks like I couldn’t<\/p>\n GG<\/em>: How successful would you rate yourself on your ability to achieve balance?<\/p>\n E<\/em>: Quite successful.\u00a0 I mean it took two midgets and a lunatic to tip the scales.<\/p>\n GG<\/em>: People always wonder about wizards.\u00a0 Can you say a bit more about them?<\/p>\n E<\/em>: Wizard this and that.\u00a0 The biggest mistake a god can make is going the wizard route.\u00a0 It’s really hard to achieve balance if you have a few people who have more weight than the others.\u00a0 I mean, look at Harry Potter.\u00a0 Why is he so great as opposed to others?\u00a0 It really does gnaw at me.<\/p>\n GG<\/em>: I’m sorry – I meant your <\/em>wizards.<\/p>\n E:<\/em> Emm.\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 Well, I really didn’t want them to play a big role in my world.\u00a0 Really they were meant to be more of an information conduit, so that elves and men took the hint that there might yet be a problem.\u00a0 I only gave them a little something extra to get peoples’ attention, but then my mind wandered in song.\u00a0 As you’ve no doubt noticed, I gave free will to everyone, so far as they could tell.\u00a0 Heh.<\/p>\n GG<\/em>: Got a favorite god you look up to?<\/p>\n E<\/em>: Me.\u00a0 Who else?<\/p>\n GG<\/em>: Right.\u00a0 Just joking.\u00a0 Thanks for taking the time with us today.<\/p>\n E<\/em>: I take the time every day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of those who like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, only some can stomach The Silmarillion.\u00a0 Tolkien was able to keep people rapt with attention in the former, but the latter is for die hards who wanted to understand how it all fit together.\u00a0 I fall into the latter camp, but even so it took … Continue reading “Conversation with a god”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,15],"tags":[115,111,113,112,114],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-stupid-stuff","tag-eru","tag-fiction","tag-lotr","tag-silly","tag-silmarillion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}