Year in Review: Jokien with Tolkien in 2024
Reviewing the year's most popular and favorite newsletters
Mae govannen!
Here we are: at the end of 2024 and in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve: the week where time doesn’t mean anything, where we’re unsure about what day it actually is, and when every day feels like one of the greatest shots in cinematic history:
As 2024 comes to a close, it’s the perfect time to look back on the milestones, most popular posts, and other favorite posts from Jokien with Tolkien in 2024.
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2024 Milestones and Accomplishments
In 2024, Jokien with Tolkien:
passed 11,000 Subscribers!
Ran our first Middle-earth March Madness tournament
Released several e-books:
Exploring the Lore of Middle-earth (a guide to what to read next of Tolkien’s works)
Wounds that Cannot be Wholly Cured (my essay on loss, grief, and healing in The Return of the King)
Released my first paperback book! Get Lore of the Rings Vol. 1 in e-book or paperback
None of this would have been possible without you who are reading this newsletter. Thank you! Thank you for reading, for your feedback and comments and input, for sharing, and for all your support. I love writing this newsletter and love that there’s folks out there like yourself who love reading it.
So what were the posts that you all loved the most? Here they are:
Nota bene: Substack is warning me that this post is “too long for email.” If it cuts off at some point, just open it in the app or online or click “view entire message” and that should take care of it!
Top 10 Most Popular Jokien with Tolkien Posts of 2024
1. Hail, Théoden King!
The most popular post I sent out this year was a surprise to me. When i wrote about the passing of Bernard Hill, I had no idea the reaction it would get and the amount of love for him that it represents.
Once again, thank you, Bernard Hill. Hail the victorious dead!
2. 🧙♂️🖥️ Gandalf Attempts to Access his Account on Moria.net
A humorous reinterpretation of Gandalf struggling to enter Moria for the digital age.
3. How Tolkien's Concept of 'Eucatastrophe' Connects Easter With All Other Fairy-Stories
In this newsletter I explored the connections between Easter, eucatastrophe, fairy-stories, and The Lord of the Rings (in a similar manner to last week’s newsletter on Christmas).
4. Why Resurrection Matters to Me More than Ever
While the above essay was a reshare of a newsletter from last year, I put my current thoughts and feelings about Easter and resurrection in this newsletter (and managed to work in a comparison of Tolkien’s views with George R.R. Martin’s while doing so):
Why Resurrection Matters To Me More Than Ever
5. Girlfriend Not Reciting Galadriel’s Monologue Like Usual Worries Local Man
This year I experimented with a few shorter, Onion or Borowitz Report style humor pieces. Spoiler alert: they were a hit! And there are more to come in the coming year.
In this one, I imagined a scenario where a special someone not saying the opening monologue of Fellowship along with Cate Blanchett is a red flag for their loved one.
6. Speak ‘Fan’ and Enter
I’d been trying to articulate for a while what my take was on attempts to root out “true” or “pure” fans from “fake” or “not real” fans in the Tolkien fandom or in others (e.g. Star Wars or Comic Book Movies), but finally nailed it down in this essay on why we should be able to debate the relative merits of adaptations of our favorite stories without pronouncing someone a real or not real fan because they do or don’t like them.
7. May the Fourth Be With You
Speaking of Star Wars, I had some fun with a Star Wars/Middle-earth crossover post this year on May 4th.
8. Tolkien and Lewis Squabble Over Spoilers
Tolkien’s usual frame for his tales as retellings of historical events means he has a penchant for spoiling some rather significant events in the titles or narration, so I imagined that he and C.S. Lewis had an animated chat about that.
9. Reevaluating “The Hobbit” Trilogy 10 Years Later
I finally saw The Battle of the Five Armies and this just so happened to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of its release, so I wrote about revisiting the whole trilogy and whether I think it deserves a reevaluation.
10. Forgive Us Our Trespasses: How Frodo’s Pity Draws from Jesus’ Most Famous Prayer
Did you know that the Lord’s Prayer influences one of the climactic sequences of The Return of the King? In this post I unpacked how Tolkien explained the connection between the two.
Other Favorite Posts of 2024
While they didn’t make the top ten posts, the following were nevertheless some of my favorite posts that I sent out this year:
💗 Lewis' Four Loves in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings — In February, I analyzed The Lord of the Rings through the lens of C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves
The Cost of Saving the Shire — I re-read The Fellowship of the Ring over the past few months and wrote this newsletter after noticing a resonance between something Frodo says before he leaves and something he says after he returns to the Shire
Why Tolkien Changed The Story of How Bilbo Found the One Ring —This was fascinating to me! Did you know that Tolkien not only made some major revisions to The Hobbit after he wrote The Lord of the Rings but also worked it into the story itself?
Top Guest Posts of 2024
This year we had some wonderful guest posts and I wanted to wrap up this post by highlighting a few of them here (though be sure to check out all the Guest Posts here):
- ’s meticulous analyses of Sauron in The Rings of Power were both widely read: How Sauron Died and Lost His True Form on Rings of Power and How 'Rings of Power' S2 Retcons Sauron's Past and Future
Landen Swain wrote about Boromir’s “They have a cave troll” line in Fellowship and why it works instead of coming across as “cringe”
- shared the inspiring reasons why she lets her young kids watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy
- imagined an unlikely partnership opening a new potato shop in the Shire to hilarious results
- shared how understanding how Tolkien’s world building can help us see our own better
Call for submissions for 2025!
As this previous section makes clear, I like to occasionally feature guest posts here on Jokien with Tolkien and I’d love to continue that trend in the coming year!
If you have a Tolkien-specific idea for an article for Jokien with Tolkien, I’d love to hear it. It can be serious or humorous (or somewhere in-between).
(But if you have an article that focuses on Narnia, Star Wars, Earthsea, Arakkis, or any number of other closely related sci-fi/fantasy universes that you’d like to pitch as a “Through the Wardrobe” guest post, I’m open to that as well!)
If you’re interested, please review the submission guidelines and then follow the instructions to submit your pitch/draft.
That’s all for this week’s Jokien with Tolkien newsletter and for 2024 too!
Namárië: farewell, friends. Go towards goodness! Happy New Year!
📚 You can read more of my writing by reading my books! My latest is a collection of essays on The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and more of Tolkien’s works (and their adaptations). You can find it and more of my books on Amazon or Gumroad
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