[Sophia the Thunder Mistress]

I found Return of the Shadow fascinating, but I think that the way things evolved into FOTR was ultimately an improvement.

Bingo was much like Frodo, but he seemed simpler and more like the Bilbo of the Hobbit, if he'd survived into the later parts of the story I think the storyline wouldn't have been able to be quite so dark, because Bingo isn't the type that could have handled what Frodo went through. He was the protagonist of another "there and back again" type story that was never written, and Frodo Baggins suits the story much better. Also, I thought his name Bingo Bolger-Baggins was overly alliterative and clumsy to say. [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img] But that's just my aesthetic preferences.

Marmaduke -> Merry was an easy transition, as most of what Marmaduke says and does is similar to what Merry says and does, or at least I didn't find him too much different than the later character.

Odo Took I found dull, and not very interesting. He seemed a bit too clumsy to me.

Frodo Took was like an odd mixture of the later Frodo and Pippin. I really enjoyed this character, because he had the "elf-like" sensitivity of the later Frodo, and the lighthearted youthfulness of Pippin. I thought he was helpful for reading the character of Pippin later as well, because he was more mature, and gives Pip a little more serious cast. Makes you realize the potential in such a character. Of all the original characters, I was least glad to see Frodo Took go.

The transformation that I find most interesting though, is the transformation of the mystery hobbit (who wore shoes! [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] ), Trotter, into the character of Strider who later would be Aragorn. This amazed me, because it seems so out of place to have a hobbit speaking Aragorn's lines nearly word for word.

This is disjointed and rough, I apologize, I'm at work.

Sophia

[ July 02, 2003: Message edited by: Sophia the Thunder Mistress ]