this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

None of them could go 400 mph. That’s just silly

And completely in keeping with every other facet of fantasy if you want to be that way. A Baalrog can go 400mph just as easily as Gandalf could teleport. All it takes is the stroke of a pen.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

That's true in a trivial sense: there's no law of nature that enforces verisimilitude in any work of fiction. However, most authors aim for verisimilitude, and the good ones achieve it. I'm not talking about the top speeds of balrogs because I think there's some objective answer, but rather because I think that Tolkein does achieve verisimilitude (at least in some regards) and therefore there is a foundation for discussing the traits of his fictional beings. He easily could have given balrogs rocket skates, but he didn't.