Ben Domenech

If you go beyond just the basic fiction works, there's a lot of really cool stuff there where Tolkien kind of shows the father he was, and that's really inspiring.

I think for me, the...

The biggest thing that I've learned about Tolkien and sort of the way he was with his children is just the way he involved them in his life.

Obviously, we know The Hobbit was something that he read to his boys as they were very young.

And we get little things like the way that Christopher would help run continuity from one reading session to the next.

Yeah.

You know, he was like the script supervisor running around the set, like, this wasn't here last time.

Yeah.

And I love that.

And Christopher especially, but I think all of his kids, he did involve them in his life.

They were part of his literary life.

And I really love that.

And so I think what I've taken away from that is just trying to keep my kids involved in my passions and my life as much as possible.

I think there's a lot of different ways to be a parent.

But for me, I really like to be very involved with my kids.

And I find that

Helping get them on board with the things that I love is a great way to keep them a part of my life.

And I've been doing that for so long now that, you know, whether it's Tolkien or D&D or my favorite movies or my favorite bands, I've just tried to keep my kids interested in the stuff that I'm interested in.

I try to get them excited about the things I like while they're young because I know when they're teenagers, it's going to be dad stuff and it's not going to be cool anymore.

Oh, yeah.