Hipster Magister,

I nominate J.R.R. Tolkien for the Hipster Hall of Fame. The man invented the fantasy genre before it was cool. None of the generations of imitators have come anywhere close to matching him. They almost universally miss the point of Tolkien’s genre — it’s not about creating fantasy worlds, it’s about telling timeless tales of virtue and valor. Tolkien talked about the personality of trees. He thought the internal combustion engine destroyed civilization. He believed in sustainable Shire-like farming. He smoked a pipe. He has to be a first-ballot Hipster Hall of Famer.

— Joaquin, La Mesa

#NERDALERT (in a good way, obvi totes)

Despite the fact that fantasy would actually have had to become cool at some point in the recent past in order for anyone to have been into it before it became so, I daresay you’re on to something here, Legolas — er, Joaquin. What the heck. When you consider the fact that every super sweet Led Zeppelin song is either about dirty hippy sexytimes or hobbits (thankfully never both), you might even be able to make a case for the coolness of opening up The Lord of the Rings.

I’m going to take an excruciatingly close read between your lines and conclude that you believe pipe smoking will be the next big hipster thing, a logical development for the vintage flavor of mustachio’d, tweedy manliness with which hipster gents have seasoned their collective personae of late. I could see it. If only we knew where Tolkien stood on the subject of fixed-gear bicycles and high-IBU beers.

One thing’s for certain, the shadow of the mainstream rose in the east for Tolkien fans, who watched a theretofore more-or-less private obsession blow up overnight in the wake of the Lord of the Rings movies. If that’s not hipster, I don’t know what is.

I’ll send word to the dwarves that they should start carving up a gilded bust for Tolkien’s niche in the Hall of Fame.