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techmomma · 5 years

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I cannot describe how much I love Elrond the character.

And yes, for more reasons than because he’s a hot dad!

Elrond is a dude who, in the movies, takes a backseat to everyone, and in any other story would be front and center. If you know your Tolkien mythos, you know what I mean already. But if you don’t, here’s a primer on everything that happened with Elrond in the background.

Elrond’s daddo and mom were Earendil (whom you may recall from the phial Galadriel gives Frodo, “the light of Earendil, our most precious star”) and Elwing, granddaughter of the most famous couple in all of the LotR mythos (Beren and Luthien). Earendil was the superman of ancient history, saving middle-earth and slaying literally the biggest dragon of all time and managing to convince the gods to come to middle-earth’s aid against Sauron’s boss, Morgoth.

Elrond and his brother Elros (his twin) didn’t get to be raised by these two though. Elrond and his bro were de facto orphaned when a warring tribe of elves attacked their home looking for one of three Very Important MacGuffin Jewels. Their mother did kind of a shitty thing and, rather than staying to protect her boys, chose instead to protect the silmaril (The Jewel) by casting herself into the sea in a suicide bid. Their father was away at sea. Eventually, the Sea God turned Elwing into a bird and she found her way to Earendil and long story short, she lives in the West now, and Earendil sails across the skies forever as a star.

But what happened to Elrond and his bro? Their captors, seeing their mom fling herself into the sea and feeling guilt over what they’d done, took in Elrond and Elros and raised them as their own sons.

Well fine, okay, at least they weren’t raised cruelly, and their captors genuinely seemed to love them (especially Elrond, who gave their captors forgiveness despite what they’d done). Not so bad? Well. See Elrond and his bro are peredhil, because of their lineage. They can choose to be mortal. His bro did, while Elrond chose to be with the elves. His bro became the first king of middle-earth Atlantis. And then died, eventually.

And the thing with middle-earth and Tolkien’s canon is elves and men have different Fates. Not just “elves are immortal and Men are not.” Elves and Man have completely separate afterlives. It’s why marriages between Elves and Men are looked down on. Once your human lover dies, you don’t get to be with them, ever again. Men go off to someplace even the gods don’t know about.

So keep this in mind, it’ll come up later.

Elros chose to be counted with Men, meaning that Elrond will never see him again once he dies. And he did.

So let’s recap so far: Elrond’s dad is guiding one of the Jewels across the sky forever, and will do so till the end of time. His mom is in the West, so he might see her again, but does that matter? He and his brother were raised by their captors after their home was ransacked. And then his brother died and they’ll be forever parted.

Now, his brother, Elros, as mentioned, was the first King of middle-earth atlantis, Numenor. There were many, many kings after that, all essentially Elrond’s nephews and grand-nephews and great-grandnephews. The entire line of Numenor are all distantly related to him. Their corruption and fall due to Sauron’s meddling was the corruption of a very long family line. And then they all pretty much died, when Numenor was sunk under the sea.

At some point, Elrond founds Rivendell. He becomes Lord of Rivendell, honoring his king, the High King of the Noldor, Gil-Galad. When you watch FotR and the initial battle, if you keep your eyes open and don’t blink, that’s this guy.

He and Elrond are very dear friends, so dear that at some point, Gil-galad gifts him one of the Three Rings For The Elven-kings Under The Sky: Vilya.

Besides the Very Important Jewels, this is possibly one of the most important artifacts to the elves. And the King Of the Noldor Tribe of Elves trusted Elrond so much that, rather than keep it for himself, gave the ring to him, a lowly lord.

And then Gil-galad died. Horribly. He was burnt to death by Sauron. This scene was scripted for the LotR movies but was never filmed.

Gil-galad had zero heirs, so Elrond was actually the most likely person who could have made the claim to be king. But out of love for Gil-galad, he did not take the title. (You can make the argument that it wouldn’t have looked good to take the title after Gil-galad, but it’s been about three-thousand years by the time of FotR. He could have made a claim at any point.)

So they defeat Sauron in the Last Alliance. After this, Elrond gets married to Celebrian, daughter of Galadriel. Three kids! Twin boys, and his baby Arwen. Yay! Everything was great.

Except at some point, about five hundred years before FotR, Celebrian was travelling, was attacked by orcs, and tormented so badly that after she got home and Elrond healed her, she was so traumatized that she sailed West in hopes that this could heal her mental wounds. (This is why Frodo, Sam, and bilbo sail across the sea.)

So let’s recap after bro died: his family line was corrupted by Sauron and caused the downfall and sinking of Numenor, his beloved king died, his wife nearly died but might as well have died because she had to sail across the sea to heal the mental trauma.

So now we get closer to the modern age. We get all of the bullshit of the LotR. His daughter, also peredhil (every elf child of Elrond’s line is peredhil). She decides to be mortal to marry and be with Aragorn.

Remember Elrond’s bro-bro? That whole permanently forever separated once they’re dead because they chose to be mortal thing? Yeah. Now it’s Elrond’s daughter. There’s a reason he’s described as giving her away “in great sorrow.” And we don’t even know what his twin sons decided.

And throughout all of this? Elrond chooses to be kind. In the movie there’s that bullshit with hiding Arwen’s future from her but I can’t recall if that actually happens in the books. But throughout the hobbit and beyond, he chooses to be kind, harboring Aragorn after his father was killed and raising him like his own and harboring Aragorn’s mother, taking in dwarves and hobbits and wizards, almost declining pippin and merry for the Fellowship because they were kids by hobbit standards, letting Bilbo stay with them just because he liked it there in Rivendell, choosing to help middle-earth when it gave him so much sorrow. He could have sailed to the West at any time, to be with his mother, to be with his wife, to be with his king, just to leave middle-earth and find some respite after everything. But he chooses not to.

I just. -clenches fist- Love him so much...

#elrond #lotr #I TRIED MY BEST TO EXPLAIN IT FOR FOLKS WHO'VE ONLY SEEN THE MOVIES

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cemeterything · 5 years

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i want to hear more about why you're a thranduil apologist

this got LONG AS HELL so i’m putting it under a cut:

okay so. i am in part going off assumptions i’ve made about certain aspects of canon, but hey, if peter jackson can assume that dwarves are so indestructable they can survive everything from flying through the air in wooden barrels to being torched by dragon fire, i think i’m entitled to just a little bit of creative license of my own.

i’ve said before that a major theme of the hobbit films is that of loss and trauma. by the end of the trilogy, every major character has suffered great loss. tauriel has lost her love, thorin his home, his sanity and finally his life, bilbo his friends, bard the home he grew up in and possibly friends he had there, legolas his satisfaction with the life he currently leads (he says he “cannot go back” to dwelling in the wood) and thranduil the respect of both his son and tauriel, who was arguably the elf closest to him (from what their limited interactions suggest) prior to the dwarves’ capture in desolation of smaug.

however, thranduil’s experiences with loss go much farther back than that. he has lost both his father in the battle of the last alliance against sauron during the second age (also known as the battle of dagorlad) and his wife (although there’s pretty much nothing on her death in the books as far as i can tell, only her absence, so it’s not 100% canon) in another skirmish on the borders of angmar, at the fortress of gundabad. and the thing is with tolkien’s elves, they’re… really not equipped to handle loss and grief very well, from what i can tell based on the book canon. tolkien mentions that many elves simply fall into despair and “fade” if they suffer from too much strong negative emotion (even luthien, one of the most powerful elves in tolkien’s mythos, is shown to not be immune to this), and many of those who don’t tend to go out seeking revenge and self-destruction; for example: feanor, fingolfin, maedhros, maglor (and the sons of feanor in general). admittedly, all of the aforementioned elves (save luthien) are of the noldor race, while thranduil is sindarin, but i digress. the point i’m trying to make is that a lot of thranduil’s seeming lack of empathy in the hobbit films, i think, is a result of trauma and the inability borne out of lack of understanding to cope with it healthily. but reserve your judgement for just a moment, because there’s more i have to say on that!

from what i can tell of elvish culture, based on what i already mentioned, and just a general vibe i get, particularly from the silmarillion, most elves just… don’t really understand the effects of trauma. i’d even go as far as to argue there’s an undercurrent of stigma surrounding it in the elvish culture. elves place a lot of emphasis on physical appearance; it’s actually an indicator of health for elves since their soul and body are linked. when the soul suffers, the body suffers. examples of this include orcs, whose many origins include one claim by tolkien that they were elves tortured by morgoth (this varies though; the consequences of having an ‘unreliable narrator’ in most of tolkien’s works), the elf-king thingol, who deteriorated physically when news of his beloved daughter luthien’s death (she got better though) reached him, and maedhros, who suffered horrific torture and abuse at the hands of morgoth. the last in particular is important to my argument because maedhros is described as being almost monstrous in battle as a result of his ordeal, the fire of rage in his spirit transforming him into something so horrifying it terrifies many of his opponents. this parallels a scene in desolation of smaug, where we’re shown that thranduil bears a pretty gruesome injury which he claims was inflicted by the “serpents (dragons) of the north”. while this is only canon insofar that there textual evidence supports claims that there were dragons in the north ,which were slain, and thranduil’s involvement in their eradication is unconfirmed, i’m going to count it nonetheless for the sake of my point (which i’ll get to in a moment).

the fact that thranduil hides his injury with magic suggests to me that it’s a source of perceived weakness for him, since it’s heavily implied that elves value physical ‘wholeness’ as they believe it demonstrates good health, both mental and physical (yes, i am suggesting that a certain amount of ableism is ingrained into elvish culture as a result of this assumption. i don’t expect everyone to agree with me on this, since i’m making some pretty big assumptions myself to support my claims.) there are also interpretations of thranduil’s wound not being real, but manifesting in that moment as an expression of a memory of past trauma (which is supported by the fact that elves’ bodies and souls are linked). either way, it aligns with thranduil’s icy, closed off personality.

based on all of the above, my interpretation of thranduil’s character is that he is so traumatised by loss that in order to survive he essentially walled himself off from his emotions completely, severing his connection to them, so that they only manifest when they completely overwhelm his defences. this is implied by tauriel, who claims that “there is no love in you”, and by his interactions with legolas. on the rare occasion that thranduil does express sincere emotion in the hobbit films, it is almost always rage triggered by something someone else has said or done, suggesting that his mental health is not 100% (and i’m NOT trying to say that people with trauma and mental health conditions are violent and/or angry, but a symptom of many trauma-related issues is difficulty responding in ways deemed ‘appropriate’ or ‘socially acceptable’ to circumstances the individual finds triggering). it’s only after legolas decides he cannot return to mirkwood, and shows signs of feeling completely alienated from him, and the sight of tauriel’s sorrow at losing kili, that thranduil begins to show signs of regret and even compassion for others. this is why i believe he’s not just an irredeemable jerkass - in the final scenes he’s in in botfa, he demonstrates that he’s aware of the consequences of his decisions, and appears to have learned something from that.

does this justify any of his earlier behaviour? of course not! i’m a firm subscriber to the view that your mental health/trauma doesn’t grant you a free pass to be an entitled asshole, being someone who suffers with both myself. but it does make his actions more understandable, i think, and thus makes him a more sympathetic character, at least to me.

EDIT: thranduil's desire to go to war in the film for a "handful of gems" is also made more understandable when you learn that they're his wife's jewels, and the only memory he has left of her, as stated in a deleted scene. the fact that the thror basically taunted him with them while refusing to return them to him also explains his emnity with the dwarves, particularly thorin's bloodline, in the films.

#long post #ableism tw #tolkien #ask #anonymous

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grundyscribbling · 6 years

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Writing Meme

I was tagged by @gaolcrowofmandos, thank you!

What’s your total word count on AO3?

475710. That’s not quite everything I’ve written, some shorts are only here on Tumblr, and I’ve been pretty lazy about moving stuff from LJ or TtH.

How often do you write?

*looks around for the “not as often as I’d like” crowd*

When I can. Which generally is not as often as I’d like, but that’s how these things go. Just because I’m not writing doesn’t mean I’m not thinking.

Do you have a routine for writing?

Put on a DVD or Netflix in the background, start typing.

What are your favorite kinks/tropes/pairings?

Kinks? Not sure. I don’t really write explicit, mostly due to fear of being really bad at it.

Tropes? I like to think ‘fix it’, but it does seem like sometimes I actually wind up making it worse. (Sorry, Maeglin.)

Pairings: When it comes to Tolkien I generally don’t break up canon pairings. (She says, guiltily working on some Celegorm/Luthien.)

Do you have a favorite fic of yours?

I’m quite fond of my ongoing First Age series that started with the Third Kinslaying. I also have some non-Tolkien crossover WIPs that I still like and mean to finish. It’s a bit strange trying to pick favorites, though.

Your fic with the most kudos?

The Unspoken Rule, a BuffyxNCIS crossover.

Anything you don’t like about your writing?

I don’t usually work with a beta, so it’s not unusual for me to re-read after posting and discover I’ve used the same word or small cluster of words multiple times in the space of a paragraph or two.

Now something you do like?

Exploring characters that don’t get much ‘screen time’.

I tag: @cycas, @joyfullynervouscreator, @alystraea, @independence1776, and @maedhrosrussandol

(No one said how many people to tag, and I’m horrible at remembering off the top of my head who writes and who doesn’t.)

#writing meme

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unknown-de-mordor-blog · 6 years

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Five ships I’m still not over

Beleg Cúthalion/Túrin Turambar

Universe: Middle-earth, first age

Ship name: Nothing that’s widely used in the fandom, I don’t think. But I like to think of them as ‘Black Sword (referring to Turin’s cursed weapon) and Strongbow (direct translation of Cúthalion)’

To me, there's no character more tragic than Turin son of Hurin, and no pairing more tragic than him and Beleg. And no clearer love, too. I don't know if J. R. R. Tolkien intended for them to go that far, but their emotional connection is so deep and powerful that whether you ship them or not it's undisputedly one of the most beautiful relationships in Tolkien's lore. Alas! It's not powerful enough to undo the curse placed on Turin and his clan, which ends both his and Beleg's life all too soon and all too tragically. So, yes, I count Beleg as one of the elves who die for love.

Favourite quote: 'I would lead my own men, and make war in my own way,' Turin answered. 'But in this at least my heart is changed: I repent every stroke save those dealt against the Enemy of Men and Elves. And above all else I would have you beside me. Stay with me!' 'If I stayed beside you, love would lead me not wisdom,' said Beleg.

Uh, I love this so much because it shows the difference in their temperament and maturity. Beleg's an elf who has lived through and fought in so many wars. He's an (elf)man of duty, honour and intellect, and Turin is still a young man whose pride and stubbornness can seriously get in the way of a grown-up conversation. And Beleg is so not having any of that in this scene. He’d do anything for Turin, including ditching his command to find him, but he can pull some tough-love moves, too, when Turin’s unreasonable.

Uzumaki Naruto/Uchiha Sasuke

Universe: Naruto

Ship name: sns, narusasu, sasunaru

I think Naruto and Sasuke canonically love each other, I really do, but I don’t think they are together romantically at any point in the series. And that’s by design, really. Sasuke -- the last of the Uchiha, the tragic figure of the Naruto series (still not as tragic as Turin, but let’s not do this morbid comparison) -- has too many issues to work through, and Naruto isn’t in the position to really help him through them. So as soul-deep as their bond is, they couldn’t have been together and survive each other. Although, I really want that to happen. That’s what fanfictions are for, I guess.

Favourite quote: ‘If you attack Konoha, I will have to fight you... So save up your hatred and take it all on me, I'm the only one who can take it. It's the only thing I can do. I will shoulder your hatred and die with you.’

Honestly, Naruto might just as well propose to Sasuke with that because he’s essentially saying ‘give me your worst, I’m not leaving and never will’. I know friends could be like that, too, but normally not to this degree and not with this kind of commitment. I’m not surprised at all when Sasuke has to ask Naruto why the hell he is doing all this for him. It just goes beyond reason, really.

S'chn T'gai Spock /James T. Kirk

Universe: Star Trek

Ship name: K/S, Spirk

The Daddy of all ships! Pun intended! Spock and Kirk's friendship really walks that fine line of are they/aren’t they. I personally think they aren’t (another controversial statement coming from a shipper), but they’re so cute together you just can’t help think: what if they are? They have this deep trust and affection for one another anyway; why not push it a notch further? ‘This simple feeling,’ as Spock calls it, might as well be love.

Favourite quote:

Kirk: How's our ship? Spock: Out of danger. Kirk: Good... Spock: You saved the crew. Kirk: You used what he wanted against him. That's a nice move. Spock: It is what you would have done. Kirk: And this... this is what you would have done. It was only logical. I'm scared, Spock. Help me not be. How do you choose not to feel? Spock: I do not know. [tears fall] Right now, I am failing. Kirk: I want you to know why I couldn't let you die... why I went back for you... Spock: Because you are my friend. [Kirk places his hand against the glass and gives the Vulcan Salute as he dies]

It’s actually really hard for me to pick a quote for these two because I think every ‘Jim’ from Spock does the job except nobody else would understand it but me. (Second to that is, ‘Captian, not in front of the Klingons.’) While I love them teasing each other a lot, I think Kirk’s death scene from Star Trek Into Darkness has all the right punches to it. Spock has been unable to accept the feeling of friendship towards Kirk (actually just feelings in general) until the moment he watches Kirk dies behind the glass door. And all just comes out like BOOM! Not to mention how close Spock comes to killing Khan for revenge before Uhura tells him that Kirk can be saved but they need Khan alive. Honestly, that’s the only reason Khan’s head doesn’t go plop in Spock’s hands.

Morgoth/Sauron

Universe: Middle-earth, first age

Ship name: it just came to my attention that the fandom is calling this ship Angbang (a wordplay on the name of their home/fortress Angband). Nicely done, you naughty people. Also Melkor/Mairon if you’re going by their proper first-age names.

I think a lot of people seeing this ship would go ‘what?!’ Like, how is that even possible when Tolkien didn’t write a single scene with the two of them in it. I’d say in this case the absence is more powerful. Tolkien wrote the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales as lore, so they necessarily come from the perspective of the tellers; i.e., humans and elves. That doesn’t mean Tolkien didn’t drop hints about the complex characters that the dark lords of Middle-earth are. He even has Elrond says that people don’t start out evil, not even Sauron. So the question becomes, what the heck happened? And the heck that starts it all out is pretty much in the first few chapters of the Silmarillion where Morgoth is clearly a powerful and inventive figure but in many ways an outcast and shunned by everyone including the very power that made him. (*cough* daddy issue *cough*) And then we are made aware of the fact Sauron, who is also powerful and creative, isn’t on Morgoth’s side from the get go but decides to join him later. The power-hungry dark lords we are later told about aren’t that at all, so it raises the question of their true characters and motives. If anything, I think the length in which Sauron would go for Morgoth thousands of years after his master is defeated and shut away says something about their bond with each other. And if I know one thing, it can’t be fear or respect. If I have to make a guess, I think it is akin to love.

Favourite quote: There isn’t anything I can quote from the source material since there hasn’t been a dialogue or anything they say to an audience that could be trusted as genuinely representing who they are. One thing I do scream about is the scene in the Return of the King movie when the black gate opened and behind there isn’t just the tower with the eye of Sauron but Mount Doom next to it in the same frame. I was like ‘I know Morgoth’s not here but isn’t that him in spirit.’ Yes, I’m a proper trash for these two.

Also, there’s this awesome comic series (unfortunately discontinued) by Suz. It’s legitimately hotter than the fire of Aule’s forge, honestly.

Beren/Lúthien

Universe: Middle-earth, first age

Ship name: I’m not aware of any ship name for these two but ‘Beren and Luthien’ is catchy enough as it is.

How else to finish this list but to dedicate the last entry to the greatest love story of Middle-earth, and, yes, I'm saying that with a straight face because, holy hell, this couple defies expectations left, right, and centre. Luthien, our elven princess, is an active participant in her own fate. She falls in love with a human who, in an act of valour, accepts her father's stupid, impossible task to steal the most treasured jewel from Morgoth the Dark Lord himself. Luthien basically runs away from home, finds her man captured and tortured, and tears the goddamn fortress down in a showdown with the-dark-lord-to-be Sauron himself (which makes you question the competency of everyone else in Middle-earth). They then proceed to steal the jewel together. They don't quite succeed in bringing it back and Beren loses his hand in the process, but hey, they could say it's in his hand, somewhere, and now could they please marry because otherwise I have a feeling that Luthien is going to elope with her boyfriend and her mom and dad won't be seeing her again ever.

And this is really just scratching the surface of Luthien’s feisty personality quite unbefitting of most princesses until the recent overhaul of attitude by Disney. And all this came from a man who was born in the Victorian era when women's autonomy wasn't given or respected. But I think Luthien's depth of character comes from the fact that she has a real-life counterpart, and so she feels more like a real woman. And the love between Beren and Luthien feels compelling because its the love the professor himself had for his wife and life-long partner, Edith. You can check out their gravestone. I'm so not making this up.

Favourite quote: The song of Lúthien before Mandos was the song most fair that ever in words was woven, and the song most sorrowful that ever the world shall ever hear. Unchanged, imperishable, it is sung still in Valinor beyond the hearing of the world, and the listening the Valar grieved. For Lúthien wove two themes of words, of the sorrow of the Eldar and the grief of Men, of the Two Kindreds that were made by Ilúvatar to dwell in Arda, the Kingdom of Earth amid the innumerable stars. And as she knelt before him her tears fell upon his feet like rain upon stones; and Mandos was moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since.

It’s not a scene between them, but this is how far Luthien’s love and badassery goes. She loses Beren in a battle to protect her father’s kingdom, and she dies grieving him. In the afterlife, she gets to meet the god of death Mandos and sings him a song of their love and her grief. Apparently, she’s so good with words and music that Mandos is like, ‘I can’t handle the feels. You can have your husband back and have a mortal life with him.’ And Luthien takes the deal, of course.

#my post #tolkien verse #naruto #star trek #beren and luthien #spirk #angbang #sns #narusasu #sasunaru #turin and beleg #shipping supreme #I'm enterprising these shit

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garden-ghoul · 7 years

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more HoME misc

“in which the ghoul pages desperately through a 3500 page document with no search function, looking for the shibboleth of feanor”

I’m not blogging leithian mk 1 any more but I just want to note that Chris included a detailed list of all the things that are long and tall, as an end note. He like, spent his entire life trying to decipher Johnald’s notes, so he could bring to us the faintly-pencilled name and origin of Nan, the giant of the south.

As I got lost somewhere in the beginning of “the tale of turambar” I started wondering why so many of our human heroes are intimately involved with Doriath, “the secret kingdom no-one can go into.” If we add Gondolin (”the other even more secret kingdom that REALLY no-one can go into”) I think ALL of the human heroes of the Silmarillion are involved with one of the two. Not counting heroes like Haleth who tragically didn’t get any dialogue. Is it just that the only humans who are heroes are the ones Special enough to trip into hidden kingdoms? Fate junk? Probably fate junk.

I was sort of skimming through Turin stuff and my eye was caught by Saeros (”Orgof”) insulting Turin’s... uncombed hair? Cute. In this one Turin throws a cup at him, killing him instantly, and everyone just kind of sits there silently at the overturned table as he runs out of the hall.

Turin laved his hands in the stream without the doors and burst there into tears, saying: "Lo! Is there a curse upon me, for all I do is ill, and now is it so turned that I must flee the house of my fosterfather an outlaw guilty of blood -- nor look upon the faces of any I love again."

Aw, Neithan. You neith’d yourself, dude.

I also want to mention (again?) that I really like Melkor being well known as a guy with an actual kingdom, where people worked. Granted, they were all Thralls, but he seemed a lot more like all of the other immortals who established kingdoms in Beleriand. I didn’t get the impression in the early drafts that like Everyone Was United Against Him. He was just an asshole neighbor? (later, in the Nauglafring story, we actually get the line “and there was peace with Melkor.”) This makes me suspect that the Porous Shadow of Doom overlaying the world in the final Children of Hurin would be a lot less huge and pervasive. But I’m not actually going to read it, just skim it. It was like 8 liveblogs long, or something, geez.

A manifestation of this lessened Porous Shadow of Doom is that when Turin returns home it’s late summer rather than winter; the grass has grown tall around Morwen’s house, and when Turin makes it to Brodda’s hall he doesn’t even pretend to be cowed, he immediately starts fucking things up. So, in that way, the original version of CoH was a lot less about Depression.

Also in this version Nienor doesn’t lose her ability to speak, so when Turin finds her and names her Niniel she can actually say “no don’t call me that.” He calls her that anyway. When she goes to live with Turin’s friends in Brethil they all constantly say “Would that the Valar would lift the curse on Niniel!” I can only aspire to be that obviously cursed, yknow.

AH. AT LAST HERE IS THE NAUGLAFRING. I can’t even remember if I’ve read it before but I Have Been Waiting.

I’m taking a break here to eat dinner because not eating makes me really stupid. Have you eaten recently? Are you stupid? If so, maybe have a snack! Sometimes I wish the internet would periodically remind--oh, no, I have a Personal Device for this exact purpose. Mm. peace out.

I’M BACK. After reading a couple paragraphs of this I realized I have read it before, but I didn’t blog it because I was procrastinating on CoH. Hurin has brought a bunch of cursed treasure to Tinwelint (do you like my horrible mixture of “canonical” and “noncanonical” names) and departed without taking any, in a huff. Then everyone in Menegroth starts murdering each other over this treasure; Tinwelint wins, and his wife (now named Gwenniel; I don’t understand how Tolkien could fail to get attached to ANY of the names he put in his first drafts) soothsays to him that he should dump it in the river because it is TRIPLE CURSED. He does, but then he stares at it for a while because, cursed. Gwenniel tells him that this isn’t even worth a third of what a Silmaril is, but like, are Silmarils useful for anything? Do they, strictly speaking, have any worth beyond the prestige value associated with possessing something super evil rare?

Some visitor says that it’s a crime to let all that gold go to waste when it could instead be used to make pretty things (natch, he is a guy who hangs out with Naugrim) and Tinwelint looks at his jewelry and is like “dang. I am a king and I do not look NEARLY that fine. please make something nice for me.” but he also grabs the elf guy and takes him hostage in a really impolite way. I have seen a lot more polite hostage-takings in the Silmarillion! Some so polite that the hostages didn’t even notice!

There’s a bunch of stuff here that I actually really enjoy, mostly descriptions of treasure, but I’m not going to blog it because I’m too lazy. I just want to note that I really enjoy the descriptions of treasure made by the Naugrim (in captivity). It’s very much the same impulse that led me to page for hours and hours through the LotR prop jewelry recreations magazines that my household for some reason received monthly when I was young.

Mm and then there’s a bunch of naugla/elda murders that I don’t care about. UGH and halfway through this story he changed Melian’s name back to Gwendelin. STG Tolkien!! Later someone is trying to kidnap her and we get this great bit:

Then said Gwendelin: "Thief and murderer, child of Melko, yet art thou a fool, for thou canst not see what hangs over thine own head." By reason of the anguish of her heart was her sight grown very clear, and she read by her fay-wisdon the curse of Mim and much of what would yet betide.

Then did Naugladur in his triumph laugh till his beard shook, and bid seize her: but none might do so, for as they came towards her they groped as if in sudden dark, or stumbled and fell tripping each the other, and Gwendelin went forth from the places of her abode, and her bitter weeping filled the forest. Now did a great darkness fall upon her mind and her counsel and lore forsook her...

The moral of the story is there’s a fine balance of anguish you have to maintain to be really good at seeing the future. IMO it’s probably “really sad but not depressed.” Oh um also, Huan is there. He works for Tinwelint now. I’m extremely offended, because this means Tolkien killed him EXPRESSLY because he was dating Luthien and Beren in the final lay. He killed Huan just so we couldn’t have nice things! And to make a point about Huan’s death metaphor, I guess. It was very artful, but I’m still mad we can’t have gay.

There’s some more murders. The asshole with nice jewelry is haunted by Gwendelin’s Glare. Oh! Luthien actually gets to meet her mom again! Haha Gwenelin says not to wear Nauglamir because it is SUPER CURSED but Beren is like “don’t worry about it! The Silmaril is so holy it cancels out all curses!” Which reveals a severe misunderstanding of what a Silmaril is, I think. Unless the Silmaril curse is stronger than all the other curses and it eats them, maybe? Like helpful strains of E. coli. Except then it mutates into a harmful strain of E. coli again--no, I’m sure there’s a better biology metaphor for this that I’m not thinking of. it was a harmful strain in the first place.

After this there’s more murders, this time feat. some Feanorions. And with that (skipping the story of Earendel) we have come to the end of Lost Tales pt 2! Next one is Lays of Beleriand, which I am going to attempt to skip because I have read all the good ones already. But I have to skip it manually so we’ll see I guess.

#silm #shibboleth update: still no shibboleth

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