vintonharper

[vintonharper]

Just a chill day rediscovering these Unfinished Tales (again). Even the stuff he never got around to writing is gripping. I just love reading about the complete backstories of pretty much every detail. (And yet again, Isildur maligned by Peter Jackson as simply an arrogant no-name who only wanted the One Ring for himself, like he did nothing else.)

#jrr tolkien #jrrt #tolkien #unfinished tales #cirion and eorl #amon anwar #lord of the rings #elendil #cirion #left-handed scribbles #gondor #eorl #the éothéod #rohan #oath of eorl #tolkien quotes

[vintonharper]

sometimes the best fanfics are written by middle aged adults with years of writing experience who simply know how to craft a good story. but also sometimes the best fanfics are written by a sixteen year old girl with something deeply wrong with her

#hundredpercent #its a good life #stay true

[vintonharper]

Y’All Should Actually Read Barthes (Or: Why Your ‘Rings Of Power’ Critique Is Bad)

I think what really gets under my skin about the many, many lousy critiques about Rings of Power[1] on Tumblr dot Com and Reddit[2] that I see out there is that firstly it frequently seems to be coming from people who don’t seem to realize that their understanding and memories about Tolkien are shaped far, far, far more by the Peter Jackson movies (which were hardly ‘canon-compliant’) than they are by the actual text. Secondly and more crucially I think is that everyone really wants to get pissed about canon that Tolkien never actually codified. Here’s what I mean: Tolkien didn’t ‘write’ the Silmarillion. He wrote a whole bunch of essays, letters, notes, scraps of ideas, poems, plot outlines, and ramblings, some of which he earmarked for a project he one day planned to compile as something called The Silmarillion. Then he made a slight error in his scheme by dropping dead. So his son Christopher Tolkien and his pal Guy Gavriel Kay stared at this enormous pile of stuff that went back decades, pulled out some of the bits they thought were most polished, did their best to link them into some kind of narrative, edited the crap out of it, added punctuation, and published a book they called The Silmarillion after JRR’s planned, but never completed idea. And was what was in The Silmarillion everything JRR planned to be in the final volume? Not necessarily. In many cases, not remotely, but Christopher Tolkien and Kay tried to take the stuff that was most polished, even if that was thirty year old stuff and Tolkien had changed his mind fifteen more times, because the old stuff often had a clarity of completion that the later revisions didn’t. They usually took the stuff in completely sentences over the stuff with sentence fragments, even if the latter was more ‘fresh.’ But because they realized that The Silmarillion was more a simulacrum of Tolkien’s ideas than anything actually definitive, Christopher then put out The Unfinished Tales, which contained some of Tolkien’s ideas in various forms such as did and did not make it into The Silmarillion. And since the very large pile of notes and scribblings and essays and letters and old recipes didn’t seem any noticeably smaller, he then spent thirteen years publishing The History of Middle Earth, comedically large tomes stuffed to the brim with Tolkien ideas, variations, variants, and late night side-table Kleenex notes. And then they kept putting out more books. And more. And then Christopher made the same silly mistake of dropping dead too! But other people put out even more books, with even more untouched material. There’s one coming out in November and JRR Tolkien’s been dead for fifty years! None of this was published under his aegis. And let me tell you, JRR Tolkien had a pretty weighty aegis: the man was famous for berating his publishers for edits and corrections. Part of the reason he never got around to completing a definitive Silmarillion was the fact that the man never wanted to publish something with which was not completely satisfied: and everything that has come out after his death, compiled with all the love and care in the world, is nevertheless pretty damning evidence that Tolkien was never satisfied. What we know about old JRR is that he changed his mind again and again, and we can’t know that on his dead bed, his last thought wasn’t some brilliant revelation that finally made the One Ring work in the context of Sauron’s timeline in the Second Age — but he didn’t even get to scribble it on a napkin for his son to later try and make sense of. And so we will never really know what his true canon decision on, say, elven pregnancy was: sometimes he thought it should take about 108 years. Sometimes only 9 years. But then he would change his mind, or change his math, again, and sometimes he’d go back to old stuff we didn’t like his new ideas. And so on. So when you talk about the ‘canon’ of Tolkien, it’s important to remember that even if you’re just speaking about ‘definitive’ works, you’re left with those published with his approval in his lifetimeL namely, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Tim Bombadil, and The Road Goes Ever On songbook with Donald Swann. And even then, what version of The Hobbit are you talking about? The original? Or the one he rewrote after he changed his mind about the entire nature of the ring Bilbo found in a cave and decided that actually it was the most important piece of jewelry in existence. Honestly, given world enough and time he probably would have made a third edition of The Hobbit because those two ‘canonical’ books, The Hobbit and it’s ‘sequel’ Lord of the Rings, don’t even fit together very well, as poor Peter Jackson learned to his sorrow and our pain with his wretched, tonally disjunct Hobbit films. )It’s funny, because everyone on here loves talking about Death of the Author. Almost none of you have ever read it, but it sure is a thing that’s a super important, inviolable concept… until we talk about an author the internet isn’t mad at, and suddenly the author’s word is inviolable and all adaptation choices are wrong.) I don’t know how to get this across any clearer: anyone who have ever dug deep into Tolkien’s lore knows that speaking of things like ‘canon,’ ‘definitive,’ ‘authoritative,’ and all similar adjectives is often a fool’s errand. Tolkien left us with a lot of ideas about the second age, but very little in the way of clarity, much less ‘this is the true thing unchanging.’ Even the ‘authoritative’ timeline of the Appendices in LOTR is stuff that he was already changing in the writings he did in the years after. So I am begging you. Please. Please stop giving the Akallabêth a level of authoritative definition that even its compiler admitted it did not possess. Until you can prove to me you brought the shade of JRR Tolkien back from beyond the Veil to speak True Authorial Intent,[3] I am going to treat your recourse to ‘but the canon’ with the level of exasperation it deserves. ————————–

[1] Besides the general problem on this website that everyone’s heard of critical theory and almost nobody’s ever read any. [2] There are plenty of valid critiques to be made, especially about pacing and awkward racial optics, but it’s really not the unhinged shit I’m seeing, as usual. [3] Let’s be honest: in the fifty years since he shuffled off his mortal coil, the shade of Tolkien will unquestionably return with a ghostly second pile of essays, letters, notes, scraps of ideas, poems, plot outlines, and ramblings, and they won’t be remotely definitive either. And we’re all going to be super disgruntled when the ghost insists that the only good Tolkien adaptation is Khraniteli.

#real talk #trop #the rings of power #christopher tolkien is the son of the millenia #really can you imagine how much love and respect was in that family #or at least they were aces at hiding them skeletons

[vintonharper]

Someone asked me to expand a little on a topic that was buried down in a big chain of reblogs, so I'm doing that here--it's about the use of the archaic "thee", "thou", "thy", etc. in LOTR and what it tells you about characters’ feelings for one another. (I am NOT an expert on this, so it's just what I've picked up over time!)

Like many (most?) modern English speakers, I grew up thinking of those old forms of 2nd person address as being extra formal. I think that's because my main exposure to them was in the Bible ("thou shall not...") and why wouldn't god, speaking as the ultimate authority, be using the most formal, official voice? But it turns out that for a huge chunk of the history of the English language, "thee," "thou," and "thy" were actually the informal/casual alternatives to the formal "you", “your”, “yours”. Like tú v. usted in Spanish!

With that in mind, Tolkien was very intentional about when he peppered in a "thee" or a "thou" in his dialogue. It only happens a handful of times. Most of those are when a jerk is trying to make clear that someone else is beneath them by treating them informally. Denethor "thou"s Gandalf when he’s pissed at him. The Witch King calls Éowyn "thee" to cut her down verbally before he cuts her down physically. And the Mouth of Sauron calls Aragorn and Gandalf "thou" as a way to show them that he has the upper hand. (Big oops by all 3 of these guys!)

The other times are the opposite--it's when someone starts to use the informal/casual form as a way to show their feeling of affection for someone else. Galadriel goes with the formal "you" all through the company's days in Lórien, but by the time they leave she has really taken them to heart. So when she sends them a message via Gandalf early in the Two Towers, she uses "thee" and "thou" in her words to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli because now they're valued friends and allies. And--this is the big one, folks, that was already alluded to in my previous post--Éowyn starts aggressively "thou"ing Aragorn when she is begging him to take her along as he prepares to ride out of Dunharrow. She is very intentionally trying to communicate her feelings to him in her choice of pronoun--an "I wouldn't be calling you "thee" if I didn't love you" kind of thing. And he is just as intentionally using "you" in every single one of his responses in order to gently establish a boundary with her without having to state outright that he doesn't reciprocate her feelings. It's not until much later when her engagement to Faramir is announced that Aragorn finally busts out "I have wished thee joy ever since I first saw thee". Because now it is safe to acknowledge a relationship of closeness and familiarity with her without the risk that it will be misinterpreted. He absolutely wants to have that close, familiar relationship, but he saved it for when he knew she could accept it on his terms without getting hurt.

So, you know, like all things language-based...Tolkien made very purposeful decisions in his word choices down to a bonkers level of detail. I didn’t know about this pronoun thing until I was a whole ass adult, but that’s the joy of dealing with Tolkien. I still discover new things like this almost every time I re-read.

#elendur and isildur thee and thou it up #until it's time to part ways on the battlefield #atarinya and senya #isildad

[vintonharper]

Love love love this!

Baby Isildur and Berek

[vintonharper]

Gotta get them started early. Get you a kindergarten teacher like me.

#tolkien #jrrtolkien #john ronald's dragons #tolkion biography #kindergarten #kindergarten books #lord of the rings #no lie it's one of their faves #and yes that's a narnia picture book too #surprise i'm a real person

[vintonharper]

Peep at my lil Tolkien Shelves.

#tolkien #jrrtolkien #silmarillion #lord of the rings #unfinished tales #history of middle earth #beren and lúthien #the fall of númenor #the fall of gondolin #the hobbit #the children of húrin #the nature of middle earth #lotr lego #roverandom #bookshelf #tolkien shelf

[vintonharper]

Been on a little bit of Isildur the father bend lately...

Day 1: Parent-child relationship

Kicking off @tolkienfamilyweek with some IsilDAD:

Isildur, Elendur, Aratan, and Ciryon looking proudly upon Nimloth II in Minas Ithil

Yes, I think about them a lot 💔

[vintonharper]

Just a regular reminder that in the time after cutting the One Ring from Sauron's hand and refusing to cast it into the fire, Isildur spent two years setting up his (ingrate) nephew Meneldil as King in Gondor, and then started on his way to Imladris to reunite with his wife and lil son, aaaaaand to give the Ring to Elrond. And he was just about there when he was killed.

He may have initially refused to give up the Ring but he yielded to better judgment once he had more context (i.e. finding out that it could not be used for good, as he had intended), and not only set aside his pride to return to one "greater" than himself, but resisted using it to save himself. Tolkien takes great pains to show that Isildur had every reason to believe his journey from Osgiliath to Imladris would be without issues and that he was well-prepared for any trouble that could be anticipated.

Oh, and his sons loved him very much. Isildur Defence Squad forever! Peter Jackson did him so, so dirty.

#isildur #the disaster of the gladden fields #tolkien quotes #tolkien #unfinished tales #elendur #lotr #lotr rop

[vintonharper]

Definitely NOT Barad-dûr. Just a random magic castle. (Actually a decent quality build!)

#Barad-dûr #tolkien #tolkien legos #lego knockoff #lord of the rings #lotr #sauron #eye of sauron #shit i found on temu

[vintonharper]

[vintonharper]

Peeps bout to lose they mind when they realize Lloyd Owen's beard comes off.

[vintonharper]

Peeps bout to lose they mind when they realize Lloyd Owen's beard comes off.

[vintonharper]

"...Farewell!"

As Beren went, still like a knell

resounded in his heart that word,

the last of his father that he heard.

The Lay of Leithian, v. 185-188

#the lay of leithian #beren #beren and lúthien #silm #the silmarillion #silm quotes #tolkien #tolkien quotes #jrr tolkien #farewell

[vintonharper]

Finally finished this one...

#i wrote this #trop fanfic

[vintonharper]

self care is writing a fic that you’re literally the sole target audience for

#pretty much #yup

[vintonharper]

#elendil #but we call him lenny #orange tabby #kitteh #baby boy #tolkien pets