#silmarillion meta

faustandfurious:

Nobody who’s actually good at manipulation is known for being good at manipulation.

A truly excellent manipulator is subtle enough that people aren’t even aware they’re being manipulated.

Based on the fact that Curufin is know far and wide for being a sneak, but Maedhros manages some fairly impressive feats of diplomacy and garners our sympathy despite participating in no less than three kinslayings, I postulate that Maedhros isn’t actually less manipulative and sneaky than Curufin. He’s just much better at what he does.

some thoughts onÍRIMËLALWEN and her youth

• it’s hard being related to fëanor and then not having some issues. i feel like she’s probably the most similar to fëanor in a way. at least, out of all the children of finwë.
• other elves would whisper that she seemed like an angry child. that she must not be happy in some way. she didn’t cry or throw tantrums though. and she wasn’t sullen and quiet. but there were aspects of her that would make older elves furrow their brows and take a step back from the young lalwen.
• she didn’t stomp around the polished floors of the palace. after all, a lady was taught to float and to seem entirely unbound from the earth on which they stepped. but her footsteps were just disturbing enough to make finwë wince as her paces resounded past his study.
• the scrape of her cutlery on fine plates is jarring to those who sit with her. she opens her a mouth a bit too much when she smiles and laughs a bit too loud. she presents herself as an entirely normal child but there are so many small eerie things that shake those around her.
• she loves her family of course. even if her father is always preoccupied with his duties or he’s always checking in on fëanor and not taking many glances back at findis, nolofinwë or arafinwë. 
• nolofinwë is always kind to her. he always helps her up onto her horse. he lets her sit in his room and browse through his books. he takes her into the city’s markets and lets her choose fine fabrics to her heart’s desire.
• at first, she doesn’t know what to think of arafinwë. he’s younger than her. and he’s born with the same golden hair of findis and their mother. he’s always tripping over and letting out small babbling sounds that babies usually do.
• later, she grows to quite like arafinwë. he’s reasonable and well-mannered. but it always irks her at how little space he seems to take up. her younger brother is perfectly content with following the will of others. he’s placated. the perfect grace and manner for a diplomatic prince. not a hair out of place, a pleasing smile and hands folded over his lap. he doesn’t scream. he doesn’t cry. he doesn’t shout.
• even nolofinwë has had his frustrated moments and lalwen can hear the bang of books being thrown from his room, probably due to frustration from fëanor’s harsh words.
• even findis isn’t a perfect picture. but she’s perfectly poised and a doll in the eyes of their mother and her people, the golden vanyar. she’s all coiffed sunlit hair and thick skirts that brush the floor. lalwen knows that findis can hold her temper. she has never heard findis raise her voice but what findis lacks in volume, she makes up for in her sharp, acidic tongue. lalwen likes how her older sister can quell even the sternest of arguments with a harsh bite and barely concealed frustration that can make elves take a step back.
• but arafinwë just keeps that calm smile on his face and some days it makes lalwen so irrationally angry that she wants to push her perfect, happy little brother down the stairs just so she can see some real emotion from him. but she doesn’t. he’s the baby of the family and it would do no good.
• lalwen hates the strict rules of society. a princess should not yell. she should not venture out beyond the borders of tirion in search of maiar. she should not come home after dark, her skirts snagged on stone and littered with small holes and loose threads. but she can tolerate that.
• what she truly despises is how insignificant she feels in the grand scheme of things. well, she’s a princess. she knows the privilege she has. but what is she? what is she allowed to be, compared to mighty gods who sit in their court on taniquetil? what is she able to be and achieve?
• she likes fëanor because he agrees with her. he allows her into his forges occasionally. her older brother cares little for the thoughts of others. he lets her sit at a murky looking table while he twists some contraption of wire and she talks about how she feels so confined and so angry for some reason. at everything.
• fëanor looks up at her. he asks if its truly anger she’s feeling. what is she angry at? it makes lalwen pause. she doesn’t truly know if its anger. she just feels red-hot and bursting and she burns to move, to conquer, to spit out. it makes her want to put her hands in her silky black hair and tear it out and to wrench her hands into velvet skirts and rip them apart. she wants to ride a horse far away and lay on the earth and feel the heartbeat of the ground beneath her.
• fëanor tells her that she’s fierce and she’s not angry. she shouldn’t punish herself for feeling that way. she’s passionate. and she knows her brother understands her. he has that knowing look in his silver-hot eyes that seem to contain a fire of their own. and lalwen knows her brother understands. they carry a similar flame and it is only after the tragedies that unfold many years later, after the death of their father, that lalwen realises that fëanor’s flame is something else entirely.

absynthe–minded:

It’s come to my attention that a lot - a lot - of the people on Tumblr specifically who are in the fandom are younger, and don’t know the history of what went down four to seven years ago. By “what went down” I’m talking about the fights, the drama, the meta blogs, the bullying, the hurt on all sides - the newcomers to our fandom don’t know about The Mess. They don’t understand why certain arguments or discussions trigger a lot of bad blood.

I think they deserve to learn about what some have called “the dark days” of the Silmarillion fandom.

And, regardless of how I might feel about it, I think it’s important to catalogue it for the sake both of fandom history and of learning from our collective mistakes. I know at least one person who got bullied off of Tumblr for her views. Others left the fandom. Some people were attacked pretty mercilessly and still have scars from the hate. Still more harbor resentment and bad blood. And I think that the best way we can keep this from happening again is to talk about it.

If you’re willing to share your story, and be civil - if you can talk about specific bloggers or posts or reblog chains that you disagreed with or witnessed and do so without unnecessary ad hominem attack (because the point of all this is to preserve and learn from the past, as well as to vent and maybe find some catharsis in talking about our experiences) - I’d like to hear it. I’m going to be putting together a Google Drive folder that’s an archive of information and testimonials and fandom history, including saved web pages and screencaps of posts for blogs that are no longer active. No real names will be used, and while discussion of personal drama are fine, I’m not interested in dragging anybody through the mud.

You can reach me here on this blog (ask and submit) or at [email protected]. If you were involved in The Mess and do not want to be mentioned by name - if you’d prefer an alias - please contact me. This way if someone brings you up, I can change identifying details.

Thank you; I think this is important or else I wouldn’t be doing it.

Hey guys - I’m putting together a fandom history thing because Tumblr might not be around forever and we need to preserve this aspect of our story. If any of this applies to you, will you reach out to me? Also, I’d appreciate it if people could reblog this - I want it to have as wide of a reach as possible.

Thanks.

this is a post about the evolution of Tolkien’s conceptions of the forces protecting Doriath, from the earliest versions of the legendarium to the one implied by the final Silmarillion, but before I talk about that I just want to share the delightful tidbit that in the Book of Lost Tales, Melian’s name was Wendelin.

Isn’t that excellent? I feel like my initial perception of a character named Wendelin is profoundly different from a character named Melian. Melian gets at the divinity, the angel-in-temporary-Elven-form, but Wendelin gets at the inhumanity, the incomprehensibility, the ways that the Maiar are profoundly different from us and anything we can imagine.

Thingol, in that version, is called Linwe Tinto.

Anyway, about that girdle.

In the earliest imagining, Thingol never returned to his people:

beguiled by the fair music of the fay Wendelin, as other tales set forth more fully elsewhere, their leader Tinwe Linto was lost, and long they sought him, but it was in vain, and he came never again among them. (Book of Lost Tales I, 125.)

and:

Linwe Tinto King of the Pipers who was lost of old upon the great march from Palisor, and wandering in Hisilome found the lonely twilight spirit (Tindriel) Wendelin dancing in a glade of beeches. Loving her he was content to leave his folk and dance for ever in the shadows, but his children Timpinen and Tinuviel long after joined the Eldar again, and tales there are concerning them both, though they are seldom told. (BoLT I, 112.)

I sort of want to read something with this version of Lúthien (and Timpinen, who became Daeron): born to parents who’ve abandoned the world forever, and joining the Eldar to be welcomed as the children of their long-lost King, would be a fascinating character arc. But we lose Thingol as a King, which is most of what makes Thingol an interesting character, so I’m not too sad Tolkien revised this. 

By the first telling of the story of Beren and Lúthien, Doriath already begins to take familiar form: 

Now in the after-days of Sunshine and Moonsheen still dwelt Thingol in Artanor and ruled a numerous and hardy folk drawn from all the tribes of ancient Elfinesse – for neither he nor his people went to the dread Battle of Unnumbered Tears – a matter which toucheth not this tale. 

Yet was his lordship greatly increased after that most bitter field by fugitives seeking a leader and a home. Hidden was his dwelling thereafter from the vision and knowledge of Melko by the cunning magics of Melian the fay, and she wove spells about all the paths that led thereto, so that none but the children of the Eldalie might tread them without straying. Thus was the king guarded against all evils save treachery alone; his halls were builded in a deep cavern, vaulted immeasurable, that knew no other entrance than a rocky door, mighty, pillared with stone, and shadowed by the loftiest and most ancient trees in all the shaggy forests of Artanor. A great stream was there that fared a dark and silent course in the deep woods, and this flowed wide and swift before that doorway, so that all who would enter that portal must first cross a bridge hung by the Noldoli of Thingol’s service across that water – and narrow it was and strongly guarded. (BoLT II, 8).

Major differences: in this telling Thingol is a lord of all peoples, with some of the Noldor responsible for building a bridge to Menegroth, while in the Silmarillion the Noldor, and most of the northern Sindar were forbidden from entering Menegroth. In this telling Doriath was accessible to all Elves, but no others. 

And Doriath was much much smaller. Chris Tolkien comments:

But the description of it in the Tale of Tinuviel as a ‘northward region of Artanor’ clearly does not imply that it lay within the protective magic of Gwendeling, and it seems that this 'zone’ was originally less distinctly bounded, and less extensive, than 'the Girdle of Melian’ afterwards became. Probably Artanor was conceived at this time as a great region of forest in the heart of which was Tinwelint’s cavern, and only his immediate domain was protected by the power of the queen. (BoLT II, 56.)

At first I was confused by the idea Thingol was a lord of many of the Noldor and they built the city’s defenses for him, because this is also the version where Beren is a Noldo and Thingol opposes the marriage out of his hatred for the Noldor. But this is clarified in the text: “the Elves of the woodland thought of the Gnomes of For Lomin as treacherous creatures, cruel and faithless,” we’re told, and “Dread and suspicion was between the Eldar and those of their kindred that had tasted the slavery of Melko”. So Thingol didn’t mistrust and keep out all Noldor, just the ones who’d been enslaved by Melkor (which is most of them, in this version, where the Noldor lost the war much sooner). 

The Lay of the Children Of Húrin describes Túrin’s arrival at a Doriath not much changed from how it was imagined in the later Book of Lost Tales:

Later they wakened and were led by ways
devious winding through the dark wood-realm
by slade and slope and swampy thicket
through lonely days and long night-times,
and but for Beleg had been baffled utterly
by the magic mazes of Melian the Queen
To the shadowy shores he showed the way
where stilly that stream strikes 'fore the gates
of the cavernous court of the King of Doriath.
O'er the guarded bridge he gained a passage,
and thrice they thanked him, and thought in their hearts 'the Gods are good’ – had they guessed maybe
what the future enfolded they had feared to live. (Lays of Beleriand, 16.)

So the same elements are present: magic mazes of Melian, which Men could not navigate. There’s a guarded bridge to the entrance of Menegroth. And, despite the existence of Melian’s protection, Beleg and Túrin are needed on the borders, and it’s said of Túrin that “for by him was holden the hand of ruin
from Thingol’s folk, and Thu [Sauron] feared him”. This makes sense if Melian’s powers are in devising mazes and labyrinths. It would make the borders easy to defend, since your enemies would wander around hopelessly lost and be easily trapped, but you couldn’t afford to ignore them entirely, or eventually someone would find a way through. 

I find it vaguely implausible that Doriath would have fallen to Morgoth if not for Túrin, because Túrin runs off shortly thereafter and Doriath fails to fall. But I’m sure he was very heroic. 

And now we reach the modern conception, with three major changes: firstly, that Melian’s power now reaches all “the fastness of Neldorest and Region”, secondly that “mazes” and “labyrinths” are replaced with “an unseen wall of shadow and bewilderment” (which could still describe mazes, but to me implies additional enchantment) and thirdly that no longer can all Elves walk the paths: 

And when Thingol came again to Menegroth he learned that the Orc-host in the west was victorious and had driven Cirdan to the rim of the Sea. Therefore he withdrew all his folk that his summons could reach within the fastness of Neldoreth and Region, and Melian put forth her power and fenced all that dominion round  about  with  an  unseen  wall  of shadow   and   bewilderment: the Girdle of Melian, that none thereafter could pass against her will or the will of King Thingol (unless one should come with a  power greater than that of Melian the Maia). Therefore this inner land  which   was long named Eglador was after called  Doriath, the guarded kingdom, Land of the Girdle. (War of the Jewels, 17).

The guarded bridge of Menegroth may still exist (“the gates of Morgoth were but one hundred and fifty leagues distant from the bridge of Menegroth”, Tolkien notes) but no longer is mentioned in connection with Menegroth’s security, and apparently is of no aid in the two Kinslayings; it’s Nargothrond, a late development in the stories of the collapse of the Elven kingdoms, where a bridge becomes of strategic significance. 

The larger kingdom makes it less plausible that Doriath could have been protected by force of arms alone; the enhancements to the Girdle mean that they would have been less necessary. The more powerful Melian was imagined, then, in creating the protections that encircled Doriath, the more vulnerable it was when she fell. 

And Melian by the telling of the Silmarillion, was very powerful indeed: no one could pass through the Girdle unless their power was greater than hers, and we know “…Ungoliant fled from the north and came into the realm of King Thingol, and a terror of darkness was about her; but by the power of Melian she was stayed, and entered not into Neldoreth…” (Silmarillion,  88), so it’s a mistake to imagine her as anything less than one of the major powers of Arda. Wendelin, fay and terrifying kidnapper of Elf-kings, is almost entirely absent from the wise and lovely Queen who kept the whole of central Beleriand in her power - except, I guess, in how little I’d like either one as an enemy.

I sort of glossed over it in the Maeglin post but the fact there are Sindarin lords of Gondolin on apparently equal standing with the Noldorin ones is kind of a big deal. The Silmarillion is supposedly written by Gondolin historians, and they wrote this: 

In many parts of the land the Noldor and the Sindar became welded into one people, and spoke the same tongue; though this difference remained between them, that the Noldor had the greater power of mind and body and were the mightier warriors and sages, and they built with stone, and loved the hill-slopes and open lands.

It goes on to say that the Sindar are better at singing, which is great, but seriously - can you imagine the person who wrote that passage, or people who believed it to be true, appointing the Sindar to lordships in their kingdom? It literally says that the Noldor are smarter and stronger (”greater power of mind and body”), that they’re better warriors and better sages - basically, that they’re better at every skill we would expect to be relevant to ruling an isolated kingdom in wartime. I would expect the sort of society that wrote that passage to be super racist against its Sindarin citizens.

And yet there are multiple politically important Sindarin or half-Sindarin Elves in The Fall Of Gondolin and in the Silmarillion. In fact, it looks like the Gondolithrim took the opposite track, elevating musical ability to the equal of valor and combat skills as a basis for glory as a House of Gondolin.

One possible explanation for this is that, when Tolkien wrote the account of the Houses of Gondolin in the Book of Lost Tales, he hadn’t yet settled on the interpretation of the Noldor/Sindar relationship which shines through in the published Silmarillion; certainly in the earliest drafts the kinslaying at Alqualondë, the biggest driver of Noldor/Sindar tensions, didn’t happen.

Another possible explanation is that the historians were bitter and essentializing and behind the times, and that society as a whole didn’t actually think the Noldor were superior in body and mind.

Another, which is uglier but consistent with the character biographies we know of, is that having a Noldorin father and Sindarin mother (like Voronwë) made you respectable enough for high society but that other Sindarin heritage wouldn’t get you very far.

I was talking with someone the other day who asked why Elves never invented gunpowder weapons. 

(The Doylist reason is that Tolkien hated industrialization and technology; there’s a reasonliterally all his villains are ex-Maiar of Aulë or else unusually engineering-inclined. Elves were supposed to be Good, in general, and therefore wouldn’t have used modern weaponry, the horrors of which Tolkien had seen firsthand. Though in fairness to him, he does not seem to have been under the impression that the wars of Beleriand had any less staggering a human cost for being fought with sword and bow.)

But there’s a reason that only depends on in-universe information, and I actually think it’s kind of interesting. 

Longbows were much better weapons than early guns. They had a much higher firing rate, they were more accurate (especially over long distances), and they were much easier to manufacture and supply. The reason guns swiftly took over as the weapon of choice was because longbows required a lot of skill and training to use properly, and when Europe was raising (mostly civilian) armies for its wars, they didn’t have time to train recruits into expert archers. Anyone can use a gun. So guns, despite their inferiority, took over. (Armor was also more effective against arrows than bullets, but I don’t think orcs were armored, so it’s hard to imagine this consideration coming into play in Middle-earth.)

Once guns were the weapon of choice there were, of course, lots of resources on all sides dedicated to refining and enhancing them. It took a long time. I looked up estimates of when a gun that was significantly better than a bow was first produced, and found estimates between 1837 and 1860 - so, more than two hundred years after everyone switched to guns. 

Developing weapons that are quick to teach to a mostly unskilled civilian force isn’t a problem that Elves would have had, I don’t think. They seem to learn things faster than we do, they live forever (and had rather few children in Beleriand) and they’re stronger, which is one of the major constraints on using a bow. Certainly there wouldn’t have been any significant advantage to guns until they started allying with or making vassals of the tribes of Men - and once that began to happen, we were less than two hundred years from the bitter end. Even if the Elves had immediately recognized the need for unskilled ranged weapons, and set to working on them, they would have run out of time long before inventing anything that paralleled the weapons they were already using. 

And without Men as allies, it’s not clear they ever would have developed guns. Two hundred years of research and development is a lot to put into a type of weaponry that’s strictly inferior in every way to what you’re already doing. The deadliest weapons of our time might never have come around in a world that had an endless supply of skilled archers. (And in a world where Elves and Men were at odds for some reason, Men would have switched to gunpowder weaponry while Elves stuck with what worked - only, three hundred years later, to be unpleasantly surprised when the first machine guns were developed.) 

At least in the First Age, Tolkien’s preference to keep his good guys to older weapons seems quite justified. Good luck explaining why Dwarves don’t have artillery, though.

anotherclassicpretence:

WHAT is it with Tolkien’s words and poems expressing such profound sorrow in their simplicity? Like “an end was come of the Eldar of story and of song” makes me go absolutely nuts with crying.

That gentle acknowledgement that grief and decline is natural, it’s ordained, and must be accepted… the beauty of autumn and winter is somehow encapsulated in that phrase… the beauty even in tragedy and eventuality because of all the love poured into what is fading away, and a gentle rebuke for the emptiness it is leaving behind… help…

“I will not say the day is done/ Nor bid the stars farewell”

okay this is the purest expression of courageous hope but then you have its nemesis

“Into darkness fell his star/In Mordor where the shadows are”

like sir you evoked sorrow and terror like I’ve never experienced before with two lines.

Just that undercurrent of High Fantasy, of nobility and dignity that does not bend though it breaks… it’s not just because of the antiquated language used, it’s about that appeal to the best in Men’s hearts to recognise this exquisite emotion without any overly flowery words? Idk man.

I’ve taken the quotes imprinted on my mind, there are probably hundreds more that capture what I’m trying to describe, tell me your favourite ones

This is LITERALLY so well said! YES YES YES!!! It’s something about the way Tolkien uses simple language that seems to sharpen the sadness to a razor point and makes it that much more painful. It reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ description of LOTR: “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book which will break your heart.”

Another example of this is Galadriel’s song of Eldamar:

But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?

It’s phrased in such a simple way and it utterly breaks my heart.

The Song of Durin is also full of lines like this:

The world was fair, the mountains tall,
In Elder Days before the fall
Of mighty kings in Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
The Western Seas have passed away:
The world was fair in Durin’s Day.

The way he phrases this is literally SO POWERFUL. There’s this sense of longing for a time gone by, but also the inevitability of change and the passage of time and the fading away of older civilizations.

And this is one of the best ones:

But neither the Sun nor the Moon can recall the light that was of old, that came from the Trees before they were touched by the poison of Ungoliant. That light lives now in the Silmarils alone.

I literally get chills every time I read this! The sheer finality of that light lives now in the Silmarils alone. It breaks my heart because we know how beautiful the Sun and Moon are, but even they cannot recall the light that was of old! That’s devastating! 

This was the Noontide of the Blessed Realm, the fullness of its glory and its bliss, long in tale of years, but in memory too brief.

This is heartbreaking. And he did it again with in memory too brief being a short phrase that adds such weight and finality. 

And then there’s this quote, which gets me every time:

Long before, in the bliss of Valinor, before Melkor was unchained, or lies came between them, Fingon had been close in friendship with Maedhros; and though he knew not yet that Maedhros had not forgotten him at the burning of the ships, the thought of their ancient friendship stung his heart.

It’s such a beautiful quote and it’s been imprinted on my memory forever. 

And:

Then in the plain of Anfauglith, on the fourth day of the war, there began Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Unnumbered Tears, for no song or tale can contain all its grief.

That’s literally SO painful to read.

And:

Then Thorondor bore up Glorfindel’s body out of the abyss, and they buried him in a mound of stones beside the pass; and a green turf came there, and yellow flowers bloomed upon it amid the barrenness of stone, until the world was changed.

I feel INCOMPREHENSIBLE EMOTIONS!

And this is one of the most painful things I have ever read:

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow in the waters that was soon lost in the West. There he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME TOLKIEN? 

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.