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meatbag posted:Sure feels like everyone beyond the Aratar are kinda filler Heresy. Nienna is the realest of the gods Vanadium posted:I really love the detail of Tulkas just being some guy who arrives later. It makes me interpret the First War less as a pitched battle of good vs evil with the highest stakes imaginable, and more like it's a big collaborative project where one guy keeps messing everything up and wasting everybody's time. Manwë has to phone home like, hey, could you send someone over to keep Melkor in line, we're trying to form Arda here and he keeps being disruptive. And Tulkas just gets attached to the project at that point to make sure everything goes smoothly. If he hadn't managed to make Melkor go away, it probably wouldn't have been the end of the world, they'd just have sighed a lot and another bunch of fresh Ainur would have shown up eventually. Of course it gets messier later on when there's elves everywhere as potential collateral damage. They don’t even call to Tulkas for help, he just hears them fighting down in the Little Kingdom and busts in to see what’s crackin
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Feb 15, 2024 13:13
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"Oh dip, did you guys invent fighting? I gotta try that!"
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Feb 15, 2024 14:11
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The Incredible Tulk
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Feb 15, 2024 14:56
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skasion posted:Heresy. Nienna is the realest of the gods  She was the making of Gandalf, he'd have been in a lot more danger of Sarumanning his own rear end without her learnings
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Feb 15, 2024 15:24
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Early-edition Nienna was more like Elvira or Black Widow or something, she was all about spiders and bats and nightmares, she owned
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Feb 15, 2024 15:29
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Given Tolkien's whole thing about how tragedy makes things more beautiful and worthwhile in the end a Vala of grief and mourning couldn't not be one of the heavy hitters.
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Feb 15, 2024 15:55
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What gave a Maiar more or less power? Was Olorin known to be particularly powerful? Was Sauron the most powerful Maiar even when he was still Mairon? I know DBZ power levelling this stuff is not really the point but you got all these guys who are the same class of being and it seems like they have wildly differing scopes of power. If Sauron had gone into Moria and tried to hook up with Durin's Bane, maybe get a team up going, would there be a power imbalance there, would Sauron be in danger or would the balrog tremble and quiver before his might?
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Feb 15, 2024 16:01
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Data Graham posted:Early-edition Nienna was more like Elvira or Black Widow or something, she was all about spiders and bats and nightmares, she owned This is back when her house was called Night and was where dead men’s souls gathered to await judgment. Later on Tolkien decides instead that she lives on the edge of the world and looks out on the Void instead which is almost cooler. He also went through a phase where she was “Queen of Shadow, Manwe’s sister and Melkor’s” and later downgraded her to sister of the Feanturi, probably because she was in serious danger of becoming too cool zoux posted:What gave a Maiar more or less power? Was Olorin known to be particularly powerful? Was Sauron the most powerful Maiar even when he was still Mairon? Sauron was chief of the servants of Morgoth. There’s no suggestion he was particularly great among the Maiar before his satanic turn—a great servant of Aule, but I don’t think necessarily the greatest. The most important of the Maiar seem to be Eonwe and Osse, both of whom were at times (before the idea of “maiar” was codified) considered Valar (or children of Valar in Eonwe’s case, he was formerly Fionwe Manwe’s son). Arien and Tilion the sun and moon also seem particularly significant. Melian is supposedly the prettiest. Olorin comes from nowhere in the pre-LOTR material to become super significant, culminating in the Unfinished Tales stuff where he stops just short of being an avatar of Manwe! I don’t think Tolkien really wanted to delineate a clear hierarchy among the lesser gods, and most of them are said to have no form or names that are known to elves and men. I will say the Balrogs don’t seem particularly high in the pecking order though. They’re just Morgoth’s heavies. Destroying angels rather than thrones and dominions. You never see one set up on his own or even be sent to run an outpost, the way Sauron is. Sauron is at least potentially in contact with Durin’s Bane. He sent his orcs to Moria during Balin’s time and DB doesn’t seem to have a problem with that. Given that we know he had plans to attack Lorien, it may be that DB was going to be his ally or lieutenant in that theater.
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Feb 15, 2024 16:15
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The problem is where do you rank Caradhras. Above or below Durins bane ?
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Feb 15, 2024 16:20
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I'm not going to thank people for every single great answer to my questions as it would just clog up the thread, but you guys give great and detailed answers that I always appreciate, so assume the gratitude is there. The Once and Future Thank You.
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Feb 15, 2024 16:21
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Sauron is kind of weird because it seems to me he inherited a lot of morgothness before Tolkien made the decision to include the hobbit and lotr in the main silmarillion legendarium
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Feb 15, 2024 16:27
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euphronius posted:The problem is where do you rank Caradhras. Above or below Durins bane ? Different scales imo. What’s worse, a haunted house that throws things at you, or a slasher entombed beneath the haunted house basement? euphronius posted:Sauron is kind of weird because it seems to me he inherited a lot of morgothness before Tolkien made the decision to include the hobbit and lotr in the main silmarillion legendarium I think Thu/Sauron was always intended to be a kind of pint-size Morgoth. Like Morgoth, but he can actually be beaten by human(ish) people like Beren and Luthien or Frodo and Sam without the gods directly doing it for them. the Sauron-Numenor story (which predates LOTR) seems to have been conceived as a kind of human echo of the elvish Morgoth myth. the lords of the west arrive oversea and crush the Dark Lord’s army, bringing him back to their western lands as a captive, where however he sows demonic falsehood among them, which eventually brings about death and destruction and the exile of vengeful western princes to the eastern lands to chase him down and make him pay. Heard this one before? skasion fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Feb 15, 2024 |
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Feb 15, 2024 16:28
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The "strength" of a Maiar/Valar varies but it generally rules that the more bound to a physical shape they are, the weaker they become. Morgoth's power was greatly diminished as he took physical form and lost his ability to change form as his wounds mounted. Sauron's fairer form was destroyed with the fall of Numenor leaving only his blackened self to rule Mordor. Gandalf and the Wizarda are intentionally bound in the shape of Men and as such are subject to the same hurts and ailments as mortals despite their divine origins. The more of yourself you put into your works the more it takes out of you. Such is what happened with Morgoth and Sauron's creations, and the same can be said of Feanor's mother and Feanor himself with the forging of the Silmarils. Creation is willpower.
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Feb 15, 2024 16:44
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skasion posted:This is back when her house was called Night and was where dead men’s souls gathered to await judgment. Get this lady a t-shirt that says "More Goth than Morgoth"
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Feb 15, 2024 16:55
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I don’t remember evidence of Feanor weakening at all But he’s kind of special I’m probably forgetting something.
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Feb 15, 2024 16:56
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Did Feonor "fall into shadow" i.e. did he become evil or was he just extra
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Feb 15, 2024 16:57
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Evil ? What is evil? I guess he did evil things. RIP the Teleri. I don’t think he was “evil “ euphronius fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Feb 15, 2024 |
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Feb 15, 2024 16:58
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Might be misremembering but didn't the Valar approach Feanor after the trees were destroyed and the Silmarils stolen to ask if he could forge new ones and he told them to piss off? Partly because Morgoth had twisted him against the words of the Valar but also because the Silmarils could never be replicated? I could be conflating things but it is clear that the Silmarils were a one-time act of creation that Feanor could never do again even if he wanted to.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:07
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I think you are right. But also the trees were gone by then ?
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Feb 15, 2024 17:08
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euphronius posted:I think you are right. But also the trees were gone by then ? Yeah the idea was to fix them via the light of the silmarils but that would involve breaking them and that was no bueno by Feänor
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Feb 15, 2024 17:13
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So did the Silmarils have some sort of corrupting influence ala the one ring? Because Morgoth wanted them bad even though they burned the gently caress out of him, even refused to give them up to Ungoliant though it imperiled his life, and of course Feanor went on elf jihad about it.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:15
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Please. It’s elf crusade. Also yes they were very pretty.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:19
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The trees were dead and Yavanna said she could never make something like that again, but also felt sure she could fix them if she had the Silmarils (as a repository of their light). Feanor gives her this impressive piece of backsass about how for the lesser as well as the greater, there’s things they can only do once, and how it would kill him to break the Silmarils and if they make him do it then he’ll know they’re as bad as Morgoth. So the gods go “ok man, you said it not us.” Then messengers show up to say “your dad is dead and you have no Silmarils anyway” and he REALLY flips his poo poo. zoux posted:So did the Silmarils have some sort of corrupting influence ala the one ring? Because Morgoth wanted them bad even though they burned the gently caress out of him, even refused to give them up to Ungoliant though it imperiled his life, and of course Feanor went on elf jihad about it. This is because Varda “hallowed” them so that “no mortal flesh, nor hands unclean, nor anything of evil will might touch them, but it was scorched and withered.” That is to say, anything that participated in Morgoth’s broader corruption of Arda. euphronius posted:Evil ? What is evil? He listened to Morgoth’s lies. Even before the darkening of Valinor he’s already preaching that the Noldor need to leave and get out from under the gods’ thumb. He draws swords on Fingolfin and later abandons him and all his people to die in the arctic which is pretty evil imo. He’s not innately evil (“nothing was evil in the beginning”) but he was definitely morally ruined by Morgoth.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:26
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The Silmarils are very pretty but not inherently evil like the Ring. Morgoth wanted them because he's a covetous dickhead but the real curse of the Silmarils came when Fëanor invoked his Oath. Once that Oath was in place it goes beyond thinking they're pretty and straight into damnation for anyone who possesses them.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:30
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much of the "Power" level of supernatural characters seems to be more about their willingness to inflict harm or collateral damage on a direct path to fulfilling their desires.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:35
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Feanor and the elves should never have been in Valinor either. gently caress ups all around
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Feb 15, 2024 18:36
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CommonShore posted:much of the "Power" level of supernatural characters seems to be more about their willingness to inflict harm or collateral damage on a direct path to fulfilling their desires. Fun made-up language fact: Quenya has two words which seem to mean power. One is something like “melk”, as in “Melkor”, “he who arises in might”. The other one is something like “val”, as in “Vala”, “a Power, a divine authority”. In the essay “Quendi and Eldar” Tolkien just casually throws out there that both these senses were derived from Valarin language and that “Vala” comes from a verb form of the Valarin common ancestor of the word (not given), the primitive elvish version of which is “mbelek”. In Sindarin the cognates are, respectively, “beleg” (as in “Belegaer”the great sea) and “bal” (as in “Balrog” a demonic power). So the elves who went to go live among the gods developed a distinction between two kinds of power—between Might and Right. For those who stayed behind, the difference was, literally, less pronounced. It’d be interesting to know which sense the elvish term for a Ring of Power employed, but I feel like I can guess.
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Feb 15, 2024 19:59
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If you want to go very Catholic on elven vs manish afterlife, Limbo of the Fathers and Limbo of the Infants from Catholic dogma seem like good analogs. Limbo of the Fathers is where they put all the early pre-Jesus religious people (Moses, David, ...). They sit in a holding pattern there until it's Jesustime, then get transferred to heaven proper. Limbo of the Infants is where they put unbaptized babies. There's no official position on what happens to them and individual priests offer up things ranging from "they're doomed", "they get Jesus-ed via some loophole", or "we don't know, have faith that God is nice" depending on how hellfire-and-brimstone they are.
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Feb 15, 2024 21:37
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zoux posted:So did the Silmarils have some sort of corrupting influence ala the one ring? Because Morgoth wanted them bad even though they burned the gently caress out of him, even refused to give them up to Ungoliant though it imperiled his life, and of course Feanor went on elf jihad about it. The way I've started thinking about it is this: the Silmarils are objects of temptation while the One Ring is an agent of temptation.
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Feb 15, 2024 22:54
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Phy posted:Get this lady a t-shirt that says "More Goth than Morgoth" the goddess of being 16 and posting in your livejournal come to the fairest city in all creation and hang out in the light of the Trees? Nah I'm ok, I think I'll just sit here and look out into the void for another millennia or three.
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Feb 15, 2024 23:14
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Pham Nuwen posted:the goddess of being 16 and posting in your livejournal also broke up with the band to start a solo career
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Feb 15, 2024 23:28
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Pham Nuwen posted:the goddess of being 16 and posting in your livejournal In.,,I think Annals of Aman or somewhere, he describes Nienna as having remembered more of the music of the Ainur than all the other Valar, but also as having been unable to endure to the end of it. So she correctly knows every bad thing that will happen, but does not know why she should have hope.
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Feb 15, 2024 23:36
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Given how the temptations around the Silmarils work out for Doriath and Sirion, really Morgoth was doing everybody a favor by taking them and hiding them deep under the earth (on his head) for so long. It's all Beren's fault for bringing one back home.
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Feb 15, 2024 23:59
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Was the watcher in the water like a product of the void seeping into middle earth from below. It's kind of funny it got outside and is probably gonna sit there for the next eternity. I bet the dwarves could kill it. Drain the big lake its in or something.
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Feb 16, 2024 00:01
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Limbo is a funny belief because Catholics are taught in school that it's a heresy (or blasphemy? I forget which) from centuries ago that we're not supposed to believe anymore, yet it stubbornly persists. Chad laity vs virgin clergy
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Feb 16, 2024 00:13
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Vanadium posted:Given how the temptations around the Silmarils work out for Doriath and Sirion, really Morgoth was doing everybody a favor by taking them and hiding them deep under the earth (on his head) for so long. It's all Beren's fault for bringing one back home. The Nauglamír was dragon-treasure, from the horde that Glaurung seized with Nargothrond. Putting the Silmaril in it was never going to lead anywhere good, but in fairness I don't think at that point anybody had dealt with dragons long enough to know it would be a problem. Plus the Second and Third Kinslayings were Fëanorian oath bullshit, that's not the fault of the Silmarils themselves. Fuckin' Fëanor.
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Feb 16, 2024 00:30
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So is the Arkenstone a silmaril? And is Arda like Krypton and the elves Kryptonian only instead of sending their kids away in spaceships when their world is doomed will they just hook up with whatever humans are left and tell their kids ‘choose the Gift!’?
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Feb 16, 2024 07:41
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the akrkenstone is not a silmaril. However, when the Hobbit was being written, Tolkien put in a lot of the ideas in his other works into it. The elven king who lives in caves in a forest, for example. So the gem that shines with its own inner light that everybody wants is one of those things.
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Feb 16, 2024 07:48
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Edit Cheetah already answered on the arkenstone I don’t understand the other question. Arda isn’t going anywhere soon. euphronius fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Feb 16, 2024 |
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Feb 16, 2024 13:13
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Lemniscate Blue posted:The Nauglamír was dragon-treasure, from the horde that Glaurung seized with Nargothrond. Putting the Silmaril in it was never going to lead anywhere good, but in fairness I don't think at that point anybody had dealt with dragons long enough to know it would be a problem. Right, the fault is with the sons of Fëanor, but a more prudent heroic protagonist or mythical ruler could have been like "no way we're storing the Silmaril in a populated area" and averted a bunch of kin being slain.
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Feb 16, 2024 13:22
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