SirPhoebos posted:I guess that's one part of Tolkein's lore that I never bought: that Middle Earth is actually our own world's ancient history. Although once I had a weird dream where parts of the Simarillion were getting mixed up with Colonial American History He made it up. Or Sam did. Or Sam heard it but edited it out of guilt. Or some later writer added it.
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Jun 2, 2015 16:41
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SirPhoebos posted:Good-bye Chris, and thanks for being a part of this strange journey. Tolkien never said anything either way. Shagrat and Gorbag have some suggestive dialogue that may indicate that they remember the Last Alliance, but that's about it. Against this, we have the significantly different physiology of orcs (on par with hobbits for height, nobody ever confuses them with elves or men) which casts some doubt on their overall similarity to elves. Goblin means orc. It's what Tolkien used in his early writings as a name for orcs, and he abandoned it (along with calling Noldor "Gnomes and Valinor "Faerie") around the time he wrote The Hobbit. A few instances are used in LOTR, where it appears to be a slang term. Bear in mind that most societies in Middle-Earth are literate, and the fall of Gondolin would be remembered in the same way that the Israelite siege of Jericho is today. So Orcs (especially if the Great Goblin is a Maia as has been speculated) remembering the weapons of Turgon and Ecthelion and so on isn't that unbelievable.
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Jun 11, 2015 17:02
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Maiar and Valar don't normally reproduce because they don't hold on to physical bodies for long enough. Melian incarnated herself for long enough to do so, and few other Maiar do (Sauron doesn't until after the Akallabeth, possibly, the Istari might, but they are incarnated as elderly for that reason, and Balrog bodies are probably not capable of intercourse).
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Jun 19, 2015 21:50
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Baloogan posted:are there black or asian elves? Yes, they're called the Noldor and the Teleri
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Jul 11, 2015 13:39
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The way Old English poetry used alliteration is a type of rhyming. It is ancestral to other English poetry, after all.
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Aug 26, 2015 02:18
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Ynglaur posted:Thanks for the responses: I hadn't really thought of those aspects. Is there a version sung in Old English? I wouldn't understand it, but it still might be fun to listen to. http://www.bagbybeowulf.com/dvd/index.html 32+ dollars, alas. But here's a reading of a brief passage: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/stella/readings/OE/BEOWULF.HTM
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Aug 26, 2015 03:15
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Fëanor is interesting to me because he makes clear that Melkor isn't the source of evil, and that Elves are urged to much greater evils than other intelligent creatures. Where a Dwarf's desire to accumulate beautiful things or a Man's desire for bodily immortality can be something that only harms themselves, the Elven desire to hold things in perfect stasis is inherently harmful to the world around them.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:14
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The whole Akallabeth thing was shoehorned into the mythology, and Tolkien never really managed to fit it in. I think if he had managed to put together the Notion Club Papers as a novel, he'd have significantly revised the Gift of Man and/or used the nascent notion in some of his notes that Ar-Phârazon's army and Numenor were preserved rather than being destroyed. Manwe's actions make more sense if you consider him as being of the opinion that bringing the Eldar to Valinor was a mistake, morally not so distant from Melkor making Orcs and Trolls and Wargs and they probably shouldn't make any more mistakes like that.
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Nov 8, 2015 08:46
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Nessus posted:The message seems to be more like "Do the best that you can and have faith that in the long run, even awful outcomes now will turn in time to the good. On the other hand, actively seeking to hurt and dominate others will eventually gently caress you up." The Trees dying also lead to the Sun and the Moon and light for all of Arda. But the Valar aren't meant to be read as perfect beings, anyways. Tolkien didn't think like that. (This would probably be clearer if Makar and Mëasse survived into post-LotR material.)
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Nov 9, 2015 08:44
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Smoking Crow posted:Why does Tolkien have all these unfinished stories? Did he just forget to finish them? It's really more that for Lord of the Rings he had an impetus continually pushing him forward, which didn't really exist for most of his other stories. "Thriller" or not, if he had agreed to write a sequel to LotR, only death would have left The New Shadow unfinished. For most of his other stuff, it seems to have been plain dilettantry, in a way. Ninja edit: For example, The Notion Club Papers is a reworking of The Lost Road, the Ælfwine story keeps popping back up in various writings up till the last ones known... Effectronica fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 21:48
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100YrsofAttitude posted:So I think there's something to be said in the fact that Tolkien focused on the Children of Húrin after having finished the LotR. Having read the appendix in said book it comes across that it was clearly the most complete of his unfinished drafts, the appendix mentions his other two developed stories to be Beren and Luthien and Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin. Yet it's also by far somehow the bleakest of those drafts. Beren and Luthien is a straight up success and while the Fall of Gondolin is very bad it results in the ultimate victory over Morgoth. The Children of Húrin on the other hand is pretty much all around bleak resulting in the destruction of an elf kingdom and the last two strongholds of Edain. The victory over Glaurung is pretty hollow ultimately even if it's clearly a good thing. The immediately post-war period was extremely bleak. Bear in mind that in Tolkien's hypothetical allegorical LotR in the second edition, the Ring would represent nuclear weaponry and Saruman the USSR. Turin's story was also much more developed than the other two, as Beren and Lúthien was intended for poetic form, I think, and Tolkien never made much more than a brief sketch of the story of Tuor, essential to the Fall of Gondolin. Hogge Wild posted:why are americans obsessed with happy endings Why are Finns alcoholics, Brits terrible cooks? Who can say where stereotype emerges from in the mind?
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Nov 29, 2015 20:48
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Ynglaur posted:Is there a video of this somewhere, or did they wisely scrap the idea before doing the CGI? I remember the (in)famous leaks of There are stills on the ROTKEE DVD's special features, but they never finished it completely.
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Jan 4, 2016 21:03
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Potatoes and pipe-weed are fairly easy to reconcile diegetically if we drop the idea that Middle-Earth is imminently prehistorical or prehistorical at all. Like athelas, they're a relic of Numenorean civilization.
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Jan 12, 2016 19:51
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