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Hi, everybody, I'm finally trying to make it through the Silmarillion again, after giving up a couple chapters in decades ago with a translation. After hearing a bit about how terrible the Noldor were and how much they hosed various things up, I'm a bit distressed to find that just about all of the really big-deal elves I've heard of are actually Noldor, and also most of the Silmarillion seems to be about Noldor adventures which, okay, I could have seen coming given the name. Also I was very surprised to learn that the whole "elves should leave Middle-earth and go to Valinor" thing happened basically at the beginning of history, that just feels super weird because what is the point of introducing a ton of potential characters and then being like "and most of them went home and did nothing worth writing about whatsoever". And then, though I was kind of aware that there used to be some landmass that got sunk into the ocean for some reason or other, I really didn't see it coming that apparently they're going to have all the act 1 history on that landmass and then it disappears and all remaining history is on the next landmass, like you're getting to the next map in a videogame. That seems so wild, I kinda thought Beleriand and Eriador would overlap a ton more and I was just too stupid to find any common landmarks on them aps. Also, as a kid I thought Túrin Turambar was the dumbest name ever and now it somehow sounds really cool to me (even though I still haven't read anything about what he was actually up to). Lots of surprises already and I'm only to the part where, after I'd finally broken down and reread a good chunk while poring over the Beleriand map to figure out where all the rear end in a top hat elves were hanging out, there's apparently a chapter that's pretty much the map in prose. Okay, I have a question that I feel I'm not going to get an answer to in the book any time soon: When the Valar banished the Noldor who participated in the Kinslaying and did not, like, immediately turn around and repent, did that ban extend to all those Noldor's descendents? Does that ever come up, or do the Noldor just not have any kids until the ban is lifted anyway? Also do I have to assume every named Noldor, like, say, Galadriel, who goes on to Middle-earth personally murdered one or more Teleri at that point, or can I pretend that a bunch of them just went along passively like, watching the whole thing go down from a distance and going well, that was hosed up but might as well get on the ships now? How do people (like, in this thread, not the Noldor) generally feel about the Valar policy decisions like not going after Morgoth at all for the longest time? I understand the idea is that they previously went to war and there was some amount of collateral damage and they didn't want any more of that, but just doing near nothing is also kind of hosed up, right? There has to be a middle ground between annihilating continents and, idk, leaving the moriquendi at the mercy of Morgoth? How many elves were there during the initial great journey to Valinor? Are we still talking about a population of few dozen to a couple hundred by the time the Teleri get ferried over? How many Noldor returned to Middle-earth? I'm sure there are no exact numbers given but what order of magnitude feels right to people?
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Feb 7, 2024 10:30
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 15:12 |
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Data Graham posted:That's all just my take, and by no means representative of thread consensus except by accident. Much appreciated!! quote:Whether they took up arms at Alqualondë or not, just following Fëanor was culpable enough. I still keep feeling surprised by how much of the timeline is spent in Valinor instead of Middle-earth. quote:In that spirit you kind of need the populations to be reasonably big, otherwise your experimental results won't be very good.
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Feb 7, 2024 13:34
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Do you think Tolkien had the elves call themselves Quendi, the Speakers, because his own last name is basically "talking"
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Feb 9, 2024 04:26
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Okay, so whenever an elf and a human fall in love there's apparently a big deal about the elf having to give up their immortality for it to work out (okay I don't even get why that's necessary but ignore that), is there any consideration of instead the human giving up their Gift of Death, sacrificing their mortality to spend an immortal life with their beloved elf until the end of Arda etc?
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Feb 9, 2024 09:47
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Foxfire_ posted:Only elves with mortal ancestry get to choose (unrelated to any falling in love, they have to decide anyway at some point). Oh I figured that was Luthien's deal too, I haven't actually read her story yet, whoops, I see now it's a bit extra.
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Feb 9, 2024 10:38
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I have now read the Luthien chapter of the Silmarillion and it is absolutely wild that they simply walk into Mor Also what a good dog.
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Feb 9, 2024 13:05
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Yeah I mean if you can stab him in the foot and get lasting damage, you could probably at least poke the eyes out or something? He's a god but by then he's stuck in that incarnation, right?
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Feb 9, 2024 13:31
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Right so I'm not saying "Luthien is an idiot and it's her fault the war didn't end there", it just makes the story even in its short version stand out very clearly as a completely different genre from the previous Noldor warfare play-by-play, along with all the were-wolves and vampires and shapeshifting. My understanding was that the whole elven history kinda exists as a backdrop for Beren and Luthien, so it's not too surprising!euphronius posted:If you like the luthien story it’s worth while going and reading the longer versions in the home books Yeah I'll definitely get there eventually! I've been looking forward to HoME in general but I have a lot of catching up to do first.
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Feb 9, 2024 21:05
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Okay, so, obviously the name Brandybuck derives from Brandywine/Baranduin, but does Meriadoc derive from Eriador in any way? (If we're going along with the conceit that Meriadoc was just Tolkien's translation of an even goofier name, can we pretend the same is true for Eriador?)
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Feb 12, 2024 01:53
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More Silmarillion semi-live blogging: jfc Túrin sure makes every possible wrong choice. And yet Glaurung somehow comes off as the bigger idiot for loving around so much just to mess with Túrin.
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Feb 13, 2024 10:24
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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. It feels a bit silly to take the pathos out of the whole thing like that, but I think it meshes well with Eru explaining to Melkor that he can't escape his role as just another aspect of the music of the Ainur, and can't possibly represent a real challenge to Eru's authority.
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Feb 15, 2024 12:27
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Maybe we're already on Arda 2 and these are the second-stringer Ainur. 
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Feb 15, 2024 12:48
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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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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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As a kid when I first learned about the existence of The Lord of the Rings (via coming across a synopsis of the LotR SNES game, lol), I was already aghast that "they" were getting away with such a blatant ripoff or retread of The Hobbit. This Frodo is obviously a knockoff Bilbo, and then the quest proceeds the same way pretty much? The wizard guy makes him leave the shire and hike east and then they hang out with Elrond? Come on. Then I learned more about Lord of the Rings and realized that no it's really its own full story, and then I learned even more and realized that no it isn't
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Feb 16, 2024 14:28
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After the War of Wrath, were the previously exiled Noldor only allowed as far as Tol Eressea rather than Valinor proper? I think there's a few mentions of the exile being lifted but I guess not entirely? Whenever it gets specific it seems to only mention Tol Eressea but I'm not clear on whether the Noldor just liked it better there at that point or whether they're still too doomed to hang out with the Vanyar and Finrod and Finarfin. There's a bunch of mentions that humans would suffer from living in Valinor, like that's why the Numenor people had to stay on Numenor etc. Why did they build Valinor like that, did they want to exclude humans to begin with? How did that affect the LOTR crowd like the hobbits and Gimli? Did they also just go to Tol Eressea? Would the Valar have been okay with Numenoreans hanging out in Tol Eressea? The Valar attitude towards humans as a whole still seems kinda lovely. Also what was Earendil's deal, he just gets turned into a star and that's it for him? He's never like "hm might be nice to check in on my kids", just sails across the sky and then maybe hangs out in Valinor during his time off at least as long as the world is flat and they don't need stars during the day? Is this also supposed to read as kind of a Valar punishment on a king of mortal who stepped foot on Valinor? Also, completely unrelated, when people say "the Wise", is that like a specific enumerated group of people, or just generally people somewhere near the level of Galadriel and Elrond? Vanadium fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 10:24
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I think with questions like whether Balrogs have wings we should defer to illustrators like this Cor Blok fellow I just learned about.
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Feb 29, 2024 06:35
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 15:12 |
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quote:So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing. Rereading Fellowship, there's a ton of neat details in there that I had zero memories of, it's great.
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Mar 13, 2024 20:38
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