#but I think it doesn’t seem like forcing Tolkien to be GOT

[hayleysayshay]

Still thinking about the supposed LOTR show intro; I don’t think it’s amazing but also, the whole thing with Amazon buying Tolkien and producing this show was that they wanted Game of Thrones V2 and ppl were worried that they were going to take the Tolkien estate and make them ~edgy~ and shit but if floating top-halves of smiling and stern and thoughtful characters really is the intro then this is actually the vibe I can dig. I want cheese and heart and characters not ~edgy~ stuff so like I’m fine with it. Give me more.

[archivxx]

✯[0.04]✯

Previous || Next

Note: my friends will find out and they will most likely hate me. For some reason, I don’t blame them.

“Is it a prank? It has to be a prank. Am I on national television? Where are the hidden cameras? How do I look?”

“It’s not a prank. There are no cameras.” You adjusted the strap of your bag on your shoulder and stepped to the side to avoid being ran over by an electric scooter. “But now that you mention it, you look great—especially for this hour.”

Nichole didn’t blush, but it was a close thing. “Last night I did one of those masks that you and Craig got me for my birthday. That one that looks like a panda? I also got a new sunscreen that’s supposed to give you a bit if a glow. And I put on mascara,” she added under her breath.

You could ask her why she’d gone the extra mile to look fabulous on a run-of-the-mill Tuesday morning but you already knew: obviously Tolkien would be here today therefore she would be seeing him.

You hid a smile. As weird as the idea of your best friend dating your ex sounded, you were glad that she allowed herself to consider Tolkien romantically. Mostly, it was nice to know the indignity you’d put yourself through with Donovan on The Night was paying off. That, all together, with Pete’s very promising potential business offer had you thinking things might be finally looking up.

“Okay.” Nichole chewed on her lower lip, deep in concentration. “So it’s not a prank. Which means that there must be another explanation. Let me find it.”

“There is no other explanation to be found. We just—”

“Oh my God. Are you trying to get citizenship? Are they deporting you back to Canada because we’ve been sharing Kyle’s Netflix password? Tell them we didn’t know it was a federal crime. No wait, don’t tell them anything, we’ll get you a lawyer. And, Y/N I will marry you. I’ll get you a green card and you won’t have to—”

“Nichole.” You squeezed your friends had tighter to get her to shut up for a second. “I promise you, I’m not getting deported. I just went on a single date with Donovan.”

Nichole scrunched up her face and dragged you to a bench. She forced you to sit down. You complied, telling yourself that had the roles been reversed you would have absolutely had the same reaction. Hell, if you had caught Nichole kissing Donovan you would have enlisted her for full-blown psychiatric help.

“Listen,” Nichole started, “do you remember last spring, after the album release party, when I held your hair back while your projectile vomited the five pounds worth of spoiled meat?”

“Yeah. I do.” You cocked you head, pensive. “You ate more then me and never got sick.”

“Because I’m made of sterner stuff, but never mind that. The point is; I am here for you, always will be. No matter what. No matter how many pounds of spoiled meat you projectile vomit, you can trust me. We’re a team, you and I. And Craig when he’s not pissing off the population. So if Donovan is secretly a extraterrestrial life-form planning on taking over the Earth that will ultimately result in humanity being enslaved by evil overlords who look like cicadas, and the only way to stop him is dating him, you can tell me and I’ll inform NASA—”

“For god sakes.” —you had to laugh—“it was just a date!”

Nichole looked pained. “I just don’t understand.”

Because it doesn’t make sense. “I know, but there’s nothing to understand. It’s just…We went on a date.”

“But…why? N/N, you’re beautiful and smart and funny and have excellent taste in clothes, why would you go out with Clyde Donovan?”

You scrunched your nose. “Because he is…” It cost you, to say the word. Oh it cost you. But you had to. “Nice.”

“Nice?” Her eyebrows shot so high they almost got lost in her hairline.

She does look extra cute today, you reflected. Pleased.

“Clyde “Dick” Donovan?”

“Well yeah. He is…” you looked around, as if help could come from the bushes or the people rushing by on their ways to work. When it didn’t seem forthcoming you finished, lamely. “He’s a nice asshole I guess.”

Nichole’s expression went straight up disbelieving. “Okay so you went from dating someone as cool as Tolkien to going out with Clyde Donovan.”

Prefect. This was exactly the opening you had wanted “I did. And happily, because I never cared that much about Tolkien.” Finally, some truth in this conversation. “It wasn’t that hard to move on. Honestly. Which is why—please, Nichole, put that boy out of his misery. He deserves it, and above all, you deserve it. I bet he’s here today, or we’ll I know he is.” You gestured to the building. “You should ask him to accompany you to coffee when he’s done with the other business meeting and to horror movie festivals so I don’t have to sleep with the lights on for the next six months.”

This time, Nichole was flustered. She looked down at her hands, picked at her fingernails and then she began to fiddle with the hem of her shorts before saying, “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, if you really think that—”

The sound of an alarm went off from Nichole’s pocket, and she straightened to pull out her phone. “Shit. I’ve got a “meeting” with Stan.” she rolled her eyes. “To discuss vocals for some of the songs.” She stood up picking up her bag. “Want to get together for lunch?”

“Can’t. Already promised Kyle we’d go grocery shopping.” You smiled. “Maybe Tolkien’s free, though.”

She rolled her yes. But the corners of her mouth were curling up. It made you much more than a little happy. So happy that you didn’t even flip her off when she asked “Is he blackmailing you?”

“Huh?”

“Donovan. Is he blackmailing you? Did he find out that your an aberration and pee in the shower?”

“First of all, it’s time efficient.” You glared at her. “Second, I find it oddly flattering that you think Donovan would go to these ridiculous lengths to get me to date him.”

“Anyone would, N/N. Because your awesome.” Nichole’s grimaced before adding, “Except when you’re peeing in the shower.”

Tolkien was acting weird. Which didn’t mean much, since Tolkien had always been abit awkward. Having recently split from you to date your best friend was not going to make him any less so—but today he seemed even weirder than usual. He came into the coffee shop next door to the record company, a few hours after your conversation with Nichole. And proceeded to stare at you for two good minutes. Then three. Then five. It was more attention then he’d ever payed you—yes, including your dates.

When it got borderline ridiculous, you lifted your eyes from your laptop and waved at him. Tolkien flustered, grabbed his latte from the counter and found a table for himself. You went back to rereading your two line email for the seventieth time.

Not twenty minutes later, Tweek walked in and took a seat next to Tolkien. They immediately started whispering to each other and pointing at you. Any other day you would have been concerned and a little upset, but Pete Thelman had already answered your email, which took priority over…anything, really.

Yes! You had several days to convince him to take on your project, which was much better than the ten minutes you had originally anticipated. You fist-pumped—which lead to Tolkien and Tweek staring at you more weirdly. What was up with them, anyway? If Tolkien knew what you were doing he certainly wouldn’t be giving you that look, besides there shouldn’t be any bad blood between you and him. Did you have toothpaste of your face? Who cared? You were going to meet Pete Thelman and convince him to let the band do work with for the charity. You were going to help cancer research.

You were in an excellent mood until two hours later. When you entered the apartment and Kyle was sat on the couch. Upon hearing your entering, he paused the show he was watching and looked at you.

“You sneaky little monster.” He hissed his green eyes were almost comically narrow. “I’ve been texting you all day.”

“Oh.” You patted the pocket of your jeans then your front pocket. “I think I might of left it here today.”

“I cannot believe it.”

“Believe what?”

“I cannot believe you.”

“I don’t know what your talking about.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We are.”

“Good friends.”

“We are. You, Nichole, and Craig are my best friends. What—”

“Clearly not if the had to hear it all from Tweek, who heard it from Bebe, who heard it from Tolkien, who heard it from Nichole—”

“Hear what?”

“—who heard it from I don’t even know who. And I thought we were friends.”

Something icy crawled it’s way up your back. Could it be…No. no, it couldn’t be. “Hear what?”

“I’m done. I’m letting the cockroach’s eat you. And I’m changing the Netflix password.”

Oh no. “Kyle, hear what?”

“That your dating Clyde Donovan.”

Masterlist

[elmendea]

“I don’t speak firefly...”

 Okay. I’ve got control of my feels and now I’m ready to talk about the first two episodes of RoP. Spoilery stuff under the jump, so be warned!

I’m going to get what I didn’t like out of the way first, because it’s a much smaller list than I thought it would be. Some of this is very, very nitpicky/from the perspective of a linguist, so YMMV. And that’s all cool!

Finrod’s hair. ugh, just. UGH. way, way too modern. broke my immersion immediately. Elrond’s and Celebrimbor’s hair I can learn to tolerate, but Finrod looked like he stepped out of a primary world hairdresser just last week. odd.

the introduction to the Harfoots was a little bit on the cheesy side

the whole “these warriors have earned their passage back to Valinor” thing was a little...I don’t feel it was extrapolated enough? After the War of Wrath, the ban of the Valar was lifted for the Noldorin exiles and Valinor was open to any of the Eldar who wished to leave Middle-earth. There was no ‘earning’ involved with it. Now, because the Professor umm’d and ahh’d about Galadriel’s personal ban, it could possibly work for her, earning her passage, but I think it would have been a little closer to canon if the warrior elves had been presented as choosing to go to Valinor, as they felt their personal duties on Middle-earth had been done.

the way the warrior band stood on the boat as it sailed. Did they...assume that position for the whole trip? I just. *gigglefit*

also puzzled as to why everyone apparently is required to wear white while in Aman...

me getting my linguist on: Poppy using the word “okay”. that jolted me out of immersion; “okay” has only been used in the primary world for the last couple of centuries; it’s distinctly modern and it’s so weird to hear it in a world where it wouldn’t even exist.

I still don’t like the costume designs for the elves (although in the series they admittedly look much, much prettier than in the trailers -- you can see the details of the fabrics and the accoutrements much better),  Celebrimbor especially (I just...why would you want to make such a stately character look so dowdy? Especially if they’re being played by Charles bloody Edwards, for goodness’ sake!). And while I don’t have a problem with the design of the Southlander’s apparel, some of it -- especially Bronwyn’s (gorgeous) blue dress -- doesn’t look at ALL worn enough, and seems too bright. The Southlanders aren’t rolling in money or culture, rich fabrics should be out of their price limits, so to speak.

Now. WHAT I LOVED.

that cinematography. This series isn’t even eye-candy, it’s eye-HEAVEN. Everything is so gorgeous and sweeping. I’m incredibly partial to the elven places (someone take me to Lindon. NOW.), but holy crap Khazad-Dum was amazing, too! The look on my face during that entry scene was exactly the same as Elrond’s!

THAT. SCORE. Bear McCreary is a force of nature and criminally underrated.

I’m still not sure why, but the boat coming to Valinor (or approaching its borders, technically) scene made me tear up something dreadful. It was just...so beautiful. The music, the golden light, the birds that swirled around the ship, the parting clouds...

Elrond. Elrond, Elrond, ai, meldenya Elerondo. Robert Aramayo played him to perfection. You can see his youth and inexperience, but you can also see hints of the mighty elf lord that he will eventually become. And he really does seem as kind as summer, too! And...SO ADORKABLE. The way he lit up when he was told Galadriel had arrived. Their friendship is EVERYTHING. (So yeah, haters, he talks to her very directly because they’re close and he cares, so can we just let all this “how DARE he speak to Galadriel like that!” claptrap die already?

Galadriel. Holy crap, Nerwen, my beautiful girl. I love how we can see the side of her that Tolkien wrote about in Unfinished Tales, that fire she has in her belly, that horrific knowledge which will eventually be tempered into wisdom. Morfydd Clark’s performance was absolutely astounding -- how she managed to have that utter longing and yet tearing hesitation in the Valinor scene is beyond me, and it’s wonderful.

Celebrimbor. I just. Charles Edwards nailed him, his enthusiasm and his longing to do something of consequence -- not for himself, but for Middle-earth. Also, his whole “I like people who create things, I don’t care what race they are, I just wanna see the awesome” is just...so...pure. And that guarded sort of look he had when Elrond was admiring Fëanor’s hammer, like he’s quite conflicted about his heritage...goddamn, man. He has my whole damn heart and he can encase it in silver filigree and keep it forever. ♥ ...oh I am gonna be a frickin’ MESS by the end of this, aren’t I.

The Harfoots. I was so prepared to hate them, but I was so pleasantly surprised -- they’re just like the hobbits of the Third Age, simply nomadic. There’s still that sense of family and community, the little sparks of adventurousness here and there, and they’re honestly adorable. 

Nori. I was actually positive I was going to hate her and she’d annoy me to the sky, but she’s so cute! A cute, determined, scared but brave, wilful little sprite of a hobbit. There’s definitely something Tookish about her.

Dísa is A M A Z I N G. She’s warm, personable, friendly, bold, brash, larger than life, heckin’ gorgeous, and oh god I ship her and Durin so hard. Their relationship just...*clutches heart* I really get that their relationship is solid enough for her to be able to tell him in absolutely no uncertain terms that he’s being an ass, and she does NOT approve, but this doesn’t change her love for him remotely. (I wanna see the wee dwarves, too! More of their family in later eps, please please please!)

Oh, Arondir. He tries to remain so stoic, but his sorrow and worry is heavy around him like a cloak, and how Ismael Cruz Cordova managed to show that is just great. Also, him and Bronwyn! They barely held hands in either episode but it’s so obvious they’re helplessly in love -- emphasis on the helpless; they both know it can’t happen. But they love, love, love, they can’t help it. I have way too many feelings about them, way too many. (...they’re gonna break my heart, aren’t they? Well, I mean, technically everyone is going to, because, uh...Second Age and all, but.)

speaking of best mama bear Bronwyn: I love her hair, the braided-in-kerchief thing. I’m gonna try that on my own hair, I think.

loved the little name drops and hints here and there -- Elrond mentioning Fëanor, Durin and Dísa mentioning Aulë, etc etc. If you don’t have the rights to film it...just mention it! (So yes, the writers have delved into the lore, after all!)

Overall, 8/10. And I’m just. I’m so happy to be back in Middle-earth. The trailers and teasers don’t show how good it really is. I have never been that happy after finishing a TV episode of anything before in my life. I’m so looking forwards to the next five years! ♥

[sehnsuchts-trunken]

alright so this is a matchup for the lovely @kameon (who’s also doing one for me btw, so thank you!) - okay first of all i had so much fun reading through your info? it may be the website, but the layout is amazing and in general its just really aesthetic? like. omg. but anyway, enough of me talking

I ship you with... 

Aragorn! 

and no i did not just pick him because i was lazy and he’s one of the protagonists, but like, he just fits best you know. he just. it just works. so let me tell you why 

- Aragorn is well able to match your personality and I believe he’s the only one who can perfectly understand all of your moods. He too seems intimidating at first - especially when he’s sitting brooding in a corner with his hood down, darling i love you but was that dramatic flair necessary - so he has no problem working through that upper layer of your character and quickly meeting a much more excitable person. He definitely values your honesty and your confidence in speaking your mind, which makes communication between the two of you easy, if not always in the sense of agreement. Neither of you ever have to fear lies or mistrust. Aragorn is also one of these people who immediately catch on to the slightest irritation, so whenever you feel annoyed or unnerved, he notices and manages to get you out of that situation. When you’re struggling, self-sabotaging, criticising or overthinking, he’s the most supportive partner you could wish for. He makes sure to offer his help with whatever matter upsets you, but he’ll also just do his best to make you feel comfortable if you decline. 

- I do think his love languages are quality time and acts of service both, but really all of Tolkien’s characters have acts of service as their love language. Like, name one who doesn’t. So he may not be as set on physical touch as you are, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t absolutely enjoy it. Especially because he notices that it’s important to you, so he’ll pay extra attention to it. He’s also just very soft about it. His touches are always feather-light and lingering and the complete opposite of the brute force he shows on a battlefield (I love characters like this sm). 

i might have got a bit distracted at this point and watched like ten minutes of “aragorn entering helm” edits but like, a lady gotta do what a lady gotta do. anyway

- Because he’s an absolute horsegirl, I can totally see the two of you bonding over horses, travelling more than necessary, dates on horseback... or in the stables, maybe, or both. Even though he’s not really reckless (but still impulsive and mindless at times, let’s be real, Aragorn in battle is the exact opposite of what we usually see from him and, again, I adore characters like this sorry i’m rambling so much btw) I think that’s a very different thing when it comes to horses - he would definitely join you when you’re training a young stallion, even though usually he keeps you from doing crazy things that have a higher chance of you dying than normal life does. Like, he’s an absolute horsegirl and that’s all this paragraph is. 

- In general though I just feel like the two of you could share a lot - because you take up so many hobbies and often jump from one to the other, he’ll be able to show you a lot of his as well, so I’m just picturing him giving you a few swordfighting lessons or teaching you Sindarin or how to make use of a bow. And he certainly will have just as much interest in all the things you could show him and, especially, in all the things you both adore - like your love of music, for example. It’ll be very special to him that you trust and cherish him enough to share things that you usually keep to yourself and, well, you know you can trust him because he’s Aragorn, he’s respectful as fuck and he would never do anything that could possibly harm you. 

- Also!! This is totally dependant on the world Tolkien created, but during battles like Helms Deep, Aragorn would never leave you behind to “stay safe” if you wanted to fight (which I personally think you would, if only so that Aragorn wouldn’t go out alone and maybe die). He’d give you one of his weapons - if you didn’t already have one of them anyway, which is just as possible - and stay as close to you as he could manage during a fight, not because he thinks you can’t defend yourself, but because just in case, he wants to be there, whatever that case may be (it’s normal to think about someone dying, right, in the midst of battle? even when you don’t want to consider it truly, you do picture what you’d do if the other one got killed) though luckily it hasn’t happened so far. Anyway my point is that you’d make a super duper battle power couple because of what I said before, like him teaching you how to wield some weapons and you doing the same for him, and just the blind trust that exists between you two.

[fandom-frenzy]

“It’s an adaptation, of course it’s going to change things!”

Alright, I want to talk about this phrase. I’ve been seeing it crop up a lot lately. The implication is that movies and shows based on books that do a direct page to screen translation are bad. They are right. The words they’re saying are true and right. But they’re usually said in order to shut down critiques from others about the adaptation.

The vast majority of adaptation critiques are fully aware that changes will happen. Sure, there are the people complaining about diverse casting or who do actually want a line by line film that are making the criticisms in bad faith. But most people when critiquing the thing are complaining about why a thing was changed.

The way I see it, there are three types of changes creators make in adaptations.

1. Changes that streamline plot or character motivation

2. Changes to highlight and bring out less explored nuances/areas of the story

3. Changes because they think their ideas will make more money/cultural impact than what was in the original

I’ve been seeing an awful lot of people calling Tolkien fans hypocrites for complaining about changes to RoP while holding up PJ’s films as a pinnacle of adaptation, when PJ made lots of changes too. These people seem to misunderstand the types of changes. Nearly all of PJ’s changes (in LotR, the Hobbit is a different story) fall under the first kind. Removing Tom Bombadil? No Scouring of the Shire? Streamlining plot. Faramir’s changes are the most inexcusable, and even then the reasoning behind it was still characterization (building up the ring’s influence over Frodo for 2 movies, then a character that just goes “Nah”). Whereas, with RoP, the most obviously glaring change is to Galadriel’s character, and the change is because....well, I guess because a woman who doesn’t swordfight and isn’t headstrong, stubborn against authority won’t sell.

That’s the same problem the Netflix Persuasion had, their changes to Anne’s character made it seem like the creators just didn’t think audiences would like a quiet, soft spoken, introverted main character.

And what I don’t get is why on earth the third type exists! If the thing was good enough to gain a following large enough that using its name and characters will make you more money than not doing that, then you should understand the reason it has a large following is for the plot and characters! THAT YOU’RE CHANGING!! And if it’s not big enough to have a following that makes using the name lucrative, then make your own thing!!

And don’t give me any of this nonsense about how it is being made for “casual fans/people unfamiliar with the thing.” If they’re unfamiliar, then they can enjoy a proper adaptation because they have no prior expectation!! If they’re a casual fan, then they still get it when a big change is made! Even casual fans knew that Perrin/Egwene was not a thing in WoT! So when you change stuff arbitrarily, because you think strong women are only those that wave a sword while quipping, or that audiences need everything spelled out to them, or because people don’t understand that a musical genre automatically includes singing, or because you think your new plot is going to make you the next GoT (Please. Please. Stop trying to become GoT. You cannot force a cultural moment) then all you do is alienate the established user base and make a mediocre product that fades from memory after all the hater-hype has died.

I don’t have a conclusion to this I just was thinking a lot and needed to get it out there.

[vitos-ordination-song]

I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in their totality by age 6; the stories were so beloved to me as a child. Tbh they were more a foundation of a reality to me than anything. Like, I hated living in many ways (edgelord baby), all I wanted was to live in fiction, and so for years, Middle Earth was my home. I got into Silm at the beginning of college. Then I like… grew up and gained political awareness and such. At one time, Tolkien’s writings were just normal to me, but you get a little distance from them and it’s like damn this shit is WEIRD. Tbh I can’t believe he ever sold a copy of LOTR—The Hobbit is at least salable as a children’s book, but what is even going on w his other stuff.

Weird is good of course. And there’s a lot to love about Tolkien’s writing. I know not everyone agrees but I think both his prose and poetry are beautiful. I love the mythology, the scope of the world, the mood/tone, the characters… the sheer imagination. But at the end of the day, the entire Tolkien ethos is deeply Christian and kinda ethnonationalist? Eurocentric? Colonialist? Just flat out racist?

I never really had an issue w the portrayal (or lack thereof) of women in Tolkien, who cares, but the cultural/racial bias is baked in. I mean, it’s constant. Tolkien doesn’t seem like he was a hateful guy, I don’t believe he was consciously a bigot or anything, but goddamn he was such an old British guy 😭 “The West” is good, while “the East” is bad. There’s “lesser men” and “greater men.” He really needed the reader to know that white skin is beautiful and all the bad men are “swarthy.” I remember Miyazaki calling Japanese ppl who loved the LOTR movies idiots for not realizing that the orcs are stand-ins for Asians and Africans. Can you blame him for thinking that?

So like, I still do have appreciation for Tolkien’s universe, but what was it in service of? Beyond any racial politics, it’s all so Christian I could vomit. I like Christian themes when they’re interesting, but Tolkien’s only end goal for his world was war: defeat the Bad Forces and then The Good Guys can go to heaven. I just don’t get all that much out of it.

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

For those who missed it: when Amazon released the trailer for The Rings of Power, the comment section was soon filled with comments in dozens of different languages that were all variations of a quote misattributed to Tolkien: “Evil cannot create anything new; it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or created by the forces of good.” 

While this isn’t actually a Tolkien quote, it does paraphrase a major theme in his books. For me, it was very heartening to see Tolkien fans from all over the world emphatically reject Amazon like this. Sure, they’re a little confused (it’s not a real Tolkien quote), but they’ve got the spirit. 

And so I’m glad to see that the backlash against The Rings of Power has been getting more news coverage in recent days. But this part of the article jumped out at me:

But just what are the commenters angry about? Amazon’s much-criticised labour practices, perhaps, or Jeff Bezos’ foray into billionaire space tourism? No, the complaints largely seem to be about the trailer itself: its gleaming CGI-ishness, changes to Tolkien’s original story, minor details to sigils, dwarves and the like and – most pointedly – the fact that it seems a pale imitation of Peter Jackson’s much loved (and still fairly recent in the memory) adaptation.

I’m sorry, I can’t get over heraldry being called sigils.

The thing is, everyone posting the misattributed Tolkien quote probably has their own personal reasons for posting it. But I think it’s pretty clear that we’re angry about all of the above. Anyone commenting about evil under Amazon’s trailer is probably talking about, well, Amazon. Because bad CGI is bad—but it’s not evil. Amazon, though? Definitely evil. And while many of us are upset about the changes to canon and the boring, generic aesthetic of the trailer, many of us are also upset about Amazon’s lack of ethics. In fact, many of us are upset precisely because of both of these things. How could a company this greedy and evil even be expected to do Tolkien’s stories justice? It’s not possible. 

And so, I find it frustrating that the handful of news articles that have covered this issue have dismissed the fan backlash as people upset about “minor details” (many of which aren’t so minor) rather than people upset about the monetization of these beloved books by an evil corporation. But it doesn’t really matter what the news reports. I just hope that Tolkien fans will continue to stand up to Amazon.

[dothwrites]

15.18 coda--the best of things

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.― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

---

There’s something. 

This is significant because, for as long as Castiel can remember, there’s been nothing. 

The Empty alternates between shoving him forcefully into sleep and yanking him out of it, just so he can experience the full horrors of wakefulness. He wanders and doesn’t know if he’s walking, screams and listens as his cries are swallowed by the darkness. He pulls at his hair just to feel, but even that bright pain is muted. 

I want you to suffer, the Empty had warned, and so far, it’s lived up to its promise. No, he doesn’t regret anything, he’d make the same decisions time and again, as long as they led him here, but he can’t deny that he is suffering. 

It would be better if he could somehow quench the little gutter of light and warmth that still resounds in his chest, but he can never quite manage to do so. Somehow, it still beats, giving him purpose, allowing him to set his compass by its enduring beat. 

And somehow, impossibly, there’s finally something for it to latch onto. 

Castiel walks forward, feeling the sensation of movement for the first time since he can’t remember when. His steps quicken as he runs towards the something, towards something that he almost forgot. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, how many centuries have passed. Time ceased to have meaning a long time ago, and in between bouts of sleeping and waking, Castiel forgot the knack of telling it. Now, he remembers, along with other long forgotten concepts such as fatigue and hope. 

His long neglected heart beats then, violently, with enough force to send him staggering. Castiel runs faster. 

If he were human, if this were earth, then the breath would be tearing out of his lungs. As it is, he feels a ripping in his chest, like he’s shredding apart from the inside out. He feels like a piece of paper torn in half, and he doesn’t know how much of him will be left by the end, but he continues to sprint forward. 

There’s something up ahead. 

A faint golden glimmer, a thread of hope so slender that if he thinks about it too long then he’ll shatter. It twists and turns in front of him, so far in the distance as to almost be a mirage. 

But for once, there is distance. 

Castiel forces his legs to keep moving, even as the pain claws through his chest, ripping into his very essence. Every step brings him the worst pain he’s ever known, but he doesn’t dare to stop. He keeps his eyes fixed on the golden line, now guttering as though it’s struggling to survive. With every step, memories flood back to him. 

The scent of coffee in the mornings when he would start a fresh pot before Dean and Sam awoke. 

The smell of leather and gasoline as he sat in Baby’s backseat. 

The feel of blood and grit underneath his fingernails. 

The salt and butter molecules of popcorn exploding across his tongue as he watches yet another inane movie starring a young Harrison Ford. 

The clear sound of Charlie Bradbury’s laughter. 

The whiff of sulfur that followed Meg, the crisp ozone of Hannah, the tang of what he was informed was an ‘84 and not 19, you have no taste, Cassie, by Balthazar. 

The rough flannel of Bobby Singer’s shirt. 

The whisper of Eileen’s fingers moving through 

The fragile strength of Jack, warm through his jacket as Castiel hugged him for the last time. 

The warmth of Sam’s arm slung around his shoulders, the steadiness of him, the unwavering loyalty, the brightness of his smile and joy of his friendship. 

Dean. 

Dean. 

Dean. 

Breath finally tears out of him as he sprints, pushing legs which refuse to move faster to fly. The golden tear glows in front of him, the only bright thing in an eternity of nothing. He has to reach it. He has to. 

A scream rips out of his chest as he stumbles his way forward. By now the pain is almost overwhelming, obliterating everything else except the most basic desire for survival, but he can’t give up, he can’t, he can’t--

Even in Hell, Dean’s soul glowed like a beacon, even when he lost hope he was still the most beautiful thing Castiel had ever seen. The smoke and whiskey smell of him, the strength and gentleness of his hands, the rumble of his laugh, the rasp and growl of his voice, the careful way he handled delicate things, the light in his eyes as he would look at Sam and Jack, the sheer love he’d seen shining out of his soul--

With a desperate cry, Castiel launches himself forward, straining towards the beautiful golden tear. 

His hand goes through the rip in the world and for a second, there’s nothing, nothing, nothing--

Strong fingers grab his wrist and pull. 

It feels like being tugged through quicksand, the Empty finally realizing that something is wrong and seizing onto him. Darkness covers him, and Castiel can’t see anything, can’t scream, can’t hear. All he knows is the strength of the grip around his hand, the fierce flare of hope in his chest even amidst the ripping pain. 

No, he thinks, with all the force left to him, no, I want--

Something finally bursts in his chest, and he thinks he screams, though he doesn’t hear any sound leave his mouth. Instead, he’s pulled, shredded, torn apart, eviscerated, and then, and then--

There’s light and sound and sensation and touch and smell and taste and a thousand different things like gravity and mass and body and Castiel can only gasp, helpless as a newborn as his sightless eyes blink through all the light. 

He’s shivering, cold and aching, and he’s never felt this kind of pain before, but it’s glorious. He wouldn’t give up feeling like this for anything, the sunburst of agony flaring through his body as he tries to sort through his senses to try and understand where he is. 

Something warm and soft settles over his shoulders and it’s then that Castiel becomes aware of his body, down to his toes and fingers and the tip of his nose. Naked, he thinks, somewhat innocuously, that’s why i was cold. 

Then the larger realization comes, which is, if he was naked, that means that he has a body to be unclothed. 

With a final blink, sight returns, though it’s unreliable. Smears of color appear and disappear from his vision, too quickly for him to hope to make sense of them. Sound returns, in deep rumbles like he’s underwater. Stop, he tries to say, let me just wait a second, but his voice doesn’t seem to work. He opens his mouth and all that emerges is a pathetic sounding croak. 

Syllables garble above him and then something cool and hard is pressed to his mouth. Cold and wet explodes over his lips and tongue, and Castiel thinks Water. 

It’s never tasted this good before. 

He gulps greedily until the glass is taken from him. He whines, wanting more, but his wordless request is denied. Touch explodes over his cheeks, his neck, and shoulders, and Castiel struggles to make sense of it. He would like to rest in the comfort of those hands, but they’re gone before he can process their being there at all. 

The sound coalesces into a single word, and Cas blinks, stupefied. He knows that word. More importantly, he knows that voice. 

He tries to force his rusted voice to work, but only a low croak comes out. Frustrated, he licks his lips and tries again, putting all of his force into the word. 

“Dean?” 

Touch returns to his cheeks and this time, it stays. He blinks again, and the haze in front of his eyes clears, and he can finally see that face, familiar and beloved. 

“Dean?” he asks, sure that he must be dreaming, even though the Empty never allowed him to do so. Perhaps this is a hallucination, a cruel manifestation of his hopes, perhaps he’s still there, in all that nothing, and this is no more than a dream--

“Cas, stay with me,” Dean says, his voice urgent and worried. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” His voice breaks on the last repetition and warmth envelops Castiel. 

A hug. Dean is hugging him, somewhat fiercely, if the lack of air in his lungs is to be trusted. 

Castiel blinks, surprised. He’s never needed air before. Come to think of it, he’s never needed water either. 

He shifts underneath the blanket, careful not to dislodge Dean’s arms from around his body. His palm presses flat against his chest. Underneath it, he can feel his heart, beating steady and strong. 

“Human?” he asks, blinking in wonder. 

Dean’s arms release him, though they take a long time to do so, as though he’s regretful. “Yeah,” he says. Castiel’s eyes aren’t working well enough to pick out the intricacies of his facial expression, but he thinks he sees guilt in the depths of Dean’s eyes. 

“It was the only way to get you out. Sam found the spell and Jack powered it up, and I...” It’s then that Castiel comes aware that one of Dean’s hands is bleeding, is leaving smears of red across the blanket and the skin. “I did what I had to do, but there was a catch.” Dean’s breath hitches for a moment before he looks back at Castiel. “You see, we looked into it, and it turns out that the Empty only cares about angels and demons. Humans, it doesn’t have any power over. So in order to get you out--”

“Human,” Castiel repeats, his mind working through the problem. It’s an elegant solution in its simplicity. The ripping and tearing makes sense, as does the pain. 

Anna described tearing out her grace as the worst pain she’d ever felt, like digging a kidney out with a spoon. Castiel understands. His whole body aches with the memory, muscles screaming for rest, his stomach for sustenance, and his nerves for peace. He doesn’t want to sleep; there’s been too much of that. But he does want to rest. 

“Dean.” Castiel pauses to let the word sit on his tongue, to feel the weight of it. It feels as good as it ever did. 

“Yeah, Cas?” 

Castiel could get lost in Dean’s eyes. Have they always been that green? Have those crow’s feet always bracketed them, like lines on a map, proof of a life well lived? 

“Home?” Castiel finally asks, once he realizes that Dean is waiting for an answer. “Can we go home?” 

Dean’s face splits in a smile, kinder than the dawn and brighter than the sun. “Yeah,” he says, though he makes no effort to move. “Yeah, Cas, we can go home.” 

Castiel tilts his head, wondering why Dean doesn’t move. Instead, he looks like he’s working himself up towards something. His teeth bite at his lower lip, while his eyes dart to either side of Castiel, like they can’t bear to land on his face. An unwelcome spike of fear lances at Castiel’s chest. 

“Dean,” he begins, but a harsh movement stops him. 

“I gotta say this,” Dean says, his voice rough. “What you said, before you were...” He swallows before he finally looks at Cas, his eyes brimming over with tears. “I haven’t been able to sleep in a year because all I could think was that I never had a chance to say it back to you.”

Hope flares and bursts in Castiel’s heart. A happiness so bright it’s searing tears through him, and this time, he can feel it, he can feel it all, he can have it--

“I love you,” Dean says, his unbloodied hand resting on Castiel’s cheek. “I love everything about you, you stupid bastard, and don’t you ever, ever try and leave me again, don’t you ever, you’d better die after me because I’m going to stick with you until we’re old and gross and creaky and we’re going to have to figure out how to have old people sex with all my fake joints and--” 

“Sex?” Castiel’s brain might not be working fast enough to pick up on every word Dean says, but he’s aware enough for that. 

Dean blushes, the tips of his ears turning red. “Yeah. I mean. If you wanted. And if you didn’t want, that’s fine, because i know you said once that angels didn’t--”

“I’d very much like to have sex with you,” Castiel interrupts, because even in his state, he can see when Dean is trying to work himself into a hole. “But not right now.” Exhaustion hits him like a wave, dragging him under and only reluctantly giving him up. He looks up at Dean, finally allowing himself to be weak, allowing Dean to step in and take care of him. “Home?” he repeats, wanting nothing more than to sink into Dean’s bed and rest. 

“Yeah, Cas. Let’s go home.” Dean shifts, but doesn’t move, and Castiel is just about to complain about the lack of progress on the home front when Dean leans forward. His eyes are determined, his lips slightly parted, his hand trembling where it rests on Castiel’s cheek. Fireworks and galaxies explode in Castiel when he realizes Dean’s intentions. 

He’s lived through several ice ages, through meteors and wars, through life and death and rebirth. He’s seen the formation of planets and constellations, seen entire solar systems collapse into themselves only to birth a new sun. 

But he’s never seen or felt anything as wondrous as the first touch of Dean’s lips on his. 

The kiss is soft, barely pressure, but it feels like everything. It feels like a promise and a wish. It feels like a homecoming. 

It feels like a beginning. 

---

Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.― Stephen King

A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And it's the most painful thing you'll ever have to do and that you've ever done. But what's yours is yours. Whether it’s up in the sky or here in your hands. And one day, it'll fall from the sky and hit you in the head real hard and that time, you won't have to put it back in the sky again.― C. JoyBell C.

[esther-dot]

What happens un LotR? Aragorn marries Arwen. Tolkien decides also to write a full chapter Oficina Faramir falling un love without Éowyn anda melting her frozen outlook onda life because she accepts her fully as she is. He writes Sam starting a family and his final lines are about Sam returning home to his wife and daughter, to home.

Screw académics! People want to be fullfilled! Life is already hard no us to being beaten un entertainment by more nihilism.

(in reference to this ask)

GoT’s ending was such a mess it wasn’t even really nihilism as much as a smorgasbord of ideas that we can make whatever meaning we want from it! 😆

I think we agree that ASOIAF isn’t nihilistic, so some fans reject the GoT ending in part or as a whole, depending on how they see certain themes, but I did/do accept Martin’s words that the endpoints were his. And, as much as I like happy stories, not getting the perfect happy ending doesn’t make it all pointless. I think the characters can be fulfilled even without getting what they deserve. I think critics sometimes get so tired seeing the same story over and over that they think different = good which isn’t necessarily true. I don’t think the show ending even did well with critics, but the people who said they liked it all seemed to be trying to take a more critical (rather than consumer) view of it.

I’ll always hate Jon’s ending, but so much of his story is about how others view him, how he views himself, who he is, who he wants to be, that some real meaning will be found when given the opportunity to be legitimized as a Stark. If he refuses Winterfell again because he doesn’t want to usurp Sansa, that could be such a beautiful moment for him. Or, say he accepts and ultimately exiles himself to secure her rights or Bran’s reign, yes, it’s unfair, he’s already suffered so much, but such an act of sacrifice is 100% in character, and is not only a testament to his love for his family, but a profound comment on the power of love.

Jon could have been the child raised far away, filled with bitterness and ideas of taking what he wanted by force, but Ned’s choice to raise him as his own, allowing him to love and be loved by the Starks, it might be the thing we’re to see as the decision that changed the fate of Westeros. Learning the truth about his parentage, choosing to defend the Starks/realm against his father’s family, choosing to stop his aunt rather than be tempted by power...there’s a lot of meaning to that when so many other characters fail to reject the toxic legacies of their family.

For Jon to finally have real options and make free choices, for him to know the truth, to be reunited with and loved by the Starks regardless of his parentage, it is the way for him to find peace, even if that peace isn’t perfect. If the author doesn’t want to leave us with everything we want, but instead, the weight of what a future costs, well, it isn’t what I want, but it isn’t nihilism. I think that’s what we’ll get. Beauty, meaning, fulfillment, but not everything we want. 🥺

[incorrectlumityquotes]

Why Amity fell for Luz: A Theory

Watching all the episodes of The Owl House and reviewing them brought back a lot of thoughts and feelings that I maybe forgot about. We all ship things and sometimes we do it for fun; sometimes for deeper reasons. I just started lumity because it reminded me of Diana & Akko from Little Witch Academia. I loved that show so much that I wanted more, and I thought it would be cool if Luz & Amity did something similar. I had no idea that it was going to go beyond that, so DAMN. To quote a talking science wolf, “For years we ask how, but we should ask why.” I mean, we saw how. But why? Well I can take a guess.

If we’re are going to start anywhere it’s going to be with the girl in question, Amity Blight.

As far as I know as of this typing, Amity Blight is a witchling from The Boiling Isles. She lives in Bonesboro at The Blight Manor estate with her parents and her siblings. She attends Hexside School of Magic and Demonics. Good for her.

Amity has an ambitious and competitive personality. She’s always striving to be better and be at the top of whatever she is doing. When she’s introduced in I Was a Teenage Abomination, she’s showing having great pride in being the top student in her abomination class. In Adventures in the Elements, she goes to The Knee in hopes of training to beat her siblings’ high score on the placement exam.

Amity also has a bit of a temper and gets annoyed easily. In I Was a Teenage Abomination, she sics her abominations on Willow and Luz just because she wasn’t named top student that day. In Enchanting Grom Fright, Amity snapped at the person she bumped into before realizing it was Luz. And later in the same episode, Amity beat up Hooty when he decided to get too close.

But she does have a soft sensitive side. She keeps a diary in her secret room in the library and even reads to kids in her free time. Amity also has a strong sense of integrity. She despises cheating (and cheaters) and feels guilt when she’s forced to break ties with Willow.

So why did someone like this fall for Luz of all people? (see above image)

Enter what I call my Shipping Theory of Compliments

The Shipping Theory of Compliments is that two characters would be shipped and sometimes canonically enter a romantic relationship based on their personalities complimenting each other and fulfilling elements they don’t have alone necessary to developing the character.

People like to use the image of a missing puzzle piece, but I don’t like that comparison because I think it’s a little inaccurate and I don’t like puzzles. Think of it more like the two pieces of the yin and yang coming together and then growing the circles of the opposite colors in them.

Something like that.

And it’s compliments, not opposites. When you think compliments, think more Star and Marco from Star vs the Forces of Evil. Star wants to go on a magical adventure. Marco also wants to go on a magic adventure. The difference is that Star goes in recklessly while Marco wants to plan it out a bit. They still have their adventure as oppose to Star’s opposite who wouldn’t want to go on a magical adventure. That sort of thing.

So how do Luz and Amity compliment each other?

Let’s start with that they have in common. Obvious stuff aside, they’re both training to become the best witches they can be. The difference comes that Luz is a human who has to learn magic via glyphs that she finds and Amity learns magic the “proper” way on The Boiling Isles. 

Luz and Amity are also both fans of The Good Witch Azura book series. Difference is that Luz is more open about her fandom while Amity tries to keep it a secret. Also petty thing but they’re both fan artists too, but I think Luz might be a better than Amity. But hey, her crosshatching is improving.

Luz and Amity are also (at the start of the series) both lonely people. Luz’s mom says that she doesn’t have any friends, and Amity doesn’t like her “friends.” The difference is that Luz reaches outward to ease her loneliness (being social and friendly, trying new things, etc.) while Amity reaches inward (keeping a diary, staying busy, having a secret spot, etc.). They both also use escapist fiction to ease their loneliness.

That’s all well and good, but now we get into the real speculative parts. 

...complimenting each other and fulfilling elements they don’t have alone necessary to developing the character.

When I was taking acting classes I was taught that the way you see people act is a persona based on their experiences on what it takes to survive and avoid physical, emotional and social death. So now we have to speculate based on what we were given on what emotional/social needs and wants has Amity not been getting before that she has with Luz.

First let me point you to another show called F is for Family. F is for Family is an adult animated sitcom on Netflix that follows a very dysfunctional family in the 1970s. These are legitimately bad characters, not in terms of being poorly written. What I’m saying is that these guys are assholes. But here’s where it gets interesting.

One of the characters is Kevin Murphy, the teenage son of the family. He’s a dim-witted wannabe rockstar who is always yelled at and put down by his parents throughout the entire series. However in season four Kevin meets Alice. Alice teaches Kevin that his favorite band is a big reference to Tolkien and gives him a copy of The Hobbit. They bond over their love of Lord of the Rings and get along really well. Alice calls him smart for being able to read all of Lord of the Rings over a few days and never puts him down. Even in the one time they did fight she never yelled at him or raised her voice which he found weird because he’s so used to being yelled at. Alice gave Kevin the emotional support he always wanted but never got from his family.

Using that as a backdrop, let’s go back to Amity.

Amity grew up with her parents making her do things she didn’t want to do, making choices for her. Amity wanted to be one way. Her parents wanted something else. Amity’s mother even dyes Amity’s hair green so it matches her siblings. Amity wanted to be friends with Willow. Amity’s parents wanted her to be friends with the mean kids. While Amity does work hard to be the best at what she’s doing, her parents also put pressure on her to make sure that she is at that level. 

Her siblings are another bag of awful. They constantly refer to her by an annoying nickname that I’m guessing has an embarrassing moment attached to it. They seem to live by a double standard that Amity despises. She has to work hard and follow the rules just to be accepted while they are naturally talented and break the rules with everyone still thinking that they’re perfect. 

Family is supposed to provide unconditional love except it looks like the love of the Blights is based on conditions. Nobody just likes Amity for who she is. She doesn’t have a friend.

Enter: the friendliest person she’s ever met

Amity has to struggle and work for the simplest things, even affection. Except when it comes to Luz. Luz is naturally friendly and positive. Amity doesn’t have to earn her kindness. Even when she’s bullied Luz before, Luz is always coming back with a smile. I suppose when you live life surrounded by jerks, you’ll want to hang out with the one person who’s always nice to you. Sort of.

Yes, Amity did think Luz was a bully for constantly getting her into trouble. But even at Covention and Lost in Language, Luz kept reaching out to her. This combined with Amity’s awareness of her own behavior is what convinced her to try to reach out in kind to Luz by the end of Lost in Language. “She’s trying to be nice to me, so I should try too,” I’m guessing is the mindset especially in Adventures in the Elements. And then...Luz continued to be nice to her which is kind of a big deal for Amity.

Let’s tally up what we have so far:

Luz and Amity have similar interests (The Good Witch Azura series, art, fiction, learning magic)

Luz and Amity have similar values (work ethic, disdain for cheating, protecting those closest to you, etc.)

Luz gives Amity the positivity and affection that Amity doesn’t normally get anywhere else

They still have differing personalities with Amity being more competitive and Luz having more of a live-and-let-live attitude.

Even with all these things in mind, why was Amity so scared to ask Luz to Grom?

Speculating again but my theory is that Amity wasn’t sure if Luz actually liked her or if Luz is just friendly because that’s how Luz is. Amity was scared of being rejected because she felt that maybe she was just reading the situation wrong. Luz is this ray of sunshine in her gray skies (if you’ll forgive the cliché). People like Amity always think of all the worst possibilities (I know because I do this too). Amity was probably thinking a bunch of what ifs. “What if Luz doesn’t actually like me? What if she’s just being friendly because she feels sorry for me? What if she has feelings for someone else? What if she never actually liked me? What if she’s straight?”

Luz is Amity’s first crush and it is scary as all hell to put yourself out there like that for the first time. She wasn’t expecting to get married at Grom night. She just wanted to dance with the girl she liked.

The dance at Grom was like confirmation for her that it could happen. Amity didn’t have to ask out Luz because Luz asked her. Being with Luz isn’t a pipedream. It’s a definite possibility. And we all know how she reacted to that idea.

Uh...she’ll be in her bunk.

While Luz and Amity aren’t together as of this typing, I believe it’s bound to happen. Until then, after The Lumity Trilogy, Amity knows that Luz is the girl she likes. 

tl;dr version

Amity fell for Luz because they have similar interests and values, their personalities differ in a compatible way and Luz provides Amity emotional needs and wants that she doesn’t get anywhere else.

Also, round eared girl pretty.

.

Thanks everyone for reading.

[absynthe--minded]

Beren, the Nauglamír, and Editorial Oversight

this is gonna be a long one, guys.

so one of the things that makes Christopher Tolkien’s contributions to the greater legacy of the Tolkien Legendarium so complex is that he, as the posthumous editor of his father’s works, essentially was able to declare what is or isn’t “canon” in a way that no amount of scholarship (fannish or professional) will be able to truly successfully challenge. it’s his vision of Arda that was published as the Silmarillion, and his interpretations of the Professor’s works that have come to act as the standard and the baseline. after all, the Silm’s been traditionally published and translated into many languages; it’s far more accessible than out-of-print/print-on-demand copies of the History, and reading it doesn’t require you to slog through pages and pages of commentary or to have a good solid understanding of what the story is so you can follow along with lists of bullet points outlining events timeline-style.

of course, Chris also made mistakes, and those mistakes became enshrined in canon just as surely as anything else. I and many others have discussed the Gil-galad problem (namely, that Gil-galad’s parentage is oblique and strange at best and downright contradictory at worst, and Christopher’s choice to make him Fingon’s son was an admitted error) but it’s not the only case of a decision later proving to be the wrong one.

with that background, let’s talk about Beren.

Beren and Lúthien are in an unusual position in the Legendarium as a whole. Not only are they the sole author-insert characters, they’re also uniquely positioned as moral compasses - every other person in the Silm is morally ambiguous to some degree, or does bad or questionable things; not so with these two. If Beren or Lúthien does something, it’s explicitly the right thing to do, and this is confirmed by the narrative. If someone else opposes them, that is the wrong course of action. They’re not merely protagonists who make a lot of good choices, they’re good people, and the things they do are right because of their moral fiber and nobility. Of the active agents who are developed to any great degree, they’re the least complex and the most clear-cut, and the narrative itself treats them differently from other characters, validating them and framing them as the sort of spotless heroes that are in short supply in this Age.

This characterization runs headlong into the actions Beren takes in early drafts of the story and in the published Silm, where after dwarves kill Thingol and sack Menegroth, Beren (with the help of some allies, usually either Green-elves or Ents) ambushes them and duels the Lord of Nogrod for possession of the Nauglamír, a necklace originally owned by Finrod in Nargothrond that Húrin brought to Doriath after his release from Angband. Thingol commissioned dwarven artisans to alter the piece and create a setting in it for the Silmaril that Beren and Lúthien had won for him from Morgoth, and there was a dispute about payment that escalated to violence and ended in his death at dwarvish hands. The battle, later called the Battle of the Thousand Caves, was more or less a victory for dwarvish forces, as they escaped both with the Nauglamír and several other treasures from Menegroth and they defeated Sindarin forces that set out to stop them.

In most versions of the story, Melian sends Mablung to Ossiriand to warn Beren and Lúthien of what’s happened, and essentially asks them to do something to stop the retreating dwarvish forces from reaching Nogrod, where they came from. Beren does this, killing the Lord of Nogrod himself and taking the Nauglamír and the Silmaril home to Lúthien, who then gives it to Dior, who takes it back to Doriath when he takes the throne there. This is the version of the tale that’s in the published Silmarillion, and the one that’s consistent throughout the earlier drafts that Tolkien himself wrote.

But it’s not the only version that exists.

In The War of the Jewels, which compiles versions of the story written late in Tolkien’s life, we find The Tale of Years. This is not a cohesive narrative, instead functioning (like many of the writings that make up the bulk of the History of Middle-Earth) rather like a series of bullet points mentioning and summarizing key events. It progresses chronologically, giving a sense of passing time and organization to the First Age, and it has this to say about the Nauglamír and the battle at Sarn Athrad:

“The Dwarves of Belegost and Nogrod invade Doriath. King Elu Thingol is slain and his realm ended. Melian escapes and carries away the Nauglamír and the Silmaril, and brings them to Beren and Lúthien. She then forsook Middle-earth and returned to Valinor.

Curufin and Celegorm, hearing of the sack of Menegroth, ambushed the Dwarves at the Fords of Ascar as they sought to carry off the Dragon-gold to the mountains. The Dwarves were defeated with great loss, but they cast the gold into the river, which was therefore after named Rathlóriel. Great was the anger of the sons of Fëanor to discover that the Silmaril was not with the Dwarves; but they dared not to assail Lúthien. Dior goes to Doriath and endeavours to recover the realm of Thingol.”

(This quote is taken from the latest and typed version of the Tale of Years, an earlier handwritten version exists that is shorter but includes the same relevant details.)

Christopher Tolkien elected not to use this version of events, instead choosing to maintain the earlier tale where Beren had an active role; he was never truly satisfied with this, or with the Ruin of Doriath as a whole. In the commentary to the Tale of Years he wrote that “It seemed at that time that there were elements inherent in the story of the Ruin of Doriath as it stood that were radically incompatible with ‘The Silmarillion’ as projected, and that there was here an inescapable choice: either to abandon that conception, or else to alter the story. I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of the editorial function.” We have, for a second time, an admission of error, though unlike the Gil-galad question there is not a specific choice singled out as a flaw.

Why am I talking about this? Well, simply, I think that the version of the story where Celegorm and Curufin attack the Dwarvish host is the one that makes the most sense, and I’m here to make my case for its adoption as fanon. I’m not trying to take a purely scholarly view - I can’t prove that Tolkien’s true vision was for this version of the text, and of course it’s only in the one draft - but as a fandom we’ve reached the consensus before that specific versions of the story are preferred, even when they only appear in a single draft (Amrod’s death at Losgar stands out as the best example).

So here’s my argument. 

1. Beren is not a violent man, and having him act as a murderer is out of character.

This one is pretty simple - Beren is an outlaw fighting against Sauron, a defender of his family’s land, a nobleman in his own right, and a vegetarian who is keenly aware of what it is to be hunted and pursued. The man we’re introduced to in the other versions of the story is not someone who would answer violence with violence unless there was no other choice, and in fact he becomes less violent as the story goes on. Putting him in a position where he’s acting militarily against the Dwarves introduces elements to his character that simply don’t exist before this story. It’s inconsistent, and it also ends his life on a strange, sour note - he’s not an uncomplicated hero anymore, he’s also got blood on his hands.

2. Beren is one of the moral compasses of the Silmarillion, and having him be the one to spearhead the ambush of the Dwarves frames that act of violence in a very troubling light.

Like I said above, Beren and Lúthien are good people who do good things, and those things are good because of who’s doing them. If Beren kills the Dwarves and the Lord of Nogrod, that act becomes justifiable, and perhaps even the right thing to do, simply due to the fact that one of the two true heroes of the First Age is doing it. The narrative never frames this as a downfall or a moral event horizon for Beren, either - he made the correct decision and the consequences that come afterward aren’t things that can be blamed on him. But wholesale slaughter, even slaughter of people who do bad things, is not something Tolkien ever condones or paints in a truly positive light, so it makes more sense for it to come at the hands of people who aren’t solely positive forces. It’s thematically in line with what Tolkien does through the rest of the text, and it feels more like Arda, at least to me. I think an argument could be made that Tolkien realized that making Celegorm and Curufin the responsible party would achieve this end, and that’s why this version exists in the first place, but there’s no proof of it.

3. The Laiquendi are nonviolent, and it makes no sense for them to be involved in this fight. The Ents being involved at all is somewhat nonsensical based on what we know of them in The Lord of the Rings.

Another simple one - we don’t know much about the Laiquendi, but we know they’re not really keen on warfare or on any undue violence, so having them be Beren’s backup is a weird divergence from their presentation in the rest of the Legendarium. And the Ents are pretty universally depicted as uninvested in the wars of the incarnates, only taking action against Saruman when it becomes apparent they have no other choice - why should they care about Thingol’s death, or care enough to murder dwarves?

4. Melian’s actions make far more sense in a version of the story where she doesn’t merely abandon Doriath once she realizes Thingol is dead.

If Menegroth is already sacked, and she cannot hold the realm together on her own as its Queen without really fucking shit up with reality-warping shadow magic, her choice to abandon it after delivering the Silmaril safely to her daughter and warning her that Dior will be needed soon is far less irresponsible.

5. Celegorm and Curufin ambushing the dwarves makes more sense than any other alternative.

Of course Celegorm and Curufin were actively watching Doriath for any sign of weakness. Of course they noticed the dwarves leaving with stolen treasures, and heard rumors that Thingol was dead and his killers had the Silmaril. Given the choice of following Melian (if they even were aware of Melian’s departure) and following dwarves, of course they picked the dwarves. Their ambush and attack and slaughter is consistent with their past behavior, as is their refusal to attack Lúthien because they were scared as fuck of her.

What’s more, this also explains the Fëanorians’ refusal to attack Doriath immediately after the dwarves do - they were unsure of whether or not Lúthien was in Menegroth and ruling as its queen or acting in some capacity as Dior’s defender. Celegorm in particular isn’t the type to hesitate - he’s impulsive, and rash, and rushes into bad decisions without considering their consequences, it’s even in his name. But they waited for years, giving Dior time to marry and have children of his own, and then even sent letters rather than attack directly - and yes, some of this might have been Maedhros’s influence, or an attempt by all of them to stave off the Oath, but it’s also plausible that they were trying to figure out whether or not they’d have to take on the same woman who made fools of them before.

I, at least, think this version of the story makes the most sense, and I’ll be adopting it into my personal canon. I obviously think it’s worth advocating for on a larger scale, and I hope I’ve made a good argument for its widespread adoption.

[theelvenhaven]

Okay but why did Luthien take only one silmatil from morgoth? Why not two or all and then use them as a leverage against feanorians like "you get these now, and you'll get the rest if u help us with (insert issue)/ or if you quit spilling blood".

11.09.2021

TL;DR: Beren and Luthien tried to take all 3. The oath probably would’ve prevented a bargain, and Luthien probably wouldn’t have given them up anyways because the Silmarils are the physical embodiment of entitlement and greed.

* * *

I’ve actually been reading Beren and Luthien and can tell you why they didn’t. I’m not all the way through it but mostly!

Beren in one part of the story managed to pry one of the Silmarils out with a knife that he stole off Curufin. (Which if I read correctly Beren stripped him of his armor too and literally tossed him aside).

The knife snapped as he tried prying the one out, luckily it was loose enough they still got the Silmaril. In it, Beren tried to take the rest but his because knife snapped, Morgoth was stirring in his sleep and I believe even Luthien was urging him at that point to leave it. Going for the rest would’ve been dangerous.

I think as well it is also dangerous to believe that the Fëanorians would’ve been controlled away with a bargain. As well as that Thingol and Luthien would’ve parted with one let alone two or three Silmarils.

1. Luthien I strongly doubt she would make any bargains with any Fëanorian. Especially after what Celegorm and Curufin did to her and Beren. Not to mention the treachery of those two to their own cousin that she would’ve been met with when Beren explained what happened to Finrod and how they were captured. The trust there was permanently broken.

2. The Oath explicitly states that it doesn’t care or matter who has it and why and to get them by any means necessary. In short, if the Fëanorians decided they were fed up with the bargain, and the Oath did it’s calling and they’d still shed blood regardless. In one of Tolkiens many notes, he makes it out that it is a magical force that cannot be opposed. I think it’s Maedhros and Maglor he states tries to oppose it but physically cannot.

3. Then we have to face the fact, if Beren and Luthien came back with 3 Silmarils, they wouldn’t have given them up. Thingol was killed over them because he wouldn’t give them up, and to Luthien and Beren, imo felt entitled to those gems because of what Thingol needlessly put them through. The Fëanorians spent years watching Luthien with the one gem, and never made a move and she never made the move to return it. Because again she felt entitled to the gemstone because of the trials her father pushed her and Beren through.

We see this in Dior in the 2nd Kinslaying as he won’t give up the gem either because of what his parents had been through and it was an “heirloom”. And with Elwing because simply she felt as though it brought Sirion prosperity so she “couldn’t part with it.”

The common, and very frustrating, theme that seems to be around the Silmarils is entitlement and greed. Which leads to very poor leadership qualities all the way around.

The Fëanorians with their Oath, Thingol because of the quest he put Beren on, the dwarves of Belegost when they killed Thingol, Beren and Luthien for what they’d been through and receiving the Silmaril post Thingols death, Dior after Luthien’s death, Elwing after Dior’s, the Valars/Vanyar’s after the War of Wrath, then finally full circle at Maedhros and Maglor for the final 2 at the camps.

[morwensteelsheen]

so @tinacharles and I have sort of been having this conversation about the varying levels of culpability of all the men in Éowyn’s life re: her abject fucking misery, which got me to thinking about how that discussion would play out in-universe.

I know it’s pretty popular (and not incorrectly so, imo!) to have Éomer being fairly distrustful of Faramir, but I think it's underplayed just how much ammunition Faramir has to be out-and-out fucked off with Éomer on Éowyn's behalf.

Part of that understatement is a desire, I reckon, to see all the named Rohirrim as basically innocents, manipulated beyond aid by Wormtongue, and functionally helpless until Gandalf and the Three Hunters show up, but that's a take that is, imo, too reliant upon what we get in the movie canon and not reliant enough on what's actually written in the text! The point of Théoden's downfall is that it is his pride and his hubris (and not any magic!) that is his undoing, and it is Gandalf's reminders that his responsibilities are greater than the weight of the injuries to his pride that "brings him back" so to speak. The ability to stop fucking around exists at all moments within Théoden, there is no magic, no great battles, not valiant rescues involved, it's just about him putting his big girl panties on and dealing with his own life. But because there's a tendency to see too much of the movie canon in these characters, their relative culpability in Éowyn's immiseration is largely erased, which is incredibly unfair both in terms of treating these characters with the nuance they deserve, but also in terms of treating Éowyn's misery with the seriousness it deserves!

And a key element of this is Éomer's complacency/culpability in all of this. I often quote the conversation between Gandalf, Aragorn, and Éomer after the Pelennor about Éowyn's ~fundamental unknowability~, but I think it is, uhhh, pretty fucked up that Aragorn, Faramir, and Gandalf are all able to spot out Éowyn's deeply destroyed mental health within minutes of coming into contact with her (and yes, it is true enough that they're all powered-up slightly by magic-ish things) while Éomer, who has spent literally his entire life around her, doesn't really have an inkling of what's actually going on in her interior life. That's really upsetting to me, and is no doubt deeply upsetting and isolating for Éowyn, who has basically no other people in her life until Faramir shows up (you know, after she literally tries to kill herself!).

More than that, when Gandalf and the Three Hunters show up and immediately break Théoden free of his pity party, we don't get a sense that undermining Wormtongue has any actual political repercussions—Hama (👑) immediately names Éowyn as the favoured heir to the throne, which says that she's got a substantial amount of organic support where and when it matters. Yes, it's true they immediately have to go fight Saruman's forces in Helm's Deep, but Helm's Deep is a pretty unique battle in the books for how "small" it is in terms of coalitions: the Rohirrim fight that sucker almost entirely unaided! So if a consequence of unseating Wormtongue had been facing down Saruman's lot on the battlefield (assuming that he would have been prepared to do so at any point before the canonical Battle of the Hornburg), we know that the Rohirrim could have handled it, and what's more, they might have been in an even better position to have handled it, because Théodred would have likely still been alive, alongside however many men they lost at the Battle of the Fords of Isen. A lot of words to say: there's really no indication that there was a danger, per se, to beating Wormtongue's ass down; but we do know that there was some obstacle. Tolkien goes pretty far out of his way to hint that it's a lack of will that's doing most of the work there. As readers, I think we're all mostly content to ignore this element of Éomer's complacency because we do largely see Éomer at his best and most noble, but I think we do a real disservice to both his and Éowyn's characters for not dealing with that more intimately.

Anyways, my original point is that I think Faramir has really good reason to be quite grumpy with Éomer and I think he'd actually probably be supported in that frustration by Éowyn, who would almost certainly be pretty chuffed to finally have someone fighting her corner after so many years. I don't know exactly how Faramir's frustration would manifest—almost certainly not with the level of vitriol and overtness that his frustration with his father manifested itself, but I do think he would be very good at making sure that Éomer is keenly aware that Faramir is Unhappy about his actions/lack thereof. That, I think, adds a really interesting dynamic not just to Éowyn and Faramir's personal life, particularly as they're off starting their lives together, but also their political life, given that Éomer is the new King of the Riddermark, shown to be exceptionally close with both Aragorn and Imrahil, and, of course, is later married to Faramir's cousin—some of Faramir's last living family.

Edit: just picked up the books to double check some stuff so adding cites beneath the cut

On Théoden's 'malady':

"the influence over him that Gríma gained when the King's health began to fail. This occurred early in the year 3014, when Théoden was sixty-six; his malady may thus have been due to natural causes, though the Rohirrim commonly lived till near or beyond their eightieth year. But it may well have been induced or increased by subtle poisons, administered by Gríma. In any case Théoden's sense of weakness and dependence on Gríma was largely due to the cunning and skills of this evil counsellor's suggestions."

From Unfinished Tales, V. The Battles of the Fords of Isen.

On Éomer Missing The Fucking Point:

"But Aragorn came to Éowyn, and he said: ‘Here there is a grievous hurt and a heavy blow. The arm that was broken has been tended with due skill, and it will mend in time, if she has the strength to live: It is the shield-arm that is maimed; but the chief evil comes through the sword-arm. In that there now seems no life, although it is unbroken.

‘Alas! For she was pitted against a foe beyond the strength of her mind or body. And those who will take a weapon to such an enemy must be sterner than steel, if the very shock shall not destroy them. It was an evil doom that set her in his path. For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die? Her malady begins far back before this day, does it not, Éomer?’

‘I marvel that you should ask me, lord,’ he answered. ‘For I hold you blameless in this matter, as in all else; yet I knew not that Éowyn, my sister, was touched by any frost, until she first looked on you. Care and dread she had, and shared with me, in the days of Wormtongue and the king’s bewitchment; and she tended the king in growing fear. But that did not bring her to this pass!’

‘My friend,’ said Gandalf, ‘you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.

‘Think you that Wormtongue had poison only for Théoden’s ears? Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs? Have you not heard those words before? Saruman spoke them, the teacher of Wormtongue. Though I do not doubt that Wormtongue at home wrapped their meaning in terms more cunning. My lord, if your sister’s love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips; you might have heard even such things as these escape them. But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?’

Then Éomer was silent, and looked on his sister, as if pondering anew all the days of their past life together."

From Return of the King, VIII The House of Healing

[5lazarus]

So Much Lore! So Much Information!

Dorian has a wonderful conversation with the Skyhold Librarian about improvements to the library's filing system and the innovations coming out of Minrathous when Vivienne comes by and points out he's just talking to himself. He's been waxing rhapsodic about the Tevinter equivalent of the Dewey decimal system to a spirit--or maybe a demon.

So clearly they must investigate. The first time I played DAI, the Librarian didn't spawn! He was quite a surprise during my second playthrough--so I got to thinking, what if he were a spirit? And what sort of spirit would he be?

The song Dorian hears in the brothel, that Solas sings, is one of the most beautiful love songs I've ever heard-- "Lamma Bada Yatathanna," which was composed in Al-Andalus. Here's my favorite version. The other song he sings to himself as he paints is a poem by Tolkien. I like this arrangement! There's a background story in those songs, if you check out the lyrics. ;) Read on Archive of Our Own here.

Dorian’s having a wonderful conversation with the new librarian in the Skyhold library about proper filing systems, and he’s really starting to have faith in the Inquisition’s ability to pull together an organization actually organized to take on Corypheus and the Tevinter elite. He’s telling him about the latest innovation of folding actual waves of sound into crystals in Minrathous when Vivienne saunters by.

“Darling, shush,” she says as she goes. “We must have quiet in the library, and you’re scaring our guests, talking to yourself.”

Dorian reddens. “I am not monologuing!” he protests. “We’re having a conversation, aren’t we, er—“ He realizes he hasn’t actually asked for the librarian’s name, but he turns to him for back-up anyway. He’ll ignore the misstep, Dorian is so pretty, he can carry this away.

But there is no one there.

Vivienne says very calmly, “Did you think you were speaking to someone?”

Dorian says, “I’m not twelve, it wasn’t a demon. He was just right there!”

She says, “Oh, what do they teach you in Minrathous?”

“I know how to recognize a demon, Madame,” he snaps. “There was no demon. Just a librarian. He was telling me about how Skyhold originally used the old dwarven system of classification and how they were adapting that with the Orlesian système de dépôt to better accommodate all the many superfluous copies we have of Genitivi—“

“Then it was a pride demon,” Vivienne muses, “or envy. With the way it accumulates knowledge and drew you out…”

“Oh come now, Vivienne.” Dorian throws his head back and crosses his arms. He knows a demon when he sees it. While he’s never been particularly interested in blood magic, the magisterium does tend to throw corrupted spirits in his face. He has gotten very good at defining when their reality is importuned by creatures wanted to eat his flesh and ravage his soul. “He was a bit shorter than me, elf, with a long nose but kind-of bulbous at the end. Long hair, he didn’t quite know how to style it. Lank. But everyone here needs a wash. Wore blue enchanter’s robes edged with gold. It was quite garish, really. You’d think a pride demon would have better taste than that.”

Vivienne says, “The rebel mages no longer wear the outfits of the Circle. Haven’t you seen their military uniform? This wasn’t human, Dorian. When was the first time you saw it? There are children who come to this library, and with so few templars about, we cannot risk—“

Dorian puts up his hands. “But I’ve seen other people talking to him,” he protests.

Vivienne narrows her eyes. “That makes it more dangerous, darling. We must track it down to its source.”

He’s getting irritated now. The rotunda is full of mages. Someone would have noticed if a pride demon were running rampant through Skyhold, if not himself, then Fiona, or even Solas, who seems to specialize in weird relationships with spirits. Then he grins. Solas has his work station near the stairs, where he can see all that come and go.

He says, “Let’s ask Solas if he’s seen him. If Solas hasn’t, then I’ll cede the point.”

Vivienne grimaces. She has made no secret of her disdain for the apostate hobo, both of his research methodology and his fashion. Dorian does so love to see them both get catty, so he grins and gestures in an Orlesian curtsey for Vivienne to lead the way down the stairs. She gathers her skirts and descends; he follows.

The lowest level of the rotunda smells of plaster, charcoal, and wet paint. Solas is painting again, moving rapidly to fill in the first layer of background details on his still-wet fresco. He is singing to himself as he moves, his brushstrokes keeping time. Dorian frowns. He recognizes the melody, but from where? Then he pulls at his mustache in his surprise as he remembers: one of the elvhen whores at his favorite brothel in Minrathous got all the boys singing it, it was a love song, an ancient one, that even the slaves still remembered. His gift of the night had translated it for him: “Oh, my destiny, my perplexity! No one can comfort me in my misery….” Then of course the man had taken hold of him and relieved him of said suffering, and it was a quite enjoyable night, even though the song as a come-on was a bit too obvious. Dorian pushes away the memory and wonders how Solas knows an old Tevinter elven song—but of course if confronted, Solas would merely shrug and say he heard it in the Fade, once.

At the end of the song the first level is finished. Solas takes his brushes and his palette and climbs down to the second level. He is humming as he goes.

Vivienne clears her throat. Solas sets down his paints.

“What do you need?” he asks. “This paint dries quickly.”

Dorian says, “Why Solas, I didn’t know you had such a lovely voice. Was that a love song I detected? I think I’ve heard it before—in Tevinter.” He does not add that he heard it in a brothel. Why ruin such a lovely memory?

Solas repeats, “This paint dries quickly, and if I delay much longer I will have to chip away the plaster and begin again. What do you need?”

Vivienne and Dorian exchange a glance. It is definitely a love song, but that is not relevant to their quest, and the paintings in the rotunda are quite impressively monumental. Josephine will be upset if they ruin it.

Vivienne, ever practical, cuts in, “Have you noticed a spirit upstairs, in the library?”

Solas says, “Do you mean the librarian? Yes. He has quite a wonder for filing systems. What about him, Vivienne? Have you drawn him into conversation and found him a demon of Envy?” Dorian, awkward, shifts—he’d spent at least an hour discussing the Minrathous Circle’s new filing system with him, and hadn’t even realized he wasn’t quite real. Solas catches the movement and smiles suddenly at him. “Do not worry, Dorian. He is a very old and precious spirit, and it is a compliment that he was drawn to you beyond your—finery.” He turns to Vivienne. “Well? Is there anything that you need?”

Vivienne says, “We cannot have a spirit roaming unconfined where there are children about. Even Cole demanded a binding. Surely you see the danger of leaving it unsupervised, particularly since we leave the mage children so…undisciplined.”

Solas’ face tightens as he forces away a sneer. Blandly he picks up a brush and dips it into the lead-white paint. He turns his back to Vivienne and says over his shoulder to Dorian, “I can see no harm in it.” Company dismissed, he turns and begins rapidly sketching out two large triangles, pointing down. He begins singing again, a more melancholy thing than the love song, and this time the words are comprehensible: “The road goes ever on and on….”

When they return upstairs Vivienne seethes, “He sees no harm in it because he’s lived his whole life half-mad in the woods, with spirits as his only companions, and due to the accidental of his birth he cannot comprehend the dangers of the Fade to most other mages.”

Dorian pauses. It isn’t an unfair assessment, but the White Divine’s Circles are so much more restrictive in the way they view spirits, and Vivienne, brought up in the proper devotion of the White Spire, is more restrictive than most. He’s worked with incorporeal assistants in Nevarra before, and back in Tevinter, Alexius had several bound to serve in the laboratories, and managed to keep them all from getting corrupted, too. A bit guiltily he thinks about Cole, who is sweet and infernally well-meaning. He doesn’t like the idea of a spirit like him bound up as a servant, but then he would break, wouldn’t he? Compassion is so fragile.

Then he realizes: that is the danger, isn’t it, that this spirit will break? Solas may see no harm in it, but Dorian didn’t even realize the Librarian wasn’t a man. What if the wrong person finds it?

He tells Vivienne, “I see what you mean. But let’s find out what it is, first. Now that we know that it is a spirit and that it’s…friendly, we can question it about its nature.”

Vivienne says, “You sound like you’ve been speaking to a pride demon—why do you think it will answer you truthfully?”

Dorian bows. “That’s why I have you, my dear.”

She smiles, and together they walk into the shelves. The Librarian is there, sitting primly on the cold stone floor. A little girl, an elf, is flipping through the pages of an illustrated edition of one of their many copies of Genitivi, speaking rapidly. Dorian recognizes her as the Inquisitor’s younger daughter—Mirthen? Meerden? It was something unbelievably solemn for a young girl, that’s all he remembers.

“So much lore!” the Librarian marvels. “So much information!”

“And then of course Auntie said that her cousin lied because why would we want them to know when they already call them false? Mamae says that holy things need to be kept silent. When she takes us to pray she keeps silent and only speaks if she thinks the gods want her to. But Auntie said more than that, it’s dangerous for it to be in books we don’t write because that’s setting it down and it’s like how the Fade shapes things, and we shape the Fade? The books take it away, because of the print. Have you ever seen print? Mamae’s a printer.”

This the girl says with pride. The spirit says, “What is—a printer?”

She claps her hands in delight. “Mamae said the dwarves from House Cadash invented it but it’s based off what the Shapers do to the Memories! Have you ever been to Orzammar? I’ve never been. My cousin says it’s true though, the memories are like print. You can take them out and everything. But you take lead and you pour it into a mould like a blacksmith, except you make letters instead of axes and jewelry or whatever, and then press it and you have a stamp! But if you make small ones for all the letters and move them quickly, you can make words and you just have to stamp the page. Put it together, take it apart. So it’s faster than illuminating a book but it’s uglier too, and Babae said it had less personality but Mamae—“

The Librarian says, “So much information!” Its eyes are sparkling. “Can you show me a book with print?”

The girl looks up at the shelves and then sees Dorian and Vivienne watching them. She colors. Very formally, in manners her mother must have drilled in her, she gets up and curtseys.

She mumbles, “Good day, Master Pavus, Madame de Fer.” She studies the floor; the Inquisitor’s children get very quiet around humans, Dorian’s noticed. He’s seen them chatter the ears off Varric, and they love Solas for his stories, who seems to appreciate a willing audience.

Dorian says, “Good day, Mirthen.”

Vivienne says, “Mirwen. Be a good girl and run along to Solas downstairs, won’t you darling? Stay there until he tells you otherwise.”

Mirwen frowns, but turns to the Librarian and says confidingly, “I’ll come back later. Stay here!”

The Librarian says, “I am always there for those who seek wonder.” The girl beams and scurries away, lugging the massive volume of Genitivi with her. It is a charming sight, Dorian must admit. She reminds him a bit of himself at that age, still so full of wonder and eager to share everything he learned with anyone who bothered to listen. Few bothered, of course, but then he learned to make himself a wonder to draw others to him, by his beauty, his wit, his disreputable charm.

Vivienne summons a ward and outlines a binding circle around the Librarian. It continues to sit there in its dowdy robes, but blinks curiously up at them.

Dorian says, “Well, aren’t you a curio. I thought you liked filing systems.”

The spirit says, “I do like filing systems! And I like print now, too.” He beams at them. “I never knew of books that were made of stamps before. So much new information! So much progress! It’s wonderful.”

Dorian sighs. He tells Vivienne, “Look at it, it’s harmless. It’s like a child.”

Vivienne says, “It likes filing systems. It’s dull.”

Dorian huffs. “Nothing I am interested in is dull. Filing systems—now, I grant you that Orlais is better organized than Ferelden or Nevarra, but there is no feeling better than taking a messy archive from some blood-addled magister and cleaning it up. The Minrathous system, unlike the White Spire, organizes by subject rather than mere chronological order, and then within the category organized by date of publication. So you don’t just end up with three shelves of Genitivi, and have to go through each book and hope you can find something about—I don’t know, lyrium memory crystals. In this case, I would simply go the bookcase dedicated to the study of lyrium, and head right to the bottom shelf, for the most recent publication, so I don’t have to wade through outdated work that’s long since been disproven. Or! If I do want to understand the whole study as a discipline, and see the development of the field, I can simply trace it in chronological order—“

The spirit is glowing, delighted. Vivienne herself is smiling. She says, “Darling, you need to go out more.”

“I do go out!” Dorian snaps. “I came out here! Into this miserable mountain backwater. Forgive me if I’m so titillated by the byproducts of civilization.”

Vivienne lifts a single eyebrow. “You could attend one of Lady Montilyet’s tea parties.”

Dorian says, “Do you attend her parties? Not just when she feats the aristocracy, but even when she’s wining and dining, I don’t know, tea merchants, and suchlike?”

Vivienne says, “Of course. I do delight in conversation and repartee. You might try it sometime.” Dorian laughs and mock-clutches his heart—that was a good one. “Even a tea merchant provides needed information for the effects of the Breach on agriculture across the continent. Half of the most interesting gatherings at the Court happen over tea, darling. One must keep up with the fields—who is buying all of what stock, how they are being delivered, how the merchants are devising new ways of it being served. And if there is a drought in the Nevarran tea mountains, then there is less tea for Orlais, and a new form of party must be devised.”

The spirit looks at Vivienne glittering in her finery. “You enjoy people,” it says. “The new games they devise. It fills you with wonder.”

Vivienne sighs. “Simpler than Cole,” she notes. “But more discrete, which perhaps makes it safer to leave alone. With supervision. Dorian, what do you think it is?”

Dorian says, “Wait, let’s ask it—who are you, O spirit of the Skyhold library, who likes everything from Brother Genitivi to print to filing systems to tea parties, apparently?”

The Librarian says, “You brought me here, so you already know.” The spirit smiles and suddenly Dorian sees it, the little girl running her fingers along the rows of indented print, himself breathing out a sigh of satisfaction at a whole shelf, properly organized, and Vivienne at the tea party, cup in hand, as her eyes sparkle over a piece of information that would be useful to a trader friend’s. He sees Josephine marveling over Solas’ frescoes. He sees Solas watching the Inquisitor, and then he hears the singing at that brothel that beautiful little night, the arm thrown around him, the companionship and the pleasure of it.

The spirit steps out of the binding and walks to the railing, craning its head to watch Solas paint below. “I am Wonder,” it says, almost an afterthought. “Don’t you know?”

[qqueenofhades]

Hey, I loved your post about queerness in historical fiction. I was wondering if you could help me find a better way to explain (or know of someone who could) to the white (usually male) fans of Tolkien who are currently losing their minds because in the series for Amazon they have cast Sir Lenny Henry (a black man) as a hobbit. It feels like the exact same argument that was dealt with when Anya Chalotra was cast as Yennefer for The Witcher. It just seems like only white people are screaming that the entire cast must be white in both the case of the Witcher and Middle Earth in order to be "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" when it's all fantasy. I'm a white person and I don't get it. It's really frustrating that the only way to convince them that people of color should be allowed to play characters who aren't evil-doers is to bring up the existence of the potato in both Middle Earth and The Witcher. In this most recent fight, I've been called all kinds of names (one dude keeps saying I'm racist when I haven't brought up race or anything like that) and it's ridiculous because Henry was cast as a Harfoot who were hobbits with dark skin that they claim means Mediterranean not Black.

Ooof. I admire your initiative, I really do, but also: there comes a point where all good-faith efforts are totally futile, because these people don't actually WANT their beliefs challenged, and there won't be anything you can do about it except to exhaust yourself. You can throw all the material or documentary evidence at them that you want, but it won't work, because racism, white superiority, and the assumption of a monolithically white medieval history are a helluva drug. They are eager to split ridiculous hairs like "dark skin means Mediterranean instead of black" because, well, racism, whether or not they want to acknowledge that. Because Mediterranean is at least European, whereas for them, Black is Bad, Inferior, or otherwise Unacceptable. This doesn't even get into the types who want to claim that Ancient Rome (which was rather notably, y'know, Mediterranean and North African) was actually lily-white, because even dark-skinned Southern and Eastern Europeans can't ultimately make the racist cut.

Tolkien himself obviously had problems with his depiction of race and racialized people (witness the Haradrim, "men from the South," being the only people of colour in the story and generalized as an indiscriminate evil force fighting for Sauron against the white/Northern European heroes). That's not to say Tolkien was actively racist (see: the letter he wrote to the Nazi German would-be publishers of The Hobbit, inviting them cordially to get fucked), but it does mean that he was steeped in the usual assumptions and expectations of a white upper-class British man in the 1920s and 1930s, and not least the mindset that the (white) rulers of the (nonwhite) British Empire were superior, morally correct, and the privileged resisters of "evil" political systems. (This isn't even getting into how Germany was admired throughout the long 19th century for its perceived cultural and social superiority, the American eugenics movement directly influenced the Nazis, a lot of people thought that Hitler's only mistake was being too obviously crazy, and America and Britain only actively entered World War II when their territory/perceived global power was infringed upon.)

White people tend to assume that if they personally don't hold discriminatory attitudes (and they usually do, just because that's what society has taught them for almost all of modern history), they can't be racist, and it's a personal insult to call them that. They know that Racism Is Bad, but likewise, it's always someone else's fault, not theirs. See the huge brouhaha over the supposed plan to teach "critical race theory" in American public schools, which is really just acknowledging that centuries of racism and discrimination have created a system that disadvantages people of color at every level. This is absolute heresy for today's right wing (which has become ever more extreme, reactionary, and historically amnesiac) to admit. They can admit historical racism, sometimes, maybe, only in demonstrably "bad" people, but as far as they're concerned, there was no lingering effect whatsoever, and it's "un-American" (read: anti-white supremacist) to insist otherwise. Land of the free! Everyone treated the same! Etc. etc. The continued inferior or disadvantaged life outcomes of people of color is, according to these types, simply a result of them not being motivated/ambitious/smart enough to fix their own broken circumstances. Those centuries of genocide, cultural destruction, use as literal chattel slaves, etc, has nothing to do with it.

If this sounds ridiculous: well, obviously, it is. But as reactionary mindsets have become troublingly normalized and social media has allowed people to spread both passively and actively racist content to unprecedented degrees, it has also leaked into media. The type of white-man-fan you're arguing with won't accept any "historically accurate" argument for the inclusion of non-white people, even as they're staking their own (bad) arguments on that hill. This is because they want to claim the sole privilege to create a nostalgic/imagined/fantasy space that looks just like them. Their underlying belief is that people of color never had any power or consequential role in history, and shouldn't have, so they don't want to see a space, even an explicitly fantastic/non-historical setting (like LOTR, The Witcher, GOT, etc.), where this is the case. Whether or not they want to say it, or even if they're aware of it, they feel that even if they've been unhappily forced to accept a small lessening of their cultural power just because we no longer automatically accept that white men get to run everything, they at least can take comfort in a (white) past. And now, or so they think, the "politically correct" types also want to ruin their racist fantasy comfort zone. They can't even escape from multiculturalism in media, as it too has become steadily more diverse.

Basically: it's racism, Jan. It's many levels of racism, you can't argue those people out of it, and you have to identify and understand that, especially since their favorite diversionary tactic will be the schoolyard maneuver of going, "no, YOU'RE the racist!!!"

(Also: "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" should tell you everything you need to know. These people know absolutely nothing about history, but that won't prevent them from weaponising it in defense of the perceived threat to their cultural and racial domination. Besides, yet again, fantasy universes have no claim to historical accuracy, and if you say that, I assume you just want to feel justified in creating a fictional universe where the only powerful/consequential people are white heterosexual western European-coded men, because you not-so-secretly wish it was still that way in reality.)

[st-just]

I think, specifically with Tolkien but also with other authors in the modern literary cannon, a lot of people’s misgivings about intense literary analysis is not necessarily that a work is analyzed at all, but rather that a lot of literary analysis nowadays is either trying to get a square peg through a round hole or actually has very little of substance to say.

The seminars on how Tolkien is translated across languages and how the work’s illustrations affect the reader’s visualization is an idea worth exploring, but the 500th seminar or essay trying to force the works of a mid-century English author into a modern American view of race/gender/sexuality is as much overdone and cliche as it is idiotic. Additionally, said academic square pegging filters down to the retched, terminally online sludge that will ultimately do the supreme evil that gains Tolkien Fantasy analysis it’s bad name: Be Annoying.

In the end, the average consumer of Tolkien’s works will never interact with an actual academic analysis of Tolkien’s work because they are not keen to spend their time reading academic works. But, the average consumer may very well see the comments under some passing LOTR meme on Facebook or Twitter and see the sludge gibber on about “Tolkien was a racist and a TERF, burn the witch!” followed by a link to an article or Essay titled “Race and Gender in Tolkien’s ‘Fantasy’ world”.

TL;DR: Analysis isn’t bad, but people being annoying is.

I mean people being annoying is a mortal sin yes, but I'm sorry to say fans being annoying assholes significantly predates this cultural turn and will last well beyond it as well. The specifics and whose getting annoyed the most change, not sure the fundamental nature of fandom does. Being annoying is what a fan does.

And, okay, freely admit that my basic reflexes on this are from truly ancient discourse about, like, analyzing the politics of Call of Duty is an acceptable thing to do (I was a very popular teenager), so can say with certainty that some people at least did object to being analyzed at all.

But anyway I truly don't actually care about Tolkein that much, but honestly my basic expectation would be that at least part of the reason for all the esoteric angles and interpretations is precisely is precisely because everything obvious has been done 500 times. Like it's 2021, you probably aren't breaking any new ground with your paper on Tolkein and environmentalism, or on political legitimacy, or the trauma of war, or Catholicism, or etc. Also, like, the convention topic was Diversity. You get what you ask for.

(Though going purely off the titles, there's...5 that seem interesting, 3 that are perfectly valid subjects I just don't really care about, 5 which admittedly make me roll my eyes a bit, and 2 which I don't even know what they're trying to say. Which is pretty good for a convention on books I haven't read since I was in primary school, honestly)

But also, like, none of those titles make it seem like they're trying to drag Tolkein? And generally my assumption is that you don't go to talk at an academic conference about something unless you think it's interesting and important enough to devote real time to?

Like, someone who thinks giving Rowling publicity is endorsing transphobia and the HP books were all basically trash that got lucky isn't going to speak at a Harry Potter convention.

Whereas, like, Lovecraft being a racist is probably the single most well-known bit of trivia about him at this point, his cat's name is a meme. But that doesn't stop plenty of people from thinking his ideas and writing are interesting and worth engaging with, through whatever lens you like.