#misadventures in arda

[maiarasura]

Amarthion, mercenary for hire - third guise

Alledging parentage of both Eldar and Istar, 'Amarthion' regularly travels Middle-Earth as a mercenary, yet remains shrouded in mystery. In reality, he is allowed closer contact with those who reside within Arda, and shows them visions which guide their hand to 'an unfortunate end', either by accident, misadventure or suicide.

Dressed mostly in black fabric and armour, he wields a sword of black iron and remains to most humourless, lest it be in his own dark way.

[suspected-spinozist]

Some time after this, probably early in 1930, Lewis sent my father 14 pages of detailed criticism, as far as line 1161 (if there was any more it has not survived). This criticism he contrived as a heavily academic commentary on the text, pretending to treat the Lay as an ancient and anonymous work extant in many more or less corrupt manuscripts, overlaid by scribal perversions in antiquity and the learned argumentation of nineteenth-century scholars; and thus entertainingly took the sting from some sharply expressed judgements, while at the same time in this disguise expressing strong praise for particular passages. Almost all the verses which Lewis found wanting for one reason or another are marked for revision in the typescript B if not actually rewritten, and in many cases his proposed emendations, or modifications of them, are incorporated into the text.

nerds!! 

[inth3world]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Gimizh/Peribold Took, Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Other Sansukh relationships, Mentioned Gimli/Legolas - Relationship Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, Gimizh Bofurul (oc), Peribold Took (oc), Lots of Hobbits, Wee Thorin Dwalinul (oc), mentions of other canon characters Additional Tags: So many hobbits, Gimizh is Baby even when he is all Grown Up, Perry is Captain Persnickety (and Gimizh loves it), Wee Thorin owns the braincell, what happened after Gimli left?, sansukh, sansukh side-fic Series: Part 23 of Sansûkh: The Appendices Summary:

The Terror of Erebor and the Tailor of Pincup: a romance told in miscommunication, misadventure, and millions of cups of tea.

or

How in Arda did Gimizh of Aglarond and Perry Took of the Shire ever meet, let alone fall in love?

[ao3feed-thehobbit]

A New Coat

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3g1f5z1

by determamfidd

The Terror of Erebor and the Tailor of Pincup: a romance told in miscommunication, misadventure, and millions of cups of tea.

or

How in Arda did Gimizh of Aglarond and Perry Took of the Shire ever meet, let alone fall in love?

Words: 27105, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 23 of Sansûkh: The Appendices

Fandoms: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M, Multi

Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, Gimizh Bofurul (oc), Peribold Took (oc), Lots of Hobbits, Wee Thorin Dwalinul (oc), mentions of other canon characters

Relationships: Gimizh/Peribold Took, Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Other Sansukh relationships, Mentioned Gimli/Legolas - Relationship

Additional Tags: So many hobbits, Gimizh is Baby even when he is all Grown Up, Perry is Captain Persnickety (and Gimizh loves it), Wee Thorin owns the braincell, what happened after Gimli left?, sansukh, sansukh side-fic

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3g1f5z1

[suspected-spinozist]

Elros Tar-Minyatur had four children: Vardamir, Tindómiel, Manwendil, and Atanalcar.  Tindómiel has two possible etymologies, both deriving from the root tindóme, the starry twilight just before dawn. Most straightforwardly, it means “daughter of twilight,” from tindóme + the feminine suffix -iel; in this case, it’s cognate with the Sindarin Tinúviel, another name for her great-great-grandmother Lúthien. 

But by analogy with Arwen’s epesse, Undómiel, it can also be translated as “morning star” (tindóme + el). In this case, Tindómiel’s named after her grandfather, Eärendil, the morning and the evening star. Of course, I think that Tolkien (and Elros) had both meanings in mind, to honor both sides of the family - but this also got me thinking about his other children. I’ve always assumed that the Valar theme naming is due to a healthy combination of respect, gratitude, and fear, and still do - to a point. Manwendil and Atanalcar are pretty straightforward - “follow of Manwë” and “man of glory,” respectiely. But Vardamir is a little less obvious. 

The name means “jewel of Varda.” I can think of at least ten possible masculine Quenya names that express reverence for or affinity to Varda; let’s assume there’s a reason Tolkien had Elros chose this one. Think literally. There aren’t any obvious jewels belonging to Varda, but there are three jewels hallowed by her, one of which is currently serving as a star, i.e. in Varda’s domain. In other words, Vardamir is also a reference to Eärendil - 

- which raises some interesting questions about Elros’s relationship with his father. Resolving the continuity issues around the twins’ age at the sack of Sirion  is beyond the scope of this post, but however long they knew him, it’s clear that Eärendil must have been gone a lot. I think he was a loving father, but not a constant presence in his children’s lives. We also know that he wanted to be human, and probably lived as one until his trip to Valinor. All this had to have been on Elros’s mind when he named his mortal children after the reluctantly immortal Eärendil. Was this a way of giving him the life - and death - he couldn’t have? Or was it a ploy to emphasize the descent of the royal house from the stars themselves, unfixed and unwavering? 

As in the case of Tindómiel, I tend to think it’s both. 

[suspected-spinozist]

I’ve been re-reading The Lost Road (which every Tolkien fan should get around to at least once, it’s fascinating), and one passage jumped out at me for the first time: 

Mariners in the old days said that the scent of lavaralda could be felt on the air long ere the land of Eressea could be seen, and that it brought a desire of rest and great content. He had seen the trees in flower day after day, for they rested from flowering only at rare intervals. But now, suddenly, as he passed, the scent struck him with a keen fragrance, at once known and utterly strange. He seemed for a moment never to have smelled it before: it pierced the troubles of his mind, bewildering, bringing no familiar content, but a new disquiet.

'Eressea, Eressea!' he said. 'I wish I were there; and had not been fated to dwell in Numenor' half-way between the worlds. And least of all in these days of perplexity! '

This is Elendil speaking, but not quite the Elendil of the Silmarillion. The story follows a father and his son as they’re continuously reincarnated. In the first chapter, the father’s an Oxford professor named Alboin Errol with a deep, life-long interest in Old English (Christ Tolkien confirms that it’s largely autobiographical). In the second, he’s a Númenorean prince during the Akallabêth; in the third, an Anglo-Saxon traveller called Aelfwine, in Sindarin Eriol.  

The association between Aelfwine and Elendil as characters is interesting in itself, and it’s particularly poignant here. He won’t make it to Eressea in this lifetime. When Aelfwine - the more developed version of the character - does get to Eressea, it’s as an exile himself. We learn in The Notion Club Papers (from yet another Tolkien self-insert) that he spent is childhood as a refugee after the Danish invasion of Somerset, and that his journey west was motivated by another series of Danish attacks. 

What struck me here is how The Lost Road turns the story of Númenor - not the fall, but the empire itself, at the height of its glory - into an exile narrative. The first Númenoreans were taken from their homes in Beleriand, granted superhuman physical and mental gifts, and then told not to leave. That’s their tragedy. The qualities that make Eärendil so admirable are the same ones that slowly destroy his descendants. They’re brave, curious, never content to stagnate, always eager and open to the world. They’re explorers. 

And it goes wrong every time. Tar-Aldarion’s wanderlust wrecks his family. The Númenorean mania for ship-building leads to ecological collapse at home; what starts out as military aid to Lindon ends in centuries of violent colonial expansion. It’s true that Númenor is blessed, but those blessing flow strictly from west to east. And since the west is closed off to them, all that desire for knowledge and beauty and wonder gets stymied and twisted and shunted back off to Middle-earth. 

Of course, they can’t go home again. Beleriand is gone. The land different, and they’re different too. The Númenoreans are, in very real ways, more than human. At the same time, they’re less than elves. Naturally, they start to fight wars of conquest. How else are they going to find a place in the world? They’re exiles in their own bodies. 

It’s not surprising that The Lost Road contains what is probably Tolkien’s most sympathetic articulating of the viewpoint of the King’s Men: 

'They say now that the tale was altered by the Eresseans, who are slaves of the Lords: that in truth Earendel was an adventurer, and showed us the way, and that the Lords took him captive for that reason; and his work is perforce unfinished. Therefore the son of Earendel, our king, should complete it. They wish to do what has been long left undone.'

'What is that?'

'Thou knowest: to set foot in the far West, and not withdraw it. To conquer new realms for our race, and ease the pressure of this peopled island, where every road is trodden hard, and every tree and grass-blade counted. To be free, and masters of the world. To escape the shadow of sameness, and of ending. We would make our king Lord of the West: Nuaran Númenoren. Death comes here slow and seldom; yet it cometh. The land is only a cage gilded to look like Paradise.'

[suspected-spinozist]

discovered in the course of researching that last post: númenoreans had telepathic horses, for real, I am not making this up:  

They were trained to hear and answer calls from a great distance, and it is said in old tales that where there was great love between men and women and their favourite steeds they could be summoned at need by thought alone.

[suspected-spinozist]

The First Letter. Pengolodh to Elrond, at Lindon, 8 Nárië S.A. 1730

Forgive me the inelegance of my hand, which dishonors our dear script and you, my dearest friend. For three days I have been quite unable to keep my desk in place. Our captain tells me that summer storms are quite common in this part of the world, and indeed I can hear the crew pattering about above my head as if the deck were steady as the shores of the undying realm. I myself am confined to my cabin, though not due to any ill will, unless it be that of Ulmo or his servants, wishing to exact revenge for that pride which caused me to forego the swanships and the straight road – I am, in a word, seasick. 

I have no fear for our safety. We are continually surrounded by gulls, which these Men believe to be a sure sign of Ossë’s favor. This was conveyed to me by the captain, who has a little Sindarin; the others speak in such a profusion of dialects I wonder the can understand each other. The Falathrim believed that gulls were particularly beloved by Ossë. (I’ve searched my papers for an old lay of theirs I put in writing at Sirion, something about rafts drawn by gulls over the glassy sea. If I left it behind in my haste, please have it sent). How strange and wonderful, that such a little thing should last so many mortal generations! – for surely their ancestors had it from the shore-elves. Stranger still that it should survive when the speech of these ancestors has not. Your command of the mortal tongues of the first age must be greater than mine, but even to my untrained ear there are evident alterations at every level of sound and structure. The Men are perfectly content to speak to me – or rather, at me – so long as it does not interfere with their duties. I am afraid they think me very strange. 

I do not expect court and (again, forgive me!) the King I left to understand why I chose to delay my journey, and visit among these people of the Apiolótse.* I am not troubled. Those few I loved will need no explanation, and reproach me only for having left. Keep me in your thoughts. Yours ever,

Quendingoldo Argadion 

*[A tree which blossoms profusely but briefly – in some varieties, only for a single night. – ed.]

[suspected-spinozist]

Hey have an extremely perplexed Aelfwine

[suspected-spinozist]

I humbly nominate “Taliska is a descendent of Avarin” for Worst Tolkien Canon

[suspected-spinozist]

For Elves, or at least the Noldor in Aman, universal grammar would seem non-controversially true. They’re a created species whose primary self-defined trait is being able to talk from day one! The stimulus is poor! All their spoken languages are related! Of course incarnates have some kind of hard-coded linguistic faculty. 

When noldo!Noam Chomsky invents generative grammar, it’s as a methodology for generating new syntactic paradigms. The aim is to figure out the possibility space for any given dimension of meaning and develop new structures in Quenya to express it. Half of the Lambengolmor take it up immediately, the other half think it lacks art. Debate is fierce. Friendships are broken. Quenya develops three new cases. 

[suspected-spinozist]

Next level petty: cringing when fic set in Valinor uses the correct Quenya names for canonical characters, but OC names are more phonologically typical of Sindarin. 

[suspected-spinozist]

[ooc: It’s @theunitofcaring‘s birthday! With love, always.] 

I almost can’t believe it. Makel Alasi’s writing his memoirs, and I have a friend who works for his publisher, and she managed to get me an advanced copy! I don’t want to leak too much, but this is one of my favorite parts. (Tagging @colorjustice since I know she’s a fan, even if she sometimes has trouble admitting it). 

“I could always write a movie soundtrack. I’ve never done one before, and it seems like it could be fun.”

“You know the difference between a movie and a music video, right?”

“Of course –“

“Because in a movie, the music’s generally supposed to stay in the background.”

“Not the way I write it.” – a matter of public record, incidentally. Just look up my film licensing agreements. “Anitami audiences have taste, Telkam. You can’t seriously believe they’d rather watch you than listen to me.”

“Yeah.”  

There wasn’t really much I could say to that, so I just let him sulk for a couple of minutes. I did apologize, eventually, I’m not heartless.

“It’s fine.” (It obviously wasn’t. What my brother lacks in eloquence, he more than makes up for in emotional volatility).

“No, it’s not. You know how I get when people imply I’m not talented.”

“Yeah. Makel, I’m not you.”

That’s obvious, I’ve heard him sing. “You’re still an artist. Well, in a manner of speaking –“ “What I am is I’m employed, that’s what I am.” He turned away. I think he may even have grunted.

“You’re really not happy, are you?”

“Guess not.”

“I just thought it would be nice to collaborate on a project with my little brother.”

***

We were all so relieved when Telkam told us he was going to be an actor. So, it seemed to come out of nowhere, so – and it’s not easy for me to admit – he’s not even that good. He’d get better. My father is always saying any of us could excel at anything we set our minds to.  Of course, it’s not like he tried especially hard to be the world’s best diplomat.

It was different with Aitim. I mean, when we first started to notice that Aitim wasn’t happy. Dad took it especially hard. He felt like he’d betrayed him; that is, like he’d broken the unspoken contract he’d signed when he bought his first credit that his children wouldn’t feel trapped the way he’d been trapped, and what’s worse, he felt like a failure. Failure makes him get all defensive, it’s not as if he’s had much practice.  Mom just didn’t get it. She sees politics as a kind of applied psychology, and both my parents tend to think of the applied sciences as things other people do after all the really interesting theoretical problems have already been solved. But Aitim had passion, he had ambitions, and he was willing to move metaphorical mountains – or at least sidestep social institutions – to fulfill them. That’s something they both understood.

*** I decided to visit Telkam at work, since I was curious, but mostly to fuck with him. They were shooting on some backlot in the middle of – and I do mean – nowhere, three hours outside of Lina by train, one of those depressing exurbs full of identical row-houses full of identical purples. It’s still mostly apartments out there, but no more than three or four families to a building. They’re all a dingy sort of off-white – the buildings, not the families – with squares of patchy grass and the occasional optimistic swing-set. I’ve heard people move out there for the space, but I can’t imagine they’d need it. I didn’t see any children. Then again, it was school hours.

The lot was easy enough to find. Telkam was wearing something that looked like a couple of old laundry machines wrapped in aluminum foil. (“Astronaut or sentient household appliance?” “Radiation suit, obviously”).  You couldn’t see his face, nor much of the rest of him, which meant either a surprising dedication to realistic radiation safety standards on the part of the producers or just plain stupidity – after all, they certainly aren’t paying him for his acting skills.

(You may think I’m habitually cruel to him – and I am, though not more than any older brother. Don’t misjudge me. The advance on my exclusive memoirs is going straight into a trust fund to pay for his first-born child. What? It’s not as if he’s going to earn one on his own.)    

In any case, I snuck in the back during a take, and watched him flail at a kind of rubbery-looking facsimile of a post-apocalyptic mutant organism for a little while before someone caught sight of me. She was a little yellow with a clipboard, clearly some species of assistant, and I must say she made a valiant effort to squeal in absolute silence. But then an electrician noticed her, and had to nudge his friend, who had to nudge her friend, and – well, have you ever seen a very, very quiet mob starting to assemble itself? Until then I hadn’t either, and it’s an experience Eventually the man with the puppet joined in and they had to stop filming. It took another ten minutes to get Telkam out of the suit.

“Congratulations, asshole. They’re going to lose the whole day, do you have any idea how much that costs?”

“Not as such, no.”

“It’s not a high-budget operation, but there’s still about 200 people working here, and they’ve all got salaries. And equipment, and renting the space –“

“I know I can pay the difference.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Sure it is. Just point me in the direction of your line producer and see what happens.”

“Fuck you.”

Articulate, isn’t he? “How do you feel about abandoning the land of the living laundry machines and taking the rest of the day off?”

“I don’t come and bother you where you work.”

“Not for lack of trying. And we both know that that’s not strictly true.”

“Makel – “

“Remember that time, you would have been, what, one and a half? And I was recording something at home, when suddenly I heard this banging – “

“Makel! Don't talk about that where there are people!” (And so I won’t – but you should really look up the video on MyStream.)

In the end, he did leave for the day, and since I’d given them permission to play my latest single over the opening credits, the director even thanked me. (Thematically, it’s completely inappropriate, but don’t we all make sacrifices for the sake of family?)

“Feel like telling me what that was all about?” – we’d been on the train to Lina for about two hours at this point, but when Telkam feels like sulking – as in all his endeavors – he commits.  

“I haven’t seen you for a while.” Which, for the record, is true.

“You’re not on a secret mission from mom and dad?”

“To, what, make sure you’re still alive. They’re not that neurotic, and they’re definitely not that subtle.”

“Aitim, then. But he probably already has spies.”

“Oh, Telkam. You’re assuming he cares.”

The thing about Telkam is that it’s impossible to guess what’s going to upset him. Most things that would reduce a reasonable person to tears just roll right off him, but he can be surprisingly vulnerable. Especially when it comes to family. So – “They all want you to be happy,” I say eventually. “They love you. For reasons that pass comprehension, admittedly – “

“I know I haven’t been home in a long time.” He hasn’t. I’m not even sure where he’s living right now, in fact, which is why I had go and kidnap him at work – “How’s Kantil?”

“He’s doing well. Math track, says he wants to do something practical. Dad’s hoping he’ll be an engineer, of course, but mom thinks economics. And Kefin’s talking.”

“I thought Kefin was talking months ago.”

“He was, but only in Anitami, and you know dad, that barely counts.” (My father raised all of his children to speak at least six languages – to varying degrees of success – and I’ll have you know that I translate all my own lyrics in four.)

“I’d visit more, but – “

“Yeah.”

“They might ask me how I am.”

***

I remember when Aitim went off to live with our grandfather (you may have heard of him?). I’ll never forget what it was like after he left. I don’t think the house has ever been so quiet, and that’s before or since. I did a lot of singing. My parents worked, somehow, even more than they usually do, and if I hadn’t been there I don’t think they’d have remembered to come home – this was just before Telkam.

The only people who gossip more viciously than blues are green academics (and I know whereof I speak), so if you’ve had the misfortune to move in those rarified circles, don’t believe what they tell you – dad never tried to force him to stay. Once he was sure that it was what Aitim really wanted, he didn’t even try to persuade him. My father doesn’t understand why anyone who could be green would ever choose to be anything else, but he knows what it’s like to be forced to be something you’re not. Yes, it’s an unusual way of looking at caste, and for all I know it may be unique to my family, but I’ve always considered myself the better for it. Patrilineality be damned, I’m green. I know it. You know it, too – would you have picked up this book if you hadn’t heard me sing?

Aitim himself says much the same – not that he won’t deny it if you ask him.  At least he did one night a few months later, at dinner with just grandfather and his wife and the two of us and our cousin Kan, age three seasons, because sometimes even Fen Neli wants to see his grandchildren without having to smooth over some sort of familiar conflict.

“You’re not blue,” I told him between courses. “It doesn’t matter who our grandfather is. In our family we’re green.”

“Poor grandfather! Someone will have to tell him we’ve stopped being related.” This all happened years ago, six or seven at least, and I can’t recall if grandfather laughed, and ruffled Aitim’s hair. I like to think he did. “Besides, I don’t think I’m blue because our father is really blue – it’s just that some people will be more willing to work with me if they think I do, so that’s how I explain to them.”  

“That’s not what dad thinks.”

“Really?”

(Grandfather, not paying attention: “No, Kan, we don’t eat the flatware, yes, yes, that’s the way, or grandmother’s necklace – where did he get that? – Kan”)

“Really. He said so. And he’s so angry he’s not going to let you come home and you’re going to have to go live with Uncle Nolime ‘cause you think he’s so much better than us.”  

It would have been a fairly transparent lie even if you didn’t know our father well, or weren’t Aitim, but he did, and he was, and of course, being Aitim, he smiled. “If that’s so, then I suppose shall live with Uncle Nolime, but I’m afraid I should miss you all terribly.”

“Don’t you miss us now?” I think I mentioned, before, that father felt like he’d somehow betrayed his firstborn son. I was two years old, my big brother had just left for what seemed, at age two, to be forever, and I just felt betrayed.

“I know I’ll come back, Makel. And if I lived with Uncle Nolime, I don't think father and mother would visit me nearly as often.”

“He puts up with Entis” – Entis, thankfully, being too occupied by Kan to notice – “so why’d you do it, then?”

“Do what?”

“Be a blue, if it’s not because of dad.”

“Hmmm. Makel, why do you think we have castes?”

“Historical contingency, right? Societies that had castes hundreds of years ago did better than the ones that didn’t, and now we all have them. Except – well, I’ve always thought, we can’t know if they did better because they had castes, or because they matched particular castes to particular niches, or they just happened to have more resources to begin with, or something else entirely. There must be archeologists who know something about it, but it was so long ago – “

“There were confounding factors.”

“Right, that. And greens really are smarter than other people, even if they weren’t always, and grays really are stronger and faster, and blues are –“ Kan, seated directly across from me, was gnawing on the edge of the table – “well, blues are something, probably, but we don’t go around saying that especially smart people are really greens. Unless they’re dad.”

Aitim nodded. “What they’ll teach you – at least in blue school – is tat heredity obviously isn’t infallible, and sometimes people really might be more productive in different caste than the one they’re born to. But that’s so vanishingly rare – especially compared to the number of people who’d want to switch for more power, or prestige, or cheaper credits, or something else like that – that it’s a waste of resources to try and sort out all the valid claims. So we just don’t allow it.”

“Except for dad.”

“That’s right. And father didn’t get away with what he did because he was talented enough to justify it. He is, of course, but that isn’t why it worked.”  

(I’m going to have to interrupt my brother, here – just for a moment – because most of you don’t know him, and have consequently never heard him speak. I don’t remember his exact words, and I can’t explain how the looks in his eyes, and his gestures, and his tone made them seem so perfectly, irreproachably reasonable. People say I have the magic voice.)

“Father got away with it,” Aitim continued, “because there’s a certain way that people expect greens to act, and part of that – for better or for worse – is that they really don’t think they should have to follow the rules so long as they’re clever enough to get around them. All the things that would have made him a terrible blue – his impulsivity, his single-mindedness, his, ah, – “

“ –complete lack of social skills?”

“Yes, that – they’re not exactly virtues, in a green, but they make him seem more consistent with himself.”

“I don’t think dad cares about that.”

“Really? I think he cares a great deal. And other people care even more.”

“Is that why you want to be a blue? Because it makes you more consistent with yourself?”

“Yes. And no one really thinks that there’s anything ontologically significant about patrilineality or matrilineality, in a mixed-caste marriage. We simply need a way of deciding edge cases – that is, of determining who we should think of as blue. They’ll think of me as blue. That’s what matters.”

Grandfather must have gone upstairs to put cousin Kan to bed, because I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have had something to say to that.

“So it’s all in people’s heads?”

“The most real things usually are. You know –“ Aitim was looking at a framed photograph of our father as a child of one or two, sitting in grandfather’s lap and looking desperately unhappy – “the only thing that could have made the caste system look more arbitrary than letting father switch would have been making him stay. Can you imagine? It would have seemed so cruel, and so stupid –“

“It’s a good thing he left.”

And, after a while – “I think so too.”

I took a few moments to digest that, along with my dessert. “It sounds like you’re saying that it’s fine to ignore your birth caste, as long as you can get enough people to take you seriously.”

“I never said that.”

“You pretty much said –“

“Well, I won’t acknowledge it.” Even then, you see, he was already running for office.

***

“I don’t see why you had to tell me all that.”

We’re getting off the train in Lina, in my neighborhood, which is mostly green, when I start to notice the strange expressions on people’s faces. Of course, Telkam’s hair. Either he’s wearing a wig or he’s bleached it for the part.

“Why do you think the leads in action movies are always gray?”

“What?”

“Your hair, I just noticed – I mean, it would make sense if you were playing an astronaut or a soldier or something, but you’re the last survivor of a nuclear holocaust, it could really be anybody.” “I guess it’s just what people expect.”

“I suppose so.”

“Besides, if action hero were a job, it would definitely be gray.”

It’s a beautiful night, perfectly clear. The city sparkles, forty, fifty, a hundred stories tall, with little cracks of sky shining between the buildings in the hazy, reflective darkness. If you live near the river – and I do – you can see the lights reflected in the water, quavering and sinking and surfacing as the little waves calm, like the stars it’s always just too bright to see.

“I think you have more in common with Aitim than you’d like to admit,” I said.

“Oh?”

“That’s why I told you that story earlier.”

“Aitim’s blue.”

“Only because he wants to be.”

“He dyes his hair. I know he wants us to think it’s naturally coming in teal, but he last time he was home, I saw his roots showing.” A girl with pale jade-colored hair walks by, gives us a funny look, and scurries off. Telkam tosses his hair and blows her a kiss. “You know, I think I just might keep the gray? It suits me.”

[suspected-spinozist]

I’m just very set on the idea that Númenor was basically third-century Alexandria, except it went on for twenty-five hundred years, and by the end probably the only socially acceptable method of communication was critiquing one’s colleagues’ knowledge of the finer points of Quendian dialectology in a series of elegant epigrams written in a choice of seventeen extremely particular First Age meters.

[suspected-spinozist]

A brief list of things:

Frustrated Númenorean philologists trying to assemble critical editions of texts from the First Age/Years of the Trees. Transcribed accounts from visitors from Tol Eressea, elves in Lindon, and actual manuscripts preserved during the War of Wrath are all wildly different.  

The split among the early King’s Men over the relative benefits of embracing vernacular dialects or elevating Adûnaic to the status of Quenya and Sindarin through the production of a standard literary language by a Lambengolmor-style linguistic guild.  

Proto-Taliska-Halethic reconstructions

Interminable debates about whether or not Rúmil was a real person. Slightly less interminable debates about whether or not Pengolodh was a real person. Real verifiable human people have in living memory actually met him, but that’s not enough to stop some scholars who want to seem really clever. 

Needlessly judgmental commentaries on Gondolinic (as opposed to Tirion standard) Quenya. (There are other Beleriandic Quenya dialects, but the vast majority of surviving manuscripts are from Gondolin, for fairly obvious reasons). It’s even worse with Sindarin. There are still Doriathrin purists. 

Dírhavel scholia 

[suspected-spinozist]

Important facts of the day: 

Quenya is canonically diglossic.

The relevant issue of Parma Eldalamberon is out of print.