#second age sauron specifically

[weepylucifer]

i am the righteous hand of god (hell's comin' with me) is a sauron vibes song. refuses to elaborate

[annoyinglandmagazine]

I like to think Elrond has punched Sauron in the face. Specifically during the whole Annatar period of time. I feel like Sauron definitely tried to convince Elrond to work with him. Being a part Maia through Luthien (who Sauron definitely still holds a grudge against) would be enough but he’s also one of Fingolfin’s descendants not even to get started on the Edain side of things. And then he sees him fight and the style is almost identical to that of Maedhros Feanorion. So Annatar almost definitely approached him.

And when he tries this he probably tries to probe at all Elrond’s issues. There are a lot of issues to probe at. But Elrond just gets angry. How dare this sketchy motherfucker start trying to convince me my parents didn’t care about me. That’s my emotional trauma and I’ll work through it myself thank you very much. He also knew something was up with this guy the second he met him. Every single bone in his body was telling him to slit this guy’s throat where he stood. He restrains himself purely to avoid causing an incident for Gil Galad to deal with. He settles for decking him and then walking away. He is very much done with enchanted jewellery made by sketchy people coming to elf lords in disguise. He had enough of that in the first age.

I just feel like the Council of Elrond gets way funnier if when Elrond’s doing his recap he just drops in ‘and then I broke darkness personified’s nose,’ before continuing as if he hadn’t said anything. Sauron maintains a healthy wariness of Elrond into the third age. Yes Arwen looks like Luthien and that’s scary but she also looks like a combination of her father and Galadriel and if that’s not terrifying nothing is.

[queerofthedagger]

the sauron/silvergifting/second age tags are all entirely unusable if you don't want to be flooded with stuff from That Show and like, it is what it is and I don't want to yuck people's yums and all that, but i was thinking that maybe a community for second age content that's TROP free might be nice? like. would there be an interest? does one maybe even exist already??

(for context, a community basically means members can post and reblog content into it so you have a dashboard you can scroll with just that specific content. you can reblog from there into your main dash/queue again, so basically it works a bit like a tag, except that it's maintained by its members!)

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

Hi there! Do you think the people of Rohan would be familiar with the Elvish history? Like, would they know about the silmarils? How about Valinor and the trees? Balrog and Glorfindel? Thank you so much!

Hi! I think the answer here is an unequivocal…kind of! 🙂

They absolutely know some of that Silmarillion-style history because every once in a while they refer to it in their own lore. For example, in Appendix A Tolkien says the Rohirrim thought this about their great horses, the mearas: “that Béma (whom the Eldar call Oromë) brought their sire from West over Sea.” In that one phrase, we get confirmation that they knew 1) the identity of the Vala Oromë, 2) that he had an association with horses, and 3) that the Valar lived in the far west beyond the sea. So they’ve got clear familiarity with at least parts of that story, and I think that’s only natural.

For starters, their ancestors (the Rohirrim are kin to the House of Hador but settled further east and didn’t go all the way to Beleriand) lived through a lot of those early historical events. So when the elves were up to big deeds, the proto-Rohirrim would have either directly witnessed some of those deeds (for ex.: their immediate ancestors, the Northmen, were liberated from Sauron by Gil-galad at the end of the Second Age!) or heard about them as news made its way around Middle Earth. Those stories would have become part of their general histories and been passed on through the years, making their way eventually to Third Age Rohan (though sometimes incomplete or having been altered through repeated transmission).

In addition, although the Rohirrim as we know them didn’t really interact with elves and seemed to have lost some knowledge and understanding of them (see Éomer’s misconceptions about Galadriel and whether she is well intentioned), they weren’t total isolationists. They were best buddies with the Gondorians, who were the intellectual heirs of Númenor and, thus, knew all that Silmarillion stuff. And they had established relationships with both Gandalf and Saruman. So they had plenty of sources available to them for information about the elves’ ideas about the gods, the world, and the history of Middle Earth.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a lot of textual evidence to clarify exactly *which* pieces of those elven stories the Rohirrim knew and believed. I’ve previously highlighted a few Silmarillion references, like Haleth and Aerin, to pop up in Rohan, but they tend to be references to the humans of the First Age rather than the elves or the Valar.

Of the examples you asked about, we can give a definite yes to Valinor (see above), but as for the Silmarils, the trees, or Glorfindel and the balrog in Gondolin, we could only speculate. The Rohirrim’s relatives, the Hadorians, were deeply tied up in the doings of the elves during the War of the Jewels – including the fall of Gondolin, since Tuor was a Hadorian – so I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least some of that made its way to them back then even without a Gondorian or Saruman or whoever telling them about it later. But I can’t produce any specific evidence for that!

If pressed, though, I’d say that the most highly educated of the Rohirrim have probably heard about most of those big ticket events, ideas and people, if only in an abbreviated or adulterated form (and they may not believe all of it to be true even if they’ve heard it). But they aren’t super focused on it anyway, because their primary interest would be the history and lore that’s most directly related to their own forebears, and that didn’t tend to intersect often with what the elves were up to.

Hope that was helpful, and thanks for asking! ♥️♥️♥️

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2024: #06 & #05

06. SWEDEN Loreen - "Tattoo" 1st place

Decade Ranking: 19/116 [above Halo, below Adrenalina]

Alright, fine, we've arrived at Loreen. There are plenty of conflicting emotions swirling around in my head, but overall, yeah, you know how I feel about her. It hasn't changed. She's very good, but I'm not obsessed with her. This is where those entries rank.

Let's tackle the elephant in the room: Tattoo is a good song and a boring, uninspiring winner. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Loreen's victory was determined the second she won Melfest, by default. It was unsatisfactory for two reasons:

(1) The moment Loreen was picked the casuals that remembered "Euphoria" immediately started praising her while ignoring everyone else, and this of course snowballed into the biggest jury coronation since Salvador. Lol that the same casuals that were obsessed with Tattoo preshow became upset when she beat Käärijä. What else did you think was going to happen? it was YOU who kept touting her as the best without giving as much as dismissive look at her competition, of course the Eye of Sauron was fixated on her and no one else.

(2) Käärijä. For better or for worse, this year will be remembered as the year Cha Cha Cha was robbed by the juries for the sake of Sweden. Käärijä was not without his own set of problems which directly led to his demise (which we'll tackle when we get to him because this post is about Loreen), but he WAS the year and it was his loss specifically that left a bad aftertaste in many mouths. It's always better when the underdog beats the overdog, and not the other way around.

Once the dust settled, everyone pledged fealty to the crazyparty Fin while "Tattoo" was quickly replaced as the basic gay anthem by "Padam Padam".

However, neither of those things are particularly Loreen's fault?

What I can ascertain is that Tattoo is not Euphoria, obviously. A lot of the love for Tattoo was spillover Euphoria nostalgia. That's fine, but I meant their thematic differences went understated - Euphoria was an ode to the eternity of love, while Tattoo specifically is about the love fracturing apart and Loreen's inabilty to move on - in other words "Euphoria" was a victory, while "Tattoo" always felt like more of a defeat. It's a subtle difference, but one that should always lead to Euphoria being ranked AHEAD of Tattoo, jesus christ ESC250 voters.

However, this is still Loreen, and a lesser Loreen is still lowkey epic. Eventhough "Tattoo" is probably the least good Loreen song, (technically because it's a Cazzi Opeia song with a Loreen sound - "You're stuck on me like a tatoo-oo-oo that is a Cazzi hook if ever there was), it is still a good song. Loreen proved although she's now at an age where her memory is starting to fail her, forgetting essentials such as clipping her fingernails and paying her taxes, she still has the attitude and flat stomach of a cougar ready to pounce. All credits for Tattoo's successes belong to her, SJB and no one else.

And, not unimportantly in a audio-visual medium such as Eurovision, Tattoo also looked really good on the stage. It had A Vision, which is what every winner needs nowadays. Again, the staging is great but also... not that grat lol - it's not the best staging ever. It's not better than Euphoria's or even Vesna's that we'll talk about later. Nevertheless, the song was beautifully framed under the confined space of that impromptu photocopier and Loreen's choreography. The staging was dynamic, artistic and gave the impression real stakes were involved. It Understood The Assignment. It made the song *pop*.

I specifically really LOVE the wide shot during the bridge that really anchors the devastation and desolation she sings about.

It's one of those money shots linger in your mind after the song has ended.

So overall, yeah, Loreen is not my winner or even a top fiver for me, but oh well, whatever? She was a dull winner compared to Käärijä but not an undeserving one. She's still a solid eight-and-a-half out of ten. She alone provided the triple threat of Good composition, Stunning Act and Killer Execution, so ofc juries flocked to her if they're instructed to assess the overal package. If you still think they robbed Käärijä (they did not.) remember that Loreen was solidly second in nearly every televote behind him. If he were destined to always lose Eurovision 2023 like I now believe he was, it's definitely only Loreen who should have taken the W here.

-------------------------------

05. AUSTRALIA Voyager - "Promise" 9th place

Decade Ranking: 17/116 [Above Adrenalina, below Manizha]

Sometimes the reason is "I like music." Many were surprised Voyager came top 10, but not I. To repeat a common question one final time:

HAVE YOU HEARD THE SONG?!?

Well-executed ProgMetal, at Eurovision! By a charismatic lead! Of course it was going to get a good chunk of jury votes from a group of people that know more music beyond what gets radio airplay. As Danny sings, if you haven't done anything like this before, you haven't been alive, sillies!

Going into the contest though, I wasn't fully sure Australia would grab the top 10 I envisioned for them. Like sure, I saw the vision. But my predictions come from Antwerp, not Delphi and the visions I see don't always come to pass. Voyager were hit the hardest by the fandom's latent misandry for daring to be men (+ Simone). Then again, if the fandom got their way, "Padam Padam" would win every year (lol can you imagine what a nightmare that meta would be? especially because "Padam Padam" isn't even that good to begin with) and not songs that are effectively Synthwave with Metal instrumentation. This is a combo that leads to immersive moodpieces, and not the high energy spikes you might expect from metal.

But what this blog if not for its appreciation for moodpieces and what was "Promise" if not A Mood immortalized by Voyager into An Experience. Danny playing the keytar on the bonnet of his delorean, or nearly choking on a chicken sandwich while getting 12 Portuguese points, THOSE are MY little joys in life.

Everything on stage suits a wholesome song about ~promising your loved ones you're in this life's adventure together, ride or die~, which as a message hits home even harder since Danny's cancer diagonosis (not like this affected their placement here - Australia were coming 5th on this ranking since the beginning).

And let's be honest, "Promise" is a just really good song that doesn't need frills or embellishments, but it got those anyway with everyone's fun adlibs.

It's like S10 or MARO, not the flashiest entry nor the most iconic staging, but never the less, the personality came through well enough to merit revisitations when I have a craving for it. Besides, we need a diverse array of genres at Eurovision, to ensure the bar remains high and we don't get a year full of Liars and Firefighters. "Promise" defo fit that bill well. It was good to have A Real Song into the mix, and one that was very deservedly was rewarded with a top ten placement.

If you think that a bad result, then that's fine. I agree with you, but mostly because I think Australia should have come top five and were robbed by the televote. 🙂

THE RANKING

[silverbridge-harbor]

Celebrimbor's Letter to Durin IV

A Tengwar Analysis

ayyy first time doing something like this, so it might suck but lets goooooo

My credentials are here.

In Rings of Power s02e02, Celebrimbor sends a letter to Durin. The first thing to note is that it is written in the "full writing" Beleriand style, where vowels are written as separate characters instead of diacritics. This is correct for second-age Elven writing in Eriador. Points there.

When I watched the episode, I was expecting this to be Sindarin, but it is actually English, transliterated phonetically. This means they are using a phonetic English full mode based on the Sindarin mode of Beleriand. Tolkien had a couple of these, but as far as I can tell, they came up with this one themselves. But it was done a bit...oddly.

First off, here it is as plain Standard English™, in ASCII:

Durin IV, I humbly request your attendance in Eregion, that I might present a new offer for the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm. Despite your recent misfortunes, I believe your ears are best suited to listen to this proposition. My people are in your debt, and I...

Okay, mostly ASCII. But anyway, this is what the letter says. No need to obsess over it and spend several hours dissecting it and writing a deep analysis.

...Unless?

Lets number the lines.

Now, lets go through it line by line, phonetically. I will be using the Quenya names for the tengwar given on Amanyë Tenceli.

1: Durin 4,

Not all that much to say yet. Note the doubled stem on the first tengwa, Ando. This is comparable to the ornate first letters in illuminated manuscripts, and does not change anything. It looks a bit like a friend we will meet in a moment, though, so it was worth mentioning.

They didnt use a dot or ring to mark the 4 as a number, but since its a single digit below 10, no big deal.

2: ai hambly rikwest yór (I humbly request your)

So this suddenly became a mess. But, actually, not really; remember, this is a phonetic transcription, so strictly speaking, anything goes, as long as it sounds right when you read it back out.

The first thing I noticed was the tehta on the last word, the rightward hook. That is the O-tehta, used to mark a consonantal tengwa with a preceding or following O-vowel...something a full mode is specifically supposed to not be doing. Here, it is over Anna, which also represents an o in the Beleriand mode. So I figured it was standing for a lengthened ó, but in a weird way similar to how diphthongs are written. Then I saw the same tehta over Úrë on a later line, and realized: the way to lengthen a vowel in the Beleriand mode is to use an andatehta. This is usually the E-tehta, which looks like an acute accent. Here, they simply swapped that out for the more interesting looking O-tehta. I havent seen this before, but I like it. Sauron did something vaguely similar, using the O-tehta in the ring inscription to represent U-vowels in the Black Speech.

Lets talk about those ys. That tengwa is Ára, which is used for a consonantal i, in words like iâth and iorhael. Basically, think of it as a J in Latin. (I am having trouble digging up my old source on this, but the transcriptions on Eldamo seem to agree with me.) The point is, as a consonant, Ára fits perfectly for "your", but doesnt really make sense for "humbly". The Beleriand Sindarin mode already has a vocalic y, using Silmë Nuquerna; it represents a vowel we do not even have in English, so there would be no conflict to simply repurpose it for this. Ára was an odd choice.

3: itendins in eregion, (attendance in Eregion,) 4: dhaet ai mait prezent i (that I might present a)

Here it gets weird. The first i on line 3 and the last on 4, both Telco, both represent what was originally a. A few things could be happening here.

In the Classical mode, for Quenya, Telco is a carrier mark, with no sound of its own. Additionally, the A-tehta can be dropped where it can be assumed, because it is both the most common vowel in Quenya and the most complicated tehta to write. Because of these two facts, a lone Telco can be read as an A-vowel. But this is a different mode for a different language. I hope this isnt what they were going for.

They may be using Telco to represent Schwa. This fits perfectly for these two occurrences, and several other lines, but I would expect it to also be used, for example, in "hambly" above and "av" below.

It could be an indeterminate vowel, essentially meaning "figure it out yourself". This seems feasible, to me; this is the default in many languages, including Khuzdûl, and the letter is being written to a Dwarf, after all. But also, the letter is being written to a Dwarf, by an Elf. This is a diplomatic letter. An indeterminate vowel seems a bit too...casual? for this context.

The ae diphthong in "dhaet"/"that" is a bit odd too, but it might be based on IPA [æ], the vowel in "that".

5: nú ófir fór dhi dwórvz (new offer for the Dwarves) 6: av khazaddúm. (of Khazad-dûm.)

I appreciate "khazaddúm" being run together like this. Fun fact: the hyphens in names (like this and "Gil-galad") are for our benefit only; they are not used when writing with the Tengwar (at least as far as I have ever seen, but I cant afford the really good sources like Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon).

Also note the use of Quessë for kh. This is very strange. First, the Beleriand mode does not use tengwar from the quessetéma (fourth column), except for Wilya, so this use of Quessë was added for the show. Secondly, the Beleriand mode already has a tengwa that represents this sound: Aha (or Harma).

However, Aha is usually romanized as ch, instead of kh. It may be that the transliterator was working from a character table, saw "ch", assumed it to represent [tʃ] (as in English) instead of [x], and decided to repurpose an unused tengwa.

7: dispait yór ryisint (Despite your recent) 8: mysfórchinz, ai bylyiv (misfortunes, I believe)

Ope, here we go using Ára as a vowel again.

Wait...what? Why are you using Ára, which you are already using as a Y-vowel, with the Y-tehta? Treating that as a diphthong like ai, it turns out as yi. What is this? Is this supposed to be like "Kyiv"? Is this even still the same person as the first half?

EDIT 2024-09-03: Skimming over this again, they did indeed use Aha here to represent [tʃ], the English value of ch, and I totally missed the connection. I guess I was distracted by this yi business. Anyway, this shows that they were at least aware of Aha, and most likely did see it labelled as "ch". I am okay with the idea of reassigning it, as it is in one of the three primary témar in the mode, and English does use [tʃ] vastly more than [x]. But, as mentioned below, Hwesta is used for [x] in Gondor, so I would have simply borrowed that, rather than arbitrarily assigning Quessë. That might be slightly anachronistic, though.

Also, @tragedykery in the replies has pointed out that the vowel /iː/ can become the diphthong [ɪj] in certain situations in Celebrimbor's accent (thanks :D), which may have been the intent behind the Ára diphthong I interpret as yi. This also fits well with ae representing [æ].

9: yór yrz or best sútyd (your ears are best suited)

"OR"??? ...Okay, I see what happened here, actually. Anna looks like ɑ (and its name even starts with an A), but in the Beleriand mode, it actually represents an O-vowel. This one was most likely just a proofreading slip.

Gonna have to put Ára up on the high shelf soon, though. You know, the high shelves? The ones who have seen the light of the coat trees.

10: tú lysin tú dhys (to listen to this) 11: propizyʃin. mai pyipil (proposition. My people)

Here they used Hwesta to represent, presumably, [ʃ]. This is another repurposed tengwa from the quessetéma. This one, however, does not already have an equivalent in this mode. Fair play.

Incidentally, Hwesta is directly adjacent to Aha on the chart, and is itself used to represent [x] in the mode of Gondor.

"Pyipil" is very strange. But then, so is "people". And so are people.

12: or yn yor det, ind ai (are in your debt, and I)

This is the last line, with the bottom cut off, but I think this is right, looking at the line weights. Featuring the return of our friend "or".

Vocalic Ára aside, "yn" is very interesting, because "in" has already shown up, way back on line 3. I really do wonder whether they had two people on this.

Also interesting is "yor", without a long vowel. This one is definitely just a simple proofreading mistake.

Overall, I would say this is...decent. Again, it is a phonetic transcription, and it is 100% legible. From that angle, mission accomplished. I do wish they had written it in Sindarin, or, failing that, defined a more comprehensive and consistent Beleriand English mode to work from.

And of course, this still absolutely puts Shadow of War to shame.

Finally, here is the full actual text of the letter, in the Tengwar, according to the character mapping of the Free Tengwar Font Project. I have absolutely no idea how Tumblr is going to respond to this. For science :D

                                            

Ah. Looks like thats the same Unicode block Tumblr uses for their own custom characters. So its probably not worth it to try to get Tumblr to use a Tengwar font, because it would break other stuff. Should be able to paste that mess into a compatible text editor and look at it there, though, so I will leave it in.

[runawaymun]

if nobody's been here yet I'm gonna be very cringe and on brand and ask about the Partake Prequel

also Rivendell's Tiny Tearaway sounds DELIGHTFUL

Ahhhh thank you!

Ask me about my not-yet-written-fics from this list

The Partake Prequel

(also if you wanted to know more about Rivendell's tiny tearaway just lmk I can make another post for that haha. But I am glad it sounds good!!!)

(cw: discussions of pretty abusive dynamics and questionable consent, also discussion of sex)

so this only exists in my head because a) I'm morbidly curious and have a fascination with the psychology of messed up relationships and b) I am a masochist.

I am just constantly thinking about how the fuck We Got Here when it comes to To Partake. Like how do things get to a point where it's this fucked up and messy and tangly and Bad?

and of course there are bits and snatches that are mixed in to Partake -- like little glimpses into the backstory of Elrond and Gil's situationship, but I want to know more specifically how we got to where we are now.

We know that Elrond started pining after Gil sometime in the late first age when he was roughly in between the age of fifty and seventy. Which...for a Peredhel is a perfectly acceptable age to be sexual (Elwing and Dior had kids and were married by 30). But from an Elvish perspective (i,e. Gil's) that's a baby.

Literally he does not think about anyone else. This is a somewhat unhealthy obsession already. There's a fealty-kink wrapped up in here somehow that's all messily combined with the fact that Gil is currently the only adult who is really present in Elrond's life (if we're going with ROP's timeline Galadriel seems to fuck off to hunt Sauron shortly after Morgoth's imprisonment in the void, and you know...Earendil is busy Earendiling)

So to start I don't think Gil even really saw anything with Elrond as being on the table until sometime in the very early second age, after he appoints Elrond as herald. It's unclear when this happened -- I couldn't find a date for it. But I presume it to be sometime after Lindon is founded and Mithlond constructed and certainly after Elros sailed for Numenor (Elrond would have been emotionally vulnerable and attached to Gil-Galad even more -- and in my head Elros would not have approved of anything going on between Elrond and Gil-Galad so that's very off limits until he's gone)

But--- with Elros gone indefinitely, yeah Elrond gets more attached to Gil.

They're still not sexual yet though.

Elrond is taking regular trips to Numenor etc.

So I generally imagine that things really Began between the two of them sometime shortly after SA 432, when Elrond is around 500 years old. He's "mature" at this point in Elvish terms, and Elros has just died -- so, unhinged and probably at one of his lowest points.

SEX CW: I have a VERY firm idea in my head which I was planning to make a oneshot of. But Elrond at this point does get Very Horny about Gil and starts masturbating about it sometime around here. Gil catches him and that's how....uhhhh things start.

Because OBVIOUSLY (Gil brain here) he is into Gil and THEREFORE this is a PERFECTLY NORMAL and FINE thing to do!

Plus he is OF. AGE.

Nevermind the fact that Elrond is incredibly unstable and vulnerable and depressed & still extremely young, completely inexperienced, and there's some really fucky power dynamics -- all of which affect his ability to consent properly to ANYTHING.

So that's how it starts. They just start having sex. I think nobody really knows about it at this point.

(we start with mostly just Gil on the receiving end of some oral sex that Elrond is getting rapidly better at)

Gil's the one to broach anything more than that and Elrond is down for anything as long as Gil is happy.

rumors do start circulating at this point but absolutely nobody is keen to confront them about it.

I feel like there's potential here for Galadriel to catch wind of things, directly ask, and for Elrond to deny absolutely everything.

If she asked Gil there's no way that he'd admit that anything is going on either because she makes him fear for his life haha.

Elrond has been actively suppressing links to Melian at this point because it freaks out most Elves -- and because Gil doesn't like it.

At some point Gil broaches-- and by broaches what I really mean here is tries (he doesn't ASK!!) an osanwe link. Likely either during or just after sex.

Elrond does not know any better and his brain is full of dopamine and he thinks this is AWESOME. The king wants to be EVEN MORE INTIMATE

boom osanwe link. Far more of an osanwe link than they ever should have had.

boom immediate dissonance which is painful for Gil and so he assumes it is painful for Elrond

Elrond has not had enough osanwe experience to know this is pretty insular to the specific way his and Gil's Themes don't mesh.

"Let me fix it ok?" "Oh god please fix it"

Also there's the undertone here of Gil doesn't like it and Elrond feeling the need to manage his emotions and divest himself of anything displeasing even if that's his fucking Theme.

Hence the theme fuckery begins.

And things really really really start to devolve with their relationship.

Like I imagine in the beginning Gil was pretty cautious and careful -- not in a lovey dovey way but he's not wholly inconsiderate and it's within his Partake characterization that he doesn't like to hurt his partner unless it's in a fun kinky way. He also does not get off on someone being scared. That's an ick for him. So initially he would be careful.

But Elrond starts getting really good at masking things and figuring out that Gil likes to be rough.

And of course, anything for Gil.

Do you see where we're going.

Well and it's compounded by the fact that Elrond does actually like it, too. It just scares him. So he as a lot of really confusing feelings going on that he doesn't know how to handle and there's also a lot of shame wrapped up in it too

And obviously Gil is not um. Guiding him through this in the way that a more experienced partner who is sometimes building scenes and domming should.

And again -- there's that messy thing of "I need to please you in absolutely every way possible and also clearly my differences are Bad, and therefore I must mask all of them as best I can and keep up with my work demands because being useful is better than being loved."

(Which is a lesson he learned from literally everyone, even Elros in the end. It is not a lesson that Elros meant to teach him. But Elros loved him. And then he left.)

Anyway that's as far as I've gotten. The beginning is much more specific and it gets more nebulous as we get closer to the Partake timeline, but it's very easy for me to see the trajectory of their relationship, and that's really what I want to explore.

OHHHH also the undertone of codependency because Elrond and Gil are both fundamentally isolated and find solace in each other. And Gil isolates Elrond further to ensure that He Will Not Be Left. Because Gil is afraid of being inadequate and has literally no one else except like, Cirdan, who cares for him so deeply. (I mean, he would. If he wasn't an asshole. But you get where I am going with this.)

Yeah. Sorry.

There is no happy ending to this fic it is just a dissection of how we get from point A to point B. The happy ending would be Partake alkdhg.

[elerrinacrownedwithstars]

Galadriel in the Rings of Power, part 4: A savvy politician or a silly brash youth?

This post is the continuation of my analysis of Galadriel as she is portrayed in the Amazon series The Rings of Power - and why I think it is so very bad. Part 1 focused on the the portrayal of her being a warrior, and the many problems it creates for her character and possibly even for LOTR, whereas part 2 argued that what is supposed to be war trauma is actually just an awful personality. Part 3 focuses on the ways ROP undermines Galadriel's story as a woman, wife, and mother.

Part 1 x Part 2 x Part 3

This post will discuss the various ways Galadriel's portrayal in ROP is wrong when comparing the mental qualities she expresses in canon and in the show, the depiction of her age, and whether she is well cast in the show.

I will post my arguments in a few different posts, because that should make the whole much more readable. I will use the tags #anti rop and #anti rings of power for the benefit of those who may want to filter my posts.

If you like Amazon Rings of Power, I have no issue with that; I only take issue with how a character I've loved for over a decade is portrayed in this show.

6. ROP!Galadriel does not have the mental capacity and abilities she should have.

In Tolkien's versions of Galadriel's story, she is consistently portrayed as an individual of high intellect and wisdom, matching even the loremasters of her people. She is insightful and astute, seeing into the hearts of people around her, and recognising evil even under a fair form. She is collected and resilient after great ordeals and suffering. She never is persuaded to follow or even like Fëanor, and when Sauron comes to Eregion as Annatar, she knows him immediately for what he is. She learns to check her ambition and when she's offered the rule of Lothlórien, she won't become a queen after King Amroth, but assumes more of a regent's role as the Lady of the Wood. Galadriel is also a strong and wise leader, respected by her subordinates and other Elven communities, which implies great diplomatic skill. As I have argued before, it is striking that she, a Noldo and blood-relation of Kinslayers, is revered among the Elves of MIddle-earth. It's hard to believe this would be possible if she did not build and maintain a connection with them throughout the First and Second Ages. When the Istari arrive in Middle-earth, she rightly recognises Gandalf as the greatest of them. She travels through Khazad-dûm with her daughter, and does so while her husband Celeborn refuses the journey due to his prejudices for Dwarves, thus showing her tolerance and ability to deal with the other peoples of Middle-earth. She makes allies among the peoples of Middle-earth, is the instigator of the White Council and even invokes love in the heart of Gimli the dwarf, who has every reason to be mistrustful of her. Specifically, it is her eloquence and respect for his culture that wins him over. She is one of the very few noble Noldorin Elves to survive the First Age and endure until the end of the Third. 

I don't find any of these qualities in ROP!Galadriel. The most glaring difference is how blind and gullible she is to Sauron/Halbrand's deceptions - a direct contradiction of how canonically Galadriel immediately saw through his disguise and was his enemy from the start. ROP!Galadriel doesn't seem particularly intelligent, what with jumping out of a ship and trying to swim across an ocean, and spending centuries fruitlessly hunting Sauron. And as I argued in the part 3, it doesn't seem like she ever had a very good plan of how to bring down Sauron, if she ever found him - unless her intention always was to self-destruct by Sauron.

She has no wisdom whatsoever, doesn't see her own faults and doesn't try to check herself. She is a princess of Noldor and in her youth witnessed all the tensions and rivalries at her grandfather's court, but still she has no skill in politics, diplomacy or negotiation. She lets herself be manipulated by Gil-galad, stepping on the ship that sails for Valinor and only jumps out at the point when there is no way she could possibly swim back to Middle-earth (only to be saved by idiot plot). She is antagonising against potential allies. She waltzes into the court of Númenor, yells platitudes at the regent, makes arrogant demands and gets herself thrown in jail - which she gets out of not by eloquence and persuasion, but by aggression and violence. The only reason Míriel seems to help her is because Míriel's own foreboding, not because Galadriel's diplomatic skill. She is a blunt weapon of no artistry or subtlety. She is rude even when her circumstances require tact and caution, and continues to act in a coarse way even though the Númenóreans' prejudices against Elves are already causing tensions and the smart thing to do would be to show discretion and courtesy. For her community, she is a problem to be dealt with, not a great asset and ally. She has no personal dignity and people around have no respect for her. And why would they? She is not nice even to her so called friends and mostly she is bothered to care about people around her when they can somehow serve her vengeance. Pride is maybe the only thing ROP!Galadriel has in common with her canon counterpart, but it's combined with an already awful personality and no redeeming qualities.

7. Depiction of Galadriel's age is nonsensical.

This argument has not just to do with Galadriel, but is linked with the show's larger problems with portraying Elves and the compression of time - although it is telling that it's the female character that gets this treatment, not one of the male Elves. However, this is another discussion altogether and I will cover it in the final part of my analysis.

According to Tolkien's lore, Elves reach maturity at the age of a hundred years. Galadriel at the end of the Second Age is already thousands of years old. At this point in canon, she has been married for an age and has a grown daughter. She is one of the oldest and most powerful elves of Middle-earth, and is senior to Gil-galad and Celebrimbor. 

Although ROP still maintains that Galadriel was born in Valinor during the years of the Trees and is thus exactly as old as in canon, you would not guess it from the way she presents herself. She is so brash and immature in her behaviour that Elendil, a mortal who can't even comprehend the ages she has lived, actually says she reminds him of his children (is this some convoluted way of saying that only parenthood will bring out one's full potential?). Meanwhile, Gil-galad and Celebrimbor, who are both her junior, are portrayed as older and more mature. In canon, Galadriel is wise already as a young elf and her wisdom grows only greater during her long life, but ROP!Galadriel has absolutely no wisdom and despite her great age, acts like a hot-headed teenager. It seems the show wants to portray her as "young Galadriel", never mind the fact that this character cannot in any way be considered young at the end of the Second Age. Heck, it would be a reach even if the show began at the start of SA.

8. Galadriel is not well cast

I will admit that this argument is partly a matter of taste, but there is also a more objective observation to be made: Galadriel is described as a very tall woman, as tall as most male Elves. She is also an athlete in her youth, and also physically strong. Combining this with her high intellect, her ability to read the hearts and minds of others, and heritage as a High Elf who saw the light of the Trees, Galadriel should be played by a tall, imposing and striking woman. 

The actress Amazon cast in the role does not have these qualities. She is diminutive and does not stand out in any scene as an ancient and powerful Elf. The weight of the role would be humongous for anyone after Cate Blanchett's widely beloved portrayal, and it is certainly not helpful that the show creators have made some very controversial choices about the character.

On a more subjective note, in my opinion the actress is not particularly good in the role. Most of the time, she has only two expressions, sullenness and angry sneer. Her delivery is not very good or convincing. But maybe this is not the actress' fault: the problems could stem from the script and direction, which are at times laughably bad. I don't know of the actress' previous work - I'm under the impression that she is a new face in the business and ROP is her first major role - so it may be also a question of experience.

Also we should cast tall women in more roles. 

&&&&&&

The next and the final part will attempt to tie in my arguments and also point out some problems with the show that are not necessarily about Galadriel, but affect nonetheless the way she's portrayed in the show.

[demonscantgothere]

Is Celebrian as Sauron's daughter just a crack theory or is there any merit to it?

Oooooooh, I'm so glad you asked, anon, because let me explain something very interesting to you!

The rings of power were roughly forged in the Second Age between the years 1500/1600. At the time, it is explained that Celeborn and Galadriel were together.

Tolkien had a lot of discrepancies with Celebrían. A lot. First of all, what little he wrote of her is mostly not even official canon but from unfinished manuscripts and letters. For instance, in some stories she has a brother Amroth, but those stories were de-canonized because Tolkien changed his mind and later made Amroth the son of Amdír instead of Celeborn and Galadriel.

The first mention of Celebrían is around the Second Age 1350-1400 when she was traveling alone with her mother, Galadriel, through Khazad-dûm. At this time, Celeborn was not with them. Mind you, the very first mention of her, there's no father involved. Her and her mother, Galadriel, are traveling alone together. IN FACT, Celebrían and Galadriel wander alone together for a couple hundred of years, looking for Celeborn. The next mention of Celebrían is in the Second Age in 1700, after the forging of the Rings, and it is mentioned specifically by Tolkien that they were trying to find Celeborn, but Tolkien never explains why Celeborn isn't with them in the first place. Dude just goes missing for a couple hundred of years! (Hmm, sounds like the show, doesn't it?)

Celebrían isn't mentioned again until the Third Age when she marries Elrond in 2500. At this point, Galadriel and Celeborn have finally been reunited.

So, yes, there's lots of juicy discrepancies with Tolkien's timelines involving Celebrían because it was just all over the place and Celeborn was nowhere to be found.

[lesbiansforboromir]

Regarding your last ask, when did sauron seem so hopeless? Was it somewhere in the text? Wasn't he at the height of his hubris just doing whatever the hell he wanted in middle earth, enjoying his success and just having a good time.

Oh I'm not describing a specific aspect of the text, I was more extrapolating from what the text says that he must have an amount of despair for his end goal. He certainly is not enjoying any success either. 'Success' is extremely relative, Sauron might have been entirely full of his own hubris, but that internally would have made his actual accomplishments appear extremely meager. Like yes, he is definitely causing untold misery and death continent wide, but that is not his actual goal. His goal is total control and domination, which he never succeeds in doing to any of the 'faithful' peoples, only to those in the south and east who in the majority have been worshipping Morgoth and then Sauron for most of time whilst being entirely abandoned by the Valar. In fact! Sometimes he does not even have control over them! Sauron has to historically suffer a great deal of ego-brutalising moments in order to further his causes, debasing himself in front of Pharazon, being laughed at by orcs (that is a canonical thing that happens, actually the quote is so funny you gotta see it; […] The Eastern Orcs, who had not experienced the power and terror of the Eldar, or the valor of the Edain, were not subservient to Sauron - while he was obliged for the cozening of Western Men and Elves to wear as fair form and countenance as he could, they despised him and laughed at him, lmao) when he tries to re-dominate them during the early second age, and in the end none of those things actually work! He gets defeated by Numenor, he gets destroyed with an island and loses his form, he gets defeated by a new country only 100 years old and loses his OTHER form, he has to become a nasty little forest necromancer for a while just to cope, neither dragons nor balrogs will work with him unless he gets to beg them first and they get killed before he can do that. Any victories he achieves, destroying Arnor for example, are then immediately tempered by defeat (battle of Fornost). And then also according to texts, Sauron is tormented by his own longing for the ring as well! He is not a creature that gets to relax, nor can he really.

I think I should also say that like.. the kind of evil Sauron is into is supposed to feel terrible canonically. He might outwardly show a haughty demeanor, but Sauron is constantly aggrieved by what he lacks, in a similar way to Morgoth being perpetually terrified and discontented. And this is textual, the discontent and rampant obsession is why they rebelled in the first place, neither of them are beings that are happy to rest when they havent even achieved what they wanted too. And as I said before, that achievement is impossible. Sauron and Morgoth did not have the bliss of not knowing about fate and the rule of Eru etc, he's their dad. They had the hubris to believe that they could defeat fate itself, but they also had to be somewhat aware that that was at least an unimaginably monumental task. So no! I'm afraid, even if he was at the height of his hubris, that is not a pleasant place to be and he was not able to do anything he wanted really. He was consumed 24/7 by his schemes or what he was owed or his losses or indeed his lack of the ring and I dont think he felt a single moment of peace from the moment he left Valinor till now.

[sotwk]

The Story of Thranduil's Great Losses

My overarching theory about Elvenking’s broken heart is that he actually lost multiple family members over the course of the Third Age, in events borne about by the spawning of evils from Dol Guldur and the resurgence of the orcs in lands close to Mirkwood. 

However, the biggest loss that hit him hardest was that of his beloved wife. Prior to being softened by marriage and fatherhood, Thranduil must have been a bit difficult to get along with. Based on his portrayal in the The Hobbit trilogy, we can picture him as arrogant, cocky, snobbish, stubborn, impatient, hot-tempered, and carrying the emotional and mental damages of war. Remember that he witnessed the Sacking of Doriath, one or potentially two Kinslayings, the War of Wrath, and likely one or two of the great Elven wars in the mid Second Age. (I’m not listing the War of the Last Alliance here because I think he was already married at that point.) Essentially, he was a grumpy, battle-hardened soldier who just wanted to live the rest of his life on Middle-earth in peace and free of care.  

Eventually, he met an elleth who not only saw the goodness and kindness behind these flaws, but helped him temper his demons. She understood and respected his desires but also inspired him to fulfill his potential as a great ruler. With their union, they helped each other grow and under their rule the Woodland Realm flourished and thrived for about a thousand years into the Third Age. 

And then, sometime around TA 1000, the Necromancer (aka Sauron) came to Amon Lanc and set up shop, turning it into the cesspool that is Dol Guldur. Thranduil’s blissful existence began to crumble from then on, slowly but surely.

Almost two thousand years later, he was still working hard to serve his people and sustain his kingdom which was being plagued by the Necromancer’s evils, even after he'd lost the beautiful home he and his wife built together and raised their children in. In his fight against the Enemy, he lost dear friends and even his own children (who, or how many, I will not say, because I have yet to write those stories!). The fact that an estranged Legolas was the one left remaining to him by the events of The Hobbit speaks to the extent of his personal losses. 

After TWO THOUSAND years of enduring this decline, injury, and strife, can you imagine what a blow it was to him when, due to one weak, unguarded moment, Thranduil failed to protect his Queen and she died?

How did it happen? 

Honestly, I am still working out the specifics in order to write a story about it, but in the meantime, I have some notes to share. 

If we choose to subscribe to The Hobbit movie’s claim that the Elvenqueen died in Gundabad, (which I do, loosely, in my own headcanon history for the SOTWK series I am building), a logical time when this might have occurred was in TA 2793 during the War of the Dwarves and Orcs and the Second Sacking of Gundabad. 

My belief is that the Elvenqueen was not a fighter, because her husband was already a renowned warrior who commanded a formidable army, and a more practical and fitting role for her would be that of a healer, ready to tend to her King and sons should they suffer injury. Elves who are healers generally avoid combat, because as Tolkien’s “Laws and Customs of the Eldar” states: “the dealing of death, even when lawful or under necessity, diminished the power of healing” (from “The History of Middle Earth").

Details of about how the Elvenqueen’s death occurred include my following assumptions: (Bear with me, because a few are leaps and stretches of imagination, although still logical in my mind.)

The Elvenqueen was Noldorin and a dwarf-friend, similar to Celebrimbor or Elrond (in Rings of Power). Since dwarves helped build the underground halls as seen in The Hobbit, a congenial relationship must have existed between Thranduil’s house and the dwarves of Durin’s Folk. I believe the Queen was the source of this, being a friend to Thrain I (ancestor of Thorin Oakenshield).

In TA 2770, when Smaug besieged Erebor and turned the Dwarves into nomads, Thranduil refused to give them aid (for reasons I can discuss at a later time--but I have a theory for this too!). At the time, the Elvenqueen was residing elsewhere and was unable to prevent this. 

Twenty years later: Wanting to make up for past mistakes, the Elvenqueen persuaded her reluctant King to send a portion of their army to fight on the Dwarves’ side, arguing that the orcs are also their people’s sworn enemy. (Does the argument sound familiar? Maybe that’s why Thranduil found Tauriel so aggravating!)

The Elvenqueen accompanied Thranduil to the first assembly of the forces, to facilitate the interactions between her hot-headed husband and a still-angry Thrain II (Thorin’s dad). 

After a few battles had been fought and won, Thranduil convinced his wife to return home. She was to be escorted by Elven warriors and taken by a safe route provided by the Dwarves, but due to either betrayal or faulty intelligence, the Elvenqueen was instead ambushed and captured by orcs and taken to Gundabad. 

Learning of this, Thranduil rode to her rescue and engaged the forces of Gundabad in battle. But his efforts were in vain because the Queen had already been slain; the orcs had no intention of returning her and had merely tried to set a trap. All Thranduil found was her lifeless body, and he never had a chance to say goodbye. 

It was Thranduil’s rage that cleansed Gundabad of orcs during that war. (Take his fight scenes in the movies and multiply by the fury of a thousand suns.) However, once this was done, he took his army home, refusing to continue fighting the rest of the six-year war. He blamed the Dwarves’ negligence for his wife’s death, which led to the open hostility between his and Thrain/Thorin’s houses. 

Thranduil’s anger was so well known (and feared), that Dain Ironfoot (who wasn’t even there!) later made the movie claim “he wishes nothing but ill upon my people” and called Thranduil a “faithless woodland sprite”, in reference to him not completing his participation in the war.

At the time of the Elvenqueen’s death, Legolas was already over 2,000 years old, so when Legolas tells Tauriel “there is no memory”, he means a grieving Thranduil likely discouraged any mention of his dead wife in his presence, songs of her are not widely sung, and images/memorials of her are scarce. “There is no grave” could mean that she was perhaps buried somewhere secret, not easily accessible, or not a typical resting place for elves. Thranduil's grief was just too deep to bear this.

[afaramir]

did you guys understand what i meant in my tragedy of the psychic warfare post when i said i will not be your banner. i need to make sure you understood because just the thought of it has been genuinely fucking me up ever since. i just. denethor definitely knows the story of the end of the second age, and more specifically, what banner the armies of sauron carried onto the battlefield. and if you need a refresher, its celebrimbor’s dead body. tortured and mutilated and probably stripped naked (someone fact check me on that one) and stuck on a standard to be carried into battle. and. well. god i cant even say it. even thinking of it makes me visualize it in my head and i genuinely get nauseous. ok just. if gondor falls denethor’s death will not be easy. he has been too much of a thorn in sauron’s side for far too long. and. alright you draw the Logical Conclusion from the facts ive presented while i go and cry for a minute.

now sauron has famously had a lot of enemies, and yet he only did the banner thing once. so you might ask well what’s my rationale for thinking he might do it again? well pure sick deranged angst of course. but i do have AN argument although i do not promise it is bulletproof.

i think that he chose to do it to celebrimbor as a final act of desecration. he’s taken the rings they made together and all of the art of their creation and corrupted them and used that great craft to forge a tool solely of domination. he’s tortured him, personally, to death. and THEN he turns his body into a banner and marches on the last alliance. its an act of specific psychological horror every elf on that battlefield knows exactly who that is, hanging from the standard.

and denethor? well - sauron destroyed numenor, did he not? not directly, but i think he claims it as his victory because otherwise the loss of his fair appearance and his physical form to the alkallabeth would be too heavy of a blow to his ego lol. and now here is this man - nay, this numenorean, who is the first person in centuries who has dared vie with him directly. who not only contests him mentally but HOLDS OUT, for DECADES, where saruman, also a literal maia, greatest of the order of the wizards, could not. who poses a genuine threat to him, while also standing as a bulwark between him and the rest of middle-earth. denethor’s entire existence fucks with him so much. because he thinks oh, numenor was easily corruptible. men are easy to enslave or turn to my will. and then here is denethor, single-handedly proving him wrong. by the end of the war sauron has so many sick revenge fantasies against him in his head. i really don’t think its too much of a stretch to think that bannering him is one of them.

further...i also think part of the thing with choosing celebrimbor is that the final battle was upon them. it was sort of expedient. well i need a banner for this battle and CONVENIENTLY i also have this guy i hate whom ive tortured. and what is sauron going to do once gondor falls? march on the rest of middle-earth. with the lord of its first line of defense, its forlorn hope, as. well you see what i mean. i typed it out and then HAD to delete it.

and oh my GOD he KNOWS. AND HE KNOWS!!! HES SEEN HIMSELF ON THAT STANDARD!!! I FEEL! I FEEL!!!! anyway yeah i picture it and i wish for death!

[lordgrimwing]

you know I gotta ask about more mouths AU

Ask me about my WIPs!

Ah, More Mouth, the first au Nightie created while I cowered in the background, horrified by the torments heaped upon upon Glorfindel.

The premise: simple (Sauron captures Glorfindel in the second age and warps his body and mind into a monster). The genre: horror (body horror, specifically, as we see our hero twisted until he is nearly unrecognizable). The word count: low (a lot of aus have been made since then and it's hard to write stuff like this. there are three stories and some art on ao3--which I can't link now because ao3 is down).

To give more detail (because I can):

Sauron turns Glorfindel into a werewolf of sorts (Nightie's lovely art) in defiance of the Valar and their emissary. During this time, Suaron sends letters to Imladris, taunting a helpless Erestor with the details of each new torture. He eventually abandons Glorfindel as the forces of evil are driven back into the depths of Mordor, thinking the elves will be forced to kill the monster (a moral blow). Glorfindel is now a raging beast with a taste for flesh and the keen mind of a deadly predator. The elves will surely have no choice but to kill it.

Against all odds, Erestor (and Elrond) convince Gil-galad and the generals to stay their hand. Some claim that it no longer has a fea, that the Necromancer cast the soul from the body and replaced it will a fell spirit as he did so often for the Dark Lord. Erestor is sure his lover is still in there somewhere (or, if he is really honest with himself, he just can't bare to lose the last remnant of his husband, perhaps forever this time).

And then the au progresses through the rest of the second and third age as Erestor cares for the monster that used to be Glorfindel.

Ok, ok, because of who we are, there is a happy ending at the end after all the torment and angst.

Some of my favorite parts:

The beast still screams like an elf.

Erestor knows he shouldn't read the letters but he can't let Glorfindel suffer alone.

The beast seems to recognize Erestor and (usually) won't attack him.

Erestor hides injuries from Elrond because he is so sure that Glorfindel doesn't mean to hurt him.

One day, well after it is tamed and settled into its new life, Erestor is relaxing with the beast when suddenly he feels a fea touch his. For a moment, Erestor is elated. After all this time, proof! But then the connection opens and all he can hear are Glorfindel's tortured screams and pleas to be killed.

The Mirkwood elves think beast!Glorfindel is actually really cool once he's back in his right mind again and not likely to eat them.

And the absolute best part of the au, hands down

Celebrian doesn't sail.

(yes yes, of course she is still captured by orcs. of course things still happen. But not as much and not as long and she recovers in Imladris with Elrond and their children)

That about covers it. A very indulgent au that is actually really cool and deserves more attention than I give it.

More Mouths. More mouths... Why more mouths? No clue but Glorfindel certainly has more mouth now.

I'll see myself out

[cycas]

I have ended up writing more about Eregion again: specifically its fall, in Speak Friend and Enter.  And I have another Second Age Eregion work slowly underway. To help with all of this, I made a map of Eregion, aiming for the period around 1600 when the Ring was forged.  

Here's the thinking behind it: 

Eregion is largely a wooded landscape.  Some of the trees have been felled to build the city of Ost-in-Edhil, and to provide fuel, but I think the woods would be preserved. Celeborn and his people came with Galadriel to establish Eregion, bringing Doriathrin forest agriculture skills with them.  

Perhaps Galadriel has even tried planting mallorn trees here, though they did not take as well as they did in Lorien later, and vanished when there were no longer Elves in Eregion to look after them. The woods would be a source of materials, fuel, and bark, but also a place where the Elves would hunt, particularly deer. 

At the end of the Third Age, when the Fellowship walked through Eregion, they noticed ancient remains, paved roads and worked stones.  I am inclined to think some of these may have been Numenorean remnants from the early Third Age, rather than remains of Eregion, simply because of the 4760 years between the Fall of Eregion and the War of the Ring. Eregion/Hollin doesn't seem to be mentioned as being part of Arnor, but it is quite close to the Numenorean settlement of Tharbad. (On the other hand, Eregion did specialise in the technologies of preservation, if the Rings are anything to go by.  Still, a nearly 5000 year old road still recognisable as such tests my imagination somewhat.) I am not sure if Elvish Eregion would have had the wide paved roads mentioned in Lord of the Rings.  I think the roads I have marked on the map above were probably green roads, used for walking routes, occasional horse riders, and perhaps livestock droving, and that the paved roads may have come later.   

Of course, the paved leading to Khazad-dûm with its wide climbing loops as described in LOTR,  may have been a dwarf-road. The creation of loops to reduce the climb suggests that perhaps it was designed for use by heavy carts.  There is no wide lake before the Doors, of course.  That was created by damming the Gatestream, Sirannon, some time in the late Third Age. 

At any rate. Tharbad does exist in 1600SA, but it's fairly new, and primarily a fort defending Numenorean timber extraction operations: there's no bridge yet, and the bogs and marshes along the line of the Swanfleet river are wide and shallow, with several small islands.  

This land will all be drained later, either by Numenor, or perhaps by the new powers of Arnor and Gondor, building the road through Tharbad to connect Northkingdom and Southkingdom.  But not yet.   The forests that used to lie around the river Gwathlo have mostly been felled by Numenor, but there are some left, and most of those will be burned during Sauron's campaign. 

I've given Celeborn a house outside Ost-in-Edhil. Given his well-documented distrust of Dwarves, I feel that he probably wouldn't be very comfortable in the city with the greatest friendship ever known between Dwarves and Elves. Also, during the fall of Eregion, Celeborn was present and joined Elrond's rescue force that was swept away into the north, to found Rivendell, and that would be more likely if Celeborn's usual haunts were at the northern end of Eregion.  I've drawn his house with two long wings and a tower, and I'm inclined to think that the tower was Galadriel's idea, and was made of stone, but the wings were made of carven wood.  There are other settlements scattered across northern Eregion through the woods, but no cities of any size: these are homes for Elves to use particularly in winter. 

When the Fellowship stopped on the road from the Redhorn Gate, they stopped at a hill topped by a few trees, and ringed with large rocks.  I've decided this was probably a way-meet, where two paths originally passed, and the trees are distant descendents of those planted by the Elves. The rocks might be remnants of late fortifications from the siege, perhaps linked to real-world myths about crossroads and waymeets. 

The wide shallow bird-haunted Swanfleet is probably a useful food source for Tharbad, as well as the elves of southern Eregion and the Men of the great woods of Eriador.  All of them hunt in the marshes for birds and eggs.  

I think perhaps the Numenoreans of Tharbad (they all call themselves Numenorean, though even at this early date, some of them have never seen Numenor) mostly hunt on land, in the reedbeds. They are more comfortable with deep water ships than small boats. 

The Elves of Eregion make long shallow punts that are driven with paddles or long poles, which allows them to hunt birds in season on the water with bows or falcons. 

The marshes are also grazing land for cattle, the herds of the original inhabitants of the land along the Gwathlo river. They have been here for a very long time, long before Eregion was established, trading cheese, milk and leather with the dwarves of Khazad-dûm in return for metal: mostly in the form of knives, pots, pans and needles. 

[cha-melodius]

It is NICE ASK WEEK and I am PREPARED. So, here's mine, for everyone - both because I'm interested and because I don't want to run out of steam: if you could be transported into any piece of media, what would it be, and why? If there's a specific PART of the piece of media (i.e. only after the Big Bad is defeated) that you'd choose, GET SPECIFIC ❤ (copy & paste is a friend to all)

HELLO and thank you my dear!! Ok you told others it could just be a holiday, so that's how I'm taking it because going permanently would be a very different proposition. Still, this was a tough choice! I think it would be fun to visit lots of fictional worlds.

BUT I decided to go with my first instinct, the oh-so-nerdy choice of Middle Earth, either in the Fourth Age (aka after Sauron is defeated at the end of LOTR), or in like, early Second Age after Morgoth is defeated but before Sauron starts acting up and building Barad-dûr. The latter bc I'd love to see Númenor before the fall, plus then I could hang out with elves and see a lot of elf cities at their height as well. But mostly I'd probably spend time in the Shire with the hobbits because they know how to live.

[elerrinacrownedwithstars]

Galadriel in the Rings of Power, part 3: Women's stories don't matter

This post continues my analysis of Galadriel as she is portrayed in the Amazon series The Rings of Power - and why I think it is so very bad. Part 1 focused on the the portrayal of her being a warrior, and the many problems it creates for her character and possibly even for LOTR, whereas part 2 argued that what is supposed to be war trauma is actually just an awful personality.

Part 1 x Part 2

This post will examine the rather misogynistic implications of the show's changes to Galadriel's story.

I will post my arguments in a few different posts, because that should make the whole much more readable. I will use the tags #anti rop and #anti rings of power for the benefit of those who may want to filter my posts.

If you like Amazon Rings of Power, I have no issue with that; I only take issue with how a character I've loved for over a decade is portrayed in this show.

3. By erasing Melian and Celebrían from Galadriel's story, the show undermines meaningful relationships between women and implies that women's stories are not worth telling unless their occupation fits masculine ideals. 

Common criticism of Tolkien is the lack of female characters in his legendarium (although there are many very compelling female characters in The Silmarillion, including Galadriel). But Amazon has actually one-upped him in this by erasing meaningful relationships Galadriel has with her mentor and her daughter. As stated in part 1 of this series, Melian's absence from Galadriel's life creates problems for The Lord of the Rings because without Melian, she doesn't have the experience and skills she needs to have in order to help the Fellowship (and ultimately contribute to the success of the quest to destroy the Ring). Needless to say, it's problematic to undermine skills, art and crafts that are specifically linked to feminine sphere, especially when this is done so that a character fits masculine ideals.

All ROP!Galadriel's relationships are with and about men: her dead (but living in Valinor) brother, her grudging subordinates, some kind of friendship between her and Elrond although there seems to be a lack of mutual respect, the manipulative and ultimately very detrimental nonsense with Halbrand/Sauron, and Gil-galad who appears to view her as a problem to be solved, not an asset. She has no female friends and her relationship with Míriel is ambivalent at best. (Can you imagine the interactions Galadriel might have had with Dísa, though? It's a tantalising thought. It could have also been used as a way to establish why Galadriel is so respectful of Gimli.)

As stated before, at this point of her story, Galadriel should be married and mother to a grown daughter. There is some variation about the timeline, thanks to Tolkien's shifting ideas about Galadriel's history, but it is safe to say that her marriage to Celeborn and Celebrían's birth took place in the early centuries of the Second Age. In part 1, I also argued that in the show's timeline, the time she would have had with Celeborn would not have been enough to marry, especially if he was actually lost in the wars of the First Age. I find it very poor writing that the show fixates on the few lines about Galadriel's athletic feats, but then ignores Tolkien's fairly clear writing on how Elves did not marry or have children when they were preoccupied with war.

Be that as it may, ROP does allow Galadriel to be married (however briefly), but not a parent. The absence of Celebrían leads me to believe that she is born at some later time during the show - and the cynic in me is convinced that the show will use motherhood as a solution to Galadriel's issues, enabling her transformation into the powerful Elven queen - as if becoming a mother is a fulfillment of woman's story, not a part of it. But even if children are supposedly a woman's higher calling, masculine traits and occupations are still more important and more compelling. Hence the part of Galadriel's story that involves motherhood is delayed to a much later time, so that she may run around Middle-earth, swinging a sword and pursuing a revenge fantasy (which, of course, ultimately fails, at least in the sense that she does not get to personally bring down Sauron). 

If you ask me, it's a particularly bad move to change a woman's story so that she is presented as an action hero and her womanhood and parenthood are a resolution of her life, not the intrinsic part of it. 

4. ROP!Galadriel's motives and agenda are not about herself, but about men. 

In The Silmarillion, it is shown that Galadriel is proud and ambitious, and wants to rule her own realm in Middle-earth. She wants to try her skills outside the safety of Valinor and build something of her own. After the War of Wrath, she refuses the pardon of Valar and remains in Middle-earth, because she is still proud: she believes that if she returns to the Blessed Lands, it would be as a shamed Exile who does not even have the permission to dwell in Aman proper but in Tol Eressëa. However, in Middle-earth she is still mighty and powerful, respected by both Elves and Men. She still wants to be an active participant in the events of Middle-earth and shape the course of the future. Her ambition and pride are not yet spent: she won't take "the second best" in the Undying Lands, when she can still stand at the top of the food chain in Middle-earth. 

There is also the version that Galadriel is actively banned from returning to Valinor as a leader of the rebellion. Later on Tolkien's thinking of her story changes further and Galadriel's desire to sail for Middle-earth is unrelated to the unrest of Noldor and she is not presented as a rebel leader. This late version, I think, is not as compelling and does contradict The Lord of the Rings. FOTR appears to derive from the version where there's a ban against Galadriel's return into the West, where she now yearns to go back after millenia of exile. But when she rejects the Ring and the temptation of becoming a terrible dark queen in her own right, she "passes the test", she will diminish and go into the West. In other words, she finally rejects her own pride and ambition. Moreover, this refusal and the crucial help she gives to the Fellowship are said to be the reason she is allowed to sail in the end of ROTK. 

All the same, no matter what version by Tolkien you look at, in canon Galadriel is the mistress of her own fate and her ambitions, and her flaws and her overcoming them are her own. Galadriel's story is about Galadriel. 

It has been extensively argued and shown in other posts criticising the show how Galadriel's agency is thrown out of the window so that all she does in ROP is obsess about men - to the point where her big moment in FOTR and the refusal of the Ring (supposedly, the reason she is granted leave to return to Valinor) is not about her own pride and ambition, but about Sauron. So I won't go into that in this post. But I will say this much: in LOTR, it is  made clear that the victory over Sauron is still a defeat for the Elves. Much that was magical and wondrous will pass with him and the time for the Dominion of Men begins. Lothlórien will fade away. In helping the Fellowship of the Ring Galadriel essentially sacrifices her own ambition and influence over the matter and fates of Arda. But with ROP's portrayal, this aspect of Galadriel's fight against Sauron is lost.

Furthermore, it is apparently because of her that Sauron resumes to his evil ways. The show changes Galadriel  from being one of Sauron's chief enemies and her opposing him even when he was still seemingly fair and helpful, to the situation where she cannot recognise him for what he is and is responsible for his return - and for the hundreds of thousands of deaths and uncountable suffering that will result from it. 

I expect I don't need to explain why this is bad.

It is also very unclear to me what she expected to do once she found Sauron. Fights between Elves and Maiar in the form of Balrogs are notoriously fatal, and Sauron must be even stronger than a Balrog, considering he is Morgoth's first lieutenant. Is ROP!Galadriel trying to go down in a blaze of (vain)glory? As the final scene of the first season between her and Sauron shows, she is and always was hopelessly outmatched and she doesn't seem to have any plan except to just stab him. Are you telling me that she spent a millenia hunting for him without any idea about his abilities and how to respond to them, and how to bring him down?

&&&&&&&

What I gather from all this is that for ROP, and for the people who created the show, women's stories, friendship between women, and women's ambitions don't matter. Or, it was thought that the only way Galadriel would be interesting to the TV audience is as an action hero. This could also be because the creative team responsible for ROP simply can't write a good script.

Surely, it's nice to see women in diverse roles, being warriors and protectors and guardians. But it's also important to see how these roles tie to masculine ideals, and that if you discard a woman's already existing story so that she can fulfill this particular role, then your take is not particularly empowering anymore.