#THIS IS LITERALLY TOLKIEN HISTORY BEING MADE

[tanoraqui]

I love your world building! Your name ideas are awesome. Love the idea of Indis being a true prophetic mother name

-@outofangband

Belated thank you! Also, sharing my thought process on that one because it's a very classic Silmarillion headcanon origin: it bothers me that Indis's name means "bride." I hate how it reduces her to a feminine trope - at "best", only here to have a troubled marriage; if you're a staunch Fëanorian, a femme fatale homewrecker. I immensely dislike how this is, in fact, an fairly accurate description of her role in the story...

Which is deliberate on Tolkien's part! The "canonically correct" way to ameliorate this misogyny (though neither erase nor excuse it) is to remember that this whole text is a mixture of history, legend and myth passed through multiple storytellers over thousands of years, translated and re-translated and interpreted through the eyes of elves and men and hobbits and men again, until even if this person ever actually existed in the history of Middle Earth - IF! - "Indis" probably wasn't even her epessë, much less her commonly used name. Probably her name got ink blotted on it at some point, or mixed up with someone else's name, and the next Númenorean scholar to rewrite the text followed the Archetypal School of historical interpretation and decided to name her "Indis" because of her role in the story...

But this, too, bothers me. Because I love the framing device of these various books, I love the historian-given dubious canonicity of literally every detail of The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and especially of The Silmarillion. But! We need some solid canon upon which to hang all our headcanons, so it's imperative to retain a delicate mental balance of knowing everything could be made up (more than it already is by being fiction!) while also adhering to as much as possible as something that Really Did Happen - and names are pretty solidly in the latter category. I mean, everyone has multiple and for those who don't, we tend to make more up, but a belief in the basic premise of the text is necessary in order to function in any fandom, and "names of characters" is pretty "basic premise."

So it's impossible to ignore that her name is Indis; and it's impossible to ignore that the name "Indis" is closely connected to her place in the narrative, more than most characters, and that said place is uncomfortably non-feminist - you can round out her character all you like, but you have to admit that her role in the story is to be the Second Wife and Mother whose acts of being a wife and mother cause trouble! That's a fact! And it's not great! And the name "Indis" isn't helping because if she was named anything but her literal narrative role, that would be characterization! She could be noble like Artanis, she could be of the sea like Eärwen, but she's not! She's just "bride"!

...so, I redeem this by making this definition of her life deliberate within the text - and not just by a future Númenorean scholar, but by Indis's mother. (Female! O! Cs!) Furthermore, names of prophecy are implicitly grand (even if they're not necessarily either good or bad). It makes being a bride itself feel more active - and why not! Do Indis's acts of love and marriage not change the fate of the world just as much as Lúthien's? Consider that Indis's act of marriage is so important that it echoes back through the Great Music to be known by her mother as she held the future bride as a babe in arms. Consider a mother holding her child under stars beside a lake and going, "damn, this kid is gonna have ripple effects. I should add a bragging warning label."

Also, if you accept the headcanons that

a) most Elvish languages treat "sex" (physical) and "marriage" (soul-bonding) as basically synonymous; and

b) Indis spends thousands of years in the Second/Third ages patiently and stubbornly figuring out how to Make It Work between herself, Finwë and Miriel, such that all three of them can marry with genuine all-around mutual love unto the end of days, for peace among the still-troubled Noldor but mostly for happiness for herself and those she loves most (also an act of bride-ship worthy of prophecy, note) -

then you can with a straight face imagine Indis saying, "I fucked my way into this mess and I'm going to fuck my way out of it."

Feminist critique + consideration of canonical historicity + elaborate headcanon web = sex joke! Now that's good fandom!

[tathrin]

My little Tolkien-fic pet-peeve of the day? Writers calling elves, dwarves, or hobbits men or women in their* narration.

"Pippin shaded his eyes, squinting until the sight of the man walking up the road resolved itself into the familiar form of his cousin Merry..."

Hobbit. Just say Hobbit. You don't need to gender everything. Or if you must, then "Hobbit-lad" or "Hobbit-lass" how's that? Or person! Being! Individual! Literally any word that isn't an inaccurate use of the word "man" for someone who is not a man!

"Gimli looked up at the taller man and scoffed at the sight of Legolas's pointed ears, now drooping with dismay..."

See this one just sounds silly, doesn't it? Silly and also confusing! Because you've just called Legolas a man, but clearly you're talking about an elf or he wouldn't have pointed ears, now would he? And Gimli's a dwarf! So why did you say "man" at all? There are no men here! (Unless Aragorn is playing Third Wheel in the background I suppose, but that's neither here-nor-there right now.)

"Glorfindel turned upon the edge of the fountain and greeted the other man with a smile like a sunrise..."

No no no stop, they are not men. Neither of them are men. They're elves. That's kind of a big important plot element in fact, that the Firstborn and the Secondborn are distinct and sundered from one another, please don't call elves men it's weird and awkward and often confusing because then I'll think you're talking about "A Man" but no, you mean an elf but you said man and it's just so off-putting...

They're different species, guys! (This drives me nuts in scifi too. Stop with the humanocentricism! You're not the Galactic Empire!) Replace the word "man" with something else and see how silly it sounds. "Elephant," perhaps; or any other species that isn't the one you're actually talking about.

"Gimli looked up at the taller raccoon and scoffed..."

"Glorfindel greeted the other ant-eater with a smile like a sunrise..."

"The sight of the giraffe walking up the road resolved itself into his cousin Merry..."

See? Yeah, that's how inaccurate it feels to me every time I read the word "man" or "woman" when you're talking about somebody who is not a human. It's not something on the level of squick where I'll reverse out of a fic if I see it, no, but it absolutely is jarring enough to throw-off the rhythm and mood of the story, for me.

(And if I see it in the first line or so before I've gotten invested in the story...yeah. That'll get me out of a fic almost as fast as lack of paragraph-breaking.)

Because I'm such a sucker for world building, I suspect, and the fact that these are all different peoples with different cultures and capabilities and outlooks and understanding and history and everything is such an interesting and important aspect of Middle-earth to me...and lumping all these different folks into one thing like that as though gender is the most important and indeed only notable aspect of their identity, and overrides everything else about them is just weird. It doesn't make sense. And I do not like it.

(Exceptions obviously made for when the character's identity is being deliberately obscured or confused, and they are erroneously thought to be a human and then revealed as something else; that sort of thing is on purpose and thus is fine.)

(Also exceptions for folk like Arwen or Elwing or Elladan etc who straddle the line between species.)

Anyway thank you for coming to this session of Tathrin Whines About Little Things To Avoid Doing Productive Writing Today.

*none of these lines are actual examples taken from real fics; I made them up for this post. Please do not attach call-outs to actual fics or authors in the notes. No need to be mean!

But absolutely fell free to gripe along with me if this silly little world building detail bothers you too. Or laugh at me for being a ridiculous spec-fic nerd. I'm fine with that too!

[erose-this-name]

Fantasy """races"""

We should stop calling fantasy races that. Normalize calling them "species" or "kinds" or "kin", or just anything other than "race".

A "race" is a matter of non-meaningful differences like skincolor and maybe average penis length. There is no evidence that different races are more intelligent etc which can't be explained by differences in opportunity or culture.

A """race""" is not living four times as long, and also they can read people's minds, and they are an anthropomorphic cat, and get +1 to DC saving throws against fire because why not, and have completely different origins to other """races""", also they're genetically predisposed to mindless lawful neutral rampages. That's something else.

High elves and dark elves and wood elves could probably be considered races of each other (if all any stat differences are due to culture or magic, not blood). But not in relation to humans.

I'm just saying; when Tolkien established the concept of fantasy races the word "race" meant something very different than it does now. Not to accuse Tolkien of anything, I have no idea what his stance on that matter was, but still.

Having an entire intelligent species that is inherently evil is one thing, but calling that a """race""", and especially if it gets used as a metaphor for actual races or racism, is another entirely.

The metaphor doesn't work because in real life all races are the same in ability (except for shit like +1 to milk digestion or -15 to not combusting in the sun like a vampire).

But racists don't know that or choose not to, they believe some races are better than others and there's a genocide-or-be-replaced situation when there just isn't.

Racists often hurt their own race if it means hurting a different race because they believe it's that or their race will cease to exist, like how you might sacrifice a bunch of Gondorians to defeat Mordor, but since that isn't going to happen in real life they are actually just hurting themselves and others for no reason.

The irrationality of racism is crucial for all allegories of it because it's more likely to convince evil people to not be racist than the moral argument.

If in your setting """races""" are as different as they often are in fantasy, you have created a world where replacement theory can actually happen and where there could be some strictly practical arguments for racist policies like paternalism or even genocide which aren't completely imaginary.

Speciesism is also an interesting and valuable concept to explore, since unlike racism it may be practical but still unmoral (being distrusting of or genociding Tolkien or 40k orcs is still genocide but, like, they're orcs. Mindflayers even more so, they can literally only exist by parasitizing and torturing other intelligent species, it's the lesser of two evils).

But sometimes speciesism might not be practical either. There is never a reason to discriminate against hobbits, they're just perfect little guys. They just wanna hang out and maybe sell cheap produce, without them the price of turnips will skyrocket!

But speciesism should definitely be kept separate from race.

The words we use change how we think to some extent. Especially when in so many settings the "human" ""race"" is invariably Just White People™, then people will start thinking of all non-white races with the same brain pathways we use to conceptualize Orcs and Klingons. They become part of the same "other" as POC, which probably isn't going to improve the othering situation.

I've seen friends of mine (not racists) slip up and say "Humans" when they actually just mean "Europeans" in the context of talking about actual IRL history which is a mistake writers should probably stop priming our brains to make.

Could you imagine if all our crime media did the same thing and made people associate criminals with people of color??? oh wait

[glorfindel-of-imladris]

Glorfindel and Erestor for the ship alignment chart?

Glorestor is so funny because of course it compels me, can you not tell from my blog and entire shipping, even pre-AO3 career? I have been shipping these two for 20+ years, but whether they make sense or not depends on who you ask and what you mean by “makes sense”. I am very aware that Glorfindel and Erestor are shipped literally by virtue of them standing next to each other—twice, mind you, which in the 90's and heydays of shipping, was plenty. (Once, after all, was enough. 🤣)

I can write (and have written lol) entire essays about why I love this ship so much. Glorfindel is my one true favourite Tolkien character—my one true favourite fandom character, period—and have devoured every lore available for him to come up with pretty solid headcanons for the guy, if I do say so myself. Erestor, on the other hand, is pretty much a result of my by now life-long quest to give Glorfindel the most delicious happy ending an absolute Best Boy™ can deserve. These two characters on their own are individually compelling. Glorfindel easily just is, because how good must a person be to be returned from death, to be released from Mandos early, to become an emissary of the Valar, to be reborn better than before, equal to the Maiar? And Erestor—who even is he? What does it take to become the chief counsellor of one of the wisest Elves of the Third Age, in Imladris where Elves who have seen the light of the Trees still dwelt? I even read in a forum (lol omg remember forums) once where people wondered who even had the higher rank: Glorfindel or Erestor. Imagine being at a level where one could potentially be Glorfindel's superior—it blows the mind. But also personally for me, I love the idea that someone like Glorfindel could get quite lonely returning to an unfamiliar world—not only is Gondolin gone, but it's not even Beleriand anymore. I also imagine that returning from Mandos comes with its own grandeur that would set him apart from younger Elves in Middle-earth. It comforts me to know he would still have equals in a world like that, who would not be intimidated by him and with whom he could forge a trusting friendship.

The other thing that works for this ship is the setting with which they could meet. I have said in the Russingon post that the First Age is a painful age to me. Not only that, it's comparatively short; Glorfindel was “Glorfindel of Gondolin” for a mere 400 years (even less) before he died. Meanwhile, assuming he returned to Middle-earth c.a. 1600 in the Second Age (which is the most likely among all “canon” possibilities), the Second Age spanned for a good 3,000+ years; the Third Age, another 3,000+. Lindon under Ereinion Gil-galad’s reign saw the longest peacetime, and Rivendell once made and ruled by Elrond is arguably the most comforting Elven realm ever made. There is simply much more one can do in a setting like this, with characters like this who have so much history—or, in the case of Erestor, potential history. It's that ✨ potential ✨ that I find most compelling, and honestly I have been writing for these two for years and I feel there is still so much one can do and unearth with them.

[pononoin]

you’re a very talented artist and i don’t have any ill will towards you. but some things need to be cleared up here. the problem is and has never been making kyle a trans man. there is nothing inherently wrong with that headcanon. the problem is when you overtly feminize the only jewish character to the point of charicature when he has not ever shown any of those traits in canon. that is indeed unintentional antisemitism because it perpetuates many pervasive negative stereotypes about jewish men being effeminate, weak, and not “real men”, that we often see in media. there is a very long history of this that dates back centuries and i implore you to do some research on it if you think this is not a real issue. it is not okay no matter if your kyle is cis or trans.

this is not to say that giving/playing up characters feminine traits is an inherently bad thing either. the problem arises when you completely strip the character of all other traits to the point where they are unrecognizable for the purpose of fitting them in a box. the kyle we are given in canon is dynamic and complex, and he is actually great representation for jewish boys. it is antisemitic to remove all of his masculine qualities in order reduce him down to a vapid little twink stereotype for big manly macho bear stan. honestly, those feel like completely different and more shallow characters than the ones we were given. what about all of kyle’s masculine traits and all of stan’s feminine ones? nope, kyle is the only one that usually receives the feminization treatment. very suspicious.

we all just need to think critically about the biases we may be unknowingly playing into. it would be disturbing if someone portayed tolkien as a “thug” despite being the opposite of that in canon, and it is just as disturbing to see kyle uwu twinkified for the exact same reasons.

finally, i don’t appreciate non jews in your comments deciding what is and what is not antisemitism. goyim do not get to decide that. if you’re jewish and you disagree, that’s fine and i’m open to counterpoints. non jew fujoshis that just don’t want their kink criticized, sit this one out.

I understand your point about your situation and what shocks you, however I never did that with any intention?

While Kyle's religion is something important in his character, it doesn't make it his whole being and the fact that I make him "a twink" or whatever (I literally just give him eyelashes or a short jacket by an accident) has nothing to do with it either, doing it because he's Jewish is pretty much the thing I really don't think about when I draw or explain my Kyle

My kyle, yeah, because that is very important, my kyle with my headcanons, not the canonical kyle and you will never see me say that my interpretation of Kyle has to be the real one next to the canon or is superior

Just as I interpret Kyle one way, there are other people who do it with other characters why attack only mine and applaud the others if we are talking about beating the stereotype? I am very sorry but as long as I am aware and calm that what I do is not something for fetishistic purposes or offensive, I will not change my headcanons. If you want to see a more canon Kyle, more "macho" or whatever you can easily look for more artists! I'm sorry I'm not one of them.

I'm very sorry that my interpretation of Kyle made you uncomfortable but I'm just a trans masc person trying to be okay with me and reflecting that there's nothing wrong with having certain feminine traits and that I don't owe masculinity or femininity to anyone through a character I really like. But I promise I’m not doing this with antisemitism purposes.

[phoenixrisesoncemore]

Why Eru Didn’t Trip Gollum: Providence, Free Will, and Con-creation in The Lord of the Rings—Part 1 of 5

| PART 1 (this post) | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 |

Author’s Note: The following essay was written between Nov. of 2020 and June of 2021 and was itself an expansion on a short social media post that was that written in 2018. The version presented here has undergone further editing for length, but represents work from an earlier stage in my research and writing journey—I hope I have grown since then. Some ideas which first appear in this essay including the notions of “Con-creation,” “Story as Emergent Property of Eä,” and “The Infinite Variety of God” are all things I would like to develop into papers one day, but after so many years of this sitting in Google Drive, I simply want to get it out there. I’ll deal with the papers later. I am cross-posting this from my long-form blog (DM if you'd like the link) in 5 parts because it is very long. Works Cited will be included only in this post, part 1, so I don't have to repeat it.

Part 1: Introduction

Here’s a question: in the climactic moment of The Lord of the Rings, who was responsible for the Ring’s destruction? Was it Frodo? Gollum? Maybe Sam? Alternatively, was it Eru? Is there a sense in which we could say it was Sauron, or even the Ring, itself?

There’s a reading of the climax of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings that takes a strong stance on the answer to the above questions. It’s a reading that has floated around fan spaces since at least the mid 2000s. Put simply it states that Gollum’s Ring-destroying fall into the Cracks of Doom as he “danced too close to the edge” was not directly caused by his careless dancing, but rather was the result of him being “pushed” or “tripped” by Eru, Tolkien’s Creator-God. The argument for this reading appears to be centered on the contents of a letter Tolkien addressed to Amy Ronald in July of 1956 (hereafter referred to per its designation in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien as Letter 192). In it Tolkien explains that the climax at the Cracks of Doom represents a time in the story where “the Other Power took over,” completing the task that Frodo was incapable of completing on his own (Tolkien, Letters 252). The “tripped” interpretation of this moment appears to assign to Tolkien’s statement in Letter 192 the meaning that Gollum was made to fall by a singular, direct, unilateral act of Eru—that is: divine intervention—a literal deus ex machina as the “finger of God” intruded into history. This reading of Letter 192 is prominent enough in fan consciousness that as of this writing, even the entry for “Eru Ilúvatar” on One Wiki to Rule Them All lists it alongside The Drowning of Numenor as one of four moments in the history of Middle-earth when Eru actively and miraculously intervened (“Involvement”), an association that is significant for reasons which will soon become clear.

This reading of the scene, and of the Letter used to argue for it, is highly selective and disregards both the context of said letter and numerous pieces of evidence that suggest contrary readings, both within the text of The Lord of the Rings and outside of it. It also requires mischaracterizing the very present and widely-recognized functioning of Providence in Eä by recasting it instead as miracle. Additionally, if true, it would work to undermine some of the most prominent themes in The Lord of the Rings, including those themes Tolkien, himself, identifies within his letters, damaging the work’s dramatic unity and rendering The Lord of the Rings unsatisfactory from a narrative perspective. Most important for my purposes, I believe that this very unsatisfactory-ness is evidence that this reading cannot be true without running afoul of one of the most important underlying aspects of the metaphysics of Tolkien’s Legendarium—the “story-nature” of Eä.

I will “unweave” this interpretation and then “reweave” the loosened threads of story into a different pattern, one I am calling “con-creation.” In my usage “con-creation” is the total continuous creative activity (by which I also mean choice-making about mundane things) of all creatures capable of choice, across all time—rather than the creative activity of a set number of said individuals greater than one (“co-creation”)—as a means of creating in concert with a Prime Creator who supports the total product of con-creation by supplying it with primary being. It could be likened metaphorically to the production of an improv-heavy play. This idea is so central to The Lord of the Rings in particular and to Tolkien’s Legendarium in total that it—like eucatastrophe—”rends the web of story” (Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories 76) and enters into the real world, encompassing the reader as well.

[Continue to PART 2: Catching the Snag]

———————

Works Cited

“Involvement.” Eru Ilúvatar, One Wiki to Rule Them All, lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Eru_Ilúvatar. Accessed 16 Nov. 2023.

Blount, Douglas K. “Uberhobbits: Tolkien, Nietzsche, And The Will To Power.” The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All, edited by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson. Carus Publishing Company, 2003.

Caldecott, Stratford. “Over the Chasm of Fire: Christian Heroism in the Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien: A Celebration, edited by Joseph Pearce. London: Harper Collins, 1999.

Dubs, Kathleen, “Providence, Fate, and Chance: Boethian Philosophy in The Lord of the Rings.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 27, no. 1, 1981, pp. 34-42.

Hibbs, Thomas. “Providence and Dramatic Unity in The Lord of the Rings.” The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All, edited by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson. Carus Publishing Company, 2003.

Ivey, Christin. “The Presence of Divine Providence in the Absence of ‘God’: The role of Providence, Fate, and Free Will in Tolkien’s Mythology.” The Corinthian, vol. 9, no. 1, 2008, pp. 189-99.

Kocher, Paul. Master of Middle-earth. New York: Ballantine Books, 1978.

McIntosh, Jonathan. The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faerie. Kindle ed., Angelico Press, 2018.

Meyer Sparks, Patricia. “Power and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings.” Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.

Purtill, Richard. J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion. Ignatius Press, 2003.

Sandwell, Ian. “Lord of the Rings almost had a much darker ending.” Digital Spy, 4 Mar. 2021, http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a31925985/lord-of-the-rings-ending-frodo-gollum/. Accessed 17 Sept. 2021.

Tolkien, J. R. R.. “The Hunt for the Ring.” Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, Annotated ed., Kindle ed., Mariner Books, 2012.

—. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, 1st ed., Kindle ed., Mariner Books, 2014.

—. The Lord of the Rings: One Volume. 50th Anniversary ed., Kindle ed., Mariner Books, 2012.

—. Morgoth’s Ring. Vol. 10 of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

—. “Osanwe-kenta.” The Nature of Middle-earth, edited by Carl F. Hostetter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.

—. The Peoples of Middle-earth. Vol. 12 of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

—. Sauron Defeated. Vol. 9 of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

—. The Silmarillion. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, Reissue ed., Kindle ed., Mariner Books, 2012.

—. Tolkien on Fairy-Stories. Edited by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson. London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2014.

Wood, Ralph C.. “Conflict and Convergence on Fundamental Matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.” Renascence, vol. 55, no. 4, 2003, pp. 315-38.

[hirazuki]

🔥 maglor? 👀

Another one that I had considered to be an innocuous opinion, if not a general baseline understanding of the character, but was recently made aware of my error:

Maglor being a kinslayer/murderer/warrior and Maglor being gentle/kind/empathetic are not mutually exclusive!

He is a ruthless killer, if the situation calls for it, yes. He participates in everything -- from swearing the Oath to the Third Kinslaying and stealing the silmarils from Eonwe's camp -- and, as a wonderful post that's floating somewhere around here details, the fact that he is opposed, that he is lucidly aware of what his family's actions are and what they entail and what they will lead to, and he participates anyway, makes him even worse of a person than, say, Celegorm, who is fully committed to his beliefs. He's easily overshadowed by Maedhros, primarily, but also a few of the others in terms of battlefield prowess, both in the text and in fanon, but that doesn't mean that he isn't just as competent and deadly.

That in no way means that he isn't a kind and gentle person. The two have nothing to do with each other, and I fully believe that reading Maglor as the gentlest and kindest of Feanor's sons is not only a valid reading, but actually encouraged --

Maedhros (bless him, I love him so much, but this crispy boy really needs to chill) is all flaming hell and burning wrath and white fire, blood and swords and just constantly on the go; Celegorm is a hunter, wilderness and beasts and ambition; Caranthir is literally known for his temper; Curufin inherited his father's temperament (and we all know what Feanor is like); Amrod and Amras, sadly, aren't as detailed and well developed as the rest imo, so in terms of canon I wouldn't hold them to the same narrative weight as the others;

-- but Maglor, out of everyone, is associated with music and water, two elements that traditionally carry strong connotations of gentleness, healing, soothing, tranquility. Music, as the saying goes, can calm wild beasts, but in Tolkien's world, Song can also bring about destruction. And water, while it is life-giving and gentle, can also turn violent and lethal.

And I don't see why Maglor himself needs to be any different.

Everyone has different tastes, of course, and perhaps this is just my preference for complexity rearing its head, but denying Maglor the possibility of being both kinslayer and gentle soul, murderer and caretaker, is like throwing away half the character. And besides -- without going too deep into nature vs. nurture because that's a whole different topic and it's past midnight and I need to wake up in less than six hours for work -- who do you think Elrond got it from? I mean, yes, certainly there are people in whom these traits are inherent to a degree and they trend towards them, but the twins were too young to have learned their manners/decorum/history/lore/combat/etc. in their formative years from anyone but Maedhros and Maglor and, in my experience, kindness is a learned behavior.

[miirshroom]

Elden Ring and Tolkein's Legendarium

In a way, Elden Ring as a game can be viewed a deconstruction of all things common in "fantasy".

It has been said that the Lord of the Rings is the origin of the high fantasy genre. The first step of a deconstruction (or of duplicating results) is to look at a thing and examine the elements it is made of. The more general the better - the goal is to find the things that inspired the thing:

The setting is inspired by research into many real world mythologies and folk tales. And Tolkein's religious beliefs as a Catholic.

Tolkein invented full language systems that were used to add extra significance to the names of people and places

The personal history and psychology of the author had an undeniable influence on the themes of the story (when Tolkein writes about the devastation of war it is from a place of sincerity - because he lived it)

So, these are the ingredients of a successful fantasy story that also apply to Elden Ring - draws parallels to previous fantasy stories, use of exotic words and naming schemes that are internally consistent as parallel to the real world, and incorporates psychologically-driven themes (in the case of Elden Ring I believe that it is less of the psychology of a person and more about drawing on the psychology of the gaming company FromSoftware...but that is a topic covered in other posts).

But regarding the works of Tolkein there are a few more...explicit parallels to be drawn. Which for legal reasons regarding the rights to adapt Tolkein's Legendarium will likely never ever be confirmed by FromSoft. But as I see it getting references under the radar of the copyright lawyers is a time honoured tradition of fantasy stories so I will attempt to explain these connections as I see them, regardless.

A linguistic connection is formed in the space between two main points that I am aware of: Gelmir of Nargothrond as the possible naming inspiration for Mt. Gelmir, and geographical region "Taur-en-faroth" containing part of the name used for Fort Faroth.

Gelmir

"J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji." - Terry Pratchett

First addressing Gelmir - literally the volcanic mountain is a reference to Tolkein. As clear of a declaration as possible that Elden Ring intends to stand on Mt. Fuji.

Gelmir in the "canon" version of the Legendarium was an elf of Nargothrond who was captured by the forces of Morgoth at the "Battle of Sudden Flame" which was the fourth great conflict in the War of the Jewels (the war over the 3 silmarils for which "the Silmarillion" is named). He was subsequently blinded and tortured for 17 years until his death - after having his limbs cut off to taunt his brother Gwindor into attacking recklessly - at the start of the fifth great conflict known as "The Battle of Unnumbered Tears". Gwindor himself was captured and held prisoner for an additional 17 years after this battle, before escaping at the expense of having a hand cut off and eventually dying in another battle of the war. He was in love with a golden-haired elf maiden named Finduilas (name meaning "hair of spring leaf") who he also called "Faelivrin" meaning "Gleam of the Sun on the Pools of Ivrin" ("Pools of Ivrin" being a location in the land called Beleriand). She was killed before the end of the war by being nailed to a tree with a spear.

For context, the sixth great conflict was called "The War of Wrath" and was the final one. Morgoth brought dragons to the battle to blast the battlefield with fire and lightning - which had never been done in any previous battle - and the outcomes were that Morgoth was beheaded and kicked through a portal into the void and the northwest corner of the map including almost all of Beleriand (an area equal to the size of the entire Middle Earth map at the time of the Lord of the Rings story!) sunk into the ocean.

There is a lot to work with here already - first being Gelmir's associations with flame and imprisonment and torture that are shared by both Tolkein's and Elden Ring's purposes. Blindness is noteworthy, considering how often this is a theme with Elden Ring characters and even partial blindness is enough to cause madness as indicated by the Prisoner Helmet. Taking a few lateral steps arrives at a golden haired maiden who shares the method of execution used for Marika. And her name meaning "gleam of the sun on the surface of the water" exactly describes the imagery seen in the Elden Ring item "Memory of Grace".

But there's still more to spin from this line! Because Finduilas had another lover named "Túrin Turambar" who was a friend of Gwindor and whose family line had been cursed by Morgoth. Túrin owned a magic helm upon which was perched an image of the Golden Dragon Glaurung - similar to the style of helmet worn by Elden Ring's Banished Knights - and which allowed him to survive dragon fire. Túrin found on the grave of Finduilas a naked woman who he called "Níniel" or "Maiden of Tears" - because she had lost her memory and was crying - and wed her with neither knowing that they were estranged brother and sister (this is based on the Finnish story of Kullervo, with which Tolkein was especially fascinated). This was revealed to them later to be a machination of Glaurung when Túrin was in the midst of slaying the dragon, and subsequently both Túrin and Níniel self-destructed. Before meeting his end, Túrin also described himself in (probably) poetic terms as having blindness being the curse placed upon him by Morgoth, which is assumed by readers to be more a matter of tunnel vision or short sightedness rather than literal blinding. He is also apparently prophesied to return to life someday in the supplementary materials.

What this means exactly for Elden Ring is up to interpretation. A story could be spun by combining Gelmir, Gwindor, and maybe even Túrin into a single character who are motivated by unrequited and/or incestuous love - to fill in the empty spaces around the characters of Marika, Radagon, and Godfrey. But there is even more nuance here because there are the alternate Gelmir's to consider.

In one version, Gelmir was king of the gnomes, by which Tolkein was inspired by the Greek "gnōmē" meaning "thought" or "intelligence". But this was dropped due to the cultural confusion with gnomes being wrinkly little creatures.

In another version Gelmir was the same character as Finwë, an elf who was born during the "Years of the Trees" that preceded the era called the "Years of the Sun". At this time, the light of the world was confined to the Lands of the Valinor (a pantheon of Creator types) in the west provided by the female golden tree named Laurelin in the south and the male silver tree Telperion in the north. Finwë's wife was a weaver named Míriel Therindë and his son Fëanor was responsible for forging the Silmarils and jealously guarding them (And also he invented the 7 palantíri scrying stones + 1 master stone, and the Tengwar writing system). The grandson of Fëanor and last of his line was Celebrimbor, meaning "silver fist". Celebrimbor forged the three rings for the elves (named for air, fire, and water) that were subject to the One Ring but never corrupted by it. So, yeah, it's possible that "Gelmir" is selected for being a seemingly niche character who was actually in another lifetime very closely connected to these core events of the history.

The 3 Silmarils contained the remaining light of the two trees that were destroyed and had the sun and moon forged of their fruits by blacksmith Aulë. When the trees were first made they were sung into existence by Yavanna and watered by the tears of Nienna (who was a teacher of the wizard Gandalf and in earlier versions of the Legendarium called "Queen of Shadow"). Nienna again wept healing tears upon the trees to grow the fruits when they were dying. Morgoth stole the Silmarils and set them into his Iron Crown, and upon his defeat the stones were pried out and the crown beaten into a collar for his neck (in the brief period of time before he was kicked into the void anyways). One Silmaril was thrown into the sky where it became the Evening Star. Another was cast into the sea. And the third was cast into a firey pit in the earth along with its possessor.

And as an addition, it is not farfetched that Morgott = Morgoth is an intended spiritual parallel. Considering that Morgoth was indirectly responsible for the blinding and killing of Gelmir (brother of Gwindor) in Tolkein's mythic history. And in Elden Ring this seems expressed in the Shattering War though Morgott pursuing Mt. Gelmir most fiercely. Also, Morgoth was the identity taken by Melkor after he was released from the chains made to bind him by Aulë, which is paralleled by Morgott being the name used by the previously bound Margit (it is called 'Margit's Shackle').

Faroth

"Faroth" is a Sindarin word meaning "hunters". The "Hills of the Hunters" (Taur-en-faroth) was a location in West Beleriand, the aforementioned western part of the continent that sunk into the ocean at the end of the War of the Jewels. In these hills was hidden the secret elven city of Nargothrond. The same from which Gelmir of Nargothrond is associated. The city began as a Dwarven Hall for the petty dwarfs (exiled and unsociable dwarfs smaller than typical dwarfs), was conquered and ruled by the House of Finarfin (a son of Finwë), and was sacked and turned to the lair of the dragon Glaurung some time after The Battle of Unnumbered Tears. And then fell into the ocean.

At this point there are too many names, so I sketched a family tree of all of these elves:

Some general trends:

Of the 3 family lines the middle one has significance for being the one to produce the Númenor Kings of Men

The family lines at the two sides have plot significance as discussed in the Gelmir section, but then just kindof die off.

Typically only the male lines matter for continuity, except for Idril in the 3rd generation removed from Finwë. The origins of the women spouses and daughters mostly are otherwise not mentioned or appear and disappear as needed from the aether (with 3 exceptions: Indis has a famous uncle, Nerdanel has a significant blacksmith father, and Eärwen's extended family has some substance to it)

If a writer wanted to do a legally distinct take on this mythology while borrowing from it for whatever reason, it would be easy to condense the feats and characterization of these 3 lineages into one truncated one. Maybe fuse Finduilas with Idril - two blonde ladies with minimal character - and also fuse together their lovers and you have a Marika + Godfrey. The narratively satisfying thing about Finduilas being associated to Gwindor (who is practically the same character as Gelmir) is that it creates a closed loop for the whole lineage when Gwindor/Gelmir is substituted for Finwë, which is a very attractive proposition for a story where time is a wheel and regression to the origin point is a principle of the Golden Order.

Also this region calls attention to the significance of the river Ringil. That word comes up as: 1) a mountain river through Taur-en-Faroth that is tributary to the Narog river, 2) a sword held by Fingolfin (another son of Finwë), and 3) as the primordial tower - possibly made of ice - upon which sat the south lamp Ormal (an orb containing the gold light of the world in the First Age that would later pass to the gold tree Laurelin in the Second Age). In an earlier version of the writings. The blacksmith Aulë created the lamps at the request of Yavanna, who was herself responsible for the growth of fruits and trees. The end of the "Days before Days" (which preceeded the "Years of the Trees") occurred with the breaking of the lamps by Melkor, after a period of time where he had poisoned the land and caused the things made by Yavanna to rot.

There is a confusing timeline here in the early history with spans of time lit only by the stars between the destructions of these various sun/moon light sources, with Yavanna singing all living life to sleep due to the lack of light except maybe the elves are still awake and doing things? The lamp and tree stuff and a bunch of elf stuff happens before the First Age of history, but the start of the First Age is also called "The Awakening" so again I don't grasp the sleep thing. Aulë was also responsible for creating the "Seven Fathers of the Dwarves", but he made them too early and they had to go to sleep so that the elves of Ilúvatar could pretend to be the first sentient mortal life? I have lost interest in interpreting the mythic timeline, so I'll just end this with more context for the lamps:

"In the middle of Arda, where the light of the lamps mingled, amid the Great Lake lay the Isle of Almaren, where the Valar dwelt." - The One Wiki to Rule them All

"In J.R.R. Tolkien's older writings (not used in the published version of The Silmarillion), the Valar sought peace with Melkor, asking his assistance with fixing the lamps upon Arda. Melkor, still envious and hateful of the rest of the Valar, agreed to give them a strong, sturdy substance. He gave Aulë ice. Melkor permitted the Valar to do as they wished until the fateful day when the Lamps' light and heat finally melted the ice. The pillars crashed upon Arda, flooding it with water and darkness." - The One Wiki to Rule them All

I suppose that if I have a point here it is that Radagon's Sore Seal talisman is found at Fort Faroth, which through the winding etymology of words is tied to Mt. Gelmir. Perhaps the blind Radagon was a hunter on a fruitless quest seeking the lost light of the Golden Sun from the days before days - guided by the distant memory of the reflection of it's light on the water. Perhaps there is other meaning to be found. After a certain point any interpretation found through these linguistics should be cross-referenced with everything that can be learned from all other sources of information in the game.

The Rings of Power

The big brazen choice - in my opinion - was to name the big metaphysical artefact "the Elden Ring"...and then draw direct parallel to the Rings of Power. Not the 3 rings granted to the Elf Kings under the sky - I've yet to identify how or if those are expressed in game. Not the 9 rings granted to Kings of Men either - those are seemingly represented in the 9 Night's Cavalry (and possibly the 9 weapon talismans that each feature a ring at the top of the head) . What is most relevant here are the 7 Great Runes matching "seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone".

The first critical part of that phrase is the reference to "stone", as I have brought up previously that the shattering of Marika's Hammer equates to the shattering of the wisdom of stone. But the second point of note is that the dwarf lords of Tolkein received their own curse from holding their rings of power - obsession with gold. A similar obsession is seen in Elden Ring where all of the demigods are corrupted by their great runes and covet the grace of gold.

The arrangement of the Elden Ring also has some synergy with the arrangement of its runes - 6 of the 7 dwarf lords pair nicely through the even numbers. The Seventh Dwarf Lord was the chief among them "Durin the Deathless", who was reincarnated 7 times by being reborn as one of his own descendants. His clan also was generally known to absorb members from all other clans due to his central importance. The first Durin (one of the 7 original fathers of dwarves) built the underground city of Khazad-dûm that would later be called Moria after a creature of shadow and flame that may-or-may-not have wings (a Balrog of Morgoth) was uncovered in its depths by Durin VI. Durin III was the one to receive the Ring of Power from Celebrimbor, and Durin IV was contemporary to the first rise and defeat of Sauron. Durin VII is apparently contemporary to the timeframe of the Lord of the Rings and second defeat of Sauron, though he did not participate and seems to be known instead for reclaiming Khazad-dûm from the orcs.

So what's the point of the elaborate Tolkein parallel? There may be 7 ring-shaped great runes, but there is also clearly one ring that rules them all - the Elden Ring. So examining Tolkein is one of several avenues of analysis reaching the conclusion that the ring is a dangerous object that corrupts everyone who touches it and must be destroyed. Of the six endings the only one that understands this is Ranni's Age of Stars. And in the Lord of Frenzy Flame ending the Tarnished succumbs to the power of the ring with head becoming a ring of flame matching the firey beacon on top of the Frenzy Flaming Tower - itself visually recalling a depiction of the Eye of Sauron atop the tower of Barad-dûr.

And even more, there's one ring bearer in particular who provides another piece to the puzzle of Radagon and Marika's dual identities. The dissociative identity of Gollum and Smeagol can completely describe the relationship between Marika and Radagon. Two thoughts in one body. With this lens I think that Radagon/Marika were likely not separate entities at the time of their Shattering and may have never had a separate existence. They can appear to hold conversations with each other through reflective surfaces, such as a very shatter-able mirror.

It is quite possible that another Great Rune (or more) will make an appearance in the DLC. If this does happen, I'll re-evaluate Ring of Power theory based on the nature of the added rune.

A Micro Parallel to the Macro Scale

One last note which, again, is oblique enough for plausible deniability. The end of Patches questline would have the Tarnished deliver the Dancer's Castanets to Tanith, inside the volcano. If you know anything about castanets, they are typically made of hard materials such as wood or ivory (or plastic) and carved into a pear shape. Not so for the Dancer's Castanets. From a visual examination these are made of metal cast in a circular shape and with a ring shaped engraving filled with filigree. A metal ring-shaped object delivered to a volcano, echoing the One Ring delivered to Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings.

[butterflydm]

origins of the wheel of time

I was originally planning on reading Origins of The Wheel of Time after my reread of the last three books, but it has arrived and also is so much shorter, so I’m going to read it first instead, lol. It’s not a narrative, but I’m intrigued to find out what it has to say about the series. I’m not entirely sure if it’s written more like a sourcebook or whatnot. 

My thoughts contain spoilers through a memory of light

1. Okay, looks like it’s broken into four sections -- first will be a bit of a biography of Jordan, then there’s specifically a whole section about how Tolkien inspired him, then his writing process perhaps (the summary on the inside of the book cover notes that there’s a previously unseen early draft of a cut scene from Eye of the World, so maybe that’s there; and then one about “the real world” comparisons (mythology-related maybe; I know that there’s a lot of mythological connections tied into the imagery, especially with Rand, Mat, & Perrin).

2. The full world map that we get (it says it was adjusted based on things that Jordan had said about the maps that had previously been made) shows how the Westlands/Randland is actually the smallest section of the map -- Shara is bigger, the Mad Lands are bigger, and Seanchan is enormous. lol, yeah, Tuon ain’t gonna be ruling all of that. I don’t care how great a general Mat is. Both of them are gonna die long before that area gets back under her iron grip (especially if she really does manage to keep herself from channeling - man, it would be so funny if she actually does get around to channeling one day but is only as strong as Morgase, literally the weakest channeler possible. I feel like Jordan wouldn’t have been able to resist making her Nynaeve-level strong, because of how much he was contorting and manipulating the story to appease her in the narrative, but her being super-weak would be so much funnier). Nation building is not easy and it’s gonna take time for her to even get over there since she will need to finish ‘settling’ the Seanchan-ruled Westlands first (and she’ll have to worry about Westlands-based rebellions as soon as she leaves for Seanchan proper too - the original plan that the Empress had seemed to be that her daughter would rule over the ~new land~ in her name while she kept a tight grip on the homeland, but now the rest of Tuon’s family is dead, so it’s more likely that she’s gonna have to pick if she wants the Westlands or if she wants Seanchan, because she has no one she can trust to rule either of them in her absence). I wonder if Jordan was planning to handwave her to be the ruler of the disputed lands quickly so that he could tell another story about... Mat being miserable and Perrin needing to kill someone? Or if he was going to take into account how likely it would be that Tuon would NOT be able to actually regain control of the majority of the continent. I mean, since he only left two sentences behind about the outriggers, he probably hadn’t even decided yet.

3. Oh, gosh, the author of this book teaches at The Citadel, where Jordan went to school after he left the military. The Citadel had a pretty heavy hazing/bullying culture, at least back when Jordan attended (from what I’ve read) and some Weird Ideas about men and women, and definitely some “beating students is good for the learning process” vibes. A lot of the odd quirks in Jordan’s worldbuilding seemed to be based in him assuming that his culture’s particular practices and his own personal kinks were just ~human nature~, including some of the stuff that seemed to be essentially ‘taught’ behind-the-scenes at the Citadel. Oh, and this author (who teaches Military History specifically, it sounds like?) was consulted about the writing of The Last Battle in the final book. This book was also written at the same desk where Jordan wrote Wheel of Time. That’s actually quite interesting to me, and I wonder if that contributes to... when Jordan wrote about war, it was very personal, because he’d been in war. But if your main consultant is someone approaching it from an academic PoV rather than a ‘in the trenches’ PoV, that definitely lends a different angle onto the way the battles are written about.

4. Ah, WoT was a formative book series for the author -- he read EotW when he was fifteen. So he is quite a bit younger than Jordan. He even interviewed at the Citadel for his teaching job knowing that it was where Jordan had gone to school. He did know Jordan personally as well (I’m going to be using his pen name for WoT as opposed to his personal name because, well, I never knew him. Though I did meet him at a book signing once.) - it looks like they met when Jordan was already quite ill. And that’s the Foreword.

5. Every time it’s noted that Harriet (Jordan’s widow) was his editor, I feel the urge to wonder why on earth she was asleep at the wheel for Crossroads of Twilight and Knife of Dreams (though, honestly, the books started to lose focus and needed much tighter editing starting in Lord of Chaos). I mean, it’s common in a LOT of series, once they become popular. But wow there’s a lot of needless fluff in the later WoT books.

6. Okay, the biographical section of the book. First thing relevant to the books is that even as a kid, Jordan was exposed to war-related PTSD - his father was in the Pacific during WWII and “For years afterward he would sometimes wake up in the night, sweating, afraid that in his sleep, in his remembered dreams, he might have hurt the wife he loved.” I’m seeing a lot of Rand in what’s written here about Jordan’s father. A gentle man who did his best to be honest and good but was terrified that he might hurt the people he loves.

7. Ah, Jordan ran into a very common trouble of gifted kids once they get into college -- he had always been smart enough to glide through classes, so he had no clue how to study, and floundered once the classes were hard enough to require it. I mean, mood. Been there. 

8. That’s when he enlisted, and he spent two tours in Vietnam. Even before I actually read the section on it, I can say that (much like Jordan was second-hand aware of how rough WWII was on his father), I have seen the effects that going to Vietnam had on my own uncle. Incredibly traumatizing experience for him that he still has after-effects about, even today. It’s affected him his whole life. 

9. Jordan was aware that his own personal experiences had an impact on his writing -- he even pointed out himself that his own personal trauma from instinctively shooting a woman who aimed a gun at him during his Vietnam tour was basically why Rand (& Mat) have issues killing women. So, he was dealing with his own trauma while writing. I think it’s possible, as a reader, to be aware of that personal history but also go “but Rand’s attitude really doesn’t fully make sense with the worldbuilding and can get pretty frustrating, especially to female readers”. Both of those things can exist at the same time, I think. Bringing personal experience to the writing process is a double-edged sword that way. 

To go back to that worldbuilding thought, there are definitely times where it feels like Jordan failed to fully do the mental math on what a world that has the backstory that he has given WoT would look like (and the show actually reflects the book’s reality more in what Liandrin says about how despite the power of the Aes Sedai, there are still many places where powerful men are in a position to hurt little girls). A non-Jordan example of this sort of thing would be Dragon Age: Origins. In the character creation screen, the player is straight-up told that women and men are treated equally in the world setting they’re about to play. In some of the character origin choices, this is disproven within minutes of actual gameplay, with oversexualized female characters and sexual assault threats that are pretty much only directed at women. Because that stuff is subconsciously lurking in the background of the writer’s mind and it just seeps out. While Rand’s sexism is more ‘benign’ in that it stems from him holding women above himself as a category, this still harms the women around him (and harms himself). I do think Jordan was aware of that, because we do see negative results from Rand’s No Woman Must Be Killed stance, but, again... given Rand’s cultural background, him having this stance at all makes very little sense, because he didn’t grow up in a culture where women were treated as fragile flowers that must be sheltered and kept from the dangers of the world (and it makes no sense for that to be LTT’s background either).

10. We also get the note in the middle of all this that Jordan’s mom was “a housewife”... but she worked “in defense” during the war “when everyone worked” and then later in her life, after she had kids, she suffered frequent nervous breakdowns. Which sounds like a very familiar story in terms of some of the history I’ve read on women during/after WWII, where they got a taste of freedom and independence during the war and then were expected to completely give up that part of themselves when the men came back to reclaim their jobs. Just stuff all their feelings inside to be the ~perfect housewives~. And this also makes me think of how Jordan always has a “but you gotta quit your job if you decide to have a husband/family” clause for the ‘working’ women in the series who aren’t nobility/elites (Aiel Maidens & Seanchan to’raken riders).

11. His experience in Vietnam sounds like it definitely also contributed a lot to Mat’s characterization in TSR/TFoH. This whole entire section here on page 14 vibes very Mat (before he got sucked into the Seanchan ‘storyline’, such as it was). “In the end, for most of us, the medals boiled down to managing not to die.” ... “That is why I am not I repeat, not! a hero. I just managed to stay alive.” From reading this, it sounds like Rand was based more on his father’s experiences/PTSD from WWII, and Mat was based more on his own experiences/feelings in Vietnam (or, to put it another way, Rand was based more on an outside view of how PTSD affected someone that he loved, while Mat was based more on his own internal experience of war). Though his descriptions of being ‘in the zone’ (which I’ve definitely heard other people talk about too but have never experienced myself) sound similar to how being a channeler affects people, in terms of time slowing, your senses feeling sharper, etc.

12. Okay, skipping past his early writing career (he first met his future wife Harriet while he was out shopping his first book, in her capacity as an editor), the first books he wrote under the “Robert Jordan” pen-name were some novels in the Conan universe (I’ve never read them; I saw the movie(s)? but never read any of the books) and I am reminded that the first plan for the WoT books was a six-book series. So that was after Eye of the World had already been completed and he was almost finished with The Great Hunt. Plan at the time was six books total but morphed as the books progressed.

13. His illness really was the kind that progressed very rapidly. I never read about all the details back when it happened, but it all happened over the course of about a year and a half before he died, it sounds like here. Maybe two?

14. Harriet, as both his widow and editor, was entrusted with the task of finding someone to complete the books. She first found out about Sanderson based on reading the eulogy written by him on his personal blog post when Jordan died (that a friend had sent to her), and decided on him as the one after reading Mistborn. He was the only name on her list of potential authors who she thought could finish the series, though it sounds like it didn’t hurt that he was already under the Tor umbrella.

15. So, the epilogue that we have in the current series is, basically, the one that was dictated by Jordan once he’d realized that he was most likely not going to recover in order to finish writing the series himself (and recorded by Team Jordan).

16. “All told, there were roughly two hundred manuscript pages of book-specific notes left behind. Some of the pages were outlines for complete scenes - bit and pieces of what became the published prologues for the final three books, for instance, as well as the all-important epilogue of A Memory of Light - but others were only hints of plots and solutions. And then there were the thousands upon thousands of pages of series-related notes, glossaries, lists, and other working materials Jordan had left behind in his personal files. It was all they had, and it left so very much undone. There wasn’t a full outline. There wasn’t a sequenced plot. Most of the puzzles only had pieces of the solution. One of the questions that Maria never got to ask Jordan - the next one on her list that Friday before he passed - was about the final moment in the series: “How did Rand light his pipe?” The answer to this, and everything else, now fell to Brandon and Team Jordan.”

17. What a massive, unbelievably massive undertaking. “Along the way, there was also a keen awareness that Jordan had made and then cast aside many plans throughout the writing of the series. Did they need to use all the hints in the years and years of notes? Surely not, since at times the notes didn’t even agree with each other. Jordan had a habit of stockpiling old files, after all: a boon for the later researcher, but a nightmare for the present writer.” And, for me, whatever you might say about Sanderson as a writer himself, whether you like his writing style or not, or like him as a person or not, you can’t say that he wasn’t sincerely doing his best to live up to the legacy that Harriet handed to him, or that he’s not a genuine fan of the series. Same thing with Rafe Judkins now -- agree or disagree with the changes that have been made, but Rafe is a very sincere fan of the series and is adapting the books with a sincere heart.

18. “Had Jordan lived to complete the work himself, it’s unlikely he would’ve managed to fit all that needed to be done within the single book he’d promised. Light knows, it might well have grown even beyond the fourteen volumes that Brandon and Team Jordan ultimately delivered.” I’ve literally said exactly this same thing, lol. And, with that, we are done with that section of the book.

19. The next section is about Tolkien’s inspiration on Jordan and the series. On why Jordan wanted to write his own fantasy series: “One of my themes is (and it’s one reason I wrote the books as fantasies) there is good, there is evil, there is right, there is wrong - it does exist. If you do that in a mainstream novel you are accused of being judgmental unless you’ve chosen the right political viewpoint.”

20. This section talks about fantasy in general as a genre before noting the specific elements (especially in EotW) that are inspired by Tolkien - the Shire/the Two Rivers; the Fades/the Black Riders -- and all this was very deliberate on Jordan’s part, to evoke a sense of nostalgia before he went beyond those general outlines of what had been inspired by Tolkien. And he also took inspiration from the same places that Tolkien took inspiration -- the myths and legends of our own world.

21. Then he goes on for... a while about language evolution through time, but I’ve read about that before, so I’m kinda skimming this part, ngl. But essentially, he kinda links what Tolkien was doing with language in LotR with what Jordan does with the concept of the Wheel of Time itself.

22. But then he does also go on to point out that having been in the military and going through war is another thing that Tolkien and Jordan had in common, and something that can be seen in their protagonists, that Frodo at the end of LotR also appears to be suffering PTSD/‘shell-shock' and is never the same again.

23. Okay, now in the next section, we dive into the actual creation of the series itself, starting with the first idea of it in the mid-70s, which was the basic notion of ‘what is it REALLY like to be the savior of mankind and what kind of toll might that have on someone’ with the addition of ‘and you’ll go mad and die to save everyone’. So that’s the core of the narrative that Rand believes he’s walking for the majority of the series. But he didn’t actually write anything on the idea until 1983 when the success of his Conan tie-books led them to asking him if he could write a fantasy book or series of his own.

24. lol, first it was gonna be a single book. Then maybe a trilogy. The publisher though “knew how Jim liked to tell a story” so offered him a six-book deal.

25. Yeah. I knew that “Tam” essentially (whatever his original name was) was the original character idea, before Tam became the foster father and Rand became the main character and that makes so much sense after seeing how much Jordan based Rand’s fears and personality on his own father. Of course he thought of the character as an older man, who’d lived a life. That was who he was basing it on. 

26. So some parts of Jordan’s collection are staying sealed until 2037. It doesn’t really say why most of it is already opened to the public but some of it is being unsealed in the future. I wonder if some of his notes have maybe some more personal comparisons not comfortable being made public at the time? But in his earliest notes, three books “dominated his early decisions regarding the scope and course of The Wheel of Time”. Lord of the Rings, Le Morte d’Arthur, and The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. I have not read the last two, so I’ve gotta trust what the author tells me about them, lol. I do roughly know that Le Morte d’Arthur formed the basis for a lot of the current stories about King Arthur, but I’ve never heard of The White Goddess before.

27. Apparently, The White Goddess is not considered... um, particularly accurate as far as the connections that it makes between various myths and legends of different cultures. “It was, at its core, a kind of conspiracy theory. Those sell.” Ah, it’s about the idea that there was an overarching goddess that cultures all worshipped before the current forms of religion existed. Okay, yeah, I’m definitely seeing how this would inform some of his writing ideas as he was pulling the story together.

28. I do like that the author here -- Michael Livingston -- sets out what he believes are Jordan’s INTENTIONS in the text (based on what his various notes said about the story) but says that it’s up to the reader as to whether or not Jordan was successful in translating that to the narrative. Example: he points out that while Jordan’s intention in creating the saidin/saidar binary was to point out the damage that one side unchecked can do and to show a need for balance rather than one half overpowering the other half, this is something that can certainly feel exclusionary to people who don’t fit into that binary. I do appreciate that acknowledgement; that Jordan’s intent in the story isn’t the only thing that matters.

29. But that does get me to thinking about... benefit of the doubt and what we extend to authors. For me personally, CoT/KoD were an overall bad experience and wore away so much of my own pool of belief and so I don’t extend the same benefit of the doubt to Jordan’s writing and intentions that I might have in earlier books. I look at the current ending (confirmed in this book to be dictated by Jordan, with only “a couple” of scenes by Sanderson) and I look at where we left off in KoD and I go, “yeah, I kinda think Jordan would have screwed up in a lot of similar ways to what people who dislike the Sanderson books are unhappy about, because the vast majority of the ‘harvest’ in the Sanderson books comes from narrative seeds that Jordan sowed, and there’s no way to know if he would have solved the narrative problems better than Sanderson did”.

Non-Seanchan example: Jordan clearly didn’t know how he was going to get Rand from “deeply traumatized” to “ready to wander the world carefree” or he would have left notes about it. And it’s easy to say that he would have figured it out as he went along, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that he would have done it in a way any better than what Sanderson ended up doing. There are some specific things that I’m sure that I’ll probably point to and say “eh, I feel like Jordan might have stuck the landing better on that one” but I’m no more guaranteed to be right than anyone else. There’s absolutely no way for any of us to know, you know? I can look at the Seanchan plotline as it stood in KoD, look at Mat’s ending, and say, “yeah, there’s nothing that Jordan could have done to make any of that feel anything less like a shit sandwich” but someone else might look at those two plot points and go, “well, if he did a. b. and c., then it would actually be a great story.” And they might even be absolutely correct that it would be a great story... but there’s still no guarantee it’s the story that Jordan would have written. And that’s not me saying that I think Jordan was... a terrible author at the end... because there still are some great scenes even in CoT & KoD (and New Spring is one of the best books in the series imo), but I do think he lost the thread of his story and wandered off into the weeds. And I don’t think that there was any guarantee that he would ever have picked it up again successfully. We might have had six more meandering books in the vein of CoT/KoD before sputtering to an end. Or he might have looked at how much easier and more crisp New Spring was as a read and reworked his future plans to put out a great banger of an ending. No way to know which direction he might have gone.

30. Tam had already turned into (unnamed as yet) Rand by the time Jordan got to the outlining stage - “Young man (age unspecified, but 18-25) in small village”. Interesting note that at this point in the outline men and women also had some different “abilities” from each other, not just different strengths. Oh. and the Dark One was also an alien at this point in the outline, “Sa’khan” and the Forsaken & Shadowspawn were fellow aliens that he brought with him from his dying world. But he had figured out already that he wanted the person who opposed “Sa’Khan” to be named the Dragon, and the origin of the savior/destroyer viewing of the Dragon was based on Jordan comparing the Western stories of dragons (fairly destructive) to the stories he heard in Vietnam (life-giving, standing for power and prosperity). Plus the various dragons and serpents in other cultural stories as well - the Norse world-serpent and the dragon in the Christian book of Revelation (sounds like Revelation is where he got the “seals on the Dark One’s prison” idea).

31. Looks like Rand’s original name was “Rhys al’Thor”, though Jordan played with the last name for a while. He liked the way “Arthur” and “Thor” had similar sounds and was looking to invoke both at the same time - so combining those two mythical figures is how he started with Rand -- a King Arthur who was also the god Thor. There’s a lot more King Arthur in the early books than the late books -- once we hit around The Fires of Heaven, we really move away from Rand being much involved in Arthurian myth (and that’s left more to Elayne & her family). Interestingly, al’Thor at this time was known as “The Hammer” - that part of what he envisioned for Rand kinda spun off into Perrin’s character, it sounds like.

32. Hmm, the original concept for Warders was a lot more of an equal partnership than it ended up being -- they were originally men “who watch the borders of human lands” and have “some abilities gifted from the Power, but they themselves have no use of the Power”. They’re bonded to a female wielder of the Power but notably “she cannot compel him to obey her” but if he disobeys, it breaks the bond between them. The gifts they were given were a “sense” for the presence of evil, some good self-healing, and slowed aging.

33. Ah, the name Aes Sedai is based on the Irish myths of aos si (faerie from the Otherworld). And he based the White Tower structure on “the pre-modern convents of the Catholic Church”. He was also amassing a list of names yet to be attached to any characters: Lewin, Thom, Emon, Jaim, Elaida, Mina.

34. This is Jordan’s own (very early) list of how the characters he was creating matched up to Arthurian myth:

Merlin: Amyrlen

Igraine: Tigraine

Arthur: Rhys al’Thor

Gwynevere: Gwyn al’Veer

Morgan le Fay: Emorgaine

King Lot: (?) Lor

Margawse: Morgase

Gawain: Gwayne

Gareth: Garth

Interesting to see which names roughly survived and which didn’t. He’d already decided at this point that his “Merlin” figure would be a woman, the “Amrylen” (Amyrlin Seat). He’d already decided that “Gwynevere” would be a ‘village girl’ as well. I wonder if at this point “Gwyn al’Veer” was “Rhys al’Thor’s” only love interest or if he’d thought that far yet. “Sir Gareth” would be ‘one of the village lads’. Lancelot was turned into “Lan, the Warder”. “Sir Galahand” was originally Lan’s son.

35. In 1987, he wrote a new outline for the first book, with Rhys still his hero. At this point, several of the pieces of Winternight are already in place - the yearly festival, “Rhys” lives with his “widowed farmer” father outside the village, an attack by “half-beast” mean and the dad getting injured badly by one of them. The story that Tam tells about finding Rand is somewhat similar, though the Aiel were “savage tribesmen, horse-mounted clans” at this point. Oh! Oh! The change that the show made with Tam and Tigraine came from Jordan’s notes!!!! (either a consultant read the public notes or they were just very in tune with Jordan’s original thoughts): “he found a woman, a warrior of the enemy, on the slopes of Dragonmount, dying of her wounds. She was pregnant, and though it was obviously not time for the baby to be born, her wounds had brought on labor. He helped the woman birth her child, and buried her when she died”. And at this point, he had vaguely thought of a “Green-God” at the end of the book who would help Rhys defeat the forces of “Sa’khan”, a god that would be revealed as a construct of the Power who watched over a magical pool (which is basically the end of the Eye of the World).

36. In June of 1987, Jordan did a second version of his ‘namelist’ for the book. This one was 33 pages long. 33 pages of names for people, places, and things, with handwritten notes to adjust them further. Changes:

Dark One renamed to Sha’tan

The Ogyr are now tall instead of short and are excellent stoneworkers and foresters.

Rhys is now officially Rand

Has already decided that Rand would fake his own death after defeating the Dark One though “Moiraine, Arinel (an early name for Elayne), Equene (the current name for Egwene) are among those who are not fooled and will not let him go alone

Tam gets a name, though it’s short for “Tamtrim” at this time; he based it on Mesopotamian mythology: Tammuz (Dumuzid) who was the god of shepherds & ‘the life-giving growth of plants’

He shorted Tamtrim to “Tam” and gave the second syllable to “Matrim” also known as “Mat”, though it was currently a name without a character

originally there was a complex set of religions in the Westlands, but he dropped that in favor of “cultural mentalities” of groups like the Children of the Light, the Red Ajah, and the Tuatha’an.

sa’angreal were based on the idea of the Sangreal aka the Holy Grail from Arthurian literature; objects imbued with the One Power

Padan Fain was originally named “Eward White” - he died in the attack on the village in the first draft but was mysteriously surviving in future drafts and spotted in the city

“Nyneve Bayal”, based a bit on Nimue from Arthurian legend, was one of his first characters, and was originally meant to have a darker role where she died, was brought back from the dead, and is serving the Dark One, getting Lan to oppose Rand at one point, and also was going to ‘kill’ Moiraine (who had ascended to the Amrylin Seat) but actually trap her “half-way between life and death” to be brought back later. So parts of this role were given over to Lanfear.

Gentling was a much more violent process originally, and there was also originally a testing in place for men once they came of age. Originally, being gentled didn’t cause an intense depression but was “a form of lobotomy performed with the power that makes the victim very passive, incapable of violence, and receptive to being commanded” and he called it being “gelded”. It sounds like it didn’t actually remove the Power from them but instead turned them into tools to be used (which sort of got adjusted and moved to how the Seanchan find and treat the women they turn into damane, it sounds like).

37. The next step was the “Test Manuscript”. Further changes in this:

Peddler now named Mikal Fain.

Rand has friends! Matrim Piket, Dannil Aybara, and Perrin Dael. Dannil actually survived long enough in the drafts that he’s in the original cover art for EotW, I learn. Sadly, I think I no longer have my original battered copy of EotW - I replaced it last year when I decided to do my reread.

Dannil got cut from the book because Harriet pointed out that he was doing absolutely nothing (again, Harriet, where was this energy for CoT & KoD?). The general plot was roughly the same as the finishing product at this point, so I assume Perrin was with Egwene, and Mat had stolen the dagger and was with Rand, so... where was Dannil in all this? lol, Jordan tried to keep him in by arguing “he’ll be important in book 5!” I wonder if he was originally the boy who would go over to the Seanchan and Mat took over that role?

Yeah, the version of the Test Manuscript that has Dannil in it is a lot less focused than the finished version.

38. The next surviving revision is “Revision 23″. Changes of note:

The Ogier “Jak Vladad” become Loial.

Jaren Telamon becomes Lews Therin Telamon.

39. Honestly, given the things that I hated so much about what CoT & KoD gave us, it’s almost sad to read Jordan writing:

The main thrust of the story will not be how fact becomes legend, however. Rather it will explore the nature of good and evil, of free will and the duty owed by the individual to humanity as a whole, of why and how mankind makes the choice to oppose evil, and the harm that can be done in the name of good.

People who do not champion and support good are acquiescing in the press of evil.

Some people who believe they are championing good actually fight [for] the cause of evil, for they would bind the free will given by the Creator.

That is EXACTLY what it feels like the story lost for me in Rand, Perrin, & Mat’s storylines in CoT & KoD. It felt like Jordan got so caught up in the shiny newness of allying with the Seanchan that he overlooked his own themes in the series and how he was undermining them.

40. At this point, Jordan is drafting The Great Hunt and has a somewhat comprehensive summary of the long game of the series as a whole:

Rand tries to flee his destiny but this only brings him into further conflict with the Forsaken

Determined to unite the people to face “Sha’tan’s” minions, by force if necessary

This middle section here I’m not certain about though -- he tries to defeat the Dark One, fails horribly, and must flee to regroup. That doesn’t sound like something that happened during his fights against TDO. That sounds more like when he tried to take back Ebou Dar from the Seanchan. Interesting change.

Rand was supposed to be completely without allies at some point in the story, originally, but that never quite happens in the books. The closest we really get is his flight from the Darkfriend Asha’man who attack him at the end of The Path of Daggers, but even then he flees... to his allies in Caemlyn (picking up Nynaeve, etc) and, of course, Min is surgically attached to him nearly all the time after that point He was supposed to realize that “by attempting to force humankind to oppose evil he was attempting to circumvent the free will that the Creator had made a central part of all humans”.

The ending is essentially what we got -- Rand binds away evil rather than destroying it because it “cannot be destroyed any more than can Good. Evil must be opposed by people who choose to champion Good”.

“Humanity, to be human, must have something to oppose and something to support, and the free choice of which will be which.” I feel like that is essentially exactly what happens in Rand’s confrontation with TDO in Shayol Ghul, yes?

also, no mention of allying with slavers, just pointing that out.

41. lol, damn, in the Test Manuscript, Min bangs Rand in the first book, right after “Eguene” breaks up with him. lol, and, wow this is... not super-great. So Lord of Chaos/A Crown of Swords Min was always in the plans, it seemed. It does seem like Jordan lifted some of the ideas in this scene for the post-Rand/Aviendha sex scene -- Rand talking about how they have to get married now that they’ve had sex and her being like “lol no”. Min also talks here in a way that makes it clear that she already had a viewing about having had sex with Rand, though she’s... happy enough about fulfilling the prophecy in this version.

42. Oh, here we go! First mention of what would become Seanchan in Jordan’s notes. I really am intrigued to see how this idea grew (and eventually took over and swamped) the rest of the series, even if I’m unhappy at the results in the books themselves. So, the first idea for the ~other continent~ was that Rand would be “shipwrecked on the coast of a Blight” and find himself in a land broken into city-states, each ruled by an Aes Sedai. Pretty different from the Seanchan we ended up with. Rand was going to fall in love with the daughter of a general that he was “given” to but then have to leave to avoid being gentled by the Aes Sedai in charge of the city-state, with not!Tuon bringing an army with her to help him take the “Stone of Stair”. Okay, Michael calling Tuon a ~young general who is also a ruler~ is hilarious. Tuon never showed an ounce of tactical knowledge in the entire series. Anyway, changing from Rand shipwrecking in Seanchan to instead having the Seanchan invade was supposed to... tighten the plot. Best laid plans o’ mice and men. Best laid plans. Boy, wow, it did the opposite.

43. Unfortunately, we don’t get a timeline here of when and how Jordan swapped things over from one version to the other. It was mentioned in the start that a lot of Jordan’s notes were not dated, so it can’t be certain exactly when certain things happened. The author notes that Jordan had also wanted to “dive into the complicated politics of a land invaded”. Again, shame that Jordan only really did that in WH and then decided Mat navel-gazing for two books was more interesting (in fairness, he does continue to explore it a bit in the prologues but, yeah, it really feels like he dropped the ball in the main storylines featuring the Seanchan).

44. Oooh, getting into Taimandred. “To imagine that an author never changes their mind about their plots or characters -- especially in a work as massively complex as The Wheel of Time -- would be foolish” .. “Another example of this -- interesting both for the ramifications within the narrative and its importance to fans -- is the shifting identity of the character Demandred. It’s a perfect microcosm of not just Jordan’s ceaseless creative process, but also the kinds of problems it left Brandon and Team Jordan in the wake of his passing.”

45. Interesting! Even after he’d finished The Great Hunt and was working on The Dragon Reborn, Jordan hadn’t finalized all the names of the Forsaken yet. In his notes he had:

Ishamael (check and already in the books)

Lanfear (ditto)

Aginor - already dead

Balthamel - already dead

Sammael

Rahvin

De’ath (...literally just the word death with an apostrophe)

Moloc

Be’aldrid

Maladour

Malifecin

Sha’rein

Savintar

46. “If we rewind back to Jordan’s own notes, however, we can see that at least at the time Jordan was writing Lord of Chaos, Taimandred was absolutely true.” Twice in his private notes for the books, Jordan wrote “Taim/Demandred showed up” at Dumai’s Wells. In his notes where he was summing up the accomplishments of the Forsaken, for Demandred, he wrote: “He will show up claiming to be Mazrim Taim, taking advantage of Rand’s amnesty.” And he was also supposed to originally be the person who’d killed Asmodean (makes sense, since it happens very soon before “Taim” shows up in the story). We know this because he wrote in a note about Nynaeve - “She does not know that Asmodean was a prisoner of Rand, nor, of course, that he was killed by Demandred.” The author says that it’s difficult to tell from Jordan’s notes when and why Taimandred changed into two separate people. “Sadly, we’ll never know. Jordan shared a great deal with Harriet and the other members of Team Jordan, but he hardly told them everything.”

In my own reread, it felt very much like Taim was Taimandred in LoC and very clearly that he was only Taim in WH, but the parts in between are wobbly and uncertain.

47. Honestly, I feel like pivoting away from Taimandred was a mistake on Jordan’s part. Him being the author of the slaughter at Dumai’s Wells and him killing Asmodean just... makes so much more sense than what we ended up with. I’m gonna hope that the tv rule of conservation of characters leads the show back to Taimandred as a reality, lol.

48. It was Brandon who came up with Random Sharan Army to try to explain why the fuck the Dark One was so pleased with Demandred in LoC if he wasn’t Taim and therefore had accomplished absolutely nothing of note on the page. Interesting. I was sure that the Random Sharan Army was connected to Jordan’s pivot to allying with the slavers, because the numbers just didn’t seem justified otherwise, but I guess Jordan was allying with them... for who knows why tbh. The mystery of why Jordan was obsessed with allying with the slavers remains a mystery thus far into this book. It kinda seems like it will be one of those forever questions that is never answered.

Jordan just... he really didn’t successfully sell me on it actually being NECESSARY to ally with the slavers, and I think a lot of that is rooted in his arbitrary withholding of information from Rand? Like, Rand is trying to ally with the slavers because he believes he has no choice, but HIS OWN ALLIES (including his LOVER!!!) are straight-up withholding vital intel from him re: the slaver army’s weaknesses for... absolutely no good reason at all. The deck feels so artificially stacked in the Seanchan’s favor due to Min and Nynaeve undergoing voluntary amnesia rather than any actual narrative reasons for the Seanchan to have the advantage. Again, it’s a place where I feel like I can literally see Jordan’s puppet strings on everyone’s shoulders rather than it making sense that the characters would behave this way.

49. Okay, the summary of what we know about the “outriggers��:

Set 5-10 years after the Last Battle

“focused on Mat, Tuon, and the changes faced by the Seanchan as a result of the events of the Last Battle” lol what changes. that was the whole issue through KOD. That Jordan refused to let Tuon change or grow even the slightest bit. I guess this would have been changes that happen despite Tuon throwing tantrums and kicking and screaming the whole way (and probably murdering and enslaving a LOT more people).

“All that survives, in fact, are two tantalizing sentences. One depicts Mat lying in a cold gutter, the dice having failed him. The other sees Perrin on a boat, sailing to Seanchan to kill an old friend.”

honestly, if it had the same energy as the Mat and Perrin chapters in CoT/KoD, then it’s hard to imagine the outriggers being anything but a boring slog where our main characters constantly think about how they should oppose slavery but then don’t actually do anything useful because slavery is just so gosh-darn helpful and some of the slavers are just so pretty. I’m just... I do wish more notes had survived on this, because Jordan’s pivot towards having all his main male characters working towards allying with and appeasing the slavers has been THE thing about CoT & KoD that really ruined those two books for me, and I just wish I understood WHY he went from his interesting and nuanced storyline that he had all the way through Winter’s Heart and instead changed it to Mat acting like “wanting to brutally torture and enslave people” and “not wanting to be brutally tortured and enslaved” are two equally valid points of view, with the edge being given to whoever has the most mysterious eyes.

50. More interesting to me are that Jordan had been considering writing a prequel about Tam. Basically the story that Jordan had first considered, all those years ago, about a soldier who has finished with his war. The other prequel he’d wanted to write would have been Moiraine and Lan’s lead-up to Winternight -- what led them to Two Rivers just in time. “As with the outrigger novels, however, Jordan’s archived papers contain no complete sequences or outlines”.

51. And the rest of the book is a glossary of the various characters, places, and ideas, with how they connect to mythology or the real world. I might potentially use it in the future during fics maybe but I’m not going to go over it here.

Overall, this was very interesting, even if the questions that I most wish could have been answered still remain mysteries.

[fictionadventurer]

Thoughts on the beginning of The Two Towers:

The opening lines of the first chapters are short and focused on action. Almost makes it read like a YA novel, so pretending that it was helped me speed up my reading pace.

This actually started at the end of Fellowship (with Frodo looking out across the world from the mountaintop), but this is the point where it stops being a quest and we understand that this really is a worldwide war.

I love how, even with the huge time pressure, Aragorn takes time to honor the fallen Boromir with a funeral. This respect for the dead really highlights the book's pro-life worldview.

Though given the huge time pressure, he probably shouldn't have stopped as many times later on to sing songs and stuff.

Aragorn dubs them "the Three Hunters". It's so cute.

I think I have massively underrated Eomer as a character. I love this boy. He's wise enough to see things are going wrong, so he's subtly gathering his own loyal followers in case civil war starts up. He's shocked by these people telling him All the Myths and Fairy Tales are Real, but he still takes it in stride. He's willing to let them go and give them horses despite the king's order. He's a good lad.

This is also adorable: "Strider is too poor a name [...] Wingfoot I name you."

Merry is the Experienced and Prepared Adventurer to Pippin's Wide-Eyed Innocent, and seeing their dynamic here makes me upset that Jackson's movie mostly made them interchangeable comic relief.

I was thinking that Treebeard's dialogue sounded like a Narnia book, then I remembered that Treebeard was supposedly based on Lewis. So apparently Tolkien did a very good job.

I love everything about the Ents here. It's like the Tom Bombadil scene combined with Galadriel's scene. The protector of the forest with a long history. The songs of the long past. The loss of the Entwives is so weird and so cool and I love the texture it gives here.

This scene even retroactively makes the Tom Bombadil scene make more sense, because he explains that the forest outside the Shire is the same type as Fangorn.

I'm upset people don't talk about Quickbeam more. I'd forgotten there was more than one Ent with a name. He's the hobbits' other buddy and doesn't deserve to get forgotten.

Tolkien was on-point for recognizing that an entire forest literally marching to battle is one of the coolest things that could possibly happen.

[anghraine]

firinnish replied to this post [a poll about headcanons for the in-story reasons that the Stewards were not in Gondor's line of succession despite being descendants of Elendil]:

for practical reasons. Gondor's late kings were BAD KINGS. That is a vital part of the text. There is even a part of the history where a 100% legitimate claimant comes along and Gondor is just like "nah". These are people who hold kings to a high fucking standard because they want their noble fantasy kings of old back & don't want to risk another shitty king It is explicit in the text that Aragorn is the rightful heir to everything, like, five ways from Sunday, but he does NOT just stroll in and be like "what's up yall take orders from me now". He first wins a battle for Gondor, goes among them as a stranger with healing hands (fulfilling a prophecy/legend), and rides to battle against Sauron before he dares actually assert that these people should ACCEPT HIM AS ABSOLUTE DICTATOR. His lineage isn't the thing that matters [...]

You left a ... lot of replies on my poll, so for the convenience of my dash, I'm putting the rest of your response below my reply, in italics, so people can see it and/or respond if they want.

I disagree at some level with almost everything you said. I'm not going to go into exhaustive detail about every point of disagreement, but Arvedui is very much not a 100% legitimate claimant in my view.

His argument that his wife Fíriel's birthright would make him king of Gondor under Númenórean law is simply false (Fíriel herself would have been ruling queen under Númenórean law and Arvedui no more than her consort; the only men who ruled Númenor through the birthrights of their wives were usurpers of those wives and/or of their children). The claim of the heirs of Isildur is debatable, in-story—the characters cannot know Isildur's intentions when "he forsook the South Kingdom", as The Silmarillion describes it—but Arvedui was not even heir of Isildur at the time that he made the claim. His father was still alive; Arvedui made the claim at the time he did simply because his wife's father and brothers had just died and he saw the chance (if a low chance) to seize power in Gondor.

Gondor's late kings made significant mistakes (as did many of the kings in Arnor and Arthedain) but were not, IMO, as bad as you're representing them. Eärnil especially seems to have been quite a solid character. In any case, I'm unsure what this, or your personal willingness to accept Aragorn over Denethor as absolute dictator has to do with my poll. I do prefer Denethor to Aragorn in general and think the Stewards historically have been better rulers than the kings of either Arnor/Arthedain or Gondor, so we're basically at "I would kneel to Aragorn and not Denethor" "well I wouldn't", which leads nowhere. But again, I actually don't know what Aragorn has to do with my post.

I also don't know why you're quoting movie Boromir in the course of lecturing me about Tolkien. This is all just kind of puzzling on my end.

The rest of the replies:

His lineage is what makes HIM certain that that is his destiny & causes people around him to react to him but they are also reacting to the obvious training/care/investment that has been made in him by people like FUCKING ELROND, his NOT SIGNIFICANT foster father, and to his deeds. any time he claims his lineage Tolkien writes about how he almost shines with confidence and the glory of the old days. He is the myth of a good king reawakened

You could be a completely legit ancestor of the most legit proven heritage & the people of Gondor could STILL JUST SAY NO. Heck Boromir reacts like that at first - "Gondor doesn't need a king". The people do not WANT a shitty king with a famous dad, they want to believe again, they want to be made to hope again, they want someone who inspires them to believe in the IDEA of a king again. Otherwise they could literally just say no lol

And this ties in a vitally important way into Tolkien's politics. Man was a monarchist and an anarchist at the same time. You can't put him in either box. The hereditary kingship in Tolkien's politics is only acceptable BECAUSE it is the freely chosen will of the people to be ruled by an absolute dictator who, for the most part, leaves them alone. The king gets his hereditary power from familiarity & belonging, just as much as from tradition

*not insignificant. Elrond is very significant

It really hinges on this idea that a good king can exist - like, a good family can raise some good kids and everyone in the area will be happy to accept them as the new rulers because they've known that family for generations and they know they're a good family and they are happy with the way things are and don't want to rock the boat & they really believe in these ideals of nobility and loyalty. That's part of the fantasy. The idea that that can work if you're good.

The return of the king isn't "the return of the guy with the right genes", it's "the return of the guy who can make us believe again in the idea that a good king can work, that the world can be as noble and loyal as it was in the elder days of myth and glory, that we could swear loyalty to someone who is absolutely worth it"

You cannot extricate the inability of the Stewards to be Kings from the decline of Gondor's self-image, the crumbling ruins of Tolkien's world, the rising threat of Mordor and the end of the Third Age. The stewards cannot be kings because Gondor cannot be a kingdom. Aragorn can be King because he is the man that made Gondor a Kingdom again. He freaking REUNITED THE KINGDOM AND USHERED IN THE AGE OF MEN.

I'd kneel before Aragorn. I'd fucking walk away if Denethor asked me to kneel before him. It has nothing to do with these strict legalistic ideas of who inherited what and much more to do with who actually has power. Same as in the real world - people got overthrown all the time by others who could command more troops/money. But in Tolkien's world it's about who deserves it more, rather than about who has money/force, and that's the fantasy he is selling us

The part of this fantasy that is deeply problematic is that Tolkien just doesn't really reflect on his ideas about how coming from a noble lineage and a good family makes you better, more deserving, or more honourable. It's a natural idea to him, and it isn't to us and that's why it's harder to understand. He thinks goodness is heritable, like height or intelligence or sporting ability is heritable, because he can't disconnect those things

To him, "Aragorn is descended from xyz" is saying the same things as "well Aragorn just deserves the crown more because he's a better person". Aragorn inherited more strength, grace, wisdom etc. And the modern world does NOT like talking about the idea that any of those things could be heritable because, well, that's usually used to defend racism and horrible inexcusable shit

But I think you CANNOT engage with Tolkien without grappling with that (except on a very shallow level)

I may have written too much in the replies but I got carried away. Sorry I like over analysing Aragorn

If Tolkien was ever actually asked "do you believe some races are better than others" he would have told you to fuck off. He was vehemently against the Nazis. But then he writes this book in which elves are very clearly better than orcs. ie. you cannot simplify him to a liberal icon or to an evil racist. He's fucking complicated. I think on some level he WANTS there to be this fantasy world in which race is that simple but he understands that in the real world it isn't

In Tolkien's head, it's NEITHER "Aragorn was entitled to the kingship due to his descent and didn't need to do good deeds" NOR "Aragorn earned the kingship thru good deeds and his lineage didn't matter". He proved his heritage through good deeds because only someone who INHERITED tons of awesome qualities would be able to do the stuff Aragorn did

The modern reader simply does not consider the idea that awesomeness is heritable so we don't engage with the idea that you could prove you're descended from kings simply by being really really awesome

He uses the ideas of the blood of old kings running strong in some people and being weaker in others to talk about the amount of awesomeness you inherited. The technical legality of the stewards' family tree does not matter. The stewards did not inherit enough awesomeness and are therefore insufficiently awesome to defeat Mordor and restore the kingdom

It is not a simple or a coherent ideology either. Compare how Tolkien's hobbits are "small unimportant people who can become heroes" yet we do NOT see small unimportant Men becoming kings. It's like a special exemption is carved out for hobbits, for a modern "anyone can achieve anything" philosophy, and the rest of the world runs on the older rules of "you can't rise above your destined station"

It's very comparable to works in the 90s which were trying to be feminist by showing a super awesome badass female heroine…. yet every background character beyond Token Badass Woman was still running on the old rules of "men are default characters, women only exist to be wives or damsels in distress" because they had not actually gotten to the point of questioning that underlying background ideology yet

like the half elves. He's trying to be a progressive person by being like "oh biracial characters exist and are awesome" but everyone ELSE in his world still fits neatly into the boxes of "you're either x or y". We have heroic half elves. We do not have masses of half dwarf quarter orc quarter elf characters chilling in diverse multiracial cities.

someday people will see us this way btw. at least I hope so. they will see our bravest progressive statements as the stumbling half steps towards truths that have become obvious to them, while in the background of our stories they can still see our limiting old ideologies showing through. I am not yelling at Tolkien I have so much empathy for this man who tried so hard in such a darker world

[impandgnomes]

May I ask you for uhhhhhh Tweek? 💚

Awww tysm! 🥹 Spent a while typing this on mobile, so forgive any typos lmao

1: sexuality headcanon

Honestly, that kid is gay af bless his soul. I could maybe see him also being ace when he grows up ngl?

2: otp

Creek is such a massive cliché, but CREEEEEK. I guess I'm one of those people who feels like it reminds them a lot of their irl relationship lmao. If you swapped out Craig's guinea pig thing with rats, you'd probably have a good approximation of my partner but as a 10 year-old American cartoon boy

3: brotp

Any one of the kids known as being in "Craig's gang" by the fandom (so like; Clyde, Jimmy, Tolkien lmao), and honestly Wendy. Those two haven't really interacted much, but she genuinely seems to give a shit about him lmao - her genuine concern for him after the fake breakup in Tweek x Craig made me feel so bad for her (Side note; anyone else ever been really bothered by how everyone still probably thought Craig was the bad guy at the end of that episode??? I like to think Tweek confessed to that whole ruse in front of literally the entire town right away 😭 Craig may seem like a bag of frosted arseholes but he's a good kid who desrves to be seen for who he is and not done dirty)

4: notp

I hate to say it but I've never really seen him as being with anyone but Craig lmao - maybe hetero ships? Not going to go on crusades or even feel mad, but it feels odd to imply he's anything but gay to me. it definitely feels weird to see him with anyone else romantically, but if whatever is said by a fan piece interests me, I'll probably check it out.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

I like to think that his parents are so narcissistic, that they named him Tweek unironically as a way of advertising themselves and their shop wherever the boy goes - even when his name isn't said in full. He was 100% named after the place, but they probably have some pamphlets by the door on their "company history" saying otherwise.

6: favorite line from this character

The panicked way he says "It's easy??!!?" in response to being asked what's good about toddler murder in Free Hat is utterly hysterical to me. Peak autism and peak anxiety - I probably would have done the same as a kid in that situation ngl

7: one way in which I relate to this character

I am an anxious little freak of a man who drinks too much coffee and seeks advice and reassurance from my partner - I feel like Tweek at least has an excuse given his parents usage of...concerning substances. Yeah, let's put it that way.

8: thing that gives me second-hand embarrassment about this character

I am an anxious little freak of a man who drinks toouch coffee and seeks advice and reassurance from my partner - but seriously, sometimes the little dude lacks confidence that just feels too real on a level when you strip back the comedic absurdity of the show he's in.

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave

He's a cinnamon roll - he has his problems but he honestly seems to have infinitely purer intentions than any of the other kids in the show lmao

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

1, 3, 6, 10, 13, 16

Thanks for the ask! I’m not sure whether to answer for the Silmarillion or LOTR, so maybe I’ll do both?

The character everyone gets wrong:

For LOTR, I answered this one way here, but there are a lot of other ways to answer it! I also think people get Elladan and Elrohir wrong. This may be a weird hill to die on because they’re small characters in the book, but I HATE how they’re represented in fanon. They’re made into carbon copies of the Harry Potter twins, who I already don’t like (ugh, I hate even mentioning Harry Potter here). I’m a twin myself, and I’m sick of twin characters being shoehorned into the goofy prankster role. It feels like a cheap attempt at comic relief because people don’t know how to write anything else. Especially when it’s just not how Elladan and Elrohir are represented in the book.

For the Silmarillion, I answered this one way here. I think the Weasley twin treatment also gets applied to Amrod and Amras, which is particularly nonsensical because the lives of all the Fëanorians are all extremely dark and tragic (the whole Silmarillion is tragic!). I get that sometimes people want to write happy, funny fanfiction, but can we please let go of the twins-as-wacky-pranksters trope?

Description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr:

For LOTR, I answered this another way here. But I wasn’t even thinking of another worst take, which is so bad that I’d erased it from my mind… the idea that the LOTR movies were an improvement on the books. "But nobody thinks this!" you will say. They do, and I’ve seen this take here on tumblr. WE HATES IT! There are good things about the movies (music, sets, acting, costumes, etc.) but literally nothing can come close to the beauty of the books. And besides, the movies deviated from them in many inexcusable ways—it would take to long to even list them all.

For the Silmarillion, one of the worst takes I’ve seen is the idea that Maeglin was really an innocent victim all along who was unfairly slandered by a supposedly biased history. I understand that sometimes it’s interesting to deconstruct the story, but at a certain point you’re just throwing it out the window. I’m not saying you can’t sympathize with him to a degree—he was clearly abused by his father as a child. But then he internalized those lessons—of his father’s possessiveness and violence towards women—and that was how he treated Idril.

I also know there’s a discussion among fans about Maeglin’s race, because earlier drafts described him as swarthy—and it’s certainly problematic for the dark-skinned male character to be the creepy one—but Tolkien’s later drafts described him as pale. So do with that what you will.

Which ships are the most annoying?

I don’t like the prevalence of Thorin/Bilbo. That’s partly because I hate the Hobbit movies, where the pairing mostly comes from, and it’s just not my cup of tea. People should write what they want, of course. I just don’t see the appeal.

For the Silmarillion, Sauron/Celebrimbor. It’s just everywhere, and I’m tired of it. Also, I get that some people are into darker relationships, but a lot of what I’ve seen of the pairing (even though I actively avoid it) is bizarrely romanticized. Like you guys do realize Sauron is evil, right? Even if he literally seduced Celebrimbor, I don’t think he’d be wracked with guilt about anything. People say they like this pairing because it’s dark, but then they turn Sauron into a poor little meow meow full of romantic longing and riddled with guilt because he tortures and kills his lover, and it’s just weird. I don’t think Sauron had romantic feelings for anyone, and I really don’t think he felt bad about torture and murder.

Worst part of fanon:

LOTR: I’m not even sure what LOTR fanon is anymore, probably because I try to ignore it. I guess I don’t like how the movie versions of characters and events have taken over. You know who also gets Weasleyified? Merry and Pippin, and it’s the movies’ fault. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them in the movies to a degree—but some of their best moments in the books were cut out.

The Silmarillion: I don’t even know if I could choose the worst part of fanon. I find Silmarillion fanon particularly frustrating, because in a fanbase where a lot of people don’t know the Silmarillion well, fan interpretations often get passed off as canon. People absorb fanon thinking that it’s canon, and that’s why you get so many posts that say things like, “Wait, I just realized Maglor ISN’T the nice Fëanorian.” (To be clear, I’m not judging people who say this. They’re unlearning fanon, which is good. It’s just a sign that fanon interpretations are taking over too much when you end up with a lot of people having to revise these big misconceptions.)

Ultimately, it’s just frustrating to me that fanon is so prevalent in either the LOTR or the Silmarillion fandom, because the source material is WAY more interesting. I might be swinging a bat at a hornet’s nest by saying all of this—but the asks were meant to be controversial!

You can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc):

For both LOTR and the Silmarillion, I don’t understand why people think Sauron can mind-read. That’s not a thing, but it’s astonishingly prevalent in fan interpretations. The worst part is, I don’t think people realize that mind-reading Sauron is a fan-invented concept.

[polutrope]

hiii! 1 and 10 please! :D

A fanon characterisation that you love

I like what the fandom has done with Caranthir and I've definitely been influenced by it in how I write him. Fanon has taken a one-dimensional angry guy and made him compelling: cranky but sensitive, hardworking, independent... and sexy. I also enjoy the way he's typically presented in fanart.

10. A popular character you actually really like and why

No secret here. Maglor.

Short reason: He is the embodiment in one character of so much of what I love about Tolkien's works. Difficult to explain in few words, but for example:

He's a singer and storyteller, someone who carries history and tradition, a theme that is central to Tolkien -- I mean, the stories themselves are presented as part of an in-universe tradition that Maglor (composer of the Noldolante) is literally a part of. That makes me insane.

Oversimplification here, but among a crowd of doomed characters, he seems to believe in choice (let's break the oath), and in taking a leap of faith (maybe we'll be forgiven) at the end; he seems to have a kind of estel ("Then let us be glad, for its glory is seen now by many.") He throws the Silmaril away (this also makes me insane). He decides to stop killing and to nurture instead. To me, these actions come together to demonstrate that kind of radical hope that defines so much of Tolkien.

The Sea. Capital S. That's it.

I know I'll go off about how he's not all soft and good (and he's not), and I'll drag him for being delusional, complacent, and a procrastinator, but the truth is I have decidedly accepted the narrative's invitation to feel pathos for him.

Long reason: I wrote 10k words about him here, there's not much more I can say 😁.

[Spread Love Asks]

[torchwood-99]

Does Eowyn continue to fight after the war?

Whether or nor Eowyn ever picks up her sword again after the war is a rather contentious question. Her decision to no longer be a Shieldmaiden after falling in love with Faramir inevitably puts readers in mind of the history of women giving up their careers when they marry, or the tropes of feminists who defy gender roles learning the error of their ways through the love of a good man.

After everything Eowyn has been through trying to prove her worth as a warrior, after having her wishes denied over and over, after having it spelled out to us why this denial caused Eowyn such despair, and after her great victory on the field, it's right that this is a bit of a sore spot.

This is fairly mitigated by the fact that Faramir, also a skilled soldier, never fails to recognise Eowyn's worth as a fighter and often speaks to her as one soldier to another, too wishes to live a life of peace away from battle, it's a mutual desire for them both. That being a healer; whether literal or metaphorical, is a role also taken on by powerful characters like Aragorn and Elrond. And the overall theme of choosing growth and healing over death is at the heart of the series, and Eowyn's arc is in accordance with that.

However, we know from Tolkien's extended writings that there is still work to be done in Ithilien, that military might will need to be put to good use for Ithilien to grow and heal. The question is, does Eowyn play a part in that?

Character wise, it makes sense for her to do so. She is skilled, she and Faramir plan to embark on growing a garden in Ithilien (healing it) together as equals, the text vindicates her desire to be able to go out and fight and "perform deeds" over and over. While her death wish was not vindicated, her right to live a life beyond the walls of her house, to be able to confront the dangers in her land instead of being left behind to wait, which is utterly at odds with her nature, very much is. And it's made clear that the denial of her true nature was one of the causes for her death wish.

Eowyn wanted glory and death. She got glory, forever renowned for her great deeds, she didn't get death.

However, this quote is often used to confirm that Eowyn never fought again.

“I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer,”

Eowyn's renunciation of the role of shieldmaiden does make it seem like she has no intention of picking up her sword again. However, just because she isn't a shieldmaiden doesn't necessarily mean she never fights or picks up a sword again. Not when she lives in a land where to heal means also needing to fight.

She gives up her role as shieldmaiden to take on a new one; not as Faramir's wife and adjunct, but as a healer. The quote above has the two roles stand in contrast. Shieldmaiden, warrior, whose purpose is to bring death, who strives for a glorious end in battle. Healer, whose purpose is to fix things and bring life. I think that this quote is less about Eowyn foreswearing the sword entirely, and more about her no longer centring her dreams and identity around bringing death and being a death seeker, and instead around someone bringing life.

But why do I think that Eowyn still retains a warrior like part to her personality, why I think she plans to channel those skills for healing purposes rather than getting rid of them entirely? It's this line here, often overlooked, but with a single word seems quite revelotary.

"nor take joy only in the songs of slaying"

It's the "only".

Eowyn didn't say she wouldn't take joy in the songs of slaying, but that she wouldn't take joy only in the songs of slaying. That indicates that she will still take joy in those songs, the songs she grew up on of brave warriors and bold deeds, but she will take joy in other songs too. That part of her still exists, but she no longer feels it's the sum of her entire existence. It's a part of her that works in accordance with her also having a desire to find love and peace and bring healing to others.

I very much think Eowyn still fights after the war, when called to. But now she is fighting for life, not glorious death.

[mad-rdr]

April Reads

9 books this month!

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (★ ★ ★ ★/5): I’ve finally read the og fantasy book and honestly it was so nice to go back to the basics before “romantasy” became a thing. An adventure for an adventure's sake !

The War of Two Queens by Jennifer Armentrout (★ ★ ★/5): this book should’ve been book 2 and we could’ve skipped those other ones. There’s a lot of unnecessary back and forth in this book and once again I stress the importance of editors. The anticipated threesome was okay, could’ve been better tbh. Honestly, I will not be finishing this series- especially after learning that book 5 is literally just a retelling of book 1 in Casteel’s POV. Respectfully I don’t care enough to continue

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade (★ ★ ★/5): this book, much like the storyline consists of, reads like fanfiction. I was genuinely taken aback by the Ao3-formatted chapters within this book, like I did not think that was necessary but okay. Not awful, but be prepared for cringy adults (almost 40 yrs old btw) that have little to no communication skills

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco (★ ★ ★/5): I'm a little late to the hype of this book but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I loved Audrey Rose and Thomas' interactions and all props to them both for being interested in mortuary science... couldn't be me

Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerri Maniscalco (★ ★ ★ ★/5): this was a good mysterious follow up to the first book, although I think it's funny that they went through all of that to not get admitted into the forensics school (also these poor children have soo much trauma now)

Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka (★ ★ ★/5): a good insight into how efforts to make the government smaller have actually made possible technological advancements nearly impossible (at least on government websites). The policy loopholes (more like tangles) are astounding and frustrating and the government is a mess

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel (★ ★ ★ ★ ★/5): I'm only a little familiar with the original Hindu myth of Ramayana but I feel like this take was so good! I really enjoyed Kaikeyi's story and learning abt her motivations for what she did, mythology (and history) is never kind to female voices, and I think their stories need to be told too

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (★ ★ ★ ★/5): what a fun little mystery novel! The humor of the narrator made this quite enjoyable and quick to read, although I'm a little disappointed this wasn't a story about a family of serial killers

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune (★ ★ ★ ★ ★/5): this was such a wholesome story about life after death and seeing the best in humanity. This also taught me that life is too short to not be lived. Go out into the world and live and love and learn and do all the things you want to do without waiting for the "right" moment !