#The history of middle earth

[eloquentsisyphianturmoil]

Unfinished tales: ‘Maedhros afterward sent [the dragon helm] as a gift to Fingon, with whom he often exchanged tokens of friendship’

Me: 👀

[inexpressiblybeautiful]

I still can't believe that Eru Iluvatar and the Ainur just let their sociopathic and narcissistic family member exist freely in Middle Earth for two Ages

[auntieoneandauntietwo]

Yeah

[caenith]

Boromir the Himbo ❤️

[eri-pl]

Yessss!

The package came.

@dfwbwfbbwfbwf in first versions of B&L it was Celegorm (not Finrod) who helped Beren. Magic disguise and all. More tomorrow or after I read it. But I thought you'd like to know.

[queenmeriadoc]

“A story must be told or there’ll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving. I think you are moved by Celebrimbor because it conveys a sense of endless untold stories: mountains seen far away, never to be climbed, distant trees (like Niggle’s) never to be approached — or if so only to become ‘near trees’…”

Letters page 110

[jewish-tattle]

The Tanakh, Book of Ruth 1:16/The History of Middle Earth XII, 369

[hopecomesbacktolife]

thinking of rereading the entirety of HoME again. for my health

[inexpressiblybeautiful]

Eru Iluvatar before the existence of the Ainur, his Children and pretty much everything else:

Ok I'm bored. Time to torture some beings lmao.

[wonderingboat]

“Slay Ungoliant”

Estel Vs Darkness

We fight the enteral emptiness with a fool’s hope

总有愚者，以莽撞的勇气和未曾有保证的信念，去直面虚空中的猛兽。

Like the idea in HOME that Earendil slew Ungoliant，also like to image the giant hungry spider as a black hole，totally make sense

somehow can also be a concept pic for an old fanfic，it is an AU but with only one character Eriol

https://archiveofourown.org/works/39467103/chapters/98778573。

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Tolkien Book Polls - HoME

Now that polls have 12 options, I can finally do this one properly!

[cantsayidont]

In Christopher Tolkien's THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH, VOLUME 8, THE WAR OF THE RINGS, the third of four volumes on the writing of LORD OF THE RINGS, there's an early draft of the chapter "The Last Debate," where Gandalf and the captains of the West discuss their remaining options against the forces of Mordor. In the draft, there's a lengthier discussion of the Ring, including an explanation of what would happen if one of them succeeded in wielding it against Sauron:

‘But if we should find the Ring and wield it, how would it give us victory?’ asked Imrahil. ‘It would not do so all in a day,’ answered Gandalf. ‘But were it to come to the hand of some one of power [?or] royalty, as say the Lord Aragorn, or the Steward of this City, or Elrond of Imladrist, or even to me, then he being the Ringlord would wax ever in power and the desire of power; and all minds he would cow or dominate so that they would blindly do his will. And he could not be slain. More: the deepest secrets of the mind and heart of Sauron would become plain to him, so that the Dark Lord could do nothing unforeseen. The Ringlord would suck the very power and thought from him, so that all would forsake his allegiance and follow the Ringlord, and they would serve him and worship him as a God. And so Sauron would be overthrown utterly and fade into oblivion; but behold, there would be Sauron still ….. but upon the other side, [a tyrant brooking no freedom, shrinking from no deed of evil to hold his sway and to widen it].’ ‘And worse,’ said Aragorn. ‘For all that is left of the ancient power and wisdom of the West he would also have broken and corrupted.’

[Footnote references omitted.]

I assume Tolkien deleted this passage from the final version of this chapter in RETURN OF THE KING because the fact that Gandalf and Aragorn no longer have access to the Ring made this all something of a moot point, but it helps to clarify the nature of the trap they're seeking to set by riding to the Black Gate: Sauron already fears that Aragorn has the Ring and is waiting for an opportune moment to seize and claim it; Sauron knows that hasn't happened yet (judging by what happens when Frodo claims the Ring in "Mount Doom," Sauron would know immediately), but if someone of real power does claim the Ring, there will be only a finite window of time in which Sauron can still hope to wrest the Ring back from them before losing too much of his own strength.

Tolkien appears to have vacillated somewhat on this point: In a 1963 letter (LETTERS OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN, Letter 246), in which he discusses what would have happened if the Ring-wraiths had reached Frodo at the Crack of Doom, Tolkien asserts that no one other than Gandalf or the Eldar — even Aragorn — could have withheld the Ring from Sauron in a face-to-face confrontation. However, if that were so, I'm not sure Sauron would feel the sense of urgency Gandalf and Aragorn sought to provoke. If Sauron could be confident of simply taking the Ring from Aragorn by confronting him directly, why not refuse to take the bait and just keep wearing down the already-crumbling defenses of Minas Tirith? Also, if the only one who could have really hoped to wield the Ring effectively against Sauron was Gandalf, I presume Sauron's fears would have been focused more on him than on Aragorn. Sauron probably knows that Gandalf is in Minas Tirith (the Witch-King obviously recognizes him, although it's not entirely clear if the Witch-King is able to report back before being destroyed), but Sauron very definitely knows about Aragorn and obviously regards him as a potentially grave threat. In this area, I have to think the villain's actions in the actual text speak louder than the author's commentary after the fact.

The assertion in the above-quoted passage that the one claiming the Ring "could not be slain" is curious (certainly the Ring didn't save Isildur, although I suppose he hadn't attempted to wield it in the way Gandalf describes), but the passage does make clear why Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel are so convinced that using the Ring against Sauron would cause the wielder to become a new Dark Lord: It's not simply an abstract truism about power corrupting, but rather the mechanical function of the Ring causing the new Ring-Lord to absorb Sauron's knowledge and power (and with it his malice), even though Sauron as an entity would eventually be destroyed in the process and his minions would desert him.

[queenmeriadoc]

“I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff.”

JRR Tolkien in a letter to his friend Milton Waldman.