#appendiceal

[picnic-at-dreaming-rock]

realising what I actually need from Suzanne Collins is just a multi-volume panem history book

[softlysilverfountainsfall]

Elrond had never said as much, but he had always thought that the story of Beren and Luthien falling into such a sturdy love at first sight was a little unbelievable.

He quietly held that skepticism until the Second Age, when, tired and grieving just after the war with Sauron, he turned a corner and saw several things at once.

There sat an elven-maid in silvered armor spattered with mud. Her silver hair, released from her helm, tumbled down in sweat-darkened clumps. Her sword lay bare across her lap, the cleaning cloth (half-covered in dark orc blood) discarded in favor of a lifted hand, upon which rested a songbird trilling its melody. The lady was smiling, looking upon the bird, and the smile did not lift the weariness from her face, but rested alongside it.

"Oh," Elrond thought.

[midstpodcast]

Season 3, Episode XIX Finale Appendices 🔎 | Lark's Final Journal Entry #MidstSpoilers

[prokopetz]

It's often been proposed that diary-style epistolary fiction is the historical literary equivalent of the "found footage" film, but I've gotta believe that pretending your story that you wrote is merely your translation of an historical document that you uncovered is at least in the same ballpark.

[likesdoodling]

>:)

[outlying-hyppocrate]

i love vivisection because it sounds hot as fuck but then whenever i start thinking about laparoscopic appendectomies i become rapidly panicked and ill

[traegorn]

The only problem with the in-the-moment style of worldbuilding I'm doing in the Mia Graves books is that I have a full cosmology figured out... and can't work in good ways to explain some stuff.

And I constantly want to explain stuff.

[caffeineheroes]

People calling Héra just another Éowyn must not have watched the movie or are just reductively reading all women from Rohan characters as the same because... they are women?

Héra JUST wants to be a free horse girl and fights for that the whole movie. Éowyn wants to be A QUEEN. She wants to rule and fight and be a leader. Héra constantly has leadership thrust upon her and just wants to escape.

Éowyn would have taken control of the Hornberg situation in a heartbeat, probably would have found a way to sabotage the seige in the first place, and married Fréaláf at the end. (No shade, because same. Actually, there may be more similarities between Faramir and Fréaláf than I realized...).

Héra did what she had to do and then gtfo out. (RESPECT - follow your dreams.)

[wardensantoineandevka]

This was so incredibly and hilariously petty of Spahr, a Top 10 Jonas Spahr Being Extremely 30ish Moment to me:

[astrovian]

You know what we don't talk about enough? Thorin's sandwich-serving skills

[velvet4510]

For all the male domination of the line of the Rulers of Númenor and Gondor, let’s not forget that Elendil, and thus Aragorn, are actually directly descended from the female line of the House of Elros, via Elros’ great-great-granddaughter Silmariën.

AND let’s not forget that Aragorn’s only connection to Anárion’s line (the actual line of Gondorian Kings) is through his female ancestor Fíriel - who actually is the one who joined the two lines by marrying Isildur’s descendant Arvedui.

Aragorn would never have had any claim to the throne, let alone existed, if it weren’t for those two very important women. The Kings did NOT do it all by themselves.

I just love that Tolkien wrote it like that, instead of having Aragorn be descended entirely from royal men. There’s a lot of “oh his father was this important guy” and “he was the son of this cool dude” but if you look closely, in the end it comes down to two essential foremothers.

(Not to mention the fact that Dior is always referred to as “the son of Lúthien.”)

[ardafanonarch]

Does canon indicate who is older: Elros or Elrond?

Birth Order of Elrond and Elros and Elrond

Good question. My instinct on this was no, canon does not indicate who is older, and indeed further research turned up nothing definitive. (If anyone has evidence to the contrary, please share it!) However, I uncovered a decent hint that Tolkien imagined Elros the elder.

[ETA: Please see this reblog for a revised answer that confirms the Elros theory!]

The fact that they are twins at all is not even in the published Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings, which introduce them thus:

Bright Eärendil was then lord of the people that dwelt nigh to Sirion’s mouths; and he took to wife Elwing the fair, and she bore to him Elrond and Elros, who are called the Half-elven. The Silmarillion, ‘Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath’ The sons of Eärendil were Elros and Elrond, the Peredhil or Half-elven. The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A

Here, the order in which their names appear does not help us as we get both options.

It’s important to note here that Elros did not even exist from the conception of the mythology of Middle-earth. Elrond son of ‘Eärendel’ does not appear in any of the Lost Tales, but he does show up in the 1926 Sketch of the Mythology, the ‘Earliest’ Silmarillion (one day I’ll make post summarising all these texts, but in the meantime Table 2 at the end of this bio has a lot of them!). Elros does not join him until the next version of the Silmarillion,* the 1930 Quenta Noldorinwa. Here he is added in revisions to the text. In those revisions, his name comes first (‘Elros and Elrond’).

(*When I do not italicise Silmarillion, I am referring to the whole corpus of drafts. Italicised means the published book edited by Christopher Tolkien.)

The same sort of revision is made to Annal 325 of The Later Annals of Beleriand (referred to as AB 2 and written between 1930 and 1937). Christopher Tolkien notes that his father pencilled a note to change the original passage (which only mentions Elrond) to:

The Peringiul, the Half-elven, were born to Elwing wife of Eärendel, while Eärendel was at sea, the twin brethren Elrond and Elros. The History of Middle-earth Vol. 5: The Lost Road, The Later Annals of Beleriand, Commentary on Annal 325.

Important! Christopher then notes, “The order was then inverted to ‘Elros and Elrond’.”

Note that the 1930 Quenta Noldorinwa is the main source for most of the last chapter of the published Silmarillion because Tolkien did not return to a full narrative of this section of the Silmarillion again. However, they are mentioned in the briefly sketched Tale of Years (1951-52), where it is again stated that they were twins and again they appear as ‘Elros and Elrond’.

[Added entry:] 528 [> 532] Elros and Elrond twin sons of Earendil born.* The History of Middle-earth Vol. 11: The War of the Jewels, Tale of Years, Text ‘C’

*[> 532] means this entry was revised to 532, the date you will find in the timeline on Tolkien Gateway (which defaults to the ‘most recent’ revision). Note that The Tale of Years (the published portion of which only covers the 6th century of the First Age) is actually four consecutive drafts: dates are revised and the entries become increasingly detailed, but each draft ends earlier than the last (e.g. Text A goes to FA 600, Text D ends at FA 527). Most of the timelines you find online attempt to consolidate all four drafts — but worth bearing in mind that Tolkien never finalised these dates.

Finally: upon investigating the source text for that one instance, from the published Silmarillion, of Elrond appearing before Elros, I discovered that this was actually an editorial decision. Tolkien himself, as far as I could find, always listed Elros before Elrond.

Now, this is not, as I said, definitive evidence that Elros tumbled out of the womb first. But I’d say it suggests that Elros was the elder, since I can think of no other reason to consistently list them in this order (it’s not alphabetical, for example). And this, indeed, seems to be the fandom’s general consensus.

But, strictly based on canon, you are free to put them in either order. In fact, if you are someone who only takes the published Silmarillion as canon, you don’t even have to make them twins.

[softlysilverfountainsfall]

Anyway, I think Elrond had a breakdown on Elladan and Elrohir's sixth birthday because they're so young, which means that he and Elros were that young when—

[midstpodcast]

Season 3, Episode XV Appendices 🔎 | A Central Vault Schematic

[jestersloverre]

Moc Weepe, the boy who would be mayor.