#theneverfadinglands

[cycas]

Five characters poll game

Tagged by @verecunda, thanks! Rules are: Make a poll with five of your all time favorite characters and then tag five people to do the same. see which character is everyone's favorite. I've also gone with the 5 different fandoms approach which I suspect means my poll will be Maedhros v Bilbo.

In a battle of blades, clearly Maedhros would win against Bilbo, and possibly also in a straight popularity contest, given that Maedhros would be able to get the crowd riled up with a wild Feanorian speech. None the less, I predict that Bilbo will win, through simple kindly acts like the gift of a bag of potatoes to the poorer hobbits, and also by writing a banging song about Maedhros's father that will give everyone an eye-opener.

Ooh, I forgot to tag 5 people!

OK, I tag: @joyfullynervouscreator @grundyscribbling, @quillingmesoftly, @theneverfadinglands @rekishi-aka

[inky-duchess]

Thank you @theneverfadinglands for the tag.

Rules are: Make a poll with five of your all time favorite characters and then tag five people to do the same.

[ambarto]

Hello, quite long time ago I asked about possible black sand for the desert in Harad. You said the minerals of black sand are unstable. Does it mean the desert can turn to normal yellow sand colour over time? Because I'm writing it as black sand desert (black in the middle and lighter on the sides as you suggested), but I would like to know what happened with it. Obviously Arda look different than Earth does now, if it's Earth from long time ago as Tolkien intended, there have to be another sinking of continents and rearranging of Arda in history. So I think maybe part of the Harad desert is now part of our Sahara. Although I have problem with time scale - how long does it take for sand to turn colour due weathering? What if the sand was indeed created by unnatural circumistances. The volcanic activity needed for creation of inland black volcanic sand could be result of the War of Powers and destruction of Ringil in South - so it isn't naturally created. I have question about the winds you talked about - to serve the purpose of continuous mechanical weathering of the magmatic rocks. What geographical conditions needs to be met for such a strong winds occuring in the desert? I was thinking about placing long mountain range with active volcanic activity between Harad and Khand on east across the length of Erumorna (my name of the Harad desert). What would it mean for climatic conditions? I would like it to be extreme place and rather unstable with gas eruptions, cave systems which can collapse and earthquakes. I was also thinking about canyons.

Thank you very much!

Hi I do remember that discussion!

Basically, some minerals aren't very stable under surface conditions. These are usually minerals which form with very high heat/pressure, and so they prone to changing when they come to the surface. These changes are often connected to chemical weathering, basically chemical reactions which alter the composition of the mineral in question. Chemical weathering is very often connected to water.

Here is a site with more details, but basically black sand is due to either volcanic material (with minerals such as olivine and pyroxene, as well as volcanic glass) or because of accumulations of grains of certain heavy minerals (magnetite, rutile, garnet). Our case is the first one, so volcanic material. Olivine and pyroxene are some of those minerals that are unstable under surface conditions, and they will dissolve relatively fast when in water. More stable minerals will be left behind. This can include quartz, clay minerals produced by weathering, and some stable minerals like zircon or iron oxides.

Of these: quartz is light colored, so is zircon, clays are variable depending on composition, and iron oxides are dark but they can can turn reddish due to oxidation (rust, basically).

Unfortunately I can't give you time scales on how long it takes for this to happen, or even how distant you need to be from the volcanic source. I will say that when you are far away from the source there will also be mixing with sands of a different source, which will also work to get the color lighter. Because this is a desert, there isn't a lot of water to go around, which can slow down weathering. Considering the volcanoes are currently active here will also be constant re-forming of dark rocks, and so more available sand.

Wind wise, unfortunately I'm not that much of an expert in this so I don't know what the exact conditions need to be. I have found this page talking about wind in the desert which describes how wind helps erode rock, but not much on actual wind formation in the desert.

What I can say is that on Earth at the same latitudes as Harad (so around our Sahara, let's say) we have trade winds, which flow more or less year round from northeast to southwest. This means that wind will in general drag sand from the area of your mountains towards the sea, and might cause large amounts of dust to rise in the air. It can lead to sandstorms, or it can lead to dust clouds similar to the ones produced by the Sahara - except Sahara storms tend to turn the sky a reddish color, these sands might turn it a darker, deeper red, and partially obscure the sun.

Gas eruptions can definitely occur, as well as cave systems due to underground lava tubes. Canyons can be more complicated, canyons mostly form due to water action and again not much of in the desert. What you could have is one or a few major rivers that manage to cut through the desert (think the Nile). Or you can have temporary streams which form during storms (remember deserts will occasionally have extremely powerful rainstorms, and then no rain for months or years), these will be very strong and over time these temporary streams can also create a canyon.

A possible alternative is also to have your volcanic rock cracking apart. Volcanic rock tends to be very brittle, and if your area is prone to earthquakes and tectonic activity you can have the opening of fissures and small valleys due to the tectonic forces spreading the rock apart. Keep in mind these canyons are more likely to be smaller and more irregular than those created by water or ice

[cycas]

Hello, Cycas! I wanted to ask you about the specific character voice of Maglor. I reread RtA and Quenta Narquelion to do some analysis of the way Maglor construct sentences and which words he uses. I still struggle with him a little bit, I'm missing some piece in the puzzle. I would be grateful if you can tell me more about the way you write Maglor and what character points to not miss?

What I learn about Maglor's speech patterns is the interesting contrast of flowery and lively speech, not being very blunt and dance around topics, but then suddenly being alarmingly blunt and to the point the second later. He is very eloquent and I noticed he is maybe persuasive without the intention to be sometimes? Always in control of every conversation and the way he is perceived by people even in daily life. My problem is I just.. have problem to write him like that and I would really appreciate some tips.

I would also appreciate if you can link me to some good books or essays on the matter of medieval kingship. Useful for the writing of noldorin politics. Thank you very much!

I finally got to answer this, terribly late, sorry. Very flattered to be asked!

I try to write Maglor as someone who enjoys language, and is sometimes a little playful about using it. Both he and Maedhros have a tendency to longer, more complex sentences and are perhaps more likely to use a scattering of Latinate words than many of my characters (particularly Nimloth, who is much more direct.)

But Maglor is more concerned with the sound and rhythm of words, while Maedhros is more likely to be obscure and elliptical when speaking. (Of course, really, they aren't speaking English, but, well, call it a translation convention.)

So on the whole, Maglor says what he means, using words that have a pleasant shape and rhythm. He's very good at that, so one thing he does, as you mentioned, is deliberately vary his sentences length for impact.

But he is also a procrastinator who prefers to avoid unpleasant truths. Such as: we are going to lose this war. Such as, just giving up and going home will go horribly wrong. Such as: you need Fingolfin's help so ffs, ask. (Maedhros faces unpleasant truths head-on, which is one of many reasons that Maglor used to prefer to leave big decisions to him.)

So when he is finally forced to face a situation he would have preferred to weasel out of (for example: the Oath really is still binding, or Elrond and Celebrimbor are in danger, etc) he's often a bit more staccato, because he's uncomfortable and dealing with emotions that he's definitely not going to explain to anyone.

But at the same time, like all of Feanor's sons, he can make a speech at the drop of a hat if he really has to. He has the ability to put on his princely mantle and play the part, the way Celegorm and Curufin did in Nargothrond. When Maglor does this, he does it expertly. Feanor's sons generally do things expertly, of course, and Maglor is an expert in language, and in manipulating emotion with language by telling stories.

So yes, sometimes he finds that he's swaying the people he is talking to with his words, even when he knows that's a perilous path to walk and is genuinely trying to dial things back. His default register, I suppose, is Teller of the Tale, and that is a role that is intrinsically manipulative of emotion and opinion. And controlling that is quite difficult because all of that family grew up using all their many talents as often and as hard as they could. They are not used to restraint. I think this is one of the many things that draws him to Elrond,Finrod and Fingon. Apart from shared history, they are genuinely friends because these are people that Maglor cannot accidentally push around, because they are more than capable of seeing what he is doing, not being impressed, and pushing back harder. After the First Age, Maglor finds that reassuring. He is aware that his own judgement has sometimes led him terrible consequences that he regrets, and he doesn't trust himself: even worse, he can't trust Maedhros or Feanor any more either, and that is really difficult for him.

A younger and more competitive Maglor would be much more irritated by Fingon and Finrod, I suspect, but of course he didn't know Elrond then. I think he gets on much better with reborn Fingon and Finrod than he did when they were children. As to medieval kingship, that's... a big question! And I don't know if I can answer it because I tend to feed in stuff from my long-ago history degree which probably has been superceded and also I can't remember where I read things anyway. But my emphasis tends to be early medieval European- what is often called the Dark Ages - rather than late medieval. Rosamond Mckitterick,J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, and Janet Nelson are relevant historians, maybe also Brian Ward-Perkins on the Fall of Rome. I like Nelson's book on Charles the Bald, but I'm not sure how much fun it would be to read just for fanfic!

But my ideas about Maglor as a leader and his characterisation are also particularly influenced by a couple of novels (neither of them, strictly, medieval!) : Island of Ghosts, by Gillian Bradshaw, and Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff, and I can definitely recommend those as fun to read.

Thank you for the ask, it was a lot of fun to answer, and I hope it made some kind of sense even if rather late.

[cycas]

@theneverfadinglands thank you for the interesting Maglor ask, I will try to come up with some good answers for you. I'm a bit overrun at the moment and promised myself I'd try to do something for Tolkienoc week, so this is just by way of a 'thanks and I have got it!' for now.