Happy birthday, Susano'o!

I am in the minority but I’d love to know more about the pre-noldor elvish edain culture, history, and just life. 

I wanna know more about men in the context of men, I wanna see history through human eyes without the elvish perspective. 

I wanna know the full experiences of all humans in middle earth not the ones the elves interacted with. And if you have to have elves, I wanna hear about what humans thought of elves that isnt ‘oh they are so perfect and amazing and beautiful uwu’, because that’s kind of boring and we can all agree first age elves? on the whole? pretty shitty. (I love em but they have one brain cell to share among them and fuck up on the regular). 

I wanna see Humans who were born into a dumpster fire that is the world of arda, these are a people who didn’t get Orome leading them to heaven on earth, they got Morgoth. These are a people who lived in Morgoth’s land for centuries who probably experienced horror and oppression from basically their species infancy. Unlike the elves of valinor, or even the Sindarin protected by Melian, horror and despair would have not been their abnormal, it would be their everyday.  But they aren’t broken, they survive. They make families, connections, lives in this wasteland. They adapt and change, because I think in some ways that is the race of men’s true advantage over elves. That we don’t have a gap on our ‘greatness’ persay, humanity’s ambitions get’s mutated into greed a lot (I mean numenor is a dumspter fire for a reason) but I think that human ambition is a strength because it means we don’t accept our circumstances. The Edian sure didn’t. 

The edain, the Boerians, the people of haleth, and the hadorians, all marched themselves out of morgoth’s land hoping for something better, with NO GUARANTEE they find anything better.  But they still did it. And while we are here, let’s talk about how the race of men has not guarantee of anything, like elves (and dwarves) kind of know where they end up. They go to Mandos and get reborn, they go to aule, respectively. Men...don’t have that. Men really didn’t get anything (but Morgoth and suffering). They leave this world forever, thats what they know. Thats what they are told. 

But no one knows what the means. (Personally, I think its like a good place situation kind of. Eru is just michael and turin is janet) 

But anyway back to the POINT, (if there ever was one) the edain end up finding beleriand but beleriand isn’t the paradise they wanted. But hey, its not morgoth so let’s celebrate said the beorians before promptly getting found by finrod. And look elves did a lot of good for humans, but I also think there is this really bad dynamic of elves holding all the power and men just being in it for the ride. 

Ive made the joke that the elves of the first age are kind of like the edian’s sugar daddies but it’s kind of true. They give them land and like ‘wisdom’ (whatever the fuck that means) and in return men give them their ever increasing numbers. The Silm is a very elven story we don’t really get a lot of human, but when we do I think it’s pretty interesting. Because the relationship between Elves and Men is really uneven in the first age...and all ages even though in later ages forces of men like numenor at their height could I think easily sweep the floor with the elves of the second age combined. I think culturally Elves give a lot more, like men end up picking up their language, though im one hundred percent sure human languages didn’t die out and never do, humans must have shit talked elves a LOT in taliska (oh yes, that is the name of at least the language spoken by the hadorians and beorians, the people of haleth spoke a different dialect) and I think a lot of humans give more in resources (aka men, power, infantry). I mean personally if I was having at a guess I don’t think (as the latecomers) men got very many places to actually farm and have good land and relied on elvish goods to survive. I think this unevenness kind of spurred this idea that ‘elvishness = superior’, so to make this full circle I think a lot of pre edain culture was lost to make place for diet pepsi version of elf culture that we see human cultures like numenor and gondor have, because that’s better than their orn because elves are SPECIal BETTER AND DON’T DIE LIKE US BROKEN AND FALLEN PEOPLE.  ((screams)) 

Okay let’s talk about the death thing. Human and Mortal and Men all mean the same thing, humans die is not a statement that should be up for debate. But the humans of edain, at least from what we see of Andreth is that this was not how it always was. Humans were once immortal like the elves until they were bad and listened to morgoth and then they became mortal and all sick and ew. 

yeahhhh, I don’t think thats true. I think in-universe its a great myth. I love finrod ah andreth for this reason (also andreth is tolkien’s best female character he ever created and the fact that she’s not in the published silm is why we are in the bad timeline) , but I think humans...always were mortal. 

And thats okay. 

We talked about human ambition above, I think that is fueled by the fact that we all die. We have a timer, so we have to do things now, and that’s not a bad mindset to have. I think it gets humjans into trouble but also, imagine your a human in beleriand, you have children, a family, they might have children someday you want to do what you need to do to make sure THEY have a chance. 

(also lets talk about the fucked up fact that humans are punished for lsitening to morgoth in the first place like im sorry that humans didnt have any other valar looking for them, there was no orome, no fucking chance that they could have met anyone else because no valar came for them only morgoth with his lies so yes humans are bad for listening to the only god like entity that seemed like he wanted to help them, the elves did that too but they had nice gods so they are wise while humans who have illness and sickness and death over their heads listen to a guy with power okay jirt i see your double fuckig stnarad and its STUPID) 

And you can’t wait for that chance, so you leap. I think this is best illustrated by Turin of all people. Turin gets called elvish a lot in looks but in actions, he, like most of his family, are allllllllll human. The bridge in nargothrand even though it’s stupid and ends up horribly kind of reminds me of this. Turin doesn’t have time to wait like Gwindor, and Orodreth, etc do. his people have already been fucking disomated, he’s lost his father, his mother is trapped in enemy territory.  He wants to help. 

Sure it blows up in his face, but yknow...the want to do good is there. 

I think on the whole humans get a bad rep...like they’re called stupid and dumb and ugly by both fandom and in universe elves alike. But I don’t think that’s the case. Humans have a lot more balls and have collectively been through more trauma as a species than I think all of the elves (especially valinorian) elves combined. I think when humans fuck up, whether it be turin or numenor, it’s proof of their incompetence, that their inante (eru-given ability) to have ambition to seek beyond the world they live in for something better for something more is evil and they should be more like the elves, stagnant, already at the height of ‘perfection’, never changing....instead of being humans. Like look at these fools trying to act like than can be GOOD at something, sit down and let these elves be best at everything obviously. How many of you would look at me funny if I said, maybe the race of men was BETTER THAN THE ELVES AT SOMETHING? A lot of you im sure, and someone would have a rebuttle for how I was wrong and how this elf was considered the best. 

(like that post going around how could turin actually be #that pretty to thot his way through all of beleriand? Maybe he just Was like that, sure he may have a little elvish ness but honestly I think that be a funny thing elves say to cover up the fact some elves found a icky human was actually just that fucking hot, because obviously humans could never be that actually hot ever, not to intangle a sindarin mast of a guard, a NOLDORIAN VANYAR-DESSCENT PRINCESS, ect) 

Also just to go back to numenor, ever want an example of why it doesnt work for men to act like elves...look at numenor, early numenor was as elvish as humans could produce....but then they got bored. And then numneor became an empire and everyone eventually had so much of a bad time, eru reshaped the fucking world just to wipe the valar’s ‘humans but better’ ocs off the face of the planet. Like just to stray off topic I personally think men can’t go to valinor 1) because the two trees are actually nuclear, and the whole damn island is chernobyl instant death right there and thats why the valinor elves are like #that (they GLOW for gods shake) 2) the monotonous never changing perfection of valinor while amazing in the short term for humans would eventually drive them crazy. Not to say that the race of men doesn’t like some peace and quite or even humans (like myself) can be obverse to change, even I can admit doing the same thing ever day would drive me crazy. 

This got super rambly, but its been a lot of thoughts Ive been having for a long ass time. Basically, I just want people to talk to me about the atani, edian, race of men, whatever you want to call them. They deserve a lot better and a lot more respect than just playing a supporting role to the elves. 

They didn’t kill all those dragons to be ignored like this.