“Tolkien wasn’t good at writing women” well explain this

Here's another Nature of Middle-Earth quote that I keep thinking about:

"[Years of the Trees:] 2223. The "Ambassadors" return. Great Debate of the Quendi. A few refuse even to attend. Imin, Tata, and Enel are ill-pleased, and regard the affair as a revolt on the part of the youngest Quendi, to escape their authority. None of the First Elves (144) accept the invitation. Hence the Avari called and still call themselves "the Seniors"." (NoME 96)

I think that's super interesting! Tolkien gives multiple potential versions of this whole sequence, when the Three Ambassadors return to Cuiviénen, so this is only one of them, but it's kind of my favorite. I like the idea that the Three Ambassadors sort of usurped the leadership of the Three Fathers, and that Imin, Tata, and Enel are potentially still out there, and may have a grudge against those three descendants of theirs.

Imin especially is a pretentious asshole, as he claims to be the "Father of all Quendi", and seems to want control over all the Elves. I want to write a fic where Morgoth or Sauron ally with Imin, maybe they tell him they can help him regain his authority over the Elves? It would certainly be an interesting premise if the Three Fathers showed up at Valinor or Beleriand one day, with the intent of taking back their kingship.

It's also always been bizarre to me that Fëanor was so worried about Fingolfin usurping the throne when Finwë was king in a place where kings do not die, and do not really need heirs (theoretically). But if Finwë was a usurper before Fingolfin was, then Fëanor's fears have a bit more ground, I think, especially if Fingolfin had the greater love from their people. It's happened before, Fëanor would think, therefore it could happen again. Elves seem to follow who they prefer as a king rather than who technically has the most claim, which is shown both in the Three Ambassadors vs the Three Fathers, and also with Fëanor vs Fingolfin during the Flight.

To put it simply:

Finwë was a rebel (we need to talk about this and it's implications more)

Finwë found Valinor less exciting for himself than he did for Míriel and how much she would love it and benefit from it and improve because of it (AWWWW my HEART)

Ingwë was just obsessed with Varda (he loves shiny goddesses ✨✨)

Elwë wanted to be there for his best friend (or something more ;) hehehehe maybe-one-sided Finwë x Elwë is something we've all thought about don't lie)

cressida-jayoungr replied to this post:

Wait, what's this about squirrels? That's one I haven't run across!

It's one of the many factoids from Tolkien's essay on Númenor in The Nature of Middle-earth! He talks about gender and relationships with animals there:

they [Númenórean women] were generally nearer to men than is the case with most races in stature and strength, and were agile and fleet of foot in youth. Their great delight was in dancing (in which many men also took part) at feasts or in leisure time ... But nearly all women could ride horses, treating them honourably, and housing them more nobly than any other of their domestic animals. The stables of a great man were often as large and as fair to look upon as his own house. Both men and women rode horses for pleasure ... and in ceremony of state both men and women of rank, even queens, would ride, on horseback amid their escorts or retinues ... The Númenóreans trained their horses to hear and understand calls (by voice or whistling) from great distances; and also, where there was great love between men or women and their favorite steeds, they could (or so it is said in ancient tales) summon them at need by their thought alone. So it was also with their dogs. For the Númenóreans kept dogs, especially in the country, partly by ancestral tradition, since they had few useful purposes any longer ... It was men rather than women who had a liking to keep dogs as "friends". Women loved more the wild (or "unowned") birds and beasts, and they were especially fond of squirrels, of which there were great numbers in the wooded country. ...The woods of Númenor abounded in squirrels, mostly red, but some dark brown or black. These were all unafraid, and readily tamed. The women of Númenor were specially fond of them. Often they would live in trees near a homestead, and would come when invited into the house. (NOME 325-326, 335-6)

Conclusion: a) Númenóreans were, as a people, significantly larger than other humans, b) Númenórean women were more similar in size and strength to the men of their people than is usual among humans, and c) these gigantic women liked to befriend normal squirrels.

Oh, brightest sun (TRSB 2023)

A hommage to Gustav Klimt's The Kiss. Acrylic paint on canvas, with gold acrylic colour, 45x45cm. This scene had fascinated me ever since I read about it in the Nature of Middle-earth, and even more so when I became obsessed with Mîm as a character. While the ship of Mîmrod was born in a discord server I am in as a joke, that joke led to me originally drafting the sketch for this painting.

@goschatewabn has taken up this prompt- in a pinchhit no less - and has written, a beautiful, beautiful, fic that also absolutely tears my heart out. Find more info & the link to the fic below!

The elf shone more brilliantly than the purest gems they had unearthed, and his kind face crowned with a wreath of white lilac was like the first rays of dawn after a long night.

The gentle sun had risen in the east, and had brought spring into Nargothrond.

5180 Words

Rating: T Archive warnings: None Characters: Mîm, Finrod Felagund, the petty dwarves, various inhabitants of Nargothrond, dwarves of Nogrod https://archiveofourown.org/works/49927210/chapters/126046690

@tolkienrsb

WHAT DO YOU MEAN "IN THE STORY OF MAELOR"???!!!! LIKE MAGLOR??!! WHAT STORY??!!! I NEED TO KNOOOOOOOWWWWW-

Elves and Middle-Earth

Okay gather Tolkien nuts, I have a question (I am genuinely curious).

I've seen so many posts about the Nature of Middle Earth excerpt that removing Eldar from Middle-Earth was not Eru's design. Doing so resulted in diminishing elves of Middle-Earth and taking away their guidance from their younger brethren, men.

Now my question is, if Aman was not a part of Iluvatar's plans for elves, why re-shape the world and go on an entire ordeal with the Numenorians? Wouldn't making Arda inaccessible make it harder for elves to return? Why would Eru allow elves to be separated from Middle-Earth later in the legendarium?

What about the Vanyar and Teleri, for whom Aman became a permanent residence and they did not experience the Doom as the Noldor did? Was their connection to Middle-Earth destined to be lesser than the Noldor?

What would have leaving elves in the Middle-Earth have meant for the Halls of Mandos and re-birth? Would the elves who died in Middle-Earth be reborn in Aman as in cannon or would they be reincarnated back to Middle-Earth?

While researching I found another excerpt from Morgoth's Ring-

"For of this summons came

many woes that after befell; yet those who hold that the Valar

erred, thinking rather of the bliss of Valinor than of the Earth,

and seeking to wrest the will of Iluvatar to their own pleasure,

speak with the tongues [read tongue] of Melkor"(P. 162)

Does this excerpt mean that narratives that were said to argue that bringing elves to Valinor had been an error and the Valar's disobedience to the will of Illuvatar were influenced by Melkor? We do hear a similar argument from Feanor who thinks that the Valar are conspiring against the elves by keeping them away from Middle Earth and in return favoring men.

Lastly- if Aman is not THE place for Elves then why do they feel the pull towards the sea and Valinor in general? (I think it is mentioned in LOTR or the Hobbit)

(P.S.- I know I have a bias towards the Valar and that my arguments favor them so for this post specifically please ignore if you can sense me simping for them)

I am confusion.

I'm always torn between the idea of Tolkien's elves being obviously nonhuman and then just being slightly nonhuman because both design choices emphasize different things and it just drives me into a spiral of thinking and thinking and thinking about the ways in which elves are weird.

And I think in some ways, it's more disconcerting to see this tall human(?) with pointed ears and androgynous features who COULD be just like you. You can't tell how alien they are from the way they look, just that they're ethereal and graceful, and maybe the dangerousness of elves as a whole falls to the wayside (because they ARE dangerous, they always have been). It's impossible to know just from looking at them that they experience literal TIME differently than humans, it's impossible to know that their minds conceive of reality differently, it's impossible to know just from looking at a single elf that they really are the closest thing to a cosmic being that a human might ever see.

So I love weird, ghostly, eldritch elves. I do. But I also love elves that are mostly human(ish), because it makes their alien nature that much stranger and more difficult to grasp.

Thinking about Tolkien’s observation that the Valar were wrong to bring the Elves to Valinor 👀 Do I contemplate this on a daily basis? Quite possibly.

I’ve been figuring out Silmarillion genealogies, and I’ve found something that’s moved me in the direction of favouring the interpretation of Gil-galad as Finarfinian (so, probably the son of Orodreth); the mention in NoME of him having silver hair had already nudged me in that direction.

Because if he is Finarfinian, that means that Eärendil and Elwing are the sole heirs of both the houses of Bëor and of Hador, and the sole heirs of the royal lines of the Sindar (via Thingol) and the Noldor (via Fingolfin). By the end of the First Age, Elrond and Elros are the only direct descendents in Middle-earth of the leaders of any of the Three Houses of the Edain, or of Thingol, or of Fingolfin. There’s no one else left.

And they go in opposite directions with that. Elros becomes King of the remainder of the Edain, no longer split between three houses; Elrond refuses both the Elven kingships he is heir to.

And the House of Finarfin become the Kings of the Noldor on both sides of the Sea (and, at the end of the First and Second Ages, take down the two great evils that have defined those ages of the world).

There’s so many excellent parallelisms!

Finished reading Nature of Middle-Earth! Here's a line concerning the Cuiviénen days that stood out to me: "During Oromë's absence [Melkor's] emissaries were busy, and many lies circulate. The "heresy" awakes in new form: the Valar clearly do exist; but they have abandoned Endor: rightly as the appointed realm of the Quendi. Now they are becoming jealous, and wish to control the Quendi as vassals, and so re-possess themselves of Endor. Finwë, a gallant and adventurous young quende, direct descendant of Tata, is much taken by these ideas; less so his friend Elwë, descendant of Enel." (NoME p.95)

So Melkor spread lies about the Valar to the elves of Cuiviénen, saying that they are jealous of the Quendi, and want to control them. This... is the same thing he does centuries later after being unchained; the lies he sows within the Ñoldor in Aman are really just re-worded versions of what he told the Quendi at Cuiviénen.

And, most interestingly to me, Finwë is said to be taken by the original lies, though his belief in them likely dissipated after visiting Aman. But like father like son, right? It's his eldest son Fëanor who is the most vocal about Melkor's later lies.

I wonder how Finwë felt during the unrest of the Ñoldor in Aman. He's said to be "greatly troubled" in the Silmarillion, and honestly it makes sense. He's hearing his people spread lies he's heard before. History is repeating itself.

NoME Melkor Character Thoughts

The second one is so heartbreaking

A very serious poll

According to Tolkien, Elros not only inherited Elvish beardlessness, he passed it on to his descendants, including very remote ones like Aragorn and Boromir and Faramir. The question of the hour is if Elrosian Númenóreans' beardlessness would extend to any other trait, like say, their ears. So:

Off the top of my head, potential rationales for "No":

There's no suggestion of anything unusual about the ears in descriptions of any Dúnedain.

Elves' ears are only subtly pointed, and the trait would soon die out.

Elves' ears are very noticeably pointed, but it's been way too many generations for the trait to pass on.

There's only weak evidence for Elves having pointed ears at all, much less for Elros's remote descendants.

Even Elrosian Dúnedain are still humans and therefore have round ears. The beardlessness is a unique exception.

Potential rationales for "Yes":

If they're able to inherit beardlessness after all that time, they could presumably inherit other Elvish traits, too.

It could be less pronounced in them but still noticeable.

They're supposed to be nearly indistinguishable from Elves. Maybe that's part of the reason why!

It'd be really cool.

Royal blood manifesting via ear pointiness is intrinsically hilarious.

Just for brainstorming, you could have lights derived from elvish signals/flares that aren’t visible by everybody. It might be because because of the mix of the objects size and elf vision. The post gives the actual excerpts from NOME with the names for the object in sindarin and quenya. The ‘flashing glass/crystal’ sounds more similar to Galadriel’s vial rather than pyrotechnics.

https://www.tumblr.com/helyannis/658786173364404224/galadhremmin-galadhremmin-galadhremmin-a

Oh oh this is fascinating, anon, thank you so much!

The link for anyone on mobile or something who can't easily copy it into a new tab etc: https://www.tumblr.com/helyannis/658786173364404224/galadhremmin-galadhremmin-galadhremmin-a

I honestly feel like nobody in lotr mentions how fucking weird Legolas is. He stays up pacing the floor and singing to himself in the dead of night. He deadass stares straight into the tree line in the absolute pitch black when no one else can see anything. He yells goodbye to a river he has heard about in songs. He's so strange and not one character mentions it AT ALL. I absolutely love him.

by kjp