Okay so I did not know only a year had passed between these events. It was Maedhros who negotiated the land things, I believe.
Dude went from half-dead in Angband right back to being a fantastic leader within ONE YEAR and honestly, dude was like, prolly writin letter and getting briefings while in a hospital bed, dude,,,,
further reasons why I dislike Broken Pity Puddle interpretations of post-Thangorodrim Mae
this guy sat down in his hospital bed and rearranged the politics of an entire continent via snail mail and if that aint the most badass shit idek
you’re right he is so feanor’s son
Hmm.
These are Points to Consider.
I fucking love Maedhros. I know he’s a bit problematic to have as a favorite character, but godDAMN does he do it well.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Maedhros is a fucking badass. He probably started working again early with the power of spite alone fueling him
Maedhros, immediately after having his hand cut off: so fingon what’s up hows the stock market hows the housing development
He was cut down off the mountain and he’s like “Whelp guess I’m gonna live. Hey Finno how’s the treasury looking?”
“We have 32 cents and a ball of lint.”
“ErU ILLuvaTAR! The war won’t pay for itself! Get my broker on the line!”
“Russo I am your broker.”
Maedhros be like „I have an oath to uphold get thee gone from my hospital bed“
“Sir you’ve lost three pints of blood.” “But mY OATH!!”
Maglor: Brother, your hand–
Maedhros: can do better running an army hanging off a cliff than you can in 30 years!!!
*whisper* he’s right tho
fingolfin: which one of us is the high king of the noldor here
maedhros, leading the first line of defense against morgoth, negotiating land rights for all three houses of the noldor in beleriand, orchestrating political and military unions with other races, and keeping 5 brothers from murdering everyone else on the continent:
I got an anon prompting me for more Fingros. I’ll get to it soon (…it’s a good prompt!) but clearly I’ve been letting the side down so here’s some garbage I wrote ages ago for partner in crime @imindhowwelayinjune while we were doing Treat Me Soft. It’s literally just this but with the OTP. Sorry not sorry.
“Alright,” Fingon said, hoping he sounded soothing and not vaguely panicked. The surgeries were done. No complications, the healers had assured him. Everything had gone as well as could be expected and Maedhros was as healthy as anyone in his situation could be. Which was not close to healthy enough, Fingon thought, his heart aching. “Eat the lembas.“
I just want to say that in the entirety of the Silmarillion, my favorite line is, and always will be, this one:
“Then Beren sprang from before Celegorm full upon the speeding horse of Curufin that had passed him; and the Leap of Beren is renowned among Men and Elves”
These losers told multiple stories about how Luthien’s boyfriend jumped really far that one time yet don’t even tell us the name of Elros Tar-Minyatur’s wife I stg if that isn’t a flashing neon announcement that these histories are haphazard yarns with no sense of proportion full of gaping holes of unimaginably significant and influential backstory that everyone should feel invited to fill to your heart’s content I don’t know what is
the thing I also love about this is like. Do we think Beren and Luthien told anyone about “that time Beren jumped really high”? Do we think that even registered on the roster of shit dealt with that day. No! What has to have happened is Celegorm verbally shitposted for fifty years to the tune of that one long reblog chain about ~humans being freaky aliens who survive amputation and head injuries, and then to his immense dismay people listened while he did it
Maglor abruptly gets up from the table. “Where are you going, I haven’t even got to the part where Curufin shot him” “I HAVE TO SCORE AN ACTION SCENE”
We’ve all seen the Rio coverage, we all know that a man jumping kinda high > the personhood of women
fuckin,,,if i see 1 more post about the ‘helpless firstborn’ or w/e im gonna lose my shit. firstborn more like freakborn this one time one of em jumped like a gd frog or flea or something you know those things that can jump a million times their own size and it made it i shit you not across an entire clearing onto a goddamn horse and i was just there like dude wat,, are you fuckin kidding me with this???? imho i think all these stories abut them being ‘delicate’ and ‘prone to weakness’ and ‘get germs’ or wev are stories they make up themselves for pity or maybe to fuck wit us because this freak flea-ass motherfucker made a leap all the way onto my bros horse like it was nbd and this was after i thought i put the bastard dOWN
and then i come on this goddamn site and see sjws posting about edain rights and i,m like u kidding, yeah, RIGHTS TO GET OFF MY BROS GD HORSE AND GIVE MY COAT BACK smh
Thingol: BUT WHAT DOES A CHEEKY KINSLAYING *MEAN* IT HAS TO HAVE A MEANING
Finrod: mate it’s hard to explain mate it’s just like one day you’ll be wif your host having a look in aq and you might fancy a hike over the ‘Raxe but your lad feanor who’s an absolute ledge and the high king of banterbury will be like ‘brevs let’s have a cheeky kinslaying instead.” and you’ll think ‘Top. Let’s smash it.”
#and that’s how Quenya got banned (@thelioninmybed)
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
I started thinking: how did Telchar make Narsil in the first place? (…
Telchar first wrought it in the deeps of time … )
The dwarves of yore made mighty spells, While hammers fell like ringing bells
Narsil is a first-age sword. It’s a dwarf-sword, not an elf-sword. (Though, potentially, using some Noldorin technology, since it was made by Telchar of Nogrod, presumably during the period when Nogrod, Belegost and Thargelion were at the height of wealth and technology, when Curufin was learning Khuzdul, and Caranthir was trading with the Dwarves.)
It’s probably about six thousand seven hundred years old.
Let me consider that for a bit. 6700 years. 6700 YEARS.
It’s older than Stonehenge is now. It’s older than the Pyramids. It’s far older than the oldest known coins. If we had a sword that was 6700 years old today, it would have to be made of stone, because that’s well before the start of the Bronze Age.
I can’t think of any metal object in the real world that is still in use after 6700 years.
And it’s being remade from Narsil to Anduril in Rivendell, which means, I’m guessing, that those two guys hitting it are smiths escaped from Eregion that Elrond swept up and managed to rescue during his insanely-risky post-fall-of-Eregion attempted rescue mission. Eregion, of the jewelsmiths. Eregion of the Rings that can avert entropy.
And later, Anduril seems to know what it’s hitting, and be able to flash light at just the right moment…? Maybe it can do what Sting does and detect enemies.
…mighty spells…
Maybe you DO remake the damn thing by hitting it with a very carefully tuned hammer while reciting poetry? In the absence of a treatise on the practice of Elven Enchantments and Dwarven Spells And Their Employment in Metalworking it seems as valid a theory as any.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,
Arthur C Clarke’s third law says.
No doubt Galadriel would argue with the use of the word ‘magic’ on the grounds that it isn’t sufficiently distinguished from the deceits of the Enemy, but we don’t all have the advantage of having studied with Aule, Galadriel.
… I love this scene!
I have always wished to read On the Practice of Elven Enchantments and Dwarven Spells And Their Employment in Metalworking. Because this is not how iron-based metals work. Ferrous metals neither work that way in the sense of “function” nor do they work that way in the sense of “to bring to shape by gradual process.”
If I try to consider it as steel, I have the following issues:
If that is a (forge)weld, you are hammering too hard and will break it.
If that is a weld, where is your flux?
It’s not even the right kind of weld for a high-impact tool (i.e. a sword), so even the idea of welding in this way is wrong, but we’ll ignore that since it’s apparently what they are doing. (Re-forging a sword is exactly what it says on the tin, forging again.)
Good temperature-color for shaping, not hot enough for sticking (welding)
Lawsy, someone teach that boy how to aim his hammer
Or maybe give him a proper smithing hammer?
Or some muscles? That ain’t how your swing that (estimated) 3-pound hammer.
The sparks always give me a special shudder because if your steel
comes out of the fire sparking, you’ve burned it and have to REMAKE YOUR
STEEL (or cut off the burned bits)
Never mind how that steel isn’t hot enough to spark white
What are you even doing?
If I try to consider it as a whitesmithing situation (gold, silver, etc) then I have even bigger issues, so that’s a no-go.
Ergo, either “magic metal” or “metal that has had magic applied to it.” A metal we have no access to or steel that has had enchantments applied so that it no longer functions molecularly like steel.
(It’s Tolkien, why not both? I’ve always headcanoned something like a mithril-alloy with magical enhancements.)
In spite of all that, 10/10 for feels. Bonus points for atmosphere and working at night. (Leaving aside ideas that starlight might help with Elven enchantments, a dark forge is properly historic and the still used by many of the best swordmakers.)
And now 11/10 for the idea that those are
Eregion
smiths.
Reblogging because I secretly hoped @ilsa-fireswan would have Thoughts on this!
frodo and sam’s love for each other is literally the only thing keeping middle earth from just spontaneously combusting
No, but like, that’s literally it. Gandalf straight-up says to Elrond this Quest can’t succeed by force or wisdom, but by friendship. If Frodo and Sam hate each other even a little, Middle-Earth is doomed.
And it gets more terrifying when you realize that one of the strongest powers of the Ring is to turn people against each other, and that even if it didn’t, the Ring and the Quest still put Frodo in a psychological state where he can barely keep himself sane, let alone love anyone or anything other than the Ring. In fact, I’m fairly sure the Ring tried to persuade Frodo to kill Sam far more often than the books shows – the Ring tends to encourage murder, from what we see. Instead of listening to the Ring, Frodo somehow manages to keep in the back of his mind that he can trust Sam more than he can trust himself, and I have no idea how Frodo can resist the temptation to think his trust is misplaced.
And sure, one could say, “Oh, but Sam has to understand it, so it’s not all that bad” but you have to remember Sam is a plain, non-Tookish hobbit with no inclination or skills for adventuring around and yet he has to become the entire Fellowship. Name one thing the Fellowship did for Frodo that Sam doesn’t also do. He has to advise, guide and protect him as well as keep his hope alive and remind him of who he is. The amount of pressure he’s under is incredible, and unlike, say, Aragorn, he has no experience to draw from. Plus, Merry and Pippin tend to rely on each other, while Frodo relies on Sam, but Sam himself hardly seems to have anyone to turn to for strength. I’m not saying Frodo doesn’t support him as well as he’s able – actually, Frodo is remarkably consistent about taking care of Sam from Book I to Book VI. But what Frodo is capable to offer (see the paragraph above) is far from being all that Sam needs. And actually, in the last stages of the Quest, Sam is basically living a one-sided relationship under the worst possible conditions, and that his devotion doesn’t even waver despite that just blows my mind.
That the Quest was successful is one of the most incredible and beautiful things that Tolkien wrote. Frodo and Sam walked straight into the Land where no love can exist and managed to become closer to each other than they had been. It’s the biggest fuck you Sauron probably ever got. No, seriously. Frodo and Sam beat a Maia basically by cuddling a lot and talking about food. Like, what the fuck??? I mean, if I told you someone could write a 1000 pages novel in which a pacifist and his gardener beat a minor god via supporting each other emotionally, would you believe me?
It’s classic Tolkien: the surprise element (i.e. flawed creatures can be incredibly noble even under unspeakable distress) might overcome even the most carefully thought out plots devised by powerful evil lords. (See also: the entire Silmarillion, pretty much.)
what she means: the words “christmas tree” are used in the hobbit, and since we know that bilbo is the author of the hobbit, hobbits must have christmas which means there must be a middle earth jesus. but hobbits seem to be the only ones who have the concept of christmas which means it was probably a hobbit jesus. but frodo says in return of the king that no hobbit has ever intentionally harmed another hobbit so who crucified hobbit jesus?? were there other hobbit incarnations of religious figures?? was there hobbit moses?? did jrr tolkien even think about this at all??
Wait wait I might actually have an answer
Tolkien wrote The Hobbit like waaaay before he even dreamed up the idea for Lord of the Rings, so when he DID dream up LotR, he had a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t make sense. Like plotholes galore
Like for example in the first version Gollum was a pretty nice dude who lost the riddle contest graciously and gave Bilbo the ring as a legit present and was very helpful and it was super nice and polite and absolutely nobody tried to eat anyone because this is a story for kids and that’s very rude
But that doesn’t work with LotR, so Tolkien went back and re-released an updated version of The Hobbit with all the lore changes and stuff to fix everything that didn’t work
This is the version we know and love today
BUT rather than pretend the early version never existed, Tolkien went and worked the retcon into the lore
If you pay attention in Fellowship, there’s a bit where Gandalf is telling Frodo about the ring and he mentions how Bilbo wasn’t entirely honest about the manner in which it was found
To us modern readers, this doesn’t make a ton of sense, so mostly we just breeze by it–but actually that line is referencing the first version of The Hobbit
The pre-retcon version of the Hobbit is canonically Bilbo’s original book. The original version with Nice Gollum is canonically a lie Bilbo told to legitimize his claim to the ring and absolve him of the guilt he feels for his rather shady behavior
Then the post-retcon version is an in-universe edited edition someone went and released later to straighten out Bilbo’s lies
So it’s 100% plausible that the in-universe editor who fixed up Bilbo’s Red Book and translated it from whatever language Hobbits speak was a human who knew about Christmas Trees and tossed the detail in to make human readers feel more at home, because that’s the kind of thing that sometimes happens when you have a translator editor person dressing up a story for an audience that doesn’t know the exact cultural context in which the original story was written
Tolkien was a medieval scholar and medieval stories are rife with that sort of thing, so like… yeah
Not only all that, but Tolkien was also working within a frame narrative that he wasn’t the real author, but a translator of older manuscripts; so, in-universe, the published The Hobbit isn’t actually Bilbo’s book, but rather Tolkien’s copy of an older copy of an older copy of an older copy of Bilbo’s book. So when errors and anachronisms came up, he would leave them there instead of fixing them, and he may have even put some in intentionally; what we’re supposed to get from the “Christmas tree” bit is that the first scribe to translate the book from Westroni to English couldn’t come up with an accurate analogue for whatever hobbits do at midwinter.
Yes. Another example of tolkien doing this is him using, for instance, Old High Gothic to represent Rohirric – not because the people of Rohan actually spoke that language, but because Old High Gothic had the same relationship with English that Rohirric had with Westron (Which is the Common Language spoken in the West of Middle-Earth). There’s tons of that stuff in the book.
Like, Merry and Pippin’s real names (In Westron) are Kalimac Brandagamba and Razanur Tûk, respectively (to pick just one example of this). Tolkien changed their names in English to names which would give us English-speakers the same kind of feeling as those names would to a Westron-speaker. Lord of the Rings is so much deeper than most readers realise.
tolkein’s entire oevre is just one epic in-joke with the oxford linguistics department imo
just moving along like everyone else 