I actually wasn’t sure about this one. I had to think about it…which is why it took so long in responding…sorry about that.
I think you might have a point, and that changes things.
On the one hand. The Nazgul really don’t seem to have free will, they seem to be Sauron’s appendages. They’re what he sends out when he can’t go in person himself, which, post his defeat in the War of the Last Alliance, is nearly everywhere. After the end of the Second Age, I personally believe that Sauron’s physical form was extremely unstable (as well as butt ugly, but I digress); he was rather to fragile to travel widely.
In the First Age, Morgoth and Sauron had a similar kind of relationship–it seemed to be that Morgoth chilled in Angband while Sauron dealt with the troops on the ground, but Morgoth’s reasoning seems different. He hadn’t suffered a series of crippling defeats in which his ability to take physical form was weakened, as Sauron has. His lack of proactivity seems to be a lifestyle choice (tbh I can relate). He doesn’t have to take care of things himself, so he doesn’t. And Sauron seems to have a measure of free will, of control over what he does.
My objection to Sauron being a slave to Morgoth is the same as my objection to Sauron being in love with Morgoth: if this was the case, how was Sauron able to repudiate Morgoth at the end of the First Age, and why did he waffle for 1000 years before returning to work? Granted I’ve never enslaved anyone, but that seems an undesirable situation from the perspective of the enslaver. It certainly does not point to Sauron being an appendage of Morgoth the way the Nazgul were of him.
But you said “kind of controlled” by him, not “totally controlled,” and there are many different kinds of slavery. To use real world analogies, which I know are the construct of cultural systems instead of some kind of magical power, but bear with me: there’s chattel slavery. There’s the evil system used in the American South before the civil war. There’s Russian serfdom. There’s the relationship which the Turkish sultans had with the Janissaries, in which the Janissaries were still owned but were high-ranking slaves with powerful positions in the military and administration, even capable of controlling the sultans at times. I think Sauron occupied an analogous position.
I think Sauron chose to serve Morgoth of his free will, or at least thought he did, and continued to believe himself free to act on his own for all time afterwards. So. Perhaps we’re looking at an Oath of Feanor kind of situation. @easterlingwanderer and I had a longish thread a while back where we talked about how the Feanorians really had no way out of their oath and the only way to escape fate (more accurately, DOOOOOM) is by dying, which neither elves nor maiar are able to do. I think now that when Sauron chose to serve Morgoth it triggered the same situation, where Sauron believed himself in control of his own actions but was nevertheless compelled to work for Morgoth and couldn’t stop even if he wanted…I’m not sure how aware of this Sauron was. I think it was extremely important to him that he believed he was acting on his own, and if Morgoth tried to overtly enslave him he would have taken it very poorly. And he may not have been able to free himself, but he’d certainly’ve tried to take Morgoth down with him.
Rules: Tell us your holiday favs and tag 10 people!
Name/Nickname: I go by tsuru and kiku on here.
Gender: Female
Height: 5′9
Favorite Cold Weather Drink: I like to make hot chocolate from scratch and put cinnamon and whipped cream on it.
White or Colored Holiday lights: White; it feels more elegant and warm.
Favorite Winter sport: Uhhh does not leaving my house count?? Jk sometimes it’s fun to watch my siblings ice skate. I personally don’t like to participate in winter sports.
# of blankets I sleep with: Right now I have three plus a cat.
Preferred Holiday Confection: I looove fruit pie.
What I’m currently wearing: Just a hoodie and running shorts.
Preferred snowy weather activity: Sledding. Also sitting inside where it’s warm and watching the snow fall.
Last thing you baked: Cookies probably? My sister does all of the baking.
Homemade gifts or Store bought Gifts: Both are great!
Favorite Christmas/Holiday Movie: I do like Home Alone.
Open Presents Morning or Eve: Morning, always.
Favorite Holiday Song: I love all of the old Christmas hymns (We Three Kings, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, etc)
There have been so many elvish kings, and they’re all so different, and there are so many different ways to judge success. So, what I’ve done is listed them all below (yeah, all of them), so you can judge yourself (though I’ve starred my personal favorites.)
Amdir (King of Lorien)
Reign: A little over 2,000 years. Created his own dynasty, and died in 3434SA at the Battle of Dagorlad.
Accomplishments: Traveled from Lindon to Lorien in order to establish a Sindarin dynasty in the Silvan community there.
Narrative Bias: Not much information.
Amroth (King of Lorien)
Reign: 1,988 years (3434SA – 1981TA, when he drowns.)
Accomplishments: ? He doesn’t seem to have been a great king, since he abandons his people in order to move west and marry his love. But he drowns on the way, leaving them leaderless during a time of panic…
Denethor (Ossiriand)
Reign: About 147 Valian years (about 1,396 solar years.), from when his people got to Beleriand, to his death in the First Battle of Beleriand.
Accomplishments: Led his people from east of the Misty Mountains all the way to Beleriand, and established a realm in Ossiriand.
Feanor (High King of the Noldor)
Reign: 2 Valian years (which is about 19 solar years), from his father’s death to his own death in the Dagor-nuin-Giliath
Accomplishments: As a king, not too many accomplishments. Unless you count attacking the Teleri, leading your people into a doomed exile, stranding your brother and half your people on the wrong side of the ocean, and then dying soon after arriving in Middle Earth because you thought you could take on a pack of balrogs by yourself.
Narrative Bias: Feanor’s kind of more an antagonist than a hero…
Finarfin (High King of the Noldor in Valinor)
Reign: Practically forever (started in 1495YT when his father died and his brother left Valinor in exile, still ruling today.)
Accomplishments: He led his people during the War of Wrath.
Narrative Bias: We really don’t know anything about Finarfin as a king, as the story follows the exiles.
Fingolfin (High King of the Noldor)
Reign: 451 years (5FA, when he arrives in Middle Earth and realizes Feanor is dead, – 456 FA, when he dies in the Dagor Bragollach.)
Accomplishments: Pretty much maintained peace with the sons of Feanor, led his people through the most peaceful years of the First Age, including the Dagor Aglareb and the Dagor Bragollach.
Fingon (High King of the Noldor)
Reign: About 17 years (456FA, when his father dies, – 472, when he dies in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.)
Accomplishments: Defends his land from Morgoth’s invasion, then plans a joint attack with the sons of Feanor (which tragically backfires.)
Finrod Felagund (King of Nargothrond)
Reign: 413 years (52FA, when he established his kingdom, – 465FA, when he died on Beren and Luthien’s quest.)
Accomplishments: Established the hidden realm of Nargothrond and kept it safe, as well as leading his people in the Dagor Bragollach.
Narrative Bias: Everybody loves Finrod.
Finwe (High King of the Noldor)
Reign: 393 Valian years, which is about 3,733 solar years (1102YT, after returning from Valinor, – 1495YT, when he’s killed by Morgoth.)
Accomplishments: Led his people from Cuivienen west to Valinor, where they built their city of Tirion.
Narrative Bias: His role as a father is more important to the story than his role as a king.
Gil-Galad (High King of the Noldor, King of Lindon)*
Reign: 3,521 years (510FA, when Turgon died, – 3441SA, when he died during the War of the Last Alliance.)
Accomplishments: Led his people (mainly refugees) through the end of the First Age, including the War of Wrath and the sinking of Beleriand, to form a new kingdom in Lindon. Also led his people through the War Between the Elves and Sauron, kept Lindon safe, befriended the Numenoreans, and formed the Last Alliance with Elendil, leading the elves through the War of the Last Alliance before being killed by Sauron.
Ingwe (High King of the Elves, King of the Vanyar)*
Reign: By the time the Third Age ends? Over 11,000 years. Became king in the very beginning.
Accomplishments: Led his people from Cuivienen west to Valinor, where they eventually settled among the Valar.
Narrative Bias: Very little information on him.
Olwe (King of the Teleri)*
Reign: 11,000+ years. Became king when Thingol went missing.
Accomplishments: Led his people across the ocean to Valinor, where they built their city of Alqualonde. Survived the Kinslaying at Alqualonde.
Narrative Bias: Not much information on him as king.
Orodreth (King of Nargothrond)
Reign: 30 years (465FA, when Finrod dies, – 495FA, when he dies during the Battle of Tumhalad.)
Accomplishments: He wasn’t a strong ruler, and let Turin sway him into making decisions that ultimately led to the destruction of Nargothrond.
Oropher (King of the Woodland Realm)
Reign: Probably around 2,500 years. Created his own dynasty, then died in 3434 at the Battle of Dagorlad.
Accomplishments: Established a Sindarin dynasty among the Silvan elves of Mirkwood. Then led his people during the War of the Last Alliance, but died because he couldn’t take orders from Gil-galad.
Narrative Bias: Not much information on him, aside from his death.
Thingol (King of the Teleri, King of Doriath)
Reign: About 3,800 years (to his death in 510FA.)
Accomplishments: Led his people from Cuivienen to Beleriand. Then established a new kingdom in Doriath, where he ruled throughout the First Age. Doriath was kept safe, though Thingol only led his people into one battle (the First Battle of Beleriand.)
Narrative Bias: Thingol is a… complicated character. Plenty of negative attention to balance out the accomplishments.
Thranduil (King of the Woodland Realm)*
Reign: As of the end of the Third Age, 3,026 years (starting in 3434SA, when his father dies in the Battle of Dagorlad.)
Accomplishments: Led his people through the rest of the War of the Last Alliance, then kept his people safe throughout the Third Age, when Sauron’s presence in Dol Guldur had horrible effects on the forest. Also fought in the Battle of Five Armies and the Battle Under Trees.
Narrative Bias: He’s sort of an antagonist in The Hobbit.
Turgon (High King of the Noldor, King of Gondolin)
Reign: 384 years as King of Gondolin (126FA, when he established the kingdom, – 510, when he died in the Fall of Gondolin), and 38 years as High King of the Noldor (starting in 472, when Fingon died.)
Accomplishments: Established the hidden kingdom of Gondolin, which he kept safe for 384 years. He also led his people in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and tried to get help from the Valar.
SOURCES: The Silmarillion, LOTR Appendices, The Hobbit, The Unfinished Tales (“The History of Galadriel and Celeborn”)
I love the idea of these stout, hairy, dirt-under-their-nails people writing the most beautiful poetry; singing the loveliest songs; being the floweriest mofos to ever pop out of the ground.
And I can’t stand when people say it’s not proper to have them like that simply for being dwarves. That’s wrong. So wrong. Because there’s so much diversity, in this world and fantasy ones.
Why should all dwarves be lumped together as vulgar, ineloquent beasts?
Why should all elves be pristine, clean, and graceful?
Why should all hobbits be scared, weak, and uneducated about the outside world?
Great stories are made from bending the ideas that have been laid out before, not sticking to them like bugs to flypaper.
“And, Legolas, when the torches are kindled and men walk on the sandy floors under the echoing domes, ah! then Legolas, gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light flows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from the dark pools covered with clear glass; cities, such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come. And plink! a silver drop falls, and the round wrinkles in the glass make all the towers bend and waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea.”
Gimli, The Two Towers
(the “Glittering Caves” speech is often cited as Tolkien’s most beautiful and lyrical writing ever. Hell yeah, I am down with poetic Dwarves!)
The Glittering Caves speech is gorgeous. And Gimli is clearly shown to be an eloquent character throughout the book:
-His very first lines in FotR have him engaging in a bit of wordplay with Elrond:
‘Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,’ said Gimli.
‘Maybe,’ said Elrond, ‘but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.’
‘Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,’ said Gimli.
‘Or break it,’ said Elrond
And we can’t forget that Gimli asks Galadriel for a gift of her hair – something denied even to Feanor – and she specifically comments on his eloquence: “None have ever made to me a request so bold and yet so courteous.” In doing so, she practically scolds the gathered elves for their prejudice against the dwarves and their belief that they have no skill in words. And with good reason! Gimli’s request is lovely and poetic, saying that her beautiful hair “surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine.”
There’s also that haunting moment in Khazad-dum where Gimli recites some dwarven poetry to the Fellowship. The poem (read it here – it’s quite long so I won’t paste it) is so haunting, filled with loss and grief and longing. Gimli’s recital clearly has an effect on the Fellowship, and Sam (who, as we know, loves poetry and even writes it himself) liked it so much that he wanted to learn it.
Gimli is only one dwarf, of course, and he’s clearly a dwarf of some status and education, but he’s Tolkien’s greatest representation of the dwarves and clear evidence that they can be eloquent and poetic.
WARNING! I’M ABOUT TO GO INTO SOME SLIGHT GORE/VIOLENCE/WEAPON PHYSICS META OF SORTS
Spock was shot in the back. We see that from the way he falls. There is blood on the front of his uniform, which means that the bullet went clean through his chest and made an exit wound.
There is quite a bit of debate about what type of bullet wound is worse, a clean one or an embedded one, but the general consensus is that both are very bad, and it is better not to get shot at all!
If you have an exit wound like Spock does, even though his heart isn’t in his chest, he’s going to lose a lot of blood from that wound.
If Jim was checking for a heart rate, he would likely be using it to gauge how bad Spock’s condition is. If his heart-rate was elevated, it would mean he was going into shock from blood loss, and that would definately be a cause for panic.
because we built this kingdom, motherfuckers, with the trekkie zine housewives before us.
So here’s a story. One Fourth of July I was walking down the street and ran into a BNF who I’d met a couple of times at a slash-centric con. It turned out she lived in the same building as one of my boyfriends at the time, which was nearby, so she invited me to stop by. She had a small group of friends there, and one of them was an older woman with short, white hair.
“How old are you?” she asked.
I told her my age, probably about 28 at the time.
“I’ve been reading fanfiction longer than you’ve been alive,” she said.
Here’s another story. A couple of years ago at GeekGirlCon they had an “elders speak” panel. It included some women who had organized Star Trek cons in the 70s and 80s. So, first off, we really have always been here, this is a kind of geekiness that has always belonged to women. Andthey talked about women doing fandom back then secretly, about having to ask their husbands for money so they could travel to meet other fans. And two of the women on this panel were a couple who’d met each other in fandom.
One of the main reasons I go to slash cons is to connect with my foremothers in fandom. A lot of them aren’t on Tumblr or Twitter, some never even really got into LiveJournal. But they’re still here, doing their thing, having Fourth of July parties and emailing with their friends about fandom. Our elders are our history, our proof that we have always been here, that “media fandom” (fandom of Western TV and movies) is our house that we built with our hands.
respect your fandom mothers and grandmothers you ungrateful little buggers
It’s just hilarious to me that kids on here think that your interests fundamentally change as you get older. Your responsibilities change and, hopefully, you start looking at things and evaluating with more life experience….which, btw, is why a lot of the over 30 people here side eye the shit out of you guys many days. Because lived experience and life experience makes you see things in a different light…even fictional stuff. But you don’t just all of a sudden turn 30 and become this boring person who has no interest anymore in all the nerd things and fandom you liked at 15 or 20 or 25. You are the same person. You still need an outlet for your interests and you still crave those safe spaces to geek out the same way you do as a kid. We’ve always been here. Other women came before us.
FYI In 1993, the most popular Superman website was run by a woman named Zoomway. She was a life long Superman fan who started the site after Lois and Clark hit the air and she had thousands of women (many of whom were older btw) who followed her site. She wasn’t some 20 year old kid. She was a grown woman with life experience decades older than most of you who was writing feminist commentary about Superman and attending fan expos before any of you were born. I was only a kid when I first starting reading her writing and she was the one who introduced me to Superman fandom. She died of cancer a few years ago and her loss was deeply felt.
Women older than you built literally every iconic fandom you post about on here.
I need the community I’ve found within my fandom more now at 43 than I ever needed it at ages 18 or 20. The more life wears on me, the more I live and love and lose, the more I treasure this space of flails and joy and analysis over episode ephemera, shared with a chorus of voices flung far and wide around the world, small sections of which have become friends, shining lights who I look for whenever I log on.
I joined fandoms when I was 18 and I’ve never looked back.
Been in fandom 20+ years and counting ❤
(also, omg ZOOMWAY)
First fandom 40 years ago. Still here. Squee is for life, not just for kids.
Fandom for 23 years, and I still smile at the memory of Zoomway and her absolute awesomeness.
Stumbled on my first Star Wars fanzine about 36-37 years ago.
I wrote Star Trek fanfic for the first time in 1978.
We’ve been here all along and we’re not going anywhere.
I wrote my first Trek fanfic just after ST:TOS premiered. I didn’t even know that fanfic was what I was doing: didn’t even know the genre had a name. Later on, when I was in nursing school, I came to know the women in New York who were in the process of organizing those first Trek conventions of the 70s. I worked some of those cons and made friendships there that last to this day. The people who ran private presses dedicated to K/S slashzines and presided over dealers’ tables piled high with them are now pro writers and editors with worldwide reputations… and they are still fans.
Which is as it should be. Fandom isn’t something you need to grow out of to prove your adulthood (or justify it to others). And it’s their own insecurities that people trying to push that position on others are running from. So fuck that noise. Long-term fannish lives are the original Slow Burn story… and it’s one we’ll still be writing for years to come.
All of this. I love that my primary fandom home– the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild– is built and maintained by women older than me (I’m in my early 30s, btw, and I’ve been in fandom since the early 2000s).
The thing that sometimes contributes to younger fans thinking fandom belongs to them?
Free time.
Older fans– used loosely to mean anyone older than early 20s– often have full time jobs (with a possibly long commute), a living space to take care of, maybe a significant other and/or children, offline friends, religious obligations, meals to cook, and a whole host of other things. There literally isn’t the time to devote to fandom that teenagers and college/university students tend to have.
Older fans might only belong to a site or two, not out of a lack of understanding that fandom is on new platforms, but because they literally don’t have the time to keep up with fandom on said new platforms. (Or maybe they prefer the older platform and see no reason to change, but that’s getting off topic.) So on sites where older fans aren’t, younger fans seem to forget we built fandom because we’re invisible.
Also, many of us came on the Internet at a time when you didn’t give out personal information to people you’ve never met, especially when fanfic fandom was a Don’t Talk About It thing. Fandom only gained its modicum of respectability in the past few years. There are still a multitude of locations in the world where fandom is not understood and plenty of areas where specific parts of fandom (slash, for instance) would either be socially penalized if people knew you wrote it or is outright illegal. So there is a very real Real Life-fandom divide for some people. People you may think are young could very well not be simply because they don’t post personal information about themselves in public spaces, including in creators’ notes.
Tumblr itself perpetuates this “older fans don’t exist” simply because the reblogging set-up divorces the creator from the content, the blog with any information from the post. Also, it’s very easy to follow a bunch of similar folks and assume that the entirety of the site is like your dash. That is simply not true.
Older fans have always been here. Older fans always will be.
Thank you to all who contributed to this post. Indy, thank you especially for articulating so well what my own challenges in fandom as an older fan–am I really an older fan at the age of 36?? I suppose I am!–have been.
I constantly regret that I can’t read more fanfiction. I barely get to read fanfic at all, to tell the honest truth. It’s not that I don’t want to–every other story on the SWG catches my fancy and I think, “This! This one! This one I will make time to read”–but “making time” isn’t really possible very often. It’s the same when reading my Dreamwidth flist and even surfing Tumblr. I’m a teacher tackling a number of professional challenges this year–writing new a new humanities curriculum for three grades then teaching it, implementing a new writing curriculum, and serving for the first time as a teacher-leader, to say nothing of serving a challenging and high-need student population–and I frequently work ten- to twelve-hour days and minimum six-day weeks. And I believe in what I do. I believe in and love what I do so hard that I can’t just set it aside. Ironically, I became a teacher in the first place because, in the misty origins of my fannish experience twelve years ago, other fannish women encouraged and validated my love of writing and language to where I threw my life aside and went back to school to get my teaching credentials and MA in humanities.
I do spend many hours in a typical week on fandom, but that time mostly goes to running the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild.
I have trouble thinking of myself as an “older fan” because I still feel like a neophyte when I consider the history of the Tolkien fandom and fanfic in particular. The first known Tolkien fanfic was published in a zine in 1958. Even online fanfic has been around a while: I came onboard well after the Silmarillion fanfic community was established and fangirled some of the “first wave” Silmfic writers harder than I fangirled Tolkien. A few of them are still around, and I still get butterflies when I see they’ve responded to something I’ve written or posted.
I think the history of fanfiction–of women engaging with each other creatively and intellectually, using that shared interest to build lifelong friendships, and producing art that they want to see, largely free of the influence of a straight-white-guy-produced pop culture and Western canon–is too important to forget. Whether new fans want to engage with our stories and the sites and groups we built and the history we made or not, it blows my mind that anyone would find it worth only of forgetting.
People who act like Middle Earth would be such a great place to live are apparently not aware that that entire world circa Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is in fact post-apocalyptic
Observe, this supposedly idyllic fantasy world consists of:
– crumbling eleven settlements
– shrinking kingdoms of Men
– governments and kings either absent or hilariously under equipped to face the evils of the world
– all but a handful of the ancient dwarven settlements are in the hands of orcs OR WORSE
– Thorin and Co. could barely take one step off the road before being nearly EATEN BY TROLLS (OR WORSE) because there’s absolutely NO safety or rule of law whatsoever
– Gandalf basically hangs out in the Shire because it’s the ONLY PEACEFUL PLACE LEFT THAT ISNT’T INSIDE A MOUNTAIN, GIVEN UNNATURAL LIFE BY THE ELVEN RINGS, OR BEHIND GODDAMN FORTRESS WALLS
– did I mention half of the CONTINENT was swallowed by the sea during the War of Wrath? Along with about HALF of the major cities?
– Numenor, major homeland of Men, was also SWALLOWED BY THE SEA
– there used to be a ton more sentient races – and most of them are either lost (entwives), leaving (elves), slowly dying out (dwarves), genocided or something who the heck knows (orcs/goblins/wargs) or destined to vanish completely within the next age (hobbits)
– seriously, this world is a vaguely-feudal wasteland of shit that doesn’t work or is downright vanished, the fact that hobbits exist at all is a goddamn miracle, because literally EVERYTHING, INCLUDING THE TREES is trying to kill you or has already been destroyed
In short, I dunno what GRRM was smoking when he said when he died he wants to go to Middle Earth, but I hope he’s prepared to spend his time there RUNNING FOR HIS DAMN LIFE
I would have assumed he meant post LotR. Yes, the elves are all leaving (I think?) but the orcs and such are all gone or dying out? So, it should be getting better?
Fun fact, Tolkien was going to write an LotR sequel that took place in the 4th Age and showed Sam’s kids growing up to take on the next big evil, which just happened to be…
Aragorn’s kids.
Basically, the 4th Age was going to show the fall of Man into infighting, mediocrity, and decadence as all magic and grace fled the world along with the elves
Tolkien gave up, because he decided it was too depressing. Compared to everything else he had written.
Let that sink in for a moment.
(Also, as GRRM pointed out, there were DEFINITELY orcs left after Sauron’s defeat. How did Aragorn get rid of them? Genocide, even down to the little baby orcs in their little orc cradles? Tolkien didn’t have an answer, but honestly the 4th Age doesn’t look so hot if you live anywhere outside the Shire, what with the whole “fading of all magical races except Men” thing)
I think what interests me most about Maedhros as a character is how he has traits that would make any other character heroic, but in his case, actually make him something close to a villain.
I don’t let him off the hook for the kinslayings, and on top of that I have Theories about the conquest of Beleriand in which he and the rest of the Noldor exiles don’t come off so hot, but I do believe that Maedhros has a conscience. Cf. the part where he stood by while Dad and the bros burned the ships, the part where he looks for the El Twins, First Edition, and on top of that Fingon clearly cares deeply for him, interpret as you will; people don’t climb up cliff faces to rescue total assholes.
But Maedhros’ conscience is the problem. He’s loyal. He’s honorable. He loves his family more than anything. He’s so much of all of these things, that when Dad makes him swear a stupid oath and sends him on a pointless quest, he can’t walk away. He values people’s lives (see again the Elured and Elurin part) but when forced to choose between keeping his word and not killing people, he takes the first option. No matter how much destruction it causes.
This isn’t a mustache-twirling villain. This is someone with some kind of moral code, put again and again in positions where he has to violate at least one tenant of a moral code. And despite being tested over and over again, he chooses to keep this code. He doesn’t become Celegorm or Curufin, screwing around Beleriand figuring out how he can get what he wants and damn the torpedoes. Maedhros is honorable to the end, see his last conversation with Maglor, when he tries to convince him to give up the oath. But Maedhros won’t–I believe because doing so would admit that all the killing and destruction he caused were pointless, and Maedhros wouldn’t be able to live with himself. He wasn’t able to live with himself as it is, hence suicide by lava.
Props to Tolkien for creating such a complicated character.
I agree 100% on this, but I would add: there is a real possibility that the Oath actually compelled the people that made it, much like the Doom of Mandos.
There is a level of… agency that the people of the Silmarillion and, in a more hidden way, LotR, simply don’t have. They can’t not-follow their Oath. The Doom of Mandos doom the Noldor *no matter what they do*.
It is a strange concept for us, but it was predominant in pre-monotheistic european societies, from Ellenism to Paganism and everything in between.
My only counterpoint to that is: then why does Maglor try to persuade Maedhros to give it up? He obviously thought there was some way out of it.
Then again, Children of Hurin was all about a guy who tried to fight fate and failed miserably. So we’re in a situation where you can try to fight your fate (or Doom, for the dramatically inclined among us) but it won’t do any good.
🤔
My point is that probably, in some way, Maglor’s plan wouldn’t have succeeded. I don’t know how, but they would have found themselves in the same situation.
Take Turgon. He tries to avoid the Doom of Mandos, sure of the security of Gondolin. But it didn’t work. It couldn’t work. He was Doomed, and so was Gondolin. Maglor, like Turgon, hopes he can go against his Doom/Oath (both of them in his case) but he can’t. It wouldn’t have worked.
Exactly as in Children of Hurin, the concept of freedom is… non-existant in Tolkien’s world. The only so-called freedom is Death (as Hurin himself says to Morgoth)
Cheerful place, isn’t it?
To make this post even worse:
“The only freedom is death"as Hurin puts it, is true for him. It is not, however, true for the elves.
Elves don’t die. They are immortal. When they “die”, they go to the Halls of Mandos and sit around, regretting their life choices and waiting to be reborn. But once they are reborn, they are back in Valinor. And Valinor is ruled by the Valar, who we know, for all their greatness and wisdom, are…. kinda flawed. (Looking at you, Manwë)
Now, concerning the Doom Of Mandos; among other things it states that the Exiles will NOT be reborn (fanfictions and headcanons aside). This means that they will stay forever in the Halls. Forever dead, we could say. They will be dead (technically) so free, right? They don’t have to worry about the Valar, and their honor and stuff; why would that matter to a dead person?
BUT, the only purpose for the Halls’ existance, is that there elves will wait their rebirth, dwelling on previous deeds of their past life and regretting some (in the feanorians case, most) of their life-choices. So, technically, they are not free. And they will never leave, so they will never be free. In the Halls their are slaves of their own mind, imprisoned within walls and forever forced to rethink and regret everything they did. (We are talking about the Noldor here, they had some pretty bad life choices)
Maedhros decided that he couldn’t live with himself anymore, couldn’t deal with all the guilt and self-loathing, and so killed himself by jumping into that volcano. BUT THAT DIDN’T MAKE ANYTHING BETTER. He wasn’t FREE, as he so desperately wanted to be. Now he is forced to stay forever in the Halls of Mandos, and instead of getting away from everything in his life that ultimately destroyed him, he is forced to gO OVER THEM AGAIN AND AGAIN, for all eternity.
And it just breaks my heart, because Maedhros just wanted to make his father proud, avenge his grand-father and keep his word, and now… Now he has deal with everything he did, everything he regretted. Now he has to keep dwelling on the things that ultimately destroyed him and it kills me.
[Ahhh, this one. Okay, there is a very long story associated with this, including an entire essay written by Tolkien about the pronunciation of this sound. People have written better, and fuller, explanations of it than I have, and I admit to being no real Quenya expert at all.
But I’ll try to explain it briefly. The various elvish languages contain a sound often written with the character called a “thorn,” which would look like this: Þ (The symbol thing I use, yes?) This sound is known as the voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative, as opposed to the voiced dental non-sibilant fricative. (In English, compare the words thorn and this. The initial “th” sounds are subtly different. Say them slowly, holding your windpipe as you do so, and you’ll be able to feel the difference.)
In Noldorin Quenya, the voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative began to undergo a mutation after the birth of Miriel Therindë and before the birth of Fëanaro, becoming instead an S sound. However, Miriel preferred the original pronunciation of her name, Therindë rather than Serindë, and all her kin used it because of her wishes — even after her death, Fëanaro insisted that the Þ sound continue to be used, viewing rejection of the Þ as a rejection of his mother herself.
This is known as the Shibboleth of Fëanor — a shibboleth being a preferred pronunciation, basically. All of his sons kept to this shibboleth for his sake and that of his mother. So Caranthir will always use it in words which should take it.
Okay, so there’s the background on Th vs. S. Now we come to the Sindar or Thindar question.
When the exilic Noldor first arrived in Beleriand, the elves later known as the Sindar did not have a name for their entire people, other than eledhrim, which just means elves.
They instead used names to describe individual populations of their folk, like the Iathrim…the people living in Doriath. If I understand it correctly, until a brand-new and very different population of elves arrived in their lands, there had never really been a reason to establish a name differentiating their own “ethnic group” from another, if that makes sense?
But then the Noldor arrived and they named the elves living in Beleriand, the Sindar, the grey-elves, to distinguish them from their own folk and from the green-elves, etc.
So Sindar and Sindarin are, in fact, words in Quenya, not in the tongue of the elves they describe, the language commonly called Sindarin! These words are therefore, in fact, likely not what the grey-elves called themselves amongst themselves.
So since the Fëanorians use the Þ sound, they would say Thinda and Thindarin, while other populations of Quenya speakers would say Sinda and Sindarin. But the in-universe conceit of the Silmarillion is that it is a history later written down….by people who did not hold to the Shibboleth of Fëanor, and therefore used the mutated S sound.
Fun fact, though: Even if we decide to assume that the Sindar/Thindar adopted that name for themselves due to convenience (let’s ignore Thingol’s Quenya ban in so doing), Sindarin actually preserves the thorn!
See Thingol, as opposed to the non-Shibboleth Quenya name Singollo, for example. The element thin- in both Thingol and Thindarin comes from the same root, meaning grey.
So with a couple assumptions made, there’s a pretty good chance that after the Noldor arrived, the Sindar might have called themselves, yes, the Thindar.
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