ulmo?

1-3 things I enjoy about them

-How he loves elves and humans and is helpful to them no matter how dumbass they get, and how his approach to the aforesaid helpfulness involves TRYING to get people to fix things themselves and learn how to be smart by giving them advice, but will still wade in and fix shit directly if he really has to

-How he apparently knows more and understands the Music and the nature of the world better than any other of the Ainur

-How he seems to Get the creative and good-out-of-evil qualities of the marred world and of Morgoth’s influence (and the capacity for bad things to draw people on the good side closer together) so well 🙂

Something interesting about them based on tenuous circumstantial evidence

This is very tenuous, but the stuff that is said about how the Valar aren’t supposed to mess with people too directly makes me think that maybe his turning Elwing into a bird might not have been so much his sole magic, but more like him kind of activating/strengthening some diluted Ainur powers she got from Melian?

A question I have about them

Exactly how did Tuor “enter his realms” anyway?

A random relevant line I like

“…he does not
love to walk upon land, and will seldom clothe himself in a body after the
manner of his peers. If the Children of Eru beheld him they were filled with a
great dread; for the arising of the King of the Sea was terrible, as a mounting
wave that strides to the land, with dark helm foam-crested and raiment of mail
shimmering from silver down into shadows of green. The trumpets of Manwë
are loud, but Ulmo’s voice is deep as the deeps of the ocean which he only has
seen.

Nonetheless Ulmo loves both Elves and Men, and
never abandoned them, not even when they lay under the wrath of the Valar. At
times he will come unseen to the shores of Middle-earth, or pass far inland up
firths of the sea, and there make music upon his great horns, the Ulumúri,
that are wrought of white shell; and those to whom that music comes hear
it ever after in their hearts, and longing for the sea never leaves them again.
But mostly Ulmo speaks to those who dwell in Middle-earth with voices that are
heard only as the music of water. For all seas,
lakes, rivers, fountains and springs are in his government; so that the Elves
say that the spirit of Ulmo runs in all the veins of the world. Thus news comes
to Ulmo, even in the deeps, of all the needs and griefs of Arda”

Okay fine that’s not “a line” but I love that passage so much.

My preferred version, if there is more than one version of their story (or part of their story)

I definitely like his expanded convo with Tuor (and additional mentions) in the UT

Favorite relationship(s)

TUOR. Also Uinen and Osse (esp since he mentions that Osse apparently serves Namo at least during the time of the exile?)

How would they react to Tom Bombadil

No doubt he loves him and probably talks to him all the time