replies

bamboocounting replied to your post: A meme ask almost prompted me to give this long…

I…CARE…SO MUCH ABOUT NUMENOR NOW

This was of course my WHOLE AGENDA 😀

bamboocounting replied to your post: A meme ask almost prompted me to give this long…

by which I mean: what are the quirky civic/municipal ‘rivalries’
that elrond could have gotten up to in memory of elros (I don’t know the
timeline of rivendell’s founding vs numenorean history but. just the
thought of IN-JOKES CENTURIES OUT OF DATE

djhgfjhs YES Rivendell wasn’t founded until 1200+ years after Elros died and who the hell knows how long it took them to put together any semblance of a library since it was the middle of a war, so like a) YES SILLY ONE-SIDED IN-JOKES but also b)….hahaha Tolkien never really elaborates on how much the people of Arnor visited Rivendell in those early days right after they came to ME either! Maybe it was a lot! Help…

thelioninmybed replied to your post: A meme ask almost prompted me to give this long tangential answer, but…

fuuuuck this is so lovely! So logical! oh god I
suddenly have all these warm, fuzzy numenorian feelings

Is it….a weird feeling….

I mean, I kind of…fanwanked myself into caring about Numenor because I felt like its early history and eventual destruction should be something that was like, seriously palpably real in its tragedy and not just academic, and the sheer number of gaping holes in information about it is just, such a fun thing, as a second-best option to having fully-fleshed out actual canon.

isilloth replied to your post: A meme ask almost prompted me to give this long tangential answer, but…”

Is it specifically written somewhere that elves
remember everything what they hear exactly the same? And everything from
their lifes? I find it very difficult where you are immortal. Did they
have time like, stop for hours to find in memory something from they
childhood? I think is kind if popular assumption here and I wonder it is
canon or headcanon? I know it wasn’t main point of this meta, sorry.

Tolkien makes a number of scattered mentions of elvish memory being generally unfading as a result of time, but doesn’t actually say it’s 100% perfect or that they never forget anything. The best kind of, like, analysis of how the persistence of elvish memory is in fact a really meaningful and woldbuilding-significant species trait that separates humans’ and elves’ view of the world and general psychology (and kind of explains how elves’ memory of their own immortality integrates into this, and just like…generally makes both characterization and thematic sense of things) is in the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth – it’s both discussed generally and invoked specifically regarding Aegnor and Andreth.

A more dry kind of factual statement about unfading elvish memory is from the Shibboleth of Feanor:

All peace and all strongholds were
at last destroyed by Morgoth; but if any wonder how any lore and
treasure was preserved from ruin, it may be answered: of the treasure
little was preserved, and the loss of things of beauty great and small
is incalculable; but the lore of the Eldar did not depend on perishable records, being stored in the vast houses of their minds.
When the Eldar made records in written form, even those that to us
would seem voluminous, they did only summarise, as it were, for the use
of others whose lore was maybe in other fields of knowledge, matters
which were kept for ever undimmed in intricate detail in their minds.

bamboocounting replied to your post: siadea replied to your post: Do…

the only fic I’d read before with tuor was the one where idril and
him got periodic airdrops of supplies from ulmo (from spices to lamb
chops, plus anniversary gifts of watches) but this is great? death not
as an immutable law, but rather the buggy feature that the ainur has
heard about, which they try to implement! in their own uniquely confused
way

Please, for the love of god, link me this fic, if you can.

(YES though – IDK if I’d even say that it’s either one or the other or not one or not the other, because EVEN THAT I think cuts down on its mysterious Bombadiliness)

misc meme replies (mostly about ar-pharazon? somehow)

thelioninmybed replied to your post: thelioninmybed replied to your post: 🔥Finwe! …”

yes, yessss, at last you begin to understand

Your v loyal padawan, that’s me

gurguliare replied to your post:
gurguliare replied to your post: …

ok got it: he looks like elros setting out and then he bleaches his hair meticulously once aboard

For #the aesthetic yes!! Do Numenoreans have plastic surgery? If they wanted to ‘stave off age by all means,’ I assume appearance-altering cosmetic stuff was HUGE during this period.

bamboocounting replied to your post: bamboocounting replied to your post:
…

didn’t he MAKE all those (man-eating) puppies himself and sauron
after carcharoth kinda, kicking them? orcs having a heartwarming spell
of adopting them and then dying miserably in one of his tantrums

Petty obnoxious mockery via doing the superpowered demigod equivalent of that scene in Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe where turkishdelight!Edmund scribbles a glasses and mustache on that stone lion’s face and jeers at him, seems to be preeeeettttty par the course for both Sauron and Morgoth, I think?

gurguliare replied to your post: gurguliare replied to your post: …

but yeah tolkien is very negative about the intrafamilial marriage!
though he qualifies it with, like, “since they only enforced that policy
after the genetic difference between line of elros and other
numenoreans became negligible,” so it’s not like, CLEAR if … uh … it
would have been fine if they had started when they were quarter-elves ….

I would assume….this might be a lot more sympathetic, if there was a big age-compatibility concern here tho. I’d think a lot of people wouldn’t want to marry someone who would age and die 100 years faster/slower than you did : (God I feel sorry for Elros re: whoever he married. 500 years is kind of a terrible lifespan if you’re the only one of your generation who lived that long – all his hypothetical human friends who he knew when he was young and who built Numenor with him would be dead super early in his lifetime….)

bamboocounting replied to your post: gurguliare replied to your post: …

it’s, what, twenty odd generations? that’s not bad for maintaining a gene line (and anything to make the whole

“Therefore he humbled himself before Ar-Pharazôn” bit actually bad for him)

YESSSSSSSS

And I think Numenorean genes do not really even follow the rules that normal humans’ genes do anyway. I mean, if they became super-tall and elflike and hyper-powerful and gorgeous and stuff in the space of like 4-7 generations (depending on ancestry)? So the reverse with the excessive stickiness of….like, maia stuff resulting in frequent throwbacks should also be a thing! (There was also that thing about how Aragorn looked eerily similar to Isildur’s son Elendur and stuff).

bamboocounting replied to your post: gurguliare replied to your post: …

or – THANKS TO YOUR ICON, if he does a whole richard ii deposition
scene?? complete with props, rolling around in glitter, etc.

I’M CRYING.

But, actually yes! – one of my big headcanons about Sauron’s manipulativeness is that he arranges things so that the person he’s manipulating comes to the conclusions he wants them to come to by themself, rather than just directly convincing/cajoling them into agreeing with what he says. So nothing that would elicit a “huh wait this was too easy and he looks too happy about this!” from Ar-Pharazon.

bamboocounting replied to your post: gurguliare replied to your post: …

“what if he and miriel look like twins” and now I’ve spontaneously
combusted from thinking on time delayed twins/clones, good byeeeee

Askjdghsjh though godddd I am weak about the clone/meaningful/horrifying visual echo potential of the Numenoreans but also just really SO MANY Tolkien characters. Hypothetical….multi-role casting….

bamboocounting replied to your post: gurguliare replied to your post:
…

I agree about the being old but in my desire for claustrophobic
court conspiracies: what if he felt the shadow of death just because he
found a gray hair one morning. (and it wasn’t even real; miriel just
took a sharpie to his head while he slept)

This is. The best thing. I have ever read.

The best thing.

thelioninmybed replied to your post: bamboocounting replied to your post:
…

The thing about this fandom is, i need you to clarify if the author intended the Attack Sirion AU as cute family bonding

LMAO god thankfully not! It was I think definitely intended as one of those little gutpunch morbid textposts. And ow.

simaethae replied to your post: gurguliare replied to your post: bamboocounting…

b e a u t i f u l

But not as beautiful as Ar-Pharazon, apparently!

crocordile replied to your post: 🔥 – the Trees

Sighs dreamily…. They’re so wonderful aaahhhh

I loooooove the Silm’s descriptive passages! (And a lot of the HOME’s even more).

crocordile replied to your post: bamboocounting replied to your post:
…

It COULD be family bonding if the sight of Elwing their sister
awakened in them their pre-kinslaying memories and made them help Elwing
and save Sirion! However even my feanorian-hating ass can’t imagine
m&m being THAT monstrous, I think only some fans are capable of that
;/

Yeah me neither! However I don’t think the OP was sincerely hating on the Feanorians with that post either, I think it was just Silm fandom being it’s jolly morbid self 😉

crocordile replied to your post: gurguliare replied to your post:
…

Also I’m pretty sure the majority of Numenorians are descendants
from the house of Hador and they must have mingled before (the very
blonde) Aldarion passes the law abt the line of Elros, so there’s
canonical back up for a blonde Pharazon if you want that hahaha

Very true! Oh wait, is this how the Dunedain in the 3rd age become so uniform-looking – all the blond ppl in numenor got drowned. sorry genetics, tolkien’s here.

bamboocounting replied to your post:
🔥 Can YOU do the Second Age too (sorry for lurking…

I have nothing good to add to this except to ask that the
‘nightingalest elrond’ post be transferred to the house of elros also,
and for tar-mairon to either mack on someone with those leaf-gray eyes
or for someone of the faithful to explicitly invoke luthien in dropping a
piano on his hideously shiny head

I’m sorry suddenly all I can think of is Ar-Pharazon (or Celebrimbor? AND Celebrimbor!!!!) innocently owning a giant wolfhound. I’ve absorbed post-Huan-Sauron-fucking-hates-dogs so deep into my soul you will never take it away from me. OTOH I have this mental image of Numenoreans generally being extremely brawny by normal human standards and Luthien…not. But you know what, the further one takes “Sauron just can’t let go of that one time Luthien and Huan kicked his ass and threatened to tattle on him to Morgoth” the funnier it gets. Or worse.

Anyway like, this is THE PROBLEM when Tolkien describes everyone as having grey eyes and dark hair, including an entire racial group whose distinctive appearance could have come from 3 different ancestral sources, out of which “maxed-out nightingale stat” (thanks gogol!) is certainly the FUNNIEST explanation and also like…………….I hate talking about ethnic essentialism and inbreeding. Why are the Numenoreans so weird.

gurguliare replied to your post: gurguliare replied to your post: …

that’s… logical… then u have “elwing’s panic spiral about maglor
specifically training elrond and elros up as noldor princelings while
belittling their human/sindar heritage.” Five Fanon Takes On Maglor And
E&E That Elwing Autogenerated

Everyone’s ideas are terrible.

I have definitely read a what-if-AU post somewhere about the Feanorians raising Elured and Elurin as Feanorians and them later attacking Sirion with them like a nice happy adopted family tho 🙂

bamboocounting replied to your post: manwe

I loved that melian and sauron were the data points we got to extrapolate from re the ainur

I HONESTLY LIKE TO BELIEVE THAT OSSË IS THE MOST TYPICAL SPECIMEN OF A MAIA. Just that….most of them are less destructively strong.

bamboocounting replied to your post: 🔥 – the Trees

I just want those victorian illustrations of sweet elvsies to be
true thanks to the scale of one leaf be such that it could’ve covered an
entire stadium

This would be terrifying but also omfg THE VISUAL I LOVE. When I was tiny I was obsessed with this book called “The Littles And Their Friends” that was all about this race of 4-inch-tall ppl who looked just like humans but with fluffy saiyan tails, who lived in various places including: big peoples’ houses, the city dump, offices, anthills/rabbit burrows, and TREES. Elveses living in the giant trees please and thank.

Somehow an illustration of this fell into the hands of humans 9,0000 years later and they misunderstood it, so this is where the idea that elves are tiny itty bitty things came from.

manwe

IDK like, I feel like I feel more positively towards him than a lot of the fandom, but more because I disagree with fandom’s level of, like, offendedness/outrage/bad-faith-about-motives regarding his and the rest of the Valar’s often rather flawed and slightly ridiculous behavior, not because I actually disagree with their points about how weird/dumb/iffy/disastrous/out of touch some of the actions Manwe or the other Valar undertook are. Like, I love how the Valar don’t totally understand the incarnates and are guessing and trying and failing and making mistakes all along the way? And I love how a lot of the Valar’s mistakes and stupid/short-sighted actions come from intense and protective/possessive love and emotional entanglement and indelicacy about the problems of power differentials when it comes to expressing that love, not from cold detached calculation. It’s like, a really fascinating and believable character trait that makes so much sense and is so different from most depictions of fantasy gods. Whether the “infallibly good and all-knowing” type or the “unfeeling dogmatic tyrants” type, a lot of fantasy gods are depicted as being above the passions of lower beings, which is not only not-true for the Valar, but if anything it’s closer to the opposite.

Oh right that’s part of my opinion – I really don’t agree with assumptions I often see in fandom that Tolkien genuinely thought the Valar were perfect or that the dictates of Manwe were supposed to somehow magically be Pure Unassailable Truth. I think it’s pretty strongly implied (and stated, piecemeal) that Tolkien thought that the Valar were reasonably fallible and that some of the acts of disobedience against the Valar wound up having very positive consequences, and that when the elves glorify them excessively or are scared or shushing when they hear people speak against them, that’s a subjective in-universe thing.

bamboocounting replied to your post: you like mushroom dishes, you have a good sized…

you either have the legendarium at hand or a spider who drank of the Trees bit you when you were younger…?

I could tell you my boring tolkien fan origin story but it’s not as much fun as this so I’m going to say yes, yes I did. Also I am reading the BOLT again (or more accurately, actually reading it through instead of skipping around inattentively) and holy shit I half-forgot so much awesomesauce I cannot believe

yavieriel replied to your post: If you’re still doing that tolkien meme thing:…

I always took the assertion about Sauron not always being evil as
more of an existential statement about no one (including Sauron) being
/created/ evil. That when Eru created the Ainur (and all other sapient
beings) they were innocent, and it is the choices they/we make
afterwards that are good or evil. It makes sense that’s something
Gandalf/Olorin would know, as one of the Ainur himself.

Yeah that’s what I interpreted it as when reading too, but I then got curious about whether it was in fact just a general blanket statement about the nature of evil, or if in fact there are also concrete Sauron-specific examples, maybe ones that someone (like perhaps Gandalf!) who knew Sauron personally could shell out if they wanted to tell about it. But just as a pure…like, fic inspiration sort of thing, it’s interesting, not because the general existential statement, as you say, is insufficient! IMO it’s totally sufficient.

you like mushroom dishes, you have a good sized collection of the legendarium, and you’d get maglor drunk and mug him of any remaining parchment with the twins’ childhood scribbles on them

THREE

a million meme replies

starspray replied to your post: ulmo?

In no triggering some latent power in Elwing has been my theory for
ages, although I had never considered it in light of the Valar’s
limitations. I like that a lot.

Awesome! Glad it’s not just me. I had this like, mental video of that scene for ages – of Ulmo like, pushing her back up towards the surface while just kind of, nudging her to tell her where in her psyche to reach to get the power or something, and when she breaks the surface she just, kind of erupts in feathers and foam-spray, and takes off in like, a hellish frenzy of determination and fury and shit.

psychopompious replied to your post: for your Tolkien-proof meme, finarfin?

wait I thought Finarfin turned back before the whole
slaying of kin thing happened?? my life is a lie

Huh? Wait, is there an alternate version where he did? *_* Wow, um, if so that would definitely be my unfavorite version!

Yeah, when they leave it’s “[Fingolfin] marched against his wisdom,
because Fingon his son so urged him, and because he would not be sundered from
his people that were eager to go, nor leave them to the rash counsels of Fëanor.
Nor did he forget his words before the throne
of Manwë. With Fingolfin went Finarfin also and for like reasons; but most
loath was he to depart.”

And then only after the kinslaying and the Doom prophecy, it’s:

“But in that hour Finarfin forsook the march, and turned back, being filled
with grief, and with bitterness against the House of Fëanor, because of his
kinship with Olwë of Alqualondë; and many of his people went with him,
retracing their steps in sorrow”

psychopompious replied to your post: Have you done Aredhel?

UGH I LOVE THAT HEADCANON ABOUT HER EPESSE 100% accepted

Thanks!!! Obvs its not like, conclusive or anything, and imo evidence and stuff is totally not required for making people not-all-white, but you know 😉 Playing with canon tidbits is so fun

psychopompious replied to your post: Have you done Aredhel?

also re: her relationships with Turgon and Fingon, maybe she and
Fingon are just too similar, and end up squabbling a lot? and then
Turgon, the eternal middle child, gets to play go-between

Yeah that would make a lot of sense! And since Turgon overlaps with Fingon in some personalty aspects too, the unwillingness to give up once started and stuff, and then part of what little we know of Argon is that he was impulsive, the family picture is pretty amusing 😉

psychopompious replied to your post: ulmo?

I did not know about this thing with Namo?? omg

Yeah I missed it for a long time, I had wondered what was up with the whole, both drowning and helping thing, but just kind of chalked it up to weird Valar stuff (thinking now about @simaethae’s headcanon/idea thing about the ainur not necessarily thinking of themselves as entirely individual self-willed people all the time). But in the expanded Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin from the UT:

“And as Ulmo said these things the mutter of the storm rose to a great cry, and
the wind mounted, and the sky grew black; and the mantle of the Lord of Waters
streamed out like a flying cloud. “Go now,” said Ulmo, “lest the Sea devour
thee! For Ossë obeys the will of Mandos, and he is wroth, being a servant
of the Doom."”

erotetica replied to your post: Have you done Aredhel?

it’s because she and fingon would explode the world. they’re taking one for the team.

THIS IS A TRUE FACT.

Also they would constantly be getting into fashion competitions.

elesianne replied to your post: Have you done Aredhel?

being aredhel’s maid/laundress must be the worst
job. the combination of white clothes and a liking for traipsing across
woods and fields…

OMFG I know right. Aredhel’s laundress must’ve been the elf who invented bleach.

bamboocounting replied to your post: ulmo?

“kind of activating/strengthening some diluted Ainur powers she got from Melian”
WHAT. YES.

I’m always inclined to like people throwing themselves off things
but – the one post about celegorm’s verbal shitposting? if she’s already
/been/ practicing this for a good while (cf luthien and the vampire
shape)

kshdjhjfsss i can’t believe I understand this comment but okay that’s definitely a possibility that I’ve never considered. THOUGH….I have always had this super unsourced headcanon, actually, of Elwing like, having always had a strong affinity for seabirds due to seeing them being the first thing that made her respond after being nonverbal for a long while as a young child from trauma after Doriath, and like, always wanting to/occasionally trying to fly? Which most would chalk up to kid stuff but as it turned out…

simaethae replied to your post: ulmo?

yep yep yep, the thing about elwing later just
deciding she’s going to learn how to do the bird thing herself thanks
def makes me think it’s an Elwing thing and not just an Ulmo thing

Yes!! That too. And I just in general love how much weird stuff Elwing gets to come up with/initiate all on her own.

thelioninmybed replied to your post:
Saruman?

Ahhh fuck I love him so much, the pipeweed thing
might be my favourite characterisation moment in all the books

I was so delighted when I read it too omggggg

the-artifice-of-eternity replied to your post:
Saruman?

One of my favorite moments in the books will always be when Merry
says “Hey, can I have my bag of pipe weed back?” and Saruman, a literal
ancient demigod, goes “no fuck you” and runs away.

ksdjhfjshkfgslgikshjw help I can’t.

LITERAL. ANCIENT. DEMIGOD.

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