Tag: morgoth

radiantanor replied to your post:                  I have a genuine question but with the sindar,…                

Great post 🙂 What I also find interesting is the implication that (I think) the Plan has changed at some point between then and the 3rd age, bc the Elves all leaving seems like a given thing and the only good option for many of them. So I’m wondering if it means that it’s possible for Eru’s plan to change bc of such decisions

I think the elves leaving might be covered by part about how humans are supposed to replace elves in the end, i guess. after all humans and elves DO co-exist in middle earth and numenor for millennia. i think the whole thing of elves going to valinor after like thousands of years of enduring makes sense in the context of immortality in tolkien’s construction of the world, where enchantment and magical power increasingly dwindles and diffuses into real-world history – sauron is the last Fantasy Evil Overlord, etc. elves going to valinor when they’re young isn’t a great idea, but when they’re really really old and weary enough to start fading and have sacrificed their rings of power and can no longer keep enchantment pockets replenished around them it’s a different story.

of course there’s SOME elves who still remain in arda and slowly fade away, as the enchantment in the world fades away like vernal pools slowly shrinking in on themselves, (*COUGH* smith of wootton major *COUGH*) and are responsible for lots of the later fae myths IRL and also continue to have a greatly lessened impact. ‘course that’s totally speculation – i guess the real explanation for why the elves all leave is ‘well there aren’t any elves around here in the 20th century IRL soooo…’

(also it doesn’t completely discount the possibility that the elves might return to arda again sometime in the future – something along these lines was part of jirt’s early drafts, called the Faring Forth. (also sry to be sappy but @ivanaskye is writing a fic kinda involving that premise lol)

radiantanor replied to your post:                  I have a genuine question but with the sindar,…                

   Which would be ironic seeing as Melkor spent so much time and effort trying to do that. Though I’m not sure if The Plan really changed, it actually sounds like it’s very flexible to begin with so any individual decisions can be incorporated (ie the Dwarves). What do you think?    

yea it does sound flexible! and as andreth says in the athrabeth, ‘we men had our own lore, and needed none from the elves’. not to mention the noldor going back to beleriand with all the advanced arts and powers from valinor was also a big leg up, since it was essential in holding off morgoth long enough for the societies there to solidify or change pretty pivotally imo, historically speaking. i def think that in the long term things really follow the whole thing wrt eru and melkor, about how all evil that happens, no matter how disastrous, eventually collapses in on itself and winds up becoming something that was good to have been:

Never since have the Ainur made any music like to this music, though it has been said that a greater still shall be made before Ilúvatar by the choirs of the Ainur and the Children of Ilúvatar after the end of days. Then the themes of Ilúvatar shall be played aright, and take Being in the moment of their utterance, for all shall then understand fully his intent in their part, and each shall know the comprehension of each, and Ilúvatar shall give to their thoughts the secret fire, being well pleased. (Ainulindalë)

For [the Dwarves] say that Aulë the Maker, whom they call Mahal, cares for them, and gathers them to Mandos in halls set apart; and that he declared to their Fathers of old that Ilúvatar will hallow them and give them a place among the Children in the End. Then their part shall be to serve Aulë and to aid him in the remaking of Arda after the Last Battle. (Of Aulë and Yavanna)

otoh that’s…..the 7,000 year perspective. like IRL i’m p sure the people living in 5,000 BC wouldn’t be particularly comforted by the idea that xyz catastrophes that befell them wound up as like, the impetus for incredible strides in foundational technology or whatever. i guess it really depends on how it’s framed to determine HOW ‘disastrous’ the valar’s intervention was

I have a genuine question but with the sindar, avari, nador when the humans woke up the elves are pretty much dominant over all of the continent same with the dwarves and then you have Morgoth and crew living it up…,where did humans live when they first woke up like where could they live without coming on land that wasn’t already someone else’s home. I always thought morgoth’s first offer to the humans was like crushing the elves there and (Real estate agent voice) “And this could be yours!”

difuhjdfdgj SORRY ANON for completely forgetting about this ask! I would say no, it’s actually somewhat the reverse – according to Tolkien, Morgoth managed to snag so many humans into his service in part because the Valar’s not-that-well-advised attempt to protect the elves from Morgoth by offering to bring them to Valinor meant the elven population of Middle Earth and beyond was actually much sparser than intended (and a large proportion of them gathered into Beleriand and therefore isolated from humans for a long time) and completely devoid of Vanyar and Noldor.

Therefore the intended cooperation between elves and humans, and elves’ protection and conferring of knowledge and stuff to humans, in order to pass the torch, since humans were meant to replace elves over time, was severely disrupted, the help they got from elves before the Edain came to Beleriand was a lot less substantive than it would have been otherwise, since the Avari didn’t have civilizations as big and high-yield as Doriath or Mithrim or Ossiriand etc, or any of the Noldor realms the Edain eventually discovered. (Humans also got a lot of knowledge and language osmosis’d and taught to them by dwarves in the canon timeline though, iirc.)

I would say this makes perfect sense – I’ve discussed before (gotta click back through the replies for full context lol) the sort of mutually-strengthening potential of elves and humans – elves, being so thousands of years older, and immortal, able to directly confer to humans the sorts of crafts, arts, tech, etc that it took hundreds of thousands of years for humans to develop IRL; and humans, being mortal, and therefore their societies being inherently unlike elves’ due to generational overturn, able to put these things to use in a huge array of ways specific to mortal lives. I stole @gurguliare‘s excellent phrase ‘elves as a patch for human continuity.’ That’s also how Morgoth’s influence on them in the early days was sorta explained in The Tale of Adanel from Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth – humans were very impatient when it came to learning and getting more knowledge.

However, Tolkien’s explanation of the thing seems to focus more on the Valar:

This is said because the invitation given to the Eldar to remove to
Valinor and live unendangered by Melkor was not in fact according to the
design of Eru. It arose from anxiety, and it might be said from failure
in trust of Eru, from anxiety and fear of Melkor, and the decision of
the Eldar to accept the invitation was due to the overwhelming effect of
their contact, while still in their inexperienced youth, with the bliss
of Aman and the beauty and majesty of the Valar. It had disastrous
consequences in diminishing the Elves of Middle-earth and so depriving
Men of a large measure of the intended help and teaching of their ‘elder
brethren’, and exposing them more dangerously to the power and deceits
of Melkor. Also since it was in fact alien to the nature of the Elves to
live under protection in Aman, and not (as was intended) in
Middle-earth, one consequence was the revolt of the Noldor.

-J.R.R. Tolkien, “Words, Phrases and Passages in various tongues in The Lord of the Rings.” Parma Eldalamberon No. 17.

003 and hmmm…. Morgoth ;D

How I feel about this character: I am like…..honestly more entertained by him than interested in him, like, internally, but he’s like, a very thoroughly built character. there’s a better term for it but it’s been like 5 minutes and i still can’t remember it – i mean that like, all the clockwork inside that makes him tick is very well put-together, so that all his ideas and motives and actions kind of come from a unified concept. It’s so very cool that basically everything about him fits into the term “Morgoth’s Ring.” Just….*finger and thumb in a circle emoji* good job jirt, even if I have some adjacent complaints about his context I have no complaints with morgoth’s content. Also Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion is rly good!

All the people I ship romantically with this character: I…..don’t. Hm. I like his tantrumy struck-a-nerve overreactionary hateboner for Hurin, it’s very telling imo.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Ungoliannnnnttttttt

My unpopular opinion about this character: Sorryyyy but…every time someone compares Morgoth’s theme in the Ainulindalë to “improvisational jazz” i lose 6 months off my life….

(The Valar: “Of the theme
that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great
Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show
forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and
devices, if he will.”

That is jazz.

Morgoth: “The
other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and
endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as
of many trumpets braying upon a few notes.”

That is military music, prob in the sense of the phrase ‘military music is to music as military justice is to justice.’)

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I………*COVERS FACE WITH ONE DOZEN HANDS*

my het ship: eh?

my fem/slash ship: see above

my OTP: hey op of this meme, why all these

my OT3: since I guess there’s a zillion interpretations of human death and also of the void, it would be funny if morgoth, luthien, and hurin all walked into a bar in the basement of the timeless halls—

my cross over ship: SCREWTAPE….from The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I feel a sense of obligation to say “Ivan Karamazov” but I don’t think he find-and-replaces well with the Devil there. Screwtape I think could use some of Morgoth’s penchant for raze-it-to-the-ground. No way would Morgoth be content with the mediocre road to hell than Screwtape prefers, and I think Screwtape’s genre-savviness would be a help to Morgoth.

my kink: I don’t….

a head cannon fact: When Luthien put him to sleep, he dreamed of Manwë going smth along the lines of *gasp* wow you were right big brother

my gender bend: Honestlyyyyyyy not that much of a change? I guess in some of the drafts he has more of a rapey old god tendency but still…