thelioninmybed replied to your post: reply post times whatever
       
   

  to shut up about the Feanorians for a second (yes I
CAN do that) I’ve seen so much crap tearing down Turgon and Idril to
make Maeglin look blameless that it’s really hard for me to enjoy him as
a character (both in contrary defence of T+I (who…really SHOULDN’T
need defending, jesus), and cause Blameless Maeglin is the blandest
thing imaginable, who even cares)             

suhfsjkf yeah i don’t really just…why do people like blameless maeglin, like, what is the point…? also like, the ways he is made to be ‘blameless’ don’t….actually make him blameless. ‘omg his mom died! how dare he be held accountable for any of his actions!’ also, simultaneously, ‘how dare idril have a personal feeling of dislike for a male in her vicinity! holier-than-thou!’

ummmm

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

simaethae replied to your post: reply post times whatever

                   oh, right, i think i get what you mean. like how imo
power-hungry arguably-colonialist galadriel is a legit and interesting
take on her when she’s fresh from the helcaraxe and burning with
righteous purpose, but then some ppl accuse her of like, oppressing the
sindar/silvan elves in this way that has nothing to do with whether it’s
textually supported or interesting and everything to do with bashing
her to – somehow?? – make the feanorians look better by comparison??    
           

Yeah. I don’t think I’ve seen that Galadriel one in the context of the first-age Feanorians specifically, more in the context of like, various other characters to show how much better THEY are, because Galadriel is the fandom’s multipurpose punching bag (though ofc I’ve seen it pushed by, you know, the usual suspects – the Feanorian-obsessed mass-headcanon-generators, and usually in a way that winds being super-patronizing to the Silvans too lol, concern-trolling is so cringey). Anyway right it’s like, is this about making her character and/or the story better and more interesting, or does it simply contradict and ruin the entire meaning, both personal and symbolic, of certain extremely important scenes from Lord of the Rings in order to make sure none of her statements or opinions in any other context have any weight either

    and yeah i was also think of that *gogol/crocordile exchange and like, i accept
it is tempting for me to make the king’s men more sympathetic than the
text necessarily justifies, bc there’s so much… potential for sympathy
there, you know? i’m here for voicing your objections to the condition
of the world by building a fleet to go fight the gods! it’s just in
practice, ar-pharazon is such an deeply shitty protag, like, once you
get to the last few generations miriel and palantir and inzilbeth are  
           

 
so much more interesting and sympathetic as *people*                

Right like….Ar Pharazon doesn’t really have much in the text going for him so if he was to be made sympathetic the only real way is to, like, add additional stuff TO him? Like, how did he become that way, and how much did his fucked-up family dynamics have to do with it. But that has nothing to do with Elendil so whyyyyyy…argh.

Also I do admit that like, probably the King’s Men could’ve even been like, maybe intended to be more sympathetic…like Arwen says when Aragorn is dying in appendix a, ‘as wicked fools I scorned them, but now at last i pity them, for if this is indeed the gift of men it is bitter to recieve’ etc. But if that was intended it,….doesn’t really come across, especially in conjunction with the Numenoreans’ mid-era history from the Unfinished Tales and stuff, where it’s much more obvious that their morality of lack thereof does not solely revolve around an axis of rebellion/obedience, for one because neither they nor their mortality is even under the valar’s jurisdiction or knowledge (which the valar as much as tell them directly) and their general shittiness long predates their conflict with the valar. So if sympathy was intended it could well be simply an inadequacy of craft and not intent, but either way the question again comes ‘what does this have to do with the other characters’

kareenvorbarra replied to your post: reply post times whatever

  yeah i wanna clarify, this stuff was not just “the
kings men are potentially interesting” – i have put more effort into
characterizing and thinking about the family/motivation of pharazon than
any other silm villain, he’s a shitty person but i find him
interesting. but there was a point when when elendil was getting a lot
of hate, the faithful in general were getting a lot of hate, and it was
clearly just to make the early king’s men look better

 
and a lot of downplaying the persecution of the
faithful in numenor, often by using unreliable narrator-type arguments
(“elendil wrote the akallabeth so it’s biased against the king’s men”
etc.)                

You know, it always cracks me up in an ugly way when people try to play the unreliable narrator card by going “the victims of this wrongdoing or persecution are unreliable narrators because they are biased against their persecutors” the implication being that the persecutors and the persecutors’ defenders are the neutral and unbiased ones who can Explain How It Really Is by talking over the victims’ voices. Like gee, I’ve never heard THAT one in real life….(which reminds me, if you DID want to whale on Finrod, why not stick to the stuff about the petty-dwarves without trying to steamroller the edain’s totally different experience? oh right, who cares about the edain’s or the dwarves’ experiences.)

Anyway wow yeah the mean-spirited agenda-driven “unreliable narrator” arguments made to advance a particular claim are so…difhjkssdkhvs. I mean, I…actually do think Elendil was a slightly unreliable narrator? but not like, in an untruthful/twisting way. imo there’s a big difference between “the substantive content and meaning of the stuff he wrote is wrong” and “some of his interpretations and conclusions are debatable given that other canon information contains information that complicates his narrative” (like the way Elendil seems to hone in so hard on the concept of heresy as the source of Numenor’s corruption, when imo it seems much more like a symptom of their view of themselves and the rest of the world, re: various timeline entries about their colonialism, Erendis’s observations that far predate the immortality stuff, etc). Like, in meta, it’s one thing to interpret the text as written by someone who is not-omniscient but writing sincerely, in good faith, vs interpreting the text as written by someone who’s a completely untrustworthy source or is knowingly lying, which renders fandom kinda impossible. IMO this sort of thing only works as a fanfic premise, and only if the author knows what they’re doing.