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.

meme: arien? :)

1-3 things I enjoy about them

-SHE SCARES MELKOR INTO HIDING UNDERGROUND I LOVE

-I really like imagining her whenever the Silm or LOTR or the Hobbit mentions “the sun” or “sunlight” 🙂

-Okay even though I hate that version from the HoME where Melkor rapes her and shit I really like the backtalk she gives him

Something interesting about them based on tenuous circumstantial evidence

I mean, she must have wreaked quite a bit of havoc on the natural world when she rose right? Come on. The elves must’ve been freaking out too.

A question I have about them

How does she view humans, given they woke up to her, like the elves did with Varda? Does she have any strong opinions about them?

A random relevant line I like

Okay she had a different name (Urwendi) in the BOLT but…but….BUT!!!!!…:

“So it comes that ever now, as the Ship of the Moon leaves his haven in
the East and his gates of pearl, Ulmo draws the galleon of the Sun
before the Door of Night. Then speaks Urwendi the mystic word, and they
open outward before her, and a gust of darkness sweeps in but perishes
before her blazing light; and the galleon of the Sun goes out into the
limitless dark, and coming behind the world finds the East again.”

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

Not the Morgoth raping thing. I like to cherry pick the rest.

Favorite relationship(s)

Tilion ofc!

How would they react to Tom Bombadil

She probably knows all about him tbh, though he possibly knows even more about the earth than she does (he was there before her) which is, unsettling…

Optional: Something about them that I think people forget

Okay this is not something people ‘forget,’ but something that I JUST REALLY LIKE TO BRING TO PEOPLE’S ATTENTION BECAUSE I ENJOY TAKING IT SERIOUSLY:

The round Moon rolled behind the hill

As the Sun raised up her head.

She hardly believed her fiery eyes,

For though it was day, to her surprise

They all went back to bed!

re-embodiment replies

simaethae replied to your post: A thought that I think I first tried to have a couple months ago just…

what i’ve wondered about is, what about elves who
got killed at cuivienen, and did finwe/ingwe/elwe get to meet any of
them??

it makes more sense if it takes forever i guess, but
then what about all the people who died way before glorfindel? and
like, clearly everyone thinks it’s ok to nag miriel about “so are you
ready to be alive now? how about now?” when she can’t have been dead for
longer than the period it took for finwe to fall for indis >>;

Yeah, I, I guess I ~want to feel~ like no one got re-embodied during the Years of the Trees just because it, somehow feels more right? And because….I feel like something that important would be mentioned explicitly (lol yeah I know, I’m expecting way too much from Tolkien). But in the Athrabeth, the way Finrod and Andreth talk about it is, they clearly believe it’s a real thing, but they still discuss it in a hypothetical way, as something that WILL happen, at some point. But, in fucking Tolkien this is really not a high enough bar to rule anything out…so, idk! It’s open! if Tolkien didn’t want anyone to theorize about it he should have said it outright…….I’m too lazy to go look in the HoME if he did. 🙂

Though, I always viewed re-embodiment as having no set schedule, just, whenever the elf is fully ready to be re-embodied/capable of re-embodiment, they get re-embodied. There’s also that line in the Valaquenta: “all those who wait in
Mandos cry to [Nienna], for she brings strength to the spirit and turns sorrow to
wisdom” which to me always seemed to ring as, a stay in Mandos is determined by the mental/emotional/spiritual condition of the elf in question, and an elf who has either done a lot of shit or experienced a lot of shit would be much less willing or take much longer than a more well-adjusted elf to pull themselves together to the point of being fit for re-embodiment, and that’s why Glorfindel popped out so fast ~~maybe he was desperate to fix his embarrassment for the hair thing….~~

simaethae replied to your post: A thought that I think I first tried to have a couple months ago just…

anyway i wonder how many messages from Valinor ppl
managed to load glorfindel down with, i think i once came across a fic
where Idril set up the Glorfindel thing in order to have someone to nag
Elrond to look after himself…

OVERLOADED MAILMAN GLORFINDEL IS SO ESSENTIAL AAAAH.

Do you mean “The Art of Long-Distance Grandparenting”? Ha, I love that fic! And….it’s a testament to just how good it is that I loved it despite how much all my acceptable interpretations W I L D L Y disagrees with that fic’s interpretation of Elrond and Elrond+Elros. As uh, you probably know, from that meme meta I wrote. But like, idgaf about that because IDRIL and Tuor and Finrod and Glorfindel and Anaire…I just loved those depictions of Valinor and Lindon so much, the very best.

bamboocounting replied to your post: actualmermaid replied to your post: A thought that I…

this is a wonderful and I LOVE JOCK GLORFINDEL

I have heard hearsay that this is way overdone in fanfic, but I haven’t read quite enough fanfic to know if it gets annoying or not! 😀 “fearless and full of joy”….I love that description too much.

bamboocounting replied to your post: A thought that I think I first tried to have a…

oh, wow, I hadn’t considered how difficult it might be to change the
habit of centuries with the Doom broken, but either Men as the only
ones to go back and forth between the continents (and even so, with the
explicit constraints of the valar) or the teleri tentatively exploring
east? I think I’ve seen an au circa the Darkening where their reluctant
team-up with feanor involved elwe as the draw?

I….I would read that fic.

Anyway yeah that’s such a great point about whether the post-1st-age Valinor elves wanted to go east…like, at some point, I guess, the extreme LOL HELL NO they probably felt after seeing what happened to the Noldor would wear off? Especially during the periods of peace in ME?

bamboocounting replied to your post: A thought that I think I first tried to have a…

YES A MINISERIES PLEASE

YOU HAVE NO IDEA IN HOW MUCH RIDICULOUS DETAIL I HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT AND HYPOTHETICALLY PLANNED THIS 😀

few replies

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

somewhere you made a graceful point about what you liked…?…which I
took to mean that elrond’s whole predicament should be annotated not
only by bilbo, but also in the format of those – snidely wry
commentaries that comes with cds of classical music

I….er, have never experienced those commentaries with cds unfortunately so I can’t tell whether that was my intent or not, but do you mean something like:

Elrond: Haha yeah it sucks that my brother died and I’ll never see him again but that’s okay because his descendants are good and wise and amazing.

Narrator: They weren’t.

thelioninmybed replied to your post: even more tenuous meme replies

(you don’t have to be nice about Worst babysitters, it is 100% just spitefic)

Nah but, like, really – the underlying, ideas? premises? behind a fic’s characterization decisions or whatever matter more to my enjoyment of a fic than how much I agree with the actual specifics of the resulting characterization. So I’m not just being nice! (However I have not read all of them and I prob should at some point.)

simaethae replied to your post: actualmermaid replied to your post: …

i mean, ppl do think things about elwing that just don’t make any
sense at all if you bother to actually read the text just in the silm,
so. *sigh*

IT’S AMAZING HOW THAT HAPPENS. tbh I run into this with…so many characters? Not just female characters, but female characters get especially short shrift in terms of being used as a tool for fans who are actually arguing about male characters

simaethae replied to your post: actualmermaid replied to your post: …

i mean tho, i have expressed enthusiasm directly to actualmermaid
rather than use you as a messageboard, but ENTHUSIASM for this take 🙂

It’s kind of fun though! If tumblr refuses to be conducive to conversations, ppl figure out a way 😉

even more tenuous meme replies

simaethae

replied to your post:

more meme replies

you say that but f!maglor suddenly realising she has the worst crush
on elwing is kind of distressingly appealing to me, someone talk me out
of this >>;

gurguliare replied to your post: more meme replies

sorry simaethae but i only ever suggest garbage ships i secretly want, WHO WOULD talk you out of it

thelioninmybed replied to your post: more meme replies

not I!

simaethae you’re out of luck. Everyone in this discussion is a useless enabler, including me. Dooooo iiiitttt.

(what would f!Mags admire most about Elwing, I wonder? Her ability to say “lol no” and slam the door in ppl’s face? Ironic how this sindarin-human princess has a quality Maglor unfortunately did not inherit from her own father! ….wait no this is going to a weird place….*_*)

thelioninmybed replied to your post: more meme replies

this is amazing, now I’m really really angry about fandom reactions that don’t even EXIST

just the POTENTIAL for wank

lol….I have occasionally, while writing meta, wondered “what if someone has interpreted this scene/character/relationship in X godawfully stupid and clueless way?” and gotten offended about it, even when that interpretation is not even a thing that actually happened anywhere in the fandom 😀 Like that “someone is wrong on the internet” thing, but pre-emptive!!

(though in my defense, it’s usually because the situation I was writing about reminded me of a real discourse that did happen with other characters in a different fandom).

thelioninmybed replied to your post:more meme replies

Can we cut this gordion knot of wank by making Maedhros female too?
What if the twins were girls, would everyone drop the matter entirely?

Well tbh, if everyone was a girl, there’d probably be only about 1/20th as much fic or meta about the issue in the first place 🙂

actualmermaid replied to your post: more meme replies

FWIW I have chosen to take on that balancing act, because I hate
most portrayals of that relationship (both the uncritically positive and
uncritically negative ones) and I need to do it right dammit. And also
because I hate myself apparently

this is
fantastic, I would so read this!!!!!! Yeah, I get caught up in my salt
over the uncritically positive stuff, but that’s mostly because it’s so often said in
the same breath as bashing or slighting the victims or minimizing or
marginalizing the attackers, not because I dislike the positive
elements themselves. And to be honest…while I do feel more sympathy for the
people who are uncritically negative, because the sort of
victim-blaming shit that the positivity-side lauds can strike
waaaayyyyyyy too close to home or reflect RL issues too nastily to feel
like ‘just fandom,’ I also find the uncritically negative interpretation to
be kind of…bankrupt of literary merit? if that makes any sense?

I
mean, I’m not huge on revisionism just on principle – if a fact
like “he cherished them, and love grew between them, as little may be thought” is stated,
I’m gonna take that as fact, and not some kind of deceptive or
misleading bullshitting like “it actually means there was only a tiny
bit of love between them!” or whatever. (Actually, this is also why I dislike “oh but ELROS hated the Feanorians!” interpretations too – apart from like, in actually interesting premises like Lion’s worst-babysitters series). But also, IMO saying that the
relationship was uncritically and uncomplicatedly negative is
just…..flattening out a complex and intriguing story element with a
ton of potential into a boring and pointless irritant that contributes
nothing of value to the characters or themes of the Silm. And…why would you want a story to be
less interesting? Why would you want a story to have less richness in
it, less material for people to enjoy in it? If M&M and their interaction with E&E are one-dimensional and boring,
that’s…not a good thing? I really don’t get that attitude at all either 😦

more meme replies

crocordile replied to your post: actualmermaid replied to your post: …

loved that scenario though!!!

It makes so much sense, and like, it’s a feling I
def experienced in these last two years of my life when I was sure my
country was going into X direction, made plans and all, and then
suddenly there was a coup and everything went to deep shit very fast.
Imagining this feeling on two characters like that wrt disasters as they
suffered… yes, i’m super interested hahahahaha

: I can, slightly relate, though I know my country’s situation is a lot different than yours : Heh well, I often have a problem restraining myself from writing reams of characters having dialogue about meta ideas, so this is the sort of thing I imagine characters doing in my head a lot

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

I don’t know about classier – also because I’m…
maybe… considering this, but then I also wrote f/m Maedhros/Elwing so I
don’t count… 😉

lol! well I do mean classier in the sense of, tending to be less slimy and clueless about how godawful and unfair their judgements about characters, especially female characters, sound; not about the….restrained-ness of their ships haha. But anyway I don’t really think ships are ever the real problem at all, I think just about any ship can be done in a way that even if I personally dislike it, doesn’t make me side-eye the author

thelioninmybed replied to your post: gurguliare replied to your post: erotetica replied…”

I mean, the comparisons with Elwing, absolutely, but an f/f pairing? lol

Oh but see, there would also be spitefic pushback from people who dislike all the f!Maglor bashing, and the discourse would try to move to less about comparing Mags with Elwing and more about comparing Mags with Maedhros and….god it’s kind of really incredible how much existing fandom trends and tropes influence the emergence of related tropes…

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

no, no, the twins comfort *maedhros* bc of how
maglor forced him into a third kinslaying in order to abduct them,
you’re losing track of the real victim here /salt

Haha….you know the worst thing is that when I was very new to fandom and hadn’t encountered the Discourse yet, one of the small-d discourses I encountered was some insane trying-to-be-feminist meta about how Maglor is better than Maedhros (no mention of Elwing) because of his feminine-coded maternal instincts! or something! I think my reaction was somewhere along the lines of “what the no.” Anyway, when I was in the vacuum, I had been very unproblematically affected and charmed by imagining the weird delicate complicated screwed-up balancing act of Maglor trying to raise the twins while showing them the affection and being the sort of figure of trust and reliability kids need, but without fucking with their brains and putting ideas in their head about who to sympathize with or agree with and how to talk about their now-absent parents, since he obviously wouldn’t want them to sympathize with him and Mae, and obviously wouldn’t blame Elwing, since he blames and despises the oath at this point. I really am very salty about how thoroughly fandom ruined my interest in the positive frame of this relationship. *_*

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

i can’t believe how seriously i’m suddenly contemplating this

Oh, well, if it was you writing it, I’d obvious trust I could read it without backbuttoning upon running into some bullshit halfway through

berrysphase replied to your post: shovel talk?

Would read.

(Just saying. Badly. Sorry it’s sleep-deprivation train again)

thearrogantemu replied to your post: shovel talk?

WHAT YES PLEASE

UNFORTUNATELY I HAVE NO IDEA WHICH ONE YOU GUYS ARE REFERRING TO unless it’s both?

berrysphase replied to your post: erotetica replied to your post: berrysphase replied to…

I laughed at Elendil and Gil-Galad’s shared life experiences

You can always count on Tolkien to create situations where characters can commiserate about the extremely similar terrible shit that happened to them and the sense of history repeating itself. Where is that one meta post about fractal narrative structure anyway….

meme replies

simaethae replied to your post:
simaethae replied to your post: …

i’m so glad i’m not the only person to have read a lot of fanfic i profoundly regret

I have actually only read a small amount of high school AUs, but the osmosis from just scrolling through the AO3 tags in certain previous fandoms is enough to intimately acquaint me with and reinforce my understandings of the genre, erg.

I have, however, read a great deal of other kinds of fanfic I profoundly regret.

thelioninmybed replied to your post:
simaethae replied to your post: …

…….i……..would read it after all………

TOO BAD I’M NOT WRITING ITTTTTTTTTTTT

Also I forgot to add: WHY DIDN’T YOU WEAR THE SPECIAL SUPER-DURABLE FOOTBALL HELMET OF LOVE I GAVE YOU ;_; WHY DID YOU GIVE IT TO THAT OTHER GUY AS A WELCOMING SOLIDARITY GIFT

actualmermaid replied to your post: Post-apocalyptic!!!

dude this is basically the second half of the big fic I’m working on yessss (minus the ot4)

Yayyyy! *high five* we must compare notes when we’re finished. Mine is super-weird and half-epistolary and the hypothetical tags make it look deranged, so I am quite sure they won’t be comparable tho

simaethae replied to your post: Post-apocalyptic!!!

i would love to read this!

It’s, pretty high on my list of “most likely to be finished first” wips, so thanks for the motivation boost! 😀 But, I am, so slow, you wouldn’t believe. And I’ve always been that way, so.

emilyenrose replied to your post: for your meme–oh no there’s only one bed, what to…

holy shit I want this

….okay, if I ever figure out something actually interesting for Maglor to say I will attempt to write it. I adore peer pressure.

erotetica replied to your post: for your meme–oh no there’s only one bed, what to…

well don’t they say one of the tooks must have taken a fairy wife at some point

yes. but…………..not maglor pls.

anyone else.

Also fuck, the….uterus and vaginal canal size issues…..no. my insides are shriveling up just imagining it.

crocordile replied to your post: Deathfic? I realize Silmarillion fandom has way…

Super interested in the arwen one!

Ahhhh thank you! I will endeavor to finish that one at some point as well. Someday I should learn to finish things one by one, but today is not that day.

simaethae replied to your post: High School AU

see you’re doing it wrong because you imply a highschool AU might
contain an actual plot, or, like, things happening other than
relationship drama >_>

Yeah you’re right, to do it properly #1 would have to be like, 10% plot, 40% Fingros fluff about how much they support and believe in each other + athlete physique porn + well-intentioned but cringey ‘inspirational’ disability issuefic re: the hand, 50% Fingros angst with Maedhros guilting and worrying about the coma-inducing concussion Fingon got from Gothmog’s illegal tackle

….I should have specified American Football

Replies

berrysphase replied to your post: 🔥 if you’re still accepting them, Aragorn?

Yeah, this is one of the (many many many) reasons I don’t get along with the movies.

Lol oops I was trying to be less obvious! 😀 I was trying…ish…to be more focused on the fandom’s obsession with making Aragorn like, super-averse to becoming king and stuff but…oh well. To be fair, I’ve seen a lot of fans go “okay I mostly prefer the books but movie!Aragorn is a far more believable and relatable protagonist–” gdhdjdrrcbjfdd HE’S NOT A okay okay I’ve beaten this dead horse too many times. But. Really. No matter how awesome Viggo Mortensen’s face is.

simaethae replied to your post: 🔥 thingol 🔥

also like, we never see the kind of… sudden
horrifying reveal you expect from mind control in the silm, the closest
it gets is maeglin and that’s presented as tied up with maeglin’s
preexisting motives. so thingol’s “he enchanted her!” comes off as kind
of, out of nowhere and irrational, esp since if anyone’s doing any
enchanting around here it’s obviously Luthien.

but like, thralls escaping from morgoth and turning
out to still be under his control was totally a thing, so… beren
“escaped” from Sauron, the lone heroic survivor, sure. sure. sounds 100%
plausible. (albeit the text doesn’t really give us this, just
Thingol’s weird anxiety about Men, so i’m kind of unsure if i really
want to overlay reality-based concern onto Thingol’s weird paranoid
issues when the latter may be more interesting really)

Haha yeah I was thinking about how Tolkien’s borrowed character archetypes and lifted-straight-from-a-legend type stuff often had a….almost fanfic-y feel? I mean in the sense of, “okay I love this standard archetypal story but wait wait let me IMPROVE it by doing a massive multi-story crossover and also explaining the character’s motives with these long made-up backstories to make the legend-characters’ actions more organic and logical! And I feel like, applying that to the standard disapproving-dad trope fits in with Thingol very well! But yeah I do kind of think a more, whatever, unique psychological explanation for his paranoia is probably more interesting than a setting-based/environmental one, but I guess I can see it either way.

meme replies (even more)

simaethae replied to your post: more meme replies

right, i should have said i love the idea of well-intentionedly patronising Aule and i may steal it 🙂

I WOULD LOVE to see/read this!!!

gurguliare replied to your post: Akallabeth stuff for the 🔥 meme

listen if they had the potential for spaceflight or whatever……………..

i also tbh think attributing a real threat to ar-pharazon’s
fleet/numenorean society as a whole makes the Problem of Numenor way
more INTERESTING–not justified, just interesting. + also the thing about
them being resurrected for dagor dagorath or whatever?? like, on which
fucking side and with what cool laser weapons, are the two most
important questions

GOD I keep telling ppl I do not subscribe to industrial Numenor stop making it so interesting sdugfdug

But yes!!! Interesting is what I was thinking of, and also how Tolkien does a lot of stuff where he takes stock fairy tale or myth ideas and fiddles around with them in strange and unpredictable ways that are not necessarily even to make a point or resist them, but genuinely just to play around with them in the context of the specific influences of Ardaverse? And so, how would Arda-specific stuff influence and change an Atlantis-type narrative and make it more particular.

ALSO YES THE DAGOR DAGORATH

emilyenrose replied to your post: 🔥 like, elrond? Tell me about elrond”

oh i like, i LIKE, the idea of both of them choosing
their paths because of, like, the best part of that path. elros
embracing the necessary heroism of mortality (i can see the
dreamer/visionary take working really well, actually; for me he’s
something like tennyson’s odysseus) and elrond embracing the endless
possibilities of the world for goodness and happiness. yes. good.

Yeah I had this sort of, idea of E&E-as-A-Set (as opposed to E&E as two separate characters) being kind of, not just like RL twins but also fulfilling the sort of role of twins in myths and tales and the idea of identical twins in stories: ~like one person in two bodies~ or whatever, with the further implications being that this split-person can pull double duty and do things that are mutually exclusive, their arcs strongly embodying roles that go: something only a mortal can do, and something only an immortal can do. But that’s more of the meta effect that…floats on top of the story, because twins are ofc ACTUAL PEOPLE haha.

Of course there’s also the fact that I am crazy about…very steep or dynamic character arcs which makes me biased about issues like this but – I always get a little antsy when people fill Elros’s hypothetical offpage arc with all sorts of cool extrapolated ideas stemming from his origins and choice and dawn-of-an-age setting, but kind of smooth out Elrond’s arc as static + based on the tiny window we see of him in the late 3rd age where his character is very tangibly defined by the centuries worth of events that came during his life. When IMO it’s so much more interesting to kind of, imagine him chronologically, and afresh, like Elros, though obviously he does have a far more definite and fleshed out endpoint and set of influences over the years than Elros.