Strong, determined, bright. The Valiant.

Silmarillion alone is already giving me a lot of food for thought. For example...

Racism irl has no right to exist, we are absolutely equal no matter skin colour, eye shape and other features we aren't even responsible for.

...but if I were to live in Arda!!! As a human woman! I would keep bitching about elves and how they have everything, and later they are going to chill with the Valar, while my own life is short like a weekend, and I need to eat, sleep and may die of an illness, and my afterlife... no one knows where I'm heading to after I pass away! I'm just a second-born embarrassment forced to look at those pointy-eared superior dudes from time to time, simply to feel worse than I usually do.

Probably Silmarillion won't give me a human perspective tho. Can't wait to read other books and see what men actually think of elves.

this is SO incredibly andreth coded of you OP!

in case u don't know (or if anyone else who follows me is interested!) the athrabeth finrod ah andreth is a text that was originally meant to be included in the silmarillion, but ended up in "morgoth's ring", one of the history of middle earth volumes (a collection of early drafts, extra materials, and analysis etc).

it is a conversation and philosophical debate between finrod and andreth, the elven king and the mortal women. a large portion of the discussion has to do with the differences between elves and men, especially when it comes to death.

it is absolutely fascinating and i cannot recommend it enough! a LOT of what you mentioned in your post is directly echoed by andreth! i love getting the human perspective that we get so little of in the first age, and andreth is so amazing i love her SO much. oh AND as a fun bonus it also includes one of tolkien's most underrated mortal/elf relationships! 👀

you can read about it on tolkien gateway here and there is a pdf of the complete athrabeth finrod ah andreth here

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

ah yes, the silmarillion. or as i like to call it, the lore of the rings.

recommending the silm to people is like hey are you interested in a book where the world’s biggest battle that destroys the continent most of the story took place on is glossed over in two pages, most characters don’t have a single line of dialogue, many characters only have personalities in fanon, and also half the silm content isn’t actually in the silm and you have to scour through notes published across 14 different books

when people ask me what i love about lotr i can't quite explain it in a normal way. its not the wizards and the dragons and the wilderness. its not the frightening thrill of moria, or the glory of helms deep. its not the ethereal magic of the elves or the pride of the growing civilizations of men. in fact out of every fantasy setting it is to me the most innocuous, the most irrelevant because what i love about lotr is the love. its the humanity. the hope. it is about goodness and fellowship. it is a manual on how to live right, with your friends by your side and your songs in your ears and a constant reminder that the best thing about going anywhere is coming home

Ugh my stupid creepy cousin sucks so bad I need to [remembers that kinslaying jokes trivialise the ever present and crushing doom that we all must live under] build the greatest secret tunnel that this hidden city has ever seen

J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Return of the King

Basically I'm not tagging for #Rings of Power because I think that means the people who enjoy both are twice as likely to see the poll?

I have no idea whether this is going to be any more accurate overall but whatever.

I have a Theory (people who like Rings of Power are, generally speaking, not people who are into the Silmarillion and vice versa) and I want to see if it's true or not so

Finrod, Friend of Men

i love maedhros and the whole fandom loves maedhros which is great until you have to balance very carefully between people who say "maedhros was evil" unironically and the "maedhros did nothing wrong" (also unironically) kind of guys

TRSB 2024 art 2: Lured to be loved

@tolkienrsb Elladan & Elrohir have done everything they stayed in Middle Earth to do, but there's one thing Elrond left behind: his pseudo-father Maglor (now turned kinda crustacean). They are going to fix that.

I am looking forward to some crabnapping /o/ ( Will there be crabnapping? I don't know, but there sure could be. )

Great fic by the author reese -> coming SOON

Elladan is the one in the red cloak and Elrohir is the one with a white sash. Maglor + several ages on sitting in sand by the beach = Crablor.