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#1 | |
Dead Serious
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The Letter of the Law
Over in my other recent thread, Huinesoron (as he is wont to do) said something that struck me as quite accurate:
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What are the most egregious distortions you can fit into the text of Middle-earth? I think we're actually going to see a lot of this that gets us all riled up once the Amazon series releases, because the 2nd Age is full of unpainted canvas and they have a whole show to fill, but I'm thinking of things closer to the texts themselves: what odd things would you plug into the cracks that you absolutely know Tolkien wouldn't approve of but he leaves space for? This is, admittedly, a broad, conceptual topic and I don't have a ready example. The best I can do is point at the inspiration in the other thread, where Huin is arguing that, even though Tolkien doesn't SAY it, he pretty much implies Sauron created/spread the Great Plague. So I'm looking for the opposite examples: where Tolkien heavily infers that Æ happened, but since he didn't SAY it did, you can argue that anti-Æ happened. I would probably need to comb through the Appendices looking for "the Wise say" or "many believed." The counterarguments to THOSE are what I'm talking about.
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I prefer history, true or feigned.
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Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,853
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~ The one that instantly springs to mind is "for elves, sex = marriage". Tolkien clearly believed it, but what he actually says is that: Quote:
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~ Also, Maglor. "It is told" that he chucked his Silmaril in the sea and now wanders around singing a lot, but the Silm itself admits that there's no evidence, and it's just saying it to claim that the Silmarils are in mystically/elementally significant places forever. For all we know, Maglor could have chucked himself in there with the jewel - or maybe he kept it, and is living off on Tol Fuin with it around his neck even now! ~ Come to think of it, we don't even know when Beren and Luthien died! Tolkien only tells us that Dior "knew" that the Nauglamir being sent to him was a sign that they'd perished, but he could have been... y'know, wrong. ![]() I mean, heck: Tol Galen is well inside the areas of Ossiriand that survived to become Lindon. Maybe they just stayed put! At the very least, that's a plausible myth/rural legend of the Sindarin refugees in the early Second Age: that their princess is still out there, watching over them from the forests south of Harlond... hS |
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#3 | ||
A Voice That Gainsayeth
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: In that far land beyond the Sea
Posts: 7,431
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That's just from the top of my head, and that is even a fairly broad thing. Something like that might concern the Nazgûl, meaning, the original Men. I remember that under the I.C.E. license, various roleplaying games and the Middle-Earth: The Wizards card game operated with one of the Ringwraith being female (for those interested, her name was Adûnaphel). I personally kinda like the idea (and could have been more than one), but I am pretty much convinced that when Tolkien said the Nazgûl were "Men", he meant "men". Even though, arguably, who knows. It's rather based on "circumstantial evidence", such as that as a rule of thumb, female characters in such positions in Middle-Earth are rare, and if one happened to be a Nazgûl, Tolkien would likely have pointed it out as a notable exception. While we are on the topic of the Nazgûl, you could probably come up with lot of things about that. It is for example also heavily implied that they were some nobility, some of them of the Númenorean stock, but likely NOT Númenorean kings. So, like, it isn't that Ar-Gimilzôr became a Ringwraith. BUT, it is not specifically mentioned. So I can easily imagine a writer who is lazy to come up with a Númenorean name, or a character for that matter, to just pick one of the later kings and be like "ok, this is one of the Nazgûl!" (Or, even better, pick three of the last kings and be done with it.) And on that note, it is also implied that the Ringwraith appeared more or less all at once at roughly the same time, considerably earlier than many of the "bad kings" lived, but that is also not said explicitly. So, I am pretty sure, somebody could come up with a case that Pharazôn became one. (Because among other things, nobody also says that Sauron did not go and pick him up from wherever he ended up under an avalanche at the outskirts of the Undying Lands.) Thinking of it, it is not even said that the Nine were always the SAME Nine, was it? As in, maybe the Ring #9 was for instance worn by one person the first two hundred years, then he was killed, Sauron gave it to another, who became the wraith then, then he gave it to Ar-Pharazôn... Well, clearly one can come up with lots of things...
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories |
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#4 | |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 3,448
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This is also why people belittle the Hobbits, not their size but their lack of boots or shoes at all. Edit: I’m not sure this fits the “implied X but the opposite of X could also happen” idea but I do feel it fits “distort the text” prompt.
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Morsul the Resurrected Last edited by Morsul the Dark; 04-15-2021 at 03:49 AM. |
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#5 | |||
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
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![]() ![]() ![]() The counter argument to 'men' is that Tolkien wrote "Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky" at a time when the Three were held by the Lady of Lorien, the master of the Last Homely House, and a wizard whose best claim to 'elven' is that some rural bumpkins used to think he was one. "Mortal Men" could easily include "and woMen", and it's not like anyone writing the Red Book would know. Quote:
~ Actually, that's another one that straddles the line between 'suggested' and 'suggested against'. Did Bilbo's mother have any adventures? She's called 'remarkable' (along with her sisters), and the best The Hobbit says is "Not that Belladonna Took ever had any adventures after she became Mrs. Bungo Baggins." So... before, then? Did Gandalf lead the three Took sisters off into the Blue for mad adventures, climbing trees and visiting elves and sailing off to other shores, facing dragons and goblins and giants, rescuing princesses and hanging out with widows' sons? I bet he did. Quote:
hS |
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#6 | |||||
A Voice That Gainsayeth
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: In that far land beyond the Sea
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But exactly - that's the one sad counter-argument: if there had been a powerful sorceress or evil conquering warrior Númenorean lady who became a Ringwraith, her unusual qualities would likely have been mentioned somewhere. That being said, for various reasons I find it not unlikely that some such may have existed somewhere among the Easterlings, Southrons or other peoples and would not have found her way into the historical annals, simply because these people were too far from the Númenorean sphere of interest, and/or also illiterate to begin with. (I personally somewhat cringe at how much this fits into the trope of "the civilised people have a patriarchal society, whereas it may be perfectly common to have a female chieftain in the 'exotic' societies that are wild and primitively barbaric/wild and free and egalitarian" - depending whether you want to paint this trope positively or negatively, both of which are cringeworthy in my opinion. But let's face it, the setup of Middle-Earth sort of supports this distinction.) Quote:
Oh! Oh!!! That reminds me of one thing that definitely belongs to this thread. Interestingly enough, again connected to the Ringwraith. Specifically, I am referring to the well-known description that upon the Witch-King's death, Quote:
Sidenote, given that it also refers to the wail itself, it does not refer to something such as that the WK himself would be seen in perhaps a different form, but rather that it would be pretty much the same form - or at least a form making the very same sounds. (It also seems to refer specifically to that particular wail, not to that of the Nazgul in general, so it isn't like that somebody would hear a random Xth Age new breed of wraith wailing in the same manner, but rather Witch-King in person.) Can't say I am familiar with that one. I have only heard about Shadow of Mordor and I decided not to pay much attention to it back then. From a brief glance I am maybe glad that I did so.
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories |
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#7 | ||||
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
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^_^ Of all my daft ideas, this and "Celeg Aithorn is the sword of Manwe" are the ones I like the most.
I did sketch out an all-woman Fellowship a while back along the same lines, though to my shame I had to tap the movies for Ranger Arwen and, of all people, Tauriel. It does showcase both how interesting Tolkien's female characters can be - and how few of them there are. (I suppose I could find a way to replace Tauriel with Ioreth of Minas Tirith, but she might be a bit much...) Quote:
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That said, I believe the amazons only get a single passing mention, buried somewhere in a linguistic essay, so perhaps "they would have been mentioned" isn't necessarily true? A whole lot of women have prophetic/visionary abilities which are never mentioned explicitly, only obliquely shown (Rosie Cotton, for one!); and the one bona fide evil sorceress has her story told solely in a single "primitive" and partly-illegible outline: Queen Beruthiel. It's entirely within reason that Tolkien would have restricted a description of Nazgul #5, the Sorceress of the Last Desert to an utterly unreadable scribble on the back of an envelope. Quote:
Or maybe they just come back for Dagor Dagorath. I mean, Turin's going to, why not Sauron's pet Men? Quote:
hS |
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#8 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 3,448
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The people of Laketown had barrel races. They would ride barrels across the lake and see who was the fastest. After all, why else would Barrel Rider clue Smaug into Laketown? Obviously Barrel Riding was extremely common, ergo Barrel Races.
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Morsul the Resurrected |
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#9 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
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The only possibility is that individual barrels were ridden regularly on the Long Lake itself, where Smaug could see them from his mountain. (There's not a lot that would look like a barrel being ridden, is there?) Humans being humans, competition - races - is an inevitability. hS
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Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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#10 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: The realm of forgotten words
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I am currently reading a fanfic where one of the characters proposes that Amrod and Amras are the same person, because allegedly they are never seen together, and they are just all too identical even for twins.
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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#11 | ||
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
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The version of this I'm thinking of is even more extreme: it holds that after Amras was burned with the ships, his spirit possessed his brother on a sort of time-share basis. Voluntarily on both sides, naturally! Which is very much the sort of thing Tolkien might have done! We know from the Glorfindel example that he was happy to employ the nature of Elvish life to resolve what he saw as conflicts between two "fixed" works: rather than changing either the Fall of Gondolin or LotR, he used Elvish reincarnation and the fact that it is possible to sail back from "heaven" under the right conditions. So, had he considered both "Amras burns at Losgar" and "Seven sons of Feanor in Beleriand" to be unchangeable texts, he might well have turned to the comments in LaCE on possession: Quote:
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Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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#12 | |
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: The realm of forgotten words
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![]() I mean, I would jokingly think on occasion that Amrod and Amras must have been conjoined twins, they're always together. But this is even better! For the official history records! ![]()
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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#13 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
Join Date: Oct 2006
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What if Ambarussa was actally one Elf with multiple personality disorder? Feanor, mindful of his family's reputation, just put it about that the "Amrod" and "Amras" personas were identical twin brothers....
Sort of like Zoot and her "identical twin sister" Dingo.
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it. |
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#14 |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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Fanficolfin, Fingolfin's alter ego at Eldamar's Saturday night open mic comedy revue:
"Hey, nothing smells worse on a hot Summer's day than Tirion upon Túna." Ba-dump-tisch "I just flew in last night with Gothmog. Boy, were his Balrog's wings sore." *crickets* "Tough crowd."
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And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. |
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