Middle-earth Meta

Middle-earth meta and posts not specifically tied to on of Tolkien's works. Side blog for general-illyrin

[velvet4510]

To anyone who believes fairy tale romances never happen in real life, may I remind you that JRR and Edith Tolkien met and experienced a forbidden love in their youth, and then were separated for five whole years because of his guardian’s rules that he could not date till he was 21, and she got engaged to someone else only because she assumed he’d forgotten her and lost hope that she could ever be with him, but then on his 21st birthday, he wrote her a letter saying he still loved her and wanted to marry her, she responded basically saying ‘if I’d known you hadn’t left me on the shelf, I would never have said yes to anyone else,’ then a week later she greeted him at the train station and then immediately dumped her fiancé, and they got married and she converted to his religion and danced for him in a flowering field far away from the trenches into which he was drafted, which left such an impression that he crafted an entire story about the most beautiful maiden in the world who danced in the woods and made enormous sacrifices to be with the man she loved, and they had four kids and remained faithful to each other and blissfully grew old together and their gravestones are now marked with the names of that same fictional couple that he created, who broke every rule and overcame every possible obstacle to be together and get a happy ending, who only did all that because he based it all on their own real love story.

[tuulikki]

Knowing all this has always made this bit of Beren’s song instantly reduce me to tears:

Though all to ruin fell the world

and were dissolved and backward hurled

unmade into the old abyss,

yet were its making good, for this—

the dawn, the dusk, the earth, the sea—

that Lúthien on a time should be!

Tolkien straight up wrote a poem that said “the world could end, but it wouldn’t have all been pointless, because she was in this world, however briefly, and that justified all the rest.” Kills me.

Who can outdo Wife Guy Tolkien? Dude was writing elaborate AUs where his wife is an impossibly beautiful magic-wielding immortal elf princess who fights Satan and wins to rescue her human boyfriend from Satan’s doom fortress. Flawless.

[trans-noldor]

look I love ghost hunting on tol himling as much as anyone but tbh I think we're sleeping on tol fuin. you're telling me that a significantly sized portion of the evil haunted forest even orcs were afraid to pass through, where sauron fled as a vampire after the lúthien incident, survived the sinking of beleriand and we aren't writing about it??

[ailendolin]

Weta once again blessing us with more Prologue pics.

[backgroundelf]

I don’t think orcs are elvish enough. You have this race that was made by taking elves and twisting them, but they are always shown as so far removed from elves that unless you are told their origin, you wouldn’t guess it. Which is a shame, because I think they would be more effective if they looked like elves.

Because what happens if they look like elves? For elves, this would lead to a whole range of issues. Does killing an orc count as kinslaying? It’s a lot harder to sidestep that question if the look similar. If you want to make it really dark, have elves face off against orcs and have the elves recognize some of the orcs. Even if it doesn’t count, that’s going to cause some psychological damage to the elves to be killing people that look kind of like them. And depending on how exactly they differ from elves, you can bring in the horror of the uncanny valley. As for humans and dwarves, if the first group of pointy-eared humanoids you encounter are monsters that slaughter your people and ravage your home, you’re going to be way less trusting of the next group of pointy-eared humanoids you encounter. What if some of the problems in early dwarf/elf and human/elf relations was due to cases of mistaken identity?

So orcs should still look like elves. Elves that had been tortured and dragged through Hell, but still clearly of elvish origin. My ideal orcs look more like uncanny valley zombie elves than the dark, beefy beast men they are usually portrayed as. I know this departs from Jirt’s descriptions, but I think there’s room to make orcs really creepy.

Traits my ideal orcs would have:

Keep reading

[eri-pl]

wait what. Tolkien Gateway, what??? Gandalf was 167 cm??? I thought he was taller. Well ok it says "at least" --- there's a Tolkien letter, of course there's a Tolkien letter --- but it does say he was short. Which, considering some of the creative decisions I've made, is ... idk. Funny.

Also: black eyes??? What??? And no source given... Does anyone have a reliable source on Gandalf's eye color??? Please ^^

[fangirl-erdariel]

Yeah tbh sticking strictly to what's said in the books and leaving out the letters, unless I'm missing something from some HoME or such material, the only description I can remember for certain relating to Gandalf's height is a mention that he's shorter than Elrond and Glorfindel (when Frodo sees him seated near them at the feast in Rivendell). Which honestly doesn't make his specific height all that clear, given that Glorfindel is described as tall like three sentences later, and may or may not be the kind of stupidly tall that you sometimes get with Valinor-born elves, and afaik Elrond's height is never stated. I think there might be a case or few where Gandalf is described as towering over someone, but I'm pretty sure in those cases it's always a hobbit, and also that they're moments where Gandalf is losing his temper a bit and possibly purposefully appearing threatening, so I don't think those descriptions say much of his height by like. objective measurement systems

As for Gandalf's eye-color, in that same bit of text where that mention of his height is, his eyes are described as "dark". Admittedly Tolkien's tendency to sometimes use "dark" and "bright" and similar descriptors in very situational ways that are as indicative of people's moods and personalities as anything, you're free to take that with a grain of salt. But the sentence specifically is "In his aged face under great snowy brows his dark eyes were set like coals that could leap suddenly into fire." which... I would say the particular phrasing and the comparison to coals would make it reasonably likely that Gandalf's eyes actually are a fairly dark color (whether that's a true black or more like a fairly dark brown, idk)

Anyway back to Gandalf's stature, while the only description I can remember of his height is, as I said, in relation to two other characters, one of whom is stated to be tall and the other's height is unknown, so I don't know where Tolkien Gateway is getting their specific numbers or how well-founded that number is... in all fairness it would make sense to me that Gandalf is on the shorter side of "unremarkable height for normal adult human". Because like. the wizards were supposed to be advisors and to guide and persuade people, rather than threaten or strongarm them or rule over them. So in a way I could see "unthreatening/unimposing physical appearance" to be a reasonable choice for the job, and something Gandalf might go for specifically in terms of his appearance as Gandalf the wizard in Middle-Earth.

Whether any particular aspect of that appearance, including height, would ring true to a form he would choose to wear while appearing identifiable as a Maia in Valinor (which we're also told he didn't do very much, and would often prefer to go around invisible or in a form so closely resembling an elf that people rarely realized what he was) is in my opinion really anyone's guess

[shadesfalcon]

J. R. R. Tolkien: no, my books aren't about the war I experienced. It's just a story

J. R. R. Tolkien's works: you cannot go home, war ends entire bloodlines, you are mourning the death of your brother alone, you dug into the earth and permanently scored the land, you cannot explain what you have been through, you cannot go home, "that wound will never fully heal. He will carry it the rest of his life", leaving the women behind does not save them, the young die first, you cannot go home, the parent will bury their child, you have lost the wives and you will never connect with them again, "how shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate?", you are not the same, you cannot go home, you can never go home, your father will only side with those he sees as worthy bloodlines and you cannot change his mind, it is more meaningful Not to kill, sometimes your sacrifice accomplishes nothing, you cannot go home

[thinkinginquenya]

What he actually said was(paraphrasing): "I had no hidden messages in mind when I wrote the book, people are bad at guessing what an author's intentions are, and to those people who keep telling me the story is about the horrors of WWII: I fought in WWI, dummies."

Actual quotes from the foreword of LotR that I was paraphrasing:

"As for any inner meaning or ‘message’, it has in the intention of the author none."

"The crucial chapter, ‘The Shadow of the Past’, is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted."

"The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron."

"An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous."

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead."

[argentumcor]

Tolkien's works were hitting popularity when it was becoming widespread to see fictional stories as metaphor. We live in that now, to the point where if there's any kind of racial tension in your fictional universe people assume the groups involved are a stand in for one real-world group or another.

His experiences inform a lot of his writing, as they do for all writers, and his themes are truths about life he learned. But the Ring is not a metaphor, though it can be likened to some things. The animosity between the elves and the dwarves is not a metaphor, though it is a lesson on getting over the past to unite for the good while still holding onto the good things about your own culture. The nearest thing to a metaphor might be the Scouring of the Shire, but I think it's more a reflection on the way the shadow can touch even places and people you think are safe.

Heaven help us in genre fiction, no one argues Flannery O'Connor's continuously writing metaphors about having lupus. Fantasy and sci-fi stories are not necessarily- in fact, are rarely- metaphors, but even non-readers and non-academics are addicted to understanding them as such and it brings everything down.

[thinkinginquenya]

My understanding of Tolkien's writings on fiction is that he's fine with people seeing his works as metaphorical, as long as it is understood that *you* are bringing the metaphor to the table, and he has simply given you the tools to make a metaphor applicable to your own concerns.

[camille-lachenille]

"average high king of the noldor rules for 867 years" factoid actualy just statistical error. average high king rules for 213 years. Ereinion Gil-Galad, who ruled for 3521 years and didn't 1v1 Evil incarnate, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[warrioreowynofrohan]

I’d say that all the comparatively longer-lived High Kings of the Noldor directly fought the principal Evil of their time (Finwë [I’m not going to get into Trees vs post-Trees timelines, but reigned for hundreds of years at least] stood against Morgoth; Fingolfin reigned over 400 years and dueled Morgoth; Gil-Galad as mentioned reigned 3521 years and fought Sauron, though not 1v1 because he was fighting by the side of Elendil).

Apparently not engaging in direct personal combat with the principal evil of the Age is associated with shorter and generally less sucessful reigns of Finwëan High Kings (Fëanor, Fingon, and Turgon).

[tanoraqui]

There’s a mathematical formula to be made out of this, or maybe a graph. X axis is years of high kingship; Y axis is power/threat level of what killed them…or should it be relative power/threat level of what killed them, for their respective era? If the former Gil-galad is definitely still the outlier. If the latter, less so.

[aragornsrockcollection]

Inclusion of Finwe changes the parameters in a way that really makes this theory shaky. Because if it’s not just “Kings of the Noldor in middle earth” then we have to consider the true winner by sheer time spent in power to be Finarfin. (Again not accounting for Finwe probably being king by far the longest but in tree time)

[camille-lachenille]

"average high king of the noldor rules for 867 years" factoid actualy just statistical error. average high king rules for 213 years. Ereinion Gil-Galad, who ruled for 3521 years and didn't 1v1 Evil incarnate, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[warrioreowynofrohan]

I’d say that all the comparatively longer-lived High Kings of the Noldor directly fought the principal Evil of their time (Finwë [I’m not going to get into Trees vs post-Trees timelines, but reigned for hundreds of years at least] stood against Morgoth; Fingolfin reigned over 400 years and dueled Morgoth; Gil-Galad as mentioned reigned 3521 years and fought Sauron, though not 1v1 because he was fighting by the side of Elendil).

Apparently not engaging in direct personal combat with the principal evil of the Age is associated with shorter and generally less sucessful reigns of Finwëan High Kings (Fëanor, Fingon, and Turgon).

[tanoraqui]

There’s a mathematical formula to be made out of this, or maybe a graph. X axis is years of high kingship; Y axis is power/threat level of what killed them…or should it be relative power/threat level of what killed them, for their respective era? If the former Gil-galad is definitely still the outlier. If the latter, less so.

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[anghraine]

Additional thought: it's not that this makes our heroes terrible for opposing them. The orcs are part of an imperialist war machine that their enemies are defending themselves against. OTOH the fact that orcs definitionally do not have a way out despite being ordinary people, and know this, and resent it, and want another kind of life, does feel tragic on some level.

It also feels significant that LOTR the book is particularly adamant on the point that acts that are broadly evil or wrong cannot be justified by who your target is or how noble the overall cause is. That's what the Ring is about, thematically—when Boromir says that good men can use the Ring for good ends and remain uncorrupted, he's fooling himself (with the able assistance of the Ring). It's one thing to defend your life and home for real, it's another to use that as a pretext for things that are simply wrong. It's not about finding the "right" target so you can feel just about doing something fundamentally unethical.

When Faramir says he would not lie to an orc, that's basically what he's saying. In his world, orcs are hostile, dangerous, ancestral and current enemies throughout thousands of years of history continuing right into the present moment and serving an existential foe. He doesn't know that some of them dislike Sauron and want to escape. But even an orc can't be justifiably lied to in his worldview, because he believes it's wrong to lie to any person. No matter how evil that person or their deeds, their actions cannot justify wrongdoing on his end.

For similar reasons, Aragorn isn't going to kill the Mouth of Sauron. He psychically challenges the Mouth (another Númenórean in the book), but actual violence against an ambassador, even a super evil sorcerous ambassador of Sauron, is simply wrong in the code that someone like Aragorn lives by. He can't just decide the Mouth is an un-person because he's a terrible person and justify a war crime.

I'm not arguing that Aragorn and Faramir have identical codes of behavior or that all heroic characters in Tolkien do (if you've followed me for long, you'll know this is very much not my opinion). But the larger idea here is that evil deeds cannot be made good ones by finding the right person to commit them against, and this encompasses the Mouth, this encompasses the human soldiers on Team Sauron that Sam pities, this encompasses orcs, this encompasses every single person. This was very much Tolkien's RL position on the atomic bombs in WWII, it's a whole thing.

And the inclusion of the orcs in this, awful as they invariably seem to be, defines them as people.

(This is not a full-throated endorsement of how Tolkien handles the orcs, btw! But I think it's important to the basic themes of the story that unethical acts cannot be converted to ethical ones by the character of your target. The orcs in LOTR are invading soldiers of conquest who pose direct and brutal threats to other people's lives, homes, and autonomy. Those other people have the moral right to defend themselves, but it doesn't give them total latitude to just do whatever to orcs or anyone else.)

[anghraine]

#very good analysis (via @draquus)

Thank you very much!

[tolkienillustrations]

Ná alya i vinya loa!

[maryellencarter]

*reads* “Ná a aly i iwany ola”

[tolkienillustrations]

This person reblogged this from me with these tags:

You know I can see what you wrote, right? You know people literally get notified when you reblog from them, right? This is so rude and obnoxious. I did not use a Tengwar generator for this. I actually do know what I’m doing. People do use that letter for V sometimes, but here’s the thing I REALLY can’t get over: you don’t even know the difference between Quenya and Sindarin modes, because you tried to read this in Sindarin mode, but it’s actually in Quenya mode *because it’s in fucking Quenya.* I have been studying Tengwar since I was 13. I’m 33 now. The first thing I learned was the difference between Sindarin and Quenya modes. I may sometimes make mistakes, because no one is perfect, but you are certainly the last person I would ever need help from when it comes to Elvish. Thanks!

[tolkienillustrations]

[tolkienillustrations]

I won’t give their post notes by reblogging it, but here’s their rebuttal:

I don’t think you are as fluent in Tengwar as you think, Mary Ellen, but let’s talk specifics. No, that is not “Sindarin letter order.” The way I wrote the long A that threw you off is just a tehta on top of a long carrier to denote a long vowel. I don’t think that is the *only* way to show a long vowel in Quenya mode, but it’s one way. And yes, spelling the word correctly with a long vowel is a priority to me. Should I misspell it instead? If the word has a long vowel, I will spell it with a long vowel. 

But enough of this back and forth. Let’s check Tolkien’s own version of the poem Namárië, written in Quenya, and see what we find. (Anyone who would like to read a transliteration can find one here.)

I circled some areas that I want to draw attention to, but first you will note the conspicuous lack of dots between words to separate them. You complained earlier that I didn’t put dots between words, but in this case Tolkien didn’t either. Was he wrong?

You will see on line 2 that I circled “ve” twice. Yes, that says “ve.” That’s the letter you told me I shouldn’t use for V, but Tolkien did use it for V here. I guess you should tell him he’s incompetent too? What does he know, he’s only the one who invented the language.

The rest of the words I circled include an initial consonant followed by a long vowel. Each is written with the consonant followed by a long stem with the tehta above it, which is exactly what I did in my original post. That’s not “Sindarin letter order.” It’s literally Quenya. You will even see that the final word I circled is “ná” with a long A. It is exactly as I wrote it in my post, except that I capitalized the N in mine. The letter order, the long carrier - they are exactly the same in both cases. 

In conclusion. You were wrong about the letter V. You were wrong about the dots. You were wrong about me writing in “Sindarin letter order.” You were wrong about literally all of this. If you had bothered to read Tolkien’s actual Quenya writing, you might have learned something that had escaped you in the last 30 years. Instead you showed up on my post and said a bunch of rude, condescending things that weren’t even true, which, besides being annoying, might make it more difficult for other people to learn Tengwar properly if they listen to you.

Most people who love Tolkien’s languages are just trying to learn things and have fun, and we should be able to do it in a respectful way. If someone was polite about correcting a mistake I made, they’d be doing me a favor, and I would actually appreciate it. But that’s not what happened here. You were not polite, at all, nor were you even right about anything. If you still think I’m in the wrong, I suggest you take it up with Tolkien himself, unless, according to you, he is also incompetent. And, as Fëanor said, get thee gone from my gate.

[outofangband]

Thinking about the more uncanny magic of the Girdle of Melian

Melian served in the gardens of Estë which are within Irmo’s domain and I’ve long had the thought that a similar magic that surrounds the gardens of Lórien is imbued in the Girdle.

I imagine the outskirts of the Girdle as disorienting, its borders mostly invisible though with some distortions of light in places that you can see if you look closely.

Strange lights can lead you astray and stepping upon certain rocks or patches of moss can render you witless, like in faerie stories of creatures that take the shape of plants or stones to bewitch unwary travelers who trod upon them

There does seem to be basis in canon for this too; in The Children of Húrin, when young Túrin and his guardians, Gethron and Grithnir, make it to Doriath, they are able to enter the girdle however they become “enmeshed in the mazes of the queen”. They would have starved if they hadn’t been found by marchwardens.

I’ve speculated before on the strange and dangerous effects of Ungoliant and her spawn upon the Ered Gorgoroth and Nan Dungortheb, the mountains and valley where she was said to live in Beleriand, on how pools of water become poisonous and stinging webs snare victims and even the geography itself is haunted. I think the Girdle, located just south of Nan Dungortheb, should have its own uncanny, sometimes terrible power.

[whosthatsilmcharacter]

You guys!

I just realized that Elrond/Elros/Lúthien/Arwen share a very distinctive piece of iconography with Durin I of all people!!!

They can all be identified with a crown of stars! ✨✨✨  

[arafinweanappreciation]

this fandom loves to explore the angst of reembodiment (obligatory disclaimer that it's not a bad thing) but what about the joy? what about being able to feel your heartbeat in your ribcage and your blood jumping in your veins again? what about feeling the sound drums in your sternum and the vibrations of your voice in your throat? what about being able to feel your clothes and your hair swirling around you as you dance? what about the rush of moving in rhythm with all the people around you? what about feeling the breath in your lungs and the cold air tearing up your throat when you run in the winter? what about being able to feel your muscles burn and your limbs stretch? what about being able to feel water flowing around your hands and feet or the rush of air on your face or the grit of dirt under your fingernails? what about the sensation of a purring cat on your lap or your hands in a dog's fur? what about the smell of freshly cut plants or the taste and texture of your favorite foods? what about being able to feel anger and excitement and fear with your whole being again? what about reunion with people you haven't seen in centuries, bittersweet but better than none? what about being able once again to shape the world around you? surely it can't all be alienation and claustrophobia. surely there must be something that makes even the happiest interpretations of the halls of the dead pale in comparison

[even-in-arcadia]

we all love to make fun of how the elves are all ready to sing at the drop of a hat while completely ignoring the fact that thirteen (13) dwarves showed up at Bag End, ordered all kinds of snacks and beverages and cakes it was some kind of tiny restaurant, and THEN proceeded to on the spot make up a song about how bilbo was slightly anxious about the fact that they were carrying his plates in the most precarious way possible.  which is truly nothing compared to the fact that

THEN they proceed to whip out two fiddles, three flutes, a drum, two clarinets, a golden harp, and to top it all of two viols “as big as themselves”.  these guys are on an Adventure to steal back their treasure from a dragon and before they even get there they’ve got to cross some pretty serious mountains and a notoriously creepy forest to say nothing of whatever happens when the land isn’t tall or covered in trees.  and they’re packing TWO viols as BIG AS THEMSELVES.  we’ve given the dwarves a pass for far too long.  the elves just sing, these subterranean band kids are schlepping half an orchestra across middle earth

[jellyfish-perspective]

I'm sorry, but other than the egg one, all of Bilbo's riddles suck so bad. Gollum is coming prepared with five lovely, deeply disturbing little riddle-poems. They're guessable. They rhyme. They've got clear well-defined answers like 'time' and 'fish' and 'darkness'. The answer to one of Bilbo's riddles is literally "Fish on a little one-legged table, man at table sitting on a three-legged stool, the cat gets the bones" which is outrageous. That's not a thing. And then the actual winning riddle of the contest (albeit accidentally) is 'what does Bilbo have in his pocket?' which is obviously unfair. So I'm sorry, I know he's disgusting and a creature of the dark but Gollum should have won that contest fair and square and the story should have ended there and that is why you need an impartial referee to uphold a minimum quality level for your riddle contest lest you be robbed and ultimately die in a fiery death because of it.

[ach-sss-no]

*slams fist on desk* THANK YOU

And from the other end of things: Gollum is sitting there wracking his brains and dredging up his repressed childhood memories of his dead family that exiled him in order to fairly think up answers to Bilbo's nonsense riddles, Bilbo answers one riddle by accident when he's actually trying to say he hasn't solved it yet, and answers another riddle because a fish jumps out of the lake when 0.1 seconds are left on the countdown clock.

And then Bilbo ends the riddle game by saying. Guess. Just Guess. It worked for me. Why Don't You Just Guess. And the narrative then dunks on Gollum for getting really angry and making an extra guess

It's even funnier in the original version of the book. When The Hobbit was originally published, Gollum was just a one-off guy in a cave and the One Ring wasn't a thing yet, so 1) Gollum offers Bilbo the ring for winning the game. However Bilbo already has it. 2) when the riddle contest ends and Gollum can't find the ring, instead of snapping and trying to kill Bilbo, this happens.

I don't know how many times Gollum begged Bilbo's pardon. He kept on saying: "We are ssorry; we didn't mean to cheat, we meant to give it our only only pressent, if it won the competition." He even offered to catch Bilbo some nice juicy fish to eat as a consolation. Bilbo shuddered at the thought of it. "No thank you!" he said as politely as he could.

He apologizes for being cheated at the game and having his birthday present (which appears to have been an actual family heirloom in this version) stolen. And then he peaceably leads Bilbo out of the cave and parts on good terms.

And, when JRRT retcons this later to match up with the Hobbit and Gollum's expanded role in LOTR, he claims Bilbo told the original version to obscure the origins of the Ring. So, in-universe, this is the version of the story Bilbo was telling all his friends! The one that includes this line:

"Finding's keeping!" he said to himself; and being in a very tight place, I daresay, he was right. Anyway the ring belonged to him now.

I don't know, man. I think Bilbo has more of a claim on the Ring in the universe where Gollum goes nuts and tries to murder him. At that point he can't just hand it back, you know?

Anyway, after the riddle game of questionable fairness Gollum will go on to

be tortured

be slightly tortured again but this time by gandalf

be yelled at for telling sam not to make a visible fire in a PvP zone (yes in the book he is primarily angry at Sam for making a cook fire because he's afraid of fire and because they are trying to use stealth, and the culinary disagreement on cooked vs raw rabbits is just salt in the wound so to speak, also sam asked him to go hunt for food to begin with)

be told fairly early on in the plot that Frodo will curse him to commit suicide on order if he steps out of line

If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or to cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command.

5. be arrested and wrassled by a whole group of faramir's rangers for the crime of eating fish in the wrong spot when on the point of starvation 6. be told he's an ungrateful turd for being mad when his neck is stiff later from being manhandled

'Have they gone at last? ' said Gollum. ' Nassty wicked Men! Sméagol's neck still hurts him, yes it does. Let's go! ' ' Yes, let us go,' said Frodo. But if you can only speak ill of those who showed you mercy, keep silent! ' ' Nice Master! ' said Gollum. `Sméagol was only joking. Always forgives, he does, yes, yes, even nice Master's little trickses. Oh yes, nice Master, nice Sméagol! ' [Psst: this is the book version, so Gollum will go on to nearly reach redemption out of warm and fuzzy feelings for Frodo... AFTER this happens]

7. Sam and Frodo are intentionally withholding the fact that they plan to destroy the Ring at the end of this journey. 8. we find out later on that Gollum claims he will die when the Ring is destroyed. as deceptive as he may be, there's no reason to think he does not really believe this. If Gollum does believe he will die when the Ring is destroyed, that means, all of this time, Sam and Frodo have been expecting Gollum to cooperate fully with a long, desperate, difficult journey (that Gollum is in charge of. He's their guide and their survival expert. And they won't even do what he tells them to do in order to not get the three of them killed, see: cook fire, see also: there's a point where frodo just starts running full tilt at minas morgul while gollum just sits there and stares at him in apparent disbelief, also sam gets annoyed any time gollum asks them to do literally anything, also this part where they're just sitting by a toxic waste heap i just think this is funny that they sit down by a toxic waste heap and gollum gets irritated because he doesnt' want to choke to death on vapors)

Too weary to go further they sought for some place where they could rest. For a while they sat without speaking under the shadow of a mound of slag; but foul fumes leaked out of it, catching their throats and choking them. Gollum was the first to get up. Spluttering and cursing he rose, and without a word or a glance at the hobbits he crawled away on all fours.

-and the journey ends in him dying. Inevitably. There was no way to save himself if he was always going to die with the Ring. And they haven't told him this.

At best, Gollum is- under duress!- going through the journey from hell and at the end of it he gets a fun surprise when his most prized possession is destroyed forever, at worst, he's being led to his own execution from minute one.

Gollum probably felt something of the same sort [referring to a long and eloquent preceding paragraph about the agonies Frodo is going through]. But what went on in his wretched heart between the pressure of the Eye, and the lust of the Ring that was so near, and his grovelling promise made half in the fear of cold iron, the hobbits did not guess: Frodo gave no thought to it.

In conclusion:

But, to be fair to Bilbo I think 'an eye in a blue face saw an eye in a green face' to mean 'sun on the daisies' is a cool riddle. It's not illogical, just abstract (and it was guessable even by someone who hadn't seen sunlight in 500 years so I think it was fair!)

[existingperpetually]

Sure, Elrond is wise and knowledgeable and stuff. A healer and a warrior and whatnot.

However.

Elrond's true power is being-related-to-everyone-ever. And he has absolutely no qualms about abusing this power. Especially in Valinor.

You disagree with Elrond?

Well, tough luck. Because his three-to-five dads, assorted grandparents and myriad of cousins of various degrees are going to hear about it.

[armenelols]

Elrond as viewed by Númenoreans is hilarious. Aristocracy is one thing, and their long kept histories and direct descent from the elves.

But someone lowborn - still educated, still familiar with the stories. Faithful or not. Lifespan lower than the upper class, but longer than other humans - but that doesn't matter - thousands of years is a long time. The Roman Empire was more recent than this guy.

Because imagine the founder of your nation and its first king, who was told to have been born as the son of a bird and a star, lived to be 500, and who died 2000 years ago. Just. Has a sibling. Who is still running around. You can go visit him. You can! He's very friendly. He wrote the medical book your healers study from. He updates it religiously every other decade. You don't hear from him often because he lives fairly secluded from society and seems to prefer a quiet life but every few hundred years something batshit insane happens and he's right there. At the center of things. Pretending to be a background character, as if Sauron didn't look warily at him expecting him to turn into another Lúthien incident. Maybe he's shy?

You are a sailor. You meet him on one of your journeys to Middle Earth.

He's not shy. He's just crown-phobic. He looks like every single painting of Tar-Minyatur you've seen. He glitters under starlight. Literally. His parents are a bird and a star and you keep forgetting that's not a metaphor. Everyone is in love with him. He sings to the birds. He has had a slowburn one-sided romance going on for the past 1000 years. His crush has yet to find out but the king is running a betting pool.