Thanks for the ask! :) Someone else asked me 12, 19 and 22 as well, so this is for both of you.
The unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them:
Emeldir! It’s not that she’s unpopular, exactly. She’s just a female character in the Silmarillion, and she doesn’t appear very often at that, so all of this gets her thoroughly ignored. But I think she’s fascinating and I wish more people talked about her. (Goodness knows fans devote plenty of time and attention to male characters more obscure than she is.) I wrote a longer post about her here. There needs to be more about Emeldir!
Speaking of obscure characters—not unpopular per se, just obscure—I feel like people should pay WAY more attention to Miaulë. We need to talk about Miaulë. I love him. I’m obsessed with him. I will not rest until the whole world loves him as much as I do. I have a similar soft spot for Tevildo, and I’ve even tried justifying his inclusion in the later mythology. Which goes double for Miaulë. All hail Miaulë!
You’re mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...
I don’t really feel shame—I just enjoy things! But horrified? That’s different! Once I stayed up until literally 4am deciphering a manuscript from the LOTR movies written in the mode of Beleriand (but in English, it’s not like I actually know Elvish). Keep in mind that I didn’t read the mode of Beleriand at the time—I’m way more comfortable with the Sindarin mode and I’m alright with the Quenya mode—and I was like, “Oh, this page is in the mode of Beleriand! Well, that won’t stop me!” And I chose the middle of the night to do this?! Anyway, AFTER all that, I found a link to the transcription. But it was a fun challenge.
AND THEN I decided to read this other manuscript in the mode of Beleriand, Thorin’s letter to Bilbo (this one was written by Tolkien himself). It was even harder, because not only is it in tengwar, not only is it in the mode of Beleriand, the handwriting is also very difficult in parts AND the spelling is weird. I had so much fun. And then I was like, “What the fuck is wrong with me?” (Note: I didn’t read it with a copy of the letter in English to refer to. Oh, no. That would have been too sane.)
This was in 2020. I’ve only gotten worse since then.
Another time someone asked me, “There seem to be a lot of twins in Tolkien’s books—are there more twins in Middle-earth than in the modern world?” And then I, myself a twin, determined to answer this question definitively, made an Excel spreadsheet of all named Tolkien characters and what percentage of them are twins, and I found that the number of twins in Tolkien is about the same as we have now, or lower, depending on which characters you count. But it’s not higher! So now we know.
Another time I saw a post saying, “But are we SURE that all of Tolkien’s male Elves had long hair?” So I opened my PDF of LOTR and did a word search for “hair” and looked at all the examples. And then I opened my PDF of the entirety of HOME and did another word search for “hair” (there were over 400 mentions) and also “locks” and other synonyms, and then I looked at EVERY SINGLE ITERATION in order to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Tolkien’s male Elves have long hair. Because I’m insane, but I’m also right.
Another time I spent literally hours trying to calculate how long it would have taken Fingon to reach Angband on foot when he set out to rescue Maedhros, depending on how far he travelled each day, etc. We’re talking actual math here. Measuring distances on the map of Beleriand. Entering different variables. I was very dedicated.
Am I normal? No. Do I feel shame? Also no. Do I sometimes horrify myself nonetheless? Yes I do.
Your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores:
I love this question. It’s hard to answer because I have so many favorite parts of canon that most people ignore. (Like the entirety of the Lays of Beleriand.) Admittedly, whether this is part of canon is debatable because it’s from the Book of Lost Tales, but I absolutely love this part. For context, Ælfwine and his companions had been looking for Valinor for years and had almost given up hope of ever finding it, and then this happens:
Then none spoke for wonder and amaze, seeing deep in the gloaming of the West a blue shadow, and in the blue shadow many glittering lights, and ever more and more of them came twinkling out, until ten thousand points of flickering radiance were splintered far away as if a dust of the jewels self-luminous that Fëanor made were scattered on the lap of the Ocean… Then came there music very gently over the waters and it was laden with unimagined longing, that Ælfwine and his comrades leant upon their oars and wept softly each for his heart’s half-remembered hurts, and memory of fair things long lost, and each for the thirst that is in every child of Men for the flawless loveliness they seek and do not find.
It is IMPOSSIBLE for me to read this without getting chills, or without it bringing tears to my eyes. The blue shadows? The lights? The music? The flawless loveliness they seek and do not find? Tolkien captures such a bittersweet feeling in this passage that it’s actually excruciating, because we can’t go there. What happens next is that Ælfwine leaps from the ship and goes to Valinor, and his comrades never see him again. The reader, like Ælfwine‘s companions, is left behind—allowed to see the Undying Lands for just a moment, but never able to go there. The feeling I get from this is very similar to the feeling I get at the end of LOTR, when we catch a glimpse of Valinor through Frodo’s eyes—but that’s it. And even though it makes me sad, I love it so much and I wouldn’t wish that it be written any other way.
A ship you’ve unwillingly come around to:
Alcarondas. I don’t like the fact that Ar-Pharazôn tried to make war on Valinor, obviously, but the ship itself was pretty cool. (Sorry for answering this in such a chaotic way, but I couldn’t resist!)
