What is this nature of Middle Earth thing I'm going thorough your blog trying to find our and I am Terrified.
It's a collection of hitherto unpublished Middle Earth essays by Tolkien, due for publication this autumn. There's a preview available, and there's A Lot about chronology and Tolkien trying to do the math to make the story he had already written somewhat plausible within the framework of a timeline where one elf year is at least ten human years. My favourite part of this is the note he wrote in pencil at the bottom of one essay: "This will not fit the narrative in the Silmarillion. What of Maeglin?" Even Tollers himself realises, at some level, that his timeline is completely nuts and requires olympic levels of mental gymnastics to make it work.
However, the thing that's blowing up in the fandom (because of course it is), is the fact that Tolkien also writes extensively about the elven life-cycle, including procreation:
On the other hand the act of procreation, being of a will and desire shared and indeed controlled by the fĂ«a, was achieved at the speed of other conscious and willful acts of delight or of making. It was one of the acts of chief delight, in process and in memory, in an Elvish life, but its intensity alone provided its importance, not its time or length: it could not have been endured for a great length of time, without disastrous âexpenseâ.
This seems to imply that a) elves have sex for fun and not just for childmaking purposes and b) elves fuck hard and fast.
So that's why everybody's losing their minds right now.
