This!
Month: March 2015
A while back, an anon mentioned that they were scared to participate in the Silmarillion fandom. People hastened to assure them that we were a nice fandom! Friendly! Full of people to talk too! This is true. I think the problem is, though, that this is not the “Silmarillion” fandom. It’s the HoME fandom.
People are expected to know all sorts of things that aren’t in the Silmarillion, whether they create or consume. People have to know that Maedhros has red hair or that Amrod died at Losgar in some versions. People have to know Quenya names and the meaning of those names, as well as basic vocabulary (ata, ammë, elleth, etc), because they’re used often in fic. People have to know about the thorn, about Gil-Galad’s questionable parentage.
If you write something that is “wrong”, that is contradicted by something in HoME, people will correct you. Quickly. Kindly, but mercilessly. It’s not enough to have knowledge of just the Silm. It’s frightening. It shuts people out of the fandom, because they have to enter it with a huge amount of knowledge.
This is very fun. It’s very interesting and exciting. There is always more to know. Debates and all sorts of interesting headcanons go on. Politics! Economics! Morality! Mathematics! Transhumanism! Fictional theology! These are all very exciting. But the fandom can be intellectually elitist, sometimes. There is no room to really be a beginner. There is so much else going on.
lintamande was talking about feeling like an imposter, because she had only been in the fandom two years. I often feel like an imposter, because I haven’t read The Peoples of Middle Earth. I’ve only read eight out of twelve HoME books! I don’t know enough! I have lots of silm thoughts. Many I don’t type up. Some I don’t post. The ones I do post, I never tag. I am afraid that I will make a mistake, and people will Judge Me.
I read a story once, with a female Fingon. Her name was given as ” Fingwen”. I was horrified. How could this person do that? Gah! *linguistic sobbing* But really. The fic was good. Should this person be expected to know the elements were “Fin” and “gon” instead of “Fing” “on”?
Apparently, yes.Hahahaha MAN DO I DO THIS. Correct kindly (at least I try) but mercilessly, I do it all the time. But I’m like… happier, when I tell people about some knowledge they haven’t yet? I expand their views! They can be enthusiastic about minor details with me! I don’t even realise if I’m over-correcting. I try to make others see what I see, probably not always succeeding. But hey, sometimes I do. I had at least three people telling me “I hated Feanor but then I read your reply to my post and now I see him under a different light” and my reaction was “HELL YEAH HELL FUCKING YEAH”. I want to get that when I “correct” people.
I probably forgot how it may feel for a beginner. I don’t even know how to fix this issue because you can bet I will go on answering to posts with different theories, new informations and even with disagreement. But if it may help, I am theorically an “imposter” too. I only ever really read the parts of HoME that concern Feanor and the House of Finwe, and some other stuff here and there. The rest… lmao.
OP, that is pretty much the clearest identification of this fandom I’ve yet seen. XD Spot on, well done. Whether we like it or not, this corner of Tumblr really is the Tolkien Apocrypha fandom. More than half the stuff we take for granted as “true” about the Silmarillion was actually gleaned from H.o.M.E. or the Appendices or the exhaustive work of Tolkien scholars from across the decades. I don’t think I even remember finding out some of this stuff– I just absorbed it via tumblr-osmosis. 
And OH MAN, Hweanaro said it: I think if you really grilled most of us in the H.O.M.E. fandom, you’ll find that most of us are “imposters” in some way or another. XD
MOST of us have a niche. Most of us have an area or areas of expertise that we’ve expanded our knowledge on because we were restless and unsatisfied with the bare-bones information given to us in the Silmarillion-proper. I myself have read every passage that mentions either dark lord, but frequently have to look up the names of elves and UGH QUENYA, WHAT A PAIN I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU’RE SPEAKING YOU’RE ALL ORC PROTOTYPES. But the longer I stay here, the more I get excited about new topics and want to expand my information base, because other fans are super excited about their niches, and make me want to get into them! 🙂
…I’ve made a lot of friends here, and I’ve produced a lot of work here. I love this fandom and the people in it. –But I also know there are huge incompatible rifts in the fandom and all it takes is the “wrong” opinion voiced in front of a certain crowd for this oh-so-polite-and-friendly fandom to turn nasty real quick. We do tend to divide ourselves into different groups based on various polemic issues, some of them based in Tolkien Mythos and “canonicity”, and some of them based in more universal fandom topics like character diversity or female representation or problematic fetishization or responsible exploration of triggery subjects, etc. etc. etc…. THE LIST GOES EVER ON AN ON.
It is, as you say, Tremendous Fun! But it’s a prickly fandom, and the barrier to entry is high. 😦 And I wish it wasn’t! I really, really do try to be as inclusive and approachable as I can– I WANT new fans to come here and explore their ideas while they’re starting their journey, because that’s how we get NEW IDEAS, DAMNIT. And yet, I know that I’ve lost some perspective, just because this has been my exclusive fandom haunt for about two and half years now, and I’ve absorbed so much fandom opinion and canon alike that it’s quite difficult to remember what it was like before knew where all the wobbly steps were.
(…and take all this with a huge grain of salt because not only am I speaking from a limited perspective, but I have not eaten yet today),
If we are shutting out people who have only read the Silmarillion, we have a huge problem. New interpretations don’t come from just finding an Opinion Camp and settling down in it.
Getting pounced on for some canonical minutia when you’re just stretching your wings can be imagination death. There HAS TO BE some protective growth-room for new readers who want to share their ideas. If you find yourself getting ready to launch a diatribe against a new reader for an opinion they just formed about a character you’ve been stanning for years, GIVE THEM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. And for fuck’s sake, give them TIME.
I managed to avoid the Silm Correction Death by joining the fandom pretty late in the game– I’d done a lot of reading and thinking before I joined. I’d already established a pretty firm idea of what MY Arda looks like, and what’s more, I joined with a very, very concrete goal in mind: I wanted to write and draw my comic, then share my comic, then retire.
…Ahahahaha. BUT SERIOUSLY–
When I want to connect with the material I love and find a new way to explore it, I MUST step away from the fandom. Things like my comic or my drabbles and my own headcanons have to happen with a modicum of isolation, or else they are blown away by the first passing whiff of judgment. (Or… that USED to be true, but now I live in a blissful, fuckless state, where I generally don’t care what people think :D)
An important bit of advice to new fans and old?:
The idea of having a “’Verse” has been crucial to my creative boundaries as a fan. As long as I keep my ideas as safe behind the impenetrable wall of “MY ARDA ‘VERSE”, I don’t have to take any guff from canon OR fanon. It’s My ‘Verse, my rules! And I also feel less inclined to criticize interpretations that don’t jive with mine! It’s their ‘Verse, their rules! It doesn’t infringe on mine.
The Wesley!Verse is a safe place for me to create, and get in touch with what my “original” ideas are– However, what I consider ““my”” Arda ‘Verse is totally riddled with cool ideas that other people have helped me arrive at, whole segments that were developed in tandem with fellow roleplayers, or were borrowed en-masse from someone who had better-developed ideas about certain places or characters than I did! It is GOOD to mingle, if only to break out of your own niche. 🙂 But the permeability of your ‘Verse is yours to decide– how much you want to let other people reach in is up to you.
I think, maybe, we would all benefit from treating each new fandom arrival and fandom veteran alike as a distinct, mutually recognizable, Arda-‘Verse-in-development.
That’s why I think it is important, when new fans ask my opinion on something or want to know if something is “true” or not, to make a clear distinction between what is “canon” and what is “real”; meaning, this is what Tolkien wrote, but whether or not it is “real” in your given ‘Verse is entirely up to you.
–Inform when solicited, but don’t “correct”. To “correct” assumes a level of cohesiveness in canon that we really, really don’t have? :
And anyway, canon or not, this is collective mythmaking. This is a book series with no agreed-upon visual designs, no Peter Jackson movies, and more contradicting and confusing sets of canon than the New Testament.
While there is a certain pedantic joy in sitting around like a bunch of old rabbis debating whether or not the author meant this-or-that, or whether or not ONE set of books is more canonical than another, or whether or not the editor obscured some passage’s original meaning, those debates are the privilege of people who have had the time/energy/enthusiasm to chew through a whole geological strata of tomes, some of which aren’t even in circulation anymore.
You don’t have to be a HoME veteran to have a really beautiful and unique vision of the text that’s worth sharing, but if we treat the value of a new interpretation based on its understanding of the, frankly, kabbalic expanse of canon, then we are doing it wrong. Silm fans -may- actually be different from HoME fans, but WHO CARES, we should NOT BE SCARING THEM AWAY.
I mean… I understand that it can be uncomfortable for someone who’s been in the fandom for years to interact with a fan who is just starting the Silmarillion. It’s like… watching a puppy go up stairs, or else it’s like watching an enthusiastic bull in a china shop: You either want to help them up to the good bits faster, or steer them away from the delicate bits that you worked so hard to arrange.
Sometimes the impulse to be a gatekeeper is strong. But what, and who are you keeping out? What are you keeping them from? If all you’re protecting is your sense of superiority, then nah friend, sit down.
Anyway, thank you OP for speaking up about this. I really want there to be a place for everyone in the Tolkien community.
Tonight I dreamed about minimalistic elves in Tirion rebelling against the gaudy, blingy style of the city, wearing black, high neck robes and designing houses with two pieces of furniture in each room.
*SLAMS FIST ON TABLE*
I AM HERE FOR PROGRESSIVE ART ELVES
*looms over bath* I won’t tell if you won’t. ~Sauron
*pales, gripping the side of the tub, while breathing slowly through his nose*
“Get. Out!”
The sharp, broken point slammed into the socket of his eye, pain bursting hot and red through his skull. Sauron screamed like a burnt jungle cat, rearing back with blood on his teeth. He recoiled off his opponent, not giving Maedhros time to gain advantage, even if the elf had not been choking for air. He could feel the knife still in the meat of his shoulder, stinging brine dripping from his eye.
Panting, the huge maia rolled to his feet, retreating. Tussles between lions seldom lasted this long when they had nothing to gain… It was not worth the injuries he could sustain to bring one elf to submission. This was not worth the grief.
He spat blood on the floor, growling as he wrenched the blade from his back. The wound shrank even as the steel left it.
“You will never—” he hissed, “—never have the satisfaction of meeting me again in the flesh, Lefthander. You will die in my shadow; my armies will march over your bones, and no one will live to mourn your nameless corpse.” The knife clattered to the floor as the Dark Lord turned his back.
Air rushed back in his lungs as a flood and the weight keeping him pinned down left. The Maia’s scream echoed in his ears, almost as loud as their ringing. He didn’t even had the energy left to feel any dark satisfaction, it was almost instinct alone that made him roll over and raise to his knees and then to a crouched position. His hand slamming to the floor to stabilise himself against the dizziness.
It’s years of war and captivity moving his body more than any conscious effort: you never let the enemy know how spent you are.Despite his still flickering vision and how every breath seemed to cut the inside of his throat. Despite the way every muscle in his body seemed to tremble under the skin and the knowledge he had nothing more to give, all his strength spent in the last effort, Maedhros felt the insane impulse to raise from the crouched position he had managed to get in and throw himself against the Maia again. Just for the satisfaction of hearing that scream again, to smell his blood spilling.
No, no sense in getting himself killed now for a few minor wounds. A dark part of his mind sooted him. Told him how his vengeance required a plan, weapons and time. All the time it could take.
Maedhros could feel his face swelling around the wounds inflicted by Sauron’s teeth and his shoulder pulsed with an odd ache. Blinding pain would come later. As soon he could bring his body to understand the danger had passed.
Sauron’s words made a him raise his head, his eyes flared with a white hot light then a low, croaking, cackle came from his lips. “I do not think so Thauron. Your armies couldn’t kill me when a stronger master than you was behind them. No matter how long it will take me, I will have my vengeance against you.”
The foundations of the room rattled and mortar dust sifted from the ceiling as Sauron’s fist collided with the wall, stones loosened as if a hammer had stuck them. His back trembled, taut and corded with unreleased tension.
“Then we are both miserable fools! Useless relics with nothing else to sustain us than the hope of some… pyrrhic retribution for losses too great to be paid for.” He laughed. “How far we have fallen…”
The rage that had galvanized him moments before suddenly left him, cutting the strings of his vigor. Shoulders broad and gleaming as bronze grew slack, and the great Maia braced his weight against the wall, neither turning to his foe nor leaving as he had planned.
The one trouble with RPing both halves of my OTP is that I don’t often get a chance to have them actually interact with each other XD
…my god I just had the coolest Finrod/Tol-en-Gaurhoth/Sauron cinematics go through my brain…. *o*// please pretty pictures stay so i can put u on papers!!
(It’s actually been a while since I let my brain do… that thing it does when it makes a fully rendered movie of a scene that I’m only semi-concsiously directing. I feel like I need a better verb for this phenomenon… less vague that “imagined”, less passive than “dreamed”, but less clinical than like, “headcanoned”? I guess “daydreamed” is there, but that sounds so silly… :[ )
{if it’s not too late, because why not} To the Bloated, Gloating, Corpse-Munching Foe of the World. Look to the red hill. Try me. Wishing you a Swift and Agonising Demise, the Lord of Dor Cuarthól.
“Happy am I to let you wait, ignorant and cold, with your ass in the sod, Master of Fate."
The note, scrawled on dried skin, is delivered from the hand of a scrawny young waif with freckled skin and short-cropped hair the color of fox fur."I was bidden give this to you upon a red hill, Lord Turambar. I could not refuse,” they said, with something crooked in the tilt of their mouth.
=
A second of confusion whirled in which the facsimile creature darted between man to man, unable to keep them all spell-bound at once. It was the axe or Turin, and in the instant in which they had to decide, they chose the axe.
Raza— who was no longer Raza the message-bearer, but the author of it— twisted their ragged head around to avoid the stroke as well they could, shrieking in an awful, gut-wrenchingly human way as the blade sunk far into their collar bone. Such a scream— a child’s scream, or a fox’s scream, the kind that sends mothers out into their yards at night, sick with worry… but as the wound poured forth smoke and the axe that had split the flesh grew warped and red and white with heat, the scream died, swallowed whole and exhaled again as laughter, hoarse and echoing.
The cut was suddenly dwarfed by the size of the limb it marred— not a thin, bird-boned limb, but a tarnished gold pillar. Melkor shook off the small, stunned men that had laid hands on him, sending them tumbling far across the plateau.
“How disappointing. You’re every bit as dull as your father. I’d hoped for better sport…” The Vala cracked their neck and joints loudly, stretching out from the confining body they’d held. Dabbing the now small wound with one finger, Melkor winced, and glanced down at Androg. “You are a feisty one… why aren’t you one of mine? You’d be better rewarded in my service than here, scavenging for roots in winter.”
Turning their eyes back to Turin, the Vala clucked their tongue and jabbed the point of one claw into the unlucky man’s chest. “After I went through all the trouble to make a body and come down to visit, you go and spoil my fun!” They sighed. “Well… the jig is up now. You invited me, and I’m here. What was it you wanted to try, Lord of Bandits?”
The instant Morgoth’s claw was out of the way, Túrin sprang. The world around him bled a thousand different colours, colours he had never seen and, had he been paying them a scrap of his attention, would not have believed existed. Like the string of a crossbow held too tight on the latch, he was not released but snapped. Never had he been so conscious of his every motion, the dormant power of his muscles and the deadly weight of the sword in his hand – and never had such things been so physically painful to bear.
Rage, to Túrin was not a red haze. It was colour, and noise, and power, and pain – and it was hate. Incomprehensible, irresistible hate.
That hate powered him forward at a dead sprint and hurled him as high as his muscles could fling him, madness-made-man intending to drive a sword (little more than a splinter, comparably) into any and every part of his nemesis.
The Vala, who sat cross-legged on the red hill just as Raza had, though now six times the height, swatted the offending mortal angrily as one might shoo off a biting fly.
Túrin’s greatsword left trickling wounds that glittered the brightest copper on Melkor’s thorny leg.
“Ouch–! You rude little tick! I’ve never met anyone so eager to die! Thank your father for the ill-fortune that makes you more amusing to keep alive!”
From where Túrin had fallen, Melkor plucked the irritating weapon and snapped it between thumb and finger. “Now what will you do? Something sensible, perhaps?”
*looms over bath* I won’t tell if you won’t. ~Sauron
*pales, gripping the side of the tub, while breathing slowly through his nose*
“Get. Out!”
Suddenly the pressure of Sauron’s arm on his stump wasn’t there anymore, its loss quick enough to unbalance Maedhros and force him to compensate by pressing his right thigh against the Maias’ body. Thankfully the frenzy of the fight dulled every other feeling the sensation of his enemy’s naked skin against such a vulnerable part of his body gave him.
Desperately trying to move his arm and slide on the floor the Noldo attempted to prevent what he knew would be his opponent’s next move, even as a part of him knew it for a doomed effort.
Gritting his teeth he gave the knife a final twist, rotating it almost completely inside the flesh, making sure it would rip most of the muscle it was embedded in, weakening the limb further. A dark satisfaction cursing through his body at his enemy’s sounds of distress.
Then a spark of pain made the Noldo grunt as the tingling ache of pinched nerves spread like a line of fire from the inside of his elbow to the tip of his fingers, making his muscles spasm, go lax and then cramp in an unnatural position.
A half-shout of pain came rom his lips as his arm was twisted and slammed on the floor. The scars left by his father’s jewel becoming numb as his hand smarted.
Maedhros could feel desperation rise in his mind with every movement of the powerful body over him, like a black tide, ebbing and flowing in synchrony with the weight pinning him down. A trickle of blood fell from the Maia’s shoulder on the Fëanorion’s neck, making the sweetish reek of corruption become a mist that surrounded him burning the inside of his nose. The black liquid slid down further and mixed with the water dripped from his body on the marble floor, making it warmish and slick.
The Maia’s face came near to his enough that Maedhros could feel his hot breath on his cheeks and, from behind the wet strands of hair, could see his eyes burning.
He saw it thanks to the cold haze of the fight, the almost cranky frustration in the Maia’s gaze. A sneer twisted Maedhros’ lips. Once such a display of weakness might have given him a measure of satisfaction, yet now whatever he might have felt was drowned in an almost euphoric hate and despairing rage.
Refusing to let him win any ground the Noldo didn’t turn his head, looking him straight in the eyes as he twisted his muscles, trying to slide on the floor and make Sauron loose purchase, but the weight on his chest was unwavering. As an iron shackle.
Then the Maia sprung into action.
Maedhros had barely the time to begin turning his head before Sauron’s teeth sank into the flesh of his face. In an instant the smell of his own blood drowned even the Maia’s reek and the Fëanorion felt an ice cold spray fall from his lips and cheek as the skin burst under Sauron’s teeth. The arm falling heavy against his neck cut his breath almost completely. It was as if every pain had disappeared; Maedhros could feel the other’s tongue touching his skin and in the red glow cast by his hair the world started to become dark around the edges.
A guttural muffled scream of rage and hate tore from his chest. With a strength borne of despair the Noldo clasped the Maia’s hips between his thighs in an unyielding grip and, with an effort that made his sight go completely black he was able to arch his hips up from the floor in the same moment that his stump flew towards the Maia’s face, hitting it with all the strength he could muster in his right eye. He felt the protruding bone fit into the orbit and kept pushing as he suddenly twisted his hips left, using all of the strength left in his body in a last desperate attempt to reverse their positions.
The sharp, broken point slammed into the socket of his eye, pain bursting hot and red through his skull. Sauron screamed like a burnt jungle cat, rearing back with blood on his teeth. He recoiled off his opponent, not giving Maedhros time to gain advantage, even if the elf had not been choking for air. He could feel the knife still in the meat of his shoulder, stinging brine dripping from his eye.
Panting, the huge maia rolled to his feet, retreating. Tussles between lions seldom lasted this long when they had nothing to gain… It was not worth the injuries he could sustain to bring one elf to submission. This was not worth the grief.
He spat blood on the floor, growling as he wrenched the blade from his back. The wound shrank even as the steel left it.
“You will never—” he hissed, “—never have the satisfaction of meeting me again in the flesh, Lefthander. You will die in my shadow; my armies will march over your bones, and no one will live to mourn your nameless corpse.” The knife clattered to the floor as the Dark Lord turned his back.
R.I.P. Ashely-Huber coal breaker. 1938-2014
Sadly these are the best photos I have of this place from 2011. Never made it back to re-shoot this location. Now it’s being demolished as we speak.
“…but Tilion was a hunter of the company of Oromë…”
It occurs to me that Celegorm and Tilion probably knew each other/were friends during the years of the Trees?
haha so okay, Celegorm not only knew the moon, he probably had all kinds of shit on the moon.
I kinda think this would be like finding out one of your frat bros is a congressman now or something? (Like “Tooter? OH MAN, I rushed with him! I once found him face down in a pile of – he makes LAWS now?”)
Anyway so I can imagine all the Elves having this profound moment when they see the moon for the first time, but Celegorm just like squints and there’s a dawning recognition, and then maybe he cracks up. “Holy shit, is that Tilion? Tilion, who got wasted on moonshine one night and hunted his own left foot for five hours? Tilion, who swore he was so fast he could steal whiskers from a squirrel and the squirrel nearly took his fingers off? He’s still missing the last knuckle of his right middle finger, btw. Tilion, who once got sick into the Valaroma and Orome hung him up in a pine tree for five days? Oh man. Good luck with your tides and shit.”
“My first boyfriend turned into the moon.”
“That’s rough buddy.”
god yes
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 