starspray | Entries tagged with writing: meta

Every so often I see discussions in fandom about the Silmarils and the One Ring that end up equating them—treating them as though they are direct parallels to one another. This always happens by way of bringing the Silmarils down to the level of the Ring, often treating characters’ refusal to surrender the one Beren and Lúthien retrieved as the result of the same kind of corrosive possessiveness that the Ring induces, which renders its bearer literally unable to give it up willingly or destroy it. This reading is not just wrong, it undermines the agency of the characters involved and undercuts the tragedy of The Silmarillion. The Silmarils and the One Ring are made by very different characters for very different purposes. They also act in the narratives of their respective stories very differently.

What do the Silmarils and the Ring have in common? They are both the titular objects of their respective books around which the major plot turns, it is true. They are both made by powerful individuals, and are desired by many different people, and when they are lost and/or stolen their makers are desperate to retrieve them. Characters die for them, and kill for them. At this extremely surface level reading they do, indeed, seem very similar. But the deeper you look at each object the more glaring differences show themselves, until you realize that they do not parallel, but rather oppose each other.

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Current Music: Beautiful Dawn - The Wailin' Jennys

I will cross-post here when I feel like dealing with the formatting but in the meantime, I have finished my Silmaril vs Ring meta! It's four thousand words long and on Tumblr and on the SWG, but I'm only gonna link to the latter:

Power & Desire: The Silmarils vs The One Ring

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Lullaby - Alessandro Moro

“The seven sons of Fëanor were Maedhros the tall; Maglor the mighty singer, whose voice was heard far over land and sea; Celegorm the fair, and Caranthir the dark; Curufin the crafty, who inherited most his father’s skill of hand; and the youngest Amrod and Amras, who were twin brothers, alike in mood and face” (Silm 77).

Celegorm, with his epithet the fair, is a source of hair controversy in the Silmarillion fandom—does Tolkien mean he is fair-haired, or that he’s just really good looking? The fact that Celegorm is here linked to, and seemingly contrasted with, Caranthir the dark suggests the former, but without another descriptor one way or the other, it’s easy to say that it’s the latter.

Thinking about this, combined with a similar discussion in Dr. Corey Olsen’s Exploring the Lord of the Rings class, got me curious about Tolkien’s use of the word ‘fair.’ Dr. Olsen asked his class’s attendees if someone could do a study of ‘fair’ in The Lord of the Rings, discounting The Silmarillion because it’s written in a different register and style, and someone did—so I decided to look at The Silmarillion myself.

For the purposes of simplicity I am splitting “fair” into two definitions: to mean beautiful/good, or to refer to hair color/complexion; and for the numbers, I am counting hits from the entirety of my Silmarillion ebook text, including the excerpt from Tolkien’s 1951 letter to Milton Waldman, “The Akallabêth,” and “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age,” and the glossary.

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For anyone interested, here is Zephen12's post on the word as used in LotR.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: In Another Life - Vienna Teng

I just realized that I have some tumblr ask memes that I want to cross-post, so here's one.

Kazaera asked for a Tolkien Meta Meme:

10. Pick a character or group who you believe is unappreciated, undervalued, or undeservedly reviled by fandom and explain why they are awesome.

I answered:

I mean, the obvious answer here is Elwing, but I feel like I’d just be repeating myself at this point. So, um…

Hey, you know who no one ever talks about? Fatty Bolger. He’s part of the Conspiracy too! He’s as good a friend to Frodo as Merry and Pippin are! He doesn’t want to leave the Shire, okay, but that shouldn’t count against him because the world outside of the Shire is a very scary place, and I think the Travelers don’t really understand that–they know it intellectually, of course–but they treat their journey like a Hobbit Walking Party right up to Bree.

But anyway, when the Ringwraiths come to Crickhollow, it’s just Fatty there. He’s alone. That’s the sort of situation where the Nazgul are at their biggest advantage, trapping someone alone in the dark, and what they’re doing as they inch closer and closer to the house is bombarding it with this like, spiritual attack, using fear and despair to try to paralyze their victims. That’s what they do on Weathertop as well–it’s a spiritual battle rather than a physical one.

But it doesn’t fully work on Fatty. He’s scared out of his mind, obviously, but he doesn’t freeze. He books it as soon as he senses something’s off, and by the time the Nazgul actually reach the door he’s already gone to find help (even though this is his first time on this side of the Brandywine so he doesn’t know the land, and it’s dark, and he’s scared!), and the Nazgul can’t stand against hobbits with their horns and torches, all of them coming together, and on their home turf.

And then, and then, when Sharkey’s Big Men come and take over? Fatty leads the resistance! He gets arrested and thrown in the Lockholes, and I can’t remember if the text says anything about what he accomplished before that, but I bet he was a pain in their asses up until they caught him!

I’m very fond of Fatty. I hope he got to live a very long and happy life after all of that.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Stay Alive - Hamilton

[transplanted from tumblr]

So I never really paid it attention before, but after the confrontation with Saruman there’s this exchange between Gandalf and Merry:

‘Well, that is done,’ said Gandalf. 'Now I must find Treebeard and tell him how things have gone.’

'He will have guessed, surely?’ said Merry. 'Were they likely to end any other way?’

'Not likely,’ answered Gandalf, ’though they came to the balance of a hair. But I had reasons for trying; some merciful and some less so. First Saruman was shown that the power of his voice was waning. He cannot be both tyrant and counsellor. When the plot is ripe it remains no longer secret. Yet he fell into the trap, and tried to deal with his victims piece-meal, while others listened. Then I gave him a last chance and a fair one: to renounce both Mordor and his private schemes, and make amends by helping us in our need. He knows our need, none better. Great service he could have rendered. But he has chosen to withhold it, and keep the power of Orthanc. He will not serve, only command. He lives now in terror of the shadow of Mordor, and yet he still dreams of riding the storm. Unhappy fool!’

It’s actually…really sad, here. Gandalf has said before that once Saruman was “as great as his fame made him,” that he was once good and wise and perhaps deserving of his place at the head of the White Council. And we’re reminded of that here, when he comes so close to accepting Gandalf’s offer—so close, and then he chooses pride and bitterness and hate, and slams the door in his own face, and we as readers are invited to pity him instead of just scorning him, even though he’s gotten exactly what he deserves, as Gandalf explicitly acknowledges.

It makes me wonder what might have happened if the hair-balance had tipped the other way, what kind of service Saruman could have given them, exactly. What would the Battle of Pelennor Fields have looked like, if both Saruman and Gandalf were there—if Gandalf had not necessarily had to choose between facing the Witchking and saving Faramir? Would Denethor have reached that point of despair at all—because Saruman has been using a palentir, so would he have recognized where Denethor was getting his information, and known what to do about it? Would Saruman have then gone with them to the Black Gates? And what about the Shire?

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: The Greatest Show - The Greatest Showman

So there's this fanfic meme on Tumblr where someone gives you a chunk of your fic and you do a dvd commentary sort of thing on it--and then vardasvapors took it and adjusted it for canon material so you're doing a close-reading instead, and I reblogged it and got an ask and I'm just gonna copy/paste what I wrote here, so I have it somewhere not-tumblr.

The ask was: "Now as has been told, one Lenwë of the host of Olwë forsook the march of the Eldar at that time when the Teleri were halted by the shores of the Great River" to "but when the Valaróma echoed in the hills, they knew well that all evil things were fled far away." ?

My response under the cut:

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Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride - Lilo & Stitch

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Entries tagged with writing: meta

Power & Desire: The Silmarils vs The One Ring

Silmarils vs The Ring

Fair vs Fair: A Meta

Of Fatty Bolger

the balance of a hair

and the beauty of Melian was as the noon

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