Schlagwort: silmarillion

Replies to the Vegetation Post

@thepioden I love the idea of Ulmo ensuring the continuation of life withing the water (and I can’t believe I totally ignored that part :0) Would also explain why Cuivienen seems to take such a central place in Elvish cultural heritage/nostalgia. Personally I have a hard time imagining the Elves cultivating lifestock at the time, but it’s certainly possible (and the more I think about it the more likely it gets, after all it took a long time for Orome to find them), and I can imagine them growing some of the water-based plants you mentioned. And anything involving prehistoric megafauna is great!

@ivanaskye The chemotrophs/chemotrophic autotrophs idea and the giant funghi towers are amazing!! And of course someone noticed the hole with “if the Elves had a carnivorous diet what would the animals eat”, but tbh I just liked the notion that the Elves’ diet at the time resembled Gollum’s Idk why. I think the stasis is still less of a problem than constant winter would be, because then they have something to eat at least. But while I like the ‘nomadic Elves’ thing, I believe they actually stayed at Cuivienen for a long time until the journey to Valinor began, so I prefer the ‘Ulmo kept the ecosystems in bodies of water alive’ idea (see above). Chemosynthetic autotrophs as the bottom of the food chain make a lot of sense, though funghi can also use organic waste (not sure if that’s the right word in English, basically I mean dead things) as a food source. Those organisms wouldn’t die out at once, but they might be at an evolutionary disadvantage compared to other plants because of some other factor, so that’d explain why there’d be only a few of them around in the next Ages.

@vardasvapors yes the remnants of the Lamps being involved fits perfectly

So the solutions to the oxygen problem are: cyanobacteriae and algae thanks to Ulmo, bacteria that produce oxygen as a waste product from methane, and my own version, the oxygen from the trees in Aman “spreading” to Middle-Earth (with help from Manwe). I’m not going to pick one, it’s all headcanon material now. And of course, there are areas in which magic (Yavanna’s, Melian’s) keeps thing alive and out of stasis too – if those are proportional in size (compared to the rest of ME) and productivity to the modern rainforests (compared to rest of our world), it’s fine.

And @nipahgirl you mentioned that there would’ve been enough oxygen left over from the time of the Lamps, but (according to a timeline I found on tolkiengateway) over 14000 sun years passed between the destruction of the lamps and the creation of the Sun, and I’m fairly certain the oxygen would’ve run out in that time, so the other options would probably work better by then.

Vegetation in Middle-Earth before the Sun: A meta that should be written by a botanist instead

Obviously starlight is most likely not enough for photosynthesis. (Of course, there has been no
need for such a plant to evolve in the real world…)

What we know: There were plants everywhere during the Spring of Arda, thanks to the Lamps. After their destruction, Yavanna grieved because their growth was “stayed”, and she “set a sleep
upon many things that had arisen in the Spring, so that they should not age”.

There is, however, a mention of growth in dark Beleriand – Nan Elmoth where Elwe and Melian
met and “the trees of Nan Elmoth grew tall and dark before they […]”. Hmm. Of course, that could be an exception due to Melian’s presence, seeing as it’s also mentioned how Doriath is a place of “life and joy” because of her, in contrast to most of Beleriand, and Niphredil blooms there when Luthien is born.

So, the explanation is that the vegetation is under the Sleep of Yavanna, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few things to consider:

– Yavanna kept the plants from dying, and if that means they were frozen in time, the Elves could presumably eat them, though they wouldn’t grow back. If “Sleep” means they were like our plants in winter, nutrition becomes more problematic. Their diet might have to be mostly carnivorous, maybe supplemented with roots and nuts or fruit remnants. (Again, since none of it grows back, they’d have to forage and put themselves in danger more and more.)

– Also, there’d be funghi. Lots and
lots of funghi, possibly everyone’s main food source.

– I’m also worried
about the oxygen – the ‘easiest’ explanation I can think of
is that the trees in Aman produced it and Manwe made sure
it was distributed to Middle-Earth, too. (Sounds better than ‘the
Elves didn’t need oxygen’, anyway.)

– Some plants could be getting glucose from somewhere else and transforming
it into other chemicals they need, more like heterotrophs. Maybe the
soil is just full of glucose at the time, courtesy of Yavanna. They’d have pale or unusually colored leaves.

– Any exceptional plants that managed to adapt to the darkness could have died out soon after the Sun rose. Which could have been
hard to get used to for the Elves and possibly Dwarves of
Middle-Earth. Imagine desperately missing your favourite plant or mushroom that used to be really common, went extinct because of the Sun and may or may not exist in Aman but the damn Noldor can’t tell you because they had so much other stuff to eat they never paid attention to the thing you’re describing (this could be part of Eöl’s villain origin story…)

Another reason why Beren is a sweetheart:

Remember Gorlim, and in particular how he is remembered as “the Unhappy”?

Beren was the only survivor of his dad’s heroic last stand group, and the only one to see the “wraith of Gorlim” and receive his warning. Which means he must have been the one who relayed that part of the story to the Elves or other Edain, who then wrote songs and histories about it. Given the detailed description of Gorlim’s backstory, his reasons for the betrayal and the emphasis on the mitigating circumstances, the most likely in-universe explanation is that Beren made sure he would be viewed sympathetically.

“The Unhappy” is not a positive epithet, of course, but it’s a lot more flattering than some of the other possibilities. Gorlim is a far more sympathetic
character than other notable traitors like Maeglin or Grima, and I know it’s because he actually was a better person. But in-universe, the main reason anyone would know all that has to be Beren’s decision to tell his story this way, even though he lost the last of his family and companions because of that betrayal. Many people would not have been as kind to Gorlim’s memory in his place, even considering his obvious regret and the attempted post-mortem warning.

Caranthir the Slandered: Narrative Bias, Cross-Cultural Alliances, and Fëanor’s Angriest Son

dawnfelagund:

In recent weeks, Caranthir’s characterization in The Silmarillion has come up a couple of times and led me to rant about how Caranthir’s description in The Silmarillion is inconsistent with how we actually see his character behaving. This would indicate bias on the part of the narrator.

If you’re not familiar with my theory on historical bias in The Silmarillion, here’s a quick primer before I dive into how the narrator expresses bias against Caranthir and why. Tolkien always imagined his stories as being told or authored by an in-universe character. In the case of The Silmarillion,for decades he assigned the authorship of much of it–including the Beleriand chapters of the Quenta–to a loremaster of Gondolin named Pengolodh; references to Pengolodh were stricken from the published text by Christopher Tolkien. However, the evidence of that narrator remains in the form of bias: who is discussed in the text and the kind of treatment they receive. I’ve compiled and looked at data around mentions of characters, descriptions of realms, death scenes, and accounts of battles, and in each instance, the data shows a strong bias toward people and groups that would have been favored by someone from Gondolin. (Some of my data can be found in my article Attainable Vistas; I am working now on putting the rest together to hopefully have it published also at some point.)

Looking at individual characters and the disparity between how they are described and what they actually do in the story also reveals bias. This is particularly egregious in the case of Caranthir.

Caranthir the Dark

The Silmarillion says very little about Caranthir. He is mentioned only 24 times (not counting mentions in the “Index of Names”), the least of any of the sons of Fëanor except Amrod and Amras. Yet the first time we see him act independently of his brothers, Pengolodh immediately applies a damning label to him:

But Caranthir, who loved not the sons of Finarfin, and was the harshest of the brothers and the most quick to anger, cried aloud … (“Of the Return of the Noldor,” emphasis mine)

The Fëanorians are not exactly sweetness and gentleness in The Silmarillion. To be named the harshest of this particular brood is notable.

Additionally, Caranthir is given the epithet “the dark,” a seeming corroboration of Pengolodh’s observation of his temper. According to The Shibboleth of Fëanor, this epithet derives from his father-name Morifinwë (dark Finwë), and we know from Tolkien that the root mor- and being described as “dark” is not generally a compliment. In this case, though, the epithet is not a comment on his temperament; rather, according to Shibboleth, it is because “he was black-haired as his grandfather” (HoMe XII, p. 353). His mother-name Carnistir, meaning “red-face,” also could be construed as a comment on his temper … except that it also remarks on his resemblance to a relative, in this case “the ruddy complexion of his mother” (p. 353). But because none of the etymology of his name is explained in The Silmarillion and he’s just stuck with the unqualified epithet “the dark,” his epithet suggests that there is a consensus that he has a tempestuous, difficult personality.

What’s interesting, though, is that even though we’re told this about Caranthir, it never particularly bears out in the story. Yes, in this scene, we see him rashly rebuke Angrod for what he sees as an overreach. (Pengolodh dwells overlong on the reaction to Caranthir’s outburst, just in case you missed the message that what he said was completely inappropriate and just plain wrong.) But this also seems to be a one-off instance. We don’t see him behave this way again.

Keep reading

irreverentecthelion:

silm characters in a horror movie

fëanor: convinces everyone to go into the haunted house

thingol: stays tucked up safe at home but dares beren to follow fëanor and co.

amrod: doesn’t make it past the opening credits

turgon: *repeats “this can’t be happening” ad infinitum*

lúthien: is coming up with a wildly elaborate escape plan while everyone else is freaking out

curufin: loftily taunts the villain and is promptly killed mid-taunt

celegorm: is Smart enough to try the same thing as curufin about five minutes later, with the same result

glorfindel: spends the first half of the movie calming everyone down. then has a ridiculous slapstick death involving hair and household appliances

ecthelion: charges at the villain yelling at the top of his voice. it doesn’t go well.

maglor: last man standing

finarfin: at home eating popcorn and watching netflix the whole time

It’s so weird to think about how the Elves (especially Noldor) probably have calendars that show the anniversaries of the days when the moon and the sun first rose.

Assuming they are right about the Edain being created at the first sunrise, they actually know when the “birthday” of Mankind is. Now that I think about it, I like the idea of some Elves deciding to honor their allies by celebrating that day, and the Edain just being really confused at first. Then they feel like they are finally getting an appreciation of how old the Elves really are that old, just as some of the Elves begin to sing the precursor of the tra-la-lally songs of Rivendell.

Sudden theory about the sinking of Beleriand

misbehavingmaiar:

For use in future projects:

Continents don’t just sink, they’re not floating landmasses; but they can be covered by rising sea levels.

What’s a cause of rising sea levels? Melting glaciers.

Where does Morgoth live? Where all the glaciers are. 

Melkor’s forces are entrenched and burrowed all throughout the Iron Mountains. He’s got the whole north to himself, the reaches of Everlasting Cold; the opposing armies can’t even get past Thangorodrim, let alone get into all the nooks and crannies, the hiding places and secret strongholds that are scattered throughout the mountains. So, the best way to wreck his complete shit all in one pass is to simply melt the icecaps– with the help of Arien or Varda or Aulë or Ulmo or all of them.

The mountains become totally uninhabitable. The orc armies are trapped, buried in avalanches and drowned in mud, or forced to flee South, pushing Melkor’s forces into the waiting armies of the Valar. 

When the great forges flood, they explode catastrophically. The subterranean levels of Angband fill with water.

The flooding doesn’t stop once the war is over; the great thawing of the North can’t be reversed. Melkor was camped out in the highest elevation in Beleriand, everything else is downstream. 

Beleriand doesn’t sink in a day, it takes its time.

Ossiriand doesn’t stand a chance as the seas rise, Doriath is encircled by water and finally submerged;  even the Encircling Mountains and the ruins of Gondolin are eventually swamped, waterlogged, becoming a lake of brown water. 

The weather changes. Mudslides ruin the hills and mountains. The rivers back up and overflow with brackish sea water, killing all the freshwater life. Forests die, are uprooted, and swept away. 

Everything turns to mud and logjams and floating corpses long before it is taken into the sea. 

Elves scramble to save what they can of their history from water damage and mildew, but much is destroyed before it can be carried to safety. And the past seems less and less worth saving, buried in the mud and volcanic ash and grey rain.

The migration east is weary and cold; men and dwarves suffer from the constant wetness in their boots and clothes, while the Eldar suffer unthinkable loss in their souls. The remaining umaiar and Melkor’s creatures slink over the mountains wherever they can, masterless, their fires dulled to dying embers.

It is a long time before the refugees of Beleriand find reason to be joyful again.   

I need a Numenor AU in which Ar-Pharazon dies, whether because of an accident or an “accident”, and Tar-Miriel finally becomes Queen for real.

Which is good for the Faithful, but everything can still go horribly wrong Sauron is already there and a Respected Advisor with enough followers to start a civil war if she attempts to arrest or exile him.

I think Tar-Miriel would try to avoid a war if at all possible, but obviously getting rid of Sauron is still a necessity for her – what she needs is more supporters and a good plan that he either won’t immediately see coming or won’t be able to counteract and look I’ve found her first major problem.

It would start with a tense political situation that is really uncomfortable for both sides. Tar-Miriel has more power than ever before but not quite enough to do what she really wants, while Sauron has to adjust his plans to accommodate for losing the monarch’s support. Since the chance of convincing Miriel to cooperate with him is somewhere between minuscule and none (depends on which version of Miriel this is), he will have to turn to the nobility and possibly the common people. Hopefully, whatever he does won’t forever discredit all future reformers, democrats, socialists, communists and/or revolutionaries of Middle-Earth.

I believe a civil war will happen eventually anyway, the question is when and how it starts. Also, Sauron and the former King’s Men probably won’t manage to organize an attack on Aman, at least not unless they win the civil war without major losses. That means the Valar will have to handle the situation somehow without asking Eru to help, so there’s a good chance Numenor won’t drown (yet). Unless of course Miriel’s side starts losing and she decides to evacuate to Middle-Earth or something. Although I actually want her to win. I’m not sure what kind of effect Numenor’s continued existence might have on 3rd Age events, though.