Cartographic Practices Of Arda: Men

[ID: screenshot of part of a Craigslist ad. Text reads, "Make/manufacturer: Mama Goat

"Model name/number: Baby

"Size/dimensions: small"

End ID.]

saw this on a craigslist ad for baby goats

Concerning Hobbits (of Color)

Okay it’s been a whole day and I’m still angry about that hobbit casting thing, so let’s lay down some Tolkien canon here.

Fact 1: Per Tolkien, there were originally three races of hobbit. The Stoors were a small group, they were broad and stocky, they grew facial hair, they liked rivers, and their skin color is not specified, so Tolkien probably meant them to be white (but there’s no reason they have to be, since again, not specified). The Fallohides were a tiny group, they were thin, pale and tall, they were bold and good with languages, and they like trees. The Harfoots were the distinct majority, they lived in holes, they had hairy feet, and they were brown. Tolkien is super clear on this. He explicitly calls out Harfoots as having browner skin than other hobbits when describing the races and he uses phrases like “nut-brown skin” and “long brown fingers” when describing specific hobbits to back it up.

Fact 2: Britain planted its ravenous imperial flag firmly in the soil of India three centuries before Tolkien wrote The Hobbit. He knew what a brown person looked like. He would know he was not evoking a slightly darker shade of Caucasian when he said a person had brown skin.

Fact 3: Bilbo, Frodo, and all of their friends are aristocracy. Sam is the only hobbit we ever meet who is an actual laborer. In Tolkien’s time, laborers worked in the sun and middle class and aristocracy stayed inside where there was something resembling temperature control. Apart from Sam and Aragorn, no one in the Fellowship (or Company) ever voluntarily got a sunburn. If Tolkien talks about brown skin he’s talking about brown skin, not a farmer’s tan.

Where does this leave us?

Well, Tolkien says that after colonizing the Shire, the three hobbit races mingled more closely and became one. This leaves us with two options.

Option A: He’s talking about that thing that sci-fi writers sometimes do where “everyone is mixed race.” So all three races would have smeared together into a single uniform color. What color? Mostly Harfoot, aka brown. The “strong strain of Fallohide” in the Tookish and Brandybuck lines means maybe they’re white-passing, but in this scenario all hobbits are brown.

Option B: He’s talking about a more melting-pot scenario where visual racial distinctions still exist but everyone lives side-by-side in a fairly uniform culure. The Tooks/Brandybucks having a “strong strain of Fallohide” means that they are themselves remaining strains of Fallohide, and are straight-up white. Merry, half Took and half Brandybuck, is thus white (possibly part Stoor, given Brandybuck comfort with water); Pippin, half Took and half Banks, is either white or biracial. The Baggins family, sensible owners of the oldest and most venerable hobbit-hole anyone knows of, are blatantly Harfoot, making Bilbo and Frodo (half Took and half Brandybuck respectively) also biracial. Fallohides being exclusively adventurous high-class types, and the Gamgees being staid low-class homebodies with a distrust of moving water, Sam is obviously Harfoot and thus completely brown. (Smeagol, a Stoor, is probably white, but as discussed above, doesn’t have to be.) In this scenario, a minimum of three of five heroic hobbits are various shades of brown, four out of five of them could be, and most background hobbits are brown.

In conclusion, if you think all hobbits are white, you are canonically wrong. If you geek out over Aragorn wearing the Ring of Barahir, rage about Faramir trying to take the Ring, and do not even notice, much less complain, that Sam, Bilbo and Frodo are being erroneously portrayed by white guys, you need to reexamine the focus of your nerdery.

a librarian’s hoard

[ID: Digital illustration of a red dragon surrounded by their colorful hoard of books. A worn, blue scarf wraps around their neck, and a pair of gold glasses sits on their snout, held in place by a gold chain. The dragon’s lair resembles a huge, airy library with multiple levels of bookcases, tall mountains of books, and floor-to-ceiling windows revealing open sky. Decorative gold chains drape across the space. The dragon smiles as it holds a small book in its mouth, stretching to offer it to a distant human standing atop a book tower. End ID.]

i reread the commentary on Finrod Athrabeth and Andreth a while ago and I just “ Elves could die, and did die, by their will; as for example because of great grief  or bereavement, or because of the frustration of their dominant desires and purposes.” 

I see… so that’s why Feanor let Maglor go to music school lmao.

Word Count: 1781 words

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth

Characters: Elrond Peredhel, Elros Tar-Minyatur, Maglor | Makalaure, Maedhros | Maitimo

Additional Tags: One-Shot Collection, Non-Linear Narrative, Elrond-centric, Maglor-centric, Character Study, Family Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Everyone Needs a Hug, let Elrond not lose anyone 2k20

Summary: Scenes of the kidnap family through Elrond and Elros’ childhood, featuring difficult questions, buried feelings, and the fragile hope of a happy ending.

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You're laughing. The royal necromancer just lost their job, and you're laughing

Whenever my day is going bad, I remind myself my name is not Maedhros and I don't have brothers named Celegorm and Curufin. It works very well.

Hello! You have just been visited by the Crackship Fairy, as of now you will be given a crackship and you have to do good by them. Your crackship: Voronwë/Maglor

(This is much more of a gen take on their relationship than it is a shippy one, but my headcanon is that Voronwë is aro, so that’s just how it’s gonna be!)

~

It wasn’t often that Maglor came across another elf on these shores. They were rocky, dreary, generally abandoned; he liked to be alone, and this stretch of coastline was good for that. The few weary Secondborn who eked out a living here were suspicious enough to steer clear of him, and in return he did the same for them.

In ages past this land had been the border of Ossiriand, pressed up against the Blue Mountains. The mountains were still there, taller and grander than ever, but the seven rivers were sunk under the sea and the singing Laiquendi had long since fled for greener lands.

Mithlond was not too terribly far from these his favorite haunting grounds, but no matter how genial and polite Círdan was Maglor knew he was not welcome there: the Falathrim had not forgotten the ruin of Sirion. No, this was a place where he could wander alone, his mind free to catch forgotten melodies on the wind and his spirit unbound by any constraints of law or temptations of love.

And yet: here stood a simple dwelling, still clearly Noldorin in make, looking near as old as Maglor felt. He had wandered this beach a hundred times or more, and never before had he run across this little elfhome that appeared to have been here since Beleriand’s death throes had finally ceased and the lands he had bled and fought and suffered for settled under the vast ocean.

Entranced, Maglor approached the house, noting its angular shapes, the Tengwar over the door, shimmering with some faint enchantment. He shivered as his fëa brushed against it: he was not repulsed, per se, and yet he was permitted to pass through the barrier.

“Who goes there?” demanded a voice too soft for its tone.

Maglor turned around, tensing instinctively and letting his hand wrap around the hilt of his dagger. The speaker was an elf, as he had thought, though they conversed in Westron, and though his eyes did not shine with Treelight he had the stature and bearing of one of Maglor’s kin. Still, there was something a little off about him—the shell patterns on his clothing, perhaps, the shimmering blue of his blade, or the curve of his nose, which reminded Maglor strongly of a person he could not quite place. Perhaps he was of the Sindar as well as the Noldor.

“Peace,” he said slowly in Sindarin. “I mean you no harm. I was simply curious of your dwelling. I will leave you to your solitude.”

The ellon relaxed, though he did not sheath his sword. “Thank you,” he said in that soft voice. “But you have not answered my question. Who are you?” He glanced to Maglor’s cloak, tattered and torn and yet unmistakably blood-crimson. It was not the same one he had worn when he cast the Silmaril into the sea—that had long since unraveled into nothing but a painful memory—but thought Maglor no longer wore his father’s star openly, he would not abandon his Fëanárion pride, nor could he wash his hands of the blood upon them.

He could give the ellon a false name; he had done so to others in the past. But Maglor was so tired, of hiding, of running, of lying, and he did not have the heart to do so. He adjusted his grip on his dagger, knowing that if this ellon was part Sindar, there was every chance he would be met with long-sleeping anger reawoken.

And yet, still, he spoke his name.

“I am Kanafinwë Makalaurë Fëanárion,” he said, “though you may know me better as Maglor the singer; and you may wish my name had never had cause to be uttered here in the east. Certainly I wish that at times.”

“Oh.” For a moment the ellon’s resolve wavered, and then he grimaced, sighing, and sheathed his blade. “Well,” he began, switching to musical Quenya that made Maglor’s heart swell with a fondness long-forgotten, “by all I rights I ought to hate you, Fëanárion, and yet it is not often that I hear my father’s tongue spoken, especially not by a voice so lovely as yours.”

“Who was your father?” Makalaurë asked, dread coiling in his stomach. If this was another long-lost relative—

“Aranwë of Ondolindë,” said the nér, and a smile twitched at the corner of his lips. “I am Voronwë the mariner, once-friend of Tuor Ulmondil and Eärendil Morningstar.”

Voronwë—yes, he had heard that name before. A nér of Gondolin, a mariner, a friend to Eärendil and Tuor...and kinsman to Círdan, if he remembered correctly. Makalaurë shuddered, bowing his head.

“You were at Sirion,” he murmured. It was not a question.

“Not precisely,” Voronwë said. “Elwing, wife of my dear friend’s son, and her children—they were there. But I dwelt alone in a home not unlike this one, some miles away from the city, as I ever have since Tuor and Itarillë departed for the West.”

Makalaurë’s heart skipped a beat. “I—regret what was done,” he began, but Voronwë waved a hand.

“Come in,” he invited, walking past the protective enchantment around the perimeter of his little home and beckoning Makalaurë in. “That was an age long ago, and we have both suffered enough for our choices. I would speak with you, over supper, of those you called your sons—unlike Eärendil, I did not have the pleasure of seeing them grow to adulthood, and I would hear from you what they are like.”

Makalaurë took a deep breath, then nodded. Voronwë’s offer of conversation, of a meal, of companionship was more than he deserved—but he spoke truly, that he was not the same nér who pillaged Sirion and kidnapped little children. And Makalaurë could never turn down an opportunity to sing the praises of his sons, no matter how little right he had to call them that.

So he walked inside, let Voronwë lay a gentle hand on his shoulder, and let go of some small portion of his sorrow.

For Feanorian week, Miriel Serinde, in whose arms began the burning history of Noldor.

i love the silmarillion cause it starts with a group of deities chilling to lo-fi beats and it gets progressively more intense like at one point an elf literally fights off a werewolf with his teeth and it's not even the most dramatic thing that happens