I'm going to start this Silmarillion livetweet thread with the MOST important thing, out of principle. I'm in love with this passage. It fascinates me to think that built into the very fabric of this world is sorrow, but it's this tranformative sorrow...

and iluvatar said oh you think you're special, melkor? with your independence and your Special Little Thoughts? haha, psych.

In all seriousness, I love that even the source of Melkor's later evil is not actually bad, it's this deliberately created thirst to do and urge to know and "like, hurry up guys"; but it degenerates into chaos from malicious selfishness and pride. it's VERY iblis of him.

also laughing that I was talking about this yesterday, trying to pinpoint the source of creating art freely, even disregarding limits, but remaining 'good' vs stepping outside of certain limits wrongfully and i found this amazing bit in a letter tolkien wrote where he

basically outlines exactly that, even using the machine-image/device to talk about how love for the world & adding to the world is the root of the problem, but it's not actually the source... that's my reading. idk. anyway, ONWARDS!

eru really said "psych" in longform on EVERY other page of this section. and I like the note of fondness throughout, it's kind of sweet.

tolkien saying that the world that is, ie reality, exists suspended in the void but that it is not of the void, is really making my classical av*cennan/arist*telian physics synapses fire

In the age of ancients the world was unformed, shrouded by fog. A land of gray crags, archtrees and everlasting dragons. But then there was fire and with fire came disparity. Heat and cold, life and death, and of course, light and dark.

magic vs machine? "strange" that the elves to tolkien capture this more than the dwarves, when its source seems to be perfectly found in aulë. tfw your antisemitism bleeding into your work disrupts your own metaphor.

it also feels like this became far more literal and allegorical (he tosses once in his grave) in lotr itself, with saruman and sauron taking the reigns of big bads, and esp with the marring of the shire, than something JUST about our human tendency towards "sub-creation" idk

ok i love this conceptually, like the idea of being clothed of the world but not of it so fundamentally that it's akin to changing form since the world is just material you can forge is fascinating, 100%, but melkor stripping naked to bother the elves in valinor would be SO funny

"therefore the valar may walk, if they be unclad..." that part. it's beautiful! it's scary! it's absolutely frightening! i also think it's funny

fëanor: i smell sulfur
melkor: heeeheee i have poot the moshroom in his tea! he shall never know it was mee!!!
fëanor: that biptch melkor was here, i just know it

i love, love, love that melkor is just fundamentally depicted as infertile and impotent, bc he wasn't supposed to be at all. he did that. "go, girl! give us nothing!" etc

maybe my dark souls/dragon age lore documents are still strong in my mind but this set off alarm bells that it did not set off before

oh i forgot to add this to the thread but here again: art as literally the forming thing in the legendarium. he's even using storytelling terms about the building of his world; the creation of the world was just telling a story.

melkor: i have chosen a rival among you
everyone, lazing around on couches: bruh, it's ramadan, chill. it's relaxation. calm down. eh-stop screaming
melkor: I HAVE CHOSEN /SEVERAL/ RIVALS AMONG YOU. VARDA, AULE, I HATE YOU!!!

melkor: *screaming in the void somewhere about his thoughts being Special*
namo: should i tell him?
manwe, feeling a little rude today: nah.

the thread got messed up but i'm NOT BUDGING ON THIS BEING INTENSELY ROMANTIC AND FASCINATING. ulmo and nienna are both such poetic figures

shakes tolkien: nienna is part of the fëanturi and you'll admit this now

i always laugh at this description of tulkas. i imagine it means he's an escalator and an enabler, and annoying in a sweet way.

did he know arabic? nahar if it's pronounced the way i imagine it to be, means daytime

tolkien: this thing is beautiful and fascinating and it has darkness to it, like light, and it is uncontrollable and wild and terrifying and beloved to those who behold it
melkor: thanks i hate it :/

no one likes you melkor, go away. stop INVADING THE TEXT

melkor came to fight lexi @ahsokatanos in particular and she will wreck him

ossë: dude i wanna take part in the marring of arda it sounds like good fun but dude my wife said no
uinen, holding a baseball bat covered in nails: i said no
melkor: omg youre just gonna LISTEN--
ossë: dude she said no :/

tolkien found the ocean EXPLICITLY romantic and i can only imagine the relationship between uinen and osse after this; i imagine this applies to her too now, doesn't it? like he's lovable and loving but there's that part of him that has gone too far, he didn't come back the same

imagine a story where melkor was smart

darkness being this neutral space in the world that melkor sinks into as a last resort to when he can't control light, can't do anything of use, can't manage a THING, is fascinating to me. bc it means he corrupted something already there

imagine remaining loyal to something that made you into a balrog. could nOT be me. u can't even do anything u just burn and burn and yell and shout and raise a fuss over nothing. heavens. this is why i support orc rights; no one should live like that

urgh, i love this. i love yavanna.

CUTE COUPLE CUTE COUPLE

this is proto legolas/gimli tbh; gimli wielding an axe in the forests and telling legolas not to worry, he wouldn't touch a tree: look back to THIS

doe's yavanna and nienna working together to invent giant serpents that get twisted into dragons agenda strengthens

*yavanna voice* sick of this guy

varda, nienna, and yavanna really are the best characters in the first part. look at this from varda! LOOK AT HER!! (i daydream about how nienna works behind the scenes in all the events, bc she's one of the mightiest but she just lingers back, advises, and shapes)

gandalf learned most from her, and i think that's honestly so cool

varda: his vibes are off
manwe: we haven't even spoken to the guy yet, look, the whole world is a void. just give him a chance
melkor: starts screaming
varda: vibes. off. kill it

i'm always, always, so freaking sad about orcs

picking up from that woefully small comment that encompasses too many of my feelings, thoughts, and misgivings: I am reading the section where the first elves journey to the west, and I am always struck by just how much of tolkien's legendarium is built on ruins and destruction.

an entire piece of this fictional map he creates, beleriand, is populated and destroyed. how much of this world is just... destroyed before the story even begins fascinates me; the story is actively concerned with creating landmarks & ruins in its landscape as it goes

I'm also one of those people who is fond of that storytelling style that jumps in between timelines and events; past and present. an event takes place here, where, incidentally, many years in the future, another event will take place. but THAT is a story for another time...

in love with the idea that they stood for human years just staring at each other; melian can stay for this witchcraft.

i'm always filled with like a little discomfort and unease, as probably intended, when i think of the elves left behind. the language surrounding them is grim to say the least, and hopeless, but especially this section where the people of elwë search for him loyally and

just miss their chance to see Ulmo and see Valinor. like. anyone else have intense anxiety about it? well done, etc but oh my gosh the passages about those elves really tug on my heart. even the happy-ish middle for the Teleri thanks to uinen and ossë is filled with such longing

gonna be an ossë and uinen stan now, bc tolkien keeps telling me how dark and turbulent and yet beautiful and enchanting the sea is and i'm like OK! YEAH! LEXI, THIS IS FOR YOU

the sea is inherently and explicitly romantic! points at ossë. he told me.

i said i'd keep an eye out on the language trees this time, didn't i? i remember telling one of you i would. observe! the vanyar's speech becoming isolated from a form that eventually became not just written but constantly updated and reinvented... thanks tolkien

the noldor are my faves honestly; this is so exciting. the vanyar were favored? manwe and varda favored the vanyar? excuse me?

the way the noldor are described to be "changeful in speech," + their connections to aulë and physical creation absolutely fascinates me. ALSO NOT TO BE A CLASSICAL ARABIC POETICS ACADEMIC BUT they had a love of words is genuinely so reminiscent of the ancient arabs who collected

strange and unusual words from tribe to tribe, measuring their worth and skill amongst each other by observing who could use the most obscure but viable words, and who had learned and learned to use and analyze the most unusual vocabulary. i love arabic.

honestly my nerdanel/feanor thoughts are reanimating. the contrast between them, the fraught tension, the separation. i'm just obsessed with the messiness of it, and i think nerdanel is so amazing.

the fact that fëanor is associated with fire, with aulë, with machinery and creation, and then marries a woman who is HIS OPPOSITE, who preferred to "understand minds rather than to master them"... it sums up about half of tolkien's villain-creation process

ok not really his opposite, they were both artists of the highest caliber, but she was really his opposite in temperament and wisdom, and i'll say it over and over

the angst of it...

finally, the boyband/sibling/final fantasy party

backtracking to point out that all this is just to say that fëanor is rude, handsome, and intolerable

genuinely love everything about this; i mean, i've had enough of this guy. but his pathetic angst is so emotionally fulfilling to me

glory!!

it's never explicitely said, iirc, but i imagine through all this varda is exactly in tulkas and ulmo's camp. her husband doesn't comprehend evil, but she's tried to pick fights with evil deliberately. her eyes see. all 16 of them see!!!

first of all, the ROMANCE of that last line. he's an arrogant idiot but he loves and respects his wife, i think that's cute. second: how silly is melkor trying to kiss and tell only for feanor to walk right up in front of everyone at the teaparty and call him a stinky liar

my brain is all nerdanel rn, please enable me

feanor: i dont listen to ANYONE
nerdanel:
feanor: i listen to her a little, for as long as my mind can handle the weight and pain of common sense. and then i have no choice but to turn my brain off

listen i'm not going to be RUDE to feanor or anything but if he had a brain for this sort of thing, the having a family and getting along with them thing, he'd have had a really good relative in andreth

I wanted to update with this detail: the silmarils are just vessels for the light of the trees, and that's why the story frames fëanor as ultimately unjust for coveting them. he create the vessels, but he was not the sole owner of what he fashioned.

when the trees are gone, they'll be all that remains besides the sun and moon. "he seldom remembered now that the light within them was not his"

the sad thing is that melkor isn't totally lying; this is too easy to believe. another bullet point under the fëanor callout post... "makes melkor's job too easy"

i love tulkas. i love how ready he is to beat melkor up

iconic. literally no one is doing it like him

to make it fully clear
melkor feels threatened by the valar so he makes feanor also feel threatened by the valar and he gets the guy banished. after that melkor goes to feanor's house and announces himself as one of the valar, and tells feanor that the valar are a threat 2 him.

and feanor, thoroughly threatened by the valar (as you MIGHT remember, this was melkor's aim), slams the door shut in melkor's face (on account of melkor being one of the valar). after this, melkor goes off to sulk and wonder why feanor would treat him this way

i'm just obsessed with this passage. ungoliant as the ultimate tragic heroine: a witch-spider

oh this one too. she craves, you see. yearns, even

the teleri that stayed behind fascinate me...
ulmo: we have plenty and immortality over there, just hop on this island and i'll take you over, no fuss
the teleri who really liked ossë (and can you blame them?): nah we wanna stay with this funky little angry fish man

when isn't he? genuinely point to a time he wasn't afraid. here's a list of things melkor is afraid of
- varda
- light, by virtue of varda
- eru
- tulkas
- tulkas' laughter
- the valar
- ungoliant being big

THE DISCOURSE in the impromptu non-secret ring of doom on this day.

aulë: this is going to be hard; i understand because i too am a maker & i love the noldor who i taught everything they know. give him time, for he's not like me. he's not prepared to move on to the next greatest thing at any given moment. i believe in him
then feanor's like: nah

unleash nienna

mandos: someone's gonna die tonight
feanor: yeah, me. you're killing my VIBE man
mandos: not yours
meanwhile, in formenos:

i love this honestly. anything for the aesthetic

deep sighing

rule WHAT? the place is EMPTY.

ossë and uinen have a special place in my heart, but gentle uinen having the same propensity for violence and destruction that her husband has is something i did not notice

i love the continuity of the elves fading in power in lotr being not just a political thing as humans rise to take control over the land but an actual literal thing, because this doom commanded that they would. and if they want to avoid that, they need to find ways back...

i know i've mentioned it before in this thread but i adore the constant skipping around in time and narrative that tolkien does, it's very poetry of him

by what meaning of fey, sir. and have the elves any knowledge of fey

i love that feanor in his selfish paranoia could not conceive of the white ships being as precious as the silmarils to the teleri. i think it's hilarious that he knows his rocks are precious to him but that he cannot conceive clearly, logically, of WHY

"i draw the line at ship cruelty"

again, the collective exhaustion of the elves in the third age being referenced HERE at the height of their determination and brash strength is genius. it just illustrates how their tempered wisdom later is just learned weariness, reluctance, even.

the drama of fingolfin and fingon being separated by ideology and feanor, the once-fun now paranoid uncle... the sibling drama between feanor, fingolfin, and finarfin is honestly like just too good. i wish it was focused on more, but the sheer implications of this are good too

'let no new grief divide us' and 'i will follow you' i'm going to keep losing my mind over this. before everything went to hell the two make this promise, and it ends up being a prophecy. bc fingolfin reluctantly follows feanor into the rebellion and then feanor leaves him behind

the exquisite sibling dramas and tragedies and betrayals in the silmarillion are why i keep telling you guys dark souls for me was just inevitable

THERE SHE IS

obsessed with menegroth's aesthetic but i think it's funny that the creation was so collaborative when i think the story associates the city with isolation and exclusion, ultimately

at first it feels so peaceful and natural bc they were left behind by the other elves. I get the feeling that their isolation in this early stage isn't the ideal or intended way of life for them because they fear oromë where the other elves no longer feel they have to

i think that speaks to a local sort of storytelling supplanting history, since the first elves feared oromë and did not know how to differentiate him from melkor. but that's just my reading, who knows

you SAY this but she basically ditches the idea after her husband dies; the thing that brought it down finally was her inability to lead in a time of hardship tbh

these green elves would eventually join with the silvan elves who i suppose were already in the forests of middle earth and become the mirkwood elves. but i think in a way they're honestly the ancestors of the mirkwood elves in the 3rd age

they're described as working only with wood and being ill prepared for war with orcs, who are of course skilled w metalwork the way thingol's people and the noldor are.

fëanor dragged his brother and a bunch of his people across the continent, stopped before the giant ocean, burned half the ships, and ditched. the LOGIC of splitting the party down the middle to separate the wild ones from the ones NOT DOWN WITH MURDER i grasp but do not respect

there's always some nerd in the clique who is just not down for murder... or something.

the worst of it is that one of his sons was still inside.

@goldcleaver i remembered your thoughts about the valar hivemind today! i hope you're well.

i just picture irmo and nienna flanking him whenever he delivers these absolutely incredibly ominous dooms.

but i wonder now that i think more about this how much of the poetry remembers a coming to life of the sun and moon, and how the sudden darkness in middle earth must have been immortalized. but then, do we know the default lighting of arda before the sun and moon?

i don't remember reading about it, i'll go back and check later. in any case. galadriel and luthien are older than the sun and moon in arda.

THOUGH, varda kind of set about the path for the movements of both bodies. it's more of a collaboration between all the valar and yavanna's original concept that allows both to exist. they're fruits in casings crafted by aule and set to move by varda.

which, i guess makes varda a mathematician too. her and aulë are aligned in several ways. they're engineers and artists, and melkor hates them both!

i named the firstborn of gwyn anar to pun on anor londo, since anor is the elvish word for sun borrowed as the name for the golden city. and because anar is the persian word for pomegranate, i had accurately and fully punned even the origin of the sun in tolkien's mythos