Nine Rings Were Made For Men. Seven For The Dwarves, Three For The Elves, And One For The Big Guy Himself.

This is my belated @officialtolkiensecretsanta gift for @arlenianchronicles. Both my laptop and my phone up and died on me (in December... I've got conspiracy theories if anyone wants to hear them), so this was rewritten and posted on a computer loaned to me by a very generous and patient family member. Merry Christmas, y'all!

by Penelope_S

In the midst of a desert, a wanderer comes across a journeyer whose face is hauntingly familiar, though they have never met.

Words: 2320, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Daeron (Tolkien), Aragorn | Estel, OC inhabitants of southeastern Middle Earth

Additional Tags: Daeron’s been mourning Lúthien’s disappearance for ages, I decided that he needs to do something more constructive with his life, Storytelling, deus ex machina-ed culture in an unspecified part of southeastern ME

consider this: given how much the hobbits are said to love legalese and documentation, I think when the shirriffs tried to arrest Frodo and company on their return Frodo should have just refused on the basis that they have no official proof that he is, in fact, Frodo Baggins

The Valar as a collective (not necessarily each individual, such as Ulmo) seem to find it difficult to empathize with beings of lesser power than they who are tied to time, especially beings who can be killed and aren’t willing to wait around for millennia for the Valar to come up with a solution when things are bad and people are dying right now. Like op said, they aren’t used to being told, “I don’t agree with any of y’all, and I’m going to pursue this goal my own way, whether y’all like it or not.” They’re not used to having more than two sides to a conflict, and throughout the Silmarillion they consistently underestimate the determination of the Children, especially the Noldor and the Numenoreans. 

So, do the Valar know the elves aren’t  just fleshy-Maiar?

(I’m tired so this might be ramble-y but oh well)

So, Pre-elves the Valar only really interact with Maiar, who basically do whatever they want and are kind of just fancy servants. The only times we actually see a Maia rebel- e.g. Mairon- it’s basically just a switch in who they listen too and not a bid for independence.

So has anyone except Melkor actually flat out told the Valar No?

Because if not that sort of explains how they have no idea how to deal with the elves.

Specifically the Noldor.

Because the Noldor, even though they are favoured by Aule, strive to create independently and without oversight from the Valar, and it’s with them the Valar screw up the most. Literally most of the problems in the first age would have been less catastrophic if the Valar had just let them leave. No first kinslaying because Olwe could just let the borrow the boats, no Helcaraxe, someone could have slapped Feanor upside the head before he got himself killed ect. But instead the Valar just…thought they’d be listened to when they told them to not go after the guy who murdered their dearly beloved king and stay put in Valinor forever, even when it’s implied Namo already knew Finwe is dead and should probably have told his son as soon as he found out but didn’t and the Valar immediately mourned the loss of the Silmarils rather than the elf who died in a place they promised would be safe.

And not knowing how elves work would kind of explain why they thought Feanor would be okay with Finwe remarrying. No Maiar had ever been unhappy with their decisions, so why would an elf be different?

It also explains the…weirder aspects of LaCE. Because some of LaCE reads like it was invented purely for population control (see sex as an act purely to create children), and that would make sense if it was put down by a race that just didn’t do sex as the ainur are implied to be. And everyone is expected to follow it and be happy, because no-one had ever told the Valar they weren’t.

Any way, idk. I’m probably reading too much into this, and this probably wasn’t articulated very well.

Tl:dr- The Valar got too used to dealing with people that do everything they tell them too and elves don’t like being told what to do Thank You Very Much

So, I fell down a rabbit hole and learned two cool things in relation to the Irish language and Tolkien!

1) He seems to have tried and failed to learn Irish and thought it sounded awful XD

2) In one of his letters where he’s talking about the origin of the word nazg (Black Speech for ring), he says that he thinks it most likely came from nasc, which in modern Irish refers to a tie/bond/link and in older Irish seems to have also referred to ring-shaped jewellery (by which I mean bracelets, necklaces etc, not just finger rings). Technically, he does say that he didn’t do this consciously. He was looking up some stuff about Irish, came across the word and ‘re-learned’ it as such and thought “oop, that’s probably where that came from!” but I still think it’s cool.

Bonus! In that same letter, he describes the Irish language as “mushy” sounding and like, I get what he means? I don’t know why, but I find this description hilarious. He’s not wrong XD

reading romance as an aroace

*opens book*

"Let's get to the good stuff"

*flips past first meeting, kissing, smut*

*gets to a mature, understanding conversation between the couple in which they each apologize, explain their experience, work out the problem between them, and formulate a specific plan to make sure things will be better in the future*

"Now THIS is what I'm here for!" *happy stimming*

Ko-if link is on my page

As is my commission info

Ozai is so pathetic, like that “take his bending away haha he’s harmless now” trick would never have worked on Zuko, if you took his bending away he’d just grab his swords and come at you twice as hard, Azula doesn’t have swords or anything but she’s pretty good at hand to hand and amazing at talking her way out of problems, Iroh bust himself out of prison with no bending at all, meanwhile Ozai? Gets his bending taken away and then just collapses, doesn’t even try anymore, then just sits in prison and tries to get into Zuko’s head some more, he could have trained up and tried to break out too! But no! Bet he can’t break steel bars with his bare hands. Bet he can’t kick a steel lever in two. Bet he can’t even do a flip.

Also we never really see him do any really impressive firebending apart from when he has magic comet power, I guesss he shoots some lightning at Zuko, but that’s it and Azula is still better at the lightning thing. Azula has blue flames. Zuko can do firebreakdancing and bend with his swords. Does Ozai, who is not 14 years old, have blue flames? No he doesn’t.

He didn’t even do his coup himself, Ursa had to kill Azulon for him! Could have just challenged Iroh to an Agni Kai for the throne but he didn’t bc he knew he’d lose.

And then he only ruled for like 6 years! He lost a war that had been going on for 100 years bc of a bunch of kids.

Loserlord indeed

microdosing on being goth by wearing black jeans

‪happy christmas to my favourite story of all time‬

You ever get like five different ideas from angst but none of them is long enough to stand on its own and so you just make Frankenangst? Yeah

Warnings: character death, description of injuries

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