Thanks for the ask! :) Someone else asked me 12, 19 and 22 as well, so this is for both of you.
The unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them:
Emeldir! Itâs not that sheâs unpopular, exactly. Sheâs just a female character in the Silmarillion, and she doesnât appear very often at that, so all of this gets her thoroughly ignored. But I think sheâs fascinating and I wish more people talked about her. (Goodness knows fans devote plenty of time and attention to male characters more obscure than she is.) I wrote a longer post about her here. There needs to be more about Emeldir!
Speaking of obscure charactersânot unpopular per se, just obscureâI feel like people should pay WAY more attention to MiaulĂ«. We need to talk about MiaulĂ«. I love him. Iâm obsessed with him. I will not rest until the whole world loves him as much as I do. I have a similar soft spot for Tevildo, and Iâve even tried justifying his inclusion in the later mythology. Which goes double for MiaulĂ«. All hail MiaulĂ«!
Youâre mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...
I donât really feel shameâI just enjoy things! But horrified? Thatâs different! Once I stayed up until literally 4am deciphering a manuscript from the LOTR movies written in the mode of Beleriand (but in English, itâs not like I actually know Elvish). Keep in mind that I didnât read the mode of Beleriand at the timeâIâm way more comfortable with the Sindarin mode and Iâm alright with the Quenya modeâand I was like, âOh, this page is in the mode of Beleriand! Well, that wonât stop me!â And I chose the middle of the night to do this?! Anyway, AFTER all that, I found a link to the transcription. But it was a fun challenge.
AND THEN I decided to read this other manuscript in the mode of Beleriand, Thorinâs letter to Bilbo (this one was written by Tolkien himself). It was even harder, because not only is it in tengwar, not only is it in the mode of Beleriand, the handwriting is also very difficult in parts AND the spelling is weird. I had so much fun. And then I was like, âWhat the fuck is wrong with me?â (Note: I didnât read it with a copy of the letter in English to refer to. Oh, no. That would have been too sane.)
This was in 2020. Iâve only gotten worse since then.
Another time someone asked me, âThere seem to be a lot of twins in Tolkienâs booksâare there more twins in Middle-earth than in the modern world?â And then I, myself a twin, determined to answer this question definitively, made an Excel spreadsheet of all named Tolkien characters and what percentage of them are twins, and I found that the number of twins in Tolkien is about the same as we have now, or lower, depending on which characters you count. But itâs not higher! So now we know.
Another time I saw a post saying, âBut are we SURE that all of Tolkienâs male Elves had long hair?â So I opened my PDF of LOTR and did a word search for âhairâ and looked at all the examples. And then I opened my PDF of the entirety of HOME and did another word search for âhairâ (there were over 400 mentions) and also âlocksâ and other synonyms, and then I looked at EVERY SINGLE ITERATION in order to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Tolkienâs male Elves have long hair. Because Iâm insane, but Iâm also right.
Another time I spent literally hours trying to calculate how long it would have taken Fingon to reach Angband on foot when he set out to rescue Maedhros, depending on how far he travelled each day, etc. Weâre talking actual math here. Measuring distances on the map of Beleriand. Entering different variables. I was very dedicated.
Am I normal? No. Do I feel shame? Also no. Do I sometimes horrify myself nonetheless? Yes I do.
Your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores:
I love this question. Itâs hard to answer because I have so many favorite parts of canon that most people ignore. (Like the entirety of the Lays of Beleriand.) Admittedly, whether this is part of canon is debatable because itâs from the Book of Lost Tales, but I absolutely love this part. For context, Ălfwine and his companions had been looking for Valinor for years and had almost given up hope of ever finding it, and then this happens:
Then none spoke for wonder and amaze, seeing deep in the gloaming of the West a blue shadow, and in the blue shadow many glittering lights, and ever more and more of them came twinkling out, until ten thousand points of flickering radiance were splintered far away as if a dust of the jewels self-luminous that FĂ«anor made were scattered on the lap of the Ocean⊠Then came there music very gently over the waters and it was laden with unimagined longing, that Ălfwine and his comrades leant upon their oars and wept softly each for his heartâs half-remembered hurts, and memory of fair things long lost, and each for the thirst that is in every child of Men for the flawless loveliness they seek and do not find.Â
It is IMPOSSIBLE for me to read this without getting chills, or without it bringing tears to my eyes. The blue shadows? The lights? The music? The flawless loveliness they seek and do not find? Tolkien captures such a bittersweet feeling in this passage that itâs actually excruciating, because we canât go there. What happens next is that Ălfwine leaps from the ship and goes to Valinor, and his comrades never see him again. The reader, like Ălfwineâs companions, is left behindâallowed to see the Undying Lands for just a moment, but never able to go there. The feeling I get from this is very similar to the feeling I get at the end of LOTR, when we catch a glimpse of Valinor through Frodoâs eyesâbut thatâs it. And even though it makes me sad, I love it so much and I wouldnât wish that it be written any other way.
A ship youâve unwillingly come around to:
Alcarondas. I donât like the fact that Ar-PharazĂŽn tried to make war on Valinor, obviously, but the ship itself was pretty cool. (Sorry for answering this in such a chaotic way, but I couldnât resist!)
