Thoughts from Arda

‘he had put on his head a tall shapeless felt bag, which he called a hat’

Frodo whines about his pack and Sam immediately offers to take more, though he probably already has the heaviest one

He loves elves so much. I love him.

side shout out to the Gaffer telling off a Ringwraith. You can tell where he gets it from

“If any one of those Black Riders try to stop him, they’ll have Sam Gamgee to reckon with.”

Pippin: “I was not going to leave you any [elf bread], but Sam insisted.”

“I plan to leave the Shire immediately.” “Very good, sir!”

“If you don’t come back, sir, then I shan’t, that’s certain.” He says this two days into the quest. Incredible

Suspicious of Farmer Maggot because he’d gone after Frodo in the past… who had been stealing from him. Sam is loyalty itself.

His blend of common, sensical talk and pure poetry in the things he says… the best.

“I know we are going to take a very road together, into darkness; but I know I can’t turn back.”

I seriously need to restrain from putting everything he says in  here

Gandalf is gand-ælf which is Wand Elf - that is, Wizard. But his name among everybody else is Mithrandir. That has nothing to do with Elves or their wands/staves. It breaks down to mith- [grey] + andir [pilgrim/wanderer], which is why another of Gandalf's epithets is the Grey Pilgrim

There's an obsolete English word that also means pilgrim/wanderer, and that word is

Gandalf, Bilbo and smoke dragon :3

Pippin-centric doodles from Book 2 of Fellowship during my recent reread

This reads like Galadriel saw how distressed Sam was on seeing the trees being felled as "didn't ought to be", and sincerely went "Here, my fellow lover of growing things, have a small box full of hope and magic dust, for the slim chance you ever get to see your garden again at the end of all this."

The ramparts of Mount Erebus (colorized), Herbert Ponting

West Gate of Moria, J.R.R. Tolkien

Like when Gandalf spent literal PAGES trying to figure out why the vibes were off in Moria and Legolas chimes in with just "it's a balrog :) that shit's evil :) we're so fucked :)" like what do you MEAN you knew already and just didn't tell him??

Or at the beginning of Two Towers when Aragorn thinks there's something nearby so he puts his ear to the ground to listen, and then like 10 minutes later is like "hmmm i hear horses" and Legolas is just like "mm yep. there are 105 blond bitches with spears" like you just let your friend put his face in the dirt and you can SEE them??

Galaxy just went through a horrifying paroxysm of violence caused by a superweapon (the Death Star) and the vicious Emperor Palpatine.

So for the next couple decades, pulp stories are full of either "What if another, worse superweapon??" or "What if Palpatine comes back??"

And none of that makes sense, and it definitely doesn't make sense that there would be five distinct Horrible Superweapons all discovered in an eight-year period. But it absolutely makes sense that many different authors would all write pulpy stories about a bunch of different Horrible Superweapons.

Leia and Han thought it was funny than hell.

The prequels were a cash grab docudrama that suffered from too many mandates. The stuff in Phantom Menace that folks find boring is *much* closer to the actual events, but the Ken Burns guy got muscled out. The series also really struggled with "humanizing" Darth Vader while keeping scope in check.

The biggest failure was how it treated the Clone Wars. In the real Clone Wars, all sides used clones, and this was part of how awful it was. But, the showrunners realized that it would make the Old Republic look a lot worse if they were using the same weapon as the enemies, so the Confederacy of Independent Systems got to have disposable "battle droids" instead.

1. As he lay in bed he could hear Thorin still humming to himself in the best bedroom next to him: Far over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old

if a story says, "These are the Elves," but it doesn't have to really get into depth about What Elves Are, Who they Are, what languages they speak, what religions they do (or don't) have, how long-lived they are, what weapons (if any) they use, what music they play, how they dress, etc. etc.

because I as the reader am assumed to already know all of those things based on Elves from other media,

then those aren't really your made up Peoples and characters, right? Those are fan characters of Elves from other stories.

Idk sometimes I feel nuts because it's like, if I wrote a scifi story and was like 'oh and there's Vulcans and Klingons in this by the way,' people would be like, 'oh. so does this take place in the Star Trek universe?' and I said, "huh? no. this is my completely made up, original scifi universe. But there's Vulcans and Kilingons.' And then people said, 'okay...can you tell us about them?' And I was like, 'Well you Know. They're like most Vulcans and Klingons. I changed a few things up for fun but they're your basic Vulcans and Klingons,'

everyone would be like, 'Okay. So those are from Star Trek!!!'

However, no single pre-Tolkien concept of Elves were adapted 1:1 by Tolkien to create the Tolkien Elves as we know them in his stories. He took inspiration from a variety of cultures' stories and histories to create his Elves. The Elves in Tolkien's works very plainly are not just Elves from Folklore. Tolkien's Elves are not the Norse Álfar or the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann.

They are his own creation, extremely hashed characters that he invented, with inspiration from varied folklore and mythologies.

Many of the Elves we see in fiction since Tolkien—the Elves which I am specifically criticizing—are not unique inventions by authors who have spent painstaking time exploring and adapting folklore and mythology—but are in fact based solely on Tolkien's Elves.

If the Elves and the story you're thinking of don't fit this criticism, the post isn't about them.

I think it's missing the point to say there is a certain kind of Stock Fantasy Elf that "everyone has heard of" that is disconnected from this criticism, because if I asked to see an example of the Stock Fantasy Elf, 9 out of 10 times, it will have far more in common with Tolkien's Elves than any of the preexisting stories that Tolkien was inspired by.

The point of my post is that I'm criticizing the entire concept of the Stock Fantasy Elf that everyone is expected to know.

And even if we do accept the Stock Fantasy Elf and its presence in a story, I don't think it's an excuse to forego developing them as a People if they play a big role in the story.

We might say that everyone has heard of Vampires. Anyone reading a Vampire book is likely familiar with the concept of a Vampire and genre staples & tropes. Yet I still expect a Vampire book to specify a few details about its Vampires specifically, for the sake of the story. Otherwise should I simply assume these are Dracula Vampires (another story that took inspiration from Folklore that later became the rule)? Or are they Vampires from Fright Night? Anne Rice? Can they go out in the sun? Some can. The story needs to tell me.

I'm just saying that if your story has Elves, the story should define what an Elf is.

Yes! This is what I'm saying.

It's not wrong to take inspiration from other stories! But I should be able to engage in your original, unique story set in your original, unique world without having read a completely unrelated book that came out 50+ years prior, unless it's a fan work that explicitly engages with that prior story. (Usually! There are exceptions)