B2MEM 2011 - The Silmarillion Extracts by Dwimordene

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Fanwork Notes

Fanwork Information

Summary:

See snazzy title. Currently posted: Day 17(?) - kindness - Faithful friends; Day 23 - use assigned quote (see chapter) - Where sea meets shore; Day 27 - character rises above herself/themselves - The Dunsinane Waltz

Major Characters: Finarfin, Finrod Felagund, Lúthien Tinúviel, Melkor, Original Character(s), Pallando

Major Relationships:

Genre: Fixed-Length Ficlet

Challenges: B2MeM 2011

Rating: General

Warnings:

Chapters: 8 Word Count: 818
Posted on 3 March 2011 Updated on 27 March 2011

This fanwork is a work in progress.

Table of Contents

Melkor and the Mountain

Prompt: Nan Elmoth - Seduction: “It is not enough to conquer; one must also know how to seduce” - Voltaire

Response: "War and Eros are the two sources of illusion and falsehood among men. Their mixture represents the very greatest impurity" - Simone Weil.

In that hour Finarfin forsook the march... but his sons were not with him

Prompt: Losgar - Defiance: Defiance is defined as the willingness to contend or fight. Write a story or poem or create artwork where the characters defy authority in some way.

Constancy

Vinyamar: Some people have difficulty embracing changes and moving on. Write a story or poem or create artwork that shows the consequences of refusing to change.

The Harrowing

Mithrim: "There would be no one to frighten you if you refused to be afraid." - Gandhi
Write a story or poem or create artwork where the character conquers his or her
fears.

Love in other languages

Prompt: Bree: Hobbits are well known for their gift-giving traditions. Write a story or poem in which the exchange of gifts is featured, or use "gifting" as a theme for a piece of art.

 

Faithful friends

Prompt: Wilderland: kindness

Where sea meets shore

Prompt: Dol Guldur: Start a story with the phrase: Everyone avoided the tower. It was believed to have...

The Dunsinane Waltz

Day 27: Rohan: Write a story or poem, or create a piece of art where your character rises above themselves to follow their dreams.

Comments

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You made me grin. I've said before that some people approach Tolkien canon like Talmudic scholars. I was joking! Never say never!

Personally, I think it is interesting that Finrod is often painted in fanon as too saintly to have continued to M-e. I have seen some explanations that he could only have gone out of a sense of self-sacrifice, etc. There are contradictions to that position. Tolkien described his motivation eloquently in this passage in the UT:

Finrod was like his father in his fair face and golden hair, and also in noble and generous heart, though he had the high courage of the Noldor and in his youth their eagerness and unrest; and he had also from his Telerin mother a love of the sea and dreams of far lands that he had never seen. [Emphasis mine.]

Not the motivation of a plaster saint or a martyr, but one stemming from reckless youth and incorrigible curiosity.

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</i>You made me grin.<i>

Not as much as your review made me grin, I assure you! :-D

</i>I've said before that some people approach Tolkien canon like Talmudic scholars. I was joking! Never say never!<i>

I'm sure there must be some authors out there who are really adept at reading Talmud and then taking that method to Tolkien's plethora of manuscripts. I'm only just dipping hesitant and linguistically-hampered toes into the Talmud, however.

And not being as much into Silm fandom, I'm not very up on characterization debates, so alas, I can't claim to have deliberately tried to play against trope. The characters I'd thought I would fit this scenario well were  Maedhros and Fingon, but I couldn't find a moment between them that would justify the argument until I went all the way back to Araman. At that point, I realized my voice-from-heaven, which I'd thought I might have to write my way around, *had actually been written by Tolkien* as an ambiguous prophetic herald whose identity was only guessed at, never confirmed. PERFECT! Nearly squeed in delight, and I shanghaied Finrod and his father without further delay. So I can't make claims to having given deep thought to his different presentations in Tolkien's corpus; Finrod just happened in his Silm portrayal to fit the bill in an almost eerily ideal fashion.

So this isn't so much an example of reading Tolkien Talmudically well as my simply getting very, very lucky twice in a week! But I'm really glad you enjoyed the drabble, and the happy confluence of passages. Thanks so much for your comments!

Some surely do! Others just as surely don't. For my money, Melkor's not a very good lover and mistakes distance for simply violence, failing to realize that it's the condition of real love. So he doesn't, I think, have any clear conception of the difference between love and war, whether the difference is qualified or absolute. It just doesn't exist for him.

Hee! Only in one sense, I think (I hope). Maedhros is totally bound by his fear that his life is an unredeemable series of disasters that lie strictly within his responsibility if he doesn't have the Oath to hang himself on. If Finrod is right, then that's release for them all, but release comes as such a devastating blow to Maedhros's world, he'd rather the agony of familiar, semi-exculpating bondage than the agony of the unfamiliar, totally responsible freedom.