Comments on B2MEM 2011 - The Silmarillion Extracts

The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.

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.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }

</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.