Bookverse Improbabilities

[gandalfs_appren]

crowdaughter suggested I post these remarks here. So I looked y'all up and now I'm testing the waters!

I've said for a long time that it's never wise to look too closely at the plot details in LotR: Tolkien wasn't writing a character-driven plot, he made it up as he went along, and even when he made major changes, he kept a lot of the original. So

Comments

[fordsflappers]

Thank you! Just dropping in to say that in my fics I change the history of the Ring. Gollum having it for hundreds of years and doing nothing but brooding and talking to himself, followed by Bilbo's decades of untroubled ownership make it about as menacing as something incredibly unmenacing. I think the Trilogy's origin as a children's book is very evident here.

[lexin]

I'd agree...I'm one of the few, who, on maturer consideration do not have a problem with Jackson's changing Faramir's reaction to the Ring when it arrives in Henneth Annun.

My reason for this is that in the book Faramir turns down the ring as if it were an unwanted pastry. Not quite the reaction one would expect given that Boromir was unable to resist its lure, and the rest of the Party were affected - and given what it does to Frodo later. The re-write for the film shows that it's a struggle for Faramir to turn it down, which is as it should be if the thing is that attractive.

[dreamflower02]

Hmm...that's interesting. I never saw that it was no struggle at all for Faramir, but rather that he had already put himself beyond the struggle by his oath that he would not take it even if he found it lying beside the roadside before he really knew what it was. Since he, like Aragorn, was portrayed as a throwback to the likes of Elendil, and was a man of his word, he was able to use that oath to put himself beyond temptation. His exposure was brief enough, unlike his brother, who undoubtedly had to listen to its yammering at him at the very least since Lothlorien, if not from the very time they left Rivendell.

I love seeing differing interpretations!

[dreamflower02]

Again the difference between "external" and "internal" explanations. I think that story-externally, you are quite right.

Story-internally, I have always taken it as one more bit of evidence of hobbit resiliance resistance to corruption because of their general lack of desire for power*. Gollum was a nasty bit of goods, but he was greedy, not domineering. And Bilbo took the Ring in total ignorance, and while it was still largely "asleep". Quite different from others who'd had it in their possession.

*We know from the prologue this was so for most hobbits, but we also know of exceptions: the Sackville-Bagginses and Lalia come to mind.

[lexin]

I see canon as a starting point not as an aim.

Which is why my (one published) story is one which would give anyone who can't see Tolkien's canon violated conniption fits!

I'd read, I think, that Aragorn started off with another name and purpose, but I'd forgotten it - thanks for reminding me.

I think the idea of Tolkien canon as legend works particularly well in the context of The Hobbit - I reckon the narrator is some Gondorian market-place storyteller of the seventh or eighth age, from after the point trains had been invented in that world.

[dreamflower02]

I see canon as a starting point not as an aim.

Really, for all of us that's all it can be. No one who writes fic is actually writing canon--only JRRT himself did that--and it is only in the level of how grounded in canon a story is that determines where it falls on the AU scale.

For purposes of *reading* fic, calling something "canon" or "AU" is useful enough. Sometimes I am in the mood for something that sticks so close that perhaps it could have been written by JRRT himself; other times, I'd just like to explore all the ramifications of crazy "What ifs".

But I'm one of those who does like to stay grounded as firmly as I can in canon in *writing* fic, and I do have to say, my favorite AUs are those in which just a few tiny things cause major changes, but everything unrelated stays the same. (Not an easy thing to pull off, but some writers do it brilliantly!)

[dreamflower02]

There are two ways to approach canon: one way is the way in which meta approaches it--to look at it from the outside or story-externally. Story-externally, JRRT struggled to free the story through his own pre-concieved notions of trying to write a sequel to The Hobbit, as it kept trying to extend its tendrils into the higher and darker matter of The Silmarillion. The whole bit of Trotter gradually evolving into Aragorn is a part of that struggle. JRRT did not know himself the first time he wrote of it, just who this mysterious incomer was.

Story-internally is examining the story and the world on its *own* terms. We are presented here with a puzzle, a seeming contradiction, yet if we are operating story-internally, we accept that it happened, and try to figure out the reasons for it *within the constraints of the story as written*. This is just one of the reasons people write fic: to solve such puzzles. Character A seemed OOC in this scene--instead of criticizing the author for making a poor choice (a story-external reaction) we

[jael_the_scribe]

Of course, the ultimate improbability in the Tolkien universe is why nobody would give those Silmarils back to those murdering maniacs. Elwing would rather throw herself off a cliff.

I sense that Tolkien imbued the Silmarils with some of the same quality of The Ring -- once you possess them, they work on your mind so you do not want to relinquish them. Perhaps, with Thingol's Silmaril there was the added influence of the dragon curse, once it was set into the Nauglamir. How else to explain reasonable people acting like utter idiots?

You see the same thing happening with Thorin Oakenshield and the Arkenstone -- was it the stone itself, or the influence of Smaug's hoard? At any rate, I've always seen the Arkenstone as a kind of proto-Silmaril. And what does this say about Thranduil (an early version of Thingol) and Bard that they were able to give it back?

[crowdaughter]

At any rate, I've always seen the Arkenstone as a kind of proto-Silmaril. And what does this say about Thranduil (an early version of Thingol) and Bard that they were able to give it back?It would either mean that Tolkien had not yet fully developed the concept of the obsession about the Silmarils as completely as the theme was developed later (which I cannot check right now), or it would indeed make them better kings than even Thingol finally turned out to be. Thingol did not give the Silmaril back to the sons of Feanor, although that probably would have been the wisest thing to do. Of course, he had lost his daughter to get the thing (although she was restored to life, but as a mortal); he might have felt entitled to keep at least the price Luthien and Beren had gotten him. Still, it was a short-sighted decision, and brought about his death and finally the destruction of Doriath

[jael_the_scribe]

However, when your whole kingdom is at stake, your people are barely recovered from an attack of the Dwarves, your elven grandad is dead, so is your divine grandma, you have no magical protection around your kingdom anymore, no army left to speak off (due to the darn Dwarves), and all you need to do to buy your people peace is hand over the Shiny? Please!

I see someone has answered this far more articulately than I could have done. I always assumed that either Dior (while very pretty) was not the sharpest arrow in the quiver) or else he was laboring under some compulsion cast on him by the gem. After all, its influence made even the Dwarves behave more avariciously than usual.

I had not picked up from my reading of the Silmarillion that the Silmaril cast some benificence and protection on the land. But it is quite possible, given it contained the light of the Trees.

[crowdaughter]

I had not picked up from my reading of the Silmarillion that the Silmaril cast some benificence and protection on the land. But it is quite possible, given it contained the light of the Trees.I am not sure they had any beneficial power; at least I did not pick that up from reading the Silmarillion, either. Varda had hallowed the three Silmarils, but I always understood that meant they *could not be corrupted* nor touched by evil without burning it; which made Morgoth's insistence on wearing them in his crown a rather painful experience. The Valar wanted them back because they held what remained from the light of the two Trees, and directly after the attack that killed the Trees, they had hoped that they could actually *revive* the trees with that light, in a way of rekindling their light with the untainted probe of the light as it had been before the attack; but if that was still possible after the Trees had died for good, I doubt. And to do it, the Silmarils would have needed to be broken, which was why Feanor did not want to hand

[redheredh]

Hi, just another drop in

[crowdaughter]

The question of Why foolishly hold on to the Silmaril? has drawn me in. I really think there is a good short answer to that: weirgild. Somehow, Isildur can be easily understood to be practicing this custom, but apparantly not Elves.I think both in the case of Dior, and of Elwing, that this argument makes the most sense in my book. For Dior, the Silmaril was the one great treasure left by his mother and his father. Both Beren and Luthien had died to get that Silmaril. They had been restored to life, but Luthien had become mortal. Dior was probably not mortal, but immortal as the Elves, because he married an Elf and became the ruler of Doriath, and I cannot really see that happen if he had been mortal, too

[gandalfs_appren]

Like I said, it's somewhere in HoME, not in the Sil proper.

I think Dior has to have been mortal. Tolkien says that even one drop of "mortal blood" is enough to do it. The only exceptions are Earendil and Elwing, who were "granted" it, and definitely not born that way, and their sons, "granted" the choice because of their parents. And then, of course, Elrond's kids. (Why not Elros's, she asks?) If you look at the dates, you'll see that all of them "grew up" at a mortal pace. Dior wasn't even forty when he died, and Earendil and Elwing married in their early twenties.

[redheredh]

The weregild argument can even be applied to Thingol for he did not take revenge upon the Kinslayers who owed him for murder of his kin. Although, he did become rather obsessive about the jewel once it was actually in his hands