Lore & fan-fiction

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Back in the old days i cared only for Lore and read only Tolkien scholars. That was why I joined the old plaza - the only place online that i ever found that gave respect to Lore. But the world has changed.

Over the years I have found what the Tolkien scholars have to say is primarily unedifying and uninteresting, and at the same time began to appreciate that it was the fan-fiction writers who were addressing the interesting stuff, the things that I wanted to think about. And then I wrote a story myself (it is somewhere on this site) and that was a revelation and since then I've felt that a Tolkien scholar who does not write stories is like a lifeguard who cannot swim.

Lore in the nuplaza has never been restored to its glory days in the old, and I have a sense that this is in part because I am not the only one who has grown up a little. Here is Eldy, in the context of the Amazon series, but putting things far better than I can:

As many critics of the project have pointed out, the paucity of Second Age material in the books means the series will effectively be officially licensed fanfiction. I see that as an opportunity! The best fanfiction AUs (Alternate Universes) diverge from their source material in artistically considered, deliberate ways, introducing new ideas while remaining in dialogue with the original. They display an obsession with detail that often eclipses that of fanfiction which hews closer to the original, in many cases because the authors really like some small element that wasn't elaborated on, and they use that as their basis to build new worlds of breathtaking depth and complexity. Some such fanfic authors love the original works, some actively dislike them, but the great ones all care. They're not making changes out of laziness, or pandering to expectations, or because they don't understand the original well enough to realize they're changing things.

I feel like this puts Lore in its place, which is really a dialogue.

Is this post an oblique way to refer to other discussions in Lore? Yes, of course. The gender of the Ainur is a legitimate subject for Lore. The old way in Lore was to quote Tolkien (with exact reference) and announce the end of the argument. But Lore itself has grown up (or should have), and it is now understood (or should be) that Tolkien's texts are all supposedly a received tradition, written down and passed on not by Ilúvatar but by Elves and mortals, and that the transmission may be questioned from various points of view (if the history of religion shows us anything it is that the same text can bear strikingly divergent readings). But this is not an invitation to make up whatever you want and call it canon - it is simply to engage in precisely the same kind of close reading that Tolkien as a scholar brought to the texts that he studied. And at the end of the day it may be that the conclusions of the Lore discussion are not acceptable to some author of fan-fiction - and as Eldy makes clear, that is OK. Lore should not be about stamping on other people's points of view but a process of clarifying where and how we (individually and also collectively) cannot or do not wish to follow Tolkien's vision.

But all that said, Lore remains, fundamentally, an aspiration to understand that vision. That was the great hallmark of Lore in the old plaza, or at least for me. And why I still come back today - to a much smaller, but to be honest, far friendlier plaza.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Yay. Fan-fiction is a liberation for the Tolkien scholar. I am not sure for the loreist. But the point of view of scholarship kind of misses the spirit of Tolkien's enterprise, which if you live and breathe it in a story of your own becomes almost a challenge. At some point, if you write a story, however closely you engage with canon, you gotta strike out on your own. You have got to become the Divine Being, the Narv of your own little patch. But that is to assume the perspective of God, which is not a point of view that scholarship usually illuminates.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: There will be people who agree with you and those who don't, when you express: "Fan-fiction is a liberation for the Tolkien scholar." I am certainly no scholar and neither have I written scholarly papers. As you say: "The old way in Lore was to quote Tolkien (with exact reference) and announce the end of the argument." The lore in the old Plaza was beyond me to understand or comprehend at the time, and it is why my focus became attached on roleplay. It was the only other option to get a sense what Tolkien's universe really was. I enjoyed it for many years with a great many people of whom are still today around. Sharing the joy with others was the element of it. I ain't a divined being, nor I strive to be best. That leads to vanity and overestimation of capibilities. The old scholars surely have points of interests, but in my case it matters totally on my extended knowledge of the English language to understand them, and twenty years ago, this wasn't.

[Eldy Dunami]

Good post, Chrys! I'm currently dealing with the effects of post-con crash, so I don't have the energy to offer much comment, though even if I did I'd mostly just be repeating things I said in various threads last year. I really like the phrase "a Tolkien scholar who does not write stories is like a lifeguard who cannot swim." Whether or not any given individual writes full stories, much less shares them with others, I've found thinking about Middle-earth from a creative perspective to be invaluable. And I say this as someone who was once very involved in the old Lore fora and learned a lot from that experience, though I have mixed feelings about them in retrospect and regret whatever role I played in perpetuating Lore's reputation as unwelcoming and intimidating, which is how a number of my Plaza friends described it at the time.

Ever since I first read TH and LOTR at the age of nine, I've enjoyed thinking about the texts as if they were a real history. That hasn't changed, but I'm glad to have lost my fixation on constructing a single, rigorously self-consistent picture of Middle-earth with clear answers to all questions big and small—what I've previously termed my Hobbitish impulse. The legendarium can't sustain such an endeavour, especially not for the First and Second Ages, but more importantly, neither can real history. There was a time when I felt wearily resigned to this after one too many failed attempts at synthesizing different parts of HoMe into a single narrative, but embracing the fanfic perspective helped me see this messiness as a positive. I believe Tom Shippey made a similar observation that inconsistencies increase the legendarium's resemblance to Primary World mythologies. As far as I know, Shippey is not a fanfic author or RPer, but he was a consultant for (and outspoken defender of) the Jackson films, so I think the point about the value of the creative approach stands to some degree.

[Androthelm]

I'm super tired and about to turn in after a long day of moving across the country — so apologies if this doesn't make sense! — but I think I agree with you.

I think my big frustration — on a similar note, it seems, to yours, Chrys — is the way that "Lore" seems to present itself as a routine set of facts. It's as though Tolkien scholarship — especially the sort of mid-level between academic and fan-driven — is more historical than literary (in the sense of mostly being about "knowing what happened" rather than "considering the text as a text, and applying frameworks to new understandings." This is unsatisfying to me, and it's something that transformative fanworks seem to sort of stand against — if only because they recognize, at very least, that Tolkien is not god and we shouldn't be limited to his word when it comes to thinking about Middle-earth.

[Androthelm]

(as a small addendum — i think the "knowing the facts of the secondary world" approach can be extremely difficult to unlearn, especially for people growing up in the current / recent moment of "nerd-culture." i know i'm a little younger than the average plaza user — young enough not to have seen the movies in theaters — but it definitely wasn't until i got to college that i realized a lot of what i thought was interesting about books was only dipping my toe in their potential)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I'm super tired and about to turn in after a long day of moving across the country — so apologies if this doesn't make sense! — but I think I agree with you.

I think my big frustration — on a similar note, it seems, to yours, Chrys — is the way that "Lore" seems to present itself as a routine set of facts. It's as though Tolkien scholarship — especially the sort of mid-level between academic and fan-driven — is more historical than literary (in the sense of mostly being about "knowing what happened" rather than "considering the text as a text, and applying frameworks to new understandings." This is unsatisfying to me, and it's something that transformative fanworks seem to sort of stand against — if only because they recognize, at very least, that Tolkien is not god and we shouldn't be limited to his word when it comes to thinking about Middle-earth.

Hope the move proves a good one!

I think i agree with everything you say, though i've started recently to think differently on the last part - the author as God. i've always felt frustrated with the obsession with canon that Lore presupposes, which seems to blind people to the 'art' of the stories. i think that is what you mean by a distinction between historical and literary approaches (though i'd also argue that the obsession with canon generates bad teleological history in which any pre-canon text is read only as a step to true canon).

so far as i can make out, the 'canon' Lore approach first arises in Tolkien's mind only in 1951 - appearing seemingly out of the blue in the famous letter 151 to Milton Waldman, the first moment that i have found where Tolkien frames all his canonical stories as narrating the history of a secondary world, as opposed to an imagination of the ancient (mythical) history of our own world. This reflects Tolkien at that point working on the appendices to LotR, and so commencing the great work of integrating EVERYTHING that will consume him for the rest of his life. Tellingly, we see in this letter that he has only just become aware of the revision to the 2nd edition Hobbit, and resolved to integrate both editions into a single narrative, which i take as emblematic of this new fixation.

Before that Tolkien has different ideas about his stories, ideas which are of course lost to Lore (or assimilated into the canon perspective as a square squashed into a round hole). But I want to talk now only about this new vision of total integration to make a seemingly independent Secondary World. As this last term suggests, the essay 'On Fairy-stories' provides Tolkien with the grounds and rationale of what he is now doing. The essay, as everyone knows, sets out a notion of 'sub-creation' in which an author is to the world of a story as is God to the primary world.

What i've started to think is that Lore as it came to be is a bastard secular child of Tolkien's theological vision of literature. It accepted the basic notions of 'sub-creation' and 'Secondary World', which became buzz words, often used, rarely understood, not least because the idea of authorship behind these notions was never seriously engaged with, giving us a wishy washy consensus space of discourse with little real meaning.

There is absolutely no reason anyone should read Tolkien's stories through the theological model of authorship of 'On Fairy-stories.' But if you do, then you should be aware of what you are opening up. So far as I can make out, a primary attraction of this model for Tolkien was theological, because as an author engaged in sub-creation he was learning something of God, the Creator. Being atheistically inclined, I never took that thought very seriously - but if you do it is mindblowing. Does God really work by only discovering the real meaning of some part of the Creation somewhere down the line, and so revising the early draft accordingly? Who can say? But it is the strangest of thoughts, and if only for that worth considering.

And then, on this model, what do we make of fan-fiction? Or even the humble reader, who enters into this secondary world, but not as a created part of it. If I follow the model, then the reader is not a Creator God and yet in certain ways is a peer with the author, and so of Divine status in some way. A vision of Literature arises as a a conversation between two gods, or perhaps two parts of the One God?

I'm not trying to sell the theological model of sub-creation of a secondary world. But its appropriation by Lore made it secular, and thereby stripped the model of all the really interesting bits, leaving us with the blinkered focus on 'facts' that you describe.

For what its worth, in thinking about all this I keep coming back to your essay on Tolkien and anarchism. I almost feel that the anarchist idealism of Tolkien is where secular and religious perspectives meet. In my head keeps sounding an old anarchist slogan from the early 1980s: There is no authority but yourself.

[Androthelm]

Hope the move proves a good one!

Thanks! Its shaping up to be — moving to start grad school — but who knows, I'll probably get there and realize I forgot to call the electric company, or something.

I think i agree with everything you say, though i've started recently to think differently on the last part - the author as God. i've always felt frustrated with the obsession with canon that Lore presupposes, which seems to blind people to the 'art' of the stories. i think that is what you mean by a distinction between historical and literary approaches (though i'd also argue that the obsession with canon generates bad teleological history in which any pre-canon text is read only as a step to true canon).

That is more or less what I meant, yeah — I'm frustrated when people read texts which are operating as texts (conflicting, overlapping, with multiple iterations and so on) as though they should be operating as "factual" representations. I think that's what gives birth to the teleocentrism — if we present the complete (or, worse, never complete but only imagined) "final" project as "true," any variation in the course of that development is "just" an "error" on the path to that truth. Frustrating, when that variation is often what makes the text interesting!

[...]and resolved to integrate both editions into a single narrative, which i take as emblematic of this new fixation.

[...] make a seemingly independent Secondary World. As this last term suggests, the essay 'On Fairy-stories' provides Tolkien with the grounds and rationale of what he is now doing. The essay, as everyone knows, sets out a notion of 'sub-creation' in which an author is to the world of a story as is God to the primary world.

What i've started to think is that Lore as it came to be is a bastard secular child of Tolkien's theological vision of literature. [...]

I think "secular" might be the right word here — or "scientific." Anyway, I'm increasingly convinced that the most important part of On Fairy-Stories is Tolkien's rebuke of the "laborious magician." Too much of the (mis)application of his ideas smells like magic, not enchantment — but I also think, sometimes, that this was a trap Tolkien himself fell into. I wrote about this behind a paywall — I might post the text here, honestly, sometime soon.

Anyway, Shakespeare scholars don't spend all their time debating the plot details of Shakespeare — they talk about the artistic side. Why should analytical responses to Tolkien be so limited to quibbling over the minutiae of the secondary world?

For what its worth, in thinking about all this I keep coming back to your essay on Tolkien and anarchism. I almost feel that the anarchist idealism of Tolkien is where secular and religious perspectives meet. In my head keeps sounding an old anarchist slogan from the early 1980s: There is no authority but yourself.

I think about China Mieville's books (another fantasy anarchist!) especially The Scar and Iron Council, both of which hammer home the point that people with liberatory political philosophies must be willing to let liberated people make decisions they disagree with. I do think anarchism, when applied to art, could suggest that a proliferation of competing canons and fan-fictions is a good and healthy thing — I'm less confident that Tolkien himself would agree, but then, I talked in that essay (unless it ended up cut) about how we all make personal decisions that are semi-inconsistent with our beliefs.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Wow, you have a Patreon account and people pay you to write about 'On Fairy-stories'!!! Wow. I've been trying to figure out how to do that for years :) Also, am i right that grad school = history of religion? If so, that seems an eminently suitable background subject for the present discussion.

'Scientific' might well be a good word for what we are both complaining about, with logical positivism, the early 20th-century philosophy of science that Tolkien would have despised, somehow setting the tone to 21th-century Lore. The underlying problems extend well beyond Lore, of course. Shippey, already mentioned by Eldy above, paints Tolkien's practice of philology in scientific, positivist terms, and dismisses the 'queerer' side of Tolkien's scholarship (his two famous essays). And beyond that, there was a concern with History and the Philosophy of History in Interwar England that did not survive WWII. Something got lost in the passage of time between us and Tolkien already back in the 1980s.

But I'd also insist that old Lore, properly practiced, has its place. I do think Tolkien pointed the way with certain statements that he made as an old man, that this was how he came to think of what he was up to, and that it has proven - was proven in the original incarnation of this site! - to have a hell of a lot of mileage. But I think it needs to be liberated; it always was limited, but today the world has moved on sufficiently to reveal the flaws. (I see my Guide to Stairs as just this, an attempt to take the next step in Lore, to reveal 'canon in the making', while attempting to show - or in future installments - how the canon becomes canon only because what Tolkien is concerned with is something that i would call his 'art').

Good luck with the studies (and also the getting paid to write about On Fairy-stories)!

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Tolkien's review on Fairy stories was good to read for me and give an actual account to write for me where he gives a lecture at St.Andrews University in Scotland through the eyes of a character. I don't have the idea the lecture got flaws for the time it is written in (1939). I don't understand where the idea stems from it has not depth at all or is limited to it. True you can disagree with what he writes and put other reasons forth in an essay of your own how fairytales ought the stand in scientific understanding. I don't like at all these negative investigations of our history. I rather leave it intact how it is. It happened and cannot be changed. Let's respect all forms of history. That is what I grew up with.

I think I leave you all discussing among yourselves and ignore my rambles. Have fun with it. See you all in other threads.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, I'm talking Tolkien, Lore, and fan-fiction. Forget about 'On Fairy-stories.'

This is not the first time i post a link to the Silmarillion Writers Guild website and an essay by Dawn Walls-Thumma, who is a bright star in a dark sky of Tolkien scholarship. Personally, I'm an alien on the SWG website, as I prefer Hobbits to Elves, and don't really write fan-fiction. But from the outside I give it absolute respect and Dawn, who combines Tolkien scholarship and fan-fiction, really does seem to me to be a light where just about everywhere else the candles have never been lit.

@Androthelm, Dawn's essay seems to me to point the way to taking Lore to the next level, a natural evolution, if an overdue one. (That is not to negate alternative readings of Tolkien's art!) And @Rivvy Elf, I'm calling you up too. I'm not saying go and read the whole essay (though you could do worse). The reason it is such an excellent essay is that it makes such a simple, but obvious point. One that, when understood, is a liberation from old Lore.

Just about the only problem with this essay is the title, which conjures up images of academic conference presentations to sleep through. Point of View and In-Universe Authorship of the "Silmarillion". But it is one to wake up to, at least on this site today. Here is a sample:

Tolkien wrote his books as pseudohistorical narratives. For this reason, point of view matters deeply. There is a reason why medievalists—in the same field Tolkien himself worked—spend so much time trying to puzzle out the source of the texts they study. Without knowing the point of view, we are deprived of a vital perspective through which we can fully analyze and understand a text like The Silmarillion, which is meant to be read as history.

[Rivvy Elf]

My post will not be as long as it should be since I'll be leaving for China at midnight and uhh I'll be gone for a month. Not sure if I'll have to post.

@Chrysophylax Dives I write fanfiction. The Outlaws of the Inland Sea is what I'm working on right now. The revised versions are over on fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own. The versions on this site range from rough draft to 4th-5th drafts. I'll show you the most pivotal modifications I made which start from the Tale of Adanel. From then on it becomes a game of telephone and some perhaps plausible mechanics of Arda Marred.

The foundation of my usage of Chinese and spare usage of Elvish comes from another interpretation of the phrasing of The First Voice in the Tale of Adanel:

"Some say the Disaster happened at the beginning of the history of our people, before any had yet died. The Voice had spoken to us, and we had listened. The Voice said: 'Ye are my children. I have sent you to dwell here. In time ye will inherit all this Earth, but first ye must be children and learn. Call on me and I shall hear; for I am watching over you.'

Though we greatly desired to understand, learning was difficult, and the making of words was slow. In that time we called often and the Voice answered. But it seldom answered our questions, saying only: 'First seek to find the answer for yourselves. For ye will have joy in the finding, and so grow from childhood and become wise. Do not seek to leave childhood before your time.'

But we were in haste, and we desired to order things to our will; and the shapes of many things that we wished to make awoke in our minds. Therefore we spoke less and less to the Voice."

From then on in the Tale, either Melkor or Sauron appears as a different Voice, giving them shortcuts on the condition that they worship him and him only, abjuring the other voice. There are some interesting words in here, including: 'So be it!' he said. 'Now build Me a house upon a high place, and call it the House of the Lord. Thither I will come when I will. There ye shall call on Me and make your petitions to Me.'

Here is arguably the most important part: "The first Voice we never heard again, save once. In the stillness of the night It spoke, saying: 'Ye have abjured Me, but ye remain Mine. I gave you life. Now it shall be shortened, and each of you in a little while shall come to Me, to learn who is your Lord: the one ye worship, or I who made him.'"

Now the surface-level interpretation of the First Voice's last words are gloom and doom. But if you look at what they actually say, the tone of which it was said, and so on, this leaves behind a very subjective interpretation on the subtext of what The First Voice said.

So, to summarize, the Fall of Man in the Tale of Adanel comes down to this:

According to some:
1. First Voice, who created Humanity, says Humans will inherit all the earth but they must learn. The First Voice says that humanity must find the answer for themselves, for it will be enjoyable and they will become wise. But they should take their time with it and enjoy their childhood.

2. Humanity takes shortcuts, listens to Melkor/Sauron, learns quickly and advances at the cost of abjuring the First Voice.

3. First Voice shortens humanity's lifespan, says they'll be coming home to the First Voice for more learning.


Now this is how my fanfic will change the interpretation of this Tale.

1. The One, aka Eru, is determined as the First Voice. Humans do not inherit the Earth because by the time they're born Melkor already marred Middle-Earth beyond repair. Why inherit a marred world? Like giving a kid a peanut butter, mold, maggot-infested, mustard, jalapeno, jelly sandwich. Therefore the First Gift from Eru is the gift of mortality. That they will not be bound to a cursed world. This time, the realization of mortality is the primary reason why humanity wants to learns things quickly, because they have limited time.

2. Happens just like in the Tale of Adanel.

3. Same things happen. Initial interpretation matches that of Andreth. But due to *spoiler events* another interpretation is born. That this is the Second Gift. This is more akin to a parent calling their children to come home to bed because there's a crime alert in the location of their sleepover. Humanity could not overcome the marring so The One says that humanity will come home earlier to avoid being marred for a longer period of time.

4. The Avari eventually come to realize once they hear of this tale that the elves who taught men elvish, who helped them out with their wisdom of technology, were in fact committing the same action as Sauron/Melkor (except for more altruistic reasons). Regardless of intent, they are causing humanity to not "find the answer for themselves." And the foundation of that mistake is Elvish itself as the language is used to scaffold concepts for and Elvish worldview, not a human worldview.

5. In my fic elves and humans co-exist (during times of stability) and it works because their tax plans is heavily reliant on "elfonomics," which range from elven midwives to elves helping record the history. Taxes and greed end up leading to humans not persecuting elves because that would really tank the economy. An example of "evil concepts" leading to something really awesome in Eru's music. In this context, written Chinese and the many different dialects of Chinese are developed.

Here's some examples in "Chapter 1" of my fic:

"Aside from your grammar, pathetic attempt at eloquence, your immodest desire to sleep with elves, you have to remember, although we use the word 'ta' to refer to everything verbally, things are different in writing."

She pointed at the word "他" in the scroll, using her index finger to draw out any corrections. "If 'That Woman' was a man, and if Chunhua was male, then '他' would be fine. But since they're not, you have to use '她.' If it was a dog, you use "牠," a deity, you use "祂," if it's a rock-"

"I know, I know, Ma! But if we're using only 'ta' verbally to refer to men, women, everyone else, dogs, deities, things, why can't we just use 他 for everything in writing? Hey, doesn't the left part of the logogram mean 'human'? Aren't we all humans?"

"... You're only saying this because you're lazy and don't want to remember more words," Ma chided.

"No! ... Maybe. But it's a good point, isn't it? Answer my question, please."

"Because we are guests in this world. And we presume the elves, and the dwarves, have such distinctions in their societies. We're catering to them."

"Why do they not cater to us?" Wang Jin asked. "Are they not our guests in the Empire?"

"Be careful when you say that to a dwarf!" Ma retorted. "They're easily offended, and take grudges like geese to air.

"Because they'll outlive this Empire, elves and dwarves also have their own languages and use ours because they know we'll leave this world before them. That's the sad truth. Even the dwarves believe that they are bound to Middle-earth. The Empire's written language is just another way of communicating with others, simple as that. Just don't bind yourself to it. Wouldn't be sad if what we invented ended up controlling us?"

Wang Jin did not fully comprehend what her mother said. It was very hard to grasp. Why didn't the elves want to teach all of them elvish? The dwarves she understood; they loved their secret. But she did not pursue it further.

"Is it true that one of the elves' forefathers is named Tata (他他)?" Wang Jin asked. "What a silly name! So redundant! Hehe."

~~~

"吳下阿蒙 means 'Martial Arts Dream,' " Wang Jin stated confidently.

"You're finally taking this seriously? But no. Not even close," Ma replied.

"But they sound alike!"

"Different inflections! Even if they sounded the same... homophones, remember?"

~~~

"吳下阿蒙 means 'A Meng from Wu' "

"Closer! Probably what it says literally," Wang Sheng replied.

"... You're kidding, Ma."

"It's an idiom, you see..."

"Of all the-! CURSE WHO INVENTED THIS STUPID SYSTEM!"

~~~

(Jin'er eventually figures out the meaning in her own words... those words are rather vulgar and may detract from the message I'm trying to say haha. Her mother essentially says 'good enough'). She also says...

"Well, Jin'er, literacy isn't about being able to read. Literacy is about understanding what you read. Just like with maps and finance. You can recognize the words of a map, and understand the difference between a hill and river, but if you constantly get lost, you aren't map literate. If you know how to spend money but don't know how to save money, though you may recognize the difference between a tael and a yuanbao, you aren't financially literate.

"Getting such a complex meaning out of only four words. That is what language is. That is the magic of the people of Middle-earth. And though I don't want you to become one of those kooky sorcerers claiming they can throw fireballs from their fingers, you're now literate enough to be a Capital Arms Instructor."

Wang Jin did not respond for a while, smiling contentedly.

~~~

... It's only after I pasted this out that I kinda envisioned what I think human learning should've been without interference from Melkor/Sauron and the Elves. Not easy, but great enjoyment can be made after mastering it.


There's also instances throughout the fic where I use the game of telephone to the fullest extent. The legend of Turin Turambar, the Black Sword, becoming the Black Dragon, Anacalagon the Black, after ingesting Gluarung's blood in complete and utter grief and despair. An elf with an account on Turin that is more in line with the Tolkien version. An elven prince, after getting rejected by the Goddess, ends up locking her in a tower and throws rooftiles at the tower for a time (Celegorm and Luthien). Legend of a forest in the west named Laurel (Lorien) being ruled by a 10-foot tall elf and her husband (Galadriel and Celeborn). Etc. etc.

But yeah, since I don't have much time, I just decided to show you how I use lore in my fan fiction and how I plausibly tweak it either through a reinterpretation of a tale or simply time, distance, and culture altering tales themselves.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

My post will not be as long as it should be since I'll be leaving for China at midnight and uhh I'll be gone for a month...
But yeah, since I don't have much time, I just decided to show you how I use lore in my fan fiction and how I plausibly tweak it either through a reinterpretation of a tale or simply time, distance, and culture altering tales themselves.

Rivvy, thank you! that is a perfect reply. i will read over your post slowly and carefully while you are gone, and hopefully then know a bit better what i am talking about on the other side. Good trip!

[Androthelm]

Also, am i right that grad school = history of religion? If so, that seems an eminently suitable background subject for the present discussion.

Yes! Although I have to admit my interests aren't always historical — the dream is to be able to think mostly about religion and contemporary popular culture, which has bearing as well!

But I think it needs to be liberated; it always was limited, but today the world has moved on sufficiently to reveal the flaws. (I see my Guide to Stairs as just this, an attempt to take the next step in Lore, to reveal 'canon in the making', while attempting to show - or in future installments - how the canon becomes canon only because what Tolkien is concerned with is something that i would call his 'art').

To be clear — I totally agree! My frustration is when the old approach to Lore is presented as the only approach to reading. I like Guide to Stairs quite a bit!

Good luck with the studies (and also the getting paid to write about On Fairy-stories)!

Thank you!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

[All of Rivvy's post]

Wow!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Just to begin with, while I had read Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, I was never aware of the Tale of Adanel. All of this is a bit mindblowing and will take a few days to process...

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Rivvy Elf, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. I really love what I am getting - on all sorts of levels. Aside from anything else, you quite vindicate my claim somewhere above that fan-fiction rather than Tolkien scholarship is where to find the interesting engagements with Tolkien's texts.

As I said, I'm still absorbing. But what I understand so far of your take on Ardra marred relates in my mind to stuff I was reading a few months back in my research on Tolkien's 1936 lecture on 'Beowulf,' in which the heart of his argument rests on the Anglo-Saxon poet's reading of Genesis 6:4. I might be going off in the wrong direction, and you may not be interested, but I'll attempt a brief account just in case it speaks to you.

Tolkien gave his lecture at the British Academy. Five years earlier R.H. Charles had died, he was one of the leading lights of the British Academy, and his biblical scholarship was greatly celebrated. Charles produced scholarly editions of the Hebrew Apocrypha, revealing a stream of Second Temple Jewish religious speculation that was subsequently placed outside the canon (and which for Charles provided a missing link between Old and New Testaments). In his edition of the Book of Enoch he draws attention to what appears to have been the mainstream reading of the story of the Flood in the last couple of centuries B.C.

The apocryphal tradition tells of the Watchers, angels who were supposed to guard and guide mankind, who were lustful of human women and took some to wife. The mortal women gave birth to the race of the giants, who caused all sorts of trouble so that in the end God sent the flood to drown the giants. The bodies of the giants perished but their spirits still survive in the form of the numerous invisible demons who plague us to this day (anything from banging a toe to getting a parking ticket - all of that kind of bad stuff!)

There is much here that one can think about with regard to Tolkien's imagination, but the point relevant here is that in this tradition the Earth is marred through no fault of our own. Theologically, this is the road to the heresy that denies original sin. The demons that plague us today have nothing to do with human sin, they are just what is left because God did not clean up properly after the mess made by the Watchers. This Second Temple reading was in fact supressed first by the rabbis and then by the Church Fathers. I'm not at all saying that Tolkien follows this reading - the opposite. But thanks to Charles he - as all scholars of his day - was very aware of it, and my strong sense is that much of Tolkien's more 'theological' thought is moving back and forth between the Orthodox and this Apocryphal reading of the Book of Genesis.

Sorry if that is wide of the mark. I return to careful reading of your post...

[Chrysophylax Dives]

A creaking sound disturbed the quiet peace, as a flamed torch revealed The Guardsman entering the dungeon cell. The occupant appeared asleep, his worn head bowed, resting on a long graying beard.

OK. No point me talking any more on your post, @Rivvy Elf. I have started the story itself (plaza version).

But as to the ideas you set out in the post - wow! just wow.

[Rivvy Elf]

@Chrysophylax Dives Haha! I'm glad you're quite taken with that post of mine! Chengdu is quite wonderful, as a belated response to your question in the other thread.

It's not wide of the mark. Thank you for that fun information! I explain those weird occurrences off as bodiless or vengeful elves, which is why it's a capital crime to kill an elf because ghosts lower tax revenue and they'll haunt whoever and whatever entity that caused it to happen! But an additional point outside of the world already marred would be what I call the concept of "tacked-on sin." So while humans aren't responsible for the world being awful, they do still commit mistakes. And that sin is disobeying the commands of the creator of being too hasty and taking shortcuts in learning more about this fun marred world. Once that hastiness is committed and the First Voice is abjured, it's curfew time!

Please note that the plaza version is uhhh the rough draft version. The HOME version, if you will. There's inconsistent pronoun usage in dialogue that I did my best to vociferously fix in the ff.net and AO3 versions. "Chapter 2" also has been revised with new content in the FF.net and AO3 version. There are more references to characters that show up in later chapters in the revised versions. The more recent the chapter (including "Chapter 1" which was the most recent chapter I wrote), the fewer mistakes there are. Outside of that, you get to see the fun process of me writing my first fanfic, haha!