[HN Gopher] The Hobbit: Riddles in the Dark - The Lost Version (...
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The Hobbit: Riddles in the Dark - The Lost Version (2001)
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-12-23 12:25 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ringgame.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ringgame.net)
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| Interestingly, in Tolkien's letter to his publisher (142, in "The
| Letters of J.R.R. Tollkien", selected and edited by Humphrey
| Carpenter), "I did not mean the suggested revision [which he had
| sent them earlier] to be printed off; but it seems of have come
| out pretty well in the wash".
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, originally he had written the LoTR expecting not being
| able to "fix" the previous. He even mentions it in the text
| (said by bilbo at the council of Elrond)
| swayvil wrote:
| It's a beautiful example of the story (the "true account")
| bending to the gravity of desire.
|
| (The ring is a desire singularity with 1000 gravities.)
|
| That's a big deal. I mean, the story is basically everything to
| us. Our whole reality.
|
| That the story is just a squishy thing that gets smashed around
| by desire is a very big important point. A shocking revelation.
|
| In the context of LOTR, all the narrators are now untrustworthy.
|
| Maybe things weren't so black and white.
|
| I think that's the point that's getting underlined and belabored
| here.
|
| Beware desire and its effects upon reality.
|
| Also, LOTR is a history. History isn't what happened. It's a
| story about what happened. And it's a story written by the
| winners.
|
| I think JRR Tolkien saw a lot of this in the war.
| Zircom wrote:
| Glen Cook has an absolutely fantastic series called The Black
| Company where the entire series is framed as being the recorded
| annals of a mercenary company, with who is writing them
| switching occasionally between books to different characters,
| which let's you see the narrating character who usually writes
| them from a different, and sometimes less flattering,
| perspective.
|
| In any case, unreliable narration is obviously a big of the
| series, and the concept that just because something is written
| down doesn't mean it happened that way is pretty central, and I
| think it's outright brought up by the narrator at least a few
| times, and reading between the lines/making inferences that
| don't line up exactly with what is recorded is pretty much
| necessary to understanding the plot of the series sometimes.
|
| Cook also served for 10 years, not sure if he ever saw active
| combat but the series is constantly praised by veterans for
| it's accurate portrayal of what life in the military actually
| feels like.
| Arrath wrote:
| I don't see the Black Company brought up often, but it sure
| is a good read. I rank it akin to Malazan, though markedly
| different.
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > In the context of LOTR, all the narrators are now
| untrustworthy.
|
| I think that's a common misunderstanding of the 'untrustworthy
| narrator' concept. All narrators are untrustworthy, the
| question is not a binary one: 100% or not. The question is how
| trustworthy, and where and when can we trust this narrator?
|
| Like real people, nobody is perfect - everyone tells >0 lies
| and >0 truth - but putting them all in the same basket is
| meaningless and aburd. Some are far more trustworthy than
| others.
|
| Tolkien was very clear that knowledge had great power (Gandalf,
| for example) and that deception and untrustworthiness were
| works of the enemy, of evil. Bilbo's lie was driven by the
| Ring, the ultimate corrupting evil. The protagonists, including
| the hobbits, Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, Legalos, etc., were
| exceptionally trustworthy and took it very seriously; look at
| Sam's faithfulness to Frodo, for example. Boromir was depected
| as flawed, and ultimately broke trust and was corrupted by the
| Ring.
| helf wrote:
| There is an alt history version of The Lord of the Rings
| written by a Russian author named Kirill Eskov called "The Last
| Ringbearer" and it is fantastic.
|
| In it, Mordor and the Orcs are a science advanced nation and
| the southern countries are the aggressors. It's a great
| "history is written by the victor" take on the mythos. I highly
| recommend checking it out.
| xoxxala wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| I sort of recommend Khraniteli, the Soviet Lord of the Rings
| Soviet TV movie from 1991. Delightfully bizarre in small
| doses but a little hard to sit through the whole thing.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xluxT4fj2U8
| mnw21cam wrote:
| While we're talking alternative LoTRs, it's worth having a
| look at The DM Of The Rings
| https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 which
| manages to use all stills from the LoTRs films and tell a
| completely different story, in the same vein as Darths and
| Droids https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0001.html .
| swayvil wrote:
| I just downloaded it. Thanks :)
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Well I hate it.
|
| Is history written by the victor? Maybe. But the lord of the
| rings is not intended to be read that way. I find it tiresome
| to have someone come out and say this nice fantasy story,
| that is not a hard deep dive on morality or political
| reality, is actually something entirely wrong; and to then
| have it implicitly suggested that if I don't buy it that I
| don't get "the point".
|
| Our post modern society has truth written by whichever side
| validates your beliefs at this point. I'm not convinced that
| "written by the Victor" is even an accurate take.
| swayvil wrote:
| Good point. I totally appreciate it as excellent epic
| fantasy too.
|
| BUT the whole "reality is distorted by desire" thing is
| dead seriously real, and it is a big deal (The Buddha
| himself ranted about it). And the ring IS a total solid
| desire macguffin. People go crazy over it. And Bilbo DID
| change his story. So... it makes an interesting line of
| thought, you gotta agree.
|
| Also : You ever read Lord Dunsany, CS Lewis or Lovecraft?
| They were all sorta on the same page as Tolkien.
| bentley wrote:
| In the United States, the copyright on _The Hobbit_ will last
| until 2033, 95 years after publication--but only the first
| edition. The second edition with the revised Gollum story was
| published in 1951, so it will remain copyrighted until 2047.
| Interestingly, this is still earlier than the first editions of
| _The Lord of the Rings_ (which will expire in 2050 and 2051).
|
| Tolkien died in 1973, so in life+50 countries, all of his works
| will expire in the same year, 2024--that is, unless the country
| chooses to extend by twenty years to life+70, as both Canada and
| New Zealand are doing next year.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Life + 50 just doesn't make any sense. A creative work doesn't
| need to provide for your grandchildren in retirement quibbling
| in an estate trust about how to squeeze every last drop of
| blood from the stone.
|
| If it was really so successful then save up some profits from
| when it was reasonably in your control and make a trust fund
| with that.
| CyborgCabbage wrote:
| Disgraceful, what's even the point of putting pen to page when
| you're only gonna get a measly 95 years of ownership.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| Just in time for Rings of Power Season 3
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Extending copyright seems antithetical to the whole purpose. If
| copyright is supposed to incentivize creative works, how does
| extending it after the fact do that? Doesn't it have the
| opposite effect?
| bell-cot wrote:
| At this point, "incentivize creative works" is 99%
| ideological gloss. The long-running payments from copyrighted
| works are golden Rings of Power from the POV of the financial
| and legal industries - and those guys are far less neglectful
| and benevolent than Gollum was, to ever let go if they can
| possibly avoid it.
| boredemployee wrote:
| i love all the (movie) sequels of hobbit, LOR etc. but I have a
| hard time to put the stories together in my mind. maybe reading
| all the books would help me with the timeline and overall
| understanding?
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| Yes, but in all honesty just "reading the books" is probably
| not enough. To really understand the full "lore" you should
| definitely read the appendices and the chronology; also reading
| The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales is most recommended.
| jfengel wrote:
| It's rather a surreal artifact of Tolkien's writing process. He
| began his book as a direct sequel to The Hobbit, and chose
| Gollum's ring as the macguffin to drive the plot. As the story
| evolved, the ring became The Ring, at which point some of the
| original story didn't actually work any more.
|
| He could simply have chosen a different macguffin, but Tolkien
| had a weird way of fixating on things that he'd already written.
| It's almost scientific: you explore the space of stories, and
| whatever hangs together consistently must be "true".
|
| He solved that not by deprecating the original book, but by
| rewriting it, and then including a preface in _The Lord of the
| Rings_ about how the original book was Bilbo 's self-promoting
| propaganda.
|
| This is emblematic of his work. He kept re-writing and re-writing
| to find something that felt "true". Which is partly why he never
| really settled on anything. He kept assigning characters
| different names, and then assigning some names to other
| characters until they fit. In the early _Hobbit_ , Thorin was
| called "Gandalf", which makes it a hell of a thing to read. (And
| the wizard was named "Bladorthin". Which is almost as bad as
| "Bingo Bolger-Baggins", the original name of Frodo. Or "Trotter",
| the original Strider, a Hobbit with wooden feet...)
|
| Given that _The Hobbit_ was not actually intended to be connected
| directly to his Middle-earth works except retroactively, and that
| _The Silmarillion_ was not published until after his death (with
| significant editing, because he kept re-writing it until it was
| no longer compatible with _The Lord of the Rings_ ), in a sense
| there is only one truly "canonical" Middle-earth book: _The Lord
| of the Rings_.
|
| Tolkien was not only an extraordinary genius, but we have an
| incredible collection of his draft works to see how his genius
| worked. I can't think of any other author whose process is
| simultaneously so remarkable and so well-documented.
| sprkwd wrote:
| It's wonderful, right? Being able to directly observe
| creativity and iteration in the story.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > He could simply have chosen a different macguffin, but
| Tolkien had a weird way of fixating on things that he'd already
| written.
|
| Tolkien pulled much from older myths, of which Tolkien was a
| leading scholar. The Ring as a driving force (and its power and
| the consequences of that power) was not an invention of
| Tolkien's; Tolkien didn't get the idea from the Hobbit. Wagner
| famously used it in the 19th century, and likely myths, on
| which Wagner also relied, preceded Wagner.
|
| I think your description is a common process of many (most?
| almost all?) artists and creative workers. Creation is not
| making things in a first draft out of whole cloth. You don't
| know where you are going or what will work. It's not unlike a
| startup in that respect (please let's not get carried away with
| our frame of reference): you have some great ideas and talent;
| you develop it, often in unanticipate directions; and
| eventually you find an application for them - sometimes
| completely unanticipated, even from a side project.
|
| > He began his book as a direct sequel to The Hobbit
|
| Where does Tolkien describe that?
| jfengel wrote:
| His biographer says that Allen & Unwin (his publishers) asked
| for "a new Hobbit book". The earliest drafts are about a
| second adventure for Bilbo -- he had run out of money and
| needed a new treasure fetch-quest.
|
| You can read the early drafts in book 6 of the _History of
| Middle-earth_ , and watch as "the tale grew in the telling".
| They start with Bilbo, then the protagonist changes name and
| identity as the concept fills out. He made it as far as Bree
| in a very Hobbit-esque style before scrapping it all and
| rewriting it in the more adult LotR style.
|
| (He later tried to re-write _The Hobbit_ in that LotR style,
| but it was dreadfully boring and he gave up after a few
| chapters.)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > His biographer says that Allen & Unwin (his publishers)
| asked for "a new Hobbit book".
|
| I wonder what the publisher's thoughts were about Tolkien's
| response: 'How about a six book, three volume epic, not
| suitable for much of the same audience (children), in
| essentially a new genre, with almost all new characters?'
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Much like movies today, if the sequel comes out long
| enough after the original, and you want to target the
| SAME people, you go from children/YA to adult.
|
| For example there was a 17-year gap between The Hobbit
| and LOTR's first two books.
| deeg wrote:
| > Where does Tolkien describe that?
|
| It's discussed extensively in History of the Lord of the
| Rings. The sequel was originally intended to have a tone as
| light as The Hobbit (which somewhat excuses his original
| "Bingo" Baggins). Tolkien had no idea where he was going when
| he started writing; he just knew he wanted to start with a
| party and somewhere include an off-hand story involving Tom
| Bombadil. He eventually decides that the protagonist
| (Bilbo/Frodo/Bingo/whoever) will go to Rivendell.
|
| He wrote a few chapters with all this in mind, still in a
| light tone. He went back to rewrite some things and he
| decides to add a passage where Frodo hides to surprise/scare
| Gandalf, who is coming down the road on his horse. Tolkien
| writes the part where Gandalf stops and starts sniffing,
| probably intending for Gandalf to ruin the surprise.
|
| But then, with no known explanation, he scratches out Gandalf
| and writes "black rider" (or something close to that). In the
| margin he writes "who is the black rider?". He then pauses
| his rewrite so he can ponder who this new character is. This
| starts him down the new, darker, path that leads to the Ring
| and Sauron. The sniffing rider eventually becomes a Nazgul.
| Fascinating stuff!
| ordu wrote:
| Wow. I always was flummoxed by the first part of the story,
| especially by the fox thinking about hobbits sleeping under
| a tree. It just feels to be out of place in the book. An
| echo of The Hobbit. But if the real story of LOTR started
| later it becomes clearer.
| jfengel wrote:
| That's an important point: Tom Bombadil was another
| character that Tolkien had already created, independent of
| both the Middle-earth stuff and _The Hobbit_.
|
| His inclusion in the book is awkward and people have tons
| of questions about it because it doesn't really fit. Tom
| Bombadil is more of a nursery-rhyme character, and would
| have fit better into a Hobbit sequel than what became _The
| Lord of the Rings_.
|
| His continued inclusion reflects the way Tolkien was loath
| to give up an idea once he'd written it, leading to a
| chapter that is at once incredibly evocative and
| maddeningly uninformative.
| niemandhier wrote:
| So LOTR was written in iterations, and the Hobbit was patched
| after first released?
|
| Sounds like a good framework for productivity.
| jfengel wrote:
| It was released only because he was forced to by management.
|
| Given Tolkien's druthers, he'd have kept it all in a private
| repository, working on branch after branch, cherry-picking
| changes strung like a Christmas tree.
|
| What he really wanted to release was The Silmarillion, but
| they passed. It included a long but incomplete verse version
| of Beren and Luthien, which utterly baffled the readers. The
| publisher demanded a Hobbit sequel -- which already included
| a bunch of random stuff from The Silmarillion, but mostly
| just a few inconsistent fragments.
|
| So he wrote The Lord of the Rings, and despite himself,
| managed to actually get it released. All the while he kept
| tinkering with his masterpiece, never releasing it at all.
| Some other developer (his son) finally cobbled something
| together after he died -- mostly by reverting to branches
| that were decades behind the HEAD.
|
| He was very, very, very unproductive. But he sure made a lot
| of commits -- and then reverted them.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| The Hobbit edits here make a lot of sense in the bigger
| picture, though. Given what we later learn about the Ring,
| there's NO WAY Gollum would wager it as a 'present' in a riddle
| game... And if he somehow did, he would cheat like hell to keep
| it, despite all the 'ancient tradition' around the Riddle Game.
|
| The edit is great; it solves the continuity problem in a really
| creative way. Making the old version into Bilbo's self-serving
| rationalization is an excellent bit of meta-fiction, further
| reinforcing the seductive power of the Ring.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Isn't most fiction writing like this though? You just don't get
| to see it because it's not so interesting and you don't
| generally have a person (tolkiens son) making editing leftovers
| their life's work.
|
| People edit, make major changes, names change, a minor detail
| in an early draft becomes a central plot point.
|
| Neil Gaiman definitely talks about development of his work like
| this.
|
| Tolkien seems to be particularly interested in having a body of
| his life's work writing being consistent, but it's not so out
| of line with how any fiction is written.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is sort of funny. Historical myths and legends of were not
| controlled in the same sense that modern fiction is, so you had
| various sets of stories -- King Arthur, Greek pantheon, etc,
| where the canon is really more of a suggestion. Events can be
| jumbled around to ignored, new characters can be introduced,
| the Lancelots of the whole thing stick around but some of their
| aspects are pulled forward or pushed back.
|
| And then of course modern stories are generally single-source
| and totally controlled (other than comic books and that sort of
| thing).
|
| And one of the major authors who sort of bridges the gap... his
| method seems to have been "well I'll just run that whole
| historical process in my head, with the various characters and
| groups recording their legends and myths!"
| jfengel wrote:
| That is the truly epic thing about his, uh, epics. He
| basically used his own evolution of thoughts as a parallel
| for the history of a culture -- all by a single person. The
| languages themselves evolved in his head, and he documented
| all of the versions as if they belonged to thousands of years
| of linguistic divergence.
|
| Star Wars and Marvel still evoke debates about canonicity,
| but at least that's a bunch of authors taking things in their
| own directions. Tolkien achieved that kind of argument about
| canon all by himself.
|
| It's actually ripe for fanfic, and why people really
| shouldn't get so up in arms about whether modern expansions
| of Middle-earth are in conflict with "canon". He explicitly
| called for "other hands and minds" to expand on his work. But
| what he achieved all by himself is so masterful that it's
| understandable that some want to think of it as a pristine
| canon unto itself.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| I hadn't thought of it before, but cannon seems mostly to be
| a consequence of copyright. Places like SCP, which only
| vaguely use copyright, have a cannon that more closely
| resemble traditional mythmaking.
| whakim wrote:
| > Historical myths and legends of were not controlled in the
| same sense that modern fiction is.
|
| I think this point misses a bit of context - notably the
| contrast between oral and written literature. Many historical
| legends and folklore originated in some kind of oral context,
| which gives rise to a huge set of interconnected stories (and
| it's only later that we get some kind of "canonical" version
| of these stories, when someone _writes down_ one of those
| oral performances). The oral performances of such stories
| necessitated some of the attributes you allude to. The
| characters and plotting are formulaic and interchangeable
| because that makes them easier to memorize; the details are
| sparse and interchangeable because that allows the bard to
| fill in details to fit the meter and appeal to the
| preferences of their audience.
|
| > And then of course modern stories are generally single-
| source and totally controlled.
|
| Tolkien was incredibly _aware_ of this written /oral
| distinction, and this whole post is great evidence! Tolkien
| _uses_ the way that oral storytelling functions as an in-
| world device to explain away a discrepancy between
| conflicting written versions of the same story. This ends up
| feeling incredibly satisfying because people intuitively
| understand the nature of oral folklore, as opposed to, say,
| George Lucas 's endless revisions to Star Wars (which
| conflicts with the audience's desire for a single "canonical"
| version.)
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Given that The Hobbit was not actually intended to be
| connected directly to his Middle-earth works except
| retroactively_
|
| In the first version of the book I read, there was an offhand
| mention that a Took ancestor had married a "Fairy" (or Fae). It
| was never discussed in the book again and I found that later
| versions had it charged to "Elf".
|
| I always supposed that this was another bit left over from the
| time where the Hobbit was its own universe - at least I never
| heard any mention of Fairies living in Middle-Earth.
|
| Edit: Of course maybe a wiser choice might have been to leave
| it in - and present it as a sign that there are still a lot of
| unexplored corners in Middle-Earth and even after reading all
| the books, we don't know all about it.
|
| I think the modern pressure to have a "canon" which explains
| absolutely everything that goes on in the world can lead to
| sterile and unbelievable worlds as well if a worldbuilder gives
| in too much.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Also IIRC Valinor is called "Faerie" at one point in _The
| Hobbit_.
| chungy wrote:
| > I think the modern pressure to have a "canon" which
| explains absolutely everything that goes on in the world can
| lead to sterile and unbelievable worlds as well if a
| worldbuilder gives in too much.
|
| I agree with that. Leaving room for expansion, and mystery,
| feels like a more "real" world than one where everything has
| already been explored and done.
|
| Fandoms sometimes put themselves into a corner, too, when
| they start making assumptions that all that can be said and
| done already has been. The Star Wars sequel series (episodes
| 7, 8, 9) come to mind. I think the majority of complaints
| came about because they dared to do something new to Star
| Wars. (Some of it was already hinted in the original films,
| too; as an example: Leia being force-sensitive)
| xg15 wrote:
| > _The Star Wars sequel series (episodes 7, 8, 9) come to
| mind. I think the majority of complaints came about because
| they dared to do something new to Star Wars._
|
| (Warning, Star Wars rant follows)
|
| Interesting to hear this direction of criticism.
|
| My personal impression from watching The Force Awakens was
| the opposite: It felt like the movies where at the same
| time obligated to continue the story of the original
| trilogy (due to them being sequels) but at the same time
| not allowed to introduce any substantial new ideas.
|
| That led to a very strange kind of "rhyming" history which
| really strained my suspension of disbelief:
|
| Even though the Empire had been defeated and the Death Star
| blown up (twice), 20 years later somehow nothing noteworthy
| has happened except that a _new_ Empire has sprung up -
| which looks and behaves exactly like the old one, has its
| own copies of Darth Vader and Darth Sidious and somehow can
| 't think of anything better than building a _third_ Death
| Star - which is promptly blown up _again_!
|
| Same on the side of the good guys as well: Last time we saw
| them they were celebrating victory with flying colours,
| having freed the galaxy from the grip of evil, ready to
| usher in an exciting era of a nascent new galactic
| republic.
|
| But sure, let's skip all that and fast-forward to a point
| where the good guys somehow ended up _again_ as the scrappy
| underdogs, fighting against an overwhelming enemy.
| Nevermind even explaining what went wrong.
|
| If the heroes do everything right, archive full victory -
| and still end up in the exact same place as they had
| started, I can't help but feel dreadful.
|
| I'm sure the restrictions here didn't really have to do
| with canon: They were sequels, so strictly speaking there
| was no canon to respect, and the Extended Universe canon
| that did exist actually was a lot more daring and
| interesting than what the movie attempted. So my guess here
| is that the restrictive approach came from the producers
| who didn't want to risk their investment by trying out
| anything new.
| chungy wrote:
| > My personal impression from watching The Force Awakens
| was the opposite
|
| Totally fair, it really is a remake of A New Hope. I
| think the same could be said of The Phantom Menace, for
| better and worse, but there is precedent in how to start
| a trilogy ;)
|
| Episodes 8 and 9 do a lot more to stuff new ideas.
| Episode 8 still felt obliged to repeat the major plot
| points of 5 and 6 (I'll ding it for that), but once those
| were out of the way, the plot could really do its own
| thing.
|
| > But sure, let's skip all that and fast-forward to a
| point where the good guys somehow ended up again as the
| scrappy underdogs, fighting against an overwhelming
| enemy. Nevermind even explaining what went wrong.
|
| It's not the reading I came away with. The good guys won,
| set up the New Republic, became a bit too complacent.
| Despite Leia and others warning about the First Order
| faction springing up out of the ashes of the Empire, they
| weren't taken seriously. These are the resistance the
| films focus on.
|
| The First Order showed that it was serious business by
| blowing up Coruscant, capital of the New Republic (as
| well as the Old Republic and the Galactic Empire).
| bombcar wrote:
| Tolkien originally used the term Fairy (as in Fae) to mean
| elf - but he changed the name without changing the concept;
| he felt the term elf was closer and fairy had too much
| "baggage" from Shakespeare and friends.
|
| I wonder how he'd feel known Ing that his concepts of orc and
| elf and dwarves now dominate fantasy
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| His version of orc, elf, and dwarves are close enough to
| earlier versions it's hard to say how much he changed vs
| these versions simply fitting a modern aesthetic.
|
| Earlier dwarves vs Tolkien dwarves vs more modern examples
| don't seem that different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dw
| arf_(folklore)#Norse_mytholo...
|
| Elves are easier to argue but Santa workshop elves, Harry
| Potter elves, D&D elves, etc are all quite different.
| bombcar wrote:
| One thing Tolkien never had was pointy ear elves - that
| crept in somehow and now it's everywhere.
| Retric wrote:
| Large and sometimes pointy elf ears where a thing before
| he was born, but I don't know where pointy thing really
| took off. I suspect it was mostly a way to draw larger
| ears without it being as comical.
|
| 1870: https://freevintageillustrations.com/enter-an-elf-
| in-search-...
|
| He did say in a letter that Hobbits had pointy ears
| seemingly a nod to existing tradition, while elves had
| leaf shaped ears whatever that meant.
| xg15 wrote:
| Oh, I wasn't aware of that. That's interesting to know!
| jfengel wrote:
| Tolkien also kept using the word "Gnome" to refer to a
| particularly high-class subset of the Elves. That, too,
| reads very strangely, because it puts me in mind of garden
| gnomes. I have no frame to think of the most beautiful
| Elves -- including Elrond and Galadriel -- as "gnomes".
|
| He eventually gave up on that and used "Noldor", a term
| he'd been kicking around for a while in various contexts.
| That's much more comfortable, but he kept using "gnome" way
| longer than seemed reasonable.
| rimunroe wrote:
| > Tolkien also kept using the word "Gnome" to refer to a
| particularly high-class subset of the Elves.
|
| What do you mean by "high-class" here? Do you mean
| they're Calaquendi, or are you saying they were esteemed
| greater than the other houses?
| jfengel wrote:
| The Gnomes were Calaquendi, who answered the call of the
| Valar (angels/gods) to come see the Light of the Two
| Trees in the West.
|
| The Vanyar (also Calaquendi) were probably "higher" than
| the Gnomes, but they were never seen in Middle-earth
| again. We learn very little about them, and I don't think
| they're even passingly alluded to in _The Lord of the
| Rings_. Some of the Gnomes returned to Middle-earth, so
| they outrank everybody who never left.
|
| He renamed the Gnomes "Noldor", and most of The
| Silmarillion is about them (and the Men who hung out with
| them). They came back to Middle-earth to retrieve the
| Silmarils, which had been stolen by Morgoth (the Big Bad
| of the First Age, and Sauron's boss).
|
| Galadriel is one of the very few we meet who were part of
| that go-and-return trip. It was a nasty business, and
| that's why her turning down the Ring and returning to the
| West was such a big deal. (Though she wasn't part of the
| story at the time they were called Gnomes, and she had to
| be retroactively inserted into it. He never did finalize
| that story, and we're left with a conflicting mess of
| unpublished stories.)
| gpderetta wrote:
| IIRC Galadriel is the noblest Noldor[1] left in Middle
| Earth at the time of the war of the rings.
|
| All children of Feanor (the main contingent of the
| Noldor) are dead by the end if the first age).
|
| The few Noldor that outranked Galadriel left by the end
| if the second era after the last alliance of men and
| elves and the war with Sauron.
|
| [1] which I think is also half Teleri.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> which I think is also half Teleri_
|
| Yes, Galadriel's father, Finarfin, was of the Noldor, and
| he married Earwen of Alqualonde, the daughter of Olwe,
| who was one of the two leaders of the Teleri.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Yes, as opposed to the Moriquendi.
|
| So his gnomes were not of the, aehm, garden variety.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Before Tolkien, elves were much closer to gnomes than
| immortal, super-human creatures. They were mischievious,
| etc.
| solstice wrote:
| In the Magic the Gathering lore, the elves on the plane
| of Lorwyn could be an example of a reflection of this.
| They are obsessed with beauty and perfection and
| absolutely xenophobic.
| https://gamelore.fandom.com/wiki/Lorwyn_Elf
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I read the original version first, some ancient copy checked out
| of the library. When I re-read it a couple of years later, the
| book was different than I remembered. It was only years later
| that I discovered why.
| dadjoker wrote:
| Heh, the web dev geek in me made it so that the first thing I
| noticed about the page was the old school web page layout using
| tables.
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| oh thank god there are diffs.
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