Admin Post: June Challenge | Analysing Arda (15 June - 10 July)

[dawn_felagund]

This month's challenge is a nonfiction challenge. All nonfiction is welcome, from headcanons to essays to multimedia responses.

There are no claims for this month's challenge, but if you need some inspiration to get started, check out the list below of member-sourced prompts. You are not required to use one of these questions and may write about anything you would like. If you want to comment on our Dreamwidth with the question or topic you'll be writing about, feel free; however, please note that since there are no official claims this month, others may choose to respond to the same question. If you suggested a question last month, you are certainly welcome to write for that question if you want to, but you are under no obligation to do so.

Nonfiction Prompt Ideas
It bears repeating that you are not required to choose a prompt from this list and may write about any nonfiction topic you choose.

• The translation history of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien


• Fads and fashions in the artistic interpretation of Tolkien's works


• Diversity in Middle-earth


• Why do the Elves of Gondolin have an assigned place for execution, and other matters of crime and punishment


• Animals of Arda (in folklore, literature, Tolkien's life and Tolkien's writing), especially cats, spiders, dogs, horses, eagles, birds in general, and any other animals you can think of


• Disability and mental (un)health in Middle-earth


• Trade and economy in the 1st (or 2nd or 3rd, ...) Age


• The Gift of Men (starting from the Numenor discussion, the Athrabeth discussion, Half-Elves, or any other approach).


• Anglo-Saxon or Norse or Finnish, etc. parallels and influences in The Silmarillion (macro or micro: overarching ones or specific details or areas)


• Attested historical practice as possible background for daily life of Middle-earth characters (e.g smithwork, sword-fighting, sailing, weaving, etc.)


• Elvish language and script as background to aspects of Arda


• Social mores during the First Age and how they compared to those of the Second and Third Ages, as well as how they compare to those we experience today in the modern world
  
• Who is Mandos and why, if he has such keen foresight, is he so rarely listened to?


• Why was Mandos chosen to look after the dead when other characters, such as Irmo, might be more suitable?


• Are the Silmarils living creatures, just like the Two Trees or Elves? Could they even be real children of Fëanor?


• How would the Elves deal with disabilities? Acquired vs congenital (present since birth, whether birth trauma or random genetic mutation)? How would the wars against Morgoth and Sauron affect it? Does the bit in Laws and Customs among the Eldar about Elves healing from things that kill would mortals change anything? What are the similarities and differences among the Amanyar, Sindar, other Elven groups, and the Avari?


• How has the depiction of a character or pairing changed across the history of Tolkien fanfic? (Or fanart?)


• How does bias against the Avari and other minority groups manifest in The Silmarillion and related texts?

For more ideas on what to write about, see Dawn's 101 Approaches to Tolkien Meta, or What the Heck to Write About.

Thank you to everyone who contributed questions and prompts for this challenge!

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Other Housekeeping: Despite my best intentions to get stamp collections updated before the new challenge was released, I did not manage to do so. I should have them finished next week.

Comments

[oloriel]

Right, I'm going to take this as an invitation to write the post on popular Elf sex myths (and/or things Tolkien actually said about Elf sex) I've been meaning to tackle for a while.

Soooo.... does anyone have any Elf sex fanon claims - or things actually mentioned by Tolkien - that they'd like to see investigated? So far I've got" Elves don't have sex at all"; "magical contraception" (a.k.a. Elves can decide when to get pregnant), "Elves can completely suppress their urges"; and "Elves stop having sex when they get older". If you have further ideas that you keep stumbling across in fanfic, or in LACE, or wherever, I'd love to hear about it so I can have a nice collection of things to talk about! :D

[dawn_felagund]

(Replying in both places in case someone wants to jump into the discussion here vs. LJ ...)

I think the biggest one for me has always been the claim that Elves don't have sex before marriage. L&C claims that, of course ... but what exactly does that mean? Only f/m penis-in-vagina intercourse? What often comes to my mind is the similar situation of evangelical teens in the U.S., who are forbidden from "having sex" and so engage in oral and even anal sex at higher rates than other teens! And what about homosexual sex, i.e., the millennia of all-male institutions that managed to cope without access to women? What about acts that could result in pregnancy without sex? Would this even be possible without bonded spirits?

In short, the issue is so much more complicated than I expect JRRT ever wanted to acknowledge! XD But we fanfic writers have gladly taken advantage of it for decades. (When writing AMC, for instance, I deliberately made it compliant with L&C but also walked as closely to that line as I could within tottering over, just to piss off canatics who would want to flame me for violating L&C, but this only worked because this particular caveat--a favorite of canatics everywhere--really wasn't fully thought out.)

[oloriel]

I think L&C is a delightful document in this context, and I hope I'll manage to find and point out all the weird loopholes in it (starting with the apparent conviction of canatics that it is, somehow, universally applicable... Indy has already written a great essay on that, of course!) XD I was currently curious about widespread fanons that I might somehow have missed, since I'm mostly dabbling in my little heretic corner of the fandom and probably unaware of a lot of firm mainstream beliefs...

[dawn_felagund]

Declaring publicly that I will be using this challenge for finish some of the alarming number of WiP essays that I have. Off the top of my head, I have a Nerdanel bio, an essay about the implications of Valarin gender roles, the "poor mistreated Fingon" essay, and an essay on the cosmogony of Arda. And there's probably more that I've forgotten about and will come flapping out like the dusty, vampiric moths that they are.

If I can get two polished off, I'll be happy.

[grundyscribbling]

Poor mistreated Fingon?
I'm not sure what's going on there, but I hope that will be one of the ones you finish, because I'm curious!

[dawn_felagund]

LOL ... it's basically shorthand for the fact that, in the data on historical bias that I've collected, Fingon is subject to a surprising amount of bias from the narrator (considering that he is Turgon's brother). I've been wanting to do an essay on some of those observations and what they might imply.

It's also one I really want to finish, but it's also the least completed of the four I listed! D^:

[grundyscribbling]

Ah.
Fingers crossed you find your inspiration/writing time/whatever this one needs - I'm now more curious to read it!

[independence1776]

Would a list of quotes about a specific topic be okay? For quite a while, I've wanted to collect in one place all the things I can find about Middle-earth being our world, whether in-text (Tolkien-as-translator) or the stuff in Letters and HOME. But it's not really meta and born out of my continual frustration of people missing that aspect.

[dawn_felagund]

Absolutely! It might not be what comes to mind when one first thinks of meta, but it's a resource (and an excellent one to have at that!)

[independence1776]

Awesome! That's what I'll do, then.

[oloriel]

I'm cheering so much about this! It's incredible how often people (still!) seem to think that Middle-earth is NOT our earth, or that applying real world principles to Middle-earth would be violating Tolkien's "no allegory!" when it is in fact analogy, not allegory! I suspect I'll be linking to your collection a lot once you've posted it. :D

[independence1776]

It really is incredible people still think that! It's right there in detailed text in LotR, not buried in a two-line footnote in Vinyar Tengwar.

that applying real world principles to Middle-earth would be violating Tolkien's "no allegory!"

…I have been lucky enough to not stumble across that twist of it (or don't remember if I have). I suspect it's because I wasn't looking at the right place at the right time.

I'm glad to hear that other people will make use of it!

[oloriel]

Sometimes I'm honestly wondering whether people aren't ignoring this on purpose (along with Tolkien's Own Words (TM) on that Eru is very much supposed to be the same, uh, entity as the G-d of Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- that's where I last encountered the "can't be! that would be ALLEGORY!" argument). It's been hashed out so often - both by Tolkien and, later, by critics and scholars - that some element of wilful ignorance seems to be involved...

[independence1776]

Some very well could be ignoring it. (Or not thinking it matters because canon doesn't matter.) Others I think are just plain ignorant; I've seen published fantasy authors say that Middle-earth is a different world.

along with Tolkien's Own Words (TM) on that Eru is very much supposed to be the same, uh, entity as the G-d of Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- that's where I last encountered the "can't be! that would be ALLEGORY!" argument

You have suddenly made me nostalgia for fandom fifteen years ago when it was well-known and acknowledged (well, not so much the Judaism and Islam part). Of course, I don't miss the bludgeoning that came hand-in-hand with the knowledge and happened because people dared to write things that didn't agree with (often conservative) Christian religious doctrines.

Scholars have done things about the M-e = our earth thing? (Apart from Kristine Larsen; her work I know about.) I shouldn't be surprised about that, but I am. But I also admit to ignorance about the entire state of Tolkien scholarship apart from the work done by SWG members.

[oloriel]

Thinking it doesn't matter because "canon doesn't matter" is fair enough, I think - I mean, it's not an approach that works for me, but if you start on the premise that canon as a whole doesn't matter, then clearly you don't have to stick to Tolkien's word on canon-related matters, either. What bothers me are the people who insist that M-e NOT being our world is, in fact, canon!

Well, those three kind of go hand in hand in that respect, don't they. But yeah, people often find it hard to acknowledge. Even though Tolkien also explicitly said that while he wrote LotR to be compatible with his faith, Middle-earth is not a Catholic world - which is why he (mostly!) avoided talking about religion in the first place. (BoLT is quite a different matter, of course!) And at one point, he referred to the theology of Gondor (or the Númenoreans of Gondor, anyway) as 'hebraic'. Definitely not Catholic, let alone fundamental evangelical!
But I'm getting off-topic!

I don't know if others than Kristine Larsen have looked at it in-depth, but I've seen it mentioned in various articles. Of course, the fact that they all feel the need to establish that fact is already quite telling...

[independence1776]

Yeah, that is a fair approach to canon, though like you, it's one that doesn't work for me. I have not seen the latter, though, and I'm glad of it. (This really is one of my pet peeves.)

Well, those three kind of go hand in hand in that respect, don't they. But yeah, people often find it hard to acknowledge.

They do! But I distinctly remember anything that even got close to Islam being used for the Southrons and other allies of Sauron (whether they were going for real-world geographical equivalence and didn't think about the implications or were Islamaphobic because of real-world stuff leaking in I don't know).

And at one point, he referred to the theology of Gondor (or the Númenoreans of Gondor, anyway) as 'hebraic'. Definitely not Catholic, let alone fundamental evangelical!

Yup! And I realized (thanks to your response to that M-e religion meta on Tumblr) that the three Númenorian festivals have rough equivalence to the three Jewish pilgramiage festivals. So make of that what you will.

Ah, okay. Yes, that is somewhat telling.

[oloriel]

But I distinctly remember anything that even got close to Islam being used for the Southrons and other allies of Sauron (whether they were going for real-world geographical equivalence and didn't think about the implications or were Islamaphobic because of real-world stuff leaking in I don't know).

Well, that makes about as much sense as implementing Catholicism in the Shire. I'd assume geographical equivalence rather than Islamophobia until proven otherwise, TBH, but I can't say I'm surprised - especially since the costume design of PJ's movies cheerfully alluded to Southern Mediterranean influences. In terms of worldbuilding, though, what a pity! You can invent whatever you want for the Southrons etc., since we don't have much material on them - from hesitant Sauron-worship to the polytheism that so many people seem to miss among the Eldar and Edain of the First Age - so why not go for that!

Yup! And I realized (thanks to your response to that M-e religion meta on Tumblr) that the three Númenorian festivals have rough equivalence to the three Jewish pilgramiage festivals.

Neat! That would fit pretty well. (I see quite a bit of meta on how the Dwarves are - or in the writing of LotR, became - Jewish-coded, but I haven't seen any analysis of the Númenorean faithful in that light, which is a real pity!)

[independence1776]

Well, it wasn't actual Islam, but rather a whole bunch of cultural and legal stuff inspired by moderm Middle Eastern Islamic countries without much thought to why the modern culture is what it is (aka religion is important) and why it doesn't quite fit with Middle-earth.

Beats me why people didn't! But this was at least a decade ago, so I'm not going to try to speculate. I'd rather make my own culture up myself.

I'm no Númenorean expert, so I'm not the right person for that meta! (Also, I'm shaking my head at myself for not spellchecking.)

[oloriel]

Ah, that makes more sense! To be fair, I'd probably take some cultural inspiration from the actual region as well, since culture (including religion!) is naturally also influenced by place - but it's a fine, fine line to tread...

Too bad! While I'm comfortable on the Númenorean material, I'd be terrified of getting things wrong or causing offense, so I'm not the right person either. ^^

[independence1776]

Yeah, absolutely it makes sense to take some inspiration! But some of these fics crossed that line…

Ah, well. Maybe someone somewhere someday will tackle it.

[oloriel]

I'm sure. Shari'a among the Haradrim and the like. (Sounds like another interesting essay that I'm not qualified to write!)

I hope so!

Speaking of essays and tackling, I seem to remember that you once wrote some brilliant meta about the (lack of ;)) universal applicability of LaCE, but I can't find it! Am I imagining things or am I just being too stupid?

[independence1776]

It's on SWG under the title "The In-universe Authorship of LACE." (Sorry for not linking.)

[oloriel]

Found it, thank you! Somehow I had in mind that it could only be two or three years old! But it's been five already! Should've scrolled further back. ^^

[independence1776]

Five… It really doesn't feel like five years. *hides under her blankets*

[grundyscribbling]

Question, as someone who's never posted non-fiction on SWG before - is there any difference in how to post non-fiction vs fiction? (I'm working on an essay about Thingol.)

[dawn_felagund]

Not really, no--the only difference would be that you'd most likely want to select Nonfiction/Essay under the Genre classification. Otherwise, the procedure is exactly the same.

[grundyscribbling]

Excellent. (Thanks for the quick answer!)

[dawn_felagund]

You're welcome! :)

[fernstrike]

I only just saw this because of dodgy internet access, but oooh yes!!! Time to rant and speculate a little about Second Age geopolitics :D It's gonna be a great chance to hammer out some ideas about an essay/paper/vaguely-academic-thing I'm working on.

[dawn_felagund]

Yay! That is a perfect use! (I'm I'm psyched that you are presenting there ... please let me know if you want to link to anything in the SWG newsletter after the conference!)

[fernstrike]

Aaah I'm psyched your psyched <3 tbh half the reason I've got the guts to write the paper in the first place is seeing all the great meta both on the SWG and on Tumblr, which I never realised (until recently that is) was just as valid and in many ways even more exciting than writing fic. So cheers for championing the nonfiction cause :)

I'd love to link to something in the newsletter! Not sure if I mentioned it before but I've postponed the paper for Tolkien 2019 because I figured I wouldn't have time to do a good one for this year. But I've got my spot more-or-less secured! So once it's done I'd be happy to :D

[dawn_felagund]

:D :D :D Awesome!

In the past, I've done "scouting reports" at conferences too ... that's a bit more, but we'd be happy to have it if you wanted to write it. ^_^ But at the least, I'll make sure you're linked.

I adore meta. Part of the reason that I have a number of meta WiPs like normal fanworks folk have WiP stories ... XD