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Sukkit

WFG Retired
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Posts posted by Sukkit

    Concept art

    in News

    Posted

    I was thinking of this one actually (I don't know the author's name), but the relevant detail, the blonde hair, appears in both. Now that I look at it, I prefer "Fingolfin's Challenge", although I find that Fingolfin to be very unsatisfactory - and not only because of the hair colour ;)

    Concept art

    in News

    Posted

    It looks awesome, as always ;)

    I was thinking of the artwork on the cover of HoME3, actually, depicting the duel between Fingolfin and Melkor. Fingolfin is golden-haired in that painting.

    That won't happen to be the Fingolfin/Conan the Barbarian drawing, right? :P

    Balancing slow growth rates

    in General TLA Discussion

    Posted

    Tolkien did write that Orcs are short-lived, even more so than Men, and that they are mortal and dying, are held "in prison" in Mandos. You can take these statements with a grain of salt, though -- they came from the Myths Transformed texts, which are kind of funky and not terribly reliable.

    That would be quite surprising. From other texts it would seem Orcs are potentially long-lived, even if not necessarily immortal (the idea that they were originally Elves was abandoned), but life is hard and cheap for the Orcs so they would tend to die relatively young. However there's nothing that contradicts directly the idea of them being short-lived. The difficulty in "Bolg son of Azog" is only apparent - he could very well be called that because he was a direct descendent of Azog, a renowned chieftain.

    Genocide

    in General TLA Discussion

    Posted

    Basically, Morgoth had convicend them that Elves were even more sadistic and cruel than them

    Actually I don't think Morgoth was too far off in that regard. I doubt an Elf would have tortured a captured Orc, but the Orc definitely couldn't expect mercy either.

    We rarely get to see the Orkish point of view. That's a pity.

    Unit List

    in General TLA Discussion

    Posted

    All the Orcs in LotR are under either Saruman or Sauron's control IIRC.

    I think the Mountain Orcs remained almost independent in LotR. They join the company of Isengard and Mordor Orcs merely by chance, because they're simply chasing the Fellowship seeking revenge, and they stay with the other Orcs simply because it's a dangerous and hostile land and they would like to survive their trip across Rohan. However, they don't like the idea of going to Isengard.

    Of Beren and Luthien

    in The Silmarillion/Unfinished Tales

    Posted

    I think Gurthang actually spoke! What do we know about the skill of Eöl the Smith? :P

    The scene comes from the tale of Kullervo in the Kalevala, and in that context a talking sword is about the most normal thing you can stumble upon. But of course, Tolkien could have re-interpreted the scene and have the talking sword be a legendary or just a psychological element.

    Favorite Kingdom

    in The Silmarillion/Unfinished Tales

    Posted

    Yeah, well, I was thinking of Ossiriand in the First Age of the Sun. But you're right, I had forgotten about Denethor.

    As for Lothlórien, I was being pedantic in purpose, since that name was used by Galadriel, and prior to that it was Lindórinan, a Nandorin name :P

    The Gospel of Judas

    in Hall of Intellectuals

    Posted

    Personally, I think this so-called Gospel of Judas is more interesting from a historic point of view rather than from a theologic point of view. The media, at least here in Spain, has been blowing this out of proportion, as if Jesus' very own Diary had been found.

    Concept question: Tolkien purism

    in General TLA Discussion

    Posted

    Just one thing: Anglo-Saxon England, until the beginning of the Viking invasions, was probably the most culturally advanced country in Europe. They weren't illiterates at all - they had very cultivated writers, both in prose and poetry, and plenty of erudites. However, most of them focused on Christian themes, and so much of the Germanic legacy was lost. Like Alcuin (a bishop, I think) put it in 797, "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?" (Ingeld is a character of 'Beowulf'), in a letter condemning the recitation of heathen poetry to monks.

    Also, towards the end of the Anglo-Saxon period culture recovered in England, but this late recovery was ruined by the Normans, which were culturally much less advanced than the Anglo-Saxons.

  17. YOUR Ancestors

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I assume it's a mix of Iberian and Roman for me, with plausible later additions, especially Arabic, and less probably Germanic (Visigothic - but that'd make me a noble!) and Jewish. And a bit of Basque - which in itself is impossible to classify at this time.

    Tolkien Research Essay Contest!

    in The Green Dragon

    Posted

    Off-topic, but kind of related to the Sil/UT thing.

    I've always found it a bit surprising that Tolkien could ever consider that the Silmarillion could spoil the magic of historical deepness found in LotR - you know, his analogy with the mysterious island where you shouldn't go because there wouldn't be other islands to reveal. To do so, the Silmarillion would have had to reveal everything, instead of just tiny bits without getting into detail, and in a legendary/mythical manner that effectively makes that island more remote and mysterious than ever, and indeed further revealing other islands... only that, this time, and unlike with the FA tales, we know for certain that we'll never be there - the Haradrim society, Orcish culture, the War of Wrath, and so on.

    I think Sil and UT, even with the divergent versions of the tales (or precisely because of them), are what makes Arda something that can never be exhausted, better known but still more mysterious than the Arda we know from LotR, and what puts his mythology closer to the popular mythologies out there.

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