[ SECRET POST #2209 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2208 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 121 secrets from Secret Submission Post #316.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

But that's kind of like saying "a black guy mugged me, I hate all black guys now".

I'd really prefer anything that takes the "I'm so perfect" shine off of elves. It leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.

In any case, people don't like nitpicking because it sounds like you're trying to tell people they shouldn't enjoy a movie. It also sounds pretty snobby, as if you think you could have done better by staying truer to the source material.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd really prefer anything that takes the "I'm so perfect" shine off of elves. It leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.

That's mostly PJ fucking up the Elves by making both more pretentious and more nasty imo. Like in Lotr with the Elves being all ethereal and arrogant and Elrond being set against Men - which, just, where the fuck did that come from? Or Thranduil in the Hobbit film.
Whereas in the books there are plenty of instances of Elves being not so perfect, specially in the First Age, and they felt a lot less arrogant to other species.

[intrigueing]

Yeah this, tbh. Not that Tolkien elves were super perfect or anything, but they were never the humorless snobs that they tended towards in the movies. I mean, Legolas spends a good chunk of his time in the book literally running around cheerfully while laughing and making jokes and telling the others to buck up and look at how wonderful the places they're traveling through are.

[(Anonymous)]

This was literally my only criticism of Orlando Bloom's Legolas, and it wasn't really his fault that Jackson turned him into a pointy-eared blonde Deanna Troi.

[(Anonymous)]

I read the books, and it came across as more or less mocking the others for being weaker and not elves. Also that we were meant to appreciate how wonderful the elves are at keeping their spirits up.

[(Anonymous)]

...and this comment has something to do with anything because...?

[(Anonymous)]

Did you even read the comment I replied to? You silly billy.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, and I don't see how your comment is a reply to or refutation of guy-you-were-replying-to's comment.

[(Anonymous)]

But I feel like a lot of those things made elves less perfect in the movies, not more. Certainly more realistic and interesting.

And elves...were ethereal and arrogant in the books. It's just that their arrogance came off as righteous, since they WERE better than everyone else.

[(Anonymous)]

See, the thing about the elves in LOTR is that these are the elves who managed to

(a) Not kill each other off, get themselves killed off, or otherwise get killed off over the brief but frankly rather awful First Age.
(b) Escape the entire subcontinent sinking during a war at the end of the First Age.
(c) Not get killed in the bloody collapse of Eregion in the Second Age.
(d) Not get killed in the war at the end of the Second Age.
(e) Not given up on Middle-Earth after the collapse of Lindon after Gil-Galad's death.
(f) Still not have decided to chuck it all and hop on a ship to (relative) paradise in the intervening almost-four-thousand-years.

Since the elven birthrate is appallingly low, the majority of the elves probably date back to the Second Age or earlier. I believe it's canon that Thranduil was born in the First Age, though Legolas may be Third-Age-born.

So, the remaining elves are a non-random sample of elves. They really are that good, because all the ones who weren't that good died. So did a lot of the ones who were that good.

They also really are that stubborn, and arguably really are that arrogant, in thinking they can make a difference when the Valar wanted them all to come and be safe.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, having just re-read the Silmarillion and read the first few chapters of The Hobbit (and having read LOTR years ago), I'd say the Elves are definitely portrayed as perfect in the books too. Or ... maybe not perfect, but certainly generally just better. Beautiful, ageless, speak the prettiest languages, unaffected by power-hunger or greed, immortal unless they die of violence or heartbreak, great singers ... I doubt the Elves would pass a Mary Sue test! =D Many of them look down on humans and consider them power-obsessed, foolish and kind of creepy for aging or becoming sick and dying.

(I still love them. I think it was the languages I fell for.)

Then again, these books (except maybe The Hobbit) are supposed to be thought of as translations from the original Quenya or something, right? What I mean is, they're written as the Elves' own stories, so of course they're not objective descriptions of the peoples of Middle-Earth.

[(Anonymous)]

Pretty sure Bilbo wrote The Hobbit or There and Back Again and Frodo wrote The Lord of the Rings (except for the epilogue which Sam wrote) but they're both pretty pro-Elf so very not objective at all.

[(Anonymous)]

You think elves in the Silmarillion are portrayed as perfect?! But the Silmarillion is full of elves making a total hash of everything because of power-hungriness and greed!

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

First of all, I meant to say the text more or less says they are perfect, but then shows something very different. Second, could you give examples? I totally agree with you on elves making a total hash of everything, but I'd point to other traits than power-hunger and greed as the cause. Arrogance, say, and envy, and pride, and an obsession with beauty.

[(Anonymous)]

Wait, you just reread the Silmarillion and still think Elves are portrayed as 'unaffected by power-hunger and greed'? Or that their being immortal is the better option in the long run? Return your copy now, you've been robbed, some pages must been missing. A lot of pages.

[(Anonymous)]

Nonononono! I think the elves themselves believe they're better than everyone else. And I think Tolkien might have thought so too, but I'm less sure of that.

The text also says over and over that humans want power so badly, and the dwarves are heavily implied to be pretty greedy (in the last chapter, about the Third Age and the Rings of Power, it's said that the Dwarf rulers were better able to withstand the corrupting power of their rings than the human kings, so it didn't turn them into tyrants (or ringwraiths), it just made them greedier. (I suppose this is what happened in the backstory sequence in the Hobbit movie?) But virtually nothing negative is ever said about Elves, which suggests we're meant to think they aren't greedy or power-hungry.

And, you know, in a way I could almost agree. As a race, Elves don't have all that much in the way of power games (court intrigues, for instance), and they don't tend to collect riches as a goal in itself. It's just that they're so hung up on BEAUTY, the end result is pretty much the same. Once you've read even a couple of chapters of the Quenta Silmarillion, the idea of Elves being all flawless and perfect seems pretty laughable.

Don't even get me started on the immortality thing. It's supposed to be this ~gift from Eru Ilúvatar~, but it entails disease, aging, only getting to stay in Middle-earth for a comparatively short time, and having absolutely no clue what happens next. It also sets them apart from the Elves and the Ainur, and keeps them from going where they'd be protected from Morgoth and Sauron - the land that's also the home of the Ainur. The Elves (and the text) seem to think the humans should basically STFU and stop worrying and whining, but it also says outright that the Elves were creeped out by humans catching diseases and growing old in less than a century. I imagine the haughtiest Elves would see humans as something along the lines of, say, sickly talking chimpanzees with the lifespans of hamsters.

[(Anonymous)]

"It also sounds pretty snobby, as if you think you could have done better by staying truer to the source material."


As far as I'm concerned, my nitpicking has a lot to do, not with me thinking I could do better, but with me being defensive of some characters and not liking the way they're characterised. If you're a fan of ongoing canons, have you never felt angry about the direction some character was taking? For me it's like that, and it's not about 'purity' or 'snobbishness'.

[(Anonymous)]

But to other people, you have your canon. It can't actually continue, since the author is dead and his works a finite. Now someone else is adapting it, and you may be interested in seeing it the way it was exactly in the source material, but it is a new thing. It's not taking away the old.

[(Anonymous)]

Your canon is not ongoing. Your canon is finished. The movies are an adaptation - they do no change the book or the books characterization. There are now two canons.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd really prefer anything that takes the "I'm so perfect" shine off of elves. It leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.

This. I'm sorry to say but I have grown to dislike elves in pretty much every freaking fantasy work. They just get slapped with this "holier than thou" stamp everywhere. And the fandom fawns over them because they are pretty and that makes them automatically the best.

[(Anonymous)]

Plenty of very flawed Elves (that are acknowledged as such) in Tolkien's own works though.

[(Anonymous)]

Exhibit One: Feanor.

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

The Original Stroppy Boy.

[(Anonymous)]

Exhibit two: Eöl. Sweet mother-of-pearl, Eöl.