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Remus
Lorien
Dec 20 2014, 2:09pm
Post #1 of 20
(1018 views)
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What happened to Thrandul @ the end
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I mean the end of ends. When Sauron was defeated? And during War of the Ring? He defended Mirkwood from orc attacks and he went out on some guerrila warfare on the borders of Mirkwood?
Did he sail into the West sometime after Galadriel & Celebrimbor? Or did he stay in Middle-Earth?
What do you think? Not much is known according to the wikia.
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mirkwoodwanderer
Lorien
Dec 20 2014, 2:30pm
Post #2 of 20
(619 views)
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One would hope he would meet Legolas and his new boy friend Gimli one more time
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LordotRings93
Rohan
Dec 20 2014, 2:35pm
Post #3 of 20
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This is why I wish more M-e literature would come out
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Little things like this have the potential for new stories set in Middle-earth. If only Christopher Tolkien would write some Middle-earth novels in the form of Hobbit/LOTR instead of the history format like Silmarillion/Histories Of Middle-earth. Or have some new authors come in and and fill out the world (or PJ can with films) like Tolkien originally wanted to happen: he'd lay the groundwork, and then he wanted other folk to come in and fill out his world.
A little off-topic, but still, I feel this world is wasted by just sitting in the Tolkien estate not being used.
The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies 12/17/14
"When faced with death, what can anyone do?" -Bilbo Baggins
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Oleander Took
Rivendell
Dec 20 2014, 3:07pm
Post #5 of 20
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He never traveled West. He remained in ME when all the others left. I had always though so myself :)
"The closer you to get to light, the greater your shadow becomes"
(This post was edited by Oleander Took on Dec 20 2014, 3:08pm)
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mirkwoodwanderer
Lorien
Dec 20 2014, 3:25pm
Post #6 of 20
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In that case some one could make a GREAT movie of him in the present day.
Would not it be super.. him in the days of the Egyptians, the Greek, The Romans, him fighting the Muslims in the middle ages, the Native Americans, the armies of the North, The Nazi's and the dictator of Romenia.
He never traveled West. He remained in ME when all the others left. I had always though so myself :)
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Glorfindela
Valinor
Dec 20 2014, 4:14pm
Post #7 of 20
(518 views)
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He belongs to Middle-Earth, not our world.
In that case some one could make a GREAT movie of him in the present day. Would not it be super.. him in the days of the Egyptians, the Greek, The Romans, him fighting the Muslims in the middle ages, the Native Americans, the armies of the North, The Nazi's and the dictator of Romenia. He never traveled West. He remained in ME when all the others left. I had always though so myself :) |
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Dec 20 2014, 4:41pm
Post #8 of 20
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Prof. Tolkien wrote that King Thranduil repulsed an attack from Dol Guldur during the War of the Ring. After Sauron fell, the Elvenking fixed the Mountains of Mirkwood as the southern boundary of the Woodland Realm, which florished well into the Fourth Age.
'There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.' - Gandalf the Grey, The Fellowship of the Ring
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yannischatzi
The Shire
Dec 20 2014, 5:24pm
Post #9 of 20
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Prof. Tolkien was a very clever man, he knew that the task he had in mind was impossible to be completed by one man alone. So, he wanted other people from various arts to come in and add to this amazing mythology. This mythology was supposed to be dynamic and organic as opposed to static and dead. That is why I love PJ's films.
The Tolkien estate could have the role of approving work done on Middle Earth, rather than prohibiting it.
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SilentLion
Rivendell
Dec 20 2014, 5:32pm
Post #10 of 20
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Tolkien would say that he had "faded"
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To the extent that Middle-Earth is a "legendary pre-history" to our own world, I think Tolkien would say that elves who chose to remain behind rather than travel west had faded. I remember a quote somewhere in his writings that described that these stragglers would be "a quiet rustic people, destined to forget and be forgotten".
Those that stayed would have done so because of their love of the earth and its natural beauty and would have little interest in the affairs of humans. Even their bodies would have "faded" with time and not be visible to humans under most circumstances. The only interactions that humans might have with them is ocassionally catch a short glimpse of them or hear a brief bit of song, near one of their favorite woods or stream.
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dormouse
Half-elven
Dec 20 2014, 6:15pm
Post #11 of 20
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I'm not sure that I do wish that.
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At least, I DO wish that Tolkien could have written more himself - but reading about how he worked I'm not sure that he would ever have 'finished', however many lifetimes were given to him. The perfect image in his own writing is the artist Niggle, who dreams of painting a wonderful tree but finds himself drawn more and more to perfecting a single leaf.
Christopher Tolkien, I think, lacks his father's flair for imaginative fiction. He's a scholar but I'm not sure that creating new threads of story to blend with his father's would be something he would want to do.
As for other writers, I think that to create a new story of Middle Earth that would really satisfy readers who know and love the original the writer would have to be someone who shared Tolkien's view of the world - his faith - that deep pessimism lit by a distant glint of ultimate hope on which the whole construction is built. If the new stories lacked that heart and sensibility they wouldn't work. I've seen Tolkien-inspired stories that were nice, well-intentioned, well-written in their own way, but they didn't capture anything of the magic that draws me to the original.
Besides, in any story there will always be loose ends. That's one of the fascinations - it leaves each individual reader free to imagine where the ends lead and produce personal 'fill-in' stories and explanations for things not explained. I can understand that desire for more but my betting is that it's that desire that actually holds us to the story. Imagine if someone actually wrote more - a new Middle Earth story with the blessing of the Tolkien Estate and you didn't like it - perhaps because it took a particular character in a direction that seemed wrong to you. Wouldn't you miss the incompleteness of the original?
I think Leaf by Niggle says it all, for me....
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Dec 20 2014, 6:53pm
Post #12 of 20
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It's not something which I am waiting impatiently for, and I agree on a question mark next to Christopher.
Such endeavours of new writers picking up other authors' characters and worlds probably fail more often than they succeed. Now, that said, I certainly don't see any negative to it (and the approval of the Estate seems neither here nor there, except as a legal enabler).
I don't agree that anyone should fear new creations in case they don't like the stories in them. You describe the worry that something the reader didn't like might happen to pre-existing character. That seems to me to be very strange. If you don't like it, the joy of a story is that you can happily ignore it.
I happen to like Dracula as a novel and there we have a character that has been taken in thousands of different directions by subsequent authors, filmmakers, artists etc etc. Why on earth would I be worried that I might not, or indeed definitely do not, like a portion of those additional stories? If I do like them, great but if not, I haven't lost anything.
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SilentLion
Rivendell
Dec 20 2014, 7:30pm
Post #13 of 20
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There are actually a significant number of Fan Fiction sites
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That extend and fill in the gaps in happenings in Middle Earth. Out of respect for our hosts here at TOR, I'll refrain from mentioning any by name, but you can find several large fan fiction sites with a short internet search.
Like all fan fiction, what is available pretty much runs the gamut, so you have to separate the wheat from the chaff. But there is some out there that is pretty well written and fills out the storylines of minor stories in a manner that is consistent with both the letter and spirit of the Professor's works.
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dormouse
Half-elven
Dec 20 2014, 8:47pm
Post #14 of 20
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Dracula's a good example. King Arthur's another (and one that appeals more to me. The Arthurian legend has spun off into so many directions, some I enjoy, some not.
I was just thinking aloud really, trying to articulate an instinctive 'yes, but....' reaction to the initial suggestion. People already do write their own spin-off Middle Earth stories and poems, of course, same as they illustrate the scenes Tolkien described. They do it for their own amusement - it's one of the joys of Tolkien's writing that it very often does fire the creativity in others. But it seems unlikely that the Tolkien Estate would give permission for publication.
That's why I mentioned the Estate. The OP seemed to be suggesting something less random and individual than the spin-off fiction that already exists in abundance. For new stories to be published commercially they would need the Estate's approval - in that sense Middle Earth is different from Dracula. And if this were to happen, would those new stories then become, in a sense, 'official' -'canon', if you will. And if they did, would that tie off some of the loose ends Tolkien left? And would that, in turn, leave the reader's imagination fewer open spaces to play in....
Just a thought.
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Dec 20 2014, 9:28pm
Post #15 of 20
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At the legal end of the spectrum, of course I agree.
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But I'm not sure the legal management of copyright impinges on the reader's experience. I guess we could just as easily have chosen Bond as an example. I haven't checked, partly to illustrate the point, but I have some memory that some of re-authoring, at least, is under an official licence. I don't think it makes any difference to the reader, as far as I can tell.
Partly, I think that is because I really don't understand how or why fans of certain things use this concept of "canon". It seems to me to be essentially illogical to think about it in terms of audience response and only to be of use or sense in a bibliographical discussion. The idea that these fictional things "really" happened and those fictional things are "made up" is, to me, very odd indeed.
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Cirashala
Valinor
Dec 20 2014, 9:48pm
Post #16 of 20
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I am a fan fiction writer myself
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and I am fully in agreement with you- there is a fair amount of crappy work out there, but there are also some absolutely gorgeous and exquisite works to be found regarding Middle-earth.
And I'm not concerned with the mods lol (it's not my personal site, and I've mentioned it before)- fanfiction.com is one of the biggest sites available for fan fiction, with hundreds of thousands of stories on there (in fact, LOTR and TH are quickly approaching the second and third slots, if not already there, for the most fics written about single stories, beat only by Harry Potter) and is the one I use  \
There's also archive of our own, but I heard rumor that it was going to end up being shut down due to site issues and the owners' inability to continue funding to fix the issue that happened. Other than that, I don't know of any fan fiction platforms....
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Na Vedui
Rohan
Dec 20 2014, 10:55pm
Post #17 of 20
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[re: The idea that these fictional things "really" happened and those fictional things are "made up" is, to me, very odd indeed. ]
... to do with what makes for a satisfying "subcreation" as Tolkien called it. Substantial internal consistency is one of those things. Beyond a certain point, inconsistency (e.g. in the course of events or the characteristics of a character) tends to destroy the illusion of reality that is needed for that world to come alive while we are in it - unless the inconsistency is "explained" (or at least explainable) by some literary device, such as the idea of being based on two separate and divergent historical manuscript traditions.
All fiction (original as well as fan fiction) is about writing as if things really were so, and fan-fiction has the additional challenge of fitting seamlessly with the "as-if-ness" of something already created (or else why write fan-fiction as opposed to a standalone original story?). The idea of canon is just about establishing where to start from. Sequels written by the same author as the original book are subject to much the same issues - the first story will play the role of "canon" as a basis for the creation of the second.
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Dec 20 2014, 11:08pm
Post #18 of 20
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The notion that stories by different authors
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Or adaptations in different media are better explained by fictional divergent historical manuscripts than by simply being aware they are by different authors or adapted in different media seems equally strange to me.
It's the difference between suspension of disbelief whilst watching the film and riding to the cinema on a horse whilst wearing chain mail.
To return to the Bond example, the quest to come up with some intricate mechanism to explain his active service for 50 or so years without ageing would be a bizarre one. It almost feels like an attempt to maintain the notion that these stories could be historically real after all.
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Na Vedui
Rohan
Dec 20 2014, 11:53pm
Post #19 of 20
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has enough of the right spirit and enough of its own internal consistency, yes, it can come to life in its own right as a version - I did say "substantial" consistency with the original, not necessarily total. (The PJ films (to me anyway) have a good deal of Tolkien's Middle-earth in them).
But there's still - where there is an original work by a known author in existence - a meaningful point of reference ("canon") which later adaptations can be said to follow or deviate from. Tolkien's Middle-earth is a bit different in this respect from, say, the Arthurian tales or Robin Hood, where the "original" story - if there ever was such a thing - cannot now be identified and has been lost in time.
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Dec 21 2014, 12:47am
Post #20 of 20
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Yes, there are the original author's texts.
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Anyone else's are stories are someone else's. So, if for some reason it became too unwieldy to say "Tolkien's books" then you could use the term canon in that bibliographical sense, as I mentioned earlier.
Apart from that, what difference does it make? I still don't see the purpose of worrying about fictional manuscript versions, or Bond as a recipient of anti-ageing gene therapy when the explanation that these are different stories by different authors has the virtues of being both sufficient and true.
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