We have something more interesting… and more late!
It’s “Tale of years”, several short pojects for (unwritten) continuation of Grey Annals. It’s 1950s and HOME XI.

In version B (A has only “The Third and Last Kin-slaying”, B&D end earlier) we read:

“532 [> 534 > 538] The Third and Last Kinslaying. The Havens of Sirion destroyed and Elros and Elrond sons of Earendel taken captive, but are fostered with care by Maidros. Elwing carries away the Silmaril, and comes to Earendel [> Earendil] in the likeness of a bird.”

Had the Noldor not rebelled, and taken matters into their own hands, the deliberation of the Valar in the darkness of the dead Trees would have likely led to a War against Morgoth in the near future. Feanor could have been part of it, and Morgoth would almost certainly have been taken down. Depending on how long it took, Doriath might have been in trouble, but it is possible that Melian could have held out long enough. I don’t think they would have done anything like that until after the rising of the sun at the earliest…but I doubt it would have been until the end of the First Age.

This didn’t happen.

By…impatiently…rebelling and taking matters into his own hands, Feanor effectively said he didn’t want the Valar’s help, and he wanted to fight this war himself. The Doom of Mandos was to warn him that he would fail, but when he persisted…they left him to it. The Valar allowed the Noldor to make their own choice in this matter. If anything, they show a much greater respect for the autonomy of the Noldor, not treating them as ‘erring children’ but rather as ‘responsible adults’ – how precisely should they have acted towards the Noldor? Forced them to do what was in their best interest?

That is…an odd way of looking at it, I know. I don’t think the Valar enjoyed doing things this way at all, and I don’t think they were sitting on their hands. Didn’t Manwe weep when he heard Feanor’s response to the Doomsman? But – he also recognized that the songs Feanor boasted of could not be bought in any other way. So his decision was – so be it. If you truly wish to fight a hopeless war without aid, then you may do so. Far be it from the Valar to force themselves upon you – they will let you learn your own lessons in your own time, and use only advice to deter you if you choose not to listen to their wisdom.

So, they waited until someone came from Middle Earth and asked for their help. Ulmo was impatient, so he didn’t just wait around, but did his best to get a mariner messenger over there pronto. As soon as Earendil arrived, the War of Wrath was kindled.

Yeah, so, maybe Feanor shouldn’t have taunted them saying that they would follow him….but maybe if he had waited, he’d have found out that they were really on his side. The whole thing’s an unfortunate mess, but we already knew that.

Oh, and while this story doesn’t have Fingon and Maedhros hating one another (they were best friends), Fingon is very angry with the implications of Maedhros’ oath, and it is politics that makes him keep talking to him about the plans for the 5th battle…..
http://www.storiesofarda.com/chapterview.asp?sid=4818&cid=19477

(I know I’ve mentioned perelleth’s ‘In Vino Veritas’ before, but not in this thread, anyway )

Also, I have to say, it’s really good to see you around again.

Oh yes, please write that! For cryin out loud, he’s got Feanor’s and Nerdanel’s blood pumping through his veins. It is physically impossible for him to be wimpy.

Sheesh.

I find the very idea of Tolkien’s intent to be a thorny one. He created something that he explicitly stated that he hoped would serve as a mythology or lost history for his people, the English. Now, no one will convince me that Tolkien, of all people–who studied medieval literature, for Manwe’s sake!–did not know what that meant. If anyone understood the complexity that is history, particularly assigning “good” and “evil” roles in history, it would have been JRRT. If anyone would have understood how a political or social climate could influence the expression of history and myth through story and literature, it would have been JRRT.

So I have a hard time believing that, if he was set on framing his stories as such, that he had an “intent” in the same sense that writers of stories that aren’t to act as history/myth can make choices with the intent of having the reader see the story in one particular way. I believe that he would have understood that, as history, his stories would have been turned and looked at from the perspectives of those who weren’t participating in their writing and that he opened his stories to that by 1) framing them as history/myth and 2) expressing the hope that other hands would take up his work where he left off.

Of course, I’m also well aware of my hypocrisy in scorning the idea of “intent” when my whole theory is dependent on Tolkien’s intent!

However, I agree with you that there is no wrong way to look at a story, and stories that seek to stick close to JRRT’s perceived intent are not inferior to stories that take off in wild directions with history and myth as the excuse. One, obviously, appeals more to me than the other, but that is just my opinion, which matters exactly as much as anyone else’s does!

On Rhapsody’s comment on taking sides …

I’m first of all kind of boggled that people write the same scene (only that scene? really??) over and over again. The closest I’ve come to that was a piece I was working on once where I was pursuing all sorts of ideas about what happened to Maglor, wild, tame, and fanonical alike. The only reason I stopped working on that piece and never published it was because it was lost when the disk it was on corrupted.

I have seen stories that take the same scene from two PoVs. I tend to find these hard to get through, as the author usually repeats a good bit between stories (even verbatim), so I end up skimming for the new stuff and don’t get the effect that I think the author intended. For such a model to work for me, each story must be unique enough on its own and also work to comment on the others. I think this becomes increasingly difficult, the more times one attempts to write the same scene.

Moreth’s Alqualondë is a story that does this well. Now how well “Alqualondë” would work if she’d added a third drabble from a third PoV … I think it would be very difficult to do so.

I’m not Rhapsody, so I can’t be certain, but I think she was replying more to the notion that one must decide whether the Feanorians are “all good” or “all bad,” not just the motley mix of virtues and flaws that characterize all of us as humans. I think this tendency was more pronounced when I got involved in the fandom: There were the stories where Feanor was an absolute miscreant who beat Nerdanel and raped Maedhros, and there were the stories where Celegorm was a misunderstood kitten who was moved to reluctant self-defense during the War of Telerin Aggression and found his name sullied ever after. Nowadays, I don’t see so much of that … but that is probably because of where I hang out, to a large degree.

But that was how I interpreted her comment.

However, I do agree with you: I’m not keen on re-imagining my characters. My characters are humans; whether they are “good” or “bad” will largely depend on the PoV from which I am looking at them. As for my own judgment, I default to the idea that I use when building characters: that every person must sleep at night so, at the end of the day, he or she must be able to live with his or her deeds in order to do so. Or: no one is a bad guy in his or her own eyes.

Thanks for the link to Claudio’s story, too. I will definitely be adding that to my must-read list!

I do not write a selection of versions of any of my characters. I have one and one only for the present. Maybe at some point in the future, I might decide to create a new world/new personal canon, but for now, for me, there is only one I write and I remain internally consistent within it. There is nothing wrong with writing a whole string of different interpretations for the same character, it is just not something I like to do.

If I think Maedhros is mostly good. Why would I want to try to write him mostly bad? Or read him as mostly bad? Or try to convince a reader he is mostly bad? I miss the point on that one. But, as Rhapsody noted, some people enjoy it. Enjoy yourself!

(I do admit to having stopped reading writers who only write the story of Eomer’s courtship and marriage to Lothiriel over and over again, endlessly re-interpreting those two characters and changing the scenario of how and when they met. Enough is enough for me as a reader.)

I think certainly within any given story one must decided if they are “they are (mostly) good guys or bad guys.”

Relating to the discussion with Raksha about this question, I think I can pretty certainly say that we approach Tolkien works with diametrically opposed methodologies. I approach Tolkien from the perspective of fanfiction and storytelling and not from that of trying to champion or determine Tolkien’s intent. The process of explaining his intention, as closely as I might be able to determine it, would be a very different process for me and result in completely different stories, but not the stories that I would enjoy telling.

I have no objective to others trying to do that. I do, however, strongly believe that both approaches are equally legitimate. I try to write stories that are consistent with the world Tolkien created, not his personal mores, religion, world view, or intention (which we can never, in any case, know perfectly). Most explanations of Tolkien’s intentions by fanfiction writers and readers do not stand up well to a scholarly examination. How about all the LotR fanatics who proudly claim not to care for the vast body of work upon which it is based?

Tolkien himself claimed he sought to create a mythology. A mythology by its nature is ceaselessly evolving and responsive to reactions, of the listener in the oral traditions or readers and writers in ours. I am responding to Tolkien’s stories not echoing them.

Elwing is fascinating just because I have such a hard time explaining so much that she did. I don’t know how closely you follow the SWG, but Oshun has just written a bio of Elwing that brings up some interesting points. I’ve always wanted to write about her, but life is too busy for my current projects, much less new ones! (This blog aside …)

Re: the Valar …

In Morgoth’s Ring (though, for the life of me, I can’t remember which chapter/essay), JRRT explains that Melkor had immersed himself into so many parts of the earth that he could not be destroyed without destroying the earth. I suspect this was, in part, to deflect criticism of why the heck the Valar sit about on their hands instead of apprehending their wayward brother. However, it doesn’t address why they couldn’t have imprisoned him sooner, and Tarion’s point about the Silmaril is pretty suspicious.

In the end, I think a major idea in all of JRRT’s writings is that it takes darkness and tragedy to really make one appreciate what is beautiful and good in life, and that overcoming darkness through one’s own efforts (rather than through divine intervention, for example) makes life even more meaningful. So, thematically, it makes sense to me, but from a purely logical standpoint is still boggling!