100% agreed on the beard plothole. Beardhole. And I can totally get behind Cirdan + Gil-galad’s mother no matter who the dad was, especially since she was Falathren in at least one version!

Just have it either ‘elves can grow beards if they really really want to’ or ‘círdan is secretly half-dwarf and this is awkward so never talked about’

My Fingon sucks at making friends and doing the extroverted make good friends and do the minimum for politics (Turgon, however? great at making friends and keeping a large friend group from getting splintered by drama) Therefore Fingon needs his wife.

who doesn’t know what pinnacles are!!! (I didn’t. yesterday.)

but more seriously, yes and yes and I think this sort of thing is great for flavour without needing to be fully understood. Although if you added nautical footnotes, I’d read them.

Yeah, there’s a war in man head with almost every story and footnotes, if to hold my readers’ hands like an overprotective parent or to fling them headfirst into the deep end (lifeboaty thingies, its setting dressing anyway and goddam it Tolkien was very sparse on detail with the Grey Harbor)

ALSO re: your tags – you’re right and I TOTALLY AGREE that there needs to be more Hanseatic League in fantasy! It’s something I grumble about when people talk about “medieval fantasy”, we’re generally seeing one hell of a narrow image of medieval times. (And now I’m thinking I might draw on the League a little for the Hwenti, bc I was already thinking of them as a seagoing culture with city-states and lots of trading. Although they’re also an Athenian-style democracy…)

Yeah, Tolkien is where I don’t have a problem with the lack of representational government- but there is a discussion to be hand about how prevalent monarchies are in American SF among other things. 

The Hanseastic League is just so cool and I wish I knew more.

The original story stuff (that dumb rose story) is where I do two things- dump all the story ideas and especially expies and fanfic au ideas that I want to write but don’t want to write for that fandom. And force myself to write a setting that was “Medieval Fantasy” where I didn’t pull fashion from the Renaissance or go play in the Bronze Age. Which…I couldn’t help myself. But as I was setting up the basic medieval kingdom, I immediately decided that having just a king and lords was boring, so the king was an emperor that needed to be ratified by a group of Prince-Electors and some of those voting seats were clergy-held because my knowledge of the Holy Roman Empire might be mostly limited to Historical Fiction AU in the 1600s when those Elector votes are about to become obsolete in importance, but darn if that isn’t more interesting. And stock medieval fantasy needed more free charter towns and imperial cities. And that made me think of the Hanseatic League. And magical boats somehow. And then when I had to dump a bunch of Green Lanterns into this universe, well, perfect! If you’re forced to read Mark Twain and learn a little history of the American West, the river boat pilots stick in your head. Magic space interpol cops become magic templar summoners who exclusively work as ship pilots and security hired by the fantasy version Hanseatic League. Because I say so, and it works well with wacky mermaids!

this is ironic bc I’ve actually ended up living near the ocean or water loads of times! (I was like 20 metres off the quay in my last flat in the UK) And I do like the ocean, and water generally, and have Plans to go kayaking on the Havel or Spree which will hopefully come to something now that I’m no longer horrifyingly anaemic. But I still know next to nothing about ships. Thanks for the tip! I really do need to do research, I was just trying to avoid it

Yes! There’s a weird sort of sea longing where you don’t want the ocean itself but you want to be near it (for the temperature regulating and mildness of sea breezes). 

Again- “what a tub! You sailed here in this?!” is a very useful phrase ;p

kazaera

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kazaera replied to your post:
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You have *definitely* gotten further than I have! (The point to which I’ve gotten being: “ships?”) I was trying to avoid the whole subject but then my POV char began comparing Numenorean and Telerin ships and I went “damnit, he’d actually know about this, wouldn’t he”

Look up David Weber one of these days. Basically SF writer who recreates the Horiato Hornblower (Master and Commander on the Far Side of the World) series IN SPACE. I was raised by two naval officers- it’s sort of like all the dog show breed stuff. i know enough to know what I don’t know, and enough to want to get at least some details down. 

-easiest thing and what I’m mostly doing – tell the reader if the ship has one mast with a single sail or more than one mast. the sail sitting perpendicular to the boat itself and of a squarish rectangle is a traditionally (Northern) European thing. What we tend to think of. The sail running mostly parallel (and triangular) is an Indian Ocean, warmer seas, more maneuverable but not good for long ocean voyages lanteen thing. Those might have a bigger triangle on one side and a narrower triangle on the other. Does it have a pointy front or not, how tall are the sides. I’m banking on the majority of readers giving less of a care than me. When in doubt, have the pov character call the ship “ugh, look at that ungainly tub” or “what a clean and beautiful craft” and move on ;p

oh god don’t remind me, I’m writing a character who lives in Alqualonde right now as well and I think I’m actually going to have to look up different ship types myself

I’m a weird person in that I love ships in concept but don’t want to go physically sailing and have read a lot of it in fiction but never studied or learned anything. And again I get ‘reefed’ on the knowledge that Tolkien was drawing on a medieval (mostly English) tradition but Númenor/inspired is Mediterranean, so I try to default back to pre 1400s Northern Europe for nautical stuff unless I think I can go Mediterranean (and by that I mean Ancient Egypt). So it’s Dover Bronze Age Boat for early stuff (and rafts and dugout canoes for Cuiviénen), Welsh coracles in lower Beleriand, the fact that I’m still not 100% sure Tolkien was picturing a longship for all the various elven boats (I don’t think he was thinking of a classical Greek or Roman galley) but for all I know, we’re talking about the great 18th century ships of the line that were the pride of Britannia (okay I’ll be honest- Ar-Pharazon’s ship was definitely the Mary Rose – or better yet for historical schadenfreude, the Vasa)

I can quite appreciate spite as a fic motivator! And can imagine how OII got out of hand now /o there’s so much to go “um no fandom this is not how it has to be let me show you” about. (Tempted to write non-awful Valar fic myself now following certain comments on my last fic on AO3. :/)

That a few Cuiviènen Era fics I found had that strain of ‘elven society was so much purer and progressive pre-Valar contamination’ raised my hackles, and my causal interest in the development of the human species so much so that I didn’t care about the elves developing new words but why on earth was no one spending time talking about them developing the different stone tools hello people that’s fascinating right? No? …years later here I am, writing a ‘good shepherd = good king’ Ingwë scene. 

Sometimes the spite motivation is benignly gentle – the ‘why isn’t there more fics with this canon pairing? here, I’ll do just a paragraph of plot-less fluff and leave the rest to others (the Thingol/Melian fic or Finarfin/Eärwen)’ Then again, a remaining Tol-in-Gaurhoth one-shot is almost uncomfortably spite-motivated and thus stalled on the writing docket.

Write it! write it I know many Valar fans who’d be happy