7821a053
XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien
From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid
In message
<33de0fc9-2ad4-432a-a82f-d057f557c293@o6g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>
"Noel Q. von Schneiffel"
spoke these staves:
>
> On 6 Jul., 23:59, Troels Forchhammer
> wrote:
>>
Makar and Meássę in _The Book of Lost Tales_
>> Makar and Meássë with their focus on weapons and battle seem less
>> able to provide the plot with twists or momentum (perhaps if
>> there had been the same kind of rivalry between them as between
>> Ares and Athena Tolkien could have created a plot twist with one
>> backing the Orcs and one backing the Gnomes).
>
> Now that is an interesting line of thought - could Makar and
> Meásse (or one of them) have actually ended up as orc gods this
> way? It would certainly have helped the orcs gain some
> independence from Morgoth and Sauron.
That could provide an extra ironic twist to the whole thing -- Makar
or Meássë trying to ingratiate him- or herself to Melko, but ending
up being definitely on the wrong side of Melko because the Orcs
started to view them as a competing god, gaining a much unwanted (by
Melko) independence from Melko. All of this should, of course, have
been triggered by Melko's own attempts to lure the other over to his
side.
> (I hope Bqggz doesn't read this; he'd love this theory.)
Well, Bqggz is a reasonably intelligent and well-behaved Orc, and I
am impressed with your generosity that you let him use your PC (or
didn't you know? He is posting from your IP-address), so I am sure
that he will be able to deal with it in a civilized manner -- just
because he'd love the theory doesn't necessarily mean that he'll go
on a blood-letting rampage, does it?
> I actually liked Makar and Meásse in BoLT, even though they were
> never much developed. They were providing a "grey area" between
> good and evil - short-tempered, warlike, not very popular, but
> still grudgingly accepted in the pantheon of Valinor. I think the
> mythology could have benefitted from this. Of course, I see how it
> would clash with the Christian good/evil dualism.
Yes, I also quite liked the idea of their being in the mythology, but
I don't think they offered many, if any, routes of development. Not
that their unchristian moral mid-tones would have stopped Tolkien in
BoLT (though quite possibly it would have meant that they would not
have survived into the post-LotR era) -- it is simply, I believe,
that they didn't offer the same possibilities for development as the
surviving Ainur did. I agree, however, that the mythology would have
benefitted from having one or more Valar that could occupy this moral
grey-zone.
--
Troels Forchhammer
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- Aragorn "Strider", /Two Towers/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
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