The Lord of the Rings

Please explain Orcs and evil corruption in LotR to me. They were corrupted elves, yes? So do beings corrupted by evil get shrivelled and thin? I think of Gollum who was corrupted Hobbit and was shrivelled up, but then what about the Nazgul? They do turn thin in essence (they go invisible)... but that's weird, man... does this mean that they're so thin that you can't even see them?
What about the Uruks? The Orcs are corrupted elves, then Uruks were crossbred with men... is there some kind of corrupted evil gene that gets passed on?

Any of the Tolkien books other than LOTR/Hobbit worth reading?

'corruption' is a metaphor for both degeneracy and race mixing. Tolkien was a fashy goy

Read his essay on Faerie Stories. It's good stuff.
Other than that he mostly spent his energy on Middle Earth and translating medieval material.

I meant like the Silmarilion, or Children or Hurin, or that new one.

The Silmarillion is good, just don't expect an epic journey or anything. It reads like a historical outline.
>that new one.
D'you mean Beren and Luthien? It's a story within the Silmarillion that's been expanded upon with some other notes that Tolkien wrote worked in, just like Children of Hurin. They're both good stories and have more depth than most of the Sil, but not on the same scale as LotR.

the new one is about him and his wife, isnt it?

Yeah it's based on himself and his wife, Edith. He writes about Luthien's dark hair and pretty grey eyes, basically love letters to his own wife...then the story is about Beren going through trials to try to earn Luthien's affections, really Tolkien writing about himself.

JRR Tolkien and Edith even each have Beren and Luthien respectively marked on their grave stones

...

but Luthien dies, right? her death is relatable with Edith IRL death?

No, she died in the 60s I think, they were both old and retired by then. The core story was mostly finished a long while before that.

I haven't read the Sil and years, but I think Beren died first and then Luthien managed to get him brought back...it's the only time that happens in Tolkien's Legendarium. Luthien is half elf half Maia (an Angelic being), so she was a very special character within the mythos to start with.

>Lúthien is a Telerin (Sindarin) princess, the only child of Elu Thingol, king of Doriath, and his queen, Melian the Maia. Lúthien's romance with the mortal man Beren is one of the greatest stories of the Elder Days and was considered the "chief" of the Silmarillion tales by Tolkien himself. Her character is revered even at the end of the Third Age and honoured still by the likes of Aragorn and various other peoples of Middle-earth. The legacy that Lúthien left behind can be most clearly seen throughout the later ages in those who stem from her ancestry, including the Royal Family of Númenor, being the line of Elros of which Arathorn and his son Aragorn were descended, and Elrond Half-elven who was Lúthien's great-grandson. She is described as the Morning Star of the Elves and as the most beautiful daughter of Ilùvatar, a term meaning not only that she was the most beautiful of all her people at the height of their glory, but even that she was potentially the most beautiful creature ever existed in Middle Earth. In contrast, Lúthien's descendant Arwen is called Evenstar, the Evening Star of the Elves, meaning that her beauty reflects that of Lúthien Tinúviel. Lúthien is also first cousin once removed to Galadriel; as Galadriel's mother, Eärwen of Alqualondë, is the daughter of Thingol's brother.

Literally considered the most beautiful in Middle earth, and her descendent Arwen gets the same title during her time. The Aragorn/Arwen arc is an echo of their story, as Aragorn is also proving himself to her father, Elrond, that he's worthy.

how about the eagle meme? one doesn't simply fly into mordor
(lots of spies on the road)

All the memes are crap. They were travelling in secrecy from Rivendell at least up to Gondor, they couldn't fly all the way there (Gwaihir told Gandalf that he couldn't carry him that far). Anything could have happen on the journey untoward Gondor, and things just happened to not go so well. No one knew where Frodo and Sam were, so they had to trust hope and divert attention away from them as best they can by acting like Aragorn has the Ring and intends to use it in the war.

There's also the other 'deus ex machina', where Iluvatar intervenes when Frodo fails to throw Gollum into the chasm...but what really happened was that the Ring dominated itself into oblivion, by by commanding Gollum (through Frodo) to throw himself into the fire, simply because the Ring was sick and tired of Gollum. It all goes full circle in that recurring idea that 'hate hurts itself'.

One thing that was left out of the movies that I noticed was how Gandalf actually used the Narya to inspire men. He used it directly on Theoden when he was being jerked around by Wormtongue's leechcraft.

Elves degenerating into orcs makes sense because of their extremes. It's like cold water boiling faster than hot water, or hot water freezing faster than cold.

The origin of the orcs evolved and changed throughout Tolkien's life and, like other outstanding items, was not established without contradictions. He left a lot of his ideas unfinished and unpublished, though there are some letters and notes regarding the nuances of lore that were released posthumously.

Also interesting, from Wikipedia:

In an unpublished letter, written in 1963 to a Mrs. Munsby (and auctioned in 2002 at Sotheby's), Tolkien confirmed that female Orcs did exist. He wrote:

"There must have been orc-women. But in stories that seldom if ever see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of the evil lords we naturally would not learn much about their lives. Not much was known."[29]

> they're good stories
>expand on material in Sim

Veeky Forums in a nutshell. Beren and Luthien hasn't even been released yet, and here we have a pleb claiming to have read it

This is bait. I'm not even going to bother fining a fish pic.

Wow she was pretty beautiful, well done tolkien lad

SILMARILLION