B2MEM 2011, Day Eighteen: A Generous Heart

[azalaisdep]

Today's Challenge: The act of kindness or hospitability usually comes from a generous heart. Write a story or poem, or create a piece of art where your character displays this virtue.

Following straight on from yesterday in the Máhanaxar, the Powers retire to debate:

The Gift of a Fruitful Heart

“Another?”  Tulkas protests noisily. “

Comments

[azalaisdep]

I can understand your being a Yavanna fan ;-) And I'm glad you feel the Valar come off - I'm always torn between giving them some sense of majesty, and wanting to recognise that rather like the Greek gods they do have both personalities and flaws; so if I'm not careful they can end up like something out of Terry Pratchett...

[curiouswombat]

Good for Yavanna.

Why would Tulkas complain about Eärendil? Presumably for turning up unannounced, as he had a right to sail West as the son of Idril.

[azalaisdep]

Ah, but he was Half-Elven, and at that point in the First Age the right to choose whether to be counted among the Eldar or the Edain hadn't been granted to the Half-Elven; that only comes later, after Earendil and Elwing have reached Aman and submitted to the Judgement of the Valar. The first time Earendil approaches Valinor, he can't find his way past the Enchanted Isles and the Shadowy Seas, and has to turn back; it's only when he later returns bearing a Silmaril that the Valar decide to let him through. So Tulkas may well be experiencing deja vu...

[curiouswombat]

Personally I see it as sexism! :~)

If your mother goes off and marries a man you needs must be counted as man unless the Valar give you the option to be otherwise - mortality or elfhood can, apparently, only be inherited through your father. Just as there is an insistence that Arwen, Elrohir and Elladan are Half-elven - when they have only 3/16 mortal blood - granted it is a little more mortal blood than their Maian blood but I don't expect anyone ever called Dior 'The Half-Mortal' or 'The Quarter Maian' either - just 'The Half Elven' - although he wasn't!

Poor Celebrian's half of her children's bloodline seems to count for nothing - and Galadriel might be one of the most powerful beings in Middle Earth, but she doesn't count when considering the bloodline of her only grand-children - they are just under 1/4 mortal after all - so much more important.

And so somehow I can easily believe that if Eärendil's father had been an elf he'd have had no problem at all

[azalaisdep]

I'm not entirely sure whether the Half-Elven thing is sexism, or more like Elf-ism - ie any mortal blood at all makes you Not Elven. (Except that all Peredhil are, for example, immortal unless they choose not to be, so actually they're pretty damn' Elven in all the ways that count.)

The reason I'm not sure whether we can say it's sexist is that, precisely because there never are any male Elves who marry Elven women, we don't know whether the Half-Elven thing would apply to their offspring in exactly the same way. (The fact that male Elves never do apparently marry Elven women, OTOH, may well be down to something fundamentally unequal in the way JRRT views the sexes, but is a slightly different issue, even though the latter is what prevents us having a clear answer about the former...)

[engarian]

The Valar always present an interesting quandry. They are all powerful in most respects, but they are still under the rule of Eru and, when you get down to it, it would be possible that those exceptions are actually dictated by Eru. Just a thought...

I loved this, of course :-)

- Erulisse (one L)

[espresso_addict]

Oh, I like that. Yavanna standing up for Gimli, yay! (I've got a bit behind on reading these, sorry, for the good reason that my own writing has been going unusually well these past few days, and it's hard to switch between such different universes.)

[azalaisdep]

Write, write, write! These'll still be here when you need a break...

[lindahoyland]

I liked this very much.