Fellowship of the Fans

Tolkien - He Said What He Proposed to Say (9/7/2022)

"But Tolkien never said such and such wasn't true."

And by such and such I mean thinks like female Dwarves having beards (the show runners admitted that is actually true thankfully), that there weren't people of color among the races of Middle Earth, or Elves having long hair.

Just, stop.

I bring this up because I had someone review a story on another site telling me that Elves having long hair is something fans think because of the movies rather than the books despite us having quotes from Tolkien like this one.

"But most it was their wont to sail in their swift ships upon the waters of the Bay of Elvenhome, or to walk in the waves upon the shore with their long hair gleaming like foam in the light beyond the hill."

And we're supposed to ignore all other descriptions of Elves having long hair, including some of the ones with short hair in Rings of Power and we're supposed to ignore his illustrations where Tolkien was consistent about the long hair unless there was a reason for it being cut off, such as illness, ect.

"But Yemi, what if he didn't intend that to be true and didn't convey it properly?"

You mean Tolkien, whose known as a scholar of language?

Uh, sure, but here's a quote from Mark Twain.

"An author should say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it."

Tolkien falls into the former category, not the latter, but to even insinuate otherwise is to insinuate that Tolkien wasn't a good writer. If a writer intends it – and yeah, I'm talking the good ones – they will write it. If they don't intend it, they will not write it, but...

What they're arguing is that what they don't intend needs to be clearly spelled out to the reader because the reader might read between the lines despite the fact we all know that Tolkien hated allegory and so reading between the lines—really, just don't.

I'm not saying you can't say have creative license with the fact he never said Elves all had long hair and have an Elf with short hair, although don't do it "just because" or "I wanna be cool and rebel." I'm saying that if you change something from the canon, admit it, and it will go over better with the audience than trying to come up with some kind of explanation as to why it doesn't break canon when it does.

And—honestly, one of the things Tolkien fans are upset about is that there is this implication that Tolkien is that kind of writer who "nearly come near it" when it came to what he wanted to say, when that is not true. And as a writer, I expect my readers to understand that if I didn't write it, I didn't intend it, but a reader insinuating that I might have intended something I never wrote is not okay, but they're doing this to Tolkien.

Which, I'm not saying don't point out things I didn't intend. I'm saying to point out things I didn't intend and say that I intended it. And by this I mean unintended messages, not what I did or didn't intend to be canon.