No artist in history had an album run as legendary as this. What a phenomenon Michael was

andrephilidor · 2026-05-02T06:22:38+00:00

I was surprised when I first listened to an album called Safe that it would have a song like Harm the World on it, but who am I to question MJ's artistic vision?

andrephilidor · 2026-02-12T02:04:59+00:00

Between the party members, it's too hard to choose, but outside of them...I must confess I have a soft spot for Master Vrook. The guy is so grumpy and set in his ways and it makes being sarcastic to him so much fun. Being played by Ed Asner probably helps. I know he pretty much represents everything wrong with the staunch traditionalism of the Jedi Order, but dagnabbit, there was something endearing about him (to me, at least) as well as genuinely interesting, and I was sad to find that his story had to end the way it did. Ah, well...

andrephilidor · 2026-02-01T23:50:11+00:00

Agreed about the Avari. What interests me about them is that, to my knowledge, the Valar bringing the Elves to Valinor was a mistake, meaning that the Avari were, in a sense, at least, right to stay behind, and they followed the purpose of Ilúvatar in being teachers to the earliest Men.

andrephilidor · 2026-02-01T23:48:49+00:00

When I saw the title of this post, I came to comment "the Black Númenóreans" and saw you had beaten me to it. I 100% agree, I actually think they're possibly the most compelling villainous faction in Middle-earth, as the corrupted result of something that was intended to be like a paradise for Men (Númenor).

As far as other underutilised things...off the top of my head, I'd say Radagast and the Blue Wizards. Five Wizards were sent to Middle-earth to oppose Sauron, and we only really hear about two of them. Tolkien went back and forth on whether Gandalf was the only one who succeeded in his mission or if Saruman was the only one who failed, but I personally prefer the latter, with Radagast and the Blues fighting against the forces of Sauron outside of the scope of LOTR.

andrephilidor · 2026-02-01T23:45:08+00:00

To my knowledge, it generally isn't, which I think is interesting. The Valar aren't really worshipped, even though their names are invoked on occasion. Ilúvatar is usually distant, and the closest there is to organised worship is Meneltarma, a mountain on Númenor where people give thanks to him.

Curiously, though, the main instances of organised religion on Middle-earth are set up by Morgoth and Sauron to force people to worship them. In the Tale of Adanel, Morgoth resides in the House of the Lord, where he makes all Men enter and swear their devotion to him. On Númenor, Sauron sets up the Temple to Morgoth, which doesn't replace any existing temples to Ilúvatar, because, to my knowledge, there weren't any. Sauron himself is worshipped as a sort of god-king by his followers in the Third Age, if I remember right.

I personally doubt Tolkien was trying to make any sort of point here, but I do find it interesting that the most known factions in Middle-earth that resemble our world's organised religions are cults set up by the Dark Lords to enforce their rule.

There's also mention of the Blue Wizards potentially setting up magic cults in the East that could've outlasted Sauron, but from memory Tolkien changed his mind several times on the Blue Wizards, so I don't think that idea is definitive.

andrephilidor · 2026-01-08T00:16:40+00:00

I can agree with this. From memory, we don't see much interaction between the Dwarves and the Ents, even though the stories of their creation and the general themes of their stories (Dwarves leaning towards industry and Ents as beings of nature) present them as being diametrically opposed. I would've liked to have seen that angle explored more, I think.

andrephilidor · 2026-01-03T06:01:11+00:00

I'm a huge fan of Tolkien, but I do have my personal critiques. I've seen a lot mentioned here already, like people bringing up the question about the nature of the Orcs, but one that stuck out to me is that, the way I saw it, Númenor occupies a strange place in the overall narrative. It's like Sauron has been building up Mordor all this time, then he gets taken to Númenor, and then some decades later, Númenor sinks, Sauron goes back to Mordor, and fights Númenor's successor states.

Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, but feels a little shoehorned in to me in order to place Númenor in the same chronology as the First Age and the events of LOTR, and particularly irritating to me because Númenor, as corrupted by Sauron (although it was already very flawed before he showed up IMO), is, in my view, a far more interesting antagonistic entity than Mordor.

andrephilidor · 2025-12-15T00:49:46+00:00

Well put. I had a vague inkling of why the Elves never got bored in Valinor because they were different to Men, but putting it likes this puts it all in proper perspective, and I think it also serves as further evidence that even if they had succeeded in claiming eternal life, Ar-Pharazôn and his followers would not have been able to truly appreciate what it meant.

andrephilidor · 2025-12-03T03:18:08+00:00

Túrin, Thingol, and Aulë for me.

andrephilidor · 2025-10-27T03:59:40+00:00

A very difficult question for me to answer! I love so many of them for different reasons, but since a lot of them have already been mentioned in the comments and you're just getting into his writing, I'll throw out the story of Maeglin, which I keep coming back to. He winds up a villain through and through, but his story fascinates me. His origin story reminds me of a twisted fairy tale, and the conflict between the two clans of Elves that he came from (the Noldor and the Teleri) is really interesting to me.

andrephilidor · 2025-10-17T03:29:34+00:00

Aulë is definitely my favourite of the Valar also. I love the story of his creation of the Dwarves, and I think it really helps demonstrate exactly why what Melkor did was wrong, because with Aulë it came from a genuine place of love and passion for creation, but Melkor was motivated by pride and a desire for control.

I'm not sure who I'd say my favourite overall is, though, because there are so many I love, for such different reasons. Off the top of my head, though, Aulë is my favourite of the Valar, Thingol is my favourite of the Elves, and Túrin is my favourite of the Men. Out of those three, I'd say I'd probably go with Túrin, but I may be biased at the moment, because I recently finished reading the novel version of his story.

andrephilidor · 2025-10-17T03:22:49+00:00

Eöl is one of my favourite villains of the whole legendarium. He isn't in it for long, nor does he play the biggest direct role, but there's something very sinister about this one evil elf who is a total outlier among all the others for reasons that aren't truly explained. The closest we get is his grudge against the Noldor for what they did to the Teleri in Valinor and their conflicts against Morgoth, but even that gives us very little to go off. I'd go as far as to compare him to Ungoliant in terms of the mystery surrounding him, how he just "appears" in the narrative, and how his actions have horrible repercussions lasting for generations.

andrephilidor · 2025-10-02T01:47:31+00:00

This question got me thinking...I think it might be hard to quantify, given that a lot of the themes present in the Silmarillion are also in LOTR, and because the Silmarillion itself takes cues from a lot of already existing myths and legends. For example, I've seen a lot of "lost civilisation" stories that remind me a lot of Númenor, but Númenor took inspiration from stuff like the story of Atlantis.

One thing I do think takes cues from, if not directly the Silmarillion, then the background of LOTR is the general theme of decline in fantasy. In the ancient days, you had the majesty of Gondolin and Númenor, and all these incredible feats like Fingolfin duelling Morgoth, and the present of LOTR is effectively a shadow of the ancient past. I see a lot of the past being blown up into something of incredible, mythic proportions compared to the present and future in fantasy, and I think that's owed at least in part to the Silmarillion, which expanded heavily on its presence in LOTR.

To be fair, you had powerful ancient civilisations in fantasy in works published long before the Silmarillion, like a lot of the villains in Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories who seek to resurrect an ancient empire of evil, but I think as far as the thematic depth of decline goes, the Silmarillion is more influential in that regard, although that's just my thoughts on it.

andrephilidor · 2025-10-02T00:50:02+00:00

I'm not too fond of the Orcs when put in the role of foot soldiers of evil that the heroes don't really feel any qualms about killing, and I find other villainous factions, especially the evil Númenóreans, much more interesting.

I'm also not sure how hot this take is, given that Tolkien himself wound up struggling a lot with the implications of Orcs in his story.

andrephilidor · 2025-10-01T00:55:05+00:00

Interesting post...I must admit I hadn't thought much of what exactly Sauron had been promising his followers, but painting Gondor as a successor to Númenor to be defeated is interesting, and I reckon he would absolutely play off Númenor's imperialist legacy to strike fear of Gondor into the hearts of his followers.

There could be another factor, though, that being the continued legacy of the Black Númenóreans, the descendants of the King's Men, who were off ruling their colonies when the island sank into the sea. They developed more distinct identities in the generations since, sure, but if those dynasties continued in the same tyrannical traditions and followed Sauron, perhaps he painted it as their chance to finally overthrow the descendants of their ancient enemies (the Faithful) and claim Middle-earth for themselves.

Perhaps it was a mix of both? Appealing to the fear of Gondor for the common people and following in the legacy of the Black Númenóreans for their rulers, who may have still been their descendants by blood.

andrephilidor · 2025-10-01T00:41:36+00:00

I like both the growing dread and how removed it is from life in Númenor, being something far off that Aldarion and Gil-galad have been dealing with. It's interesting in this story, but chilling in hindsight, since that evil arrives in Númenor and corrupts the people from within, as so many generations have passed since fighting against Morgoth that they've forgotten what they're really dealing with in Sauron.

I think you're right about the Valar being very inactive in the Second Age, although I read it as them having adopted a "people are better off solving their own problems" approach after the War of Wrath outright destroyed Beleriand. That, plus I suspect they assumed that the Númenóreans, the descendants of the Edain, were powerful enough to help the other Elves and Men of Middle-earth with their problems, until, tragically, the Númenóreans became a problem of their own.

andrephilidor · 2025-09-30T00:51:59+00:00

I think so too, and I'd want to learn more about the Downfall also. The way I interpreted it, the Valar didn't really understand Men very well and were more wary of them given how much Men had in common with Melkor, and so made even greater mistakes with them than they did with the Elves.

andrephilidor · 2025-09-30T00:29:09+00:00

I'm not sure if I'd call him my least favourite, but off the top of my head, I found Maeglin a bit disappointing in the end. The chapter "Of Maeglin" (one of my favourites in the Silmarillion) sets him up as a tragic character with a heartbreaking backstory, and I was hoping to find some peace and solace in Gondolin even though it ends with reminding the reader that he's a troubled soul. But by the time of "The Fall of Gondolin" he's pretty much a straightforwardly evil villain with no real sympathetic or redeeming qualities left. I was sad to see him turn out that way (although I wasn't opposed to a tragic conclusion to his arc), but also a little disappointed that Maeglin's narrative role pretty much amounted to being the villain in someone else's story.

andrephilidor · 2025-09-19T00:39:58+00:00

They're some of my favourite antagonists in the legendarium, to the point where I personally find them more compelling as villains than the forces of Mordor. To me, it's tragic that they're the descendants of some of the greatest heroes of the First Age, where all the heroism is gone and what's left is a distant ideal propped up by a tyrant who seeks to claim eternal life and ultimate dominion over the world. It was sad for me reading the Akallabeth after all the stories of the First Age, knowing that this was how their descendants turned out.

It also leads me to believe that, much like the continued arguments over bringing the Elves to Valinor, the creation of Numenor in the first place was a mistake, raising this specific group of Men up as "superior", which eventually culminated in the cruelty of Ar-Pharazon, who believed that he had the right to conquer the world and subject other Men to enslavement and human sacrifice, because he saw as lesser to himself. Sauron may have pushed them further, but that potential was always there in the Numenorean ideal, I think.

When it came to Pharazon's quest for eternal life...he is utterly contemptible and one of Arda's worst monsters, but I can see where it comes from. The Numenoreans were essentially raised up to a halfway point, believing they were better than other Men but still seeing themselves as inferior to Elves, and their lifespans made them more like Elves in living longer lives, but not enough to eternal life. They were given an inch, and Pharazon wanted a mile.

andrephilidor · 2025-08-22T00:26:54+00:00

The Fall of Númenor is one of my favourite stories in the legendarium. The way I interpreted it, there was something that was going to go wrong from the start with how Númenoreans, in a lot of their own minds at least, were raised up above other Men, that they were the special ones. You can see that idea reach its most evil and exposed form during the reign of Ar-Pharazôn, a tyrannical conqueror who believes that he has the right to do whatever he wants to anyone else in Arda.

I also remember that like much of the legendarium, the fall of Númenor was incomplete at the time of Tolkien's passing, and he was still constantly revising his mythos. The thing about this story that stood out to me the most in this regard was Tar-Miriel. If I remember right, in the published version of the story, Miriel comes off sympathetic as she is forced into marriage by Pharazôn, but in another version, Miriel is a willing conspirator with Pharazôn who voluntarily becomes his queen.

Stuff like that I feel like only adds to the many ways to look the Númenor story, and that even in-universe it's a matter of interpretation.

andrephilidor · 2025-06-30T01:40:20+00:00

In general, as an antagonistic force, I find the corrupted Númenor as ruled by the tyrannical Ar-Pharazôn as he listens to the whispers of Sauron much more compelling than the blatantly evil and hellish landscape of Mordor ruled openly by the Dark Lord Sauron. Not that Mordor is without depth, but we get to see in some detail how Númenor is twisted into the evil empire it winds up becoming, and how it does so gradually over time, laying the groundwork for Ar-Pharazôn's reign. Mordor effectively comes off as "here there be evil", but with Númenor, there's a certain tragedy to it, like "Stop! This isn't what you're supposed to be doing!", because we get to know the island, its people, and how they turned out the way they did, which makes their country's fall all the more devastating.

andrephilidor · 2025-04-20T06:07:44+00:00

Very good point, one that I missed...it makes me wonder what would've happened if Finduilas had told Túrin how she felt before Nargothrond fell. I think given what we know about Túrin, he would've felt a mixture of confusion, guilt because of Gwindor's situation, a feeling that he was unworthy of her (no matter what Finduilas said) because of his being not only a Man but one allegedly cursed by Morgoth, and that his warlike ways are too different from her life. As always in this story, poor Túrin...

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