for not all tears are an evil

[lotesse]

I quite possibly opened my flist this morning, was informed by my theonering.net feed that today in Middle-Earth history Bilbo and Frodo departed over the sea with the Elves, and started crying really damn hard.

“…they came to the Far Downs, and to the Towers, and looked on the distant Sea; and so they rode down at last to Mithlond, to the Grey Havens in the long firth of Lune.”

“But Sam was now sorrowful at heart, and it seemed to him that if the parting would be bitter, more grievous still would be the long road home alone.”

“…The Third Age was over, and the Days of the rings were passed, and an end was come of the story and song of those times. With them went many Elves of the High Kindred who would no longer stay in Middle-earth…”

I swear to Elbereth, nothing will ever touch me like that ending. Nothing. Just a mention of it has the capacity to reduce me to an absolute wreck. The first piece of fanfiction I ever wrote was an attempt to make it stop hurting. But it never has, even after so long, even now that I don't think of Middle-Earth that often. I aches like no other pain in the world, for me.

Comments

[slashfairy.livejournal.com]

*loves*

i wept and wept when i first read that, and when, in the film, Gandalf says that ... *cries*

oh, loves.

[lotesse]

Oh god, just the whole thing. I swear, the Grey Havens were the central trauma of my adolescence! *loves you right back*

[tootsiemuppet.livejournal.com]

I can understand that. I read the passage in the appendices a few days ago where Legolas and Gimli set sail. I started crying too.

God, that book...

[lotesse]

Legolas and Gimli! It made me so happy to know that they never broke up - omg so totally married.

[(Anonymous)]

Though I always wondered just how Gimli would get on in the Undying Lands... :/

[lotesse]

Poor guy. Bet he hung out with the hobbits a lot. And Gandalf can be sane some of the time - when he's not acting like an elf.

[lazy-neutrino.livejournal.com]

I can't read that without dissolving into sobs so hard I can't see the words on the page.

We've got the BBC radio version which we're listening to on long car journeys. We had an awkward hiatus after Theoden died (reaches for tissue, although it never gets me in the books) and I think we've kind of reached an unspoken agreement that the Grey Havens will not, after all, be listened to.

[lotesse]

When I was fifteen, I read the entire book out loud to my baby sister. I made her read those last pages, because I was crying too hard to speak intelligibly.

Theoden's death is definitely a sniffler, though my true wellsprings of grief are pretty much totally reserved for the hobbits.

[theprimrosepath.livejournal.com]

Theoden's death is definitely a sniffler, though my true wellsprings of grief are pretty much totally reserved for the hobbits.

And I seem to be the exact opposite, perhaps because, by the time I came to Middle Earth, I'd already been "corrupted" :) by King Arthur and his round table of ridculously noble knights. Theoden's death...Faramir's near scuicide--by-orc to please his father...those are my moments of grief.

Not to say that I'm unaffected by Frodo and Bilbo's departure, and Sam's subsequent abandonment. There's still tears and tears and tears, but the attitude behind them as different. I can't help but see that departure as anything but hopeful - the awful task is done, Frodo is finally given the peace he deserves. If I feel grief for anyone, it's Sam; he's the one left behind to go back his hobbit-y existence after being so changed by his journey.

I'm writing this quickly, so I think I'm forgetting things I want to say, but...there's my nutshell of thought on the subject. :)

[lotesse]

Well, okay, yeah. Oh, Faramir.

The thing about hobbits that just gets me is that they are so damn happy when left to their own devices. It's kind of like poor Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker books - he'd be so happy if he could just get some tea, and that makes his pathos that much more pathetic. Because it would be so easy to make him happy, but it just never happens.

[etharei.livejournal.com]

Gosh, every time I remember Middle-Earth, there's always that ache from the first time, you know? Every fandom that's come after has never felt quite that intense.

(Um, I'm here because I've just read one of your SPN fics and totally fell in love with your writing. In case you were wondering.)

[lotesse]

(Hey, welcome!)

I know exactly what you mean. I've never loved a book as intensely as I love LotR. I was twelve when I read it for the first time, completely unspoiled, and it was a revelation. It then totally dominated my entire teenage life - I was one of those dweebs who learned Elvish! There's just so much more to Tolkien than there is to anything else, both in volume and in substance.