Talk:Misconceptions

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Latest comment: 26 June 2023 by SingingOrc in topic Do We Need This Article?

I salvaged some non-trivial examples from an recent version of fanon article. Since we have already other debates liked "mistakes in Tolkien's works", we can tolerate this article too. This I consider also useful because I have also fallen victim to such misconceptions. Sage 20:46, 31 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I agree. I simply removed all of it from fanon for the sake of ease. An article is good (maybe rename it though to have some consistency.
Now I'm off. Happy new year, all. -- Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 22:35, 31 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think if this article gets a bit more polished, it might be useful to link to this on the main page.
Happy new year, Ederchil~& Sage. Grond 22:39, 31 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Maybe we can add also something about Lurtz, Orodreth and Gil-Galad ancestery...and uhm...the location of Dorwinion.

Midden-Aarde Essays (a book of essays from Tolkien's work, made by a friend of my, what he is soon gonna publish in Dutch) says something about that in the chapter "Mysteries van de Hobbit, Dorwinion" ("Engimas of the Hobbit, Dorwinion") --Amroth 15:54, 24 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Actually, Dorwinion's location is not really a mystery - Tolkien placed it on the Western bank of the Sea of Rhûn. How is Lurtz a misconception? -- Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 16:00, 24 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
About your ½ rigth. It was only not Tolkien who placed there but his illustrator, latter Tolkien agreed with it. Many people think that it was Lurtz who killed Boromir while many Uruks did it.
This comes from the chapter "Dorwinion":

Uit de tekst van ‘De Hobbit’ is dan ook niet te achterhalen waar Dorwinion juist lag en wie er woonde. Desondanks is de ligging van het land op een andere manier duidelijk geworden. Pauline Baynes, de favoriete illustrator van Tolkien , zette Dorwinion in 1969 op de landkaart. Ze plaatste het land aan de monding van de Running, aan de noordwestelijke oevers van de Zee van Rhûn (zie kaart).

Hoewel Tolkien bezwaar had tegen sommige andere plaatsen die Pauline Baynes op de kaart gezet had, verklaarde hij zich wel akkoord met de ligging van Dorwinion. En ondanks het feit dat de Zee van Rhûn niet de locatie was die Tolkien oorspronkelijk in gedachten had, is het land sindsdien wel op die plaats blijven liggen. Christopher Tolkien merkt hetzelfde op in ‘The Lays of Beleriand’:

“Dorwinion is marked on the decorated map by Pauline Baynes, as a region on the North-western shores of the Sea of Rhun. It must be presumed that this, like other names on that map, was communicated to her by my father, but its placing seems surprising.”

--Amroth 16:12, 24 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Dorwinion dan maar wel. Maar Lurtz komt alleen maar uit de film. -- Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 16:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Cleanup/Rewrite[edit source]

Going through the different "misconceptions":

  1. Definition of First Age; Third Age "of the Sun": keep.
  2. The Arkenstone was a Silmaril: keep
  3. Elrond visits Elros in Númenor: what part of the text implies such a thing? With the current wording it seems the "misconception" is created to highlight a trivial abandoned concept.
  4. Arwen, the lastborn of the Elves: keep. It was portrayed sort of like that in the movies
  5. Legolas's age: omit, already at Legolas
  6. Legolas hair color: see previous
  7. Names of the Nazgûl: remove or rewrite
  8. A female Nazgûl: remove or merge with 7.
  9. Mrs. Thranduil: there are so many characters whose mother's name is unknown, it's pointless to single out Legolas. Also, if this stays, can we at least tell the reader what the name is?
  10. The War in the North: pointless. Maybe inspired by BfMeII, but I'm pretty sure the promotional material for the game explicitly mentioned it was fiction.
  11. The shape of Middle-earth: we can keep this, but with a rewrite
  12. Pointed ears: why is it under misconceptions if it's pointed out (npi) that it's true?
  13. Hobbit feet: huge? rephrase
  14. Déagol/Sméagol relationship: keep. Maybe also point out that they weren't Hobbits, but ancestors of Hobbits.
  15. Gollum's age: pointless. Nothing in the text suggests such a thing.
  16. Tengwar on Sting: pointless. We might change this to "Bilbo named Sting when he found it", because that's what happened in the RB movie, the 2003 game and I believe the radio plays too.
  17. Saruman, the creator of Uruk-hai: rewrite.
  18. Dorwinion: keep
  1. Add: in light of Last Waterbender's recent edit to Bregalad, we should also explain here that "beam" means "tree" here (cf. German baum, Dutch boom, Frisian beam), not "a beam of light", and note something about translators messing up (Schuchart, for one, did).

Any other ideas? -- Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 17:52, 1 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As I agree that most of your points are not really misconceptions, I removed some of them (and left others). I also removed the "shape of middle-earth" thing since it doesn't seem as a misconception to me. The map was drawn by Tolkien; it is not said that it was replaced by another map; nor it is contradicted by the Silmarillion. I also collected some more from other articles. Sage 08:45, 10 April 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Legolas' hair?[edit source]

The article: "However, in The Fellowship of the Ring it is stated that Legolas' hair was "dark", and dark brown or black hair was most common among the Sindar."

Is it so? Here I would like to see the sources, so that the misconceptions would not be replaced by other misconceptions. What it comes to Legolas' dark hair, I suppose the source in the Fellowship is this: "His head was dark, crowned with sharp white stars that glittered in the black pools of the sky behind." (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Great River"). But does this really tell anything about the colour of his hair or even of his skin? I suppose that we can only say, that when Frodo saw Legolas standing above him, the figure of the Elf was dark against the sky. – The source for the dark hair among the Sindar in general would also be nice to have. --Tik 11:47, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Buckland[edit source]

I'd suggest taking out the reference to Buckland or changing it. Early editions stated explicitly that Buckland was added to the Shire, and I'm not sure it's clear that the change in recent editions is the one Tolkien would have made, so I wouldn't call it a misconception. Spearwielder 20:15, 2 January 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sex of Nazgul[edit source]

The current text says <<with their consistent references as "Men" and "kings", although it could be argued that "Men" includes women>>. The part about "men" including women can be pretty much assumed - that term is usually used in place of "humankind", not as a plural of "man" in the sense of "male". Like in https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Men. Would emphasize that, as to make clear that Tolkien hasn't given us any information about gender here. Given how the civilizations feel, a woman is not that likely, but not impossible either, but if we don't want to speculate, the fact is that no information in that regard is given.

Honestly while we cannot definitively say that all of the Nazgul were men, we cannot definitively say they weren't either. Furthermore, in the case of the Numenorians cited in the article, the three Ruling Queens are specifically referred to as such in the text. I think if Tolkien had wanted there to be a woman among the Ringwraiths, he would have included an explicit mention of a queen or sorceress or whatever among their ranks. I'm tempted to remove that part from the article, but I admit we can't 100% say one way or the other. --Turiannerevarine 10:47, 5 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'm actually not sure if this part of the article should even be here. I do not know what exactly I would label this part as, to be honest, but I do acknowledge that it is a least a valid point, so I want other people to weigh in on this. Personally I think at the very least break it out from the names of the Nazgul to its own section for better page formatting.--Turiannerevarine 23:12, 5 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The part about the sex of the Nazgul should stay. In Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP) publications there is a female numenorean nazgul called Adunaphel and the names and the Sex of these nazgul exist on several sites on the internet. A lot of older Tolkien Fans are familiar with those names. Tolkien legt the question open. Tolkien also explicitly mentions the Rings for the elven "Kings" in the Ring verse in The Lord of the Rings, but Galadriel is one of the bearers of the Rings for the elves and she is female and is the de facto queen of Lorien although she does not call herself so according to The History of Galadriel and Celeborn in UT. --Akhorahil 14:20, 6 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Order[edit source]

I can't judge the rewriting, but this needs some kind of order, isn't it? Also, maybe a subsection for misconceptions created by the movies? --LorenzoCB 21:25, 2 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It probably does, but I am not sure what kind of order it would need. Maybe by book?Turiannerevarine 23:01, 2 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'd vote for alphabetical order. --LorenzoCB 17:08, 4 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think that if we separated the misconceptions by book or movie, it would be easier for people to find what they are looking for. --Ancalagon the Black 18:11, 4 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Page has been reordered according to book/adapation (includes Jackson movies as well as other adaptations) and then alphabetically within the individual sections.Turiannerevarine 22:30, 4 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Perfect! --LorenzoCB 08:02, 5 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

"Age of the Sun"[edit source]

What about adding the new section about the common misconception that the First Age as if began with the first sunrise? -- Ar-Zigûr (talk) 07:59, 6 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Great idea! Hyarion (talk) 03:52, 7 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Do We Need This Article?[edit source]

The entire point of this wiki is to provide information on Tolkien's lore, so I am not sure how important this is. Also, I've never met anyone who claimed definitively that the Arkenstone is a Silmaril, and it seems firmly in the fan-theory category (albeit, I admit, a rather weak one). Also, I am not sure if we can fairly place Gil-Galad son of Fingon in here. Yes, the final version has Orodreth as his father, but that does not change the fact that a version had Fingon (I believe one also had Finrod, if I remember correctly). Gil-Galad's parentage is not mentioned in any writing published in Tolkien's lifetime, so I am not convinced it needs to be present. Following this pattern, we might add "Galadriel was involved in the Noldorin rebellion", since it is fairly clear Tolkien intended to rewrite her history so that she was not. Also, this article states, "The Ring that Celebrimbor gave to Durin was a notable exception, being the only one of the Seven or the Nine purposely intended for a non-Elf." I am not sure this is entirely true. In the Unfinished Tales, it is stated, "There Sauron took the Nine Rings and other lesser works of the Mírdain; but the Seven and the Three he could not find", which seems to suggest that at least one point, Tolkien considered Celebrimbor himself to have given out all Seven to the different Dwarf lords himself, nor, as far as I can tell, does Appendix A "On Dúrin's Folk" ever go against this idea.

SingingOrc (talk) SingingOrc (talk) 18:40, 26 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]