It doesn’t, they’re different parts of the document.
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Ooh, right. Nevermind then!
You see, the one thing I’ve read of Tolkien are the first five pages of the LotR, before falling asleep out of boredom, so I really don’t know much about him and his lore.
But hey, I watched the movies so that counts.
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This is in my head.
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From my friend who read LaCE and writes gay elf fic:
elves CAN only marry once, but we get evidence of elves falling in love several times
they just generally only have sex/marry once
the “elves don’t remarry” part is correct
the trans bit is like. a sentence with very vague wording but i agree it was ~ weird energies ~
gender roles ARE present but seem to be very variable on society (ex. the noldor and sindar seem to have different gender roles)
also. LaCE seems to be intended as a “human narrator describing the elves” narrative. and contradicts several things we see in tolkien’s later works
SOOO i highkey take it with a grain of salt in general
like lace says “elves will often marry in times of war” and the silmarillion says “elves cannot marry in times of war”
or no not the silm sorry
the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth says u cannot marry in times of war
it also like. blatantly contradicts EVERYTHING he says about elven reincarnation/rebirth in other sources
tolkien purists crack me up because. ALL the texts contradict each other sooo bad
also interestingly. christopher tolkien, who edited Most of his father’s work posthumously, was more conservative than tolkien. and. definitely added things to the work to make it a “better influence”
also. i found the note that denies the existance of trans elves
and it’s. specifically in the context of elves being reborn
so like. elves who die and get a new body
and it says all of their features might change, except for their sex and their name
my take is like. the work def has weird problematic angles but also tolkien has been dead for many years and made something i really enjoy
not gonna defend these notes but also not gonna define my fandom experience by them
I mean it’s interesting he says their names don’t change. because elves also change their names SO frequently in life
or not ~ change ~ i guess but like. take on new names
nothing he says in LaCE about rebith actually makes sense either
like. he says it’s elves being reborn as infants into a new family/new body/etc
but this just contradicts the texts??
in the text they just. come back
it’s also like.
there are characters who seem to be noted as gnc/intersex/etc
like. galadriel’s first name, nerwen, literally means “man-maiden”
Me: so wait… elf sex is affixed to their mind from day 1? wouldn’t that mean they just get the matching body to their gender no matter what?
some people do choose to interpret it that way!
that kinda easily falls into “there are no trans elves”
but it also could mean “there are no elves with dysphoria, but intersex, nb, or gnc elves that feel good about their body exist”
if we say sex perfectly corresponds to bodies that might mean nonbinary elves have nonbinary bodies with no alteration as well
Sorry for this being messy, had to copy paste around some other conversation stuff happening. Think I caught most of it.
Conclusion pretty much boiled down to: He contradicts himself so how the f can you be a “purist” over contradictions?? Also he’s not been around for a while and expecting 2023 kind of knowledge and awareness over gender and sex from Tolkien is unfair. What was he supposed to do, google it?
And “marrying only once” from a British catholic is something that I’m amazed doesn’t pop up more regularly… considering how religious change was handled on the little island kingdom.
Also elves are like Maggie in the Simpsons opening and get scanned at the till after birth.
American popculture discovering Krampus has caused some… strange things to pop up.
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Got the Lfrith and Mirasoul unit at long last. My Aerial will finally have an open hand.
Now if only the rebuild Aerial order could come in…
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A majority of his letters and notes are just him contradicting,rewriting or arguing with himself over things he wrote previously that he didn’t like anymore or disagreed with. Almost everything that was written in the books were later contradicted or changed to varying degrees(minuscule or quite huge changes) in some random letter or personal anecdotes.
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Tolkien Purists: “He said here that [thingsthathappen]!!”
Tolkien: “Actually, I was thinking what if [differentthing] instead? Yeah, I like that one more anyway.”
You know… like any other artists… ever.
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His view on the Balrogs are a good example. As it’s this dark forgotten thing in the trilogy. And in Silmarillion/some of the other works they are still these demonic creatures but Melkor has armies in the thousands of them as they are part of his main forces alongside orcs.
Then in a couple of his letters and notes he expresses disdain over having written them in such an expendable manner, has some reflections then concludes that in actuality there was only about 5 of them and they were extremely rare, powerful and dangerous. And they went to hiding deep in the earth.
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Yeah, ask any artists ever if they plan on changing the set rules they just gave to their current project in the near future when they just came up with them and there’s a good chance the answer in that moment is “no”.
Ask again a couple years later and it’s very likely changed to “I already did that like 15 times”.
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That strong confidence when it’s just done, followed by reflections years later of “Whyy did I do that? No, that’s bad.”
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It’s inevitable that some of your fans will get attached to a specific version eventually, even if it’s not what you want as the final product.
That’s why the safest way is to throw things out there and then do iterations as a new IP that you also throw out there… just redo all the things but with a new coat of paint. Will some critic whine about how you always do the same thing? Sure. Will the people who engage with your stuff because they enjoy your tropes care? Probably not.
See: Fromsoftware. Calling Elden Ring “big Dark Souls” is only wrong because you could argue it to be “big Demon’s Souls 2.0” and I don’t see them having issues with that. Sekiro already showed that they can maintain the fanbase on different genres 
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ive never read lotr of seen the movies but wtf the elves sound like some weird alien robots in that writeup
damn, shadowlands ripped off lotr elves even more than i thought??
Tolkien elves lean somewhat heavily on the “what if biblical human but not corrupted” trope as far as I’ve understood it. Probably why it reads like alien robots to you… because if you read Abrahamic texts on this it also sounds like alien robots.
Already wrong. Finwë, father of Feanor and Fingolfin, remarried when his wife retired to the Halls of Mandos after giving birth to Feanor.
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That’s one of the contradictions yeah. It’s just that LaCE says “elves don’t remarry”.
The source texts don’t even agree on when elves marry or not marry.
Schrödinger’s elf marriage.
Seems more likely that elves remarrying is unlikely because they’re immortal. Seems more that “elves don’t get divorced”.
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Tolkien probably: And then I took Henry VIII’s actions personal.
If you are ever unfortunate enough to find yourself in a room with Tolkien purists, ask them if balrogs have wings
Endless free entertainment
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Put some clothes on!
Also on that note, very few things cant be improved with wings. It just works.
My clown outfit is simply too powerful
The funny thing is that it displays just fine on mobile
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