Concerns About Season Four

As to the second point, Nan Elmoth still fits the bill, with its pre-established proto-Girdle for him to adapt to his own purposes. And it's still outside the Girdle. How he knows about it would have to be established, of course.

Since this is meant to be an early Season 4 storyline, it will still be possible for us to tell the story of Eöl purchasing Nan Elmoth before the Fëanoreans move into East Beleriand (albeit after the sun rises). That would make it very possible to show Eöl resenting his new neighbors, neighbors who didn't bother to get Thingol's permission (really) before moving in.

We will have to work out Eöl's motives for moving into Beleriand at this point. We can't use a 'he's always been here' storyline very easily. We could try it...but it would probably look like we were tacking him into the story rather than incorporating him organically. We are already doing a 'surprise, they've always been there!' storyline with the petty-dwarves of Nargothrond, so I think we'd want to be cautious not to double up on that and make it look like ill-thought-out worldbuilding.

As for how he knows Sindarin...does he need to when he first arrives on screen? He was last seen storming out of a meeting at Cuivienen in Season 2 Episode 3, so if we bring him back in Season 4 Episode 1-2, we could have him conduct his meeting with Thingol via translator (even a dwarf?) and then just know Sindarin after he's established in Beleriand. Any ongoing translation needs would get tedious, but we might get away with a single scene of that.

It seems likely that Eöl's point of contact would be the dwarves of Belegost, rather than the Sindar of Beleriand. So, we'll have to create some back story for him that makes sense of all of this. Does he know Men? Does he know Dwarves? Why does he want to come to Beleriand now? We'll have to come up with answers to those questions that tie into the rest of the story.
 
I believe a 1st or 2nd generation elf could still be able to communicate with another 1st and 2nd generation elf by no trouble...

We know how fast Finrod was able to learn the language of house beor, so that won't be an issue among elves.
 
We could tack something together, and it makes sense to plan something as best we can, although he won't be the same character anymore - he won't have much in common with Eol in the books.

What I'm trying to say is, there's plenty of quite justified reasons to tell to the Hosts, why not to make us rewrite Eol's story. As well as reasons to ask them to let us tell stories in their intended order in the future, so this doesn't keep happening.

MithLuin said:
As to the second point, Nan Elmoth still fits the bill, with its pre-established proto-Girdle for him to adapt to his own purposes.
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What purposes are those? He doesn't trap anyone there until Aredhel, and he has nothing to hide from if the Noldor and Melian already killed the monsters.

Edit: Keeping people away from him isn't enough reason... unless he has some particular enemy who is an Elf or Dwarf... what else does the magic in Nan Elmoth do? Could he plausibly think he can use it to create a bubble of anti-Sun perpetual night? Melian is a night spirit. Is that enough reason to give away Anglachel?

What specifically drove the Green Elves and Ents westward?
 
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We already made the decision to use the story version in which he is an avar rather than a sinda... so i don't have that much trouble with altering his story a bit. I think he still has the same personality as we know him from the pubsil, despite a slightly altered backgroundstory.
 
Being an Avar or a Sinda, is a much tinier difference story-wise, compared to being a long-term resident/native of Beleriand, or a very new immigrant.

Again... I'm trying to think of ways to try to persuade the Hosts to let us tell the story in the book.

Haerangil said:
I believe a 1st or 2nd generation elf could still be able to communicate with another 1st and 2nd generation elf by no trouble...

We know how fast Finrod was able to learn the language of house beor, so that won't be an issue among elves.
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I think saying the Cuivienen generations remember the oldest version of Elvish, is pretty reasonable. And easy to convey, without much explaining.

Please let's not give other Elves the incredible super-telepathy Finrod has, though. He's unique that way. We haven't even mentioned telepathy yet, and if other Elves were as powerful a telepath as Finrod, it would look pretty weird to suddenly bring it up for the first time two seasons after introducing Elves. (Plus, making many Elves super-powerful telepaths is far from what was in the books, and could even obscure the existence of separate Elven languages.)

We showed Elves having language barriers with Orcs and Dwarves, which couldn't have happened if a universal translator was present in those scenes. Legolas in the LotR can't speak or understand the Rohirrim language.

The only reason it works for Finrod to have such a power without having mentioned it before, is that he's never actually encountered a language barrier before. He grew up speaking both Quenya and Telerin, and Valarin wasn't spoken in front of Elves. (It's possible that his power only works on people who unconsciously project their thoughts with every word they speak, and that Elves don't do that... but in SilmFilm, I don't know how we could show that difference, if there is one.)

Finrod will probably learn Sindarin absurdly quickly, and then act as translator until the other Noldor in Fingolfin's camp catch up. (In contrast to the Feanorians, who'll have to learn the normal way.) I think other Elves asking Finrod how he does that, would give an opportunity to explain telepathy to the audience -- the other Noldor might know what it is, but had never heard of someone able to use it well or reliably.
 
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Faelivrin said:
I think we do have three very good arguments why we should be allowed to tell the story from the book:

1. Eol would only claim he has more right to live in Beleriand than the Noldor do if he arrives before they do, not years afterwards. It's a significant part of his story and character that he was there first, years before the Noldor, and that he enjoyed peace in Beleriand and blamed the Noldor for starting the war with Morgoth -- not just that he has a generic, unspecific dislike of them for no reason. And that he got to know the Dwarves long before they met any Noldor. If he hates the Noldor for no reason at all, then he'll be like a characature of the original character. Eol in the book is a nasty person, but he actually has reasons for what he thinks and does -- they're generally bad reasons, but they make sense to him and he can tell them to other people -- he doesn't just hate people at random. If it was just reflexive xenophobia or being antisocial, he'd hate the Dwarves, too.

2. His choice to live in Nan Elmoth was also supposed to be about finding someplace safe in Beleriand, but outside the Girdle of Melian. That doesn't matter if the Feanorians have already killed all the Orcs, the Girdle is a decade old, and the Spiders are long gone, by the time Eol shows up -- he could live anywhere at all, without paying for it with magic swords, so why would he bother to pay for Nan Elmoth? Why would he choose that place, after the Noldor arrive? If he hates them, he wouldn't even emigrate into Beleriand, after it's settled by Noldor and he has to pass through Feanorian territory just to get to Nan Elmoth. How would he even know what Nan Elmoth is, or speak Sindarin, or know to ask Thingol's permission, if he had no prior contact with the Sindar?

3. How would we depict him hating the Sun and Moon and longing for the ancient time of starlight, if he doesn't show up until after the Sunrise? His unhappiness wouldn't really have meaning without contrasting it to a previous time when we show him to actually be content or happy, before the Sun rises.

None of the above would make sense if he arrived after the Noldor were already established in Middle-earth. Making him a late-comer to Beleriand instead of someone who lived there for many years fundamentally changes who the character is.



If the Hosts dislike flashbacks that much, then I wish they would allow us to tell the stories in chronological order, in the first place.
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I also detest flashbacks, but I agree with you that in this case it is necessary if we want to convey the character of Eol properly. My recommendation will be an episode which centers on Eol and tells his story in flashback while showing what he is doing in the present. Insert Firefly reference here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Gas

The above is one of the more brilliant episodes of Firefly where we have three different timelines with the same characters, two of which converge by the end of the episode.
 
'Out of Gas' is a great episode of Firefly, but it's probably worth pointing out that it's conveying the backstory of characters the audience has already gotten to know over 7 episodes and is (plausibly) interested in. I should note that I absolutely love out-of-order storytelling, so I enjoy Quentin Tarantino films and Boondock Saints is one of my favorite films. I just happen to know that the Hosts do not share my tastes in this, and have been pretty strongly committed to linear storytelling. [As a for instance, I would have done the Ainulindale as flashback and started somewhere else in the story. But...that's just me.]

Eöl essentially needs to be reintroduced to the audience, and likely we will not have an entire Eöl-centric episode in which to do it...there will likely be at least a side story in the north with the Fëanoreans and the Host of Fingolfin. Eöl could be the protagonist, and his story could be the main plot of the episode, but...that's probably about as much as we'll get for him.

I guess it would be possible to have Eöl and Thingol talk directly to one another in subtitles, while the younger members of Thingol's court sit around going 'huh?' That could be a helpful way of establishing that Sindarin is not the same as the original common Eldarin tongue, which will be useful for having the Sindar and Noldor meet (another early-in-Season 4 theme).

I think that the idea that Eöl is fleeing the sun, and sees Nan Elmoth as a refuge of shadows where he can hide from it is intriguing. While it is true that several armies have been defeated, the idea that all evil creatures have retreated to Angband at this point isn't entirely what's happening - plenty of giant spiders have taken up residence in Nan Dungortheb, and no doubt there are still stragglers of orcs in the wide open areas of East Beleriand. Apparently Morgoth's initial plan was just to release some orcs (not orc armies), so these rogue bands of orcs are roaming at random, I would think. The Noldor are *going* to set up a leaguer, but they haven't done it yet. So, yes, safety from evil creatures is likely still a valid motivation.

I recognize that making Eöl hypocritical in his dislike for the Noldor newcomers does not help make his character sympathetic at all - the audience is not going to buy his arguments. But I don't think that's really a problem...he's more-or-less a villain, and we're going to have him be involved in one of the more questionable questions of consent in the entire project (Ar-Pharazon and Tar-Míriel is worse, obviously). Audiences got mad at the vampires on Buffy when they *threatened* to rape teenage girls, and...those were meant to be evil soulless monsters. Audiences were mad at Game of Thrones for the rape of Sansa Stark even though it was done by the most sadistic character on a show full of sadistic characters and mostly happened off-screen. So, yeah, everyone's going to hate Eöl, even if Aredhel is portrayed as somewhat willing, and that's going to mean that whatever backstory we show for him isn't hugely important.
 
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Even if it's a long shot... I request an attempt to ask the Hosts to let us tell his story in flash back.

Do the Hosts like Firefly? Would mentioning Out of Gas sway their opinion?

MithLuin said:
I recognize that making Eöl hypocritical in his dislike for the Noldor newcomers does not help make his character sympathetic at all - the audience is not going to buy his arguments.
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Well, I'm less concerned about him being sympathetic -- that's a lost cause! -- than crazy and out of character.


A thought occurred to me about Eol yesterday: in the books he has some gloomy servants. I'm sure we can tell Aredhel's story without them, since I don't recall them doing anything except telling Eol something he could probably figure out on his own (correct me if I'm wrong about that). They likely don't need names, casting, or personal stories. The questions I have about them are whether we include them, and how. (I would prefer to include them, if it's feasible.)

1. If we don't include them, will it be plausible for Eol to live all alone in the wilderness for centuries? I read Hatchet and My Side of the Mountain as a teen, and they seemed plausible, but the main characters in those books were only alone for a year or so. Can anyone really survive with no contact with other people... make all their own food and clothes and such with no help, take care of themselves if they're injured, etc? Elves don't have to worry about getting sick, and don't need much sleep, but it may still be implausible for him to be totally alone for centuries.

2. If we do include his gloomy servants, how do we introduce and explain them? My thought is that it would be easiest for Eol to arrive in Beleriand already with some buddies. Even a creepo has some friends. I don't think it would need much explanation, or any, if they're just fellow Avari or Nandor who are his buddies. That would spare us from having to explain who they are, where they're from, and how and why they hooked up with him.


About his motivations to come to Beleriand, those can hardly be the same as his motivations for wanting Nan Elmoth, since he won't know about Nan Elmoth until after he comes to Beleriand. Unless both reasons are generically "to escape monsters." Why did the Green Elves come west? Could he have the same reason?

Although I just thought of something: Eol could learn about Doriath, the Girdle, and Nan Elmoth from somebody who gets exiled from Doriath for... some reason... and joins up with Eol. So we could use one of his gloomy servants as a device to explain how he learned Sindarin, and learned about Nan Elmoth. Or, Dwarves could tell him?



About linear and non-linear storytelling ... I'm going to have to mention again Tuor and Turin. After the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, there are multiple simultaneous storylines, that have to stay simultaneous. But telling them simultaneously with alternating scenes or episodes would probably be a nightmare and/or spoil the mood of both stories (one uplifting and hopeful, the other unrelentingly depressing). I don't think strictly-linear-no-matter-what will work after the Nirnaeth, no matter how much the Hosts want it to.
 
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I think Eol should have a small following of likeminded Avari... though not an entire tribe though. I think it would be most safe to assume that they were a small group that has come out of the east for unknown reasons... though I sort of DO like the idea that Eol fled either from the rising sun or from thevawakening men.

I share the concern about linear storytelling...

I would like a beren&luthien season, a Turin season, a tuor season & an Earendil Season, each with it's own continuous timeline, but 7ndependent from each other in terms of chronology.
 
MithLuin said:
I think that the idea that Eöl is fleeing the sun, and sees Nan Elmoth as a refuge of shadows where he can hide from it is intriguing. While it is true that several armies have been defeated, the idea that all evil creatures have retreated to Angband at this point isn't entirely what's happening - plenty of giant spiders have taken up residence in Nan Dungortheb, and no doubt there are still stragglers of orcs in the wide open areas of East Beleriand. Apparently Morgoth's initial plan was just to release some orcs (not orc armies), so these rogue bands of orcs are roaming at random, I would think. The Noldor are *going* to set up a leaguer, but they haven't done it yet. So, yes, safety from evil creatures is likely still a valid motivation.
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Interestingly: "But now the trees of Nan Elmoth were the tallest and darkest in all Beleriand, and there the sun never came."

Also potentially useful in his motives for wanting Nan Elmoth (if we don't get to show it in flashbacks) is this line from an abandoned sketch about changing Eol's story:
"he left the Forest of Region where he had dwelt and sought for a place to dwell. But since he did not love the Noldor he found it hard to find a place where he would be unmolested."


And from a similar abandoned note: not a motive for coming to Beleriand, but a reference to his buddies.
"But [later] he and a few others of like mood, averse to concourse of people, ... [had] crossed the [Mts] long ago and come to Beleriand."

I don't find anything in the texts in which Eol's servants play a clearly pivotal role, but it is said that Aredhel was allowed to "fare" about alone - it isn't clear if only in Nan Elmoth, or in neighboring lands - as long as she never spoke to any Noldor. How would Eol enforce this during his trips to the Dwarf-kingdoms? Either with his servants keeping watch and coralling her, or with strong enchantments, but in the latter case, how did Aredhel and Maeglin finally get away? The servants do tell Eol that Maeglin and Aredhel had left only two days ago, when he returns from the Blue Mountains and finds them gone. So they're the kind of detail that's worth including, I think.


Tolkien didn't seem to give any hints as to why Eol would come to Beleriand, in the versions where he's an Avar or Nando -- other than a generic remark that those people were wanderers.

Haerangil said:
though I sort of DO like the idea that Eol fled either from the rising sun or from thevawakening men.
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Well, fleeing the Sun can't be a reason to come to Beleriand initially... that isn't an effective way to escape from the sky... 😛 Come to think of it, he could try to emigrate permanently to an underground Dwarven city, and be told no.


Haerangil said:
I would like a beren&luthien season, a Turin season, a tuor season & an Earendil Season, each with it's own continuous timeline, but 7ndependent from each other in terms of chronology.
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I totally agree. IMO, the emotion of Turin and Tuor's stories would be best conveyed by giving each of them their own season(s), each starting at the Nirnaeth. (There's also the Doriath and Dior storyline, but other than Dior being born and starting a family nothing in particular happens with them until Hurin comes to Thingol and starts the chain of events that brings down the kingdom.)
 
Faelivrin said:
Even if it's a long shot... I request an attempt to ask the Hosts to let us tell his story in flash back.

Do the Hosts like Firefly? Would mentioning Out of Gas sway their opinion?

Well, I'm less concerned about him being sympathetic -- that's a lost cause! -- than crazy and out of character.

About linear and non-linear storytelling ... I'm going to have to mention again Tuor and Turin. After the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, there are multiple simultaneous storylines, that have to stay simultaneous. But telling them simultaneously with alternating scenes or episodes would probably be a nightmare and/or spoil the mood of both stories (one uplifting and hopeful, the other unrelentingly depressing). I don't think strictly-linear-no-matter-what will work after the Nirnaeth, no matter how much the Hosts want it to.
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I would say the Hosts like Firefly, judging by the fact that they wanted Jewel Staite to have a larger role than Earwen. They have suggested her for Finduilas (I myself prefer Rosie Huntington-Whitely).

As far as Tuor and Turin, it would be interesting to have a scene at the Pools of Ivrin from Turin's perspective, which is where Tuor and Voronwe see him.

I think it would be fun to have a non-linear storytelling, but we could just tell it in book order, since the Men arriving in Beleriand comes after Aredhel meeting and being seduced by Eol chapters wise (Of Maeglin is Chapter 16 and Of the Coming of Men to Beleriand is Chapter 17). Though not to Tarantino levels.

As for a whole season devoted to Beren and Luthien, is it possible to stretch it out into a full 13 episodes? I say there's enough material for 6, but not 13.
 
A few thoughts all in a jumble.

I also think we might need to start looking, now that stuff is starting to happen, at the notion of half-seasons, or more but shorter seasons.

Maybe Beren and Luthien works best as 6 or 8 episodes. Are we forced to fill it out, or put in B stories, or can we just do 8 episodes (or whatever it is)?

I'd love to have some level of seasons (half-seasons) running in parallel. I mean, the main Lord of the Rings book does this, so it's not like it's a foreign concept. There are a bunch of stories that start at the Nirnaeth, that could be tricky to interweave episode by episode (or scene by scene). Maybe there are some independent outside time markers we could use to help line events up chronologically. See the same event in each story, from that story's perspective, as a time stamp.

If we really push hard on Turin and Tuor sort of being opposites in a lot of ways, maybe their arcs could be alternate episodes in the same season? Or would we either lose momentum, or jumble up the conflicting themes and emotions? Just brainstorming here, typing stuff as I think of it.
 
What we are running into here is a desire for linear storytelling in our TV adaptation, when the original source material is decidedly non-linear. Tolkien jumped forward and backward in time throughout the Silmarillion to get his stories told. 'Meanwhile, in Beleriand,' jumps back to summarize a few thousand years of history before catching them up to the present, and Of Men is sorta a, oh, by the way, they've been around since the Sun rose, but you're just meeting them now, and...well...there's a lot of that.

How to tell Tuor and Turin's stories is tricky, because they overlap in all of one scene...and yet clearly they are contemporaries.

It's possible to do a Turin mini-season, followed by a Tuor + Fall of Gondolin mini-season. That would be...more or less how the book does it, segregating out each of the 'Great Tales' to be told on its own.

It would be a more ambitious challenge to integrate the stories, telling them together. That would require that we have a 'Turin storyline' and a 'Tuor storyline' for each episode, and that both stories have some common theme to tie them together. Túrin and Tuor would likely have to be complete foils of one another, which leads to some caricature issues. In other words, I'm warning that such a choice might damage the quality of the writing.

As an example from another Joss Whedon project, Faith and Buffy are often portrayed as two people with very different attitudes towards life and slaying; Faith trusts no one, Buffy has a group of loyal friends; Faith hooks up, Buffy is loyal to her one true love. Etc. So, naturally, when they have a Season 3 episode where the two slayers are fighting together and one of them accidentally stabs a human and kills him (after mistaking him for a vampire), the writers have the two girls take very different attitudes to the tragic accident. Faith claims not to care and has a very cavalier 'so what?' approach. Buffy, on the other hand, is all 'you can't take an innocent life! We're slayers, not murderers! We don't kill people!' Not that these reactions are out of character, but the extreme polar opposite thing seems a bit contrived. It makes them both sound like they're lying to maintain face, or just arguing for the sake of being contrary. A more nuanced 'wow, that's terrible, we should be careful that doesn't happen again, but it was an accident, and, well, friendly fire happens' would have seemed more realistic, and they likely could have written that if they weren't so focused on the two slayer dichotomy foil thing.

This is not to say that the stories *can't* be integrated, but that doing it well is a serious challenge and I think it would take some work.
 
Something again within the Tolkien family I am thinking of is the intro to the extended Two Towers, where the balrog scene is replayed, and then at the Fly You Fools moment, instead of following the Fellowship as it did in the original film, it switches to following the fall.

A similar split could occur at some point, and follow Tuor on one path and Turin on another. I think if I remember right, their stories interact and overlap in just that one spot where they cross paths, but it would take a bit of fudging by a couple years to make them exactly contemporary (ie. born in the same year - I'm at work and don't have my references handy). We'd want to have an overlap at the start as tiny tots to diverge from, then that crossing paths scene (which we'd see twice, once from each side), and then maybe even some sort of path crossing at the end - maybe in the flight from Gondolin, Tuor passes by the location of Turin and family's demise(s)? This could even be a way to split it up from a straight through pair of seasons. Start with Tuor's story up until the point where they cross paths, then do Turin's story all the way start to finish, then do the second half of Tuor's story.
 
amysrevenge said:
Something again within the Tolkien family I am thinking of is the intro to the extended Two Towers, where the balrog scene is replayed, and then at the Fly You Fools moment, instead of following the Fellowship as it did in the original film, it switches to following the fall.

A similar split could occur at some point, and follow Tuor on one path and Turin on another. I think if I remember right, their stories interact and overlap in just that one spot where they cross paths, but it would take a bit of fudging by a couple years to make them exactly contemporary (ie. born in the same year - I'm at work and don't have my references handy). We'd want to have an overlap at the start as tiny tots to diverge from, then that crossing paths scene (which we'd see twice, once from each side), and then maybe even some sort of path crossing at the end - maybe in the flight from Gondolin, Tuor passes by the location of Turin and family's demise(s)? This could even be a way to split it up from a straight through pair of seasons. Start with Tuor's story up until the point where they cross paths, then do Turin's story all the way start to finish, then do the second half of Tuor's story.
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They overlap in a single spot: As Tuor and Voronwë are making their way to Gondolin south from Nevrast, Turin is making his way northward from Nargothrond to Dor-Lomin; they intersect at the Pools of Ivrin, now frozen over. They're about nine years apart; Turin was born in 464 FA, while Tuor was born in 472 FA in the Year of Lamentation.

It would have been funny if everything is out of order, like Tarantino.
 
Yeah. Also, Turin isn’t aware that anyone’s watching him at Ivrin. If his version of the scene is shown first, then in the Tuor version the audience will say “Wow, Turin had no idea his cousin was there.” But if we do Tuor’s story first, then the weird guy he and Voronwe see will be an unexplained mystery, until the audience sees Turin’s perspective — in which case Tuor’s version of the scene is a spoiler?
 
It's rather important to Túrin's story that he have younger sisters. Tuor is of course born at the same time as the youngest of those (more or less). The only part of Rían's story that we know is the part where she is pregnant when her husband dies, and gives birth and then throws herself on the burial mound and dies. That...kinda requires that Tuor be younger than Túrin. We could make Tuor older, a child who sees his father go off to war like Túrin, but that would be a change. Rían could still go off and die, but leaving her child behind when she's raised him for years is somehow more heartless than abandoning a newborn (not that that is a great thing, either, simply...more...understandable).

I imagine that no matter how we do it, we will show the Pools of Ivrin scene twice, from two perspectives.
 
Tuor is eight years younger than Turin, when they (nearly) meet Tuor is 24 and Turin 32, we should be able to acknowledge this during casting.
 
It’s mentioned that Turin knows of Tuor, but never meets him in person, which means that Tuor can’t be a child by the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.
 
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