Some thoughts on all 3 of the episode questions.
1) What do we want to show of dwarf culture? How homogeneous do we want the clans to be?
A) The 7 different tribes should have some cultural distinctiveness, as basically everyone on the forum seems to agree. I'm almost of the opposite thought as Marielle, however. I'm thinking that dwarves are individually stubborn and collectively resistant to change, as we saw with their language (Faelivrin). They should obstinately resist abandoning their initial cultural distinctiveness to the point of being jerks about it.
B) The Longbeards (Durin's folk) should have uniquely long beards. Perhaps it is traditional among them to cut or shave the beard of a dwarf if s/he is shamed or commits a crime.
i)
Question: Do we want to stick with depicting female dwarves with beards, which is admittedly a central part of their making, at the risk of horribly confusing the audience?
ii) Mim should have no beard. This marks him as shamed in the eyes of the Longboards. More on this below.
C) The different families should have diverse architecture and greater diversity among armor and jewelry. The less purely functional something is, the more we can allow its artistic diversity to grow.
i) I imagine that we'll mostly see the Longbeards, given their prominent role in the story and their location in Beleriand.
ii) Maybe we should have a scene where the Longbeards host their "cousins from the east", at which point we can highlight the different styles of armor and hair/beards but not have the elves interact much with the other tribes.
D) All dwarves should originally be illiterate. They adopt systems of writing after encountering the Elves, and they refuse to use the newfangled Feanorean runes once they come over from Valinor. Thus, Dwarven art and architecture should include no inscriptions.
2) What is the relationship between Mim and the rest of the dwarves?
A) Mim is a biological dwarf. His distinction from other dwarves should be cultural. His works (and possibly his beard) are small, not his stature
B) Mim is an example of wandering dwarfs who are anti-social to the usual crafting, mining and building activities of dwarfs. As a result of this, we see them branded as petty by the other dwarfs, who find their lack of craftsmanship to be unnatural and an offense against Aule.
C) I love the idea, had by many, that the other Dwarves should be the ones to evict Mim, and I propose making the Longbeards do it. If Mim is unbearded, the associated shame, combined with his failure to "properly improve the caves like a good dwarf" allows the Longboards to justify evicting him from his cave. Basically, the Longbeards' argument is that the petty dwarves aren't really
using the caves they're living in, and thus have no claim to them. I've deliberately set up a parallel to the situation of the US vis-a-vis the Native Americans, but we should let this parallel stand on its own without pointing toward it in dialogue.
C) I dislike the idea of "Mim the Deathless". The "once and future king" aspect is what marks Durin as unique. Spreading this out to Mim and possibly other dwarves renders Durin's uniqueness less culturally valuable. If the producers insist on Mim being the dwarf evicted from Menegroth, will the text permit making "Mim" an appellation rather than a given name? That is, can it be a term of derision applied by other dwarves and taken as a mark of outsider pride by Mim himself?
i) Perhaps it's this cultural identity that gets passed down among Mim's company, rather than a genetic heritage. Maybe it even becomes a honorary title. [
The Mim. Curses gold twice a day, straight from the mines.
]
3) How do the Sindar encounter the dwarves?
A) No strong thoughts on this.
B) One possible idea is that Thingol's folk quickly figure out they need to make war on these unlovely things that come to be called Yrch. The Longbeards should already be at war with the Orcs, and the Elves discover the Dwarves having a pitched battle with the Orcs at some point during the early hostilities between Elves and Orcs.
C) To Elvish eyes, dwarves will also be very unlovely, and they should wonder whether the dwarves are also bad guys. Have the question asked, "Is the enemy of my Enemy my friend?"
Aside: Maybe we should limit the contact between the Elves and Dwarrow families other than the Longboards.
1) As far as I can tell, the racial enmity between Elf and Dwarf seems to be universal, and nobody argues about who killed whom.
2) This universal hatred isn't especially Elvish. Thus, I'd argue that the Elves should not encounter other tribes of Dwarves until after the events of the First Age would make it easy for the Elves to paint all dwarves with the same brush and lead to the deep racial enmity that we see in the Third Age.
3) Nevertheless, the general consensus here seems to be that there are interactions between Elves and many Dwarrow tribes, so I've probably overlooked something.
Question for the Forum: Where are the names of the other dwarf families coming from? Everyone seems to know what these are and where they're coming from. I see them on the tolkiengateway wiki, but I don't remember them from the text.
