Session 4.02 - Season 4 Episode Outlines
- Thread starter MithLuin
- Start date
I think it simply depends at what point in the Season we want to have the Orodreth/Sinda woman (she'll need a name!) wedding occur. If it's early on, they have to meet by the Feast at the latest. If it's later, then, sure, she could be in one of the Noldo realms. This will likely be a backdrop to other stories, so I was imagining their wedding occurring before Thingol's ban. Is there a reason to do it later? Could we use that to show some healing between the two peoples post-ban? Or is the Galadriel/Celeborn relationship for that?
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
It's just so dull - does it even really need to happen explicitly? Maybe someone mentions it in passing, while talking about something else that's actually interesting. Small talk between Galadriel and Celeborn?
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
People prefer to know how characters fall in love and it feels contrived when characters decide to become attached out of nowhere.
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
Depends on what you mean by "characters". Orodreth, maybe, just barely qualifies as a character. His beloved is most definitely NOT a character - we haven't even given her a name yet.
Aw... I'd rather try to rehabilitate Orodreth as somebody non-pathetic instead of leaving him that way... I mean he'll always be the guy who let Turin dictate his foreign policy, but surely we can rehabilitate him somewhat. (After all, Turgon's response to Ulmo's warning was at least as foolish, but we're depicting him as someone impressive.)
At one point, when Tolkien wanted Gil-galad to be Finrod's son, his mother was a woman named Meril from Eglarest. That needn't confine us or anything, but Meril could work as the name of Orodreth's wife.
At one point, when Tolkien wanted Gil-galad to be Finrod's son, his mother was a woman named Meril from Eglarest. That needn't confine us or anything, but Meril could work as the name of Orodreth's wife.
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
I don't mean that Orodreth is pathetic, I mean that he's a background character. He has a small amount of prominence in the Turin story, but not one that really requires him to have a fleshed out background. When he fudges up Nargothrond, us having seen his romance with his wife (or not) won't factor enough into the story to have been worth spending the time on it now.
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
You mean Fingon’s son, right? Or was Gil-galad Finrod’s son at some point during Tolkien’s writings?
Gil-galad started out with an unspecified Fëanorian ancestry in LotR drafts (yes, really!), then was made the son of Finrod Felagund and Meril, then briefly the son of Fingon, then given an unspecified descent from Finarfin, then settled on being the son of Orodreth after Tolkien decided that Finrod loved Amarie.
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
In the published Silmarillion, Fingon is Gil-galad’s father, which would make a little more sense geographically since Fingon’s lands are much closer to the Falas than Nargothrond is.
That's because the 1977 Silmarillion was compiled by Christopher Tolkien from unfinished writings, not JRRT's finished ideas (he didn't finish them...). It includes several things that JRR Tolkien tossed out, including this one (the sentence in the Silmarillion about Gil-galad being Fingon's son is actually just an editorial addition). It even includes a couple things JRRT never wrote at all, like the Nauglamir being made for Finrod.
But Gil-galad's Falathrim mother was only ever mentioned when his father was Finrod Felagund, not Fingon.
Last edited:
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
I've been thinking more about this. It's actually a kind of interesting thing about Orodreth - just how dull he is. All of his relatives are dynamic and interesting. And he's just... nothing's there. It's not that he's weak, it's not that he's pathetic, it's just that he's... invisible. Forgettable. A background character in his own story. His siblings are among the most interesting characters in the whole story. His children have strong roles in history. And he's just a space-filler. An entry on a genealogical chart.
He's uniquely uninteresting. Which is interesting hahahahahaha
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
He showed enough backbone against Celegorm and Curufin.
But as far as I know, audiences prefer watching a couple’s relationship develop over time instead of having them fall in love out of nowhere (unless it’s an established relationship). For example, people weren’t exactly thrilled with Game of Thrones Season 7 when Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen go from bickering to having sex in a short amount of time (it doesn’t help that he’s her nephew). And then as Kristoff from Frozen said:
“Who marries a man she just met?”
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
Yeah he does. Like I said, he's not particularly weak or pathetic. Just dull. I'm not sad for him, I'm kind of amused by it.
My (comedic) instinct is to crank that up to eleven: have other people forget he's in the room or leave him off invitation lists, just because they forget. I don't think this is an actually good idea, it's just the first place my brain goes.
My (comedic) instinct is to crank that up to eleven: have other people forget he's in the room or leave him off invitation lists, just because they forget. I don't think this is an actually good idea, it's just the first place my brain goes.
You mean, logistically how is he transported as a kid to the Falas? My guess is that the safest method would be a boat down the Narog and Sirion to the Bay of Balar. They'd basically be in Ulmo's hands the whole trip.
I know. It's sad...
Orodreth started out as a dymanic Elven chieftain in the original tale of Turin, when Finrod wasn't even a character. And then... I don't know when the idea entered that Orodreth let Turin control his foreign policy, but his position as the founding King of Nargothrond is figuratively usurpes in subsequent drafts, first by Celegorm and then by Finrod. All the neat stuff he did was transferred to other characters.
He could be brave (so he approves of Turin's foreign policy decisions because he's unhappy the folk of Narog are hiding all the time -- a policy started because of Curufin's fear campaign!), and wise when it comes to feuds and forgiveness (his sensibility about how to get rid of the sons of Feanor without more kinslaying). I proposed that in the Dagor Bragollach, if Aegnor is killed by a Balrog, have him pitch the Balrog into a lake to kill it, and have Narsil be Aegnor's sword that Orodreth retrieves from the nearly-boiling lake before anyone knows whether the Balrog survived that. That would give him something badass and brave to do, and demonstrate that his bravery sometimes shades into idiotic bravery in anticipation of his behavior after he meets Turin.
Last edited:
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
As far as watching couples develop. Yes. For characters that are interesting and we care about and focus on. For background characters though?
The only reason we have Orodreth at all is that there is juuuust slightly too much to do for all the other Noldor Princes, such that none of them can be there to screw up Nargothrond. If we didn't need him for just that couple of episodes in the Turin story, some other Noldor could easily be arranged to father Gil-galad (and of all the things to invent whole-cloth, surely Gil-galad's parentage is the least controversial, since no matter what we do we're going against something printed somewhere already). But we need him for Nargothrond, we can choose to use him for his genes, and then we literally never need him again. We can invent things for him to do, but nothing that some other person couldn't do instead. If we see him in the background on the Helcaraxe, and then see him visiting Thingol with his sibs, and then later on when we see him in the background already with a wife, that's not a beloved character having development off-screen. That's a guy we probably have to mention the name of out loud every time we see him, because the audience won't remember who he is.