Barahir: Blog

Thus concludes Éowyn, Book 1: The Cage. There'll be a short break while I catch my final-editing-pass breath, but I intend to start posting the second book fairly soon.

This particular story grew out of a fairly simple question: if Tolkien's characters had rich sexual lives, but unlike in most Tolkien-universe stories didn't do anything to break or contradict the published narrative, what would that look like? (Ref. the blog entry entitled "Why Tolkien erotica?") I started brainstorming a half-dozen scattershot notions for various characters, and immediately noticed something intriguing.

They were all women.

In retrospect, that choice was largely forced by my determination to respect authorial primacy and the books themselves, which are overwhelmingly male-dominated. For a known male character to roam around a story while having tons of (heterosexual) sex I'd have to invent most of their potential partners. I found that less satisfying than using the existing cast. (I suppose this also partially explains why there's so much slash fiction set in Tolkien's universe.) For example, a story about Éomer (assuming he's straight) set within the timeframe of the novel has only one available Tolkien-identified female character for much of the narrative: his sister. On the other hand, his sister encounters a vast array of potential partners as she moves around the geography and through the timeline.

Once that choice was made and I'd selected Éowyn as the most potentially interesting among the options (Ref. the blog entry entitled "Who wants to be a Shieldmaiden, anyway?"), the next question was of character…her character. Who was she, who is she, and who will she become? It may be hard to see right now, given the rather relentless descent into darkness that is The Cage, but I greatly prefer female characters with 1) a robust sexuality, 2) over which they have total agency. That said, I find the journey to that endpoint vastly more fertile storytelling ground than starting at the end, so to speak, and so we begin with an Éowyn who believes she has neither, despite a fair number of people telling her otherwise.

I've never been much of an outliner, even when writing professionally, but I knew I'd need one for a story of this length and complexity. I started with a completely open-ended conception and began scribbling ideas for scenes…potential partners, specific acts, and so forth…with an eye on the end goal but not yet having any firm plan regarding how I'd get there.

The basic narrative hinges of the first half of the story came together fairly quickly, in part because Tolkien's novel doesn't leave a lot of temporal freedom between the moment we meet Éowyn at Edoras and the moment she wakes up in Minas Tirith. As a rule, we know where she is and who she's with most of that time. In The Cage, those hinges are 1) Éowyn's relationship to Wormtongue, 2) the conclusion of that story, 3) falling in "love" with Aragorn, 4) the partial resolution of that story as they part ways at Dunharrow, and 5) how all those factors inform her desperate ride to Gondor and battle. Thus, what I needed to write was how her sexual journey fit into those major narrative beats.

In many ways, the entire structure of The Cage was determined by the very first choice: whether or not to make her relationship with Wormtongue a sexual one, whether or not that relationship would be (as described in The Lord of the Rings) unidirectional - there's obviously no question regarding his sexual interest in her - or bidirectional, and if the latter what form that would take. The novel also suggests she's a virgin, through constant association with the color white and by referring to her as a Shieldmaiden. Writing Éowyn and Wormtongue into a sexual relationship meant that her first experiences with sexuality would be with a thoroughly evil partner who manipulates and (at least at the start) controls her, and that's a pretty dark beginning. I knew I didn't want to drag it out too long, but I felt it had to be told…because rather than simply igniting her sexual journey it set it ablaze with a narrative flamethrower.

So I had to make that choice count, and I'm fairly proud of what I came up with over those early chapters. Even though their first three encounters are to one extent or another against her will, in the end she succumbs. Starting a story with scenes that are by any ethical definition sexual assault wasn't the easiest or more enjoyable thing to do, but ultimately I thought it truest to both characters. Because I didn't want to write the same scene over and over, I had to come up with different ways for him to violate her consent. His powers of manipulation were already canon, and physical restraints were an obvious alternative, but then I hit upon the notion of a magical alteration to her libido (described in chapter 2). This relieved me of a limitation that I'd not previously figured out how to evade: justifying an increasingly sex-obsessed Éowyn when the story introduces her as a virgin and immediately treats her to a series of unpleasant encounters with someone she quite justifiably loathes.

But that's not why I'm proudest of those chapters. I ended with Éowyn in the physical, emotional, and mental state I needed to move the story forward, but along the way I was able to give her a major (and heretofore unseen) hand in the downfall of her assailant…one which I most definitely think she deserved after what she'd been through…that doesn't contradict the existing narrative. I also invested Wormtongue with the dangerous manipulative power the novel intimates, but which is utterly belied by the craven traitor so easily defeated by Gandalf and seen in even worse straits thereafter. Finally, I built a stronger foundation for a desperate and disobedient character who latches onto Aragorn out of nowhere, repeatedly defies her King's explicit orders, blithely abandons her responsibility to her people, and willingly rides (with an even more vulnerable Hobbit) to near-certain death.

In other words, adding a sexual component to Éowyn's backstory justifies her known behavior in a way that the published novel doesn't quite manage. Since Tolkien took a lot of narrative importance away from her character in the journey from first draft to finished product (especially regarding her relationship with Aragorn), I felt confident adding it back. With a lot more nudity.

The second question to confront was just how far she'd go in her vain pursuit of Aragorn. When I began writing I didn't know if I'd let them have fully consummated sex or not, and my outline dithered on this point for a long while. In the end, I decided that even if they were going to have mutually consensual sex it couldn't be at Dunharrow, for the way he rejects her before he takes the Paths of the Dead wouldn't make sense if they did.

The use of Wormtongue's vial and its will-suppressing powder on Aragorn in chapter 12 (and also Gréor, and the young recruits in chapters 10 and 11) didn't arise from the introduction of the vial itself. In the beginning the vial and its secret were mostly a MacGuffin to justify keeping Éowyn close to Wormtongue in ways that would imperil her, sexually and otherwise. Once it existed, however, it became the obvious way to make a sexual advance on Aragorn without him immediately waking up, and also how to hide her dalliance with the trainees without the whole camp hearing about it by the next morning. That it paralleled the growing darkness of Éowyn's sexuality - a sexuality meant to "feel" more and more like Wormtongue's - was a welcome side-effect.

After that, it was just a matter of filling in the blanks. Despite the largely negative sexuality in which Éowyn is often engaged in The Cage, I didn't want all her "firsts" to be inextricably bound up with coercion and evil. That's why Elfi and Théo enter the picture in chapters 8 and 9, and in fact those are my favorite chapters so far.

Or: in the novel it's clear Elfhelm knows who Merry is on the ride to Gondor, given their brief conversation. But why wouldn't he question the Hobbit's presence? And the worthy Marshal would surely know the names of his soldiers, so how could the mysterious Dernhelm pass without comment? Given Éowyn's growing predilection for solving her problems with sex, their "relationship" was an entirely obvious fix to what I see as a small narrative hole in The Lord of the Rings

How to introduce Éowyn to a broad range of unfamiliar sexual activity without breaking what I've already noted is a highly inflexible temporal and geographic structure was, at first, difficult to see. She can't actually be nipping off to secret orgies whenever she has a free hour, nor did I want every single one of her formative encounters to be a variation on the teacher-student scenario. Wormtongue breaks a lot of new and unexpected ground in chapters 4-6, but after that a great deal of her sexual education is introduced via manipulated or constructed reality. Magic in various forms plays a role from the beginning, but especially in chapters 10-13. (What Elladan and Elrohir did to her in chapter 13 remains, for now, deliberately vague.) Dreams do the rest of the work in chapters 14-17 and from 24 onward.

In the end - and this is the accomplishment of which I'm most proud, as it was intended from the beginning - all of Éowyn's sexual encounters serve to advance not only her sexuality, but her overall growth as a character. I'm quite happy with the character work that the sexual encounters accomplish, both singly and in toto. Some of the sex is indeed gratuitous, but much of it isn't. Taken as a whole it's turning Éowyn into the person she's going to become.

There's the good. What about the bad?

There's only one specific chapter which which I remain entirely displeased and that's chapter 10, which received more top-to-bottom rewritings and edits than any other chapter in the book. After all that work I still don't think it accomplished what I wanted: setting up a non-sexual analogy for the sexual "lesson" the next chapter was to impart. Or perhaps it's just that I suck at describing hand-to-hand combat.

I also think the chapters from 24 to the end are, taken together (originally they were a single 90,000-word chapter on my hard drive) too long and too much. BDSM elements were always intended for this story, entering the narrative way back in chapters 3-6 and recurring with some regularity, but I came to the end of The Cage with a lot more ideas than I needed to put on the page all at once.

About halfway through I felt that her treatment had grown brutal beyond my ability to derive sufficient corollary enjoyment (or at least interest) in it, and so I was compelled to add what one correspondent later called "breather" interludes to break up the otherwise relentless abuse. As a result, what was originally meant to be a shocking window into the deeply damaged state of Éowyn's sexuality became a slog though a book-length menu of arbitrarily completist nonconsensuality with equally unlikely interstitials. It ended the way I wanted it to, and still showed the character the things I wanted it to show her, but it took too long to get to that end.

All that said, I'm looking forward to Book 2. It's not quite the wild rollercoaster of discovery and dissolution that the first is, but it covers more meaningful ground and there are some major surprises along the way. Most importantly, I think it's significantly better.

Thanks for reading!

One of the primary benefits of the story codes on SOL is helping readers avoid (or seek out) specific types of content. I'm cautious about using some of the more controversial or extreme codes when they only apply to one or two chapters out of what will likely end up being around 60-70, and so when that happens I'll instead put a warning at the top of the chapter in question.

That said, within a few paragraphs of the next chapter to be posted (Chapter 8), some might raise their eyebrows at the absence of one particular story code or warning that seems pretty clearly implied.

So let me clarify, and note that this will be a narrative spoiler for the next two chapters (here's a little space to click away, if you'd like):

There's no incest in this story (or its second half). At least, not by my definition.

However, there are three instances where the possibility of incest is a plot point. Whether or not it happened or has yet to happen, it won't be described in this story.

My definition of incest is sexual contact between relatives. As a result, several things that might still bother those severely averse to even the suggestion of incest are worth mentioning. The most likely to offend is that, in all three instances, people who are related to each other will be having sex in the same room or place, in close proximity to one another. Just not with each other. Non-sexual contact may sometimes occur (e.g. holding hands), but it will be rare.

For those who have specific preferences or tolerances within the category: all three instances involve siblings.

And on that note, another spoiler: Éomer is not involved.

Readers familiar with The Lord of the Rings are either going to have their own "picture" of Éowyn in mind, or they're going to be imagining Miranda Otto.

With all due respect to Ms. Otto, a lovely woman and a fine actor, the Éowyn I'm picturing in these stories needs to be a little bolder, fiercer, saucier, and...this is important...more overtly sexual. As such, the mental image I've carried throughout the writing is Katheryn Winnick's version of Lagertha from Vikings. She's decidedly curvier than the Éowyn in the books (and in my story), but everything else is pretty much exactly what I'm picturing.

Issues of costuming and hairstyling aside, I mean this, or this, or in more peaceful moments this.

This is the first story in what I hope will eventually be a larger collection. Or maybe it will be the only one, considering how long it took to complete. I have a bit of a hangup regarding posting a story that's not finished; far too many of my favorite serials have been abandoned and left as monuments to premature expostulation…and so if you're reading this, the story exists in a finished form.

It's very, very long (he says with dry-eyed and sore-fingered understatement). It's not always particularly nice, and in fact some parts are unpleasant indeed. Some chapters are wall-to-wall sex, others have almost no sex at all, and a fair percentage of the rest feature sex that doesn't always end well. Or begin well. Sometimes both. It profoundly recontexualizes one of Tolkien's best-defined characters: the one and only female to have a well-described narrative entirely within the pages of The Lord of the Rings.

Of course, I'm talking about Éowyn.

While I more or less like the filmic version of The Lord of the Rings (I have some strong objections, too, but this is neither the time nor the forum), I greatly prefer the book and have grounded these and any future stories in it. Mostly. That said, the genesis of this particular tale is a scene in the movie adaptation, one that visualizes a backstory to which the book clearly refers but only obliquely depicts: Gríma Wormtongue's lust for Éowyn.

That backstory is brought up twice by Tolkien: once in its immediate aftermath (the Gandalf/Wormtongue confrontation at Edoras), and once again later, in Gondor, as Aragorn heals her in body but not in mind. Tolkien does not, despite his frequent narrative inefficiencies involving leaf-by-leaf description of walks and goofy forest-dwellers singing about boots, usually write throwaway character moments. If he mentions it, it likely matters. If a character voices it, it's unquestionably important. If it's mentioned twice….

In the book, there's a consistency to Éowyn's star-struck "love" for the unavailable Aragorn. We see her consumed by desperation and driven to hard deeds and outright rebellion after Aragorn spurns her for the Paths of the Dead. (The movie, as with so much else, manages to make a hash of her motivations.) Yet much later, during the Gandalf/Éomer/Aragorn conversation over her bed in "The Houses of Healing," Tolkien suggests that her troubles were already long-established before we meet her in the narrative. The filmic version makes this suggestion explicit in a scene between Éowyn and Wormtongue, dramatizing a representative interaction that could have, and probably did, happen despite Tolkien not putting it to paper. Interestingly, it borrows the very words that form the core of Gandalf's bedside revelation.

The scene is played perfectly by Miranda Otto and Brad Dourif, with enough complexity and nuance lent to an encounter between obviously evil Gríma and obviously good Éowyn that one could easily believe that Éowyn was, in growing crisis, tormented and vulnerable enough to be corruptible. That she could potentially be tempted, in a moment of hopeless despair, by what Wormtongue was offering. If that wasn't the intent of the movie scene as written - though I think it most certainly was - it was unquestionably the way the actors played it.

In the novel, we see Éowyn deal with many obstacles, and she makes a fair number of choices that are obviously poor. (That they ultimately end well is beside the point.) What reason is there to assume that her decision-making hadn't always been suspect? In the book we see her essentially broken by a series of crises, but what if she was already broken by an earlier crisis? Which character would be the most interested in forcing an Éowyn-in-crisis to make a poor decision, the better to take advantage of that decision? There's only one choice.

On that foundation, the possibilities are obvious and the consequences multiply, well beyond the point where Wormtongue is abandoned by the narrative. (Spoiler alert: mine will abandon him at the same time. Don't worry, they're not going to live unhappily ever after. He's still going to be imprisoned in Orthanc and gnaw on a few Lotho loins before he dies. She's still going to meet, fall in love with, and marry Emo Steward. And yes, it's all much more complicated than that.)

Will everyone like or accept this version of Éowyn? No, most certainly not. I'm not even sure I do at all points. A lack of "purity" can be assumed given that the context is erotica, but I was surprised by how dark the character was capable of being when driven to it by circumstance and a good itch 'tween the nethers. As a result, the Éowyn I end up with in the story is decidedly not the limited character that appears in the book (or movie). She's weaker and she's stronger. Her motivations are more complex. She's a lot hornier. But here's, for me, the key point: the self-motivation she exhibits in all other aspects of her life is carried through to her sexual explorations. Whatever the specifics of individual encounters, at her core Éowyn knows what she wants and isn't afraid to make it happen.

That said, I've tried to write my own ambiguity about this version of the character into the story itself. The character as written by Tolkien I find both interesting and sympathetic especially because, unlike many others, she's allowed to have flaws and make mistakes. The character I've written has even more flaws and makes a lot more mistakes. She does some fairly reprehensible things, and even when she doesn't she sometimes allows herself to be led very, very far astray. (She also does some beautiful and redemptive things.) More often, though, she does understandable things. Is she more interesting? Well…we'll see. By the end of the story, I think she's experienced some intriguing times, but then I admit that I've written myself into quite an attraction for the blonde minx.

My commitment to Tolkien's authorial precedence, however, remains consistent. This is important, because if I ever defy it (and I usually won't, though there are arguable exceptions) I want it to mean something. All those things that Éowyn does in the book…cross-dressing and uncle-disobeying, Nazgûl-poking and Steward-marrying, Hobbit-stealing and horn-gifting; she still does all of them. Not one bit of that story is, to my knowledge, actually changed. I don't consider my version a contradiction, I just think she's acquired a new layer. Or several. Perhaps it would be more correct to say she's stripped off a few layers.

Anyway….

Why does Éowyn "deserve" this story, which is certainly the longest I will ever write in this universe (and which could easily support the sequel implied in the coda some forty-plus chapters hence, most of which was already outlined before I typed the first word of the first chapter)? Consider: in early drafts of the novel, Aragorn was going to fall in love with Éowyn. (Fact!) Tolkien decided against it as he continued to add layers of identity to Aragorn and then chanced upon Arwen as a parallel to the (then unpublished) tale of Beren and Lúthien, but for all his mind-changing he never really replaced her. In some ways, Éowyn's story actually grew in individual importance after her demotion, from doomed love interest to victorious Hero. And while her story was certainly afflicted and bookended by her relationships (imagined and real), she's no Bechdel-ian victim; her crowning moment of triumph had nothing to do with Aragorn or Faramir. It was purely personal, showed her to be a true warrior, and yet unquestionably relied on her being a woman.

In The Lord of the Rings, Éowyn is the only complete and fully-realized female character within the pages of the published narrative, given that most of Galadriel's story exists in different works and Arwen's tale is relegated to an appendix and thus almost entirely "offstage." She's both important to and present in the story in a way no other XX-chromosomed character is. To my mind, that means she probably deserves an orgasm or two. Or twenty. Several hundred. Whatever.

To be sure, Tolkien would angrily roll over in his grave at what I've done to Éowyn. (I hope he doesn't.) His characters wouldn't ever act this way. I can only apologize, with respect for an author whose work I have found deeply moving and meaningful.

Now let's go get Éowyn laid, shall we?

As predicted, SOL doesn't want to post essays unless they're part of a story. Their site, their rules, it's all good. So here's the first of two.

Why would anyone want to write naughty stories about characters who were very seldom, if ever, naughty?

The question answers itself, really.

In choosing to write erotica set in J.R.R. Tolkien's universe, one is immediately confronted with the nearly sexless nature of that universe. There aren't all that many female characters, either, and most of those that exist - with a few well-known and obvious exceptions - are background at best and thoroughly victimized at worst (see, for example, poor Elwing). This is not, by the way, a prelude to a feminist critique regarding this lack. Tolkien could write interesting female characters, even though too many of them were defined primarily by their relationships. I don't really blame him for that either; that's not only the world he knew, it's the world he thought to be "correct." Moreover, no conversation about Tolkien and sex or sexuality could possibly be unthreaded from his very sincere but very conservative religious beliefs, and they cannot help but inform his writing. The critique is more or less valid, but it's not like we're going to get a revision out of it.

Still, there is implied sex, of a sort, in Tolkien's works. Some of it exceptionally pure (most of it, actually), and almost all of that is "offscreen," as it were. People get married, they procreate, we meet their kid(s). Certainly none of it is explicit; the Bible is far more R-rated than Tolkien. But what's really fascinating to me is how much of the obliquely-referenced sexuality in his work is dark. Sometimes very dark.

Unconvinced? Let's start here: Túrin impregnates his own sister. Sure, they're under a curse, but it is one of the very rare times Tolkien specifically highlights a sexual act between any of his characters. Incest resulting in conception is more G. R. R. Martin than J. R. R. Tolkien, or at least one would think, and yet there it is.

Even when it's not all doom and womb, there sure are a lot of triangles, and none of them are the fun kind. Lúthien/Beren/Daeron, for example…and don't tell me Daeron's jealous stalking of Lúthien isn't twisted. Or Finduilas/Túrin/Gwindor, which is even more twisted in that she was actually betrothed to one, fell in love with the other, and then…oh, just go read The Silmarillion (though if you haven't, this essay is going to make very little sense). Then there's Idril/Tuor/Maeglin, and…well, I could go on.

Tolkien would eventually trump himself with the much more complicated Gríma/Éowyn/Aragorn/Arwen/Faramir pentangle (actually more of a squiggly line with some polygons in the middle), but the point is that when Tolkien was moved to actually write people's romantic-with-a-chance-of-nookie lives onto the page, it wasn't always white-wedding monogamy and virgin Balrog-butterflies. There's a fair bit real sexual darkness, and not just for people under the ill effects of dragon curses.

Consider Eöl's relationship with Aredhel, with its implied semi-consensuality (less implied than blatant in earlier drafts), that ends well for absolutely no one. Not only does it provide the unstable catalyst for the Idril/Tuor/Maeglin triangle, that instability leads directly to the Fall of Gondolin…an event so important to Tolkien that it's the very first epic he ever wrote for his now-beloved legendarium. It also typifies one of the few very clear positions Tolkien takes on sexual matters: if it's not pristine and thoroughly Good, then it's very, very, very Bad and there will be Consequences. Again one sees the impact of his religion: Eöl's pursuit and capture of Aredhel is wrong, thus the product of their union is wrong, and from this much awfulness flows, but in Eöl/Aredhel rests the original sin.

One might assume that writing "correct" erotica in Tolkien's universe would be pretty much restricted to two things: chastity/marriage/pure love stories, and tales of darkness, jealousy, and betrayal in the classic and entirely familiar form. Plus that one really icky (or hot, depending on your tastes) incest story. I'll say right now, for the record, that while I appreciate that some would love thirty chapters of Twoo Wuvv between Aragorn and Arwen - and I'm not opposed if it's well-written - such is not my interest, because there's no drama in it. Finduilas/Túrin/Gwindor is much more fertile territory (so to speak). Hot sex is hot sex, but I find narrative trajectory and character development much more interesting.

All that said, what I actually find most interesting is what Tolkien seems to go out of his way to avoid writing. The gaps in which there was almost certainly fornication…or at least there would have been were the characters not so damned noble and sexless, and were the author not such a prude (which I don't actually mean as an insult; he was who he was)…but that we are forced to imagine from either whole cloth or a mere scrap of thread.

Though it's a particularly unpleasant example of what I mean, consider Celebrían. We know she was abducted by orcs, rescued by her sons, and found her ordeal so horrible that she abandoned her husband and children to pass, prematurely, over the Sea. The entire story, aside from the detail of a poisoned wound, is reduced to "torment" in the text. While I'm sure that's true, her subsequent decision is extreme and somewhat unprecedented.

Now think about this: Tolkien wrote a somewhat similar tale of familial abandonment into the story of Míriel (mother of Fëanor). Remember what came of that? The event and its consequences are directly faulted for both Fëanor's domineering, intransigent personality and much of his familial strife. And what came of that was, eventually, a condemnation that subjected Fëanor, all his descendants, all his followers, most of the Noldor and any Elves that never went to Valinor, all Men, and a whole lot of Dwarves to unending defeat, despair, and death, as depicted in chapter after depressing chapter of The Silmarillion.

You know…no big deal, right?

So Celebrían leaves her children, all three have pretty gosh-darned happy endings (not that kind, though on the other hand…), and she gets away scot-free. Her torment must have been pretty awful for her to be forgiven so easily, when the majority of mortal and immortal inhabitants of Middle-earth were eventually forced to suffer for Míriel's choice.

No modern reader would fail to guess what form that torment must have taken. A more interesting question is whether or not Tolkien actually had it in mind. I tend to think, for all his purity, he must have, given how easily he let the character and her descendants off. He would likely have found what happened to her the worst possible form of perversion. Others of a more prurient inclination might find it a subject ripe for a particular sort of story, and for the exact same reason. (George R. R. Martin would have written half a book about it and then killed a Stark at the end, just because.) Either way, the point is that it's hard to imagine that there wasn't a sexual component - no matter how violent - involved in what Tolkien reduces to "torment."

Dialing back the horror for a moment, consider the story of Lúthien, which is more fully described than any tale of the First Age, save perhaps that of Túrin. I've already noted that her relationship with Daeron could be viewed as strange, disturbing, or even somewhat kinky, depending on one's imagination. Who really knows what those crazy kids were getting up to while they played the Sindarin version of "hide the flute?" Notably, Tolkien is also awfully evasive about when she and Beren finally got it on. Obviously they did at some point, and I hope more than just once (when they conceived Dior), because they went through an awful lot of hell if they only banged that one time.

But delve deeper. Though it's more explicit in earlier versions of what eventually became The Silmarillion, Tolkien definitely hints at a lust/seduction angle as Beren and Lúthien penetrate (sorry) deeper (still sorry) into Morgoth's lair. And then what happens? Lúthien belts out a few tunes and gets the better of Morgoth. Easy, right?

But wait…didn't she do the same thing to Beren? She sang, and poof: he was in love. That little performance resulted in the Second Great Interspecies Mating (after her parents'…and what is it with this family?), the Greatest Love Story Ever Written, and so forth. So when she pulls the same musical trick on Morgoth, we're supposed to assume that the most powerful of the Vala, the self-styled ruler of everything, the unbeatable embodiment of Evil, the one who's just been imagining a defilement to trump all other defilements, just gets really, really sleepy whenever someone launches into a power ballad? Maybe it didn't go down like that. Beren was kinda entranced himself, after all. And while he was out, maybe Lúthien thought her case might be made more convincingly via other means.

You see what I'm saying.

Later in the story she sings to Mandos and, again, gets extra-special treatment. That little songbird sure gets around. Hot Elf-on-Master-of-Death action! Don't fear the reaper!

The point is: I've no doubt that Lúthien's true love was Beren. But who's to say Lúthien was above a little groiny action on the side to get what she wanted? The narrative implications are far from clear (and no, I don't think Tolkien intended any of this), but neither are they dismissible out of hand if one posits a world in which people actually have sex.

So that, at last, brings me to the existing universe of Tolkien-derived erotica. Some's good, some's mediocre, some's bad, like everything else. But aside from the canon pairings, which are obvious things to write about…Aragorn and Arwen live Lustily Ever After, Galadriel and Celeborn have Really Splintery Sex in Trees, Sam and Rosie Conceive a Child Every Single Time They Screw…most of what's out there is highly arbitrary "my two/three/seven favorite characters get it on" without much fidelity to the text.

Well, okay, maybe "fidelity" doesn't apply…but alternate universe interpretations are, by far, the majority of the settings; Arwen runs off with Legolas, Gimli runs off with Legolas, Legolas runs off with Legolas, Legolas is magically cloned over and over so he can have an orgy with himself…well, you get the point. To which I'd also add: a lot of it, from both the tenor and the date of publication, seems very much derived from the movies rather than the books, and more based on the actors therein rather than the characters they play.

(Oh, Orlando Bloom; if only you'd had looser morals and an affection for moonstruck teenagers, you could have gotten yourself into an awful lot of trouble….)

I find this vaguely dissatisfying. Not Orlando Bloom's sex life (which I'm sure is perfectly serviceable) but alternate universes. It's mostly a matter of taste, and it's not because I don't appreciate alternate universe settings. After all, they're not a whole lot more unlikely that what I will write.

But here's my question: what if Tolkien's actual characters had sex in the universe as Tolkien wrote it? What if they had sex in the same complex, conflicted, imperfect, sometimes regrettable way that everyone else has sex? Even if they just happen to live in a world with very short people who can't figure out how to make shoes, and goofballs who caper about in brightly-colored boots collecting water lilies and that are in desperate need of a wake-up call concerning their sexuality?

Or, more seriously:

What if one leaves everything that Tolkien wrote as intact as possible, but fills in the naughty bits?

There are several problems to confront. One is that Tolkien's schedule, at least in The Lord of the Rings, is painstakingly rigid. It might be fun to watch Frodo pay his long-standing mushroom debt to a Dominatrix Mrs. Maggot in a much more tactile way (I am supremely Not Turned On by this idea), but the fact is that there's no time during the hobbits' shortcut to mushroom-shaped organs. One could write it (for all I know, someone has), but one has to break the story to do it.

Dream sequences can be used. And I embrace their use in certain limited circumstances, but the whole thing can't be a Bob-Newhart-appears-in-Pamela-Ewing's-shower joke on the reader. There has to be some plausibility to the dreams, and they have to be deployed sparingly and with caution. I think, for example, it's entirely reasonable to use a "story based in non-temporal reality" (euphemisms for the win!) when someone is under magical influence or dangerously ill. Or, y'know, asleep.

But that exception aside, I prefer to start with "this could actually have happened without changing the story" and then allow our poor, afflicted characters to actually get laid once in a while. Or a lot. Or really a lot. Or so much so that it's surprising they can lift a (non-flesh) sword the next morning.

Of course, this brings us to a second and more fundamental problem: if I'm actually considering fidelity to the text, very little of this would actually have happened. This derives from the premise with which I opened this essay: Tolkien's characters, unless they're evil, would not do most of the things they're more or less compelled to do by the demands of erotica. To turn Gimli into the rampaging defiler of other-species poontang that he was always meant to be, one has to turn Gimli into someone very different than the Gimli that Tolkien wrote. (Again: I am seriously not writing that story. I think.)

To this I respond: Tolkien ain't driving this bus. He programmed the GPS, but I'm paying for the gas, and I'm the one filling the seats. (Though I disclaim responsibility for that noisy troll orgy going on in the back seats….)

While we're on that subject (authorial intent, not troll orgies), a word about content. Some of what I've been moved to write is pretty dark, and at times well outside my own personal interests and kinks. Sometimes it's beyond what I consider acceptable. I haven't exerted tight control over content for a good reason: the stories need to go where they want to go.

What interests me, in erotica, is a story. For me, the best stories involve conflict. Jeopardy. Actual danger, even if not the physical kind. (And even physical threat is, if used sparingly and with care, a valid tool in Tolkien's universe; a universe that may be sexless, but is somewhat staggeringly violent even though he doesn't describe it with the pornographic glee of some of his literary descendants.) There are very bad people in Tolkien's works, and there are good people who do bad things. I don't see why completely normal and entirely canonical nuances of character shouldn't also apply to those characters' sex lives. People make huge mistakes, and as long as there are consequences - or at least learning opportunities - that's okay.

I don't mean that I want to strip all the good from the "good" characters; I'm not about to turn Pippin into The Dungeon Master of Tuckborough, with Goldberry on a spiked leash and Diamond of Long Cleeve on his…well, never mind. I'm not actually interested in good characters turning evil…at least not permanently…but I'm extremely interested in good characters doing unwise or even bad things until they learn to be better. I'm also interested in allegedly bad characters doing, by intent or otherwise, good and/or beneficial things. If those things happen to involve orgasms, all the better.

Ultimately, a character isn't interesting because of how they're described, a character is interesting because of what they do. There has to be setup, crisis, climax (yes, yes, I know), and conclusion. Or non-conclusion, if that's what the story demands. This is, by the way, precisely why I'm not all that interested in writing "Galadriel + Celeborn 4EVAH!"…because where's the story in that? Galadriel + Treebeard, on the other hand….

(I'm not going to write this. Tentacle porn and its arboreal analogues: also not my thing.)

(Though I suppose Treebeard has no problem maintaining wood.)

(I'm so very, very sorry.)

(I am now much more likely to write the above story than I was when I used it as an example of what I would never write. Because: hilarity. But I think it's more Old Man Willow's type of kink, don't you?)

If the story I'm writing at the moment - the first, and unquestionably the longest - doesn't exhaust my interest and the limited set of non-absurd synonyms and adjectives for the male sex organ, there might be others. Some will be lighter, some will be darker. I think more, though, will be the latter, for reasons that I tried to make clear earlier in this essay. Tolkien's sexual world, even when undescribed (which is almost all of the time), is full of the potential for, and the suggestion of, darkness. The orcs didn't bring Celebrían flowers and ask permission to torment her with tickling. I don't see how you write Gwindor's metaphorical impotency out of a story about Finduilas and Túrin…if you're writing erotica, I don't see why you'd want to…and I don't see how you make that story a happy one, especially given how it ends. "Finduilas is torn between two love interests, then orcs capture her, and even though they're dragging this really hot Elf through the forest for days and days, absolutely nothing nonconsensual happens because no one is better-known for their sense of sexual propriety than orcs, and then one day she accidentally comes over with a severe case of being dead. The end."

In other words, that's not how it went. I don't even think Tolkien thought that's how it went. He'd just never say so.

And so, here's a world in which Tolkien's characters are pretty frequently naughty. Why would I want to write such things?

The question answers itself, really.