[Alassante]

A man cannot usually create a baby after say 50-60 and a woman cannot have a baby after menopause. That being said, with elves being immortal, can they always have kids? Also, in my stories, sex before marriage is okay considering the fact that they lived so long. Think that is the way it is supposed to be?

On a man/elf related question, do you think that Aragorn was supposed to be faithful from age 20 when he met Arwen until age 87(?) when they married? Were they supposedly intimate? Hmmm...so many questions.

[sindohte]

I hate the fact that I am not at work and cannot email you a copy of LACE aka Laws and Customs of the Eldar. You can consider that to be basically everything that you wanted to know about Elf sex and having babies. If you do a search through some of the older posts on the forum, you should be able to find more information about LACE and the subject of Elf sex.

If you follow a strict interpretation of LACE, sex before marriage would not happen. Elves tended to marry soon after they reached adulthood, so there really wasn't much time to be running around shagging everything that moved. So if you really stuck to LACE, it would eliminate you writing a story about a hot Elf girl or human female from having a random hook up with Legolas or whichever Elf of your choosing.

Call me a romantic, but I would like to think that Aragorn loved Arwen enough to wait until marriage to have sex. It just ruins the magic of the romantic story told in the Appendix of ROTK to imagine Aragorn screwing every random bar maid he could get his hands on. Heck, this was a man who loved Arwen enough that he was willing to reclaim his birthright as king and rid Middle Earth of Sauron. I would like to think that if he could be dedicated enough to accomplish that goal, delaying sex would be minor compared to that.

[SpaceWeavil]

From the LACE I understand that the problem was that childbirth took a lot out of the ellith and so they tended to get that part of life over and done with when they were younger, as although they didn't seem to age or grow weary, they actually did, just very very slowly. Also I think it says something about them moving onto other things later in life as well, though I'm also away from home at the moment and don't have HoME to hand.

[sindohte]

Jess, you are correct about childbirth taking away some of the lifeforce from a female Elf. My interpretation of it was that the mother was actually giving a small portion of her fea to the child. And in the case of Feanor's mother, she gave him such a large share of her lifeforce that it sent Miriel into that profound decline that resulted in all that divorce business which led to all that later craziness. I too remember LACE talking about Elves finding other pursuits as they grew older. That once they had given birth their interest in sex declined as well, although the strength and depth of their love for their spouse remained.

[Alassante]

Will one of you please email me LACE when you get back home?

Until then I will just plan to ignore the rules from my previous stories and then going forward try to use it. But Elrond was a couple of thousand years old when the twins were born wasn't he??

If elf men do not have sex before marriage they definatly do not have the same sex drives as mortal men. Can you imagine a man waiting hundreds of years to have sex if they lived that long? I mean most men are ready to lose their virginity at age, what 14 or 15, and then get sex as often as possible.

I like the thought of Aragorn waiting but being a man, I just don't think it would have happened. Of course, he was a very busy man so it's possible. I think that SLASH writing use that as a basis for all of their Aragorn SLASH. He was only around men so.... Personally if I were in the wilderness for months even years, I would be way too miserable without a real bed or the comforts of home to think about changing my sexual preferences!!!

[Alassante]

[NancyBrooke]

Unbelievably, I have a copy of LACE that BB e-mailed me; I'll pm that to you, Alassante.[/b]

[SpaceWeavil]

A fëa is an elven soul / spirit, with a 'hroa' being the body or raimant that the soul wears. (and I cannot type on this stupid keyboard of my dad's )

[Alassante]

Okay, now I am going to have to trash most of my fan fiction. Stupid stupid stupid!!! Should never have asked. Next time I plan to be blissfully ignorant. Well, I am going to put on all of my fan fiction - "Written before I read LACE."

[sindohte]

I don't think that you need to trash what you have written, but you should be aware that some of your readers are going to be conversant on most of Tolkien's works and will pick up on canonical errors that you might make. For example, unless you are writing about Glorfindel, it would be extremely unlikely that a Noldo Elf would have blonde hair. A good portion of your audience may not even notice something like that, but those familiar with Tolkien canon will immediately pick up on it. An error like that is not the kiss of death, but it is something easily corrected. The best thing that you can do is research and/or get information from people who have studied Tolkien for a bit. And most important - remember that we are all hopefully writing for the fun of it.

[Alassante]

[VanatheEverYoung]

[Elentari]

[Thuriniel]

[NancyBrooke]

You can also clearly state that you're writing in Movie-verse, not book-verse if you insist on undisputed blond-Legolas (or Boromir, or Faramir, for that matter).