[Sophia the Thunder Mistress]

[img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] I think you may have a very good point there... Something I will continue to think about.

I want to say what you're saying has a link to the elves' role as preservers. They seem to be attempting to preserve their history, but I think, perhaps, that there's another link in there that we are missing. The elves' history is grand and beautiful and touched with sadness, but (and here I bring in a thought from Bethberry, also in the Gated Community thread) they do have a tendency to project their failings on anything but themselves. Much of the grief of the elves is in fact caused by the fact that they seem unable to learn from the mistakes of the past (Feanor falls with his Silmarils, yet Celebrimbor still judges ring-making safe???)

Considering their tendencies both to preserve their history, and to see it through lenses that obscure their own faults, I think it is plausible to say that they aren't preserving their true history (which I don't think would qualify as sub-creation), but that they are preserving an idealized version of their history. The atmosphere in Lorien or Rivendell, or even in Mithlond, is not the same as the atmosphere in Beleriand, First Age, which is what they are doubtlessly trying to recapture. The atmosphere of the elven realms in Beleriand was not the same as the atmosphere of Valinor, not even Gondolin, which was directly modeled on Tirion upon Tuna.

While the events of their history may have been recorded accurately, if you are coming from the point of view that davem is taking, then the primary act of subcreation of the elves in the Third Age was the preservation of an ideal take on a historical world.

Did that make any sense? I had one of those quick ideas that's gone before you can finish writing it out, so I did the best I could [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Sophia

Happy 400th post to me [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]