First Age Problems

[oloriel]

That moment when you mean to use the "like a moth drawn to the candle" imagery in an Age-of-the-Trees fanfic set in Valinor and realise it doesn't work. Moths die in candles because they mistake our artificial lights for bright lights in the sky, particularly the moon. BUT IN THIS SETTING, THE MOON DOES NOT YET EXIST. Instead, we have two very bright trees ON THE VERY EARTH, making moth orientation next to impossible without, like, drowning in the vats of Laurelin. *facepalms*
So, no moths in Valinor. Perhaps moths in Cuiviénen (USING BRIGHT STARS FOR ORIENTATION, YOU CAN'T STOP ME), who regularly died in Noldorin campfires? And thus the adage came into being, and continues to be used in Valinor? LOOK, IDK. I'M JUST OVERTHINKING FANTASY. WHAT ELSE IS NOT NEW.

Comments

[ysilme]

I love this kind of overthinking to pieces, I'm thrilled every time I'm reading little bits like these. They show _so_ well how much thought and author has given to things, and how much they try to really live inside their world. (I've likely ridden myself rather deeply into the realms of improbability with a few things my long WIP, The Valley, brought me to for Elves being on the trek fleeing the enemy... and lately, I've lost a whole day free for writing agonising about the possibility of firewood and light in my cave situation, unable to continue my story until this detail was clear.)

That being said - if you had moths drawn to the light of the trees, they don't need to die in my opinion. They're drawn there and perhaps stuck, but who knows, perhaps a lesser Maia has the honourable if mostly overlooked task of carrying the poor moths away again each day, or more often? Or somebody has clever items installed, like artificial fruits of the trees, where the moths get into and can be carried away to safety. Or, if you want moths in Valinor, they're just different and don't orientate like this - a detail I would buy any time.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Glad you managed to resolve the firewood situation!

I thought about making up "different" moths, and then I briefly thought moths might be normal butterflies that were drained of all colour by Ungoliant's poison or somesuch. In the end, I have decided that there are no moths, and that insects flying into sources of light are a story from the Cuiviénen days. I mean, moths and darkness, that just goes with each other. Where there is no proper darkness, there are no moths. ^^

[ysilme]

Yeah, the firewood situation is well solved - and then it doesn't appear in the story, since the story had its own mind. *headdesk* But it's also valuable background info for any future fic.

I love the drained-of-colour butterfly idea. :o)

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Moths were a side-effect of the Sundering, when the Earth was made round.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

More likely of the Darkening! They were colourful butterflies once, but when Ungoliant sucked the light out of the Trees, she also sucked the colour out of the butterflies. ;)

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Oh, there you go... I rather like that. The butterflies were accustomed to flitting between the trees, moving as the light waxed and waned for each one; they naturally transferred that to the moon.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

That works really well! Head-canon accepted! :D

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Moths are certainly not the only organisms to display phototropism - lots of insects do, and many plants. There are day-flying moths, and night-flying butterflies. Some of the butterflies are dull-colored; some of the moths are showy, such as the Luna moth.

"In the presence of two sources of light, [the phototropic organism] orients itself toward neither the one nor the other, but in an intermediate direction, so that the two sides of its body receive the same light."

I like cowboy_r's suggestion, that the phototropic organisms of Valinor in the First Age naturally moved back and forth between Laurelin and Telperion. There might also be differences in the frequencies of light to which they reacted - some more drawn to the blue frequencies, some more drawn to the yellow.

Obviously, if there are insects, there must also be insect predators - birds, bats, spiders, frogs, other insects - to keep them in balance. Camouflage evolves because those who are hard for predators to see are more likely to live to pass on their genes. Thus, even with no particular darkness in Valinor, moths would still tend to match the tree-bark where they like to rest, because if they were bright-colored, the birds would just pick them off like Skittles.

The Elves of Valinor wouldn't have needed that many candles before the Darkening, but no doubt they did have cellars and other underground or inner rooms where they'd need artificial light, and perhaps that's where the attraction of flying bugs to light was first noted.

Alarming to think that when the Trees went out, every torch and rush-light the Elves lit was swarmed by confused insects that had never before known total darkness.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

And at that point, the whole thing crumbles anyway, because at some point it gets too hard to reconcile evolution with "Yavanna made them all up". I mean, it's a chain-reaction really, once you start wondering about moths, you start thinking about spiders...

Alarming to think that when the Trees went out, every torch and rush-light the Elves lit was swarmed by confused insects that had never before known total darkness.

That's a really rather powerful and disturbing image that I'm definitely going to keep in mind if I ever choose to write something set during/immediately after the Darkening!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I know - it's like that old story about the eminent biologist who was asked what a lifetime of studying the Creation had led him to deduce about the nature of the Creator, and who answered "He has an inordinate fondness for beetles."

We can't do without the beetles, or the ants, or the wasps, or the spiders, or the termites. We can't do without the things they eat, and the things that eat them. The arthropod and annelid species are essential to a working ecosystem - therefore Yavanna must have crafted them all, and set them each to their work.

Maybe the Trees were the first-ever flowering plants, and all insect phototropism exists due to their need for cross-pollination.

Camping back East in my youth, especially in early Summer, it was always horrifying the way any light drew swarms of moths, mosquitoes, flying beetles, giant crane-flies, and weird insectoid things that one never suspected were out there. They're more attracted to blue light than to yellow; fluorescent or Coleman lantern light brings them much thicker than firelight.

No doubt they would have been attracted most of all to the Silmarils, if they could see them. Now I have an image of Morgoth's crowned head surrounded by a halo of bizarre flying bugs, with giant bats swooping in and out of the swarm as they feed.