My Understanding of the Silmarillion
By Regardlessofthought
Ainulindalë
In the beginning there was this dude named Ilúvatar, or something like that. He was also called Eru, 'the One', 'He that is Alone', and 'Poor fucking Lonely Guy'. One day he decided to bring these guys called the Ainur into being. They started singing, but it took them a while to get their shit together and sing well, which was like flutes unto trumpets unto harps unto choirs unto really fantastic music, okay? But then this guy named Melkor decided to fuck shit up because he was a douche, and for some reason among the Ainur he had been given the greatest gifts of power and knowledge. And well…crud.
So Melkor created his lame music, which was really out of tune with whatever everyone else was doing. Ilúvatar sat and hearkened, which is basically another way of saying he sat and did shit. Eventually he smiled, lifted up his left hand (his left hand, oh my gosh), and he created a new theme of music that was way better than Melkor's. But Melkor, being a stubborn little shit, just made his music louder because he figured this would make it better. (This is a belief shared by many a trumpet player in marching bands.) Ilúvatar realized he needed to approach this differently, and lo! he created a third theme (with his right hand!) that was small and kind of soft, but still awesome. Kind of like a hobbit.
But Melkor just tried to play even louder, and that really made Ilúvatar mad. So he threw up his hands (both of them!) and he ceased the music.
And Ilúvatar said, "Melkor, you're pretty awesome, but I'm the best."
This scared all of the Ainur for some reason, except for Melkor, of course. It made him feel a bit peeved.
And then Ilúvatar said, "Behold, your music!"
And the Ainur saw a vision of a world made from their music. (This is a fantasy, so of course the world is made out of fucking music.) And they saw the coming of the Children of Ilúvatar, otherwise known as Men and Elves. This excited the Ainur a whole lot, and they wanted to go and be nice to the Children of Ilúvatar, all except for Melkor, who we have established to be a total douche. He wanted to rule them so bad.
Out of all the stuff in this vision, the Ainur praised water the most. Apparently water is like music, and they liked that a lot, especially the Ainu (the singular form of Ainur, folks) named Ulmo. He liked water the best, and his friend Manwë liked the sky the best. Clouds are made of water, so every time you see one from now on, remember the beautiful friendship of Ulmo and Manwë.
Anyway, suddenly there was darkness. This darkness meant that the Ainur did not know everything! This explains why Melkor later went on to be such a doink, because if he knew what was going to happen, he probably wouldn't have wasted his time.
After that Ilúvatar actually made the world come into being, instead of it just being in a crummy vision. The Ainur went to this world, and suddenly they are called the Valar and you need to check your index to make sure they are the same thing. They discovered, much to their surprise, that the world wasn't like the vision yet, but had to be shaped to this vision. Ilúvatar probably made the most tremendous of troll faces at this point.
As you can imagine, Melkor promptly pitched a fit and had this huge old fight with the other Valar. They tried to make stuff, and he kept kicking it down, kind of like that jerk kid in the sandbox who always knocked down your castle. Apparently it was a pretty huge battle, but we don't know much about it. So...that's that.
