mallecurunin:

all-things-devours:

OK, but did Tolkien ever specifically state that the Blue Wizards were both male? I know he said the Wizards in general came “in the form of men”, but that could be taken as referring only to their race not their gender. Even Tolkien’s pronoun use is ambiguous: since he almost always discusses the Blues as a pair, they’re only ever referred to by the gender-neutral “they”.

Now the names Pallando and Rómestámo do seem to be pretty definitely masculine in form; but Alatar and Morinehtar are at least a little ambiguous: -r is an agentive suffix in Quenya (the same one found in Istar, in fact) which is often found in masculine names but doesn’t seem to be necessarily exclusively masculine.

So… what if Alatar, the second messenger chosen by Oromë, was in fact a badass female Maia sent to Middle-earth in the form of an old woman? And Pallando was her loyal male sidekick/BFF. (I already find it cute that Alatar brought Pallando along “as a friend”, but making it an epic f/m friendship between a female hero and male sidekick somehow makes it even better.)

Oh wow….