Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-34030170-20190515131724/@comment-28383306-20190718212116

I think towards the end of his life, Tolkien was leaning towards a corss of men and elves. Being a devout Christian, he was not comfortable with the idea of a race being inheriently evil/damned from birth, and was never quite able to figure it out before his death.

He started out with them being made "from the slime of the earth, with stones for hearts.", but this was changed when he decided that evil could not truly create, only twist and mock.

He moved to them being animals whose speach was mimickry akin to parrots, that even their dialouge saying they didn't like him being part of the illusion. This was also done away with

He moved to currupted elves, the most popular one among people today, but even then he had trouble with it. How could elves be corrupted so? Did Eru make them with weaker souls/consitution than the other elves?

He toyed with the idea of them being from humans, but that would require him to alter the lore to have humans arrive a few thousand years before he had them doing so at the time.

Lastly, he thought of a cross between elves and men as the source. This is my personal favorite origin.

In the end, he toyed with many idea's and flip-flopped a bit, and was unable to come up with a satisfactory answer (to himself at least) before his passing

I've also heard tell that he planned to add more scenes featuring them in a sympathetic/tragic light, and even had a scene featuring orcs that had deserted Sauron's army, that he cut because it interupted the story. I cannot confirm if this is true, though, as I've only read this on one website, and I'd need more proof than that.