#fandom simplifies him a lot i think its tragic in it of itself

[trixstriforce]

TP!Link is so complex to me, he is a puppet in very sense of the word imo

Link was always a question, at least to me, of a victim of circumstances vs a fated savior. TP!Link is the perfect example of both interwoven into a very interesting narrative that touches on themes like the sins of the father, legacy, and the consequences of colonialism

I think making TP!Link emo miss the mark, but he is a very very interesting guy to deconstruct w/ the quote from Majoras Mask "Your true face...What kind of face is it? I wonder...The face under the mask...Is that your true face?" after all, unlike most Links...he didnt chose to don the Hero's Tunic it was literally thrust upon him. theres a lot to be said about that i think

#link #twilight princess #loz #i have many thoughts about this guy #and i havent even beat the first temaple!!!!!! #the more i play and learn the more i jsut feel like the fandom has slept on the true potential #of unpacking all that burdens this link #fandom simplifies him a lot i think its tragic in it of itself #the fact a popualr blog can even claim tp is not about anything boggles my mind #like i get not getting all the possible subtext but it is so clearly a story about legacy and the sins of the father its just #astonishing anyone could miss the point so badly #in compelty related news i love vauging anyway play tp for clear skin and watered crops #trix posts #lore rambles

[dorwinionwhining]

Please share your thoughts on Russingon if you feel like it.

ahhh, i’m not used to being asked for my thoughts like this, thank you, anon!

and for anyone else who is curious: anon is referring to this lovely post on trauma in the silmarillion and the tags i left on it.

so, my thoughts.

i suppose i'll start with the wall of tags i was halfway through writing before deciding to delete them: maedhros and fingon are often portrayed as a pairing between a traumatized person and a person who helps and supports the healing of that trauma

this is a common couple trope that exists throughout many fandoms and i'm not all that shocked it's been latched onto for the two of them considering the main story we're introduced to their canon relationship through involves fingon rescuing maedhros from a widely known and accepted form of trauma: capture, torture and imprisonment by an enemy you're in the middle of fighting a war against.

but to me that portrayal does both of them a disservice. it dismisses potential sources of trauma in fingon's life as well as simplifying maedhros's trauma as resulting from a singular event that happened to him and that he was saved from.

one of the things i love about the silmarillion is how it shows suffering compounded by previous suffering. melkor's theme is repetitive. echoes of trauma build off of each other, rippling outwards so that eventually the entire world is infused with them down to its core.

look at what these two elves go through:

their homeland is invaded, their grandfather is murdered and the light of the world itself is extinguished.

the home maedhros is living in is robbed, his father instigates the kinslaying and the theft of the ships and maedhros participates. he then sets off on a harrowing trip across the sea to an unknown continent to fight a war against the strongest of the valar, and when he gets there his father decides to burn the ships, stranding them and preventing anyone from following. maedhros protest this but his father and brothers all decide to carry it out anyway, ignoring him. then his father dies. he inherits the kingship and is suddenly in charge of all his brothers and their men. this culminates in him getting tricked into an ambush where his men are slain around him.

fingon comes across the kinslaying as it's in progress and leaps in to defend fëanor's side without knowing what's happening, then fëanor and his sons set sail while he's left to wait with his father and their men for the ships to return. but the ships burn instead and his father decides to cross the ice. the descriptions tolkien gives of the landscape there make it sound like one of the worst places on earth. people die. fingon's sister in law dies. it's a terrible journey and when it's finally over they're met with a battle, which ends in a victory but also with the death of fingon's youngest sibling. then fingon hears that maedhros has been captured and is presumed dead, and he makes the decision to walk off alone into enemy territory in search of him.

this is just what happens surrounding their arrival in beleriand, it doesn't touch on maedhros's torture and it doesn't include fingon's rescue. it also doesn't include anything about the oath (despite my own personal belief that fëanor having his children swear it again over his dying body had to have been, uhhh, i'll say impactful to avoid going off on a tangent) and it doesn't include things that could have or had to have happened off page, the everyday stresses of figuring out food, water, shelter, combat, weather conditions, etc., or any of the politics, which would have been incredibly stressful, especially for maedhros after the death of his father and for fingon after fingolfin's arrival in mithrim.

and it's not like this just stops after the rescue. it's not like the two of them are ever given a clean moment to process what's happened to them. no one in this book is. new stressful events are always coming along on the heels of old ones, and often the best thing to do for everyone (because there's always someone else who is suffering more, now, in this moment) is to move on however you can. even if moving on means leaving pieces of yourself behind.

so fingon and maedhros interest me because their traumas, shared and separate, have so much potential to play off of each other, negatively as well as positively. how can they possibly navigate an intimate relationship with all of this behind them and even more ahead?

i understand why portraying them more simplistically is popular, why maedhros is often the one getting his traumas spotlighted with fingon as his well adjusted lover who helps him heal and offers him a bright spot in the darkness until he's tragically lost and maedhros goes back to unravelling. but for me personally i often wish there was more complexity. 

i can work with maedhros carrying lasting trauma from thangorodrim. i don't think tolkien would have written the line about him carrying a shadow of pain in his heart if it wasn't important. the silmarillion isn't a book that prioritizes character details. but if he's traumatized and fingon isn't then there needs to be a reason, an explanation, some thought put into why that's the case. is it something inherent in fingon's nature, in maedhros's? are there some things elves can heal from mentally and some things they can't?

and fingon can be traumatized without overshadowing or taking away from maedhros’s trauma. there’s not a limit, unfortunately, on the number of people who can be hurt by others and by circumstance. i want to see his coping mechanisms, his pain and suffering and how it develops as he loses more and more of his family as his father’s reign unfolds.

there's a lot of room for variation. i'm always interested when i see people exploring these two, and i'm always craving more.

and i don't want anyone to think i'm saying there's a right and wrong way to portray their relationship. even if you're someone with opposite tastes to me who loves the version i'm currently complaining about then i want you to keep loving it. this isn't a fandom i'd ever want to take anything away from. i'd always much rather just add more.

and yeah, i think this wall of text is gigantic enough. i kind of lost some of the points i wanted to make along the way. must be because i never got to the point in school where i needed to learn how to write essays so all of this was just a stream of consciousness ramble. i'll probably remember something important three days from now and be kind of annoyed.

but, uhhh, there's some of what i was thinking. again, thank you for the ask, anon, and i'm sorry! you were probably expecting something a little less ridiculous.

#replies #the legendarium #oh god it's so long #and probably full of mistakes #and i'm always so nervous about posting meta in this fandom #i wasted so much time at work on this but i had to get it out #otherwise i would have just forgotten it #Anonymous