#turgon just wanted to build pretty things

[molteasee]

Silmarillion Noldor Kings summed up pretty accurately 😂

Fëanor

Maehdros

Fingon (imo the last of the great kings)

Fingolfin

Maglor

Finwë

Turgon

Gil-Galad

Elrond

#seriously the silmarillion is just full of death #just re read Nirneath Arnoediad and it breaks my heart #feanor did nothing wrong #except he did #fingon is the goat #fingolfin is also awesome #have a soft spot for Maedhros #maglor isnt even on anyones radar #turgon just wanted to build pretty things #finwe was unlucky #gil galad tried his best #elrond just wanted to chill with his books and flowers #honestly elves had just been beaten so much by the 3rd age #silmarillion #noldor high kings

[echo-bleu]

You know what, let's get even more unhinged with those son-of-plothole theories: Gil-galad is Lalwen.

was always a trans boy, but never had the chance to live his truth in Aman

went to Middle-Earth following Fingolfin because he longed for some freedom

didn't even get a cool new gender-neutral name :'(

wasn't a war general because there are other things in life, okay, probably loved gardening or cooking or building things

still fought heroically in various battles under a helm and various nicknames that loremasters never put together

couldn't save his brother. He didn't even see Fingolfin ride out, didn't say goodbye, and he'll feel guilty about that for the rest of his life

decided that fuck it, life is too short now, fully transitions

"my name is Ereinion Gil-galad and you killed my father, prepare to die" no fuck wrong movie

helps Fingon as best as he can with the transition of power but let's be real, Maedhros is a lot more help there

transphobia is uh pretty high among the Noldor especially when you're Finwë's son so once Fingon is semi-settled, fucks off to the Falas

the Falathrim are way more chill about it (the Falathrim are pretty chill in general, unlike the Doriathrim)

watches Beleriand fall and his nephews die with growing horror

in the wake of Turgon and Orodreth's death he's just, genuinely the only one left beside Idril and the Fëanorians (Artanis fucked off somewhere and no one has heard from her in years)

Noldor refugees flood into Balar, there's a few years' battle between Idril and Gil-galad about who should lead them. Idril doesn't want to be queen and wants to sail to ask for help, Gil-galad thinks it's a lost cause, they settle on Gil-galad as king with Eärendil as his heir

he's watched Finwë and then Fingolfin for centuries, he knows how to be king

fuck that shit is hard though

then Eärendil sails too and his kids are kidnapped (dammit Maedhros wtf)

now Gil-galad has no choice but to see this war through

Arafinwë arrives and is like 👀

but honestly he's pretty chill about it, chiller than Fingolfin ever was

there's just a smidge of confusion because for some reason Arafinwë was told that the new king was his great-grandson

it's a little awkward to find out that it's actually his brother

who he thought was his sister

but hey at least not all of his siblings are dead, he'll take it

Gil-galad is offered the option to sail back to Aman after the war and goes "fuck no"

Lindon is very queer-positive

there aren't actual rules about being in a relationship with your great-great-grandnephew right?

what about your grandniece? what about both?

(nah it's fine)

(well they'll probably have to change a bunch of laws in Aman before Elrond sails but they've already won the case for trans rights, it's fine)

#sorry about this 😅 #crack #gil galad #gil-galad #lalwen #silmarillion #fingolfin #finarfin #tolkien #tolkien meta #tolkien headcanons #echo's fanfiction

[novemberthecatadmirer]

Nobody:

Me: So I think it is actually convincing to headcanon that Salgent had eating disorder

Me: If he was exiled Noldor there was the Ice and I bet they were starving here and there. If he was Sindar seek refuge in Nevrast there were also plenty of reasons to suffer some kind of food-related trauma during & after the first war

Me: Actually there should be more 1st age elves with eating disorder

Me: But of course the history would write him as “he was fat and ugly and evil and a coward”

(Me: screaming internally when fics demonize him to give excuses for Maeglin because by my taste that’s not how things should go)

Me: The issue was who made him a Lord and why was he a lord; his actions suggested he was horribly incompetent at strategies and fight and was mentally unstable under stressful situation

Me: Also we don’t know how the house system exactly worked in Gondolin. The lords clearly served as councilors for the king. The thing is for a whole damned city safe away from the war you cannot have each and every councilors to be military leaders. There were many other tasks that require other skill sets

Me: I suspect he was more responsible for the financial stuff. Estimating the cost and budget. Managing the market. Organizing festivals.

Me: So when the Fall happened they asked his opinion because he knew the most about the resources they had to support the war

Me: And he felt it was suicidal to enter battle outside of the city and escape. He thought the city was very defendable; he did not fully know the horror of Morgoth’s army.

Me: Also he got very attached to the city too. Maybe he chose to live close to the Lesser Market so that he could enjoy the scene of the prospering economy he helped to build. And have street food. That was how he was able to convince Turgon to try to hold the city. They shared the same sentiment.

Me: There was also the little matter that he planned the Gate of Summer celebration. He spent weeks planning all the festival happy events then boom, Morgoth at their door. Mentally extremely shaken.

Me: Then his friend went crazy and asked him to help him murder his other friend, and he panicked and chose to do nothing instead and he did not know wtf was happening with Maeglin to think about it was too horrible because it seemed Maeglin knew something and wtf did this imply

Me: I suspect he already had depression after Unnumbered Tears. I mean, seeking refuge in your bed. At least that’s what I do when shit happens and I don’t want to make decisions.

Me: Then when he just saw all the horror of Morgoth’s army he fully cracked and the rest was history

Me: I love the version that he got captured by Morgoth and found out what happened to Maeglin and I think he would feel relieved at least Maeglin was dead and could no longer be reached by Morgoth (he definitely wished so, but sometimes he was not sure if Morgoth could have kept Maeglin’s soul somewhere to play with, there was just no way he could know)

Me: The amount of guilt he’d feel would be extraordinarily delicious

Me: Because he thought he was Maeglin’s friend and was trusted and he should be the one to notice something. Instead he ignored all the personality changes because he did not want to remind his friend of the mining incident trauma (and it was something WORSE). Then he just jumped to side with Maeglin and made everything worse.

Me: He betrayed Maeglin, he betrayed Tuor, he betrayed Turgon, he betrayed people of his house, he betrayed people of Gondolin. And he learned how horrible those decisions were. Had he fought he could at least got death without guilt.

Me: Idk, would be pretty nice if he survived until the fall of Morgoth and was liberated from Angband. But his appearance had changed so much and no one recognized him, even reembodied Gondolin elves like Rog

Me: And he refused the summon because he felt he was undeserving of forgiveness and the bliss of Aman; he just wandered away

(Me: Because apparently when you are a musician with guilt and past crime your fate is to wander Middle Earth and never be heard of again)

(I think he was a very material person. Food, wealth, comfortable life, those were things that gave him sense of security. So he clenched them tightly and refused risking anything he treasured. He did not want to lost anything and when he realized loss was inevitable he broke.)

#tolkien #silmarillion #the silmarillion #silm #silmarillion headcanon #silm headcanon #salgant #maeglin

[warrioreowynofrohan]

22, 58, 75 for the fic ask game? :)

I am SO sorry, I was so excited and happy to get this ask and then I never answered it! <3

22. Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

There are a lot of things I don’t know how to do - action, for one. There are a lot of things I’m too lazy to do, like detailed worldbuilding. And all my fics so far have fallen into fairly similar patters - either emotional reflections or emotional conversations. But until 2019 I’d never written any fanfic at all, or even considered it, so there’s no saying that won’t change.

I don’t usually connect with a lot of the writing exercises that I’ve noticed as common on tumblr. I can’t take a one-word prompt and create a story from it, or start out with a trope and build a story around it. I look at the long lists of characterization-building questions and can’t answer most of them for most characters I write, even canon ones. Basically, I’ve never done any practice or any disciplined writing, and when I look at the ways you’re supposed to practise I draw a blank. I just occasionally get an idea that connects with me emotionally and even more occassionally manage to write it down.

58. What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most? (Brainstorming, outlining, writing, editing, etc)

I like getting a new idea and outlining it, and I like writing down the parts that are clear and vivid in my mind. I’ll usually have spent a while daydreaming about something and mentally assembling it before I start writing it down, and will by then have a sense of many of the key things I want to do. That part is fun! After that it gets into the more challenging parts of pulling together all the other elements that need to be there but that I don’t have the right words for. And I’m downright awful at editing - reading prose that sounds wrong in my head doesn’t make me want to fix it, it makes me want to close the document and walk away!

75. What scene in Ashes took the longest to write? What was difficult about it?

That depends on whether write means times spent actually writing or time spent leaving it alone because I didn’t know what to do! 😂 Chapters 7 and 8 were the longest in the making by far, because I had a sense of the major moments in the emotional journey that needed to happen, but I was having trouble putting them together in a way that worked. Chapter 7, with a lot of help and advice from friends, came together pretty well - the Finrod and Fingon conversations stayed similar to what I had planned for a long while but the timing got rearranged , abd the Finrod-Turgon conversation helped a lot with getting the other parts to fall into place without Maglor having too many repetetive conversations. Chapter 8 was even more challenging abd in the end I’m not sure it did work the way I wanted it to; it was one of the pitfalls of being very much a plotter rather than a pantser, that I didn’t know any way to substantively anend it from my earlier ideas without breaking everything that came after, which was the stuff I wanted to get to.

#tolkien #the silmarillion #fanfic #maglor #ask game

[ceescedasticity]

Unforsaken, 8a

(All sections on tumblr)

(AO3, lagging behind but more polished)

Elrohir and Celeborn make good time across the mountains and down the river (with a short pause to speak to the Beornings), and arrive at the head of the rapids a few days before the first of the boats.

Suitable light barges are, it turns out, in use on the lower Anduin's tributaries, and Arwen was able to procure some without difficulty. Transporting them was more of an issue, because they had to be taken out of the river and hauled overland, steeply uphill, to get past Rauros and the rapids.

But it's not undoable, and Arwen judged it to be a simpler matter than sending bargewrights up past (by Gondorian standards) the edge of civilization and finding adequate timber with no nearer forest than Fangorn, or else sending the bargewrights up far beyond (by Gondorian standards) the edge of civilization to build barges next Mirkwood, then bring the barges down, and… Yeah.

******

Turgon — Bellow — goes to Mount Gundabad.

He's not completely sure what to expect. There was no one in Gundabad willing to stand up to Celegorm — Reckless — at all. But even in low-pressure conditions you rarely get more than a dozen or two goblins without some sort of pecking order being worked out, and 'gone to ground in Gundabad after the Dark Lord is killed, advantages against enemies decreased and decreasing more' is not a low-pressure situation. There will probably be someone nominally in change; it will probably be someone Bellow can deal with without too much difficulty, but he will have to deal with them.

(It's not that he thinks Reckless was wrong; Reckless was possibly drastically oversimplifying because he has never bothered to pay any attention to orc politics, such as they are, and is strong enough to get away with it. Bellow would not be at all surprised to find Whiterot doesn't pay attention either.)

As it turns out, a few years ago approaching Gundabad would have been much more complicated, because Slayer and Demon had been running the place — also relatively independent orc-bosses, without the Great Goblin's civic leadership and city-building but very compelling leaders. Slayer and Demon had a certain amount of respect for the Great Goblin, but they would not have cooperated. It would have been necessary to outmaneuver or, more likely, kill them, which then would have caused other problems.

(Bellow doesn't know who Slayer and Demon were in their first lives. Possibly Sindar, considering their hatred of dwarves, but probably Avari of some description, given their relatively recent appearance. Better friends to each other than most orcs managed.)

(Bellow knows Slayer did some unnecessary grandstanding when defending his claim to Moria, and so presumably the dwarves don't like him any more than he likes them. He does not know that 'Azog' and 'Bolg' are known names — or that they are known as father and son. They are not. …Probably.)

But! A couple years ago, Demon started agitating to attack the Lonely Mountain, or the Greenwood, or Rivendell, or the Vales of Anduin, or someone. Slayer was reportedly working on a plan before an alliance of a dozen or so other orcs ambushed and killed both of them on the grounds that if they'd wanted to get killed fighting they wouldn't have come this far north. Then those orcs were set on by Slayer and Demon's surviving partisans. Things continued on like that for another six months or so, until the death toll was in the dozens and the remaining orcs settled into a sullen ceasefire with no one leader.

So, actually, Reckless was pretty much correct, and Bellow can just walk in and be heard. (Fortunately he hadn't mentioned any doubts to Reckless, so he should be able to avert any gloating.)

Bellow speaks to the goblins in Gundabad, and he tells the truth.

There are elves searching for Ghâsh-bagronk, in order to destroy it, and Bellow believes they will be able to.

Bellow and some others are working with the elves, even, because this is important.

Most orcs don't need to be convinced that it's desirable to destroy Ghâsh-bagronk. Even with no idea what would happen in its absence — being a restless spirit forever is clearly preferable to Ghâsh-bagronk.

Some are suspicious of the elves' motives, though — why do they care?

Bellow tells the truth again: The elves are sure some of the spirits imprisoned there used to be elves. And you know how elves help each other.

Enough to work with orcs?

Yes, and they're not going to regret that decision, because destroying Ghâsh-bagronk is more than worth working with elves, and if anyone jeopardizes that Bellow will give them something to regret.

There's not unanimous agreement, and the situation should be checked again when the party is about to pass by, but by and large the orcs currently of Gundabad agree that even a potential end to Ghâsh-bagronk is worth not being territorial for a little while.

#orc bank unforsaken #orc bank #a tolkien tag

[meadowlarkx]

ooh if you want to share any finrod on the helcaraxe thoughts I would be super curious! And feel free to come back to this ask later if you want to save your thoughts for the fic :D

First of all I know I got this ask like... a very very long time ago, so please know I have been treasuring it that whole time and meant to get to it eventually!!

Basically I always come back to one of my favorite details we get about Finrod, that he brought more jewels and other things over from Valinor than any other Noldor. And it's just such a Finrod thing to me, because to me his character is really all about heart in like such a way that... He leaves Nargothrond, everything he's tried to build and a brewing political crisis there, takes the first steps towards a quest which he knows successful or unsuccessful will create a whole new set of problems, and gives up his life, all to buy a human of a family he loves the potential for a little more time/happiness in that time on Arda. He loves so much and like, in a way that counts small things as important, so of course he's lugging like 7 sleds of jewelry and treasured possessions from home across the Grinding Ice--it's so funny and a little vain because he is but it's also just so him.

And I really think they needed that kind of person on the Helcaraxë. (this got long so it’s going under a cut:)

Like, thirty years of darkness on a freezing journey that you don't know will have an end, with your companions dying around you, to eventually get to a land you've only heard stories about--and though Fëanor made it sound pretty good, now with all this time on the road to sober up since he burned the ships you remember that your actual grandparents' stories were mostly about getting picked off by strange creatures in the woods. And missing your relatives and friends and partners that you left behind, with the words of the Doom still echoing. It's so miserable!! I think multiple times there would have been disagreement, and extremely tense disagreement, about whether to go on or not, and blame cast around for starting in the first place. And in the moments where it was especially miserable, they needed Finrod to smile and talk disagreements through (like he does for the Bëorians + Laiquendi) and sing, and his determined optimism about people’s nature (no matter how horribly shaken it was by the first Kinslaying but sure let’s never process that I’m sure it won’t be a problem later). 

They needed to pass around whatever trinkets Finrod had brought from home. I think Finrod put in all the effort possible to mark moments with some kind of celebration or ritual to pass the time. They can’t sing the usual songs at the mingling of the light of the Two Trees, so Finrod suggests they sing when a particular star crosses the horizon instead. They’re half-starved most of the time, but when they finally get some seal or fish to eat Finrod passes out all the jewelry he’s brought so they’re decked out like a feast and discusses burning some of their fuel stores in a soft voice with Fingolfin so there’s a little light. Finrod comforts Turgon after Elenwë’s death coughs and maybe more and takes care of Idril while he’s grieving. Finrod always makes sure his younger siblings are accounted for in the darkness. Finrod is the only person proud Galadriel will allow herself to be comforted by and he braids her hair up in crowns like ammë used to and they talk about the lands they’re going to see. They’re all looking to Fingolfin as the leader, but the Arafinwëan group is looking first to Finarfin’s son, who they see all the time, who they know now cares about them since the handful of times someone fell behind or was lost and Finrod decided to slow the entire group down and/or risk his own life to find them and bring them back (and if he wept finding someone already dead, he still made sure they marked the death with some remembrance or rite.)

And it took a personal strain on him and Fingolfin noticed it and was proud and sad for him

@imakemywings also has headcanons about Helcaraxë cuddle piles and I have embraced them wholeheartedly, let the Elves on the Helcaraxë cuddle for warmth it’s the least they deserve </3 I think he grew even closer with Fingon then too.

I also like to think that this period of time is where Edrahil got his loyalty to Finrod (I love all the hcs of Sindarin or Avari Edrahil but mine generally is more that he was a follower of Finarfin who decided to continue on, and then caught a bad case of devotion to Finarfin’s son.) On that topic, I definitely imagine that before this, Finrod unlike Maedhros imo didn’t... have like any leadership experience, formal or otherwise. He was well-liked and smart and pretty, with various uncanny talents (fics w/ young!Finrod offhandedly or traumatizedly revealing glimmers of his foresight have my soul) but that’s about it, and a lot of just having fun with Fingon and/or Turgon too. I also think being an heir generally means very little in a place where people don’t die, so if he had princely responsibilities (whatever that means for Elves) he did what was required of him, but it wasn’t much. Finarfin was doing the rest of his part unlike Fëanor who was busy with hot girl forge/Silmaril shit and sent Maedhros to councils to stand in for him. 

And so then when Finarfin turns back and the kids decide to keep going, (a.) Finarfin trusts them/Finrod enough to not protest the decision at all that we know and have some mutual respect, but (b., hc) for Finrod and for Finarfin’s people who continued on it was the first time Finrod was anywhere near in charge of anything and no one exactly knew what to expect. And I think partly because this whole leadership thing was hella improvised on his part, Finrod isn’t great with logistical things or governance per se (see: letting his cousins amass influence in Nargothrond and being like ahh I’ll deal with it at some point and never dealing with it), but he has incredible personal charisma and is really good with individuals and groups of people--he just cares so much that he pours his whole soul into it, and he genuinely wants to understand, and on the Helcaraxë even (or especially) those Arafinwëan followers who started quarrels over going back or blamed Finrod in those arguments for the choice of going ended up loving him and caring about them.

He won them over really hard, and they (+ the Nolofinwëans) needed that too, in the mood of distrust, guilt, and fear/anger after the first Kinslaying, the Doom, and the burning of the ships, when nothing seemed secure anymore and people felt like they didn’t know themselves or those they had set out with. They needed this Elf who cared about this journey and the people on it, whose mother is Teleri don’t tell me that didn’t make an impact here :’D but who loves his kinslaying Nolofinwëan cousins enough to go through hell with them, who reminds his people of joy and comfort and love & the things that make life important/worth living when they don’t feel like people. Just you know... Finrod

#finrod #finrod felagund #edrahil #answered #anonymous #silmarillion #helcaraxe #can you tell i'm writing a power of love fix it fic with him or was this not glowing enough :'D #blorbo from valinor #i also have thoughts about this whole things that make life worth living thing relates to the way he builds/reigns in nargothrond #but those will hopefully one day be in an actual piece of writing coming to u soon if i can muster the strength to edit it :'D #my posts

[tolkien-feels]

ask game: 3 and 5 for any of the following that you have thoughts abt! (Some of them are not really textual friendships and more wishful thinking haha) finrod&Turgon, finrod&luthien, Galadriel&luthien, finarfin&fingolfin. (Can you tell the arafinweans are my favs 😅)

ANON PLEASE BEFRIEND ME YOU'RE GOING FOR ALL MY FAVORITE UNPOPULAR RELATIONSHIPS!!!

Under a cut for length, because I'm doing all of them as a token of friendship 🥺

A random headcanon I have of them

Finrod & Turgon

I think I have mentioned the comedy potential of Finrod & Turgon: Adventures In Having Sisters Born In The Same Year, haven't I? I'm pretty sure I have so I'll pick something else. They both like maps and architecture, and between them, they must've drawn schematics and artistic sketches of every inch of Eldamar. They actually have plans to build the prettiest settlement in Aman, but they're too perfectionist about it and never get to the end of the project before Exile.

Finrod & Luthien

Is it too horrible to pick as my headcanon that the only reason Luthien doesn't get very Shaken when she learns of Finrod's death is because Beren needs her to not fall apart? Okay if that's too horrible, I'll go with: Luthien assigns herself as Finrod's guide in Doriath and he has so many questions about Menegroth that at some point she actually laughs at him, which is a diplomatic faux pas but Finrod finds very endearing.

Galadriel & Luthien

You know how Galadriel has her little apprenticeship under Melian? Luthien looks at that and goes "It's free cousin!!!" Well, they're once removed, but that's the closest thing to a cousin Luthien has available and she's loving it. Galadriel, who associates cousins with varying degrees of headaches, is pleasantly surprised to find Luthien has almost as many braincells as her mother. They never become very close friends because they don't share many interests but they consider each other family and act accordingly.

Finarfin & Fingolfin

Fingolfin is very protective of Finarfin. You think fanon Maedhros is intense about being a big brother? The Fingolfin of my headcanons is Worse. In all ways but literal, Fingolfin is standing between Finarfin and the world. By "the world" what I actually mean is Feanor. In return, you know Galadriel's infamous hatred for Feanor? She got that from her father, he's just quieter about it. Finarfin also has all but cut ties with Finwe over the blatant favoritism of the guy making his brother's life a living hell.

A scene I wish we had of them

Finrod & Turgon

I know Turgon has closer kin than that, but I actually feel Finrod might have been the one to comfort him and Idril immediately after Elenwe's death, and I would like to see that.

Finrod & Luthien

Well what I actually actually want is for them to interact during the Leithian saga, but that's not something that can happen in canon. Something plausible that would delight me would be seeing them comparing notes on songs of power. Would also work as foreshadowing. Tolkien missed an opportunity there :/

Galadriel & Luthien

Any. Literally any. The POWER Galadriel and Luthien would have together, oh my god. If they're hanging out with Melian, I think books could not physically contain the awesomeness! If I had to choose just one thing, I would like to see them talk about beauty. Not because they're beautiful, but because they're The Most Beautiful of their peoples, and they both fall in love with men who seem to value them for other reasons. I feel like they might have some Thoughts about this, and I feel you could have a... Finrod and Andreth kind of debate where they discuss all sorts of topics going off this premise. The Debate of Luthien and Galadriel, with notes on the relationship between hroar and fear. Or something.

Finarfin & Fingolfin

Okay, Feanor pulls a sword on Fingolfin and Fingolfin goes see Finarfin and......??? I'm begging Tolkien to have a whole chapter about that!!

#ask game #tolkien reading day festivities #please talk to me anon!!!!!!

[erynalasse]

Who is your favorite character from each main first age species (elf, human, ainur, dwarf, etc) you can choose more than one if you want!

-@outofangband

Oh, this is quite an interesting one! How dare you make me pick favorites!!! If you don’t mind, I think I’ll interpret this more as a “who’s your under-recognized favorite” since my answers would be pretty predictable otherwise.

Elf: I thought about this one the most because there’s so many to choose from. I have to go with Eärwen, which might be surprising. It’s not like with have any canon character details on her besides her genealogy. But I love the possibilities that opens up! All of Eärwen’s children head east after the Darkening. Her husband Arafinwë almost does too before he turns back. And then the two of them are tasked with ruling a shattered people who lost their old king, their lights, and their stability in one blow. And the Noldor also have to patch relations with the Teleri after Alqualondë—and oh, yeah, it’s Eärwen’s own father who rules them. Conflicting family loyalties much? It’s an impossibly difficult situation and I have to imagine it took all of Eärwen’s strength and grace to navigate it. How to you approach being High Queen of the Noldor when your only models are Míriel and Indis and their famous marriage issues?

Man: Oh Boromir, my beloved. Not a First Age character, but he deserves it. This one was an easy choice. I mostly grew to love him after seeing some excellent metas about his character. I’ll have to come back and link them. But I love how Boromir embodies the best and the worst of the race of Men, and how the Ring brings out both extremes so strongly. Boromir is indeed a man of extremes: strong loyalty, strong love, strong duty, and strong stubbornness and pride. He does his best every step of the way until the Ring seduces him, and even then it cannot overcome loyalty to the little ones. I cry every time I see this scene, and I’m not ashamed to say it.

Vala: Ulmo! This is also an easy choice, mostly because we have a small pool and a lot of unattractive options. I mostly love Ulmo because he’s one of the few Valar who give Manwë’s edicts a big fat middle finger and keeps intervening in Middle Earth. Manwë and his Eagles get half-marks, at best, for timing. I also think it’s important that Ulmo is proactive, especially in guiding Turgon and Finrod to build their realms. Ulmo starts them early and he keeps helping Turgon and Tuor and their family. Manwë, notably, only intervenes when things have gone horribly wrong first.

Dwarf: Hmm. I don’t actually have such strong opinions about this one, mostly because we just don’t get many Dwarven characters. But I really, really like Azaghâl. You can build up a very compelling character from the handful of details: Maedhros rescuing him and his people (in a similar way to Haleth and Caranthir!), the story of the Dragon-helm, his death in the Nirnaeth. All very interesting, and I wish we had more.

And a bonus, because I’m not sure whether it counts as a race! Actually not even related to @outofangband liking my meta on her, but I hope you like this take too.

Peredhel: I love Elwing. I really, really do and I wish fandom were more open-minded about her. I don’t agree with her decision to cling to the Silmaril—it was objectively foolish, and she had good examples for why. But I love Elwing for the same reasons fandom fixates on the Fëanorions: she grows up under the burden of a family legacy that also kills her family one by one. She escapes, and survives, and does her best to find happiness even after she’s lost so much. And that happiness and that legacy, too, is snatched away from her because she drew the line at giving up what her family died for to unworthy hands. She lost so much, and life in Valinor with a husband away on star duties is less than what she deserved.

#asks #outofangband #tolkien #silmarillion #ulmo #eärwen #elwing #azaghâl #boromir

[arrivisting]

I’d love author commentary on basically the whole scene at Ekkaia in all my war is done (or any individual part of that scene, if your prefer). Taken together, it’s one of the most beautiful and emotionally complex and heartrending things you’ve written, from the description of the sea itself, to the difficulties of Fingon and Alqualondë, to Gil and the ocean and his ‘mother’, to Fingon and Gil beginning to tackle the thorny subect of Maedhros.

I should admit something about all my war is done: it's the most fugue-like my writing has ever been. I jotted down a few notes on my commute into work - I was deeply underwater with my PhD at the time, three months away from submitting - and then the idea of writing a sequel to scion seized me so profoundly that I sat down in the Starbucks where my bus stops, took out my laptop, and wrote instead of just collecting my coffee and walking down to my office. I wrote 15k. In one day. In about five or six hours. I've never achieved anything like that before or since - I do have good days where I can knock 2-4k out easily, but not 15k. (You might note that the posted part of all my war is done is only 12k, but I wrote all the way up into the next bit with Fingon in Tirion that you've read, up until Turgon at the dinner table). I didn't sit down or plan events; I didn't actually know much about what would happen: but I knew they were going to Ekkaia and they'd have some kind of resolution there. These are my phone-notes, from that morning:

You can see, I think, something of the way an idea hits me. I note down a few snatches of plot, not necessarily in any order, some lines I think people should say at some point, although I might not use them, sketch out some things (Formenos's ruins were going to feature more heavily, but they're waiting for a later story).

(It makes me laugh, the words my phone doesn't accept - Gil-galad, for one - and the ones it automatically capitalises from where I've yelled enthusiastically about elf things at people. I never stop long enough to correct spelling etc when I'm trying to get something down).

I clearly knew from inception that I wanted Fingon's place to be called the hill of waiting, and had tried out the name in Sindarin; because my verbs are not good, I came up with Amon Dartha. It was when I was redrafting that I realised Amon Darthir had existed actually in Dor-lomin(!!!) and the name was even more perfect symbolically than I'd meant it to be! Did I know that, unconsciously? I don't know.

You can see, too, that the Sea of Ekkaia was almost the very first point to hit me, and that I knew it and the scene there would be important, and that I knew that the story was about Fingon finding a way to tell Gil-galad that he had been loved, and wanted, and that meant talking about Maedhros; and that at the end I wanted Gil-galad to be gently, impersonally, firmly clear that he would not, could not, be staying to wait with Fingon.

Okay, DVD commentary proper - I'm sorry, I remember awfully little about writing this, given the fugue state and my thesis and everything, so I'm not sure how useful this will be!

“Oh,” said Gil-galad when they broke out of the woods and began to ride down over the dune-lands to the rocky shore. “Oh!”

The Sea of Ekkaia was beautiful, in its own way, but that way that was like no other place in Arda, in either Aman or Middle Earth.

It was a dark-blue that was almost black, even in the late afternoon, and the shore was less sand than gravel, a strange inconsistent rubble of rock and broken sea-shells that had been dashed to pieces by the constant fury of the waves. Staring out to sea, one did not see the far-away horizon the way one did on the gentler coast of Belegaer: there was no gentle faraway blue haze through which one might, perhaps, on a clear day, imagine that Middle Earth could be glimpsed, or at least the Straight Path.

No: instead along the horizon there was a seam of silver light, and then a great blackness, where the Sea of Ekkaia met the Uttermost West that was not quite the Doors of Night, but was certainly the end of Aman itself. If you stood on the shore watching, the seam would ripple with a pulse of light, sometimes green and sometimes white.

It was so far from anywhere the Eldar of Valinor lived. While they clustered around the Belegaer like moths to flame, this shore seemed instead to repel them. Was it the sight of the world’s end itself? It might be; yet Fingon thought there was more to why this wilderness was so little visited, this howling black sea lashing itself against a grey shore. It was beautiful, but not in the way Elves liked things to be beautiful: it was too raw, too unfinished, too savage.

It was too close to where Mandos kept his Halls, which were not only a thing of spirit but also matter, at least in the way that things in Aman were both. Too close to where Nienna’s tower looked out into the Void and where she wept, and wept, and wept. It was too close to death and to rebirth, to judgment and to pity.

There's a little Dawn Treader, I think, in this idea of the uttermost West. I don't know why I thought the seam of the world should pulse with strange light, but it's an uncanny kind of geography, so near Mandos and Nienna, and I like the sense that this is the end of the world, but not the end of the universe.

A lot of this came together serendipitously. I knew some kind of memorialisation of the river that bore Gil-galad needed to be part of his story; that meant going to the sea; and it's clear from the notes that I had already decided that couldn't mean Alqualonde because of kinslaying reasons and memories. (And that that too would need to be confronted). Therefore: roadtrip to Ekkaia. Therefore, the question: what would Ekkaia be like? We don't really know anything about it - only the good qualities of Belegaer. This was really written by a process of inversion, a way of pulling what we know about Belegaer inside-out, and imagining a place at the world's edge, a place that was empty, a place that was uncannily close to difficult things, to Mandos and Nienna; a place that seemed to repel the Eldar as surely as Belegaer drew them like iron filings.

I was thinking visually about New Zealand, too. I spent my childhood summers on the beaches up north, mostly around Tūtūkākā, which are bright and lovely, with golden or white or tawny sand, with gnarled pohutukawa and blue-green water. Like this:

That's what beach and sea meant to me, and it was a shock the first time I went to one of the black sand beaches where the wind howled and the colours weren't blue, green, gold, but iron, grey, navy, black. I loved it, but it felt so other, so passionate, so strange. That shock and that wild beauty and desolation were things I wanted to get at, though Ekkaia would be far more wild and desolate still.

They left the horses in the thin sea-grass, and their shoes, too, and walked down to the water. “I missed it,” Gil-galad said, and closed his eyes, breathing in the brine. “I missed it badly, all the long years besieging Mordor before I died.”

I think Gil-galad would be very marked by his upbringing first in the Falas and then on Balar; you don't lose that, if you grew up by the sea.

The wind took up his long dark hair and made a banner of it as they walked along the rough crescent of rocky ground where the waves met the shore, and around their bare ankles small stones tumbled back and forth in the lace-edge of the water.

When I was young I used to stand in the water and let the waves bury me up to my ankles, watching the water move in, out, spreading skirts of lace overlapping as new waves came in. I could do it for hours. There's something very liminal about the water's edge, between the solid land and the sea, which is why I put this conversation in it, I think. They're in a liminal space and at a liminal moment. It's the scene the whole story has been inexorably building toward, the point where all Fingon's painful scraping-away of his barriers finally reaches his skin.

“Sometimes in Middle Earth it became very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said, his eyes still closed, “in the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.” He opened his eyes and looked towards the Uttermost West where the world ended. “And here it is impossible not to. Look at it!"

This is a little more hopeful than the original version, which I don't have anymore, but went pretty much:

"Sometimes in Middle Earth it was very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said. "In the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.”

It was a comment more about Gil-galad's rueful scepticism than wonder - because he fought the Dagorlad before he died, because he spent the last ten years of his life in mud and blood and filth and horror. I work on the First World War - its literary legacy and traces in the decades after, more than its immediate experience or actuality, because there was a ten-year period after 1918 where it was more latent than overt, a traumatic lacuna of silence, a Nachträglichkeit- and I thought in the blood, and the mud, and the filth was a little too on the nose.

I kept it, though, because Tolkien was drawing on his own memories of the trenches with the Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes, with those blurred lines of solid land and mud/bog, the living mixed up with the remains of with the dead, all the themes you see again and again in the war poetry and the officer war-books. (Santanu Das is very good on this, as is Eric Leed). Paul Fussell is a bit old-hat now, but his argument that WWI altered the sensibility of its survivors because of their close, consanguinous co-existence with the dead is something I still find valuable. I think there's a lot of WWI survivor in the way I think of Gil-galad, actually, I'm just realising - not that he survived the Last Alliance. He's detached in a different way from Fingon. Fingon's built himself a thick layer of repression/denial, a kind of callous to protect himself from confronting or thinking about what Maedhros did, and what that means for him and to him; Gil-galad is entirely present, but somewhat detached in some ways, the way people who came back from war could be. Not that Fingon and Finrod aren't also separated from the Amanyar by their time in Beleriand and experience of war and death, but Gil-galad lived there for millennia, and he fought a longer, harder, more total kind of war than they did.

But he's at the Sea of Ekkaia, as west as you can get. So much of Tolkien is about that endless longing glance west, that movement: why is this very westernmost edge so under-explored?

I wanted Gil-galad to be softened by this encounter with the sea, so I went back and let his wonder be as much at the spectacle itself as the sea, like the greater hand at work he had sometimes doubted being visible was something wonderful rather than something to be bitter about. I wanted to position him to be potentially open to, perhaps, the Valar; perhaps, to Fingon. I hope he doesn't come off as closed-minded: I think of him as having a fair mind, and good judgment, but - despite placing him here between the sea and the shore - very clear personal lines between what he thinks is just, and what is not. Certainly, it helps a lot, never having known the Feanorians when they had not fallen.

The seam of the universe pulsed with light, and beyond it was – what?

Unutterable nothingness, something worse than death.

Perhaps Maedhros.

This is an important line for Fingon. He hasn't though the name of his own accord for much of the story, flinching away from it; it's only come in when Finrod and then Gil-galad speak the name. This is the first time he's thought it clearly of his own free will, and this is I think the first signal that he's brought Gil-galad here to be as honest and earnest with him as he can be, however much it hurts, or however much it might drive him away. Because if he isn't, and doesn't, Gil-galad will be driven away anyway, and Fingon wants to be connected with him, the first time he's wanted that kind of bond with anyone since he returned.

(I think of Finrod as someone who just kept turning up, regularly, and forcing Fingon to associate with him; and then bringing Amarie; and then his children; and not taking no for an answer. It bothers Turgon rather terribly that they seem to be friends now, when they were never that close Before: that Fingon pushes him away, but allows Finrod to keep pushing; that Finrod does push. He doesn't know about Gil-galad, of course).

He's brought Gil-galad here to show him if possible that he was wanted, to conjure up lost Ringwil where she might be felt if not found; and to do the same for Maedhros. This is a signal that this journey to the sea is as much about Gil-galad's missing father as his missing mother.

The almost-forgotten tang of salt in the air always mingled with the smell of blood in Fingon’s worst memories, and he was not the only one who remembered. The waves were gentle around Gil-galad’s feet, but they boiled furiously around Fingon’s, delivering small spiteful slaps at his calves.

Spiteful was probably the wrong word here. I don't necessarily mean a dramatic boiling or bubbling; but the water is harsh where it touches him, the kind of slapping roughness you get when the tide is coming in rough.

It took Gil-galad longer to mark the difference, engrossed in the joy of the sea and spectacle as he was, and when he did, his face changed. There was something terribly sad in his eyes when he lifted them from the water to look at Fingon.

It wasn’t why he had brought Gil-galad here; but Fingon didn’t want to imagine the look he would receive if he brushed aside the silent question. “No,” he said. “I am not forgiven.”

“So I see.”

They could probably leave it there.

But Fingon won't, because he's trying. He's really trying to connect after all the time flinching away from it, and he's remembering what Gil-galad said about talking, and what Finrod said about mistakes and silences in their first life.

He said, “You said you loathed the thought of being the son of – a murderer. But my own hands have not been clean since Alqualondë, and death didn’t unstain them. All the time you thought I might be your father, you must have known I was a Kinslayer, too.”

I tried to signal this in their earlier tower conversation with Finrod, and Gil-galad's changing of the topic, but I feel like it's a little abrupt here.

“Yes,” Gil-galad said, and his expression didn’t change. “And when the knights that had served you came to me, they told me that you killed that day in ignorance, that you came upon a battle already being fought; that you took up your sword to save those you loved and didn’t question whether it was just. I heard that from others, too, those who had less reason to bend facts to a flattering pattern; survivors of Gondolin and of Nargothrond. I did ask."

“Ignorance wasn’t an excuse. I died ashamed of it, and I live again with the shame.”

"Good!” said Gil-galad, and there was no forgiveness in his voice, even when Fingon jerked his head up in shock. Instead there was the stern ring of a king used to weighing the ideals of justice against the world as it was, the king who had walked arm in arm with Eonwë the Maia, led his people through many full-fledged wars, and held court and meted justice to them for an Age. “That gives me a far better opinion of you than any of the stories did! I’m glad.”

I remember talking to you about this in the comments, about what it meant that Gil-galad wasn't forgiving him. I think I really meant condone, but I also don't think it's Gil-galad's place to absolve Fingon - he wasn't the one wronged! - and that it's important to me that, because Fingon does truly regret it, he doesn't wish to be absolved, to slide away from it. I don't mean he ought to wallow in it or flog himself with it daily, but I think it would be important to him to shoulder and own that guilt rather than ever allowing himself to put it behind him or have someone else tell him it’s quite all right.

I think this is a moment where I show that they're quite similar, too, because even if Fingon wasn't aware that a bracing, clear assessment was just what he wanted, it was what he needed, rather than people being kind (which he's had a lot of, since he returned; and which hasn't touched that central guilt he's hidden from them, that he loved Maedhros, who had done such terrible things. It's prevented him from accepting kindness made him block people reaching out to him. Gil-galad is not being kind, but just, and still reaching out).

It felt like Fingon had been struggling to take a full lungful of air for a long time, and now something constricting in his chest had loosened, as it hadn’t even after the Valar themselves had judged him. It was only now that he realised that he hadn’t wanted Gil-galad to forgive or absolve him. He had wanted – needed – Gil-galad to be better than him, to withhold forgiveness when it was unmerited; and Gil-galad had. He had become the shining legacy they had all hoped he would be, the thing they had all somehow done right.

The water slapped at his ankles again, in impatient reminder.

This is too brief a transition. I should have fleshed the join out more.

“I think Ulmo would come to you here, if you called. You were a king by the sea in Middle Earth, and you may not remember it, but it was a river who gave you life.”

Gil-galad looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “What?”

“I brought you here for a reason,” Fingon said. “Where did they go, the drowned and poisoned rivers of Beleriand? I don’t know; but Ulmo might.”

I've really personified the rivers, but I think it's a clear and easy extrapolation from the Withywindle and the River-daughter in The Fellowship of the Ring that I don't need to justify in order to argue that every river might have had its own attendant Maia-spirit. It does make what happened to the Rivers of Beleriand much worse, though, and I wanted to look at the way a character that was a throwaway mechanism in scion ended up being sickened and dying as horribly as Beleriand did; this story was really about following all those lighter bits in scion home, to the end of the line, and looking at the long-term impacts of something that began more lightly. In this verse, Ringwil was a river, but also a person; and I think of her and Finrod as sharing a strange human-river friendship and overlapping enthusiasms.

He clapped Gil-galad on the shoulder, hoping it said all the things he meant it to say. Affection had been so easy for him once, in the life that had been taken from him by the fiery flails of the Balrogs, but now it came hard, and the sea-smell was in his nose, the terrible memories too close to the surface.

He had surely outstayed Ulmo’s tolerance by now. Fingon left Gil-galad there in the water, and didn’t dare glance back until there was thin sandy soil under his feet again.

Only then did he look once more towards the sea.

Gil-galad was standing in the shallows. His broad shoulders were bunched tight, as if he was readying himself for something very difficult, a confrontation with one of the Valar he had long doubted.

Then he spread his arms out, empty-handed, and tipped his head back, and the light on the horizon grew unbearably bright, whiter than white, more silver than silver; and a face began to move upon the water.

I really like this, honestly. Which I can't/don't say often! The temptation to overwrite this was strong, to show this encounter, to describe the Vala: but I think it's often stronger not to show something numinous, to pull away, to let the mind fill it in.

Again, this is Gil-galad as I imagine him: still somewhat distanced from the Valar by the Dagorlad and the things that happened there (and I think perhaps doubly unhappy in that he lived through the end of an Age once before, and that time, at least, the Valar came: they did not come in the Second, nor send so much as a messenger, and such obscenities as the fall of Ost-in-Edhil and the drowning of Numenor had been allowed to happen, and Men and Elves were left alone to come together and break Sauron's grip). Doubting, but not angry; doubting, but still curious. Open to listening.

a face began to move upon the water is of course a deliberate sideways reference to

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

-

It took a very long time. Fingon could not watch; his eyes dazzled.

Can you tell I was teaching The Duchess of Malfi at this time? Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. That sense of a light too bright and white to look upon; that sense of guilt; that faint reference to life lost untimely. This wasn't meant to be a direct intertextual reference, but that net of meaning was there, lightly. Again, I wanted to under-write rather than over-write. I know I have a tendency to over-write.

And of course - there's a sense here that Fingon is refusing the kind of close enoucnter with Ulmo he could/might have. There's water in his eyes. From the wind?

-

“Thank you,” Gil-galad said when he rejoined him at last. His eyes were glowing, and he whistled Ceredir to him from where he was tearing ropey roots of sea-grass from the dunes with great relish. “Thank you for bringing me here;” and he didn’t say it the way he’d thanked Fingon for the horse, or the armour, or the sword, or even the lance.

Because this is a real gift, something that means something to both of them, something more honest/painful. Fingon's been trying to connect through gifts but not serious conversation or sharing, like some estranged parents do, throwing money at the problem rather than giving of their time or their selves, and however well-meant, it hasn't worked.

“I didn’t truly do anything."

“You brought me to the Sea. I know – I could see – how difficult it was for you."

"Well,” Fingon said lamely. He cleared his throat. “What did Lord Ulmo say about – oh, I can’t call her your dam! – the Maia who bore you? Did she – was she there?”

The dam pun is Finrod's. Don't blame me.

A little of the light dimmed, but it didn’t quite fade away. “No, she’s gone. Back to the Timeless Halls, he says; but one with him again, Ulmo, at the same time.” Gil-galad made a noise. “I don’t pretend to understand any of it, all the metaphysical nonsense of the Ainur! But he was kind to me, and he told me something of her – that she delighted in the making of me.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “I left the flowers we gathered earlier in the waves for her and the sea didn’t dash them back onto the shore. I’m sure Ulmo broke a few laws of Arda there.”

I like this image of the flowers suspended in the water. I had it clearly in mind from before I began to write.

"You were wanted.”

“I’m beginning to believe it,” Gil-galad said.

“You should,” Fingon said. He took a breath. Talking is how you sort things out; and a long time ago, Fingon had been known for his valour. Gil-galad deserved to know how much he had been wanted, who had called himself a political compromise given birth. The truth of that had stung.

And it was less than the truth. Fingon could still remember the first time he had opened his mind to Maedhros over the leagues between them and let him see Gil’s small face through his own eyes, holding nothing back. He had shown Maedhros the dark long lashes and the squashed baby nose, the milk-blister on the bow of Gil’s upper lip, the way his whole head turned an alarming red when he wailed; shared with Maedhros Gil’s fondness for being tossed in the air, his splashing joy in his bath.

This is is me trying to describe a baby without being too sentimental about it, because Fingon wasn't all, oh look at the toesie-woesies, or my son, my son: his eye was more detached, and you see him in scion thinking of Gil-galad as it.

I've been thinking about why Fingon in no way allowed himself to consciously dote on the baby, why that streak of denial that's so strong in his second life was there in his first light, and really: it would have been dangerous to let himself love him, to see Gil as his son and Maedhros's. He was born at a time of terrible loss, after the Flame, when they all expected they could die themselves. He was moved around Beleriand like a game-piece. Fingon was always going to lose him: he wasn't going to get to raise him, after all, until and unless Morgoth was defeated. Maedhros wasn't going to meet him, until and unless &c. It was easier not to let oneself get attached than it was to confront those hard facts and let oneself be hurt by them. Easier to think of him as a baby Finwean prince, and that only: a political pawn, not a son.

Conversely, Maedhros maintains a physical distance, but not an emotional one. Here's a bit from Maedhros's perspective:

Finrod had told him that. They had written, back and forth, in the long months as Ringwil’s belly swelled, as the child formed, as it began to move and stretch and turn frog-like inside her. They had corresponded constantly during the first months of the child’s life in Nargothrond, and during the first months of his life, Finrod had sent long scrolls detailing every change in Artanaro’s weight, his length, his hair colour, his eye colour, how much milk he’d consumed each day: screeds winging forth to Himring until the child was old enough to survive the secret trip north.

Fingon’s letters had been infuriatingly spare of useful information while the child was fostered at Barad Eithel. Beloved, ineloquent Fingon: Fingon, who had nevertheless shown him the child as no reams of paper could.

Fingon had given him forever the rounded bloom of his full cheeks, and the pursed mouth, sullen in sleep: the feathery, rather cross-looking eyebrows, and the small hands with their deep dimples and smaller fingernails, curled into the edge of Fingon’s furred mantle.

Maedhros had felt the way Fingon hovered between wonder and confusion at what they’d wrought: the way he couldn’t quite manage to think of the child as his own, this thing spun out of air and calculation and freshwater into heavy, solid life. He could have loved him so desperately, Maedhros knew that. He was halfway there, hovering in terror on the edge, afraid of falling. If the baby had stayed in Barad Eithel longer; if Fingon had watched him begin to creep around on fat little knees, to pull himself up on the furniture and to take his first steps – to hear the baby babble turn into words and speech – his heart would have opened to him like a flower, and the child would have become the centre of his universe, the sun in his sky.

Fingon had never known what to do with Idril as an infant, either, but he’d easily become an adored uncle as she grew up. If they’d had more time – if the child had been permitted to stay with Fingon even a month longer before being sent for safety to Cirdan –

Well, they’d never had enough time.

There had been few walls between them then, so he had felt Maedhros’s bright joy, the painful love, in its moment of birth: swelling and swelling like a cloud with rain, as though his heart was growing and his blood was leaking out of him at the same time, transmuting into pure tenderness and iron purpose.

I like this because I think of the Ekkaia scene as a cloudburst, full of emotion that has been swelling and swelling and now released. This is one bit of the breaking-through.

He had never needed to ask whether Maedhros considered Gil-galad a son.

“I don’t want to talk about – him,” Fingon said with difficulty, and the salt breeze stung his face, his eyes. “I know you loathe him, and rightly; and I do, too. I do hate him; or I hate what he did. I do! But you should know – you deserve to – that he wanted you, badly, although he never met you; he never wanted the shadow on him to touch you or to taint you.

And this. You can see here where I spun off into cliffs of fall, which isn't a scion story, but sprung out of this speech. It was already there in those sketchy notes, too, a lot of what Fingon's saying here: this important line about hating Maedhros, or what he did (that movement from clear certainty to trying to separate the deeds from the loved one; to urgent reptition - I do! I mean it, I really do! - which means he doesn't, can't: this is the heart of Fingon's guilt, because he wants to hate Maedhros utterly, but he can't, and he is profoundly in denial about that).

“He always wanted children; I took that from him even before the Oath did, but I gave it back to him with you. I loved you first of all for that, but he loved you for yourself. Because you existed, against all hope and possibility and fate and chance; and because you were ours.”

Gil-galad said nothing. There was still a wildflower tucked behind his ear, but the brilliance had quite left his eyes.

“Well,” Fingon said at last. “I needed to tell you that. You should know that you were never – not only – you were wanted very much."

Beloved ineloquent Fingon, &c.

-

They were some miles from the beach when Gil-galad said, “‘Ours’?”

“Yes."

-

I was trying to let the gaps and breaks talk for me in the text. Under-writing.

The beginning was full of these little breaks, too, because they didn't yet know how to talk to each other; now at the end, that connection, and their conversations, are breaking down again. It's echoing that ride together at the beginning very strongly, but now it's not Gil-galad trying to become acquainted and Fingon giving light, unsatisfying answers. These are the real questions/answers at last, and the whole story has really been about getting to the point of Fingon and Gil-galad in Aman where they actually could have the kind of conversation Gil-galad was trying to have at the start.

-

Some miles further, Fingon said, “Did you ever meet him in Beleriand? After I died. I always wondered.”

“No,” Gil-galad said.

It didn’t seem like he was going to speak again, and Fingon had begun to assimilate that knowledge, that pain – that Maedhros had never seen him, had only ever known him through Fingon’s own eyes – when he added,

“But I saw what he did. Have you ever seen a whole city ruined, and known the ruiners to be Elves? It wasn’t even a city, poor Sirion! It was a refuge, a place for the desperate, as far to the West as they could get, as close to the safety of the Sea. They had so very little. No great stone palaces, no towers, no spires. Little enough fresh food. They were able to grow so little, and they lived on fish, and sea-weed, and what brave hunting parties would bring back; and hope. They lived on hope, and they thought Elwing wore it around her throat, but the Valar didn’t come for them: Maedhros Fëanorion and his brothers did instead, and they burned and killed and ravaged. I’d say they salted the earth, but it was salt already. To fall on any innocent Elven city would be a horror: on poor Sirion it was the greatest cruelty I ever saw, and entirely pointless."

They said nothing more.

I like this, too, actually. You see a little here of why Gil-galad might be healthily sceptical of the Valar - they didn't come for them: Maedhros Feanorion and his brothers did instead - and that very post-war experience of seeing a descrated, destroyed town. Worse when you had seen it when it was whole, when you knew the dead and fled.

Sirion is, I think, the worst thing the Feanorions did. I find it worse than even Doriath or Alqualonde (though they're all awful!). These were desperate survivors, huddled together at the edge of the sea for protection. So many of their leaders had been killed or lost. Idril and Tuor had disappeared; Earendil was away; Maedhros and the others struck while only Elwing was there, and she was so young, and so alone, and so damaged already by what they'd done in Doriath. And now they’d come again. There's something about the revictimisation that gets me. It's awful.

I wanted it to be weight and counter-weight - that soft, painful, remembered moment of Maedhros seeing baby Gil-galad through Fingon's eyes, something Fingon has clearly not deliberately thought about since he was reborn, but dredges up now for Gil-galad, because he should know: and which is echoed in the beginning by Fingon's question to Finrod. But Maedhros is still the person who did the things he did, and I wanted to set that soft moment of truth against his deeds at Sirion, another truth, to point out clearly why Gil-galad would recoil so hard from this offering, this honesty Fingon wants to be able to give him. This is the dichotomy at the heart of the story: reconciling Maedhros and how one felt for him with what he did, and how one feels about that. It is irresolvable, at least for Fingon, at least at the moment I've ended it at for now.

I don't know if this is quite what you wanted, @warrioreowynofrohan, especially because like I said, I wrote this story in a frantic fog, but I hope this in some way suffices!

#not!fic

[arofili]

some Turgon thoughts

so @siphilemon asked on discord for Turgon headcanons and I, a known Turgon apologist, was all too happy to oblige! I rambled for awhile and thought that maybe some other people might be interested in my thoughts, so I’ve gathered them here. under a cut because it’s a Lot.

General Turgon HCs

Turgon is fiercely devoted to his family, whether that's his siblings or his dad or Finrod or Elenwë and Idril...and he outlives. all. of. them. except for Idril and the Fëanorians, who he does NOT like

He's grumpy, more of an introvert than Fingon and Finrod are for sure, he was never really fond of the Fëanorians (esp Maedhros) but that was more because “someone in the family has to stand with Dad against them and it isn't going to be Fingon or Aredhel, so I guess it's gonna be me” and then add the whole thing with Fingon and Maedhros being in love on top of that...he's protective of Fingon

And then. things get bad.

There was never any question that Turno was going to follow his family to Middle-earth, he's devoted to them above everything - and I think he and Elenwë were very much in love and devoted to each other (some of my personal Elenwë hcs is that her parents weren't very excited about her marrying Turgon, and she kind of chose him over them, hence her being the Only Vanya who leaves with the Noldor) and he knew Elenwë would go with him

That's why Baby Idril went along on the Second Most Dangerous Road Trip In All Of Arda (which after the burning of the ships becomes the Most Dangerous Road Trip, surpassing the Great Journey)

but I don't think that (at first) Turgon was very excited about going to Middle-earth for himself? it isn't until Ulmo gives him the dream about Gondolin that he really gets the idea of creating a city of his own, a land of his own

And Gondolin is said to be Very Much reminiscent of Tirion - and Turgon is the one who keeps sending messengers back to Valinor - he missed his home

And he blames the Fëanorians for everything that went wrong. Morgoth too, but he's always kind of resented the Fëanorians, and then Elenwë died and it's all Fëanor’s fault but then when he arrives in Middle-earth Fëanor is dead so he shifts his anger onto Maedhros instead. Maedhros is a very sore spot between Turgon and Fingon.

And after Fingon dies.....well, Turgon blames himself, but he's angry with Maedhros. IMO Turgon is very much a hypocrite - he hates and hates and hates but does the same damn things he hates people for doing (i'm a sucker for Finrod/Turgon which is a juicy parallel to Idril/Maeglin...)

Turgon & Idril

Turgon is intensely protective of Idril, almost suffocatingly so

he was always kind of inclined to be an anxious helicopter parent but after Elenwë dies (it's fucking canon that both of them nearly die but Turgon has to choose between saving Idril or Elenwe, which fucks me up to no end) he's literally Never Letting Her Out Of His Sight

In the immediate aftermath of Elenwë’s death / the rest of the journey across the Ice, that's fine? it's a survival strategy, a coping mechanism, and Idril is traumatized and doesn't want to leave her dad

but then they get to Middle-earth (and Turgon loses his little brother, which makes him cling to his daughter even more) and Idril starts to grow up. IMO she was pretty young when they left Valinor, and she comes of age in Middle-earth. She can finally walk around barefoot in the grass again, and she starts making friends and learning to live without her mom.

which is something that terrifies Turgon, because he doesn't know how to move on without Elenwe, and he's always always looking back to Valinor but Idril barely remembers Valinor by the time she's older, and he's terrified she'll forget her mother

Idril loves her dad but he's very controlling and overprotective - and the dangers of Beleriand only make him more paranoid, even after the Dagor Aglareb ensures the Long Peace...

When Turgon builds Gondolin of course Idril is coming with him. He doesn't even ask her. She wants to go, she loves her dad even if she kind of resents that he still treats her like a child, but she wishes he'd asked her how she felt about the whole thing instead of assuming

(In general Turgon is really really bad at communicating. Elenwë was good at teasing out what he was feeling and getting him to talk but after losing her he shuts out the world. Finrod - whether we're going in a shippy context or not - is also good at understanding Turgon, and that night at the river they have an almost breakthrough together... but then Ulmo visits them and clouds their memories and they forget about it until way later)

But back to Idril: once they're in Gondolin and she can Literally Never Leave, Turgon relaxes a little bit, gives her some more freedom, because this is his city and she's safe here, right? But then everything happens with Aredhel and he's terrified again because if he can lose his sister what about his daughter---

Except now he has Maeglin to take care of too. Turgon is torn between parenting both his daughter and his nephew and ends up not doing a good job of either even though he tries...and Idril doesn't want to be parented at this point, she's a grown ass woman! Maeglin however does need a parent-figure and Turgon "Bad At Communicating" Nolofinwion horribly miscommunicates a lot of his intentions toward Maeglin

Anyway - I think Turgon is oblivious to Maeglin's feelings re: Idril? Until Tuor shows up and he can see "wait this mortal is in love with my daughter and is acting suspiciously like Maeglin...oh shit"

part of his motivation for letting Tuor marry Idril (aside from her being like "Dad I am gonna do what I want and you need to accept that") is fuck she can't marry MAEGLIN

Turgon & Aredhel

So I think that Turgon and Aredhel were the middle siblings who always kind of picked on each other in a loving sibling way? Like Finno is the Golden Child, the Responsible One, the Big Older Brother who adores them both - if they try to nag him it just bounces right off

but they know exactly how to push each other's buttons

and in Valinor that means they get into a lot of low-stakes petty fights that always resolve with them fiercely loving each other

after the ships burn Fingon is just...broken by Maedhros' betrayal. Aredhel, however, is fucking furious that Curvo and Tyelko would do this to her and she starts to channel that fury into hating them as much as Turgon does - which brings her and Turgon closer together

they forge a very deep bond on the Ice, especially with Aredhel kind of stepping in to help parent Idril after Elenwe dies

but unlike Turgon, when they get to Middle-earth Aredhel starts to heal (like Idril). she fights with C&C and then forgives them, and they go back to being friends. she gets to be carefree and happy again. and she'd still die for Turgon, she still looks up to him and loves him, which is why she follows him to Gondolin, but it was inevitable that she would get restless in Gondolin

Turgon resents Fingon for having Maedhros (i think he knows about their relationship and hates it but won't like, spill their secret bc he does love his bro) and he resents Idril and Aredhel for moving on from Elenwë & Argon's deaths because he can't do that, he feels like he's shouldering all the responsibility among his siblings

But most of all he resents himself for not being able to save them, and not being able to move on like a normal person (he's got some massive undiagnosed anxiety/depression). He kind of feels like he's suffering so his family doesn't have to, and since he loves his fam so much he thinks this is the "right" decision

(He's very hung up on morals for someone who is bad at following his own moral code)

So yeah he's angry that Aredhel wants to leave this safe place he created, but they fight and she pushes his buttons and he pushes hers except they're hurting still (aredhel is affected by everything that's happened, she just tries to focus on the positive) and they don't have time to makeup before Aredhel up and leaves

But he's not going to tell her she can't go because he does respect her decisions and her autonomy. and then when she disappears he's worried and then she comes back and he's overjoyed (and disturbed about what happened with Eöl) and then she dies and it's his fault and he blames himself....but Maeglin is also blaming himself and their self-pitying and grieving is magnified by being close together and they both come away worse for it. Maeglin thinks Turgon blames him, and Turgon thinks Maeglin blames him

And yeah, there is some I told you so in there, Turgon feels he was right, but he hates that because he'd rather be wrong than have his sister be dead

#turgon #turukano #silmarillion #silm #headcanons #my meta #meta #silm meta #look i just...Love Him #he's my Problematic Fav #aredhel #idril #maeglin #elenwe #fingon #tefain nin

[kendrixtermina]

Orodreth’s timeline

Orodreth actually gets a whole lot of pagetime, but he’s always very adjacent to the action; He’s got moments but seldom are all the bits we learn about him presented with a throughline, so here’s a compilation of everything we learn of him from start to finish

The one 4th generation person to have an active part in the debate, suggesting that he was possibly the oldest of the 4th generation; (I guess Turgon just took forever to ask Elenwe out) - one might speculate that he went cause he couldn’t bring himself to leave his parents or Finrod.

Close to Finrod (but Finrod was pretty much everyone’s favorite family member in the house of Finarfin)

never wanted to leave, and boy did he have a bad, bad time in middle Earth

may or may not have made the crossing with C & C. Personally, I like to think that he just happened to be playing with Celebrimbor and that C& C just let him, A& A on the ship so they could keep talking, having no idea of what Feanor was gonna pull; If we want to reconcile this with the later scenes where Angrod is rather salty towards the Feanorians we may assume that he grew disillusioned sometimes between the burning of the ship and finding out that everyone else crossed the ice... they’re not noted as prominent leaders during the march, though Finrod and Galadriel are. 

In any case, A & A were also said to be very close buds with Fingon, with no ambiguity here. But Fingon gets along with everyone anyways. I want more fic of him being besties with A & A (and Hurin, for that matter!) and how this related to Orodreth NOT supporting Fingon’s later plans

Got Finrod’s old fortress when he left to build Nargothrond

Would have been allowed in Doriath

was relatively learned (one can imagine that Finrod taught him)

loved nature & the mountains in particular (which is reflected in how he picked his sindarin name)

Curufin did not consider him particularly sharp or competent (at least after things turned sour) but of course he’s not exactly an unbiased source

Married a Sindarin chick; From this & the nature loving & being somewhat aligned with Thingol policy wise one might suspect that he took after or felt an affinity to the Telerin side of the family; Had anywhere between one and three kids sometime during the long peace, one of which may or may not have been Gil-Galad; Finduillas was old enough to be betrothed by the time of the Nirnaeth

Obviously then the Dagor bragollach happened; A & A are killed(and probably Edhellos, too) According to one version, C & C make it to his stronghold, help defend about two years, until they’re all forced to make for Nargothrond, where the arrival of their forces might have conveniently coincided with an orc raid the helped to repel

used to be somewhat soft/ nice (see the scene where he picks up Finrod’s crown, or when he tells the angry mop to let C & C escape alive) though by the time Turin shows up he’s significantly more jaded at least in the verse version 

(thats the one where he has an older son who gets terribly murdered by orcs); The prose coH heavily implies that Finduillas has got zero brothers, though the Shibolleth version makes him Gil-Galad’s father; There’s even some genological table where he was supposed to have two sons. But brothers or no brothers, nothing comes of Finduillas bethrotal since poor, poor Gwindor gets captured and whatnot

wanting to protect his people/ putting caution first is noted as a motivation and he’s characterized as not entirely unskilled at this

At the same time, character flaw numero uno is that he is not a very dominant or leader-like person at all; Probably gets shouted over a lot; Kind of always following someone wether it’s Finrod, Thingol or Turin; C& C have no trouble sizing control under his watch; That’s how he ended up listening to Turin and meeting his eventual death by glaurung

poor, poor Finduillas kicks it not much later

If Gil-Galad was his kid we can assume he escaped from the destruction somehow at this point, if he was not evacuated after the Bragollach based on some prophetic vision from Finrod

#Orodreth #silmarillion

[sweetteaanddragons]

Other Shadows

I should probably be working on prompts right now, but my brain wanted to write these instead.

These are short AU snippets that explore the concept of “What if a different Vala had been the one to go evil?”

Warning: They are all pretty dark.

. . .

Irmo

Fingon hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours, so he was probably one of the sanest people in the camp at the moment. Those who’d been awake for too many hours longer were either all but nodding off or jittery with stimulants; those who’d been asleep too much sooner were still trembling from their dreams.

Trembling. Screaming. Sobbing. Trying to wrench free from their restraints so that they could drive a tent peg into their brains.

They all had their little ways of coping.

The healers promised that soon they would find a way to induce dreamless sleep. Fingon nodded, and smiled, and told the good news to his people.

Inwardly, he had his doubts.

But now was not the time for doubts. Not here of all places. 

Maedhros’s tent had a wide ring of space around it. Even the two guards stood a wary distance from the tightly tied flaps. Both of them had bloodshot eyes and shaking hands.

They didn’t need steadiness for this job. There was no real threat. It just - It made everyone feel things were safer.

For everyone involved.

Fingon nodded at them. Smiled.

Thirty-six hours ago, he had dreamed that his smile stretched on and on until the skin split and his whole face slid off like the mask it was. It had hurt, slipping off, it had hurt even when he’d held it in his hands -

But that wasn’t real. This was real.

As soon as he forgot that, he’d be in the tent right beside Maedhros.

He slipped inside the tent. There was a light burning because there always had to be a light burning to keep Maedhros from screaming out, and it was a gem glowing out, not an open flame, because there were far too many flammable things in a tent to possibly trust to Maedhros’s restraints.

He was still restrained for now, though. Still tied to a chair since he flinched so violently from every bed they’d offered.

Still trembling in every muscle because he refused to sleep.

Or, as he sometimes put it, to wake up.

He didn’t say anything today. He had yesterday, but Maglor had sung to him yesterday, and that helped, sometimes. Maglor hadn’t sung today, because today was Maglor’s shift to go under the poppy.

It was the only way any of them could bear to stay asleep long enough to truly rest, if it could be called rest.

Maedhros always just spat it back up.

“You really are safe now,” Fingon said helplessly. Hopelessly. It had never worked before. Why should it work now? “This isn’t another nightmare. You don’t have to be afraid.”

Maedhros looked at him and - laughed. Actually laughed. Laughed until tears came out of his bloodshot, sunken eyes, and his chipped, brittle nails scrabbled for purchase on the chair’s left arm, leaving flecks of blood behind.

The right arm just shook under its painfully tight straps.

The stump of the hand he’d gnawed off to escape whatever nightmare he had visioned sprouting from it had no nails left to scrape.

“Alright, it is a nightmare,” Fingon conceded. “But it’s still reality.” He smiled weakly, and the smile stretched and stretched and stretched -

It did not break. His skin did not break.

He told himself that firmly as he forced the smile down.

This was real. This was real. This was real.

It had to be.

. . .

Mandos

The walls of Hithlum were ridiculously tall because they had to be.

It took the dead longer to stack themselves into high enough towers to attack that way.

Caranthir could see them even now at the bottom, reforming after their last attack failed. Pale grey bodies in bone white armor that stacked themselves up with no care for pain and no mind left to think of tools.

As far as they had been able to tell, most of them had only enough mind left to think of what would happen to them if they failed.

There had been a few exceptions.

“He should have known better,” Fingon said numbly beside him. “Turgon knew Ada was gone, he knew - “ He bit back whatever words were next and gripped the top of the wall to balance himself instead. “And now he’ll be the next face over the wall.”

“Not the next face,” Caranthir offered. It was all the limited comfort he had to offer. “He’s strong. He won’t break easily.”

Fingon considered this for a moment before saying what they both already knew. “That doesn’t actually help.” He looked down at the seething mass of undead below. “What do you think he does to them that it makes them fear returning to him so much?”

Caranthir actively tried to avoid thinking about that. It helped nothing, and they couldn’t afford guilt when they sent the shrieking horde back to its master.

The living were already outnumbered by the dead. They had to take precedence if they were to stand any chance at all.

“I’d be more interested to know why only one in ten Men end up in that horde outside our walls,” he said instead. They had been Fingolfin’s walls once, but Fingolfin was dead, and thanks to the retreat, Caranthir had as many men trapped here as Fingon did. He had as much claim to the walls as anyone.

“Maybe they move on too quickly for him to catch them,” Fingon suggested, latching onto the topic quickly. “We’ve always thought they moved on somewhere. Not like us.”

“Not like us,” Caranthir agreed grimly. Not for them was a hoped for paradise. For them there was nothing but the promise that they were bound to the circles of the world for however long it lasted.

Living, dead, or a horrible perversion of both.

His hopes were slowly fading that somewhere out there his brothers were still in the first category.

Fingon was curiously silent beside him, and Caranthir realized, looking at him, that he was building up to something.

“What?” he asked. He had spent the midnight hours removing his uncle’s head so that Fingon would have time to light the body on fire; there seemed little point in delicacy now.

“Seeing my father return after so long made me realize that we still haven’t seen your father yet,” Fingon said quietly. 

“He was strong,” Caranthir said firmly. Perhaps there was still need for delicacy after all, little though he usually thought of it,  if this was going where he thought it was. “Maybe - “

“It’s been two hundred years,” Fingon interrupted. “No one’s that strong, and you know it.”

It had taken Fingolfin twelve years to fall and consent to be pushed into a stretched thin body covered in armor that looked too much like bone. Fingolfin had lasted far longer than most.

Caranthir’s father was strong.

But no one was that strong. Not against a Vala. Not in the end.

“Maybe he’s off attacking Maedhros’s people,” he said.

“Maybe,” Fingon said almost faded hope, and he politely did not mention what they both knew but tried not to talk about: That Curufin had last sent a bird with a message a little over a year ago, and there was a limit to how often messages could simply go astray.

But that wasn’t what Fingon was driving at now.

“That’s not what the men think,” Fingon said. “They think the Halls of Death never held him. That maybe he went straight to the Void.”

The Oath, the accursed Oath, stirred to life within him, and even on Hithlum’s cold walls it felt like a dragon’s wealth of fire.

“I want to swear an Oath,” Fingon said bluntly. He held up a hand to forestall Caranthir’s startled protest. “Not to claim the Silmarils, I’m not fool enough to try to cross you in that, but something else. Anything else that seems unattainable.”

“Do you really think the Void will be better than Death’s halls?” Caranthir demanded when he got his voice back. “It’s like fire, Fingon! Even now it’s burning me up from the inside out, and it won’t be too much longer till there’s nothing left but its call or the darkness beyond. It’s not better.”

“It might be,” Fingon said wearily, looking down at the shattered remnants of those that were once their people below. “And even if it’s not, at least the Void won’t spit me back out and send me out against whoever’s still breathing.”

Caranthir closed his eyes and tried to think. It made sense. Horrible, burning sense. It would be the highest bargain he had ever witnessed being driven, but it made sense.

“What will you swear?” he finally asked, defeat in his voice.

“To kill Death,” Fingon answered promptly. “That way either I fail and go to the Void, or succeed and don’t have a need to.”

A faint smile, the first for a while, stole across Caranthir’s lips. “To killing death,” he said, miming a mocking toast.

“To killing Death,” Fingon repeated.

The warning bell cut off anything further he might have said.

But as they raced to answer it, Caranthir saw Fingon mouthing further words, and he felt a shiver of power when his cousin finished. 

. . .

Yavanna

When Dior was a child, the forest had been green and lush and safe.

But then his grandfather had died and Grandmother had left them, and there had been no choice but to set the whole thing ablaze. He still remembered the choking smoke as they’d fled and the hideous heat. They had run as close to the fire as they dared because it was safer than the alternative.

In the charred skeletons of dead trees, there were twisted fragments of bone still visible that had once belonged to those who had not stayed close enough.

The area remained safely scorched, though, and what little had grown back flinched away from the holy light on his brow.

The caves of Doriath loomed ahead, the soilless stone promising even greater safety. 

They had fled the forest, but the forest was gone. Maybe now it would be safe to return. They said there were a thousand caves in Doriath; they could plant their gardens at the far end, pin them in with steel, and guard them with axes and fire until they were ready to sing the plants to sleep long enough to snatch their fruits.

It would be safe in there, even with Melian gone, or at least safer than being out here, always waiting for a vine to strangle you softly while you were sleeping or for roots to shoot up and drag your bleeding body into the earth so that their tress could grow lush and strong.

It would be safe, he thought, and his hand brushed the moss that had grown up on the side of the cave.

He snatched his hand back immediately. His hand still stung, small drops of blood clinging to the palm. The moss grew fat upon its own share, bulging outward, but even it shrank back from the light.

Nowhere was safe, he reminded himself, and he proceeded more slowly. Safer than most places did not have to mean particularly safe at all.

(But the stone holds. It holds steady and firm, and they lose only a few to the harvest each year until the Feanorains come.)

(When the Feanorians come, the guards’ blood flows freely into the garden, and it sends out a call to the Ents.)

(Elured and Elurin do not expect to see a forest when they flee from the caves. There was not one there last night. It is the first time they have seen full grown trees.)

(It is also the last.)

#silmarillion #fic #maedhros #fingon #caranthir #dior #mandos #irmo #yavanna #alternate universe #horror #dark #undead #body horror #sleep deprivation #there may or may not be more of these

[victoriousscarf]

1, 15, 23!

Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

AU. Longing. Personal as well as external conflict, politics, someone probably dies. Fucked up morality in the name of a cause. Revolution maybe? 

If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

Honestly either Find the Sun or Secrets/Whiskey. Find the Sun was sorta based off the aesthetic of Mad Max Fury Road and has the epic plot to support a whole movie (or mini series???) and Secrets/Whiskey has some pretty intense set pieces and areas that would be fun to see. Like, my soul for Finrod’s speakeasy to be put on film, or Turgon’s. 

Alternatively, Until the Moss would also be sorta amazing to see on screen, like the different house’s and the changes of architecture from city block to city block, and I’m especially thinking of the scene in Ivan’s Casino that would be… it could be so visually interesting ah man that would be great to see on screen. 

If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

I’ve been making noise on and off about completely rewriting the Harry Potter revolution fic because it’s an idea I’m still super into but I’m not sure it works as a beginning anymore. I never really got the revolution off the ground anyway. And I want it to be more streamlined, more brutal from the get go. It was the very first Harry Potter fic I actually put down on paper and it was five years ago and it just withered away and I want to make it shine. 

I’ve also been working on revising Starlight from the Gutter and like yeah I’m making minor edits and shit so I can at least mold it into something that can be finished but like, I’d sorta like to burn that whole story to the ground because frankly I’m still not over the Blue Mountains being a shitty apartment building falling apart, and the dwarves living on top of and around each other while trying to survive, and Thorin’s usual blind stubbornness and brutality keeping them afloat by the barest skin of their teeth as the roaring twenties swirl around them and there’s no glitz here, no beaded fringe no jazz music, simple survival at the bottom of the totem pole. (And the Fellowship in high school was hilarious and i’m not over it, despite every dramatic thing I just said, I still just need the hobbits to be awkward exchange students and Boromir can’t figure out why everyone wants him to be their big brother while Faramir goes oh really you don’t get this huh?) 

#vs does a meme

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Finarfin, Elrond, Gil-galad for the character thoughts meme, if you still want to do it?

Absolutely! I enjoy doing these; it helps me pull together my thoughts on characters without really needing any sort of unifying theme.  I’ll do them one post at a time.

Finarfin

I get the impression that Finarfin is deeply conflict-averse. He’s by nature a mediator and concilator, and he believes in thinking things through and not making hasty decisions; all of which are excellent traits for his later kingship. (The Noldor really should have listened to him. One of the things that stands out to me most about the Return is the way in which Fëanor is trying to drive things along as fast as possible and prevent anyone from stopping and thinking - going by their lack of intel on Morgoth or anything about Beleriand, they don’t even think to bring along a couple palantír, which would be invaluble in war both for surveillance and communications! - and that after the initial rush to Middle-earth, the death of Fëanor, and the capture of Maedhros, they spend about 20 years sitting around doing pretty much nothing until Fingolfin shows up and bails them out.  Just think if they had all spent those 20 years in Valinor building their own boats instead.)

It’s striking just how devastating the Return must have been for Finarfin.  In the space of a couple days, he loses almost all of his family - his father is dead; his brothers have both left; all his children have all left; and his relationship with Eärwen must have been severely damaged for at least some time.

And in some ways leaving the Return right in the middle of it is the worst of both worlds. He’s separated from all his family by his decision to stay, but he’s still not innocent; prior to the Doom, he had been willing to use the ships stolen from Alqualondë, despite the murder of his wife’s people. Once you’ve gone that far, it takes a great deal of moral courage to change your mind, turn back, and say I was wrong - all the more so when you’re doing it alone. (In contast, I’m somewhat amused by The Silmarillion describing Fingon and Turgon as “loath to abandon any task to which they had put their hands until the bitter end” as if it was an inherently good quality.  ‘We may not always make good decisions, but at least we stick to them!’)

Romantic relationship: Finarfin/Eärwen. I think they met because he spent quite a lot of time in Alqualondë, trying to avoid the family drama in Tirion.  And Finwë would doubtless have wanted his sons to become friends with the family of his friend Olwë; Finwë must have been delighted by their wedding.

Favourite non-romantic relationship: I think the one that interests me most is his relationship with Finrod. I really like the way Philosopher at Large portrays it in The Leithian Script, with Finrod’s departure during the Return (with a large part of the House of Arafinwë behind him) driving a serious breach between them; there’s an amazing scene in the later part of that fic where they talk/argue things out.  It works well precisely because there’s such a strong instinct to regard both characters as very nice people without a lot of sharp edges or interpersonal conflict, so looking at that divide adds a lot of dimensions to both their personalities.

In my own head, I don’t regard the conflict as being quite as sharp, but it would virtually impossible for Finarfin not to feel betrayed and abandoned by all his sons and a large part of his people leaving him to go with the Kinslayers.  And all the emotions wrapped up with that would only become more conflicted and painful as he learned of the deaths of his brothers and his sons - the complex web of I loved them and They betrayed me and I was angry, I’m still angry, but I never wanted it to end like this. And it would give him a real ability to empathize with Finrod, later, when Finrod was feeling very much those same emotions over the Fall of Nargothrond.

Unpopular opinion: I think that, at least from the Second Age onward, being King of the Noldor in Valinor didn’t involve doing a great deal. Valinor is, the overwhelming majority of the time, a world with no danger and no scarcity, which removes the necessity for most of the functions of government. I don’t even see it as really having any kind of economic structure that we would recognize - people do what they enjoy, and they give what they produce freely because they enjoy doing it, and there’s always enough. If food is needed, Yavanna creates food.[1] Everyone has projects, but no one has a job in the sense of something you need to do in order to earn a living whether you want to or not, and there’s nothing that could be recognized as economic class.

That doesn’t mean that Finarfin’s kingship is all presiding at banquets - there would be various issues to mediate or coordinate at various times - but on the whole it would have more in common with Mayor of the Shire than, say, King of Gondor.

(This vision is partially influenced by Tolkien’s description of his idea government as being a sort of monarchist anarchism, where you have a king but he doesn’t really do very much.)

Something I wish had/did happen with them in canon: I think he and Eärwen would develop a good relationship with Thingol (Eärwen’s uncle!), once they’d gotten a profuse apology for the whole “getting Finrod killed” thing.

[1] Also, from the fact that the Noldor were able to survive a multi-year journey across the Helcaraxë at all, despite packing very little in the way of provisions, I get the impression that elves don’t need to eat as much or as often as Men do.

#tolkien #the silmarillion #finarfin #valinor #finrod #thingol #valinorean politics #return of the noldor #character asks #character thoughts

[silmarillionwritersguild]

Revolution Challenge Stories and Art

Yesterday, our February challenge, Revolution, closed with a total of 19 stories and artwork contributed! Below is a list of all of the challenge entries for Revolution. All links to stories go the Table of Contents, where you can view ratings, warnings, author's notes, and additional information about the story. If you like a piece, please consider letting the author or artist know. And then he spoke by Hrymfaxe. Knowing his own fate, that he can speak only three times before his death, taking the leap and speaking that first time must have required courage from Huan. (Art) Aurë entuluva! by Lyra. Húrin's famous battle cry makes a fine protest sign. Or maybe just a motivational postcard. (Art) A Different Kind of Peace by Tyelca. During various moments in his life, Celebrimbor is forced to reconsider the meaning of peace. Early Roman Kings by mangacrack. The degree of civilisation of a society can be judged by entering its prisons. Far Too Many of You Dying by StarSpray. After the Noldor depart, Alqualondë is left reeling. Give Me Freedom, Give Me Fire by Fernstrike. In the week after the beginning of Dagor Bragollach, an elfling and his mother flee their settlement near the Fens of Serech. With his father's fate unknown and his home destroyed, the elfling considers what is to come next. Like The Fall Of Night by hennethgalad. Morgoth sells the concept of swords to the elves through his minions. Morning Hath Broken by Kaylee Arafinwiel. One fair morning in Harlindon, Oropher tells the story of the Iathrim's first sunrise to the most precious light of his life - his only remaining son. Musical Interpretation by Erulisse. Feanaro intended his sons to be smiths or artists as he and Nerdanel were. His second son seems to have a different idea and when he spends a day at the Forge, it is a eye-opening experience for both Feanaro and his young son, Maglor. No Small Dreams by just_jenni. After the Noldor are victorious in the Dagor-Nuin-Giliath Finrod and Turgon fall asleep beside the River Sirion while on a camping trip. Ulmo, having come up the river to find them, lays a deep sleep complete with heavy dreams upon them. Each elf will remember that his dream involved building new cities or realms which are places of refuge or retreats for their people during a peaceful time; for at any moment this peace could be broken by Morgoth and his evil army waging war on them once more. This fic deals with the fact that despite being best friends (perhaps even closer than that) since childhood, neither Finrod nor Turgon will disclose each other's dream to one another. I tried to understand why they would not and describe the reasons they might have for not doing so. Obsidian to Cut by LadyBrooke. He is reborn in Valinor, and they assume he died because the Kindi were incapable of standing against Morgoth, especially after their King and Princes were not. (The Noldor forget that their relatives weren't left behind on the March because they were incapable, but because they didn't wish to come.)

The Parting of the Ways by Lyra. On the eve of the Great Journey, Morwë discusses his doubts with Finwë. Standing Aside by Silver Trails. Maedhros must decide what to do after standing aside while his father and brothers burned the boats at Losgar. Those Who Remain by Tyelca. In 1997, Maglor visits the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel shortly after the premiere, and one song in particular catches his attention. Also featuring Fëanorian Stubbornness. Three by the Door by Himring. Elros, future King of Numenor, makes the acquaintance of some of his future subjects--and finds out that some traditions that he thought forgotten have survived the drowning of Beleriand. Uncertain Seas by Grundy. Today changed everything, and Artanis isn't certain of anything now. We Weren't Born to Follow by oshun. The Noldor were always a contentious people. Finwë and Míriel before they leave on the great Trek across the mountains to the sea.

The World Will Know by Lotrfan. written for the Revolution Challenge 2017. The prompt was the song “The World Will Know” from Newsies. “And the world will see that we had to choose that the things we do today will be tomorrow’s news. And the old will fall And the young stand tall And the time is now And the winds will blow And our ranks will grow and grow and grow and so The world will feel the fire And finally know!” Your Image in an Antique Book by IgnobleBard. After the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, Maedhros revisits Fingon's fortress. Some housekeeping details ...

I first want to give an enormous thank you to Lyra, who helped us immensely with both prompts and stamps for the Revolution challenge. The next challenge will be announced on 15 March, which is next Wednesday. I made quite a bit of headway earlier this week on stamps for participants and reviewers, so updated stamp collections should be available by the end of the weekend. If you don't see your updates by Monday, please let me know, but please do not query before then. Late entries are welcome for any challenge; however, late entries do not receive participant stamps for that month. If you want a prompt for Revolution, you can continue to request a prompt on the challenge post or contact the SWG mods. On that note, we had a couple late entries for the Taboo challenge. Please stop by and check out these stories and show the authors some love! If you need an extra incentive, remember that review challenges never expire, so it's not too late to earn the pretty Taboo challenge reviewer stamps. ;) Late Taboo Challenge Stories 100 Days of Silence by just_jenni. Amras, realizing that he cannot bear to continue fighting, ostracizes himself from his family. Choosing to retreat into the forests of Beleriand, he meets someone unexpected. Fire and Worms by Tyelca. The ground is wet and rotten and the fire is wasteful, and madness slowly turns vices into virtues. Or is it the other way around?

#swg challenge #silmarillion #tolkien #tolkien fan fiction #tolkien fan art

[warrioreowynofrohan]

@anduniela: Character thoughts - Orodreth

Because I’ve read the Silm and not much of HoME, I go with the Silm version that he’s Finrod’s younger brother. The information we have on him is somewhat limited, but the first piece we get is that during the Return he’s the only person who’s on Finarfin’s side of wanting everyone to calm down and not do anything rash. So I think he was likely the most reluctant to leave among the Finwëan grandkids, and mostly went along because all of his brothers were doing so and he didn’t want to leave them.

And he probably shouldn’t have gone. He is, to say the least, not very successful in Beleriand. (And I have to say tangentially, his deployment on the front lines is one of the more questionable things we see from Finrod. With the other houses, we see the older members protecting the younger ones. Maedhros puts his younger brothers far to the south, well away from the front lines, and he and Maglor take the most dangerous positions. Fingolfin and Fingon are on the front lines in Hithlum, with Turgon (and possibly Aredhel) in the much safer location of Nevrast. Whereas Finrod’s three younger brothers are on the front lines, directly in front of Angband, while he’s comparatively safe in Nargothrond. Yes, ‘little’ brothers is a relative term when they’re all likely over a thousand years old, and yes, Finrod was doing other valuable things in the way of mediating between Sindar and Noldor and between elves and humans, and yes, he was following Ulmo’s guidance in building Nargothrond, but it’s just a difference that stands out. And I have to think that, after the Bragollach when Angrod and Aegnor died, he was rather haunted by it.)

During the events of the Leithian, Orodreth is thrust into a position of political leadership. But he’s pretty clearly unsuited to it - there’s much else you can say when , twice in the space of less than 50 years, he’s sidelined from power while guests in Nargothrond effectively take over the place (and on both occasions take disastrous actions). I don’t regard Orodreth as morally blameable for that - he was given a job that he’s no good at and he did his best, even if his best wasn’t very good. And notably, outside of military contexts, he can provide moral leadership, as when he prevents Celegorm and Curufin from being murdered. (Would things have been better if he hadn’t? There’s an interesting topic in moral philosophy, but kinslaying tends to lead to bad things so I’ll say he made the right call.) But it’s rather striking that he couldn’t manage to rally anyone in Nargothrond against Celegorm and Curufin when they were outright engaging in kidnapping and plotting forced married (which, in addition to being morally abhorrent, would inevitably have incited war with Doriath had it been successful).

We’re not told anything about his wife, but for reasons that I’ll get into in the Finduilas post, I think that she was likely Sindar or Laiquendi and that Finduilas was born in Beleriand.

Orodreth’s non-participation in the Nirnaeth is interesting because Fingon is High King of the Noldor and, as such, has the authority to order Orodreth and Nargothrond into battle. Which means either that Orodreth refused such an order, or that Fingon didn’t give it. I think the latter is far more likely. Outright refusing an order to fight from a legitimate authority would feel too much like a repeat of the events of the Leithian for me to see Orodreth doing it, and would also require more defiance than he displayed on any other occasion. And Fingon giving such an order would require Fingon to seriously grapple with the fact that Maedhros’ brothers did something atrocious and Maedhros is doing nothing whatsoever about it, and that Fingon would be ordering Orodreth to fight on the side of people who orchestrated his brother’s murder. And grappling with all that is something I think Fingon isn’t willing to do.

(I’m departing from the usual meme format here because there are too many questions in it where I have nothing to say.)

#tolkien #the silmarillion #orodreth #finrod #fingon #nargothrond