gwaedhannen
Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.
Tolkien sideblog, still figuring this "actually post to tumblr instead of lurk" thing out. He/him.Main is acretosorienstormfallen on AO3
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The Tengwar are one of the delights of visiting Middle-earth as a fan of Tolkien's work. Whether a serious student of the letters; dabbling with them, Appendix open, on a lazy afternoon; or simply admiring the way they flow across a title page (or the One Ring …), most Tolkien fans find them beautiful and packed with meaning beyond what it seems should be contained within a single letter.
This month (and a bit beyond!), we will feature a prompt per day taken from the Tengwar chart. The prompt will include a graphic of the tengwa and its name in Quenya and English. You can use any part of the prompt: the tengwa itself, the name, the English translation, the graphic, or some other creative interpretation we haven't even dreamed up yet! You may do as many or as few of the daily prompts as you would like. One prompt is worth as much as challenging yourself to do them all, so work at the level and pace that is comfortable for you. (However, there may be a special reward for anyone ambitious enough to try them all!)
Prompts will be posted daily at midnight UTC on our website, Tumblr, Dreamwidth, and the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord. You do not need to do the prompt on the day it was posted; you can go back and do prompts you missed or do them out of order.
In honor of Poetry Month, we will have a special stamp for fanworks that are or include poetry. In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 June 2024. Note that the deadline is a month later than usual since the challenge runs longer than usual. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.
Thank you to Cuarthol and Anérea for the gorgeous banners and stamps this month!
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How much more deranged would Middle-Earth be if Tolkien was given access to modern scholarship re:the ageless depth of trees?
It’s true that by the end of the Third Age, no trees in Eregion remember the elves that walked there. But there’s an ancient yew in Rivendell that Gil-Galad planted, a clone of one of the old trees of Lindon, that’s still thriving when Elrond leaves his home. It’s seen elven kings and laughing lords and harried messengers. Though trees don’t care about such things, it’s nice to be seen.
There’s a golden aspen grove between Lothlorien and Fangorn. The elves say Nimrodel planted it before her name was Nimrodel, before continents sank, when the forests were home only to a handful who loved them more than paradise.
By the shores of the Mirrormere is another yew. In a little known tradition, kept by one dwarf alone, every Durin plants a few of its seeds, and one of those trees always lives long enough to see his next self.
There’s a cypress in the port of Umbar. Locals say the lord in Mordor planted it the first time he visited (he was still in the habit of planting trees back then). It lived past several of his deaths but faltered, finally, beneath the ashes of his last, worst destruction—more than four thousand years later.
On a tiny island in the sea is a little cluster of spruce trees—some scrap of drowned Beleriand too holy, for one reason or another, to falter. It’s the same tree—when one falters a new coppice comes to take its place, growing out of the same root system. There’s a betting pool among the deep sea fishers of the Falathrin about whose grave lies beneath.
Much is made of the White Tree of Gondor, but on the hillsides in Ithilien, dangerously close to Minas Ithil, are gnarled olive trees that witnessed the Last Alliance. Faramir is inordinately fond of them without knowing the reason why.
Ulmo keeps a garden of sea sponges. The oldest didn’t just see Númenor founded and drowned, it saw the bones of the very first second-comers. (Ossë collects many things.) It’s been… 10,000 years? 12,000? Sponges don’t keep time, they just remember.
Ulmo also keeps a bed of sea grass older than the destruction of the Lamps, but he doesn’t mention that to other people; it’s just for him.
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The Chickens of Manwe, seen here pursuing a servant of Melkor.
Which would be the best/worst idea?
(Leaving out Geese, because I've already done those and I suspect geese have an unfair advantage in polls.) (Also left out the completely flightless options — penguins, ostriches, cassowaries — because of the sky connection, but they do say all birds, so maybe they should be included…)
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i have not booped half of you as well as i would have liked, and i have booped half of you half as well as you deserve.
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Ónen i-Boop Edain, ú-chebin boop anim.
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yet booped ye may be, and booped ye shall be: by mutual and by follower and by random;
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maybe a silly one: thoughts on crablor?
Crab-Lore
For those who have yet to encounter him, “Crablor” is a portmanteau of “Crab” and “Maglor”, i.e., the crab Maglor became after his many ages of wandering the shores in pain and regret. Crablor is fanon. It was born here.
As @faustandfurious wrote in that very post there is no canon about Maglor’s eventual fate. (You can read about the various ways Maglor ended, or didn’t, here).
But the idea of Elven crabification in general does have some basis in canon!
In his writings on Elven fading in Morgoth’s Ring, Tolkien talks about the fëa (spirit) consuming the hröa (body):
As ages passed the dominance of their fëar ever increased, 'consuming' their bodies (as has been noted). The end of this process is their 'fading', as Men have called it; for the body becomes at last, as it were, a mere memory held by the fëa; and that end has already been achieved in many regions of Middle-earth, so that the Elves are indeed deathless and may not be destroyed or changed.
The History of Middle-earth Vol. 10: Morgoth’s Ring, The Later Quenta Silmarillion, ‘Laws B’ (p. 219)
This was not, however, Tolkien’s last thought on the matter. In a marginal note on the entry for hröa published in the linguistic journal Parmasan Eldalamberon (Vol. 12), Tolkien revisits the metaphysical implications of Elven fading:
What of a hröa that resists fading? It is not then consumed by the fëa, but compressed by the process of containing it; by which it will in time be overcome, though at great expense to the strength of the fëa, for this at last takes possession of the changed hröa as its ‘casement’.
What?
This note Tolkien clearly did not intend to be seen or interpreted by anyone but himself, and its meaning is rather opaque. What he seems to be describing, however, is a slow process of shrinking and shapeshifting, from body to “casement”, in cases where a hröa resists fading.
Casement as in… shell? As in… exoskeleton? Elves who resist fading become crabs?
Okay, so that probably wasn’t what Tolkien meant, but I can find nothing to contradict it. Let us assume, for our amusement, that the hröa - casement transformation is, or can be, into a crab.
The next question is: Might Maglor have resisted fading?
If one imagines his fate in the published Silmarillion as self-punitive (a reading supported by the alternate versions in which he does in fact commit suicide like Maedhros), it would makes sense that he might resist fading as a sort of release from his punishment. Or perhaps the metaphysics of the Oath had some interference in his ability to fade in the usual fashion.
In which case, Maglor may very well have been one of the Elves who became a crab. Or something like it.
#elves are not immune to carcinization#time for crab#silmarillion#tolkien#maglor#character meta#reblogging someone else
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i do think there the flavor of "feanor is horrified by his sons' deeds" is underexplored
#ohhhhh yeah#“we destroyed ourselves for you father”#“we made ourselves into Morgoth's tools for you father”#“isn't this what you wanted? aren't you proud?”#“isn't this what we swore with you?”#silmarillion#tolkien#feanor#sons of feanor#character meta#reblogging someone else
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Well, with my copy of The Peoples of Middle-earth, I’ve now had a look at the alternate version of the account of Losgar (the one where Amrod is burned to death) and I have quite a few thoughts on it.
1) It removes one element that is very dear to the hearts of many people in the fandom, that of Maedhros being the only person among the Fëanorians to oppose the burning of the ships, and specifically remembering Fingon. In this version, most of the Fëanorian armies are unaware of the ship-burning until it has already happened, as Fëanor sets the ships afire in secret with the help only of Curufin and a few others. (Further confirmation of Curufin being terrible.) We do have Fëanor saying, after the burning, “Now at least I am certain that no faintheart or traitor among you will be able to take back even one ship to the succour of Fingolfin and his folk.” (See how Fëanor’s got things twisted around again - he’s describing any refusal to betray the rest of the Noldor as being treason.) It’s certainly possible to fanon that line into Fëanor being worried that Maedhros will go back to get Fingon, but that’s just fanon; there’s no textual indication towards it.
So the effect of this change is to make Maedhros stand out less from the other Fëanorians, and to make most of the Fëanorians less personally guilty of the ship-burning than in the Silm version.
2) Most of the Fëanorian armies are “dismayed” by the ship-burning when they awake to find it done, but not out of either value for the works of the Teleri or concern for the Fingolfinians. Their concerns are far more materially focused: not only would the ships have continued to be “useful for further journeying” in search of better ports further south, Fëanor hadn’t unpacked them first. He burned all their luggage! Food, clothing, tents, tools, objects of sentimental value - they’ve just lost most of it!
This is hilarious to me. I really hadn’t thought Fëanor could get more impractical than leaving behind two-thirds of his military forces when facing an enemy of great power and unknown capabilities, but that’ll show me! Fëanor can always get more impractical. I’m at a loss for words to describe how ridiculously dumb this is. So now you’re in an unfamiliar land, without backup, also without supplies, and without intelligence (either military or, apparently, otherwise), following someone who has, to all appearances, completely lost it.
Fëanor’s lucky he made it to the balrogs because seriously, this is why fragging was invented.
3) Nobody notices that Amrod is missing until the morning (even though the burning wakes them up in the middle of the night). The passage says that Amrod intended to sail the ship back to Valinor and return to Nerdanel and that Fëanor suspected this, but also that Fëanor was “dismayed” to hear that Amrod had been sleeping in the first ship he set fire to. (One would think!) Which indicates that another reason for the ship-burning was to prevent Amrod from turning back.
(My usual view is that, of the Fëanorians, only Maedhros [and of course Celebrimbor] have any chance of returning from the Halls of Mandos, because the others showed no inclination towards recognizing that their actions were wrong. But in this version I would obviously make an exception for Amrod; it’s likely that he would return to life at some point, since he was already regretting his decisions very early on and planning to act on that.)
4) This version makes it very clear, if the Oath didn’t already, that the relationship between Fëanor and his sons is deeply unhealthy. After Amras calls out his father for burning his brother to death, “no one dared speak to Fëanor again of this matter”. If your father can burn one of your brothers to death and the response of most of you is to say nothing about it - and afterwards, still stay committed to carrying out his goals - that is a downright disturbing level of control.
5) Personally, I don’t like this version as much as the one in The Silmarillion (despite my amusement at Fëanor burning all their supplies), primarily for practical reasons. (The Maedhros stuff is also a consideration, but less so for me because in my view Maedhros’ reform during the years prior to the Nirnaeth proceeds from and is the result of Fingon’s rescue, rather than due to Maedhros being a better person than his brothers from the start.)
Specifically, I simply don’t find it credible that an elf could burn to death in a boat, on the ocean, without at some point waking up and jumping in the water. And elves are incredibly hardy, so Amrod would be able to heal from even fairly severe burns if he did so. Yes, people in enclosed rooms can fall unconscious from smoke inhalation and die from burns without awakening, but he’s not in an enclosed room, he’s in a boat, on the ocean, in the open air, where there’s practically always a breeze, so the density of smoke wouldn’t be as great…and if that boat was the first one set on fire then he’d feel it before the smoke buildup became too much… It just doesn’t work for me, to think that Amrod could burn to death without either Amrod himself or anyone else noticing.
So I think I’ll stick with the Silm version as my personal canon, but this did give a lot of interesting insights into Tolkien’s ideas on Losgar, and his ideas around Fëanor’s relationship with his sons. And confirms my personal view that Silmarils > kids in Fëanor’s values, if he’s able to both 1) not openly react to the news that he’s burned one of his sons to death and 2) prevent anyone else from ever mentioning it to him.
#silmarillion#tolkien#amrod#amras#feanor#maedhros#character meta#narrative meta#reblogging someone else
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undercat-overdog replied to your post: untitled celebrimbor fic, hopefully to be…
Can I just say I love a Celebrimbor who was born in Beleriand? I think it makes the way he relates to both Feanor and the Blessed Realm really interesting, having never met/seen him/it.
This is actually one of the big reasons I go for this interpretation! I’ve mentioned reconciling contradictory canon (although tbf the best way of doing that would actually be to have Celebrimbor’s mother be Daeron’s Telerin daughter who he parted with on the Great Journey - I had a post about this recently), and also letting the Sindar have partial claim to one of the great craftsmen.
But the thing that really interests me about it is exactly that - Celebrimbor, shouldering Feanor’s legacy when he’s never so much as met the man, growing up with the story of their flight from Aman and the Oath and the Silmarils and all that family history hanging over him when all he’s known is Beleriand. I like the dynamic it makes for (I like, generally, the dynamic that is the children of the Exiles becoming the leaders of Middle-earth in the Second Age) and it’s such a minority interpretation that I feel like it lets me tread new ground, while there’s already a lot of angles on Celebrimbor who was born in Aman.
I actually wanted to see if I could make him quite young when they came to Nargothrond, but the timelines didn’t work out unless I wanted him still underage when he renounced his father. Which… you could make that work, but there’d be a whole host of consequences to take into account, plus I ended up feeling sorrier for Curufin than I was really comfortable with!
#pay no attention to the lack of a Caranthir post#I got distracted by reading the entire last third of Dungeon Meshi yesterday#no I'm not ok#I'm perpetually undecided on brimbo's backstory but these are some very compelling arguments for Beleriand-born#and I could read Undercat and Kaz talk meta at each other for hours and never get bored#silmarillion#lord of the rings#tolkien#celebrimbor#curufin#curufin's spouse#sauron#character meta#reblogging someone else
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#silm#meta#the thing is i'm not even sure the silmarils burning them#would necessarily break curufin from that crafted tower of delusions#because he could equally rationalise it away#of course it burns them because it was hallowed#and they have done terrible deeds in pursuit of them#but maybe they were wrong#and his father would have found a way to not do all the terrible things#and yet win the jewels back#and eonwe's words re. dior & the sack of the havens#esp being the reasons why they forfeit the silmarils#would simply reinforce that belief#that feanor would have found another way#the same would hold true even if they got hold of the silmaril pre-nirnaeth#after finrod's death and luthien and beren#because they've committed terrible and contemptible crimes then including murdering a close cousin#who gave them refuge in his city#now if they had got one immediately after alqualonde#and it burned them#that i think would have destroyed curufin completely#because feanor led that#and this would mean he had forfeit the right to his own creation through his deeds#that would have been world ending#(the thing abt someone so enmeshed in their identity#is that they can simply invent more lies#to protect their conceptualisation of the world and themselves) (tags from @tobermoriansass)
some meta about those disaster boys
The fundamental difference between Celegorm and Curufin is that Curufin believes he is right. And Celegorm tolerates this, because he knows his brother needs to believe it. He won’t bring it up when they argue unless Curufin pushes him so far that anger totally overtakes the genuine care Celegorm feels for him underneath all the tangled and twisted bullshit of their relationship (however you choose to read it).
Curufin holds near-unshakeable belief in these things:
- His father was right, in everything
- The ends always justify the means
- Anything done in pursuit of the Oath cannot be morally condemned
Of course, this means a hell of a lot of denial. It’s not easy to maintain such a belief structure while actively doing such terrible things, and that’s an important part of why his interpersonal relationships tend to break down (see also: Celebrimbor); he’s lying to himself at least as much as to everyone else around him.
Curufin’s relationship with Fëanor never moved beyond the idealisation phase. You know what I’m talking about: the stage in a child’s life where they genuinely believe their parent is the best in the world and can do no wrong; an image generally slowly tarnished during the teenage years, or shattered by some defining event. As the favourite son, striving to be like his father in all things, Curufin had every reason to keep this image alive far longer than his brothers. And let’s not forget that (aside from Ambarussa of course) he was the youngest of all of them when Fëanor died.
I’ve read first-hand accounts of the anger some people feel upon finding out that the parents they lost as children or young adults had imperfections and faults (the discovery of a letter from a father to his illicit lover, for example). The idealised image of a parent, frozen in time by their death, is a brittle and fragile thing; when broken (as is almost inevitable), it requires hard psychological work – and a good deal of inner bravery – to face up to the truth and reconcile the pieces into a more realistically flawed memory. Would Curufin be willing or able to put in that sort of work, with the value of the Oath tied to that golden image of his father, and both in turn ruling the course of his own life? I think not. He would choose instead to protect that conceptualisation with layers of half-truths and amoral reasoning, and lock it away in a box labelled “fundamentally true and right” without looking at any of it too closely. And if anyone dared to question such a conclusion, it would trigger anger on a level vicious enough to prevent him from having to actually think about it.
Imagine building your life upon something, having it guide (and force) every one of your deeds, leading you down a path from which there can be no return – only to question it and discover that it was wrong all along. Better, surely, to never question it at all. (This, incidentally, is why I believe that Curufin would have been the one most broken by finding that the Silmarilli burned them all by the end (or even from the start.. but that’s a whole other meta)).
It is easier for Curufin to tell himself that the Oath is both intrinsically right and worth anything and everything to achieve; then he does not have to question any of his deeds – or, for that matter, feel any kind of guilt for them.
Celegorm, for his part, thinks this is one of the most irritating things about Curufin. They don’t talk about it, because Celegorm knows that without that convoluted web of circular reasoning and denial his brother would simply break, but he thinks it’s ridiculous for Curufin to have such a self-righteous stick up his ass over something that’s clearly morally grey at best.
Not that Celegorm feels any guilt either, of course; he chose the path of simply not caring about whether they happen to be right or wrong, and (most of the time) it works.
I believe that one of the reasons Celegorm has a more realistic image of Fëanor in his mind is that he was the one of his brothers to be least affected by his father’s favouritism and the subconscious competition for his approval that went on between the others. My personal headcanons for their Valinor-era family dynamics could make up several metas on their own, but an important part of my interpretation is that Celegorm was always different enough from his brothers that he wasn’t vying for the same position in his father’s eyes that the others mostly seemed to be (example: how do you think Maedhros felt about Curufin being the obvious favourite, right down to his name, when he himself was originally named as his father’s heir and probably raised as such until his little brother came along?).
I think Celegorm knew almost from the start that the Oath had the potential to lead them to terrible things. But where Curufin chose denial, Celegorm never saw the point in pretending that they weren’t all slowly becoming the monsters they claimed to fight.
Imagine Celegorm, at Alqualondë. The first time he killed – of course, he had taken animal life many times before, but with respect and the blessing of a Vala; this was more jarring than that, up close and personal and wrong. The hot blood on his hands felt so terribly different from every other time he had felt the same sensation, and the life draining from the blue eyes in front of him tugged on his fëa in a way that made him feel sick.
He was not Celegorm the Cruel then.
Celegorm was always the most free with his emotions, never bothering to hide what he felt or wanted – and so I think he would have instinctively felt the damage that Alqualondë did to them. He knew there could be no going back.
And so, he chose to embrace the direction they were headed rather than pretending it wasn’t happening – enabling him to keep that brash freedom of emotion which was always so intrinsic to him. His character stayed the same, bright and wild and expressive, yet filtered now through dark, cracked glass rather than the clear crystal of Valinor.
The delight Celegorm takes in the atrocities he and his brothers commit is a brittle, angry thing; the inverse of Curufin’s righteousness, a little too wild – and his sanity, too, is somewhat fragile for having chosen such enjoyment of cruelty. It damages his capacity for empathy and makes him more selfish than he used to be; just as Curufin’s self-absorbed denial turns him inconsiderate and vicious.
Celegorm knows they are wrong. I doubt he would be surprised at all when the Silmarilli burned to the touch. But then, Curufin might be surprised on the surface.. yet beneath all those layers of lies there would be an unacknowledged, long-silenced part of him which would have expected it too.
#ok this is more Curufin than Celegorm but the one I have for Curufin day is mostly Celebrimbor#and I have no idea what I'm posting for Caranthir >_>#but yes Celegorm as the guy who knows what they're doing is wrong but doesn't care#(or is very good at deluding himself into believing he doesn't care)#and Curufin as the guy who's deluded himself into believing what they're doing is right#silmarillion#tolkien#celegorm#curufin#character meta#reblogging someone else
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Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?
askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like
(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)
i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads
which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter
it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272
it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all
and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to
i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet
rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare
(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)
(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)
probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them
like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy
(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)
(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)
even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to
i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident
and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection
‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!
another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing
other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could
this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor
something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins
and...
first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more
(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)
more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left
(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)
(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)
which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them
there’s just so little of him left but the weapon
he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins
not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once
and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps
... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here
just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either
no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?
the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -
it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat
they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope
but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one
yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction
the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...
that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice
like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds
... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger
what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?
don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear
some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all
and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain
(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)
(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)
i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond
he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him
but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’
(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)
(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)
more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror
in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them
that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands
as for maglor...
i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad
but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge
it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons
horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!
it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve
and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me
so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them
an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects
maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin
seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me
the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them
there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay
they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain
he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can
(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)
(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)
however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this
but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created
and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable
look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat
but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?
that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian
we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence
(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)
like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them
(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)
elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home
... right?
it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice
then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them
the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him
instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through
... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most
i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives
they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t
speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations
because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke
that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain
(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)
(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)
(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)
(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)
not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past
i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy
no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer
compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea
and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic
honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way
but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me
which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage
it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently
i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist
in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing
they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification
they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world
and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood
nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams
there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer
as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor
(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)
but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves
they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage
he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less
and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be
... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out
the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of
and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -
i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can
they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light
and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality
it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved
even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor
not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands
it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one
that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other
and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness
but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out
well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell
it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial
still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away
#I don't vibe with all of this but I do with a decent amount#(I think the fandom tends to not treat the cultural replacement factor as nearly as horrific as it is)#silmarillion#tolkien#maglor#elrond#elros#character meta#reblogging someone else
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I read your thing about the elkids finding Maedhros's PTSD symptoms familiar because of Elwing and now I'm thinking thoughts about Celebrian. can't decide if this is sad or comforting- at least Elrond has some prior experience in the area of loved ones and trauma, I guess?
Ohhh no, that is kind of sad. Especially considering Celebrian was such a beacon of joy and light for Elrond when he first met her? But I feel like if he learned anything from growing up around Feanorians, it was that there are a lot of layers to a person.
Maedhros was inherently a good person who wanted to do good things - by the time he meets the elkids, that’s buried under a lot of layers of trauma and murder and hopelessness and guilt. But little nuggets of eldest-brother-responsibility and nurturing-instinct and… dare I say conflict resolution? (As much as he ultimately failed at resolving conflict in essentially every single circumstance where it was relevant save one, it does seem like something he kept coming back to.)
Eventually Elrond would be able to understand that even a bad person like Maedhros has become has something very very good buried inside him.
And so when Celebrian is in so much pain, and loses her will to continue living, I like to think that Elrond is still able to see traces of the happier, more radiant Celebrian underneath her trauma. She’s been changed, but everything that he has loved and that has brought him comfort is still present. It’s just a matter of healing the wounds that have obfuscated that. He has experience with the pain, not just of trauma, but of the manner in which that trauma interfere’s with someone’s identity - and how painful that is to endure. Of course he will still grieve, deeply, but passing into the West is a natural course for Celebrian’s recovery.
Tl;dr that’s an Interesting Thought anon, thank you so much for bringing it up! I feel like I recently saw someone mention something about Maedhros and Celebrian meeting in the Halls of Mandos and talking things out, which is a whole other angle to consider. Personally I enjoy thinking that Celebrian was never a huge fan of Maedhros? I picture her and Elrond having very calm philosophical arguments about the Feanorians, where she’s mostly like “I just want you to understand that they murdered people you loved and impacted your life in a /negative way/ and were not necessarily a healthy presence in your life?”
“Yes, but as I grew I came to an understanding with them, and learned a lot from them, and I know that they felt trapped into those evil actions, it wasn’t of their nature. And that was a valuable lesson for me to learn!”
“I still don’t think you’re really appreciating how much Stockholm Syndrome is a thing.”
“But Stockholm Syndrome /wasn’t/ a thing that really applies, in this situation, I came to love them because I made my own evaluations of their characters as a young adult, and I felt genuine compassion for them.”
“Forgiving the only adults in your life for being murderers because they are the /only adults in your life/ is not the same as having a healthy relationship!”
I picture her for the most part respecting Elrond’s connection to Mae&Mags, but also quietly really not liking them for her entire life. That’s why I’d love to read more about them meeting in happy elf afterlife, it would be a lot of her going “I just want you to know that everything you did was absolutely unconscionable” and Maedhros going “yes I agree entirely I’m a monster.” And eventually she goes from really disliking him from just thinking of him as really really really really sad. Idk, I’ve gone way off topic at this point, time to cut myself off.
#think I'll do a thing where I reblog old meta posts for Feanorian week since my writing projects didn't pan out#and yeah Celebrian being a fan of M&M is a pretty common fanfic thing that I don't really get#remember who her parents are?#who she lived with (as far as we know) for 3000 years?#lmao at that “you're a monster” “yeah I know” exchange though#silmarillion#lord of the rings#tolkien#maedhros#elrond#celebrian#character meta#reblogging someone else
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apparently today is the anniversary of Sauron’s fall in LotR so… RIP pal, you tried your best and it wasn’t enough I suppose ❤️
#a very happy Shame Sauron Day to all who celebrate#which better be all of you#lord of the rings#lotr#tolkien#sauron#celebrimbor#reblogging someone else
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I kinda feel like with how much Elrond gets depicted as the heir to Doriath or Gondolin or the House of Fëanor, or all or none of the above, we sometimes forget about his human half.
(or human 3/8ths, whatever)
On Balar, did he ever wander among the escapees from Dor-lómin, the fled from Brethil, the survivors from Sirion, learning their songs and stories and hopes and griefs? Did he find his childhood playmates, now grown? Did any survive? Does he remember them?
Did he ever stand beside his brother as Elros gave mighty speeches of unity and the strength of the Secondborn? Did he, in battle or in uneasy alliance, meet the descendants of those who betrayed Maglor and his kin, who enslaved Tuor and his kin?
Did he ever brave the moonless dark of Taur-nu-Fuin, seeking the ruins of Ladros or the mire that was once Tarn Aeluin? Did he ever wander the scorched plains and shattered encampments of Estolad? Did he see the Hill of Slain and guess which skeleton may have been more recent than the rest? Was another skeleton holding its hand, an arrowhead in its skull?
Did he grudge Elros the Bow of Bregor or Dramborleg or the Ring of Barahir? Did he think to keep relics for himself, if immortal memory could not suffice? Did he know the Bow's name?
In Lindon, did he befriend the Men who refused Númenor? Did he live alongside them for centuries as they lived and died? Did he seek out Dor Firn-i-Guinar, if it may have survived?
Did he find it?
Did he send letters to the West through Númenor, seeking the truth of Tuor's fate? Did he ask after the ancient legends and myths of the House of Bëor, now only remembered by Finrod Atandil? Did he befriend the ancestors of the Dunlendings, distant kin of the House of Haleth? Did he speak against the deforestation of Enedwaith and Minhiriath, their homeland? Did he welcome those who fled into Imladris, if they sought it?
Did he visit Númenor? Did its kings listen to his counsel? When did they stop?
Did he welcome Elendil as a kinsman, as a nephew, or as a stranger?
(I could go on into the Third Age but I think this is getting long enough already.)
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[Excerpt 6 from Sorrow Beyond Words: Collected Testimony of the War of Wrath, 4th Edition; edited by Elrond Peredhel.]
“It—it would have been easier, I think, if the rest of Beleriand was as dead as Anfauglith. Not just easier to march through. I don’t miss the mosquito-wetas. But—it’s one thing to march through a choking wasteland when you know there’s no refilling your canteen 'til you get to the other side. It’s another thing entirely to walk through thirty leagues of verdant wetlands and every single spring and lake you find is so clear you can see all the skeletons at the bottom. Every fucking time you get your hopes up that maybe, maybe, this one will be drinkable—but—but…
“Not all the skeletons were at the bottom. Some of them still almost looked like people, too.
“No food, either. Fruit trees? Pah. Every apple that isn’t rotten is full of worms and wasps. Herbs? Poison. Roots? Also poison. Game? You fucking guessed it, poison. Or viruses, whatever. Sorry that we never really had the leisure time to reinvent microscopic biology here.
“It, well—it wasn’t entirely ruined, I guess? He left Hithlum mostly untarnished to keep the Easterlings a little happy. Heh, not happy enough apparently to stop most of them from jumping to Elros’s banner the moment they could. Nan Dungortheb was as much a pain in his arse as it had been in ours, especially once Mindeb gave up holding it back. We think the spiders ate a Balrog, actually. Good for them. He never touched the ruins of the Havens either. Guess he liked the statement that sent better than more despoiling.
“But, uh, in some ways that was more disheartening. The little bits which were still standing, or seemed to still be standing. There were still lots of too-clear pools. But you’d come across the ruins of a homestead with the garden only overgrown with normal weeds, or an orchard where the fruit still smells fine; and then you’d look twenty feet away and see what's left of the former inhabitants and another fucking field of razorwheat and another cloud of hornets that want to lay eggs in your eyes and a pool that only isn’t clear because Glaurung shit in it eighty years ago. That’s worse, if you were wondering.”
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does the Oath of Feanor work as a magical compulsion, or does it have magical properties, and its consequences real?
yes, because the magic of Arda is also based on words of power, and it would be dissatisfying and limiting to assume that somehow that power doesn't work in this specific instance. no, because even if Feanor is the one speaking, not even his power could bend the fate of elves to that extent. yes, because the fate of any one people can be bent, delayed, or weirdly modified until an oath is fulfilled; in LOTR, the ghosts of the path of the dead prove it. no, because Manwe and Varda would not feel bound to enforce an oath of death with them as witnesses, and it goes against the rules of oathing. yes, because the enforcer is Eru, they just stand as witnesses and do not have the power to release the swearers as Eru would. no, because we don't even know if Eru accepted that oath. yes, because if the oath was invalid from the start, it would be beyond callous of Manwe and Varda not to inform the swearers and allow the consequences of the oath to happen. no, because a magical compulsion would remove or to an extent at least lessen responsibility of actions taken in its pursuit. yes, because the author of the story acknowledges a certain "will" of the oath by making it wake or sleep with active verbs. no, because even swearing without additional magic on top can feel like a compulsion to do things or to keep going that otherwise would not exist or not be felt by a given swearer. yes, because no matter what the everlasting darkness is or does, it can be real independently from any other prior compulsion to act; in other words, there may not be a magical property to the oath, but its called consequences for the swearers are very real. no, because there's several slightly different versions of the oath across the texts, and it's impossible to do a literal, word for word reading of its lines if it's possible to recite it slightly differently at a given time. yes, because the only valid version is the original pronounced by Feanor in Tirion, you can't wiggle out of that one. no, because who's to say that was recorded correctly, it's far too poetic for a sudden decision. yes, because who's to say that Feanor couldn't whip out all that via improvisation, I bet he could. yes, because other characters beyond the sons of Feanor treat the oath as something absolutely serious and real, and that includes Finrod in speaking to Andreth, when he says that Eru's name is not called upon even in jest, as well as Melian, when pointing out the strong forces awakened by involving that power. no, because neither of them can talk to Eru anyway. yes, because it's narratively more satisfying to imagine characters morally struggle against something that is eventually unbreakable and unavoidable like in any good tragedy. no, because it's narratively more satisfying to imagine characters do it to themselves and compromise with who they are out of family loyalty. yes, because the curse of Mandos actively turns it against the swearers into a betraying force, a consequence that wouldn't otherwise be a given, that is, nothing says that everything they start well would have finished badly and that the oath would have led them to defeat, and if it weren't magical before Mandos' addition, it is now. no, because Amrod's death in a draft would prove it breakable through his (admittedly only guessed) desire to turn back. yes, because he still died in the process, aka the everlasting darkness claimed him for being an oathbreaker. no, because how is it possible that it's simultaneously unbreakable and broken. yes, because the fate of arda and that of elves is inscribed within the eternal paradox of everything being predicted and everything being free will, and that will never be solved, neither regarding the fate of the elves nor the oath of Feanor. no, because the oath is a narrative device. yes, because the oath is a narrative device. three hundred more lines.
hope this helps. hope it doesn't. your pick.
#lol#now the real question is whether any of Feanor's sons knew the words before joining their father in swearing it#and also why they included “ere Day's ending” when days didn't exist yet#and whether that means the oath should've been broken through failure as soon as the sun rose the first time and Morgoth wasn't dead#silmarillion#tolkien#narrative meta#feanor#sons of feanor
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