No thoughts, head empty.... Just possessed Jade tying me up orz.... I am very sane for that man, I swear—
Tying you up and calling you little shrimpy....... 😵💫 which is such a whiplash because imagine he's so skilled at shibari, locking you up in expert knots, but he sounds and acts just like Floyd. orz Floyd doesn't have the patience to tie you up in the way Jade's tying you up. Aaaaaa he teases you so much. <3 maybe he even bites you and leaves you with a hickey so everyone knows you're his hehe. >:) he's just as devious when he's possessed.
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One reading of Fëanor that I haven't encountered yet but has recently become integral to my interpretation of the character and of the Fëanorian Oath (tho I'm sure I'm bound to find it somewhere if I do better research of academic databases and the Tumblr search system wasn't bullshit) is that Fëanor shouldn't have made the Silmarils in the first place.
One of the reasons I love this idea so much is that we know Fëanor does not care about should do, he cares about what he can do. "Enough" is a limitation, how far he goes, how excellent his craft is is not determined by notions like this. He would've made them anyway, even if Eru himself had told him not to.
I became of this idea when I was reading a series of theology essays about prophets in Jewish religiosity and history, as well as the Man-God relationship by Abraham Joshua Heschel. One of the essays is an address he made during the Civil Rights movement, in defence of it as an accomplice of racial liberation, and in it, while talking about racism and using religion to justify racism in an affront to God, he defines an Idol as "any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not you, is an idol."
Aside from its context, it made me think of how the Fëanorian Oath changes the narrative around the Silmarils. We know they're sacred objects; so sacred Varda herself protected them. In this line, most of the reads/takes/interpretations about Fëanor and the Oath I have encountered revolve around either (a) him being justified in his pursue of what had been stolen from him because they're sacred objects; (b) interpretations about Fëanor's downfall rooted in his pride and direct Catholic/Christian interpretations of Genesis.
Starting with the latter, I've never liked those interpretations not because Tolkien's religiosity did not affect his world building, but because imo they are less concerned with the story in itself and the narrative relationships between themes, characters, actions and environment, and more with making Tolkien stories into fables, as if he was writing the moral reimagining of Paradise Lost. Man's a lot of things but he is a novelist through and through. He's not writing a fable.
Another reason I don't like them is because they forgo simpler, much more tangible interpretations between Tolkien characters and what is Holy, Sacred or Godly in the Legendarium, but also with religion in general: that not bringing harm onto others, because you recognise life in others as a manifestation of what is Holy, isn't about the great moral deeds of misdeeds of the Reprehensible and the Punishable but in the neutral. In the small things. In the not holding yourself as the only measure of the world and being curious enough to be open to others. You don't need to be Great to do this. This isn't about the Great Kings and Great Elves and the Names Which Go Down In History, but the everyday people, concerned with every day things, which is a huge theme in Tolkien.
This is when the Silmarils become idols, this is why he shouldn't have created them even if I know and love that he would've done it anyway. Because even as Varda put her hands on them to protect them, Fëanor is not the owner of the light of the trees. Who is Fëanor to command who gets access to the light of the trees and who doesn't? Who is Fëanor to decide who is worthy of their light and who is not? That is not his prerogative, and never will be. The Oath confirms the opposite, whoever: that the light is his and of whom he decides are worthy, and before the Oath, his resentment against other elves and the Valar about them being taken too.
Which takes me to the the other interpretation. He's justified to go after them because they're religious, sacred objects. And I agree! They are. And they're also still idols. The Fëanorian Oath still turns the light of the trees into something of only some are worthy, concerned with Fëanor and his descendents and no one else. Because if it were for the sake of the holy value of the Trees themselves, why act against other elves? Why make your children swear to take them from, by any means, from even the Valar and Eru himself? He was like this even before Melkor got in the picture.
If Fëanor had kept the secret, like Aulë when he created the dwarves, and Eru had confronted him about it, do you think he would've given them away? I don't think he would've. And even if they weren't sacred, Fëanor still had no special right over the light of the trees, or do great corporations, political tyrants or the like own the sun? Should they own water, the housing markets, food, healthcare, education, and all of the things people need to live?
This is why he shouldn't have created them in the first place. Because even if the elves did not revolve so heavily around God (which is a thing for another time) light isn't his to own. Light does not need to sacred or hold religious significance for it not to be his to own. I assure you that if, in real life, someone began trying to charge us for being under the sun (and honestly some corporations and political decisions already kind of try) we'd be rightfully pissed.
If I was an elf and Fëanor told me I couldn't partake in the light of the Trees because he was better than me, and because he was the only one who could even do a feat like preserving it, I would tell him to fuck off and to realise that if he hasn't noticed, the fruits of the Trees give light for free, what is he gonna do? Build an enclosure around them? lol, lmao even.
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