#little tyelpe just wants to be friends with all kinds of people | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thistleking · 2 years

Text

Fëanorion Spouse OC: Curufin's Wife/Celebrimbor's Mother

First up we’ve got Sartissë Falassendil, called Ardemmacto. Her names are in reference to her personality and interests. Sartissë is her amilessë, meaning “one who is steadfast, trusty, loyal”, and Falassendil is her ataressë and means “friend/lover of the wave-beaten shore”. Neither really suited her though, and so she goes by the epessë she earned as a young adult! Ardemmacto means “one who creates pictures/images of Arda”. She’s a cartographer/oceanographer. I couldn't find the specific job title but she makes sea charts!

As you can probably guess, Ardemmacto is Telerin! The initial idea for her was more Jenny’s than mine, but we developed all of these characters through conversations so ultimately she’s ours. We were discussing Quenya-Sindarin name translation and Jenny brought up the one (bad) draft where Celebrimbor was Telerin, and how that still influenced the published Silm because the form of silver used in his name “Telpe” is specifically Telerin Quenya! Noldorin Quenya would have been Tyelpe. This got the ball rolling on my favourite kind of Silm speculation: how can we make things just a little bit worse? Being half-Teler gives Celebrimbor something in common with his Arafinwion cousins as additional motivation for disowning his father’s family, and makes the kinslaying at Alqualondë very literal. So!! Curufin marries a Telerin woman, how the hell do we fit this into canon?

Well, first we had to work out what kind of person he would marry. Like all of Finwë’s descendants, Curufin has - to put it politely - a very strong personality, and the only options are really someone who can match him or someone who folds like wet cardboard, and the latter isn’t any fun at all. Ardemmacto has a keen sense of justice/fairness, and a proclivity towards action. She's very passionate and very stubborn and very kind—very "I will make you get better if I have to drag you kicking and screaming to it." They’re a couple who are similar in personality but have completely different interests, though she’s definitely more empathetic than her husband. Ardemmacto’s family aren’t noble, and they don’t hold any social power. She’s from a town just a bit outside of Alqualonde (I still haven’t named it, but that doesn’t really matter lmao), and is utterly exhausted by the political maneuvering inherent to living in Tirion. She's someone who can challenge Curufin in everyday life, without setting off any kind of inferiority complex because she's not challenging him in his own craft or like, questioning his social position and setting off his middle child syndrome.

They meet as kids. Curufin wanders off to sulk on a rock during a family trip to visit Arafinwë’s family, he’s the equivalent of 12ish and does not want to hang out with his brothers and cousins. Ardemmacto walks up to him like "Hi you're in my way. I’m trying to draw a map of the beach and I need to draw the rock you're on." Then they're shitty tweens at each other for a bit. They become best friends over the weeks of that visit, and the subsequent trips over the following decades. It’s a lot of infodumping about their respective interests, dunking each other in the surf, and some mutual light antagonism. Ardemmacto likes Curufin for his charisma and dedication to the things he loves, whether that’s his craft or the people he cares about! He likes her for similar reasons and that she doesn’t give a shit that he’s a prince or Fëanor’s son. Like, she knows who he is, but emotionally he’s just her friend Curufin.

Like any good friends-to-lovers story they gotta have an oh moment. Ardemmacto’s is on her first visit to Tirion. They’re young adults by this point, over a century old and most of the way through their apprenticeships. She wants some new surveying gear and goes up to Curufin and puts in an order. Now I gotta go on a tangent about my interpretation of social classes in pre-Darkening Tirion, namely that there isn’t much distinction between people! Aman is a post-scarcity utopia, people aren’t competing for resources or exploiting the labour of others. Finwë became king because people like him, he’s good at organizing people and resolving conflicts when they don’t involve him personally. But, with all this said, there is still some social faux pas for commissioning work from the royal family when there’s plenty of craftspeople around who are just as capable of making what you need. Unless you’re related to them or are Ingwë or Olwë, you wouldn’t go to Fëanor or his kids for something you could get from someone else.

Ardemmacto? Not only is she not related to the royal family or anyone of social capital in Tirion, she's a nobody from Alqualonde, and she walks right up to Curufin and commissions him and he drops whatever he's doing to fill her order. She doesn’t even realize that this is weird until other people start side-eying her for presuming to request work from the grandson of the High King. At which point she has a little breakdown about how her best friend is actually a Very Important Person, and not only does he choose to spend his time with her, he’s dedicated enough to their friendship to set aside his work for her whims. Then she realizes that she loves him.

Curufin, of course, has been in love with her for years and has been too scared to say anything because she’s his best friend, his only friend who doesn’t compare him to his family or care that he’s of the house of Finwë, and What If He Fucks That Up.

They end up in a stalemate of mutual pining, neither of them wanting to shift the suddenly precarious balance of their relationship. However!!! Ardemmacto knows next to no-one in Tirion. She's gonna stay with Curufin and his family, they had already decided on this plan back when she first said she would be visiting. Curufin picks up that Ardemmacto is behaving differently, but he thinks that it’s because she's in a new city and not only has to navigate Noldorin society, but she has to do it as the guest of the royal house. Meanwhile she IS acting weird but it’s because she's having a crisis over realizing that her best friend is hot and that she's going to be living with him for a few weeks.

Thankfully, living with Curufin means living with his parents and most of his siblings, which means that relatives can meddle. We haven’t decided on who, but one of his brothers is gonna work out what’s going on and tell Curufin. He has his own mini-crisis and then resolves to confess his feelings on the day Ardemmacto leaves - so that she isn’t stuck in his house if it goes badly. She’s initially disbelieving, because he hasn’t been acting any differently, then he’s like, “what do you think me doing everything you tell me to do means?” “That you’re a pushover?” “NO!! I’VE BEEN IN LOVE WITH YOU SINCE WE WERE KIDS” and then they have an argument about him not confessing earlier because she’s about to leave, they don’t get the opportunity to be together in the same place.

Their courtship is long-distance and very brief. They’re young to marry by Valinorian standards, but not crazy young, equivalent to early 20s. In a choice that surprises Tirion high society, but not his immediate family, Curufin moves to Ardemmacto’s hometown. I’m gonna try to keep this short and so I can save it for a post about him specifically, but I think Curufin is a genuinely very talented and charismatic guy in his own right, it’s just that everyone just expects that of him because of who he’s related to. It’s very hard to be confident in your own abilities if no one’s gassing you up! He prefers the relative anonymity of small town life, where he’s considered on his own merits. His work is also far more mobile than hers is, for all that a forge is in one location and surveying necessitates travel. Ardemmacto needs to be on the ocean to pursue her craft, while Curufin can establish a forge anywhere.

Celebrimbor is born eventually. I don’t have anything specific to say about his childhood? He’s spoiled by all his grandparents, his parents love him deeply, he’s one of the very few Noldor who knows how to sail a boat.

Things can’t stay good forever, this is the Silmarillion after all. Melkor is released from the Halls of Mandos, conflict starts brewing in Tirion, and even with their physical distance, Curufin and Ardemmacto are drawn into it by their family. When Fëanor is exiled to Formenos, Ardemmacto chooses to follow her husband and father-in-law. She doesn’t want to separate her family, especially after having experienced it before while courting! Furthermore, Curufin had moved to be with her and her parents; giving up the ocean for a few years so that he can be with his family is fair play. It’s more interesting to me if they had a very healthy, loving relationship right up until everything blows up in their faces.

Then the Darkening, and Finwë is murdered by Melkor-now-Morgoth, and Fëanor starts agitating to follow him across the ocean to Beleriand. Ardemmacto is on board with this plan. She was swayed enough by Morgoth’s anti-Valar rumours that she’s got a bone to pick with them for “abandoning” the Sindar. It’s also a point of pride that she followed Curufin into exile when none of the other women who married into the family did. She’s resolved to follow him anywhere. She does fight with Curufin over bringing Celebrimbor into danger, but that doesn't dissuade her from coming; better he have two parents to protect him than one. (It doesn't matter that he's nearly of age: he's still her baby.)

Ardemmacto gets a front row seat for Fëanor’s failed negotiations with Olwë, and only begins to have some mild reservations about the plan to steal the ships. She pushes it aside though, it's still for a good cause, after all. They're going to aid the Sindar, who—now that Morgoth has been revealed to be unchanged and unrepentant—must be having a Bad Time right about now, and isn't it fair for the Telerin fleet to aid Elwë's people?

Then swords are drawn. And she stops before the docks, and turns to find her son who has been lost in the confusion, in the dark, as the streets of her people’s home grow wet with blood.

She tells Curufin and Celebrimbor she wants to turn back, after that—after the Kinslaying—that she will not sail on the ships her people were murdered for, and she asks Celebrimbor to come home with her. She gives him the night to decide which of his parents he will choose, wanting him to have as much time to consider as they can give, refusing to force him to make that decision on the spot when emotions are running high.

And then in the night, Curufin is awoken by his father, who tells him to wake his family, but Curufin leaves his wife asleep and hurries Celebrimbor into the boat still half-asleep before he really understands what's going on. It's only as they're already sailing that Celebrimbor wakes up enough to realize that the choice he fell asleep still wrestling with was taken away from him, and he didn't even get to say goodbye.

Ardemmacto considers turning back, speaking to Eärwen to see what she intends to do, as another woman of the Teleri who married into the Noldor only to see her own people slaughtered in the streets, but ultimately decides fuck that. Curufin does not get to have the last word this time, though she does renounce him (not knowing that someday her son will renounce his father for yet another betrayal of her kin). She resolves to cross the Grinding Ice and make her son say to her face that he would rather stand by his father through betrayal after betrayal than stay with her.

She sticks with the Arafinwion followers at first, keeping her head down, not drawing attention to herself. Her cousins-in-law are also (part-)Teleri who are crossing the Helcaraxë mostly out of spite and have extremely conflicted feelings about this whole thing now, but Finrod proves himself in some way, becoming co-leader of the Exiles crossing the ice alongside Fingolfin himself, and Ardemmacto joins his inner circle. As far as she's concerned, he has earned her trust and loyalty in his own right, and when they reach Beleriand and she finds her son, regardless of what Celebrimbor says, she intends to return to follow Finrod wherever he will go.

Of course, our parameters for this headcanon come back into play here. Things need to stay canon-compliant, or else the puzzle of fitting as much detail into the gaps of the Silm as we can becomes writing over it, and we both get the most fun out of threading that needle. Ardemmacto would be too important to leave out of the histories if she was present for the First Age. Instead, she dies in the Battle of the Lammoth, saving Finrod's life. He’s the one who breaks the news to Curufin, who adds the guilt and grief of destroying his relationship and Ardemmacto’s death onto the massive pile of it that he already had.

Ardemmacto is reembodied just before the first casualties of the War of Wrath die. Between missing the fleet, and her original exile, she’s forbidden from joining the fighting. She had avoided Curufin in the Halls, and continues to avoid any reminders of her husband in her new life. Some of the survivors of Nargothrond - or maybe some of the dead in the Halls - told her that Celebrimbor disowned himself, and she’s proud of him for that! She moves to Alqualondë, throws herself into her craft and what rebuilding still remains. Numenor is a point of interest for her! That’s a whole new island, the currents and ocean floor are completely different! She’s busy! She’s fine! She’s holding out hope that she’ll be able to reunite with her son, and she’s got a knife picked out to wave in Curufin’s face if he ever approaches her!

Then Celebrimbor dies. Horribly. At the hands of a Maia.

Ardemmacto tries petitioning the Valar to send an army to help. They tell her no, they’re trying not to sink another continent, to which she’s like “oh so a continent is too much but you’re fine with Eregion being razed? Is that not big enough to matter?” and they go “look, this is in no way your fault, but you really don’t understand the scale of destruction involved here” and she’s like “WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE LET ME GO FIGHT THE FIRST TIME!” She drops the petition on the day that she catches herself contemplating whether she could get away with sailing as far as Numenor openly and then secretly from there to Middle-Earth. Even though it would be her own boat this time, no plan that involves sailing a boat to Middle-Earth in defiance of the Valar is one that Ardemmacto’s comfortable with.

She’s there for Celebrimbor when he leaves the Halls, and they are able to rebuild their relationship. She doesn’t take Curufin back. If they had been able to reunite in Beleriand and he was able to explain how rushed the final theft of the boats was and does a lot of grovelling, then she might have forgiven him. Ardemmacto was there to see how the First Kinslaying escalated from theft to mass murder; a panicked choice made in the dark is something she could understand. But after Nargothrond and Doriath? No way in hell.

#ardemmacto #feanorion spouses #silm #meta #m.txt #eh im not gonna put this in her family's character tags #enjoy this 2.6k meta/fic/headcanon lmao #i do have art of her i just figured that this post was long enough #PLEASE send asks about her i love talking about ardemmacto #and as always none of this would be possible without my lovely collaborator jenny iridescentoracle <3333333 #we've been working on them collectively im just posting it

18 notes · View notes

taintedfirelight-moving · 5 years

Text

Relationships

Here’s a general compilation of canon characters and Sauron’s relationship with them. Basically those he’s had close relationships with either positive or negative, and my headcanons as to the nature of those relationships.

Note these are my personal headcanons, with a bit of how Sauron would react to them. If your character’s relationship is different, that’s completely fine by me! We can talk.

The following two are the only people Sauron may have ever had sexual or romantic relationships with. The others are either platonic, one-sided, or enemies. Sauron does not love lightly.

Melkor—

the most important, and most complicated, figure in Sauron’s existence. He’s been a part of things from the Music all the way until now. At first he irritated Mairon, then intrigued him, and then, after quite a long time, seduced him. Mairon was a key provider of information to him during the years of the lamps, both knowingly and unknowingly. After their destruction, he fled to Utumno and officially changed his allegiance from Aulë to Melkor. Their relationship was fairly positive throughout the time between this and Melkor’s capture. While Melkor was imprisoned, Mairon eagerly awaited his return. But when he did return he was changed. There was genuine love between them before, but now Melkor’s capacity to love seems to have been diminished. Their relationship became more master/servant, and they bickered much more. After the theft of the Silmaril, almost all positivity was gone. Sauron was punished for his failure and remained more afraid of Melkor than fond of him. He lost many of his pleasant memories at this time, as well as much of his emotional capability. He became much colder and lost the ability to truly feel love. However, there was still some fondness between them, though the relationship was a lot more toxic after that, and Sauron still retains some loyalty to Melkor now, though his loyalty to himself is stronger.

Celebrimbor—

Sauron seduced him as Annatar to forge the rings and learn the Elves’ secrets. Sauron didn’t go into this expecting a sexual relationship but one sort of just happened. He especially didn’t expect to actually develop feelings for Tyelpe, but he did. He doesn’t think he loved him, but he was a little bit sad when Tyelpe died. He honestly didn’t mean to actually kill him, he just took things a little too far. But when he did kill him, he did his best to convince himself that there really was nothing there. There definitely was something, though.

While there may have been hints of romance between Sauron and some of the following, it never actually developed into anything, or was one-sided, at least in this version’s backstory.

Gothmog—

Political rivals. Sauron hates his guts. They just want to see each other in pain. Their relationship became even more hateful after Sauron fell out of Melkor’s favor, as Gothmog was permitted to “teach him a lesson.” Sauron spent the rest of the First Age trying to one up him. And did so by not dying.

Thuringwethil—

Sauron misses his lieutenant. He really does. This was one of his less problematic relationships. They got on well, they had a good thing going on in Tol-in-Gaurhoth for awhile. It was nice having a somewhat sane person around. He was sort of sad when she was killed.

Maedhros—

Another complicated scenario. They weren’t friends but they weren’t completely enemies either. Sauron would talk to him when he was bored and had nothing better to do. He learned a good bit about Valinor from Maedhros, and also the Quenya language. Later he’d occasionally bring him food and water on Thangorodrim. But he also tortured him sometimes. So it’s complicated. He wouldn’t mind seeing Mae again though.

The Nazgûl—

Sauron’s personal favorite humans that he doesn’t mind spending time around. By this time, they were valued for their skill and use to him. Though he did have a little bit of affection toward them, especially Mûrazôr and Khamûl. Later, when he reincarnated in the third age in an incredibly weak and fragile form, the Nine were for a while the only people allowed near him and aided in his healing.

Ar-Pharazôn—

Ew. No. Sauron hates him so much. He hated humiliating himself before him. He hated that Ar-Pharazôn took advantage of that. He hates everything about this man and is able to count the whole Númenor thing as almost a success just because this creep died in the process. Sauron never wants to see him again. And especially doesn’t want to feel his touch. But Ar-Pharazôn wouldn’t know that, since Sauron was very careful to conceal his disgust. The king never really trusted him, though— before leaving for Valinor, he bound Sauron to his fána with an enchanted shackle that pierced through his wrist, so that he couldn’t flee if things went wrong. This caused Sauron’s first death and substantial weakening. So he has a very personal vendetta against this man.

Aulë—

Sauron basically wants to avoid Aulë as much as he possibly can. He thinks Aulë completely hates him. While he still served the forge Vala, he didn’t feel appreciated, as Aulë underestimated the amount of attention he needed. Mairon’s tendencies toward strange creations at times also drove a rift between them. Their relationship wasn’t negative, though. Just neutral at worst.

Curumo—

They never got along. Two of Aulë’s most skilled, but Curumo was definitely better at giving the Valar what they wanted. He was also jealous that Mairon was a good bit more skilled and powerful than he. Mairon actually learned a good bit of his manipulation skills from Curumo— particularly that sometimes you have to pretend in order to get in good with people. But Sauron hates Curumo and the feeling is mutual. When he managed to corrupt Curumo, now known as Saruman, by using some of his own tactics against him, he thought that his greatest achievement of the third age. But he knew that Saruman was going to attempt to take the One for himself and outdo him or control him and that frightened him immensely, since by then he was in a much weaker state than he had been in Almaren when they’d last clashed.

Olórin—

He and Sauron are brothers. They were very close in Almaren, though they started becoming estranged once Melkor began seducing Mairon. Sauron had very little interaction with Olórin while he served as the wizard Gandalf, and that was intentional. He doesn’t really know how to face him. It was Gandalf who gathered up the fractured pieces of Sau’s eäla to take back to Valinor, but Sau doesn’t really remember that since he had thoroughly lost consciousness. Bonus: You know Gandalf’s fireworks? The two of them invented those in Almaren as a prank.

Eönwë—

Mairon’s best friend. After the war of wrath, Sauron asked Eönwë for pardon, but was told he would have to be judged by the Valar. Their friendship seemingly all but dissolved, as Sauron was certain that the Valar would simply toss him to the Void, he ran away and became even more bitter. He doesn’t consider them to be friends anymore, and feels a bit betrayed.

Other Maiar that were part of Mairon’s little circle of friends were Ilmarë and Melian. Though it’s unlikely he’ll befriend Melian again since her daughter played a role in the defeat that led to one of the worst days of his life.

Námo—

Sauron’s captor. Also the one helping him to recover from the loss of the ring and the destruction of massive parts of his eäla. Sau is begrudgingly respectful of him, since he’s showing him some semblance of kindness and also because he wouldn’t be conscious at the moment if it weren’t for him.

Looking for rp partners/ask blogs playing any of these characters (and others of course) for all plots serious and silly.

54 notes · View notes