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[lkaluna]

I’m a Russingon girlie at heart and will never miss an opportunity to read into the romanticism of Maedhros’ rescue from Thangorodrim: ancient friends/lovers coming back together, Fingon finding compassion despite betrayal, all that good tear-jerker stuff.

But what makes Fingon’s heroism massive to me has nothing to do with the personal and everything to do with the politics at Mithrim. The fact that had he not gone to Thangorodrim, the Noldor in Beleriand would find themselves at literal war against each other.

This little passage from the Silm really deserves a lot more attention:

No love was there in the hearts of those that followed Fingolfin for the House of Fëanor, for the agony of those that endured the crossing of the Ice had been great, and Fingolfin held the sons the accomplices of their father. Then there was peril of strife between the hosts

Years later, when Fingon decides to look for Maedhros, the conflict between the hosts comes back as a primary reason behind his decision:

Then Fingon the valiant, son of Fingolfin, resolved to heal the feud that divided the Noldor, before their Enemy should be ready for war

This makes me conclude that the three years between Fingolfin’s arrival at Mitrhim (FA 2) to Fingon’s rescue mission (FA 5) must have been a continuous civil crisis. The hosts are in close proximity, a single lake dividing them, Fingolfin on one side, Maglor on the other, and for three years they cannot find a compromise. This crisis must have gotten pretty bad for someone to decide that braving Thangorodrim might be worth it.

And to me, this is Fingon's greatest contribution he ever made, not his battles, not his chasing of dragons, but preventing civil war among his people.

Of all the children of Finwë he is justly most renowned...

Yes, indeed, he is. Because without Fingon’s deed, there would be no victories for the Noldor, no Long Peace, no meeting of the Edain and Eldar. They would have fought each other endlessly until one group obliterated the other, or alternatively, Morgoth used this division (as the book seems to imply) to destroy them all swiftly. 

Fingon effectively accomplishes what Fingolfin and Fëanor never managed: peace, at least for a good while. Maedhros of course contributes in return by giving up the crown. He meets Fingon halfway, and they stay true to this alliance until Fingon’s death. They cross an impossible bridge no matter how you read their relationship. 

I’ll never tire of it. Ever.

[lkaluna]

Now we know where does the phrase “wet dreams” really come from

Ulmo, in his elaborate matchmaking effort to make sure Earendil was born, looked at Tuor and Idril and said "THIS SHIP WILL SAIL AND NEVER SINK" and then personally made sure of that, sending Earrame straight to Valinor and getting Tuor immortality so he and Idril could stay together forever.

Ulmo, despite being single, and besides from being the Lord of Waters, is also the Lord of Ships, in more ways than one.

[lkaluna]

Merry: We’re not orcs!

Pippin: We swear!

Treebeard: Maybe you are, and maybe you’re aren’t. The white wizard will know. 

Gandalf: That one, Merry, is a hobbit. Pippin is an orc. 

[lkaluna]

[lkaluna]

Fingon does not play often anymore. Rarely does the mood strike him, and mostly when he is alone, his heart is sorrowful. But at the Mereth Aderthad some merriness of the crowd strikes him, some warmth of the liquor, and he picks up the harp and plays, unthinking, a drinking-song from bygone days. Around him elves laugh and dance, an ocean of swirling silk, and he hears little his own music. 

“You have lost the touch,” Maglor says, “you were better.” 

Fingon looks down at the joints of his fingers, where feeling has not returned since the ice, and says naught. 

[lkaluna]

Fingon does not play often anymore. Rarely does the mood strike him, and mostly when he is alone, his heart is sorrowful. But at the Mereth Aderthad some merriness of the crowd strikes him, some warmth of the liquor, and he picks up the harp and plays, unthinking, a drinking-song from bygone days. Around him elves laugh and dance, an ocean of swirling silk, and he hears little his own music. 

“You have lost the touch,” Maglor says, “you were better.” 

Fingon looks down at the joints of his fingers, where feeling has not returned since the ice, and says naught. 

[lkaluna]

What Comes Naturally

Fandom: The Silmarillion

Characters: Indis, Miriel

Summary: Two queens of the Noldor discuss motherhood.

Length: 2.9k

AO3 | Pillowfort | SWG

“What a trial motherhood was,” said Míriel in the understatement of several Ages, leaning back with a huff, so that she almost knocked Indis’ nose with the back of her head. “Not that you would know.”

            “Not that I would know?” Indis echoed, her brows arched. However, she refrained from further remark, and Míriel elaborated. Since Míriel’s return, Indis had gathered that at times, Míriel would give explanation only if you kept quiet. (Other times, she would explain regardless of whether one wished it or not, but this was likely only with technical matters. On Míriel’s first day in the palace, Indis had received a three hour lecture on the function of various parts of a loom after fatefully inquiring how Míriel found her old tools.)

            “Well,” said Míriel, and despite her dismissive tone, Indis felt something rawer in her voice now, facing away from Indis, than she had heard from her all that day, more even than when she’d had Indis’ hands between her legs. “Elfinesse the realm over praises your sweetness and care; I assumed that motherhood and nurturing came naturally to you.”

            Indis resumed combing through Míriel’s sleek silver hair. Beyond the open windows, a dove whistled. The rest of the house was still and relaxed in the warmth of the sunlight as the day eased towards evening; perhaps the slowness of the day had led to this thoughtful (for so it was, even if Míriel feigned otherwise) conversation.

            “Perhaps,” Indis allowed slowly. “Though ‘naturally’ does not mean ‘wholly without effort.’ The joy of it came naturally, certainly.” Míriel said nothing else, and Indis, with great restraint, held back from probing or trying to change the subject.

            “For my part, I believe pulling teeth would have been a simpler and more rewarding task,” Míriel said at last into the silence of the bedroom.

            “Surely it was not so terrible,” Indis objected, then cringed. Míriel snorted mirthlessly.

            “Whatever Finwë told you of my efforts, certain I am that he was kinder to me than I deserve.”

            Indis worked carefully through a small knot near the ends of Míriel’s hair. “You were ill, Míriel,” she said gently, at length. Míriel grunted.

            “Yet still I was a terrible mother,” she said. “Even Fëanáro knew it, though he has since forgotten.” Indis opened her mouth, but Míriel silenced her before she could get in the air to disagree. “He always preferred Finwë,” she said. “Even as a babe in arms. How he wailed when I held him! And nothing could I do to calm him! At times I thought at the least he would eventually tire himself and then be content, but he seemed to have an endless reserve of energy for screaming, and the volume!” Míriel winced. “He could drive me to tears for want of a moment of quiet! So of course in the end I would give him over to Finwë, and it seemed at once he would be smiling and reaching out with his little hands and laughing! I cannot recall that he ever laughed for me. He must have, I suppose, but I…” Míriel trailed off, almost confused. Indis was not sure if her memories were muddled by virtue of her rebirth or the illness which preceded her death, or both.

            “Finwë had a way with children.”

            “I was told and told and told how naturally motherhood came, once the babe was born,” said Míriel, and Indis could picture the wrinkle of her flat nose. “Naturally! Not to me, but to Finwë, certainly. He seemed always to simply know what Fëanáro wanted, and if he did not, he would figure it out, or find some suitable substitute.” She shook her head.

            “You would have come into it,” Indis insisted. “If you had had the time. You would have learned.”

            “Perhaps. But if I must learn, then it was not natural.” Doubt shadowed her words. Again, she fell silent, and Indis forced herself not to fill it. Early evening light slanted through the windows, turning the mantle to gold, lighting up the dust motes floating around the bed curtains. Míriel lifted a hand as if to chase them with her touch; there were still times when she seemed amazed to be in the world again, to have physical sensations like touch and sight and sound (Indis, in the very new days, had found her by the fountain in the yard, weeping profusely over the sound the water made burbling up in the bowl of it, and often early she had touched Indis as if expecting her to dissipate beneath her fingertips.)

            “I cannot say I was ever one who weathered failure gracefully,” Míriel said then, as Indis slid off the bed and went to the bottles and jars on her vanity. “I was failing at motherhood and I could see it, and I felt sure the baby and the rest of the city knew it too. And do you know? I resented him. I gave everything of myself to this child, and he would only smile for his father, and he made everyone whisper behind my back—or so I thought, I haven’t an idea if it was actually true—and even when he was quiet for me, he looked at me with these great accusing eyes as if to say he knew I was the worse parent.”

            “Míriel…” Indis began uneasily, fingers lingering over the cosmetics. “Babies don’t…”

            “I know, Indis, I know,” Míriel snapped. “But as you say, I was ill, and in my illness I was convinced this child whom I had given so much to bring into the world loved me not, nor would, and every day it seemed I could not escape my failures. I asked for him less and less; I felt the more I left to Finwë, the better for the child.

            “Still he would come and see me, but even then I felt he disliked me. A-times I could hear him in the yard with his nursemaids, running and shouting and laughing as children do, but when he came to me, he had to play quietly, or not at all, for Mother’s head hurt, and Mother was tired, and Mother needed to rest. What joy is there for a child, sitting in a dark sick-room with a feeble shade of a woman who never knew how to be a mother?” Míriel lapsed into silence, scowling.

            “You know he loved you,” Indis said quietly, returning to the bed with a small vial. She dabbed a bit of osmanthus oil from the vial onto her fingers to brush through Míriel’s hair. “You were his mother, and he loved you without thought for your condition.”

            “What does a toddler understand of love? They know only safety and joy, or the absence of them. Love? What complexities of love could be grasped by such an infant? He knew that his father made him happy, and I did not; for him, what deeper considerations could exist?”

            “I disagree,” Indis said. “I think he loved you even then. Perhaps he did not understand it, but he did.”

            “Truly you think a babe can comprehend some notion of love?” Míriel asked, twisting around to look in skeptical astonishment at Indis.

            “I do,” she said firmly. “Truly you believe they cannot?”

            “A child who can barely string together a sentence, know love? Next you shall tell me mice and horses know it!”

            “Must one be able to articulate the feeling to feel it?” Indis asked.

            “I believe one must be able to understand it!”

            “I disagree,” was all Indis said.

            Míriel shook her head. “Yours is a gentle spirit I think,” she said. “Better not to comprehend an absence of love. I see why Finwë chose you.”

            “Gentle, perhaps, but I should think not naïve,” Indis replied with a hint of an edge. “I do not speak out of blind hope, Míriel.”

            Míriel regarded her a moment, and then said: “No, I did not think so. I would not accuse you of that. Perhaps it is only that I have grown cynical. No—perhaps that I always was.”

      ��     There were things Indis could have said then—about the vain effort of cynicism to protect a weary heart, about Míriel’s struggles, about the necessity of not closing oneself off to feeling—but instead she just took Míriel’s hand and squeezed it.

            “I will not say I have never felt it, for that would be a lie. But you were telling me of Fëanáro’s infancy,” she said, and Míriel nodded. Still she was quiet a moment, and Indis thought the interruption would be the end of Míriel’s sharing, but then she continued.

            “Yes…the more my illness took me, the less reason girded my thoughts, as you can see. As my weariness grew, I convinced myself that I was doing him a favor; that he would, truthfully, be better off without me. One can always convince oneself that one’s desired course of action is also, coincidentally, the best for everyone else, isn’t it so?”

            Indis bit her lip against the desire to interject that that it could never have been that Fëanor or anyone else would have been better off if Míriel were dead.

            “What a little fool he was, too,” Míriel went on crabbily. “To think he had the fortune of a mother such as yourself walking into his life, and he pushed you away for want of me! I should pinch him if I could. The real tragedy would have been if you and I had traded places!”

            “I think you are too hard—”

            “All of that rather makes it sound like I cared not for him, doesn’t it?” Míriel let out another long sigh. “It isn’t so. He was the flesh of my flesh, how could I not love him? Or at least…in the beginning. At the end, I do not believe I loved anything. I had not the capacity any longer.” Indis was neither combing nor braiding, simply running her hands through Míriel’s hair in hopes of soothing her. “But there it is, you see? I think no matter how ill you were, Indis, you could not watch your children sobbing at your bedside, could not hear them begging for you to come home, to be a mother, and feel nothing.”

            “I do not think you felt nothing,” said Indis quietly. Míriel’s shoulders tensed.

            “Was it not near enough? Nothing he said, nothing Finwë said, would change my course. I broke his heart, and I knew I was going to do it. And out of sheer stubbornness, I refused to return once I had done it.”

            “You were—”

            “Yes, yes, I was unwell,” Míriel said forcefully. “And yet, I was myself still. I was not deprived of my faculties. I was aware of the consequences of my actions.”

            “Such knowledge may become subordinated to extended pain and discomfort,” said Indis. “We are, after all, still physical beings. True thought is difficult when one’s mind is focused on the struggles of the body.” When Míriel said nothing, Indis added: “I know not that I could have done otherwise in your place. I have never felt as you did then.”

            “I feel quite assured you would have borne it with more grace.” Míriel’s tone was breezy, and Indis could not discern if there was something heavier beneath it or not.

            “I know that you bore it a long time,” said Indis, beginning to weave Míriel’s hair into a set of braids. “I tend to doubt very much I could have managed so long.”

Míriel leaned back slightly into Indis’ touch, relaxing a little. “It felt like a long time,” she murmured. “Stars, it felt like such a long time. It was only a few years. But it felt so terribly, terribly long.”

            “I think ‘tis a credit to your love,” said Indis, “for Finwë and for Fëanáro, that you endured so long as you did.”

            Míriel said nothing, and Indis worked the second braid down to the tie. She thought back to what Míriel had said earlier. It had never occurred to her, in all her morose anxiety that she would never live up to the exalted former queen of the Noldor, that there was anything Míriel might have felt similarly about, looking at Indis.

            “I know you would have been a good mother to Fëanáro, if he had permitted it,” Míriel said at last. She twisted around on the bed to look at Indis. “And I am grateful, for what you did do.”

            “It was not much,” Indis demurred. Fëanor had not allowed it to be much, and at some point, Indis had given it up as a lost cause.

            “I fault you not for that,” Míriel said with a wry twist of her mouth. “When I died, I had hopes that Fëanáro would turn out to be like his father. Everyone likes Finwë. How could anyone not? In fact, I believe he was sometimes overconcerned with how well he was liked. And Fëanáro looked so like him, even as a child! Unfortunately, it seems he took after myself, and so I have great pity for you.”

            Indis could not help but giggle at this, try as she might.

            “I see you trying not to laugh,” said Míriel. “But you ought; ‘tis true. Finwë was liked and I was a bitch.”

            “You were liked!” Indis exclaimed. “Even still, you have scant idea how the Noldor lamented your absence.”

            “Mm. Liked, perhaps, but likeable? No, that was never me. If anything, I was liked in spite of myself. I never did understand why Finwë chose me.”

            “He was amazed by you,” said Indis with a smile. It was good, when they could speak comfortably of their pasts this way, without rancor or injury. “That never changed. Nor do I disagree with him.” Míriel’s lips curved into a smile as well, softly fond, and Indis found herself saying: “Do you remember how he would smile, that one particular way, where you could just imagine what he might have looked like as a child?”

            Míriel’s smile grew. “Yes, I know the look,” she said, flashing teeth. “Ah, but how he charmed me with that! He was a beautiful thing, wasn’t he?”

            “I will tell you,” said Indis, “I saw it very rarely, but once or twice, I have seen Fëanáro smile that way.”

            Míriel’s eyes grew distant, as if she were drawn into a dream, but her smile remained, close-lipped once more. There was such a silent ache about her that Indis could not resist throwing her arms around Míriel’s shoulders to embrace her from behind, squeezing her tightly as if to give physical reassurance that she was not alone. Míriel’s loose robe slipped down her shoulders at Indis’ touch.

            “But he was clever like you,” Indis whispered to her. There had been a time when she could not have spoken of Fëanor this way, when her anger and bitterness against him overbore any of the sympathy she had harbored for him in his youth. Half of her children and all her grandchildren he had stolen from her, and never had he missed a chance to spit in her face if he could. Yet there had been a time too when she had seen the better in him, and empathized with his pain, and there was almost relief, in speaking of him with Míriel, in purging the acidity of her wrath. It did little good, she reminded herself, to dwell perpetually in anger, even if the object of it would walk no more among them. Nothing in her garden grew of her anger. “I saw it in the work you left behind. Your minds ran the same paths.”

            “Pity the boy,” said Míriel ruefully. “And his father too!”

            “I think neither of them would have had it any other way.”

            Míriel put a hand over Indis’, and rubbed the back of Indis’ hand, slowly returning from that dreamy place where she at times withdrew to, as if her mind were still making sense of how much had changed since she last lived in truth. It was some moments before she spoke again.

            “I understand he was difficult for you,” said Míriel. “And for that I apologize...I am still…still learning of the full extent of all that transpired…” Míriel’s voice had grown thicker, and Indis could catch a glimpse of the grief that the queen tried so doggedly to shield from view. “I spoke again with your grandson several days past; he told me a little more of the fortunes of the Noldor in Middle-earth…” A place they never would have been but for Fëanor’s rebellion. Indis knew that Finrod would be cautious in what he shared, but Míriel was sharp enough to fill in many gaps. She knew how much ruin had come of Fëanor’s actions, if she did not yet know every detail of it.

“And I have spoken a short while with his wife.” Indis had hoped that Míriel and Nerdanel might share something of a grief the rest of the Noldor were not keen in hearing of, but as neither of them was particularly inclined to spill their hearts to a stranger, she could not say yet if introducing them had done any good. “But ‘twas you that knew him in his youth. Could you—would you—tell me something else of him, of my son?”

            “Of course,” said Indis, loosening her hold on Míriel. She eased back down onto the mattress and sat beside Míriel so that she could still hold her hand. “What would you like to know?”

            “Anything,” said Míriel. “Everything.”

[lkaluna]

[lkaluna]

[lkaluna]

From the ask game, what can you tell us about hierophilia?

Hi there!

I sure can. This one is a silmkinkmeme prompt of Vala/elf and one of the suggested pairs being Vairë/Míriel. I'm a little stalled on how to proceed (this happens a lot to me with NSFW pieces), but I'll get back to it some day, since this fandom needs more femslash, darn it!

SFW excerpt:

The spiced smoke thickened as she neared the steps. It clouded into her lungs, vibrant and laden with memory of tastes her tongue had never known. She swayed when she reached the dias, the heady mix of music and myrrh making her skin tingle. Míriel steadied herself with one hand on the door frame—the cool stone soothing the feverish excitement. She put her hand to the knocker; it was in the shape of a hand with a needle grasped to sew. Her blood rushed, anticipation hastening her breath. The other servants of Vairë fell back to soft humming. She could hear their the whispering of their robes as they retreated from the antechamber, taking the torches with them. She knocked. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Thank you for asking!

[lkaluna]

Ask me about my not-yet-written-fics from this list

@linesofreturninggeese

Okay, so this is something I was talking over with @metatomatoes because I wanted Celebrimbor to survive so badly but like, I just could not see how it was possible, and then we got to talking and fucking around with Elvish biology and I think I can make it work.

this is all based on the foundation that Elrond and Celebrimbor were very close in the second age, and/or it piggybacks on the To Partake universe. Either way, they have an Osanwe bond. Not quite a marriage bond. It's a bit weaker than that, but a bond nonetheless.

there are human burn victims who have lost a tremendous amount of skin with medical care and survived, right?

and obviously the greatest risks here are blood loss, infection, and hypothermia

It's reasonable to me to assume that elves have pretty good blood clotting.

We also know from canon that they're better at regulating their temp than we are

If elves are pretty much immune to infection, we can knock that out.

With some sketchy research the general consensus is that a human IRL could, after being flayed, last 36 hours, or perhaps up to a week (if given fluids and semi cared for).

Reasonable to me to assume because Sauron is Sauron that he might continue to toy with Celebrimbor post-flaying, which means he has a vested interest in keeping him alive a bit longer.

Also reasonable to assume that elvish bodies can withstand quite a lot, considering Maedhros survived torture and being hung off a mountainside for a really long time while captured by Morgoth.

So, the final kicker here IIRC was @metatomatoes' idea - which is, what if elves are essentially able to drop into a stasis state? Like where everything slowly shuts down to minimal functions in order to survive extreme conditions? Explains a lot of things, really.

With that, what if rather than dying, Celebrimbor drops into stasis.

Stasis is no fun for Sauron :( Celebrimbor's not making fun noises anymore when he gets hurt.

So at this point Sauron has him shot full of arrows (assuming that he'll be dead soon) and hangs him up to taunt Elrond and Gil-Galad, per the canon events.

Everyone at this point is pretty confident that Celebrimbor is dead as a doornail,

EXCEPT ELROND.

Because he can absolutely feel through their Osanwe bond that there's something left there, and post-siege of Eregion when they finally recapture everything and pull Celebrimbor down, everyone is like "Elrond he's dead, we promise he's dead" and Elrond is like "I promise he's not!!!!!!!!! he's in stasis!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And Elrond by now has Vilya, which enhances his already incredibly strong healing.

Also I have already established within my own universe that Elrond is a bit of a necromancer, so long as someone is only mostly dead (re Princess Bride hehe).

SO, he manages to bring Celebrimbor back from the grave.

And granted, Celebrimbor is like, severely fucked up and perhaps does not even want to continue living, but Elrond is determined.

Once Celebrimbor has recovered (it is a long, slow road) he winds up just living with Elrond in Rivendell, possibly under an alias idk. But hey everyone talks about that weirdly good smith in Rivendell. Like uncannily good smith.

I like to imagine that he's the one who reforged Anduril :3

[lkaluna]

AITA for kicking my cousin out of our city? Kicking out is a strong term. I didn’t exile her or anything, I just - well, here’s the story from the beginning. My cousin-once-removed G (3263F) and I (2188M) were co-founders and co-rulers of this city. I don’t want to give undue credit to either of us - there were and are many others involved in the founding and governance of the place - but it’s fair to say that we two were the ringleaders. And we made a good team! We’re both very opinionated people, so of course there was sometimes tension, but overall I think our disagreements only made our decision-making stronger. That was until A (ageless, M) showed up. A is one of the lesser primordial beings who helped create the world. Necessary context: not long ago there was a catastrophic war between the most powerful of these beings, who was monstrously evil, and his more benevolent brethren. This war was absolutely necessary, but it did wreak havoc on the natural world. Myself and my cousin G and many others had to flee as refugees. When we founded our city, we wanted it to be a place of recovery from all that loss, somewhere that everyone could come together and flourish. The rulers of A’s people sent him to aid us in that. And his help has been invaluable! He’s shared knowledge that has already bettered our city and its people, and now we’re working on a project together that will let us heal so many of the world’s ancient hurts… but I digress. When A showed up, G took an immediate dislike to him. She has some history with the rulers of his folk, and I suppose that colored her opinion of him, but I’ve never seen that level of hostility from her before. She picked at everything he said, implied that he wasn’t trustworthy, even tried to tell me that we should send him away! She argued that since our people’s king had declined A’s help, we should too - which was ridiculous, our city has always made its own decisions, and anyhow our king hadn’t commanded us to do any such thing! Ordinarily G is very clear-headed and has excellent judgment, but in this case I just couldn’t get across to her that she was being unfair. When I was firm in my support of A, G started trying to drum up public animosity against him. Of course I opposed her, and as A had already made many friends in the city and is an excellent rhetorician to boot, G only succeeded in turning public opinion against herself. At city council meetings she continued to oppose A and his projects, but I stood with A, and the majority of the council followed my lead. G was essentially frozen out of the city’s governance - and I do regret that, truly, but she put herself in that position by refusing to work with me and A! Eventually G took the small faction that agreed with her and left the city. She told me my “doom was on my own head,” which was needlessly hostile, I think. And look, I fully believe that she believes she’s in the right. She’s a very principled person; she wouldn’t do all this for petty reasons. She’s just so wrong about A! I truly can’t think of anything else I could have done, but G’s been a blessing to this city and I’m really unhappy to have been part of the reason it lost her. Was there another way I should have handled this conflict? AITA?

[lkaluna]

is anyone else feeling stuck and waiting for something that will never come in order to start living or is it just me?

[lkaluna]

i think finarfin during the war of wrath should have personal beef with sauron over finrod's death. like. angrier than he is with morgoth even

[lkaluna]

[Un]conscionably, Tolkien's works have been severely underrepresented in the world of Tumblr sexymen. Now is[n't] the time to change that.

On a related note, did you know there is a Sexypedia Wiki? The research I do for these polls continues to surprise.

[lkaluna]

Half Goblin, half Hobbit.

Goblit.

[lkaluna]

i'm so gullible i see literally any redhead covered in blood and i'm immediately like 👀 Maedhros? 👀👀 my king Maedhros? my love Maedhros?? and i'm only right like. 70% of the time. what do you mean there's other bloodsoaked redheads who allowed this