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seaemberthesecond · 2 hours ago

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Probably a question that's been asked before but, what are your thoughts about the Valar, I guess Manwë is particular.

It's a mixed bag from what I've seen, people saying they did too little, not caring for men enough to confront melkor and aid them the first time they woke up.

Manwë' naiveté in regards to the releasing of Melkor or my personal favourite from vixen, the whole punitive Vs restorative justice thing going on in regards to the Noldor leaving the blessed realm.

Reading your analysis'/takes & metas is really eye opening, so many topics I'm ashamed to admit I have a surface level understanding of.

(sorry for any grammar issues, English is not my first language)

well, in the words of douglas adams, i think the valar are "mostly harmless"

i'll let tolkien speak for this -

Moreover, ye misrepresent and exaggerate the workings of the Ban and so call in question its justice. As far as concerns the Ñoldor, they obtained precisely what they demanded: freedom from the sovereignty of Manwë, and therefore also from any protection or assistance by the Valar, or indeed any meddling with their affairs. They had been advised and solemnly taught by Manwë to what straits and griefs they would come, relying only on their own wisdom and power. They rejected him; and even before they had finally left the West Lands and reached Middle-earth, they did hideous deeds of robbery and bloodshed and treachery.Then a large number of the Ñoldor, who had taken no part in this, went back to Valinor, and sought pardon and were granted it. Those that did not do so, even if not personally slayers, must share the blood guilt, if they accepted the freedom gained by it. That none of the Ñoldor should be allowed again to dwell in bodily form was an inevitable consequence. That none of the Valar or Maiar should appear in their lands to aid them was also inevitable. But it is not said that Manwë abandoned them, peoples over whom he had been appointed by Eru to be a vice-regent. His messengers could come from Valinor and did so, and though in disguised form and issuing no commands, they intervened in certain desperate events. - Manwe's Ban in Part III of The Nature of Middle Earth

TL;DR: local Noldor reject Valar and go to claim Middle Earth for themselves. Frankly, the Doom as exile for the Kinslaying is like. I know its easy for us sitting here in this time to say there should have been an attempt at something different - but the Doom, when you boil it down, is literally a) the consequences of your actions (you have already begun suspecting each other of nefarious purposes, you are going to be driven by a self-fulfilling prophecy of treason) and b) exile for having killed people. I cannot stress this enough: the Teleri were killed, Feanor deliberated and decided to steal those ships and any attempt to stop them was met with actual escalation into an outright slaughter. The Noldor had swords. The Teleri mostly had bows and arrows. This is all canon! The Noldor later are perfectly happy to set down far more punitive justice, so all this grousing just feels like grousing about them facing consequences for some truly horrifying violence.

As for reconciliation - I think for the reconciliation to be possible, for restorative justice to be possible, the Noldor would also have to be willing to subject themselves to it. This means the Noldor would not have to think of themselves as above the other Elves - Feanor, when Olwe denies him the ships, outright tells him the Teleri would be loitering on the beaches in huts, if not for the Noldor. He is approaching them already with a) an air of highly racialised superiority and b) an air of entitlement, therefore, to the works of their hands for his quest - regardless of whether or not they're interested in it. Meanwhile, the lands they want to go and seize for themselves are populated by fellow Elves - and they have to know it, considering some of them have kin still on hither shores. Their entire self-concept at the time of the Kinslaying is one that elevates them above the other Elves and which dehumanises them and which sees them as subjects to be ruled. Their entire project revolves around going to Middle Earth to seize Arda back from Men. So while we can talk about how the Valar should have opted for restorative justice, my question is: how? It requires a meeting in the middle that the Noldor are not willing to do at that point in time, especially not the Feanorians - and exile from the community is a fairly bog standard punishment for someone who commits a community-violating act.

What happens as a consequence of this, however, is that the Sindar & other inhabitants suffer as a result of the actions of the Noldor, for one, but for another, from Myths Transformed in Morgoth's Ring:

The whole of ‘Middle-earth’ was Morgoth’s Ring, though temporarily his attention was mainly upon the North-west. Unless swiftly successful, War against him might well end in reducing all Middle-earth to chaos, possibly even all Arda. It is easy to say: ‘It was the task and function of the Elder King to govern Arda and make it possible for the Children of Eru to live in it unmolested.’ But the dilemma of the Valar was this: Arda could only be liberated by a physical battle; but a probable result of such a battle was the irretrievable ruin of Arda. Moreover, the final eradication of Sauron (as a power directing evil) was achievable by the destruction of the Ring. No such eradication of Morgoth was possible, since this required the complete disintegration of the ‘matter’ of Arda.

The Valar do make three big mistakes. 1) they remove some of the Elves from Middle Earth, fracturing any unity amongst the Elves & with the later race of Men. 2) they pursue a policy of isolationism, which in Myths Transformed, Tolkien points to as a flaw emerging from an approach of either despair or selfishness -

It had one good, and legitimate, object: the preservation incorrupt of at least a part of Arda. But it seemed to have a selfish or neglectful (or despairing) motive also ... Thus the ‘Hiding of Valinor’ came near to countering Morgoth’s possessiveness by a rival possessiveness, setting up a private domain of light and bliss against one of darkness and domination: a palace and a pleasaunce5 (well-fenced) against a fortress and a dungeon.

In doing so, they make the rebellion of the Noldor inevitable in some ways - and Ulmo says as much, when the Valar make their decision to bring the Elves to Valinor.

Their third mistake is when they exile Feanor, without going through Finwe. Finwe himself calls it an unkinging, if by other means. This is why he goes into exile with Feanor! Now, its sort of understandable why they did this - there is something very shocking in the first threat of murder. I think on some level we're desensitised to this because we live in a world full of ugly violence, but for the Valar, this is the first time they've been confronted with the possibility of murder in a land that is designed to preserve and protect. Emotionally: very understandable. But pragmatically and politically, this betrays the social contract they've established with the Elves in that they have their own appointed lands, the kings rule over their people and the kings are then beholden to the Valar. There is a hierarchy of power that needs to be followed in order for a king to retain his symbolic power - in going over Finwe's head, they delegitimise his power in the eyes of all his subjects.

(Whether this was also done out of a fear that Feanor would have been let off the hook is an interesting question & I think there's something very very interesting in Indis' reaction to Finwe's self-imposed exile that suggests Finwe would not have actually delivered impartial justice in this situation). Again from our modern eyes, exile seems extreme: from the lens of medieval justice & rules which the Silm draws on, exile is a relatively peacable punishment - especially since it seems to have functioned more as a cooling off period than anything. Sort of like everyone getting put in timeout, which god knows the Noldor could have done with more of.

Re. Manwe's naivete with Morgoth - well, Manwe himself is good. He also cannot read minds. If Morgoth lies to him and tells him he's repented of his wrongdoing, what can Manwe do? Is Manwe supposed to punish him anyway, and therefore commit a great injustice - and therefore "fall"? Again, from the chapter Osanwe-kenta in Part II of Nature of Middle Earth:

How otherwise would you have it? Should Manwë and the Valar meet secrecy with subterfuge, treachery with falsehood, lies with more lies? If Melkor would usurp their rights, should they deny his? Can hate overcome hate? Nay, Manwë was wiser; or being ever open to Eru he did His will, which is more than wisdom. He was ever open because he had nothing to conceal, no thought that it was harmful for any to know, if they could comprehend it. Indeed Melkor knew his will without questioning it; and he knew that Manwë was bound by the commands and injunctions of Eru, and would do this or abstain from that in accordance with them, always, even knowing that Melkor would break them as it suited his purpose. Thus the merciless will ever count on mercy, and the liars make use of truth; for if mercy and truth are withheld from the cruel and the lying, they have ceased to be honoured.[14] Manwë could not by duress attempt to compel Melkor to reveal his thought and purposes, or (if he used words) to speak the truth. If he spoke and said: this is true, he must be believed until proved false; if he said: this I will do, as you bid, he must be allowed the opportunity to fulfill his promise.[fn8]

The force and restraint that were used upon Melkor by the united power of all the Valar, were not used to extort confession (which was needless); nor to compel him to reveal his thought (which was unlawful, even if not vain). He was made captive as a punishment for his evil deeds, under the authority of the King. So we may say; but it were better said that he was deprived for a term, fixed by promise, of his power to act, so that he might halt and consider himself, and have thus the only chance that mercy could contrive of repentance and amendment. For the healing of Arda indeed, but for his own healing also. Melkor had the right to exist, and the right to act and use his powers. Manwë had the authority to rule and to order the world, so far as he could, for the well-being of the Eruhíni; but if Melkor would repent and return to the allegiance of Eru, he must be given his freedom again. He could not be enslaved, or denied his part. The office of the Elder King was to retain all his subjects in the allegiance of Eru, or to bring them back to it, and in that allegiance to leave them free.

...The release was according to the promise of Manwë. If Manwë had broken this promise for his own purposes, even though still intending “good”, he would have taken a step upon the paths of Melkor. That is a perilous step. In that hour and act he would have ceased to be the vice-gerent of the One, becoming but a king who takes advantage over a rival whom he has conquered by force. Would we then have the sorrows that indeed befell; or would we have the Elder King lose his honour, and so pass, maybe, to a world rent between two proud lords striving for the throne? Of this we may be sure, we children of small strength: any one of the Valar might have taken the paths of Melkor and become like him: one was enough.

Anyway, re. the rest - Tolkien takes a twilight of the gods style approach to the Valar in that once Morgoth is defeated in the War of Wrath (and Beleriand is sunk), the Valar become obsolete, again from Myths Transformed -

The Valar were like architects working with a plan ‘passed’ by the Government. They became less and less important (structurally!) as the plan was more and more nearly achieved. Even in the First Age we see them after uncounted ages of work near the end of their time of work — not wisdom or counsel. (The wiser they became the less power they had to do anything - save by counsel.)

TL;DR: local overpromoted millennial middle managers trying their best and failing. Mostly harmless, but when the mostly stops being mostly, its kind of Not Great.

#lotr

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seaemberthesecond · 3 hours ago

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sorry i love sluts. i thought we all loved sluts. i thought this was the slut-loving website. my bad i guess

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seaemberthesecond · 3 hours ago

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Regarding daddy issues, what's your opinion on Maeglin? His father trying to kill him, him being raised by Turgon, his uncle killing his father and having an attraction to Turgon's daughter, and Eol's "curse" that he will die the same way he did. He must have some daddy issues and some complicated feelings for Turgon, who I think spoiled him? Does Idril think Turgon would listen to Maeglin more than her?

I sat on this ask for a couple of days because unfortunately my answer is a little bit of a killjoy answer and this is partly because I've been thinking about the Of Maeglin chapter lately, thanks to two different scholarly works on incest in Victorian Britain I've been reading of late - in this case, the prominence of first cousin marriage amongst the Victorian bourgeoise, to the point that this form of marriage was considered somewhat nearly the ideal until the First World War at least. And which therefore is all the more striking for the whole "Eldar wed not with kin so near" thing that Tolkien inserts, considering that in every other respect, both the Silm and LOTR are heavily in conversation with a much older Victorian era Romanticism than Tolkien's Modernist contemporaries.

My very short answer to this is that I think that Maeglin has well. He has kid of a relationship defined by cross-colonial and racial politics issues.

My longer answer is that you need to look at the implied subtext of the relationship between Eol and Aredhel, which appears to be very weird once you start digging deeper, especially on the front of Elvish racial differences and relationships. Eol's dialogues at multiple points where he appears - in conversation with Curufin, in conversation with Turgon - draw very heavily on positioning himself as Teleri, the Noldor as oppressors who have taken away their rights to move about freely, who have seized their lands, who now dictate where they come and go as they please and who, crucially, have killed his kin. (He is married to a Noldo princess). His ban on Aredhel's movements specifically relates to a) movement in the sun and b) movement towards the Noldor & esp. the SoF. The very political nature of Eol's ban is reinforced again in this little speech:

But when he declared his purpose to Eöl, his father was wrathful. ‘You are of the house of Eöl, Maeglin, my son,’ he said, ‘and not of the Golodhrim. All this land is the land of the Teleri, and I will not deal nor have my son deal with the slayers of our kin, the invaders and usurpers of our homes. In this you shall obey me, or I will set you in bonds.’

(Aredhel consistently wants to go towards the Sons of Feanor. There is something very interesting in this, considering both Turgon & Eol forbid this and each time, she begins by going towards them first.)

Maeglin, on the other hand, is drawn to his mother. Tolkien describes him as looking more like and being more like the Noldor in stature. There is a lacunae in the text there, but we might imagine that Aredhel saw this too and that Maeglin noticed this himself too, in the difference between himself and his father in appearance - and therefore, when Aredhel tells tales of Gondolin and her relatives to Maeglin, we get a sense of both desire emanating from him, but also the kind of envy which is familiar to the colonised/formerly colonised: "What hope is there in this wood for you or for me? Here we are held in bondage, and no profit shall I find here; for I have learned all that my father has to teach, or that the Naugrim will reveal to me."

There is a very interesting passage at the end of this chapter, which I think underlines this reading:

Yet he did not reveal his heart; and though not all things went as he would he endured it in silence, hiding his mind so that few could read it, unless it were Idril Celebrindal. For from his first days in Gondolin he had borne a grief, ever worsening, that robbed him of all joy: he loved the beauty of Idril and desired her, without hope. The Eldar wedded not with kin so near, nor ever before had any desired to do so. And however that might be, Idril loved Maeglin not at all; and knowing his thought of her she loved him the less. For it seemed to her a thing strange and crooked in him, as indeed the Eldar ever since have deemed it: an evil fruit of the Kinslaying, whereby the shadow of the curse of Mandos fell upon the last hope of the Noldor. But as the years passed still Maeglin watched Idril, and waited, and his love turned to darkness in his heart. And he sought the more to have his will in other matters, shirking no toil or burden, if he might thereby have power.

It's easy to get stuck on the treason of kin unto kin as pertains specifically to the Noldor, but just half a page before, we have this little note tucked away in Eol's curse to Maeglin:

"‘So you forsake your father and his kin, ill-gotten son! Here shall you fail of all your hopes..."

If you read the chapter closely, it becomes pretty evident that Maeglin sees Gondolin, he is very impressed with it, and then he wants nothing more than to be part of it, because it seems more elevated and greater than Nan Elmoth - which is forsaken, which is dark and which has run out of things to offer him by way of knowledge and also, power. Turgon looks on Maeglin and sees in him someone "worthy to be accounted amongst the princes of the Noldor". Maeglin pretty clearly leans really hard into this and as his father accuses him, eschews the Telerin part of his identity. This is all, again, deeply familiar racial politics.

It's also very interesting that Tolkien describes Maeglin's desire for Idril in terms of her seeming like the sun: "for she was golden as the Vanyar, her mother’s kindred, and she seemed to him as the sun from which all the King’s hall drew its light".

Earlier on in the chapter, when Aredhel and he come to the edge of Nan Elmoth, they see the sun and "desire grew hot" in Maeglin to leave Nan Elmoth. That is the point at which he makes his little speech above about "what do we have left here for either of us". Sunlight = Noldor = Gondolin = Idril. You might also argue that for Eol (and therefore Maeglin) the association is also a political one, given that the sun rose in Middle Earth with the arrival of Fingolfin's army, which is the point at which the Noldor seem to go from a shattered force, to one that establishes its own kingdom and which, in Eol's eyes, pushes them off their lands. Put together, Maeglin's desire for Idril is not merely only a desire for Idril i.e. sexual desire alone. Its also symbolic desire to possess Gondolin (the King's Hall), therefore to possess the great and lofty things that make the Noldor great and therefore, to possess that greatness and beauty himself.

On some level it is also political, because the point at which Maeglin is galvanised into action is the point at which Idril marries Tuor and has a son. There's a throwaway detail in Of Maeglin - "Maeglin would not remain in Gondolin as regent of the King" - that makes this more obvious (and also answers your question: pretty patently, yes, Turgon was listening to Maeglin more than Idril and placing him above her as political heir). Idril should be Turgon's heir and therefore his regent. Idril is his firstborn and is significantly older than Maeglin. But Maeglin's appearance places Maeglin above Idril in a system built on male primogeniture. However, when Idril marries and has a son, everything that Maeglin has built for himself essentially is at risk, because Earendil is then the heir to Gondolin and supplants Maeglin - despite being the son of a Man (inferior to an Elf) and Idril (a symbol of Gondolin, the Noldor, the things that Maeglin desires).

By every bourgeoise English definition, Maeglin should marry Idril and that would be the ideal marriage, closing off all political challenges for the throne of Gondolin and keeping it in the family. However, because this is Tolkien, the driving theme is not the realpolitik or bourgeoise values, but concerns Maeglin's libidinal desire to possess "Noldorness" and to do so by possessing Gondolin and to do that by possessing Idril - i.e. Maeglin's will to power. (Ofc, will to power is the animating force between incestuous marriages amongst the English bourgeoise, in retaining control over and consolidating estates; but that is immaterial because Tolkien does not believe in economics, unfortunately, or he does so only when its strategic to whatever idea/point he's trying to drive home). Ergo, I think, "the Eldar wed not with kin so near", when many of the Sindar marriages are littered with marriages occurring within the third degree of consanguinity and um, considerably closer in terms of broader kinship/affinity structures (e.g. Aragorn being, more or less, Arwen's foster-brother, though again, Tolkien puts his finger on the balance and conveniently has her staying with Galadriel for many decades through Aragon's coming of age; though it still has troubling implications viz. relationality to Elrond). THE POINT BEING that "the Eldar wed not with kin so near" serves as a moralistic symbol within the text to suggest that Maeglin's will to power over Idril via marriage is immoral not only because the will to power over an individual via marriage/kinship is wrong, but because it contravenes Elvish law of marriage as well (i.e. if we followed the same principle viz. C&C's violent approach to Luthien but subtract the question of consanguinity from the equation, Maeglin only would commit "wrong" when he attempts to force Idril into marriage; Tolkien wants us to know that Maeglin's desire is wrong right from the start, but cannot serve it to us in straightforwardly moralistic terms and therefore, the incest taboo also serves as cipher to demonstrate the wrongness of Maeglin's desire right from the get go)

So I don't know that his feelings for Turgon are complicated, or that daddy issues are his main problem. I think they're pretty straightforward textually. Maeglin is the half-Teleri, half-Noldor son of Aredhel (friend of the sons of Feanor, who tells Maeglin stories of them) and Eol (kin of Thingol, high kin of the Teleri) who is brought up between these two clearly politically and racially polarised individuals, is filled with a sense of rejection of home for being lesser compared to the tales of Valinor & Gondolin, desires to possess Gondolin, is acknowledged as worthy of possessing Gondolin by Turgon and then seeks to legitimate all of that by possessing Turgon's blood daughter and heir. (There are a lot of parallels to be made in this reading, of Maeglin and Caliban in The Tempest). Turgon substitutes for his father's authority, because Turgon is judged by Maeglin to be a more superior individual and therefore, a father he would like to possess - as a half-Teleri, half-Noldo child who looks more Noldo than Teleri. Clearly Maeglin resents his father's control, but he also rejects his father's perceived "lessness" - the first treason of kin unto kin, which lies in Maeglin rejecting his Teleri heritage and deciding to lean only into the Noldor part.

Maeglin clearly has a much closer attachment to Aredhel, that may stem from so many potential sources (his perceived racial inferiority drawing him to the "greater" parent; his shared place of relative powerlessness as a child and her as a woman under a clearly very patriarchal model of fatherhood viz. Eol's argument that Maeglin is "his" since he is his father) but which finally manifest in a desire to only acknowledge his Noldor heritage. If you read the text closely, it seems more like Aredhel's influence has a lot more to do with the shaping of Maeglin's desires as a child - and it does make you wonder how exactly she related the tales of Gondolin and her brothers and her cousins. It is also interesting, as I said, that she gravitates towards the Sons of Feanor (even above Fingon!) - which suggests at least some kind of affinity there, whether that is in terms of sharing their politics, or at least being willing to overlook those politics in favour of having a good fun time with male relatives who have no authority over her / whose authority she can reject without incurring censure. Whatever it is, her narration clearly positions Gondolin as aspirational and it all gets tangled up within Maeglin's broader desire for freedom and for more than Nan Elmoth's limited borders (and associations) have to offer him (and, probably, some of the thrill in pursuing the forbidden). Honestly, Turgon and Idril are pretty incidental, I think, in Maeglin's actual emotional landscape because everything he does in relation to Turgon and Idril are pre-formed by whatever the hell was going on in Nan Elmoth between Aredhel and Eol.

TL;DR: Maeglin may have some daddy issues, but crucially also, he has mommy issues out the wazoo and its those mommy issues that actually serve as the catalyst for the way the tragedy of Gondolin finally plays out. But beneath those mommy issues are, well, Noldor issues because any sense of racial superiority of the Noldor is ultimately one that has come cooked up by the Noldor themselves and most likely, on a deeper level, from the Sons of Feanor.

Please note I am not placing any responsibility on Aredhel or Idril for Maeglin's actions, or trying to excuse his actions by pointing to the elements of racialisation present in Maeglin's story; I am simply trying to describe how these pieces fit together and also suggest that Eol and Turgon are far less important to Maeglin's story than Aredhel is as his mother and as the person who seems (or is implied textually) to have done a lot more of the emotional caregiving.

#i want to eat this meta #oh to be this articulate op ily #lotr

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seaemberthesecond · 5 hours ago

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maybe the real oath was the sunk cost fallacy we made along the way

#also the idea that the silmarils had no supernatural mindaltering power of their own #it was only what they represented as a prize or a trophy or a glorious past that they gained their power #lotr

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seaemberthesecond · 1 day ago

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"Do not rip your skin off" you say. Well did you ever consider that the skin started it?

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seaemberthesecond · 2 days ago

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Maglor and Elrond inspired by a Jessie Willcox Smith illustration

#lotr

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seaemberthesecond · 2 days ago

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!!!!

I LOVE this. YES YES YES to all of it. You Get It.

Thinking about what you said re: citizenship and belonging in Valinor and how Earendil and Elwing must "prove their fidelity" and reject their hybridity in order to "earn" citizenship but despite choosing the way of the elves are still kept apart from the "real" elves – elwing is given a tower to live in, earendil is saddled with his flying ship and eternal star-duty and it's like they must constantly audition to prove that they have the right to remain in Valinor, earendil through his service and labour and elwing by abiding with her imposed segregation, the ultimate result of which is that they are sundered from their own children who have not yet "earned" their place in Valinor by renouncing their own hybridity. And how in the context of the subcontinent it's very similar to how minorities on either side of the border (particularly Indian Muslims and Pakistani Hindus as the demonized Other against which the national identity is crafted) must loudly perform patriotism at all times to avoid suspicion and yet despite all their efforts to be model citizens are still marginized and erased from the national narrative.

And Elros and Elrond's choice ofc mirrors the essential story of partition – families being forced to choose a side and ultimately being forever parted from one another because a higher power arbitrarily decided that this was the best way to deal with plurality 🤷🏽‍♀️

Also there is something to be said about how the Valar's approach to the peredhil seems to be 'stamp out the aberration as fast as possible'. Elros and Elrond need to make a choice and once they do their children are bound by it – Elros chooses mortality and so his descendants are forbidden from ever daring to set foot in Valinor or seeking immortality whereas Elrond's children are only allowed to hold on to immortality as long as they follow their father to Valinor when he leaves. Again, at the risk of being repetitive, it's very reminiscent of families being forced to choose which side of the border they'll live on and the consequences of their decision, whatever it may be, dictate the lives of future generations forever after by locking them into an identity that bars them from access to parts of their family and/or their homeland.

I hope this is at least somewhat coherent asfgfhs and also I haven't actually finished the silmarilion 😭 so if anything's egregiously wrong with what I said pls ignore it thnx

(also I am SO excited to read your India AU the excerpt has me frothing at the mouth!!!!)

Hi hi hi! I just finished reading The Sword Tree and I'm still unwell about it so I hope it's okay if I rant in your ask box for a sec. I'm South Asian and the bit about celebrian saying there's more to their national diagnosis of sea-longing hit so close to home because the rhetoric around returning to valinor is so similar to partition where the rhetoric was (and remains to this day at least in pakistan) that all the Muslims of the subcontinent WANTED to go to Pakistan because they wanted a Muslim homeland. Which is just - patently untrue as evidenced by the fact that MILLIONS of Muslims chose to remain in India and doesn't take into account any of the hundred of reasons people actually chose to migrate, the threat of violence being not least amongst them. The way returning to valinor is framed as this glorious homecoming when really so many of the elves would have been fleeing from violence, would have been going because they had no other choice, because it was that or fade is soooo ASHDHSGS it drives me insane. But at least now I can think of celebrian taking them to her forest so yay <3 thank you for that

You’ll have to excuse me nerding out being a complete freak and writing a whole ass impromptu 1500 word meta essay at midnight in the hour since you sent this though, because this ask scratches a good 100% of my brain in a wonderful way + I have a lot of THOUGHTS + it touches on some non-fiction stuff I was preparing for Mereth Aderthad… so thank you very much ily as you can see here I am just as unwell 🥹🙏🏽🫶🏽

I’ll put the actual content under the cut since it’s long, but it may be interesting to anyone else keen on my silly meta/theory ramblings re: postcolonial South Asia, Tolkien elves, Valinor, Indo-Pak (obv a thematic comparison rather than a direct equation since the circumstances, cost and setting is entirely different), slow violence and the diction of genteel exile… plus, Frodo comes into it at one point!

Forgive me if I repeat myself here because I’m not sure how long you’ve followed me so idk how much Balls Lore™️ I’ve dropped btw… so I’m not religious but my paternal side (who we’re culturally closer to as a family since my mum’s side don’t really practice their religion/culture) are actually Indian Muslims from Kerala, which was one of the v few Indian states that had both a high Muslim population yet saw almost no northward movement towards Pakistan, partly bc it was so far south and the people don’t speak any of the Indopak “border languages” but also because there wasn’t much communal violence or structural discrimination (relative to the rest of the country, I mean…) so life was at the time not particularly hostile or difficult for Muslims in Kerala, at least on the basis of their religion (caste is a diff story though 🥲).

And so people just stayed, because, as you say, they COULD. Because why the fuck would you choose to leave the place you were born in, trek across the entire subcontinent and face unspeakable violence, if you had literally any other choice!!!

And your point about “glorious homecoming” is also super interesting to me especially in the context of the RSS/Indian RW’s “Musalmanon ko donon sthan, Pakistan aur kabarsthan’ (Muslims have two places: Pakistan or the graveyard)” chant, by now a vicious majoritan sentiment which simultaneously contradicts their other unhinged viewpoint, aka “Pakistan technically belongs to India”. And that kind of diction is in turn echoed and mirrored from the Pakistani side, where anytime anti-Muslim violence breaks out in India, the PK broadcast media/politicos begin their “we told you so tee hee we told you you should have come here, who asked you to stay in India? 🤪” world tour like they’re talking about children who dropped their ice creams 🥲

Which is unsurprising of course, considering India and Pakistan have spent nearly 80 years constructing their national identity as the moral and civilisational antithesis of the other one… ie Pakistan as a “sanctuary from Hindu majoritarianism”, India as a “secular (lmao) republic against Islamic theocracy”… and like w Valinor and Middle-earth, these imaginaries are less geographic than mythic (thinking about Eärendil’s journey here, or Tuor just… as a concept sksksk): each land continuously reifies itself by casting the other as failed or impure, and the rules of performance and belonging keep shifting…

The very structure of Valinor's inaccessibility aka requiring divine permission, reserved for the select, where rules can be broken only if the divine powers will it to me resonates w how citizenship & belonging are gatekept in the subcontinent and how those with hybrid or marginal identities (like Ëarendiil) are often asked to prove their fidelity to the nation (“choose elves or men”) in ways the majority never is, as if access to the country of your birth was a conditional gift rather than a birthright.

And I’m thinking again about the Peredhel choice, and Elwing and Eärendil being forced to choose to belong to either men or elves at great cost, quite literally punished for hybridity, and for stepping foot in Valinor as the “wrong kind”, the kind who aren’t allowed to enter… and this punishment lasts for several generations of their line, right down to Arwen… so again that “homeland” projected not as a shared horizon of peace but as a fantasised ideal purified of the other’s existence…. an unsoiled homeland that can only keep moving forwards by erasing those whose identities speak to entanglement...

And with “Indo-Pak”, that metaphysical distance between Valinor and Middle-earth is reenacted as militarised borders and cultural opposition... each made from the blank spaces in the other’s mirror. And so in India, much like for other minorities in Pakistan, or former East Pakistan prior to the liberation of Bangladesh… those who don’t fit the moral geography of Partition ie religiously intermarried families, religious minorities, borderland communities, secular dissidents, queer folk, etc, are not only excluded from nationalist narratives but seen as aberrations, or intruders… India must inversely reflect Pakistan, and Pakistan must inversely reflect India, because if they don’t, then neither country can be said to exist.

And yes absolutely, for ME elves (ie Elrond for instance) the “return” is not some triumphant homecoming, the journey West is sorrowful and final… less a political return and more an admission that Middle-earth, the “contested space” so to speak, can no longer sustain the presence of its most wounded or burdened beings. Eg Frodo’s departure, like Celebrían’s sailing, being a spiritual evacuation rather than a physical one, not in itself necessary for healing, but because healing is no longer possible where the wound was made… like, the tragedy of people needing to convalesce from their own country is just 🥲

and I think the ending of the Return of the King showcases this splendidly: by ending with a *departure* from ME rather than an *arrival* in Valinor. And that’s what makes it tragic to me, bc in Tolkien’s world, the sailing to Valinor marks the end of the narrative for the reader, but in South Asia, this desire for purified homelands continues to regenerate new forms of violence…

What I’m trying to say here is, I assume you haven’t read my India AU (Prayers to Broken Stone) since I remember you mentioning the sea serpent one was the first Maedhros and Elrond story of mine you read, which is why I am EXTREMELY shook (in a good way aka I am insanely impressed, whatever our souls are made of yours and mine are the same etc etc) at how you’ve hit the nail right on the head when it comes to a major undercurrent of Prayers, which I don’t think I’ve even mentioned explicitly on Tumblr either—the overarching thematic parallel between the fading of elves and the postcolonial trajectory of the Indian Muslims who chose to stay because they wanted to, where the opportunity for a “glorious return” to an unknown land is no opportunity at all, and is in fact nothing but a great and violent sundering. Like that is the main thematic framework there, far beyond any positionality-politics about the Noldor and the Sindar or whatever. Just including a bit from one of the chapters which I think illustrates exactly what I mean (context, this is set during the Emergency following the Fëanorians as a Malayali Muslim family, where Maedhros is a former freedom fighter).

———

I wanted to convey in the fic how in post-independence India, Muslims were not formally expelled, but their political + cultural + historical centrality was increasingly made to fade, ie transformed from participants in the national story to spectral reminders of an undesirable past… thinking about that alternate LOTR ending where Sam talks to his daughter Elanor about Celeborn staying alone in Lothlorien, and her calling it “terribly sad”… artefacts/relics/remembrance etc etc…

+ in Tolkien, fading is often accompanied by a refusal to speak of the past. Sam, after Frodo’s departure, speaks little of the Ring or of what was lost, or with Celebrían, the narrative has nothing to add about the year between Cel’s capture and torture, vs her sailing, ie what it was like to make the decision to sail after the act of violence. Similarly, in India, public discourse around Patrition + postcolonial antiMuslim violence is marked by silences, half-truths, and amnesia (similar to how the Bangladesh War of Liberation is taught in Pakistan, from what I hear from a cross-border friend…). And this silence is absolutely not accidental but functional: they allow the nation to perform coherence by concealing rupture.

Eg just as the memory of Frodo’s pain is only buried under the peace of the Shire and never truly gone, the memory of communal violence in India is buried (quite literally sometimes, thinking about Babri masjid…) beneath the rhetoric of secularism, progress and unity. IE like Maedhros realises in that snip above where he “loses” his name, India tells itself that it must forget the past in order to survive the future… and in doing so, renders certain kinds of survival indistinguishable from death 🥲

So yes, I absolutely think it’s exactly that “violence of belonging”, where to belong fully often requires the erasure of the other, where even the sacred return is structured by exclusion. Ie the “offer” of “returning” to an imaginary, idealised and ultimately inert “homeland” is more a euphemism for removal, or a horizon made visible only through loss.

The political grammar of “sundered” states require a sort of continuous re-inscription: new Others, new exiles, new purity tests. and in both Tolkien + postcolonial India, gesturing the “fading people” towards a redemptive “homeland” doesn’t signify the endpoint of suffering and victimisation, but rather serves as its ongoing justification. Eg is it homecoming or is it exile? 🥲

Hope my very incoherent midnight thoughts make sense! You really put my brain on speedrun mode jsjsjsjxjd this is the fastest I’ve run to answer a meta ask hahaha. And I also wanted to say thank you so much for leaving all those fantastic comments on my fics, I normally respond in bulk because I’m only logged in to AO3 on my desktop, but I just wanted to say they have TRULY been making my week…

#lotr

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