softlysilverfountainsfall

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Star-spray

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the founding members of the “forgotten finwëans” club!

findis (right) is president, argon (top) is vice-president, angrod (left) is secretary, and lalwen (bottom) is a member in bad standing because she never pays her dues

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i enjoy thinking about the silmarillion as an in-universe historical text and also building on that it's really fun to think about what other texts (not necessarily limited to writing) might have survived in-universe from the first age or even before. of course a lot of it got destroyed, but as in the real world, there would be copies of copies and fragments and things written down from memory and stories told to children that survived. Even if 95 percent of everything was lost, that still leaves a whole lot! and all of that would be subject to further translation and mythologization and fragmentation and alteration after the first age. there's so much potential in the cultural legacy (& its reception) of first age beleriand

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now the joy that was hidden in the songs we heard is made plain to me.

tolkien south asian week hosted by @arwenindomiel

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Hold me blameless if you can.

I gave my love to what was fair.

I held his portion in my hands.

Fate took more than his share.

If I were but a builder mild,

And having made a lovely home,

Did find in it bounder wild,

You’d blame but him alone.

And if I were a gardener,

Who grew a lovely tree,

And storms made awful use of her

You’d have no blame for me.

I held the spark as I was bid,

I loved it as it grew,

And had I known I might have hid,

It from the wind that blew.

It took that which I had begun,

And fanning sent it forth,

A blaze to rival new lit sun

And I the first he scorched.

Hold me blameless I but dared

To start a thing well loved.

would you have any better faired

Against plans from above ?

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Some Gil-galad heraldry bowls I made

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what she says: i’m fine

what she’s thinking: Morwen clutched the door frame til her fingers bled. Morwen clutched the door frame til her fingers bled. Morwen clutched the door frame til her fingers bled. Morwen clutched the door frame til her fingers bled. Morwen clutched the door frame til her fingers bled…

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🥲for me this is the end of story so I paint this(so much pain(didn't expect this when i started reading

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“Every character in the Silmarillion has so many names” factoid actually a statistical error. Most characters in the Silmarillion don’t have more than one or two names. Túrin Neithan Gorthol Agarwaen son of Úmarth Adanedhel Mormegil Thurin Wildman of the Woods Turambar Dagnir Glaurunga, who lived in a cave and has ten names, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

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watching the Moria scene in the fellowship

Y'know what, why not start the story at the beginning. So Eru Illuvatar-

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Maybe they should’ve called it “The Union of Fingon” for political reasons. 

I’m not even kidding it’s exactly that sort of inane thing that wins or loses wars. If Fingon played down The Sons of Feanor’s involvement then Nargothrond and Doriath might’ve helped more. Maedhros should’ve loudly played up that it was Fingon’s idea, even if it wasn’t.

That’s politics. That’s literally politics. If it wasn’t Maedhros asking Thingol for military aid, and was instead Fingon, he might’ve helped. “But he swore to never aid the sons of Feanor!” No you don’t understand, that’s the sort of thing people tend to overlook or forget if the suggestion being presented to them doesn’t directly mention the thing they hate.

Is it stupid? Yes.

Would it have worked? It’s entirely possible.

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Nerdanel by the sea.

For my fic Sinking Ships, in which Nerdanel meets a Teleri lady on the beach and they talk about the first kinslaying, among other things.

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I love your world building! Your name ideas are awesome. Love the idea of Indis being a true prophetic mother name

-@outofangband

Belated thank you! Also, sharing my thought process on that one because it's a very classic Silmarillion headcanon origin: it bothers me that Indis's name means "bride." I hate how it reduces her to a feminine trope - at "best", only here to have a troubled marriage; if you're a staunch Fëanorian, a femme fatale homewrecker. I immensely dislike how this is, in fact, an fairly accurate description of her role in the story...

Which is deliberate on Tolkien's part! The "canonically correct" way to ameliorate this misogyny (though neither erase nor excuse it) is to remember that this whole text is a mixture of history, legend and myth passed through multiple storytellers over thousands of years, translated and re-translated and interpreted through the eyes of elves and men and hobbits and men again, until even if this person ever actually existed in the history of Middle Earth - IF! - "Indis" probably wasn't even her epessë, much less her commonly used name. Probably her name got ink blotted on it at some point, or mixed up with someone else's name, and the next Númenorean scholar to rewrite the text followed the Archetypal School of historical interpretation and decided to name her "Indis" because of her role in the story...

But this, too, bothers me. Because I love the framing device of these various books, I love the historian-given dubious canonicity of literally every detail of The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and especially of The Silmarillion. But! We need some solid canon upon which to hang all our headcanons, so it's imperative to retain a delicate mental balance of knowing everything could be made up (more than it already is by being fiction!) while also adhering to as much as possible as something that Really Did Happen - and names are pretty solidly in the latter category. I mean, everyone has multiple and for those who don't, we tend to make more up, but a belief in the basic premise of the text is necessary in order to function in any fandom, and "names of characters" is pretty "basic premise."

So it's impossible to ignore that her name is Indis; and it's impossible to ignore that the name "Indis" is closely connected to her place in the narrative, more than most characters, and that said place is uncomfortably non-feminist - you can round out her character all you like, but you have to admit that her role in the story is to be the Second Wife and Mother whose acts of being a wife and mother cause trouble! That's a fact! And it's not great! And the name "Indis" isn't helping because if she was named anything but her literal narrative role, that would be characterization! She could be noble like Artanis, she could be of the sea like Eärwen, but she's not! She's just "bride"!

...so, I redeem this by making this definition of her life deliberate within the text - and not just by a future Númenorean scholar, but by Indis's mother. (Female! O! Cs!) Furthermore, names of prophecy are implicitly grand (even if they're not necessarily either good or bad). It makes being a bride itself feel more active - and why not! Do Indis's acts of love and marriage not change the fate of the world just as much as Lúthien's? Consider that Indis's act of marriage is so important that it echoes back through the Great Music to be known by her mother as she held the future bride as a babe in arms. Consider a mother holding her child under stars beside a lake and going, "damn, this kid is gonna have ripple effects. I should add a bragging warning label."

Also, if you accept the headcanons that

a) most Elvish languages treat "sex" (physical) and "marriage" (soul-bonding) as basically synonymous; and

b) Indis spends thousands of years in the Second/Third ages patiently and stubbornly figuring out how to Make It Work between herself, Finwë and Miriel, such that all three of them can marry with genuine all-around mutual love unto the end of days, for peace among the still-troubled Noldor but mostly for happiness for herself and those she loves most (also an act of bride-ship worthy of prophecy, note) -

then you can with a straight face imagine Indis saying, "I fucked my way into this mess and I'm going to fuck my way out of it."

Feminist critique + consideration of canonical historicity + elaborate headcanon web = sex joke! Now that's good fandom!

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(All art used with EXPRESS permission from the artist)

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Hey everyone! Check out this tiny foray into digital art that I did! (I wrote out the Tengwar and English translation by hand first)

anyways I love Aerin so so much and think about her repressed anguish and rage literally every day

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You know actually I can sort of see Fingolfin's point with the Helcaraxë.

They've, like, just blown off Mandos telling them "your path leads to suffering and death" with 'that doesn't matter'. Before them: a road of obvious suffering and death.

So if they give up, they are saying one or more of:

Actually we aren't cool with suffering and death, we just didn't believe Mandos!

Actually it wasn't that we were cool with it, we were just following Fëanor, so with him having abandoned us we might as well quit.

Actually it turns out we didn't understand what suffering and death meant and actually faced with it we're chickening out.

All of which are… yeah.

Or, alternatively, they could say: The people willing to stand down rather than walk into Doom already left. We made our choice. We keep going.

Also — once you've decided that continuing is more important than "not benefiting from the murder of our friends and plunder of their treasures", how can you not decide continuing is more important than your own safety?

In conclusion Noldor are highly susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy, though they wouldn't see it that way because they usually think either (a) surely they will eventually succeed and it won't have been for nothing or (b) they are doomed no matter what they do so might as well be consistent. And the Kinslaying and the Doom were a hell of a sunk cost.