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eri-pl · 2 days

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Silm reread 17: more B&L

And more fourth wall, and therefore more Pengolodh.

TW: Some musings about what exactly Morgoth wanted to do with Luthien, but vague and rather silly.

Sauron, like everyone there knew Huan's "die on greatest wolf" prophecy. Where from???

Luthien faints! She's not that OP. Her cloak dazes Sauron and Huan saves the day. She takes the island, Sauron flees and doesn't notice Gondolin (I guess Ulmo did his mist thing).

Luthien says that she claims the island and the island replies! The magic goes away and it all crumbles (described in a very awesome way) and the ex-prisoners are in shock (who wouldn't?).

Luthien faints at the fainted Beren, because she thinks he's dead. Of all the books you had to reference Romeo and Juliet? Professor… It's a parody more than a serious thing. And it's so… But ok, maybe that's the point. Maybe the point is that of course B&L don't harm themselves because they have a functioning braincell. And estel. Not necessarily in this order.

Also, we get the note that Finrod is already with his father in Valinor. When? When is this written? I guess the only way to get this info back from Valinor to ME would be the War of Wrath, or maaaybe Gandalf told Elrond. But Gandalf barely remembered anything, so more like War of Wrath. Or Galadriel saw him in the mirror and she told Elrond who added this to the book. This would make sense.

Do we have any info on "Finrod got reembodied quickly" except this line above + fanon?

Nargothrond rebels against C&C and Orodreth becomes king. He doesn't kill them because he is afraid of getting more Doom of Mandos. This… isn't a very moral attitude. Well, at least he doesn't kill them.

Also, Celebrimbor disowns his dad. Or at least his dad's deeds.

Beren, against his better judgment, tries to leave Luthien in safety but she tells him it doesn't work this way.

They fight C&C. Luthien forbids Beren to kill Curufin. Which is great of her. (I wonder what she'd say about Celegorm, but probably the same.)

Curufin curses Beren. "Taking the sky and clouds as his witness" – I guess he is too afraid / too ashamed to mention the Valar. :þ He wishes Beren a painful death, soon. Which …kind of works?

Celegorm tbh doesn't do much in here. He does fight Beren, but Curufin seems to be the boss.

Beren is desperate, leaves alone, sings, Luthien (who was searching for him because no, she won't let him go on the quest alone) sings back. Again. It's not a full rescue, but still, it is the song thing again.

Description of Thuringwethil, who is just a large bat with iron (liteerally? metaphorically?) talons. And Sauron's mail-lady. Mail-monster? Sadly, we don't get an info on who killed her.

Beren curses his promise to Thingol, Huan lectures him, gives him a sort of prophecy and leaves. Why is everyone cursing things all the time?

Morgoth also knows what Huan's fate is (Everyone knows it. How? Did Celegorm gloat about it?), also, more info on how werewolves are made. So, Carcaroth.

Luthien gets a burst of Maiarin powers (because fate, plot and all. Yes. I know. But this is the genre.)

We got an absolute metal description of Morgoth's throne room: "his nethermost hall that was upheld by horror, lit by fire, and filled with weapons of death and torment". Upheld by horror. This is just peak description. (as long as it's sparse and the rest of description is actual description. Yes, HPL, I am looking at you) unspeakably

Morgoth, umm, reacts in a similar way as Celegorm, and we're told that it was the wickest idea he got since he escaped from Valinor. Which:

I respect Tolkien for putting it so high on the wickedness meter

Does the "since he escaped" addition mean that killing the Trees was more wicked??? Sorry, I'm not buying it. Depraving the Elves? Hmm. Making orcs was more wicked in my opinion (in the "from broken Elves" theory), and he indeed invented it before the whole imprisonment in Valinor, so I would like to assume this is what the narration means, but I somehow doubt it.

Please don't tell me that indirectly giving Feanor bad ideas was somehow more wicked than this. :|

Also, him and the Men… but that is vaguely canon and anyway Pengolodh said himself that he doesn't know what happenned, so this doesn't count. Because if it counted, this "most wicked" would be false.

And of course it turns against him. He gets blinded, everyone else falls asleep, the Silmarils glow brighter (reacting to Luthien?).

Out of the blue, we now get a quite sympathetic description of Morgoth being so tired and terrified and worried and …. see, Jirt, that's why. That's why I can't read him as you would like me to. Seriously. If you don't want me to have compassion for the guy, do not show him as emotionally vulnerable. Seriously. [Unless it is the translation again]

Yea, I could blame this on narrative frame (which goes on and off, in one paragraph he doesn't know things, and in the other he almost knows what Morgoth's inner emotional state is) and say that Pengolodh made it up… except it's very much a kind of thing he would not make up, rather cut out… I would have to assume some other author or editor added this for some reasons… If I were to guess, this very much sounds like something Luthien would say when telling this story. (Which tells us a lot about her)

Anyway: book, what are you doing?

And Luthien puts Morgoth to sleep (which is an achievement!!!), "as black as the Outer Void where he once wandered alone". Jirt. Seriously. Stop giving me ammunition to like him. I almost wish I had more normal reactions and, idk, assumed more details on what he planned about Luthien or anything that would allow me to read it closer to the authorial intent. (Because with how cautiously you worded it, it might have as well been planning to propose to her and make her a dark queen, Haladriel-style, but cooler. And from a book that says "corrupting Fefe was one of the worst" I could assume this would be still called "wickedest since fefe". I know that's not what you mean, but I wish I could internalize it more.)

My brain is not braining properly. (Also I can't learn to not mistake "wonder" and "wander" every once in a while. I blame it on that one song from RoP. Which is almost as uneven in quality in my eyes as this chapter.)

At least, we get a description of how the Silmarils were set in the crown. (Also, my drawing was wrong, because Morgoth falls face-down.)

Beren takes the Silmaril and it glows through his flesh like in a lantern (White or red? Seems more like white, but red often works better with fanart.)

Luthien is out of spell points tired, Beren tries to use the Silmaril on Carcaroth, saying "this is the fire that will destroy you and all the evil creatures" which I think is quite stupid, so Carcaroth promptly bites off his hand, chomps the Silmaril and runs away because he's in pain.

"Stupid but well-intentioned thing doesn't work but gets the result anyway" is a trope I like, but sadly in Legendarium it is terribly rare. Again, B&L have a different genre than the Feanorians. :(

Another "the most X to ever X": Carcaroth's rage is the most terrible thing to happen to Beleriand (before the War of Wrath). OK, I can believe this, I think.

Eagles! They should really have a tagline about providing eucatastrophes. It's their main job.

Morgoth is probably awake, because volcano and lightnings are striking from the gound (lightning seems to be his thing, and thunderstorms in general too).

Luthien (in contrast to Sauron) can see Gondolin down below and it gets a beautiful (but short) description. Also, she'd rather wander aimlessly with Beren because she is so happy, but he remembers that he gave his word, also Thingol deserves to see his daughter, despite all his problematic behavior. Beren is so kind.

We get a lot of information from Luthien's PoV in this story, more than Beren's, which confirms to me that in-world, this is derived from Thingol's retellings of their story, and Luthien told him more than Beren did. Also, he was unconcious in many important moments.

Also, we get a note that it's bad to ignore father's opinion, "unless in extreme situation" which sounds quite feminist to me, considering Tolkien's times and the genre.

Meanwhile in Doriath:

Daeron left Doriath to be sad for Luthien's disappearance (we aren't told if he even learned that she returned with Beren). Well, he did snitch on her twice. :þ Also, we are reminded that "he was considered better even than Maglor". :Þ

Thingol is mad at Celegorm (for the "let me marry Luthien pls" letter + probably for Finrod's death), he'd like to attack all Feanorians, but can't, so he writes to Maedhros demanding help in finding Luthien, but the letter gets eaten by Carcaroth (probably. Definitely doesn't reach its destination) so we don't know what Maedhros would do.

[I think: berate Celegorm, agree to help with Luthien and demand the Silmaril for it. Which… Thingol may have agreed to tbh. He cared for Luthien more. So, maybe if it wasn't for Carcaroth things would be better. Even for Celegorm. There's a fic potential in here.]

Oh, here is Mablung. He will be in CoH too, I think.

Thingol is still not a fan of Beren. Until the hand pun. Absolutely realistic father-in-law behavior. :D I love the genre whiplash.

And the narrative tells us that Luthien's love is a feeling unknown before and all the powers of Arda cannot stop B&L's fate. I'm not a fan of this sentence, it makes me cringe a bit. Did I mention that I dislike romance as a genre?

Anyway Thingol ok-s it and they get married.

Hunt for Carcaroth. The way in which Mablung takes the Silmaril gives me a vague Arthurian (Grail) vibe, but I'm not sure. It is weird and the disappearing hand seems the medieval sort of weird?

Beren dies, Luthien … It doesn't say explicitely that she died of grief. I would prefer to believe that it was more like her Maiarin instinct… she went to Mandos, because she had a business there.

Also. Men after their death sail from the dark shores of the Outer Sea — what? That is so cool. And who runs the port there, who has a house on the very edge? Nienna! This is just so fascinating. Early-Legendarium-like but in the best way.

Luthien sings the most beautiful song that has been made. OK, I can buy that. And, says Pengolodh, there wasn't, nor will ever be a saddest song. My guy, you would sound wiser if you stopped saying what will be and what will not be, you are not Namo. But anyway, her song is beautiful and very, very sad.

This song is so amazing that it's still sang in Valinor, without any change, and the Valar are sad. that is… interesting to explore. It is about Men and Elves and even Namo is sad… yes, I am definitely getting ideas. Which may be explored some day. Or not.

I wonder whether we get the words of it in the Lay... No, the Lay doesn't go this far. I therefore will assume that it starts with "the stars have faded" or something similar, like we have described Luthien's grief in the chapter: "the starlight was quenched and darkness had fallen even upon Lúthien Tinúviel"

B&L say their goodbyes, Namo is so moved that he goes to Manwe, Manwe goes to (metaphorically; mentally in his deepest mind) Iluvatar, Luthien gets a choice.

And the invitation to forget Beren and live among the Valar… I'm not sure what is the exact deal here? Is she offered just a normal Elven Valinorean deal or to make her a full-on Maia? Because it kind of sounds like this. And… why not? The word "impossible" got yeeted out the window anyway (I love such situations, of course I do, I love the insane out-of-the-box-ness as Mairon loved order and efficiency, but hopefully the other way around ie.: it is a problem first and not last).

Anyway we don't know what exactly was the first option, because she choses Beren (I really like to think it was less about "romance means so much to me, I am not complete without my man" and more about "it feels like a beautiful idea (and I do love him and forgetting it sounds cheap and too easy)" but … have I mentioned I don't like romance as a genre?)

Luthien was the only Elda to truely die… Yep. Hold our beers and behold our fics. (Or maybe it is just my optics that Elves going "because Luthien made a precedent" is a fic staple? Anyway this makes too much sense to not use it.)

Yes, she's the only one in the canon. She died and it's sad. But we got half-Elves which is cool. Also, and we got a teaser for Elrond and Arwen:

"Yet in her choice the Two Kindreds have been joined; and she is the forerunner of many in whom the Eldar see yet, though all the world is changed, the likeness of Lúthien the beloved, whom they have lost."

Also, poor Elrond. This paragraph shows us how he is seen by other Eldar. First and foremost as a memory of a long-lost legend. :(

I feel like I missed some of the cool parts, but nevermind. TLDR: Luthien cool, narrative frame inconsistent.

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gallusrostromegalus · 1 month

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Might I inquire as to what, precisely, a Mustain't is? (Aside from a string of letters I hesitate to Google in that order.)

In October 2014 I went on a road-trip to the Dryest Place In America.

I was having a rough year, very depressed from having dropped out of college for the third time. I decided a road trip was in order to re-set my brain and get a little distance. Being that it was October, and therefore all the campgrounds in the American Southwest were filled with people who have the good sense to camp in reasonable temperatures, I elected to take my parent's minivan so I could car-camp anywhere suitably isolated, and looked up some of the southwest's geographic extremes- the highest place I could drive to (Pikes Peak), the lowest place (Badwater Basin), and for fun, the Dryest Place in the continental US, which turned out to be the Pinacate Volcanic field just west of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It gets rain maybe twice a century and has no standing water, despite being less than 100 miles from the gulf of California.

It's a startlingly beautiful and alien place. The ground is a deep chocolate brown to black volcanic sand, and in mid October, the rabbit brush is turning bright yellow as it shifts to autumn, the organ pipe cacti are a dark green and stand, partially concealed in the brush at exactly human height. The air is alive with birds and insects and bats at night. The stargazing is like looking into the eyes of God.

You get there by driving down a little dirt road called "El Camino Del Diablo", or "The Devil's Road".

I drove out about three hours from Glendale, AZ to get there, arriving at sunset, and felt a profound sense of peace. I stargazed, listening to the bats hunt and sing, and slept peacefully for the first time in months.

I stayed out there for three days, sketching and painting the landscape, taking strolls through this almost alien landscape, and enjoying the light and sound and total absence of human intrusion besides myself.

On the fourth night, it was a new moon, and I awoke in the middle of the night. Something was amiss, and it took me a while to realize it was because I could NOT hear the bats. I was sleeping inside the van with the rear windows rolled halfway down rather than trying to set up the tent, so I when I sat up, I looked out of the van's reflective windows to discover what at first appeared to be A Horse.

It was something between pale gray and bright white in the starlight, standing maybe a dozen feet from the van, sniffing curiously. It made sense- I was in the middle of mustang country and there was quite a bit of foliage in the area for it and it did look like a truly wild horse- lumpy where the bones were jutting out, dusty about the hooves and face.

I was instantly seized by the sort of paralytic fear Sleep paralysis is made of. I couldn't move. It wasn't quite looking at me because it couldn't quite see through the windshield into the shadowy into the shadowy interior, but I had the distinct impression that if I looked away, it would know, and get me.

I already had problems with horses. My beloved Aunt Helen's Prize mare tried to kill me on two separate occasions, and the year before I had to carry my sister-in-law backwards out of a slot canyon whilst reciting the Saint Crispin's Day Speech as loudly as possible to keep a mustang from trampling us to death.

This is approximately what it should have looked like:

Instead, it was... off. like trying to draw a horse from memory.

The waist tapered in.

The legs were slightly too long or the torso slightly too short, probably both.

The ears were Triangular.

The head wasn't quite right- Too narrow and the jaw wasn't heavy enough.

The tail was too long and arced unnaturally away from the body.

The neck arched.

The nostrils were too high and close

The mouth too long.

Whatever this is, a Mustang it Ain't.

I watched it from the back seat as it sniffed around the front of the van, curious with about the side mirrors. It moved around the van, nibbling experimentally on the front door handle. It came up to the side windows, sniffing like a dog, and it's breath didn't fog up the glass.

Finally, it came up to the rear window, which was rolled halfway down to let the fall night air in. Not even half a pane of glass and two feet of air between us, and I could clearly see it's bright blue eyes.

Horses have Elongated pupils to give them a wide field of vision, and eyes that rotate sideways in their sockets so the pupil remains parallel to the ground. Rather creepy to watch, especially the ones with blue eyes.

A real horse that was curious about the interior of the van would have come up to the window more or less sideways, and looked at me with something like this:

Instead, the damn thing walked up and faced the back window head on, staring back at me with this:

I'm not sure how long we watched each other like that, eyes locked. My eyes burned. I couldn't blink. My mouth was dry. I couldn't swallow. My throat began to ache. I couldn't make a sound. My skin began to twitch, like I was severely dehydrated. I couldn't move. My lungs burned. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I couldn't move.

Something was touching the side of my hand on the seat next to me. It's my water bottle.

The realization must have broken the terrible paralysis in the lower parts of my brain first, because by the time I consciously realized I could move again, I was already flinging my water bottle out the window at it.

The top was open, and splashed out the window at the Mustain't.

I've never heard such a scream out of an animal. Something halfway between the sound of unquenchable rage vibrating in someone's chest and the way rabbits cry out to God when the dogs catch them.

It jumped back, pivoting away from the van, snarling at the water bottle. I don't think you're supposed to be able to see All of a horse's teeth at once, no matter how angry it is.

I watched it run into the night for some distance, it's pale body visible against the black sand and the dark gray shadow of the ancient volcanic cone it was headed for.

When the blood stopped pounding in my ears, I could hear the bats again.

I debated leaving right then, but I didn't want to get out of the van with that thing in the area, nor litter by leaving the water bottle out there. I also had the awful idea that if I left now, it might somehow be able to follow me home. I ended up staying up three hours to watch the sunrise, shaking and trying to figure out if I'd woken up from a vivid dream, if my meds had stopped working, or if that had really happened. I didn't dare move until I actually felt the temperature rise, before stepping out of the van to grab the bottle. I had my camera ready- I was still using a DSLR back then- to take pictures of the hoofprints, to show how close it had gotten to the van.

No hoofprints.

Beetle tracks in the soft sand around the van, and the clear foot-and-wing prints of a bird that had hopped around then taken off. But no hoofprints.

I went over the entire campsite with the tent broom, to make sure I removed every scrap of evidence I had ever been there, including my footprints, grabbed my water bottle, and drove the three hours back back to Glendale, then decided to do seven more hours of driving to Moab, Utah just to put more than 500 miles, the state line and at least nine things that could be considered "running water" between me and the Mustain't.

I still have that water bottle. It has a dent in the bottom from hitting something, but that could have happened at any time. Strange thing though. I can't drink that bottle dry. I'll have it on me, drink whatever I've put in there- water, juice, iced coffee- and eventually feel like I've drunk the whole think and that it's empty. But I open it up and it's still at least a quarter full. I drink that. I get thirsty. I open it up again. ...and there's always a mouthful left.

Not sure what the side effects of drinking from a bottle cursed by a Mustain't to always have some left are, but it lives in the Emergency Breakdown Kit in my car now, just in case I meet another one.

---

(I'm a disabled artist and make my living telling stories, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or Pre-order the Family Lore book on Patreon)

#Family Lore #scary stories to tell in the dark #or out camping #Horses #sort of #The Mustain't #long post #trypophobia #I know these are usually funny but this one is spooky

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