#ASK ME ABOUT MY HANDIR FEELS SOMETIME i'll write you a novel

[theserpentsadvocate]

@iceberg-hootenanny I tried to save your ask as a draft and tumblr deleted it instead, but if I recall correctly you said 4, 5, 17 for any Silmarillion character, so! (Insert joke about ‘ha, you think YOU took a long time to answer’.)

4. Has the character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them?

I go back and forth on whether Handir was even at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (depending on which source you use, as few as three of the Haladin’s warriors returned, so his odds of survival are not good, and we know he did survive past that) – but if we assume that he didn’t remain behind as interim leader and he didn’t choose to stay because his son was badly injured (my preferred reason), then he would have been there.

Of course, the Nirnaeth is an experience, more than just a single event he witnessed, but my personal headcanon is that Handir saw his father killed. Witnessing it had a profound affect on him, being unable to recover the body had a profound affect on him, returning home with his men absolutely decimated had a profound affect on him – it’s hard to separate these things from each other, but the visceral blow of seeing his father cut down contributed tremendously to the near-despair he was mired in during his first years as Chieftain. Between that and watching his mother just hopelessly waste away immediately afterward, it took him along time to recover. (It didn’t help that he had to focus all of his attention on getting his people through the ensuing difficulties, and what extra strength he had he spent trying to be present and steadfast for his family, rather than on processing his grief. It’s not that his priorities are wrong, there are just no good choices here.)

Losing his cousins in the fighting at the Fords of Brithiach also had a profound affect on him (no less so because they miraculously popped up alive a year later), but in that case the fact that he didn’t witness it, was fighting in another area entirely and only found out afterwards that they were gone, was the really traumatic part, and it took quite some time before he could really believe that Hurin and Huor even were alive in Dor-lomin. It just juxtaposes really interestingly to me.

5. What have they got in their pocketses?

Knives, or string, precious!

…You know, it’s actually a decent bet that most characters I’m interested in would have at least one of the above. Except for the Valar, I guess.

Knives: Haleth, Nienor, Mablung, probably Fingolfin, decent odds any random member of the Haladin will have at least an eating knife

String: Beldis (well, thread, anyway), Niniel, maybe Idril actually?

Both: Brandir for sure

17. What was the character’s favourite childhood toy?

Handir likes to whittle, and he made Brandir a lot of little animals when he was young. I don’t know that there was one specific one that he preferred over the rest, although I’m sure he was very attached to various ones at different times, but having some wooden figurine his father made for him to play with was a staple of his childhood. He takes it up himself after his father’s death as a way to feel closer to him, although he’s not as good at it as Handir was and always feels slightly like he’s coming up wanting once he’s finished. In that way it mirrors his feelings about being Chieftain.