#chthonion answers questions

[chthonion]

I think you'd like to know: I am having SO MUCH FUN trying to picture what chapter 22 of The Harrowing looked like from Finrod's POV, it's the favorite thing my mind goes to chew on whenever i'm staring out the window in the hour-long bus ride to work and back! thank you so much for this!

This made me grin a lot. Honestly one of the MOST compelling Finrod POV options in the Harrowing, what a DAY he must have been having.

Here's a tiny piece of my own attempts to work it out:

The tea was Finrod's idea. Finrod knows, without Annatar ever explaining it, that Annatar thinks that it was Celebrimbor's idea, and that Finrod helped because he's Celebrimbor's friend. The tea was Finrod's idea, and he did not suggest it for Celebrimbor. He suggested it because Annatar looked so afraid, when he asked Finrod how to make tea, and so relieved, when he had gotten all the way through the process and had a cup of tea in his hands. He suggested it because Annatar went through that entire interaction expecting criticisms or jabs or at least irritation, tense and deferential and cramped, and Finrod is trying to make a point about the fact that it is okay to need to ask. He may have overestimated Annatar's capacity to read into actions that are not adversarial. "Yes, it is," Finrod says, trying to put as much certainty into his voice as he can. "Because we wanted to do something nice for you." Annatar gives Finrod a look as if Finrod has just stabbed him in the heart.

[liltalle]

Happy Tolkien Reading Day!

A Tolkien Ask for You:

You have the chance to serve one of the Valar as a Maia. Which one would you serve, and what would your job entail?

Hm, good question. A pretty answer would be a Maia of Varda, to help tend the Wells of Light or hang the stars, or one of Nessa's dancers, and I like those. But there's an idea that Ainur have a core principle to their natures, being more singular than the Children (like Love for Melian), and going that direction, there's one passage that's resonated with me deeply...

“I was the voice that sang possibility, and strove to reach it. And here I am, having done so by means that no one else among you would have tried.”

– said by Annatar/Sauron in @chthonion's The Harrowing, who I identify with far too much 😂

So, idk if I get to pick an extant character, but I fear... given a dualistic divine conflict, I'd find Paradise boring, and I might fall.

(since that's kinda what happened irl...)

I wouldn't enjoy working for Melkor, I don't like destruction, Thuringwethil's messenger & vampire gig sounds alright, but given the limited options, to get outside of supposedly perfect stasis... idk, that's the dark but maybe more honest answer? (We're all more complex than Ainur anyway tho 😉)

[echo-bleu]

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

28. On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

Thank you!

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

Let me check my bookmarks real quick. They will all be Silmarillion fics, as that's where my brain is at currently.

we will make this place our home by @leucisticpuffin, a 70s AU where young Elrond and Elros are fostered by Maedhros and Maglor. I just can't get over how homely and comforting it is, while having *precisely* the right amount of hurt/comfort and melancholy, and the writing is a thing of beauty that I wish I could write even half as well.

The Harrowing by @chthonion (and it's prequel Anastasis). I wasn't into Silvergifting at all before this fic, but I can't get enough of it now. It is so beautifully written, a truly moving exploration of trauma and redemption, and also regularly has me laughing my ass off. It's also the best characterization of Frodo I've read, and wonderful wonderful Finrod and Celebrimbor. I just love everything about it.

The Host of the West by @mynameisjessejk. And the whole Otter Mayhem and related Otterless Mayhem but this fic in particular is a take on Finrod that I just can't get out of my head. I've reread it like three times and it still haunts me in the best way. Otter Mayhem, in general, is a wonderful, comforting and yet realistic exploration of all the trauma of literally every Silm character, with added otters. Reading it is very much like an otter hug.

28. On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

Oof. Two years ago, the answer was about 1k, I wrote very regularly and pretty consistently, but I absolutely do not remember how I did that.

The current answer is "sometimes".

Send me questions about my writing!

[chthonion]

(I am on my... third re-read of the Harrowing and just got to Chapter 14: Association again)

I think if Annatar eventually joins in on Family Association Night or something it is only a matter of time before he starts causing increasingly exasperated additions to the rulebook.

"No Annatar, your two cards being cognates in the Black Speech don't count, you don't get to found your argument in the linguistic conventions of a LANGUAGE YOU MADE UP"

Miscellaneous sons of Feanor: NOBODY CAN VERIFY THAT ARGUMENT ANNATAR NONE OF US SPEAK THAT

Annatar: Sounds like a you problem

Feanor: I would be interested in learning

Elrond, already getting a headache: please don't

[chthonion]

👀 The version of things where Annatar does use the Benign Necromancy Thing to help Maglor when he runs away?

Answering asks waaaay out of order because this one is easy: I might as well just go ahead and drop the outtake under a cut.

You can see that the intensity wasn't yet where I needed it to be, and also that...as soon as I raised the intensity a bit, it was clear that no one was ever going to allow this. But it was a pretty neat thought.

---

Maedhros puts his arms around his brother and stands there, his face grim and alone and far away, his chin resting on Maglor's head.

"It's all right," he says again, as if he's said it a thousand times. "It's all right. You can come back."

Annatar cannot see Maglor's face, from this angle, but he can see Maedhros's, and--he doesn't like it. He doesn't like the helplessness, the loneliness, the hurt.

Annatar looks at Maedhros, only at Maedhros, and says, "Do you remember what I did when Curufinwë hit you, in Mandos?"

Pause.

"Wait," Maedhros says. "Can you still do that?"

"You never actually explained that," Ambarussa says warily.

"Try it," Maedhros says. "If you hurt him, I'll kill you."

"Trust me, I'm aware," Annatar says dryly. He comes up closer to the creek, so that he's near enough that he won't have to exert himself, and closes his eyes so that he can find the edges of himself.

His spirit is here; the world is there--

He reaches those edges out, as he has long been in the habit of doing when he didn't have a body to get in the way--

Finds Maedhros's spirit, steady and hurting, and discards it; finds Maglor's, all diffuse and blurry at the edges--

He narrows in on Maglor's spirit and clamps down, slow but inexorable, pressing the diffuse and disintegrating edges back together again.

Maglor jerks in Maedhros's arms, gasping for breath, struggling suddenly against the embrace. Annatar steps back, holding his hands up, as Elrond takes a threatening step forward.

"Shhhh," Maedhros says. "Shhh, Mags, it's all right, I'm here. Everyone's safe."

"What the fuck," Maglor says in Westron, and then, when Annatar starts to let the pressure up, "No, don't stop."

Annatar reasserts the pressure.

"The fuck," Maglor says again, in Westron, and then, in Sindarin, "Let go, I need to breathe." And, when Annatar starts to let up, "Not you, don't you dare make me do this by myself."

Annatar clamps down again.

"Me?" Maedhros says.

"Yes, you," Maglor says, and, when released, falls promptly to his knees on the ground and presses his hands to his temples.

"Hmm," Maedhros says, and crouches down so that he can keep an eye on his brother's face.

"It's fine, it's fine," Maglor says. "Who in Music's name is doing--that?"

"Me," Annatar says. "Should I stop?"

"No," Maglor says.

"Tell me when you're done with it, then," Annatar says.

"Why on earth," Maglor says, slipping back into Westron, "is this a thing you know how to do?"

"It's useful for other things too," Annatar says, in the same language.

"Quenya?" Maedhros says. "Sindarin? Any language we all speak, please?"

"Sorry," Maglor says in Quenya. "Sorry, it's fine, I think I've got it now." He looks up at Annatar. "Let go?"

Annatar lets go. Maglor sways for a moment, disoriented, and then shakes his head and steadies himself.

Then he blinks at the river, and blinks at the trees, and says, "Wait. Where are we?"

[chthonion]

Hello! It's the shy potato again.

I placed the image on hosting. This is my take on your Annatar ✨

https://ibb.co/JW0TsNzD

Thank you for your work, it saved a ton of my days 👉👈

Shy potato! Hello!!!

For everyone else's benefit, please behold:

I love him. The depth of colors in his hair is so good and so nice to look at! Thank you so much for sharing! I am in the midst of Sudden Life Stuff (subcategory: positive but stressful and a lot of work) and this was an absolutely lovely pick me up.

And also a reminder to go eat lunch no matter how busy I am. Because Annatar, too, needs to eat lunch. XD

[chthonion]

I'm enjoying the pace you're releasing Harrowing at, but I am also vibrating at the notion of sticking Feanor and Bilbo in a room together

I have to work on the Harrowing before I work on part 3 don't tempt me like this

The possibilities are so endless. And almost none of them end with Fëanor's dignity entirely intact. Which is why they're so excellent

[chthonion]

👀 for the line about Fingon seeing echoes of Elrond before (that was very beautiful and very long to quote) how much of that was influenced by his relationship with Nienna in the halls? Bc it felt very in line with her grief and grace

I'm doing an ask game thing with author commentaries!

In many ways, it's influenced at least as much by what Fingon has been doing when he hasn't been talking to Nienna.

Fingon has been searching the tapestries for any sign of Maedhros. For a long, long time.

He did not see Maedhros. He saw a lot of other things, though, while he was looking; and I think that in the long litany of Middle Earth's history, he must have felt, after a while, as though looking at Elrond was like looking at a kindred spirit, at the kind of person he wished he could still be for someone. Unbroken by pain, and determined, and offering kindness in the dark. I think it must have been a relief, sometimes, to stumble on an image Elrond, like seeing an old friend: there you are.

I bet he was delighted when he realized they were related. (It's kind of hard to tell who is related to whom just from frozen snapshots in time.)

[chthonion]

I just wanted to say that reading The Harrowing has been legitimately therapeutic for me and has helped me see/make adjustments to be Mentally Ill/Emotionally Unhealthy thought patterns. sometimes I will do/think something and then Harrowing!Frodo or Finrod or Annatar will pop up in my mind and be like. no. eat a cookie and put on some comfy clothes and go talk to your friends about how you’re feeling. you don’t have to be ruled by Trauma Brain and it is both okay and necessary to ask for help.

and okay, typing it out does make it seem maybe still a little Mentally Ill of me but. I thought you might appreciate knowing that you have made a Genuine Difference in my life and I’m endlessly grateful for the absolutely stunning behemoth of a story you are gifting us all with.

This really means a lot to me, and makes me very happy. ❤️ Navigating Trauma Brain is hard! If a thing I did has given someone extra tools for doing it then that is one of the best things I could possibly accomplish.

Sometimes people leave comments on the Harrowing along the lines of "Wow reading this chapter felt like going to a therapy session and now I am appropriately exhausted." My spouse jokes that the Harrowing IS a therapy session, which I am conducting on myself, and everyone else is collateral damage. Narrative can be a very, very powerful thing, and we joke in the comments about how Annatar's a dumbass, but Annatar is also doing us a public service: his brain has like ten unhealthy thought patterns turned up to their absolute maximum at all times, so that we can look at them and go "Wow. When you put it like that, my manifestation of that thought pattern is maybe not ideal."

On the downside that is actually an upside, I can no longer say anything self-defeating without a solid chance that my spouse will look me dead in the eye and go "Okay, Annatar."

Which, for the record, is very hard to argue with.

[chthonion]

Any thoughts on how Elrond and Fingon are going to work together? 👀

I'm doing an ask game thing with author commentaries!

So in the Harrowing, Elrond and Fingon are, on one level, incredibly well suited to each other: they both have very strong principles, which are generally in harmony with each other. They both care very much about Maedhros, and want to support him. They both want to see a good outcome for this family. And they have a lot in common.

It is also the case, however, that when it comes to implementing their principles, Elrond is a diplomat and Fingon in his current state, gleefully unburdened by kingship and very energetic with his release from Mandos, is a wrecking ball.

It is also the case that Fingon's still a lot more comfortable with Annatar than Elrond is.

This may or may not be troublesome in the immediate future, depending on how things play out. Troublesome for Elrond, specifically. Fingon doesn't see a problem at all.

[chthonion]

Do you have a favorite part of the Harrowing that nobody’s explicitly mentioned before? I always love hearing what authors love about their own works.

Oooh, this is such a fun question! And a hard one, because there's so many things that I love about working on it.

A fun fact: one of my favorite scenes is coming up soonish, probably in chapter 50, as part of the arc that just kicked off in the chapter I posted today, and it is so weird that I will have to resist the temptation, in edits, to un-weird it. A lot of my favorite parts are the parts that are the most daring and strange. (Like...Frodo and Annatar's relationship, for instance. What am I doing)

One of my favorite things about the work as a whole is the fact that the Celebrimbor/Annatar romance is a driving engine that makes the rest of the story tick, and Annatar expected it to be the center of the story, and indeed the be all/end all of his existence...but that's not how people work. And Annatar is now a people, which means that's not how he works either.

Annatar started this story expecting it to be a world-altering romance. What he's getting instead is a sometimes-brutal, sometimes-beautiful lesson in why you cannot put a single person at the center of your existence and not care about anything else, and ultimately he has tripped and fallen into a story about friendship and community and family, because once he started learning to truly love one person it was inevitable that he would learn to love multiple people, and that is going to make all the difference.

[chthonion]

Hi, I absolutely adore your writing style! Would you mind sharing what that section in chapter 50 of Harrowing looked like before your betas “un-weirded” it?

Haha, my betas weren't exactly responsible for it, but one beta's response to it convinced me that I needed to tweak it...and in tweaking it, I did make it a lot better (Maedhros did not originally punch the table!).

But here's the original, which is arguably sexier than the version that stayed in the draft:

Annatar has successfully neutralized his hands, but he can’t stop his face from flinching: eyes screwing up, head ducking sideways in mindless anticipation. He turns his face away to protect the injured part of his head— The blow doesn’t land. Annatar’s heart is beating faster than he knew it could. He hopes that’s normal; he doesn’t know what to do if it isn’t. He squints an eye open to see if the danger is done, and is just in time to see Maedhros collapse onto the floor at Annatar’s feet and put his face into his only hand, his shoulders shaking silently. There is a part of Annatar, still—the part that would speak in the voice of Morgoth’s lieutenant, or of the Ring’s master, if he were in Mandos—that sings with satisfaction at the sight of a person maneuvered to their uttermost breaking point, and that part of him sees a beauty in this moment that outshines the loveliest of stars. He decides, after a moment, that that’s fine. He knows why he’s doing this; he knows what he has to do. He waits just long enough for the moment to sink in before he moves. “Maedhros,” Annatar says quietly, and reaches down to touch his fingers to Maedhros’s chin, exerting upward pressure so softly that it would be easy to ignore him, if Maedhros wanted to. “Look at me.” As power plays go, it isn’t a subtle one. It isn’t meant to be. Annatar has demonstrated comprehensively that Maedhros is no longer in control; now he has to assure Maedhros that someone else is. Maedhros looks up at him, which is the only confirmation Annatar needs to know that he’s won.

[chthonion]

👀 the gospel of judas the forgiven?

I'm doing an ask game thing with author commentaries!

ANON YOU'RE MY FAVORITE

Goodness, what to say about Judas the Forgiven?

I grew up culturally Christian and surrounded by fundamentalists, but in a family of mostly atheists and agnostics. This was a very weird experience.

At some point in young adulthood I made a judgment call to strive to understand the religious institutions that traumatized me instead of hating them, which is when I started studying religion. It was interesting, so I kept doing it. I have done a tremendous wealth of reading in the history of religion, quite a lot of it focused on Christianity, and immersed myself in theologies and debates and church fathers and big questions.

The symbolic language that my (USAmerican) culture uses to communicate about Big Important Questions tends to be Christian. Crucifixion and forgiveness and sin and the Garden of Eden and the End Times are all used as shorthands to help us talk about meaning and human experience more broadly, and they've been used for that in a lot of European cultures for a long time. I have gone an extra step and given myself a gigantic reservoir of additional layers for that symbolic language.

I'm not Christian.

But.

At one point I was reading about the actual Gospel of Judas, which is so tragically fragmentary that extracting meaning from it is very difficult. It talks a lot about (and possibly objects to?) sacrifice--in the sense of ritually killing something for religious purposes--and some scholars wanted to connect this theme to the crucifixion (as a kind of human sacrifice), or to the Eucharist (you are consuming the sacrificed flesh of Christ). I would not dare to evaluate these arguments unless I'd done a whole study of the work, because it's so difficult to work with, but the theme stuck with me, in my writer-brain rather than my scholar-brain.

Sacrifice-narratives and the crucifixion can be used to support some messed up things, in our current culture; the glorification of suffering, the belief that suffering is necessary for redemption. And so I thought--what if the narrative focused on a different kind of salvation? What if being saved was about trying to save someone else, instead of about suffering for what you'd done? What if the vast confrontation between Man and God which theoretically occurs in the person of Christ resolved itself not by violence and death, but by mercy and love?

And that's Judas the Forgiven.

[chthonion]

👀 Finrod?

I'm doing an ask game thing with author commentaries!

INCREDIBLE choice I love Finrod forever

I just…can never get over the possible implications of Finrod being one of the few people who is mentioned as having come back from death, and the possibility that he did so comparatively quickly. The trauma of his death seems like it would have been considerable. Did he heal quickly? Was he sorry never to see Middle Earth again? Was the adjustment weird?

In Your Shadow Rising I answer these questions in one way: the adjustment was weird, and he has never quite made it fully, only learned to look like he's fine.

He's not fine. He is getting closer to healing with every day that he spends in his friends' company, though, with people who understand the pain. The entire process, in this scenario, is one marked by increasing visibility: he still hides his face when he's upset. Someday--someday--I will get him to not do that.

In Lost and Found I answered them with an AU, and the AU, I think, is not characterization of Finrod but decisions about timing: what if he got back really extremely quickly? Would he have watched the forces of the West sail East without him? I don't think so. Would he have been okay? Still no.

Apparently I really think Finrod needs to work through the trauma of his death. Apparently I do not think he can be trusted to do that without really good social support.

This being Finrod, whose primary motivations always seem to include friendship, I suppose this makes a certain amount of sense.

[chthonion]

👀 in the lost and found verse, i can imagine the awkwardness in that house, like holy hell

OH YEAH IT'S SO AWKWARD.

The only thing that would be more awkward would be if they had to all go on a road trip together. Maybe with Mairon forced to be a giant wolf, aka all of Finrod's trauma triggers at once, for a not-insignificant chunk of the day every day.

So naturally that's what they end up having to do almost immediately.

[chthonion]

Hi. I find it interesting whenever I see Annatar's perspective as the Ghost of Sauron. Will there be a future spin-off or something that will tell the story of that time?(as an example he called Frodo, crawling thing)

Honestly, I think it would be both difficult and depressing to write that era; he was Not In A Good Place, and also still much more Sauron than he is now, and it would be a challenge to write that kind of hatefulness. There's also a certain degree to which Annatar-now is sort of...obscuring that time in his narration; he'll allude to the things that happened, and he'll talk a little about how it felt if it makes a useful comparison to something else, but he's not interested in reminiscing, because it hurts too much.

Often when narrators are obscuring things I like to let them. (This, incidentally, is why Finrod has not narrated yet: he's still so used to holding his pain so tightly against himself that it doesn't feel right to share.) But I certainly am not ruling it out; it's entirely possible that somewhere down the line I'll need to write it out, in order to make something else work, and if that happens and it's good, I'll share!