#mundane peredhel

[hollowwhisperings]

Elven Maturity (Tolkien)

an interesting thing about Tolkien's elves is how historical they are: they are the living history of Middle-Earth as they know it (dwarven records & the avari memories likely differ).

the noldo and silvan elves met in LOTR are OLD. so old that Legolas could very plausibly be interpreted as having suffered being treated as "the baby" for, like, four hundred years.

(i assume that Arwen & her brothers are older simply because their parents became a couple before Thranduil became a king)

the age of Tolkien's elves thusly makes it difficult to discern a true "age of maturity": Galadriel was born before Arda had a sun, Elrond's dad is a star, Elrond married Galadriel's daughter and her grandkids look as old/young as she does when the Fellowship meets them. Arwen was an "adult" by mannish standards when Estel came to live at Imladris but her subsequent move & stay with Grandma Galadriel spares readers the awkward thought of Arwen grooming Aragorn for her husband.

This fixation on Arwen is Key because she is of the Peredhel, the half-elven. The first known peredhel is technically Luthien, born of maia and elf, but it is her child with a human who is the first "true" instance of a peredhel in the sense of a "Schrodinger's Immortal".

The age of elves becomes very pertinent to the modern reader when Dior is seemingly orphaned, married to an elven princess(?), has three kids with her, gets abandoned(?) by his maia grandmother due to his grandfather's violent death & left with said grandfather's throne... by the age of 33. not as in "33 years of The Trees" or "33 years in The Lamps"... 33 solar years. Mannish years. THIRTY THREE.

Dior was the first peredhel to be both mortal (human) and immortal (elf): Luthien was the Tolkien equivalent of a demigod but it's unlikely that that changed the expectations for her, in terms of lifestages or maturity.

Dior though? He was raised by isolationist elves during a Politically Tense period of time and no love story is alluded to, between he and Nimloth. The elves Dior was raised amongst did not think highly of humans nor dwarves (nor other elves) and Dior was the first half demi-god, half human elf known. Did they think that his mannish blood made him quicker to mature & doomed to mortality? Did Dior or any of the persons involved with his marriage have enough experience with ELVEN children, nevermind human children to compare against, to discern how "mature" Dior was or wasn't?

I cannot think of any elven romance that did not take at least a decade or three to result in a promise of "forever" or 'til mortality. This makes the prospect of a 30 year old King Dior, newly father to twin peredhels, a disturbing image.

Then we have Dior's daughter, Elwing, meet the only other peredhel not related to her: Earendil, son of Idril Celebrindal and the human Tuor.

Where Elwing was raised by elves & recently orphaned, Earendil had grown up in Gondolin with both an immortal & mortal parent to mind him. Earendil and Elwing were both 23 when they wed: this I find easier to accept, with the extent of their shared experiences of being refugees and not-wholly elven. that Tuor, a human mortal, is also canonically present helps significantly with my comfort zone: no alarms rang in his head when these two 23 year olds got hitched and thus, by mannish standards, they were two consenting adults.

HOWEVER.

we still do not know what ELVES think makes a wholly mature elf - the Noldor elves that these peredhel live amongst are still adapting to the "quickness" of mortal lifespans, of life beyond Valinor. There is, presumably, still a majority amongst the Noldo who predate the first sunrise: whether the silvans hold alternate expectations of maturity, based on living amongst mortals all this time, is unknown. I would safely consider Earendil to be am adult by human standards: he may have also had the mental faculties of an adult elf as well, thus able to recognise and understand an Eternal Committment.

...Elwing probably doesn't. She was raised amongst elves and likely expected to be exactly like Dior and he like Luthien: part-divine and thus, potentially, mature by default. Her actions upon meeting her childhood nightmares - the Sons of Feanor - seem more in-line with a traumatised youth than a traditionally "wise" elf (or human): she jumped out of a window with a [very definitely cursed] holy lightbulb without much thought to the two small children she left behind.

which... her childhood nightmare was "The Sons Of Feanor Stole My Parents And Brothers": Elwing yeeting herself from a tower does Exactly That, all to keep her "rightful inheritance" (i.e. Luthien's winning a silmaril off Morgoth by sing-off/right of conquest & Elwing being Luthien' direct descendant).

the only way i can read Elwing's actions - did SHE know she could turn into a bird when she yeeted herself? did she ever plan on, y'know, coming back after her understandable panic response? no? straight off to alleged elf heaven? kidnap fam it is then - is as Elwing, young adult of several species and never truly able to be any bar one, being out of her depth and going full maia (as her great-grandmother melian before her).

Elrond taking a few centuries to get together with Celebrian, Arwen then taking a few decades to figure things out with Estel... the difference between these later love stories in contrast to Dior and Elwing (& to elf/elf romances) is Very Striking.

Tolkien's elves can get very, very old. Their societies developed with the core concept of their getting old & living eternally. Elves cannot simply marry on a whim - they had better be certain on their spouse or they're in for a very, very taxing eternity (the Avari have different customs but any cross-cultural exchanging of notes seems to have failed miserably in the face of The Maeglin Situation).

The first [mortal&immortal] peredhel died before the weight of immortality could be felt; the second peredhels all left the realms of mortals very abruptly; the third generation of peredhels had entirely unique circumstances that resulted in Elrond being Elrond, Father Figure to generations of Mortal Men and Designated Sane Voice in every crisis.

I wonder what Elrond would think of his grandfather Dior if he were to ever meet him: Elrond has spent several immortal lifetimes learning all things peredhel. I struggle to think of Dior leaving the halls of Mandos, of Dior adapting easily to life amongst the truly immortal.

And if I consider 33 to be "too young" for a Peredhel to swear eternity to an immortal elf... what does that mean for the wholly elven Maeglin, whose orphaning at 80 solar years lead to his being RAISED in the utterly alien Gondolin? Maeglin, whose tween crush on his cousin (who is, if not "older than the sun" very certainly "old as heck" at this time) became blown entirely out of proportion due to his very existence being a Scandalous Tragedy to the Noldo.

Maeglin dying at 190 is considered "very young for an elf". What humans was Doriath in the habit of noticing for them to consider 30 year old Dior an eligible bachelor?

[thotinshield]

🌹🌹🌹

here, have the beginning of a zombie apocalypse wip!

When the world came to a grinding halt, Bilbo Baggins wasn’t prepared for it. He had no reason to be. Indeed, the day of the apocalypse was much the same as any other day in his really rather mundane life.

Bilbo dropped a stack of papers on his counter. He’d arrived home late from the university, caught up in a conversation with Professor Peredhel about the latest history books that had arrived that afternoon. Even if he was a Literature professor, Bilbo quite liked the history behind most literature and he had spent a good deal of his undergrad studying history. He’d just been more taken with literature itself in the end.

[raybyanothername]

This or That Fanfiction Tropes

Tagged by @do-what-the-knight-tells-you

Rules: bold which trope you prefer (or, in some cases, maybe just hate the least!) out of each of the following pairs:

slowburn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // oh no there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt/comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // smut or fluff // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high school romance or middle aged romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or genderbend // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane

Did any of my answers actually shock anyone? Cause I feel like anyone familiar with my fics could have predicted my answers. ^^'

Also, I totally feel like I should write an isolation fic of some sort now. Given current events, it seems fitting.

Anyone interested, feel free to grab, but @sailorbuilt @peredhel y'all would probably like this. ;)

[pan-princess-levy]

🌟 for whichever OC you like! :D

🌟 When your OC loses all hope, who do they turn to first? What helps make them feel better? What calms them down and reassures them? Why?

ok so. many of my ocs are fandom specific because im a dumb bitch baby

HOWEVER 

i do, in fact, have silm oc, so lets go with her

halireth is my peredhel caranthir/haleth bby

back in beleriand, her closest confidant was her mother, with whom she lived until haleth passed away. while she is close to her father, neither her moryo are really... feelings people. (they’re both however, very good at yelling). instead, she would rant to her horse, sirdal, with whom she was very close

hali is one of the best riders in thargelion and sometimes, she would disappear for weeks on end in the forests with only some food and her horse. it really helps her ground herself and remember her roots. (after haleth passed, she took her father on one such visit to the forests. moryo doesn’t admit it to anyone, but he cried a lot) she enjoys riding even in more mundane situations and if one saw her racing around the courtyard and probably something yelling in haladrin, they knew to stay away.

after her death in the nirn and subsequent rebirth in valinor, she grew extremely close to her only (blood) cousin, celebrimbor, and grandma nerdanel. and because she doesnt like bothering nerdanel, she more often turns to tyelpe when the old pains come back to haunt her.