#silm text

[tinwe-the-local-assassin]

I think this might be controversial, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

Celegorm wouldn't have forced Lúthien to marry him. In fact, he couldn't. I recently went back to read the chapter of B&L from the book, and what it says is that they had planned to force Thingol to let him marry her, not Lúthien herself.

Based on LaCE, the concept of a forced marriage didn't exist between elves. Even if the marriage wasn't out of love, it was out of free will. If Lúthien were to marry Celegorm, it would have been of her own free will, just as nothing was stopping her(besides maybe the guards which wow they were really effective) from eloping with Beren and marrying him under Eru's law.

The text says they were planning to force Thingol, bcs well, Thingol would have rather Beren marry Lúthien than a son of Fëanor for how much he hated them.

I have seen many fanfictions about this with Celegorm borderline harassing her sexually, visiting her chambers, etc and for a long time I thought that too, until I decided to read the chapter clearly and word by word. It is not Celegorm who visits her. It's Huan.

I understand where the confusion might come from, and of course, everyone is welcome to their own headcanons, but bashing people for not supporting this and calling them delulu also sucks.

And yeah, what they did was wrong. Very wrong. But if Lúthien was as naive as people consider her to be, I think not stopping a lone maiden to go after a suicide squad to save a mortal man just doesn't make sense all that much. They shouldn't have imprisoned her, of course.

[virgil-upinthestars]

the landing of the host of the west, f.a. 545, colorized

[buttered-toasty]

Ignore the half-assed background, it’s not actually supposed to Be the background, I just wanted to post this in case I never finish the second half (maglor)

I have thoughts about them. Many thoughts.

[psstwantsomecheese]

Silmarillion as stuff I have on my phone

[eloquentsisyphianturmoil]

I do think that any fan who believes Tolkien intended readers to view characters as deserving of death, instead of simply meeting death as a consequence of their actions (or that one state-sanctioned execution), is fundamentally missing the ideology conveyed in ‘Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.’

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

if celegorm had whatsapp

[eri-pl]

The parallel between the victorious War of Wrath, with Maedhros and Maglor falling to the temptation and committing another murder admits the celebrations; and the Last Alliance and much lesser failing, but still: Isildur not destroying the Ring.

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

a city to fall for the folly of one

[kisses-in-the-void]

"Arwen was way too powerful in LOTR movies, that means she is Sauron's granddaughter" is a very... bizarre thing to say for many reasons, but the funniest of them is that while it's true that Peter Jackson shipped Galadriel with a certain Maia character BUT IT WASN'T SAURON, IT WAS GANDALF. AND THIS MAN ISN'T YOUR ALLY. Y'ALL CRAZY TO FORGET HOW SHAMELESSLY HE WAS PUSHING IT IN THE HOBBIT MOVIES. WAKE THE FUCK UP 🤣

[lime-bucket]

Hey divas can we give the manwë is a doormat for melkor fanon a rest?

Like yeah maybe it wasnt a brain move to free the powerful & probably unstable valar without a strong parole into heaven,& mayyybe that decision was clouded with some brotherly sentiments

But i think sending bigass eagles to scar the dark lord,attack his twisted creations & aid his sworn enemies not once but several times should be enough of an indictment on what manwë felt towards melkor throughout the the story

Or the fact at the end manwe had melkor's legs cut off & thrown to the void & refused his demands for forgiveness,cuz by that time he had no illusions left on his brothers nature

I get manwë isnt that well liked in the fandom like melkor but cmon guys lets use the littlest of media comprehension & not act in fix it AU fics that manwe would have stayed a pushover for melkor or wouldve desired still his companionship

[daily-smol-silm]

Day #281 - Mad goth

Maeglin in a random outfit :P

Also pride flags color-picked from him, because I could:

[buttered-toasty]

White fire

.

.

POV you’re an orc about to get GOT

.

This has a companion piece now btw

[maenefa]

I’ve never been completely satisfied with the Silmarils as a plot device. If Sauron gets the one ring, the world will end, but what will happen if the Sons of Feanor reclaim the Silmarils? Not much.

It’s easy to frame the whole saga as a pointless struggle over “shiny rocks.”

It’s unclear what the Silmarils do. Secondhand Silmaril light is powerful enough to hold Shelob at bay, the jewels burn evil people/creatures, and the people of Sirion believe they have magical protective powers. However, Beren isn’t healed from his mortal wounds when he holds a Silmaril, and their evil-repelling properties don’t stop Morgoth from wearing them in his crown.

I do think it’s legitimate to ask why Dior/Elwing didn’t give up the Silmaril. Yes, the Feanorians don’t really deserve it after all their evil deeds, but handing it over would bring peace between the elves. It’s frustrating to see Doriath and Sirion fall because their rulers didn’t want to let go of the shiny.

The only way I can wrap my head around the Silmarils is to treat them as religious relics.

The light of the Trees is not just a “public good,”but something sacred. Yavanna created the light, and Varda hallowed the Silmarils so no unclean hands could touch them.

When I think about Elwing clutching the Silmaril and jumping into the sea, my terminal Catholic brain rot connects her with St. Tarcisius, an ancient Roman martyr who died rather than hand over the Eucharist. He is only known from this 4th century Latin poem:

When an insane gang pressed saintly Tarcisius, who was carrying the sacraments of Christ, to display them to the profane, he preferred to be killed and give up his life rather than betray to rabid dogs the heavenly body.

You can bet your ass that Tolkien the Literal Altar Boy knew this story, which was popular in Victorian Catholicism (it certainly burned itself into my 7 year-old brain).

Giving the Silmarils to the Feanorians would have been a kind of sacrilege. We know that because the Silmarils burn Maedhros and Maglor, and the horror of realizing their unworthiness is so great that Maedhros kills himself and Maglor wanders by the sea grieving forever.

For me, the story of the Silmarils and the Oath is about the tragedy of doing evil in the name of religion, or simply forgetting the point of it all:

For Feanor began to love the Silmarils with a greedy love, and grudged the sight of them to all save to his father and his seven sons; he seldom remembered now that the light within them was not his own. (Silm. pg. 59)

I find more emotional depth in this interpretation than reducing it all to a blood feud over jewelry.

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

i don't think "war crimes are fictional my annoyance is real" is the point when it comes to thingol hate. it's fairly rare that i see stances on thingol that are "i dislike/hate him because he acts like a jerk at times and that reminds me of unpleasant irritating individuals i know irl." and when i do see that, it's like, fair enough, he can be an asshole when he wants to be. his method of telling beren to fuck off was extreme and it was petty; he could have just said "absolutely not, get out." and he absolutely is a smothering overprotective father sometimes, who very much chose to lock his daughter up. no matter if he believed he was doing it for her safety, imprisoning her is an inexcusable violation of her autonomy.

but here's the thing: i don't see that many people who hate on thingol doing so for "the war crimes are fictional, my annoyance is real" reasons. if they did that they would call him out for things he actually does in canon, for being an unpleasant dick at times and a helicopter parent -- while still knowing that from an objective moral standpoint, those things do not make him as vile as mass murderers, attempted rapists, evil overlords, and all the other types of villains you can find in the silm. but that's not what i see from most thingol hate. what i see from most thingol hate is, on the contrary, based in things that canon makes no indication of, and said things are used to make him look like a worse person, morally speaking, than he is canonically. "he's racist against the noldor," "he turned refugees away," "he was a xenophobic isolationist through and through who never let anyone into doriath," "aredhel's situation with eol is his fault," "he would have disowned luthien if she had just eloped with beren without coming to him first," "he would have let celegorm marry luthien against her will," "he owed the union of maedhros his allegiance and unreasonably abandoned the noldor by not sending forces to help," "the feanorians made every effort to be diplomatic and humble to him but he's a bigot so he snubbed them at every turn which led to them resorting to violence," etc. etc. etc. -- all in all blaming him for every last thing that ever went sour in the first age. making up lies about how a character did x and y bad action as a reason for why you dislike them isn't "the war crimes are fictional, my annoyance is real," it's "i already hate this character and i want to justify my hate." i understand disliking characters because their unpleasant behavior is more mundane, so to speak, and therefore hits closer to home -- i do it too -- but from what i've seen? that is not fandom's attitude towards thingol. fandom's attitude towards thingol is accusing him of things that he literally never does to make him far more villainous that he is in the source material

[queerofthedagger]

"feanor was a good dad" "feanor was a bad dad" frankly either version is a headcanon and we could all just finally admit that we're picking the one more compelling to us. which is literally fine either version has its merit. can we stop being annoying about this now or do we need to do another round in the discourse pit from hell

[sesamenom]

Various inhabitants of rivendell

(inspired by @thesummerestsolstice here and here)