Thingol Hating On Maedhros Is So Crazy Hilarious To Me Because Imagine Beefing With Your Bestfriend's

Shout out Haleth. The It Girl of the Edain. Centuries later and all these shield maidens have posters of you on their walls. Showed up, served no nonsense badass, refused to elaborate, left.

Celegorm canonically speaking animal languages is so funny because how many times he went to his brothers and told them "A little birdie told me" to embaress them with some gossip and then watch their house descend into complete chaos as his brothers try to figure out who exposed them

And it was really a little birdie, a real bird, with whom he spoke, because he understands his language

Between the curse of Mandos that loomed over every exile and Turin's own doom Beleg never stood a fucking chance. Gwindor and Turin meet for the first time and the force of their collective inability to keep a love one alive was so strong poor Beleg immediately exited the narrative

When Maedhros comes back from Thangorodrim, the sun burns him. It burns him like it burns orcs, burns him like he is one of Morgoth's fell monsters. And sometimes he thinks that the sun must be able to recognise the darkness in him, the fact that he truly is not so different from the other creatures of Angband that he slays. It's only centuries later that he realises: oh, gingers just do that

maglor does the scariest impressions. Once, he walked in on Maedhros and fingon and said in his feanor voice, ‘what is going on here?’ Mae almost had a heart attack.

I don’t think Maedhros stopped praying when he left Valinor, even once the Valar had forsaken his family and banished them. Maybe it was habit maybe it was comfort but I don’t think he stopped.

Nor do I think he stopped when he was captured by The Enemy. I think it became his sole source of hope that someone who cared would hear him and free him one way or the other and in a sense that prayer was answered.

I don’t even think it stopped when Fingon died. I think Maedhros prayed he’d find peace and safety in Mandos. I think he prayed he’d be home safe soon. I think he was grateful that no matter the end the person he loved most was at last out of harms way.

No he stopped praying after Doriath. The night he lost so much. The night he lost three brothers. The night that Celegorm bled out in his arms going out of the world quietly, in stark contrast to how he entered it. But it was not those deaths that stopped his prayers, he knew his brother’s wrongs, the harm they’d done. He knew with as much pain as it brought him they deserved it.

He stopped praying when he lost two little boys in the woods. When in desperation with tears freezing on his cheeks he called out with the simplest prayer you can “please.” He was met only with the bite of the frost and the cold moonlight and the colder indifference of gods that claimed to be loving. When Fingon had reached out in a moment of need despite his own banishment an eagle had been sent. To save Maedhros’ wind and war torn soul. But when Maedhros asked them to save two little princes lost in the woods there was only silence and contempt.

Yes I think he only stopped praying after that. When he was good and sure he was alone.

I was thinking of Beren and Lúthien and how their story is so much more interesting than they get credit for. I mean, on the surface it reads like a fairy tale but it also elevates the rest of the story, it uses common fairy tale tropes but turns them upside down, and the way we see the heroine asserting her agency in this story is so fascinating. I think the story of Beren and Lúthien provides much needed contrast for the rest of the Silm, and both become more poignant because of this contrast. 

The familiar fairy tale goes like this: there's a a poor but resourceful peasant, set with a difficult task (which is in fact designed to be impossible to complete), but thanks to some magical help he is successful, retrieves treasure, and as a reward he wins the king's daughter and lives happily ever after as a prince, gaining all the earthly glory one can have in this life. But in the Tale of Beren and Lúthien, the hero is a traumatised outlaw, the king's daughter IS the magical help, she is an active and equal participant in the quest for her own hand in marriage, the treasure may actually be cursed, the hero and heroine die, and the ultimate reward is not a social rise from rags to riches. Beren does not become a member of the power-wielding elite of Doriath and he and Lúthien are not promised that their second life will be happy or long. But just that chance is worth it, and by choosing it they actually change the course of history. Lúthien is offered all the bliss that is possible to have in Arda, if she will give up Beren, but she decides that the love she has for him is still more valuable. And that idea, of loving someone so much that your love shifts the world, is so compelling to me. 

And I love that the story of Beren and Lúthien is also a rendition of Orpheus and Eurydice, and that just as the world was created in the Music of the Ainur, so is Lúthien's song powerful enough to change what those original notes dictated. She changes it with hope and a song. That is so simple and yet so beautiful, in the way some of the best myths are. (Insane that this is essentially a love-letter to Edith Tolkien.)

There is this fascinating contrast between Beren and Lúthien: at the time of their first meeting, Beren has lost literally everything and his family is either dead or lost beyond retrieval. Stumbling across Lúthien, he is fresh from terrible ordeals and suffering. But Lúthien's life has been full of happiness and without care, and she has lived in a literal fairy kingdom as the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar. She could have her pick of any prince of Eldar. But here she comes across this mortal, who has nothing to give except for his love and even that only for a brief time, and she is willing to risk all she has for it. The gall and courage it takes to take such a chance! She chooses this man and her choice changes everything. 

And that is brilliant! Because Lúthien starts with so little power and agency, and she is constantly belittled or even abused by those with more power around her. She is treated as a pawn, her will is undermined and she is coerced and imprisoned to make her compliant. But Lúthien shows her determination and courage in holding fast to her choice even when it's just her and Beren against the world. In the end, she wins agency and freedom to determine her own tale. In her beginning Lúthien is a maid dancing in the woods; by the end she will have faced Satan and death itself, and changed the world forever. Truly, to call her story "Release from Bondage" is more than appropriate. How insane is this all from Beren's point of view? He has lost everything, he is an outlaw, and has nowhere to go. What is left of his family is scattered who knows where. He has nothing but the clothes on his back and nothing to give. But here is this immortal princess, and she will go to hell and back with him! She will cross the Sundering Sea to bid him farewell! She pleads with inexorable death and for her, an exception is made!  It's so on brand for Tolkien that these two achieve with their love, and precisely because they act out of love, something that others with armies behind their backs can't even imagine doing.

Yeah. It's such a good, hopeful, bittersweet tale.

A day in the life of taking care of hyperactive elflings~

day 1: Maedhros - childhood

he's able to form the Union and get a bunch of generals to cooperate with each other because he already has plenty of experience as The Eldest Cousin who wrangled all the kids during family reunions and got them to behave