Lines to kill Tolkien Challenge
tagged by @starshadeemilyart, even though I usually write in a fairly canon-compliant setup, considering my propensity to drawing from 20th century modernist interwar literature + my contentious relationship with the authority of the Valar and LaCE even if I don't outright ignore them this one should be interesting
Rules: Go into your fic archive and pull out 5-10 lines that you think would put an end to JRR Tolkien once and for all, were he to come across the thing. They don’t have to be funny. You don’t have to explain why they would kill him, but you can if you want. 5 extra points if at least 50% of them don’t have anything to do with shipping and/or LaCE.
I put one hand against the stigma of the scar on his collarbone, arrow to arrow, and the other around the iliac crest; I put my unwashed mouth to his salty throat. We fuck on the rocks bloody-handed like wild dogs, all watching the shadows of mutilated carcasses warp, and don’t speak of it in the morning. (Bloodtoil) (homoerotic, sadomasochistic, fetishising violence)
“But we were not made for easy things,” says the knight, nose to throat, chest flush to back, almost at a whisper. “What kind of man wishes for a simple life? A mindless man, a beast-man, glutting himself, wasting himself, eating and shitting and fucking and never knowing what it is like to be tried and find himself true. You’d drive yourself mad.” (Last Salute in the Pyre Glade) (given the characteristics of the Shire I don't think he'd agree)
“You are right – I only need the writ,” the other mouth murmurs back, kissing him, not without teeth, not without blood but still so greedily. “Not her bond, not her love, not even her agreement. But she will agree. We will make her agree.”
It seems then as though the lights were going out under the vaulted ceiling, though Laureo belatedly realises it is only the drag of the prince’s fair hair and his own, blacker than the firmament, mingling as they shift in one perpetual unending motion that lies on the crossroads of vice and holy delirium; the coals burn hot on the edge of his sight, searing with a heat so potent that every loose strand has already been sodden, sweat and diluted viscera clumping them together. He was made to endure – as long as his hand once again finds purchase, holding onto Tyelkormo’s shoulder-blades – and thus he demands no concession, nothing less than what is offered, no half-measures either from the prince or Eru Illúvatar himself, taking with whole bites, swallowing down even those accursed bitter dregs. (also Last Salute) (homoerotic, sadomasochistic, and against LaCE)
“Your mouth can be the preferred host for my cock. I don’t know what kind of tapeworm it is.” (Knight Roland's guts, strewn all over the marble ground)
“What I think is irrelevant. It was not a viable choice, because you can’t argue with thralls.” Tyelkormo draws in a deep breath, lets his head fall to the side. “Have you ever seen a thrall? From time to time, a slave escapes Angamando’s pits—or at least, he thinks he has escaped, but in truth the chain has been loosened on purpose and now lies in wait for an order to snap it back, and when it happens, he’ll kill and lie under Moricotto’s will like an animal. There is no reason; there is no freedom, even to admit their own unfree nature. How should you argue for the shucking of bonds with a man like that?”
“Are you telling me Olwë and his people—my mother’s people--”
“ Not for lack of fondness, nor faith, nor goodwill, but for wariness of the Valar’s wrath. Their words, not mine; I merely heard them spoken to my father. Is that not thralldom?”
Findaráto frowns, and the cold is still pervasive. He looks into his cousin’s eyes with lips tightly pursed and eyes all but foreign to any man who knows him less well.
“I hope you are not asking for forgiveness,” he breathes out, and though it is hardly a command, even his quiet voice is hard.
Tyelkormo smiles, both wan and vicious.
“I would not dare to. The choice was mine, as is the blame.”
“You said you didn’t have a choice.”
“Correct. Yet I made one.” (Die Nelke) (implicitly anti-valar, philosophically too modern)
“The green one? The same you brought to the celebration of my mastery?” The scepticism doesn’t let up, but for -- different reasons, this time.
“Oh, no, not the same. This one didn’t contain any hallucinogens.” Tyelkormo stretches out a hand, as if to inspect the play of starlight on his rings or the give of the cobweb of scar tissue beneath them, turns it one way and another. “Not any medically significant amount, anyway. Insilarquen suffers from unbearable spiels of generosity when he’s drunk, and I’m in no mood for arguing with Findekáno’s bastard of a chamberlain if the liquor gets into the wrong hands and someone pisses into the firepit for fear of arson. Ammonia on the fire is a stench straight out of the black pits.” (Herzkranzgefäß)
“Death does not undo an oath, little as you would know of faith even if it fucked you in the arse.” (Henbane)
[23] Eruenvinyanto. Coronation of Arafinwë Ingoldo, King of the Noldor. FA 7, Royal Palace of Tirion (fresco) (From Charcoal to Nigrosin: Historical Perspectives on the Heraldic Role of the Colour Black in Noldorin Society) (I don't think he'd enjoy me putting Raphael in Valinor)
Forwards, forwards, where mountains loom black, capped in the starless eigengrau of fresh-fallen snow on the advent of inescapable war. Forwards, forwards, back turned to foreclosed treason and exiled faithlessness. Forwards, forwards, abandoning all egotism between fatherhood and brotherhood, the unweaned child with its umbilical cord still bleeding and the embryonic conception of a brother that had not quite become born. (Bloodsacrifice) (way too modernist)
Bonus:
“Don't act self-righteous now, Macalaurë -- if it had been Russandol who ordered you to bring the Þindar under fealty, you'd be dragging yourself over the table like a prostitute just to do his bidding!” (33 years of carrion WIP)
tagging @antlered-vixen @melestasflight @nycterisg @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @polutrope @kibutsulove
