Refracted Light

Silmarillion nonsense, fic writing, and other hazards. Profile pic is by Veroniel.

[chthonion]

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About me

I'm Chthonion (they/them) here and on Ao3. Currently I write Silmarillion fic, although honestly who ever knows what I'll do next? Not me.

If you arrived here for non-Tolkien reasons, I apologize for all the Sauron. If you arrived here for Tolkien reasons I am only slightly sorry for the occasional rock operas.

My works are archive-locked on Ao3 for several reasons, including AI scraping and privacy.

My writing

Current installments of Your Shadow Rising To Meet You, my Fourth Age Aman series:

Anastasis (complete), in which Frodo and Celebrimbor and Finrod build a friendship, talk about trauma, and deal with the fact that Sauron's dead spirit is haunting Celebrimbor.

The Harrowing (in progress), in which Sauron/Annatar takes a stab at a redemption arc and encounters many horrifying challenges, including but not limited to Celebrimbor's family, the mortifying ordeal of being known (especially by Frodo), and emotions.

As healing hurts the wounded (complete): there is a scar on Maedhros’s neck. Elrond is the one who put it there.

Installments of The Second Must Begin With Choice, my post-War-of-Wrath Finrod/Sauron/Celebrimbor series (all installments are complete):

Lost and Found, in which Finrod fights in the war of wrath, dreams of a home he has never known, and follows his dreams

Nothing left to fear, in which Celebrimbor and Sauron meet each other during the War of Wrath while they're both having a bad time, and possibly change everything.

Hold me fast and fear me not, in which Finrod, Sauron, and Celebrimbor have to go on a road trip together in order to save Celebrimbor's life, and Finrod finally finds the home he's been looking for in the most unexpected place possible.

Short Silm fic that isn't part of a series (...yet):

Nothing Defies You: Annatar becomes God and finds it unsatisfying (Silvergifting Last Trial AU)

The Answering Ring: Celebrimbor forges a Ring of Power out of a shattered marriage-bond, and uses it.

Sanctuary: Sauron flees Morgoth with two Silmarils and a plan to offer his fealty to Maedhros in exchange for sanctuary. The fact that Maedhros (post-Nirnaeth) is very fucked up and borderline suicidal is probably a surmountable obstacle.

Other stuff:

The Gospel of Judas the Forgiven, a fragment of an alternate-history gospel in which Jesus does not die. 500 words of speculative theology about redemption and forgiveness.

Transformative works

People sometimes ask for permission, so: if anything I wrote inspires you to write, draw, or otherwise make stuff that is related, please feel free! And when you are done, please tag me or link me or otherwise send it my way, because it makes me really happy to see these things, and I want to admire them.

Do not feed my words into any chatbot or other AI, though. My fic is archive-locked for a reason.

[chthonion]

🫂How would the story have changed if you wrote it for [this pairing] instead?

(fic ask game LAST ONE FROM ME I SWEAR) (but hooo boy could you imagine The Harrowing where Annatar ends up thirsting after Finrod. or Maedhros. OR BOTH)

This is from the ask game here!

HELLO I am answering out of order and you will be able to see me do it because you sent several asks but this one is really fun and I have no patience. This isn't quite a complete answer to the question, but it's some of one!

I can absolutely imagine the Harrowing where Annatar ends up thirsting after Finrod. It wouldn't even require a major plot alteration, assuming a baseline willingness to engage in polyamory. Annatar is two thirds of the way to thirsting after Finrod already, let's be real here--or at least, he is according to my (apparently rather odd and asexuality-adjacent) experiences where platonic love and romantic love have a very wide swath of confusing middle ground between them that's kinda both and sexuality is sort of a negotiable bonus.

...and that's all I'll say about that for the time being. ;)

Now, having the Harrowing but focused on Finrod/Sauron without the Celebrimbor would require a significant reorientation of a lot of stuff and a really interesting backstory, presumably, because there has to be some emotional investment that predates Annatar's second life for the Harrowing to work, and I'd kind of love to know what that would look like. What scenarios could one concoct that would make that work? I don't know, but it would be fun to find out.

Maedhros and Annatar is a bit too unwieldy for me when Celebrimbor is already in a relationship with Annatar--the crossing of familial generations sounds very challenging to juggle in a metamour relationship, to me--but Maedhros and Sauron where Maedhros is the transformative relationship that causes a dramatic reorientation of Sauron's priorities and serves as the starting point for a new life and a new future...

Well, I like that idea so much that I'm already writing it. That's Darkness on the face of the deep, where Maedhros and Sauron's destroyed spirit post-Ring meet each other in the Void and make a connection before Sauron understands who and what he is, and everything is changed thereby. And it's going to be soooooo fun for me personally.

[chthonion]

🍆 What scene do you think was the hottest? What scene do you think your readers thought was the hottest? Are they the same?

I’m doing a very slow reread of the Harrowing so how about that

This is from the ask game here!

This is such a fun question because it's weirdly hard to answer. Which scene do I think readers thought was the hottest? Obviously Celebrimbor and Annatar actually making out is generally very well received. I think their kink negotiation in chapter 55 was probably one of the hotter ones, and I think the comments section agreed with me, because, I mean, look at this shit:

Celebrimbor slides his hand into Annatar's hair, makes a fist against the back of Annatar's skull so that all the hair winds tight and pulls on every part of Annatar's scalp with a smarting tingle, and grabs Annatar's jaw— Annatar lets his head be twisted toward Celebrimbor, very obligingly; this is in fact very pleasant— And Celebrimbor slips his first two fingers into Annatar's mouth and clamps down on Annatar's tongue, so that he is gripping the bottom of Annatar's jaw and silencing him in the same movement. "Be quiet," Celebrimbor says, his voice low. "Artworks don't talk."

Despite having no actual sex in it, however, and despite not being a scene between two characters who are going to have a sexual relationship in this story, I must also put forward the conversation between Maedhros and Annatar in the library in Chapter 50 as one of the sexier moments in the Harrowing, in my biased opinion. It certainly convinced me to go on a quest to see what I could do about making Maedhros/Sauron happen, and for a long time my spouse just called it "the seduction chapter."

...feel free to tell me what YOU think the hottest scene so far was in the replies here, everyone, I am very curious

[chthonion]

🔎 for The Harrowing?

This is from the ask game here!

🔎 What detail(s) in the story are you particularly captivated with? Is there any behind the scenes info or backstory?

I feel like I could do this question nigh-infinitely with the Harrowing, because it's So Goddamn Big, and as a consequence I lose track of what I've said here vs what I haven't said here, because it's all SO big.

But here's a detail I really really like: in chapter 50, when Annatar walks into the library, Maedhros has blood on his sleeve.

(Spoilers follow this point if you haven't read chapter 47)

I really like this detail because of all the pain that it implies:

The blood on Maedhros's sleeve is from the bit in chapter 46 when Annatar was freaking out and fell and Maedhros caught him.

In chapter 46 we don't understand the full range of emotions that Maedhros is probably having about All Of This, but by chapter 50 we can guess, and whooo boy they were probably a lot. It is Maedhros's fault Annatar was bleeding that much! And Annatar was bleeding A Lot. Maedhros does not feel great about this, especially since the context of the conversation was Annatar trusting Maedhros to help him make decisions while confused and badly injured.

All of that happened the day before chapter 50. Maedhros should absolutely have changed out of that shirt by now. Given that it's all bloody, Fingon and Maglor and Elrond all probably tried to convince him to change out of that shirt. They were clearly unsuccessful, and we may infer from the fact that he is still wearing it that they had about as much success at getting him to sleep.

We may also infer from this that Fingon, Maglor, and Elrond are probably not doing great either at this point, which definitely contextualizes Elrond and Fingon's struggles later on when talking to or dealing with Annatar--they are not even close to a hundred percent. They aren't even close to fifty percent.

This arc contained so much pain and I love it so much

[chthonion]

For Anastasis: What scene were you most excited to write? Did it end up being the one you enjoyed writing the most?

This is from the ask game here!

Anastasis is a funny beast because I wrote it so fast, so it's not like I was particularly excited to write any given scene for very long; but the image that I started with, the one I expanded outward from, was the image of Celebrimbor forging his wounds and Frodo's, his memories of Sauron and Frodo's, into...something.

Initially I thought maybe it was going to be a ring. Or perhaps just Mairon: the core of Sauron, reverse engineered until he was closer to what he had been. Pretty quickly I pinned down the fact that what it was, ultimately, was going to be an attempt to understand, to get answers, and then I came up with an idea for what might catalyze their desire to do that, and then I was off.

So I guess the answer is: the scene I was most excited to write, in the sense that I got this whole story out of it, was the forging scene in chapter 7.

But I think the scene I enjoyed writing the most is the scene where they actually talk to Sauron, in chapter 8 ("Sunrise"). That one was a glorious mess with so much weight behind it, and I still love rereading it.

[chthonion]

🧭 I forget the name but that one blind!Mairon and Maedhros story was sooo interesting. I’m kind of curious about the type of injury you gave Mairon and whether you debated any other type of injury before settling on that one

This is from the ask game here!

So I went and looked at my notes for Sanctuary to see if they held any answers, since this was one of those "Wrote this in a baffled fit of fascination, very little memory of what was going on at the time" stories, and in the notes the arc seems to go like this:

"Punished horribly"

"Maimed and possibly blinded?"

The author realizes it would be thematically interesting if he couldn't see the Silmarils, since their visual beauty is what gives them power

The author realizes it would be even more interesting if the Silmarils were the last thing he ever saw

The fate of Sauron's eyes is sealed because now the author thinks it's interesting

That being said, there's a reason I went for his eyes relatively naturally, and the reason is twofold:

Sauron's association with eyes and seeing is extremely strong, so taking that away forcibly creates a whole lot of really interesting questions for a narrative to answer and marks a stark thematic departure from canon-Sauron, which is fun and interesting.

My vision is usually mostly fine now, but for about four months straight a few years back it really wasn't, so it's probably gonna be a few more years at least of me fucking around with a character's vision whenever I have an excuse. Sauron's got so much eye imagery that he's asking for it, really.

(I do tend to process my experiences through fiction, unsurprisingly. Get wrecked, Sauron.)

[chthonion]

Mutiny!! 🏴‍☠️ for the Harrowing I feel like the one you’ve mentioned most is Fingon, are there any other characters that surprised you?

This is from the ask game here!

Haha what part of the Harrowing hasn't had at least a little mutiny, at this point. It's a sign that the characters are "alive" once they start doing this, for me, and whoo boy all of these idiots have taken on a life of their own.

Yes, Fingon's definitely a good example. And I've talked before, too, about how when [redacted for spoilers] happened in chapters 46-47, that really came out of left field for me as well as for the characters. I wasn't expecting that! It was necessary! In retrospect, everything was leading to that point! WASN'T EXPECTING IT THO

Lately I feel like I court this problem every time I touch Fëanor with a ten foot pole. This guy REALLY wants to improve as a person and he REALLY has no paradigms for how to do it well and I have no idea what he's going to do.

One of my favorite examples, though, is chapter 39, Which none shall break, in which Maedhros and Maglor go take their best shot at giving Annatar a relationships talk and end up elbows-deep in Oath-Adjacent Stuff that they weren't prepared for. I initially had Celebrimbor and Finrod and Frodo going after him, or at least Celebrimbor and Finrod, and it would. Not. Work. Nothing felt right and everything was terrible.

It took my spouse being like "No??? Oh my god of COURSE Celebrimbor shouldn't be the one to go after him" to realize why it kept coming out wrong. And then it was not a very far leap from "Okay well who SHOULD" to "Maedhros and Maglor maybe?" and from there everything ran away from me very quickly until I was staring at the wreckage of my outline going OH SHIT ARE WE DOING THIS NOW? I GUESS WE'RE DOING THIS NOW.

I wasn't gonna bring the oath stuff up until part 3, but Maedhros and Maglor had different ideas, and holy shit they were right. Can you imagine how bad it would have been if they hadn't actually started addressing this stuff for another hundred thousand words. Oh my god that would have been so bad.

[chthonion]

🤍 I was re-reading The Harrowing, and I was curious about your head Canon for what occasion made Elrond choose to push past the point where he injured his voice? Was it trying to heal Celebrian? Thanks!

This is from the ask game here!

Hi Melian! :D

I suspect there was more than one such incident, honestly; I can't see Elrond getting through All Of That without pushing himself just about as hard as he could go, more than once.

Celebrian's a good candidate, definitely. Last Alliance stuff, certainly. I also wonder about anti-necromancy measures, depending on what sorts of situations he encountered over the years...that seems like the sort of thing that might be extremely difficult to overcome.

What are the odds that he came close to injuring his voice while trying to heal Frodo after the Nazgul? Probably low, but it's crunchy to think about.

[chthonion]

🔎 What detail(s) in the story are you particularly captivated with? Is there any behind the scenes info or backstory?

for Hold Me Fast

This is from the ask game here!

Hello hello! Thank you so much for asking about this story, because I'm so fond of it.

I don't know if it counts as a detail, but it feels like a cohesive set of details, so I'll count it: the shapeshifting themes in this story were really fun to play with once I noticed how central they were. Who are you? Can you love me when I'm wearing this persona? How about this one? If I show you different pieces of my heart, will you be able to handle them? What if there's something wrong with me? Will you love me then too?

Mairon's not the only one shapeshifting here; Finrod has forgotten many things that used to be central to who he was (like music!), has discovered in his heart a wellspring of pain that feels as if it will make him into someone else entirely, and the great conflict he's trying to resolve in this story is: is there anywhere for me to be my whole self?

Which is why it's so important, near the end, that what he asks Mairon to do is this:

Be there for me when I am hurting and when I am cruel and when I am sick with the burden of living, because it weighs on me, Mairon, and I don't know what to do. If only you would be there, if only you would keep me no matter how insufferable and useless and unreasonable I become—that would be the finest thing you could ever offer me. That would be the thing that made this world bearable again. If you don't want to let go, then keep me, and let me keep you.

Which is what Mairon yearns for too, really: to be loved and accepted even in the parts of himself that he didn't previously realize he had.

Finrod has never been angry or unreasonable, has never been in the habit of standing up for himself rather than for other people. He's not even entirely there by the end of Fear Me Not, but he can feel it coming, and he knows it's not going to be put off forever, and he's frightened of it. He doesn't say I hate you to Mairon in chapter 7, but he thinks it, and when has Finrod ever been in the habit of hate? (He uses the word hate eleven times in three paragraphs in that chapter. That's a lot!)

And Mairon, meanwhile, has never been kind, not really. They both feel very vulnerable about these unfamiliar and unaccustomed emotions, and they're both desperate for someone to understand these new selves they're wearing.

[disarmd]

Fic Ask Game: pick a story and a question…

❓No dumb questions amnesty - can you explain this [line/dialogue/moment from the story]?

🏴‍☠️ Were there any points in which your characters tried (or succeeded) to commit mutiny against your planned plot? Where did they most want to rebel?

🥇 What scene were you most excited to write? Did it end up being the one you enjoyed writing the most?

🙏 Was there anything your character(s) really really really wanted to do? Did you let them?

🍆 What scene do you think was the hottest? What scene do you think your readers thought was the hottest? Are they the same?

🔮Have you imagined what happens to [character(s)] in the future? Or does the story only exist to you as a moment in time?

🔎 What detail(s) in the story are you particularly captivated with? Is there any behind the scenes info or backstory?

🧭 What was the key choice or decision you had to make for this story? If you had chosen differently, what would the story have turned into?

📖 Could the story have been a different length? What would you have included/removed?

🫂How would the story have changed if you wrote it for [this pairing] instead?

💭 If you could wish into creation a transformative piece for your story, made by a real human who isn’t you, what would it be? Art, video, sequel, podfic, etc.

📋What was your main goal for the story and/or writing experience? Do you think that you achieved it?

🎤 Do you think the story was written in your typical voice? Why or why not?

👉👈What two stories have you written that are most similar? Why?

👈👉What two stories have you written that are most different? Why?

🤍Asker’s choice: ask whatever you’d like!

[agendratum]

fuck i forgot to partake in handmade crafts and whimsy

[holdmyhannow]

the very next post on my dashboard was this one

[chthonion]

Podfic alert!

Hellooooo everyone I just finished listening to @mdaaaang’s podfic of Gil-Galad’s new advisor, whose name is definitely Léraquen and not anyone else and it was SO much fun.

If you’re not done with Gil-Galad and Mairon’s friendship in Fear Me Not, go check it out!

[chthonion]

i have been spinning the second must begin with choice around in my head these past few days and:

what does earwen think/do/say when arafinwe goes back across the sea and is like. so. our son made some choices,,,,

gil-galad seems content to not call mairon out about the obvious, but is galadriel going to stay content to do the same 👀?

THESE ARE THE GOOD QUESTIONS

I also wonder this. Did she guess/foresee that if he went, everything would be changed? Did she guess/foresee it but not want to accept what she was seeing? Did she try to talk him out of going?

Lol no. Galadriel is willing to let this lie for now but she WILL be returning to the question. And she WILL find out eventually, whether because they tell her or because she figures it out. And whoo boy that will be an interesting day in Eregion.

[dovesandmagpies]

So.

I read a lot of fanfiction.

I have always vaguely wanted to make fan art for fics I have read but I couldn't think of a way to do it that I liked.

But after doing the Howl's moving castle project I had an idea. Making tiny book covers!

So here are my first 6.

I decided to start with Silmarillion fics. In general I went with ones that really stuck in my mind, for some reason or another I really remembered them.

The Harrowing by @chthonion

(I could not get the teacup and the rest of him in focus at the same time.....oh well)

What the hell is happening??? By Leader_In_Red

What this darkness cannot swallow it must spit out by Dialux

(why does it look so dusty?)

You have come to love what you will always fear by Dialux

Visions of gold by Leader_In_Red

The Guardian by SpaceWall

If you like the Silmarillion I would really recommend reading these.

[chthonion]

Omg not only is the Harrowing one perfect but the rest are also awesome

[mdaaaang]

silvergifting silvergifting silvergifting silvergifting

They(tm) (@chthonion edition) are everything to me

I CANNOT STOP

[chthonion]

Once upon a time @thearrogantemu made me deeply unwell about them and after several years of processing I have apparently decided to hit as many other people with the silvergifting stick as possible

[chthonion]

Gil-Galad's new advisor, whose name is definitely Léraquen and not anything else

Hello, everyone! If you liked Gil-Galad in Hold me fast and fear me not, well, so did I, and I accidentally wrote some more Gil-Galad-and-Mairon snippets. So I posted them. Here you go!

[chthonion]

There is now another snippet, right here! This time with Gil-Galad POV...

[chthonion]

Gil-Galad's new advisor, whose name is definitely Léraquen and not anything else

Hello, everyone! If you liked Gil-Galad in Hold me fast and fear me not, well, so did I, and I accidentally wrote some more Gil-Galad-and-Mairon snippets. So I posted them. Here you go!