Songs and tales around the fire

Literature | Tolkien | Maedhros has my heart | AO3: Nerdanelparmandil

[nerdanelparmandil]

Welcome to my blog!

I'm Nerdanelparmandil. This blog is mostly dedicated to the Silmarillion, for which I write the majority of my fics. I post them on AO3.

Current WIP:

Hand of Gold - Russigon, 4/? chapters, rating E. I promise I will update this fic!

What I'm currently working on (unpublished WIPs):

Maedhros returns from the Halls of Mandos and diploatic incidents ensue. Family drama, exploration of trauma and depression, Valinorean politics. Russingon endgame but it takes 100k words at least before they even meet.

Fingolfin/Anaire: how they meet and fall in love. A sweet romantic tale with a sprinkle of Valinorean politics and Finwean family drama [on hold as I finish the other fics]

Maedhros/Fingolfin: the rescue-fic where I want to see how fucked up I can make them. Featuring unhealthy coping mechanisms, Nolorin feudal politics. Explicit, with a dash of undernegotiated kinks. Will probably turn this into a series.

Feel free to pop in my asks/dms to chat about anything Tolkien related or yell about Maedhros.

The Silmarillion will always be my main fandom, but I'll reblog stuff from other fandoms sometimes.

Enjoy <3

[sycamorality]

writing a canon divergent fix-it fic while also shaking my head to show that i actually really like the canon's tragic narrative and am not trying to say i think it would be better if canon was like this

[talshiargirlfriend]

“Oh, this cute little ficlet is going to be about 500 words.”

-a dumbass

[eccentricmya]

"Oh, this fic is going to be epic with 100k+ words."

-another dumbass with 500 words written in 12 fics

[beckette]

the token gay friend? no, u misheard me. i’m the tolkein gay friend. i’m gay and i love lord of the rings

[thetiredprometheus]

Part 2: Indis and her sons

Here's the two pieces together:

[vamplire]

HEY that's MY emotional support morally ambiguous misunderstood full of trauma touch starved yearning for love drenched in blood responsible for numerous atrocities comfort character who is TRYING & u will TREAT them with RESPECT

[rinthecap]

'golden flower' - oil on canvas, 2023

A little about the painting: i drew this one after i first read about him in The Silmarilion (of course i knew him in LOTR before) and i was inspired by his death. I mean, being killed by being pulled down by his hair is something that i found quite irritated at that time 😅. So i want my dude to rest in peace, surrounded with flower and green (i was biased, i know. I was in love with him after reading LOTR) 😋

I wish i have more time to make more oil painting 🥲

[quietwingsinthesky]

like the betrayal’s always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didn’t matter. someone discards you because they didn’t give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say “I love you. I would make the same choice again.” You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.

[quietwingsinthesky]

“I thought they cared about me, but they were lying this whole time.” <- tired. boring. removes all the nuance of this relationship to make it easier to move on from.

“I thought they cared about me, and I was right, and every minute they were there for me, every time they said they were proud, every laugh we shared leaning against each other bruised and breathless, all of it was real. and they still left me behind. They could put their love aside. I couldn’t.” <- insane. will never leave you alone. reminds you that even the worst people are still people and can still care about even the ones they hurt the most and that undoes neither the harm nor the love.

[quietwingsinthesky]

okay. something about the way i worded this is making people think this is a vent thing about real relationships. and it’s fine if that’s where it took you. but i feel like i need to be transparent here: this be blorboposting. karlach cliffgate and her terrible awful no good very bad betrayal.

[othellho]

julian de narvaez piranesi illustration i will think about you every day for the rest of my life

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

can’t even joke about wishing my fics could write themselves without people mistaking it for ai usage anymore. what a lost whimsy

[achesspiece]

in chess the queens can kill each other which is toxic yuri and the kings can never get within a square of each other which is doomed yaoi

[ryebreadgf]

the sexiest thing a woman can be is a cringe fujoshi with a very serious day job

[garlicbunny]

“ok lets do warm up sketch”

“oh..”

[orpheuslament]

oftentimes two guys who want to fuck each other not fucking each other is hotter than if they fucked each other

[karama08]

eternity

[littlestpersimmon]

Do you ever wonder how one such as Mairon, who loved order and coordination above all else, could have fallen into one such as Melkor, who was chaos himself; and follow him into oblivion

[balrogballs]

"and friendship/love/whatever can certainly be a driver, but i don’t think it’s the driver." but the only reason we are canonically given is that their ancient friendship stung his heart. saying "it's not the main driver" is directly going against canon, when it's all we know. also fingon's actions/reactions during the rescue seem mostly personal/emotional rather than political. eg being willing to kill maedhros to end his suffering is understable from a personal, love-inspired POV, but it wouldn't be politically advantagous for fingon to kill feanor's oldest son. once that got out (even if fingon managed to keep that a secret, sauron or morgoth would certainly know and spread that information around to sow division), the divide between noldor factions would only grow worse or erupt into outright hostility/fighting.

ok listen i am not going to sit here and argue whether or not ‘russingon’ is canon because i feel like there are much better uses of everyone’s time and secondly any time someone says anything about this pairing they get an inbox essay, which i find particularly irritating because i don’t even not-ship them, i enjoy the pair, pls stop being annoying.

in my post i literally said that the ancient friendship is a driver. i just said it’s overemphasised into being the only driver because the majority of interpretations of the thangorodrim rescue is done through shipper goggles. i didn’t say fingon is a psychopath who hates maedhros and is doing everything for callous political reasons. of course he’d have a reaction to seeing his friend/lover/what not strung up like that in torment. of course in that moment he would feel inclined to shoot him like he was begging, because that was an act of mercy and fingon is, while mired in a wider political project, not a particularly cruel person at any point! there being political reasonings for a personal act does not mean that personal feelings are kept out of it. that is what makes the pairing interesting! they’re not romeo and juliet, they’re two high ranking royals at the tip of the great noldor feudalism cock, in a text that is written as a history, and that means almost every action these characters take are political actions, regardless of personal motivations. stories are not split into ‘political’ and ‘apolitical’ — the rescue having political aspects to it doesn’t mean that there are no personal feelings involved.

as for your point about ancient friendship being the only canonical reasoning you get, the silmarillion is a text pretty sparse in its character motivations, and interpreting a text doesn’t mean just looking at what is directly said but what is implied by both the narrative and the environment it operates in. an ancient friendship with the reigning monarch is a political advantage to the newly arrived noldor. i am not saying that the friendship did not exist or that it played no role in the rescue, it clearly did. i am saying that the rescue can pretty easily be seen to have a myriad of favourable political outcomes, and that those are ignored in favour of focusing only on some great romantic scene starring two individuals that has no other motivations or repercussions for the wider political stage.

and i think viewing fingon as a pining loverboy and nothing but a pining loverboy is a reductionist diminishment of his character for the purposes of shoving both him and maedhros into a pining-and-pined-for trope. finally, please remember the question i was answering is one about my opinions on something. this is how i interpret it and why. i am not saying that people viewing russingon as a great romantic saga between individuals are reprehensible, i am saying it’s not my jam and that i think both characters are too flattened in that lens to appeal to me.

[melestasflight]

Besties, I'm a die-hard Russingon shipper and love a good 'ol romance like the next girlie, but let it be clear: Maedhros' rescue from Thangorodrim is not some princess saved from a dragon castle but an extremely layered decision that is motivated politically first and foremost, while certainly not free of personal complexities.

Fingon’s heroic act and why later he gets proclaimed "of all the children of Finwë he is justly most renowned", is due to his contribution to preventing civil war among the Noldor.

The Silmarillion is explicit about the tensions at Mithrim:

No love was there in the hearts of those that followed Fingolfin for the House of Fëanor, for the agony of those that endured the crossing of the Ice had been great, and Fingolfin held the sons the accomplices of their father. Then there was peril of strife between the hosts

Years later, when Fingon decides to look for Maedhros, the conflict between the hosts comes back as a primary reason behind his decision:

Then Fingon the valiant, son of Fingolfin, resolved to heal the feud that divided the Noldor, before their Enemy should be ready for war

Fingon is not some love-stricken fool who runs after his boyfriend the moment he steps foot in Beleriand, but a leader and a lord who has already lost people across an icy wasteland and is tasked with ensuring the remainder is not sacrificed to civil war.

Three entire years pass between the arrival of Fingolfin’s host at Mitrhim (FA 2) to Fingon’s rescue mission (FA 5). In some versions, this timeline gets stretched to five years.

Yes, "their ancient friendship stung his heart", certainly, but divorcing that element from the rest of the factors driving Fingon to Thangorodrim is frankly a disservice to his character, and ignorance of the long history of division among the Noldor that shapes the politics of Beleriand throughout the first age.

You are of course free to construct an AU that suits your tastes.