#*prosthetics

[disabled-tolkien]

☆ Month of Fic Recs ☆

For each day of September (which is disability pride month in Aotearoa) I'm sharing a Tolkien fanfiction with disabled characters.

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Day 22/30: Celebrindal by @factorialrabbits

Fandom: Silmarillion

Rating: T

Disabled character: Idril (foot amputation)

Warnings: ableism

Summary: Eärendil helps his mother pick her outfit for the day.

Alternatively

Idril learns to create, to live, and to wear beautiful things.

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[disabled-tolkien]

[Image: a sword held in a left hand with the words “... and he lived to wield his sword with left hand more deadly than his right had been.” in white font. Beneath is the sigil of the House of Feanor.]

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The Hand Problem

Let’s talk about Maedhros! Or more specifically, about his hand. Yes, you all know which one.

Maedhros loses his right hand fairly early in the story when Fingon cuts him down from Thangorodrim. I’ve seen fans engage with this in a lot of different ways, including some incredibly insightful and nuanced discussions. But there’s a troublingly common trend of portraying Maedhros with a fully-functioning prosthetic.

Why is this a problem? Prosthetics exist, and real people use them. Why shouldn’t Maedhros?

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Hand Prosthetics

Let’s start with the basics about hand prosthetics. There are four main kinds;

Passive Prosthetics don’t have moving parts, although sometimes they can be manipulated into different shapes. They’re often used for aesthetic purposes, but they’re also useful for purposes like carrying, pushing, pulling or supporting things. They’re very common! About 1/3 of all upper-limb prosthetic users have a passive prosthetic.

Body Powered Prosthetics are attached to the rest of the body via harness and use those muscles to move the prosthetic. So for example, bending your arm might close the fingers of your hand. These provide some limited movement.

Myoelectric Prosthetics are the modern kind that use the electrical signals in surviving nerves to trigger movements in the prosthetic. These are the most elaborate and realistic prosthetics. They are also the heaviest and most complicated, requiring a lot of training before they can be used properly. Most require regular recharging. They still don’t replicate all of the functions of a living hand, especially finger movements. However, this area is advancing rapidly and more sophisticated myoelectric hands may be available very soon. 

Activity-Specific Prosthetics are designed to carry out certain tasks, for example prosthetic hands made for boxing. You can also have activity specific attachments such as knives or forks (or, say, short swords...)

Prosthetics aren’t always hand-shaped. Hooks are also quite common, although I’d be very careful about writing these because there’s a lot of problematic tropes around characters with hooks; particularly villains. Murderer Maedhros with a terrifying hook may sound tempting, but it fuels stigma and fear of disability.

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So What Would Maedhros Have?

Within the fantasy setting of the Silmarillion, myoelectric prosthetics are pretty much immediately ruled out as likely candidates. We have no evidence of any culture in Arda using electricity and the other kinds of technology associated with myoelectrics.

On the other hand (the left one), given the skill of the Noldor and especially the Sons of Feanor, they would certainly be capable of developing a passive or body-powered prosthetic. Such prosthetics have existed throughout history, as far back as Ancient Egypt.

So it’s completely possible that Maedhros would have some kind of prosthetic, whether for functional or aesthetic reasons. But it probably would have limited or no movement given the practical limits of the setting. Also, I’d argue that the “lived to wield his sword with left hand more deadly than his right had been” quote suggests pretty strongly that if he had a prosthetic, it wasn’t particularly functional / practical for sword-fighting.

But finally and most importantly, many upper limb amputees don't use any prosthetic at all. You can play around with lots of potential reasons Maedhros might make this choice, such as the general unwieldiness of prosthetics, a political desire to have his amputation visible, or pain at the amputation site. Personally, I think Maedhros might be deeply uncomfortable with having any kind of restraint around his wrist after the trauma of Thangorodrim.

Of course, this is all leaving out the one kind of prosthetic that we haven’t discussed. Magic.

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The Magical Cure Trope

It happens disturbingly often in fiction; a character is disabled or becomes disabled, but then through magic or some fantastical feat of science their disability is no more. Sometimes this is a very literal cure where a blind person gets their sight back or a paralysed wheelchair user can suddenly walk. Sometimes they’re given something that completely compensates for or negates their disability, like magic eyes that also have X-ray vision. But if our heroes become disabled, the message is clear; they have to regain their lost abilities before they can be a true hero again.

This is what we as fans are doing when we give Maedhros a perfect prosthetic. We hide his stump and we erase his disability, turning him effectively able-bodied again for the comfort and convenience of abled fans.

This happens because so many of us are stuck on the idea that disability needs to be 'fixed'. People are uncomfortable with disability, or they find it difficult to imagine a one-handed character being a fulfilled person living a competent happy life just as they are. If the option for two hands is there, people jump at it, because surely two hands would be better than one. But not everyone sees it that way.

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Arda’s Bodies Are Full of Diversity.

Consider the variations in height and strength, hardiness and lifespan, and all of the other traits that differ between the races. When we think about how many characters in the Silmarillion lose hands (Maedhros, Beren, Gwindor) and the war raging on around them, there must be hundreds of amputees and other disabled people across Beleriand who all need accommodations and respect. So rather than saying that their bodies are lesser or thinking about a magic hand, why not think about real societal change across the cultures of Arda? How do all of the different peoples deal with their sick and disabled kin?

I’m not saying that you can’t give Maedhros a magical metal hand. But you should ask yourself why you’re doing it and if that reason is a good one.

There’s a great deal of stigma around amputees and how their bodies look, and I think sometimes this can make fans reluctant to portray Maedhros’s stump or uncomfortable talking about it. But when we get those feelings that make us uncomfortable, we need to stop and look at them head on. We need to work out why. It’s not about making people feel shame or guilt, but we do need to put effort into recognising and confronting our biases so that we can work to be better people.

Please let me know if you think there’s an error in this post, I’m not an amputee or prosthetic user myself. And if you have questions I’m always happy to talk 😊

Edit: can't believe I forgot to add this earlier, but if you want to write a character with a prosthetic, here's a post about prosthetic sleeves!

[disabled-tolkien]

I read you post on Maedhros' hand and especially the 'magical cure' trope wanted to make sure that I wasn't falling into it. For my prosthetic headcanons I have Maedhros having a 'metal' hand, fairly similar to a flesh hand in uses/mobility with some limits (ex. no feeling, can't hold anything) that come with the disadvantage of being painful and exhausting if worn for a long time, meaning that Mae would wear an alternative to battle, using his hand mostly for more menial tasks. Ready to learn!

Thank you!! I’m very glad you liked the post. Your headcanons sound great to me. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with giving Maedhros a prosthetic, so long as it’s not magically a perfect replacement. Having limited mobility is very realistic and so is the idea of it being painful or unpleasant to wear for long periods of time, particularly if it’s metal. Him having different tools for everyday tasks vs battle is also great!

I do think that Maedhros’s prosthetic(s) would be likely to be more painful than modern day prosthetics for a number of reasons, such as the material involved, a messy and traumatic amputation, or the fact that many people headcanon the prosthetic as being made by Curufin or Celebrimbor and they’re unlikely to have had much practice making prosthetics. I think I’ve also read a fic (I think it might have been @nikosheba?) that mentioned Maedhros's hand being more difficult to wear in the cold, both because freezing metal directly painful and because the cold causes it to shrink and pinch. I really adored that idea and it’s stuck in my head ever since.

I’m not sure if you’re writing or just swimming around in fun headcanons, but if you do want to write about prosthetics here's a helpful post about the kind of sleeves worn with them  😊

[disabled-tolkien]

I really appreciate your post about Maedhros’ hand. It helps clarify for me how to write Maedhros, since I like the idea of situationally-useful prosthetics (but I’ve never really liked the magical replacement angle - I’m not an amputee, so it can’t be wish fulfillment for me, and I don’t want to portray him as a tragedy bc that’s demeaning). I was wondering was your take was on how Maedhros feels about his right hand? I personally headcanon that Maedhros is a pretty pragmatic guy. I don’t necessarily think he feels too badly about not having a right hand; he initially asked Fingon to kill him, so his amputation is maybe a testament to how Fingon refused to give up on him? Like, if he can fight well with his left hand, and maybe uses simple prosthetics for tasks, i don’t necessarily think he would choose a purely aesthetic prosthetic or seek a highly advanced magical limb. Again, thank you for opening this blog, you offer a nuanced opinion that I don’t necessarily have as I am able-bodied.

Thank you! I appreciate that 😊 I have many many thoughts so get ready for a long post :P I like your suggestion about him associating his amputation with his rescue, like a physical mark of how much Fingon loved him and how far he was willing to go. I have some similar thoughts about that and how Maedhros actually ends up feeling quite good about his stump. I’m going to break this up so that it’s not all a gigantic wall of text.

This is all personal headcanon, and it overlaps with some of my favourite Celebrimbor headcanons too!

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Waking up in Mithrim: 

Maedhros doesn’t go through the same stages of shock and grief that a lot of people do when they suddenly become disabled. When he woke up in Mithrim, his hand was honestly nowhere near the top of his list of priorities. His injuries, both mental and physical, were extremely grievous. Not everyone’s sure of the full extent of the internal damage, and whether he will ever heal again. A lot of the healers don’t think he’ll be able to walk. He’s also been through so many pain and bodily damage that his hand just feels like yet another part of him that has been stolen, along with his dignity and his ability to sleep without nightmares. Maedhros isn’t even particularly coherent when he wakes up, and it actually takes him a few days before he’s with it enough to realise that his hand is gone and isn’t going to grow back or something. 

In another situation I think he’d feel awful and have a lot of negative emotions, until he grew to process it and went through that journey.  But he’s so grateful for how much he does recover, when he thought he never would, that the hand feels like a small thing.

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Prosthetic 1:

Curufin is the first person to make Maedhros a prosthetic, and I usually think that it didn’t happen until Maedhros had made a lot of progress on his psychological recovery and to some extent physical recovery. It’s a very basic (although beautiful and expertly crafted of course) body-powered hand with some movement in the fingers. However, it takes a lot of time to get the issues worked out. Maedhros isn’t quite strong enough to handle the movements yet, and it’s also painful for him to wear.

Then there’s his various trauma responses. Just the pressure of the prosthetic around his wrist can set him off sometimes. But the worst is that at this stage Maedhros still keeps falling asleep all the time, and when he wakes up with two hands he thinks that the rescue was a dream and he never left Angband. Cue breakdown. Repeatedly. In the end, it takes a long time before Maedhros really starts trying to use the prosthetic.

(Although I did write a dark oneshot about Curufin gifting a prosthetic.)

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Feelings:

Maedhros’s feelings shift a lot at first and get pretty complicated for a while. I think it’s a big source of frustration for him when he’s trying to retrain and relearn how to perform basic tasks, but he picks up skills with his left hand very quickly. By far the thing that annoys him the most is trying to cut up his food (I’m not sure exactly what kind of cutlery the Noldor use, but let’s just say this is still a problem!) until his brothers devise hand attachments, and later different cutlery, that allow him to eat independently.

I think later it becomes a symbol to him of everything he survived. He can look down at his stump and think Morgoth couldn’t keep me and he’ll never have me again. It also takes on a similar symbolic significance for his followers and many  others who see it, because it shows the strength of this lord and the proof of his survival. That then comes to symbolise the perseverance and survival of the free peoples of Beleriand in general, that they will not be beaten down, and proof that Morgoth can be overcome and lose.

It gets more complicated with that in certain situations. Thingol looks on it with scorn. He thinks it ironic and just that the samd hand that killed many of his kinsmen has been cut off. At the same time, Thingol is quite a bit better at dealing with disabilities when it’s his own people!

Some of the tribes of men, and certain Petty Dwarves, have their own connotations around loss of a hand. In some Mannish tribes a warrior has their hand cut off if they shame their people. For Petty Dwarves, it’s a punishment for stealing. So the initial responses to Maedhros’s amputation aren’t always good; but they generally improve once people learn Maedhros’s story.

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Collecting prosthetics, and thoughts on Celebrimbor: 

Eventually Maedhros ends up with a whole lot of different prosthetics, but he has a few favourites. Two of them are passive; one made by the dwarves and one made by Curufin. (That one has so many attachments it’s like a Swiss knife. Maedhros thinks this is incredibly funny.) One is a body-powered prosthetic with a tiny pinch of magic sprinkled in, and it’s by far the greatest hand that he’s been given. It’s made by Celebrimbor.

I know that Celebrimbor is supposed to be his father name, and that fanon often makes Curufinwe his father name instead and Celebrimbor his mother name. But third option; Celebrimbor is his epesse, Silverfist, given to him by his loving uncle because of the incredible prosthetic he made. Celebrimbor spends a great deal of time and love making a hand that isn’t just perfect, but perfect specifically for Maedhros.

Celebrimbor grows to love his work, especially his discussions with amputees and all of the different peoples of Arda, who have their own perspectives and have developed solutions to the disability issues in their communities. (In the Second Age he works with Elrond on collecting and sharing that knowledge so that everyone can benefit.)

It’s part of how his close collaboration with the dwarves begins, because he spends a lot of time talking to them about their experiences and solutions. Dwarves have a very high number of limb disabilities and also have a lot of disability sub-cultures!

Celebrimbor grows to spend more time working on prosthetics, and in fact becomes well known for them long after Maedhros is dead. He branches out into other areas of assistive devices and also works on brand new concepts like devices that bring comfort and help with PTSD. He (and most of the other Gwaith-i-Mirdain) are hugely passionate about urban planning and making the Best and Prettiest Coolest most Functional City, using mad algorithms to decide things like road layout. But part of his interest in urban planning also involves accessibility.

The hand that Celebrimbor made for Maedhros is irreparably damaged at the Nirnaeth. After that, Maedhros ends up only having the one that Curufin made for him. No-one’s quite sure what happens to it in the end, although Elrond knows that Maedhros still had it the last time that Elrond saw him. He thinks of it often, and the way that it felt stroking his hair.

Elrond is a healer, and Celebrimbor’s devices are incredibly useful for many patients. But Elrond never looks at the ones that bear a Feanorian star. He never really forgets.