curious about the Deny Thy Father wip!! (I also can't remember if I sent this ask already so if I did... my bad!)
you didn't! yay!
so... Deny Thy Father and Refuse Thy Name is a Melkor redemption fic in which his time in Valinor does actually motivate him to change... his literal nature as a being. It's a super philosophical debate- centered fic about morality and existence and redemption. And all because i wrote a little drabble for Manwe week about opposites and balances.
I've got about ten more chapters of this drafted out and the entire ending planned but i don't want to post more of it because i keep adding and changing up whole fic premises when i'm editing and by eru this cannot be happening again. So i'm trying to finish editing my WIPS before I post them at the moment. Also because i really don't want the angbang in this to divert from the focus and i can see that happening all too easily once Mairon enters the scene. Especially while i'm quoting Romeo and Juliet for all the chapter titles....
It's funny actually; it's a fic about Melkor trying to control himself and has become an exercise in me controlling my own worst impulses as a writer
tis i... if you're ever feeling it, 22 or 35 for maemags? 💕💕💕
(Here's a take on an AU Lark and I have oft discussed, in which Maglor is chosen to enter a Vanyar religious order and serve a ceremonial role as Eru's spouse. Maedhros goes with him as his attendant/consort which is totally brotherly and fine)
Maedhros approaches the temple at the appointed hour with the rest of the followers and penitents. The light of the Trees is blazing, a permanent mingling. They say the oldest priestesses go blind, an inescapable effect of lives spent dwelling so close to Laurelin and Telperion. But they care not. They have no need of sight, for Eru guides them.
Maedhros is a little frightened of the priestesses. They flank Maglor where he sits upon his flower-strewn dais, wearing masks of bone-white starched silk, and it seems to Maedhros they not only see him plain but see into him, see every secret he would keep concealed. They preside over the queue, which must reach nearly to Valimar. Even the least devout among the Vanyar do not miss a feast day. If a crop fails or a calf dies none wish the nagging thought misfortune might have been avoided.
On the dais, Maglor is resplendent. He wears an opaline veil draped over his head and shoulders. Flowers mass in his lap and more surround him, all grown in the temple gardens and hand-picked for color, for shape. Their perfume strikes Maedhros in the face as he ascends the steps to the dais. Bees drone. The Tree-light is so bright he has to shade his eyes. He might be in a dream. He wonders, as he often does, how the figure before him can be his brother.
Maglor sees him through the veil and extends a hand. The nearest priestess nods at Maedhros in tacit permission. She lifts the edge of the veil, holds it high for Maedhros to duck under. Each elf in the queue will have this holy honor: a few moments alone with Maglor, who was wed in symbol to Eru Ilúvatar before his majority, and who dwells in the temple still.
But with Maedhros, Maglor is only himself. He smiles, expression wry. Can you believe it? his eyes say. All these years and Maedhros still cannot.
“I was waiting and waiting," Maglor says.
Maedhros shrugs. “The queue is long.”
Maglor frowns. His face is bare save the circles of scarlet paint on his cheeks, gold dust swept across his eyelids and along the parting in his hair. “You ought to be up here with us. You are my attendant.”
“A secular role, remember. The high priestess hath spoken.”
Maglor wrinkles his nose. Maedhros knows how he dislikes the high priestess, who somehow manages to outrank him. She is starched stiffer than the silk masks, and she smells of the beef-tallow candles tended at the altars.
“Perhaps Eru shall will it,” Maglor says. “He must want my happiness. Perhaps he will deliver unto his wedded spouse his divine word before the next feast day.”
Maedhros snorts.
From beyond the veil there comes a soft but marked cough. The next petitioner grows restless before the dais, and Maedhros' time is nearly up. He must move along, back into the throng amidst the shrines and offerings. He will not see Maglor for hours and hours yet, when he is led back into the temple weak with fatigue, and then Maedhros will feed him honeyed porridge and wash his feet.
Maglor clasps his hand. “Go on then, brother. Make your confession.”
Today, as ever, Maglor is a proxy, fed on sins and secrets. Eru hears each unburdening, spins the muck into fecundity. But Maedhros needs no boon. He has no crops to tend, no livestock, no lady desirous of a full womb. Since he followed Maglor here years ago he has been clothed and fed by the Vanyar in exchange for naught but his brother’s care. He serves Eru as Maglor does, as do the priestesses. His private dreams are inconsequential. They are not matters for the confessional.
“There is nothing,” Maedhros says. He feels heat rise in his cheeks. Maglor has begun to stroke his thumb along the back of Maedhros’ hand.
“Nothing, truly? I do not believe that.”
Maglor inclines his head. Maedhros is keenly aware of him. He sees the pale arc of Maglor’s neck, smells the oils he himself poured into Maglor’s bath, hears the rustle of the heavy ivory jacquard he brought out from the wardrobe and laid upon Maglor’s bed. In the distance bells are ringing. He thinks of Maglor’s songs, not ceremonial chorales but his own private music, those tunes he sings to birds at the gold-barred windows and to Maedhros, when Maglor senses he is troubled.
When Maglor speaks again it is not speech at all, but a whisper mind to mind.
I have seen the way you look at me when you think I do not notice.
Maedhros means to drop his hand, to stand, but Maglor holds him fast. Coldness fills his belly, chased just as quickly by warmth like a draught of liquor. For he sees no reprobation in Maglor’s eyes. Instead there is a darkness not altogether holy.
“I have been indiscreet,” Maedhros whispers.
Maedhros risks a glance behind through the veil at the ghost of the priestess. Maglor always fusses at how much they know. His daydreams, his barked shins. They watch Maedhros already; they have never liked him in their sanctum. He is too Noldor, too impious. If their parents had not insisted, he would not be here at all.
They will send me away.
Maglor curls their fingers together and pulls Maedhros closer, closer. His eyes flash, and in this moment Maedhros considers that some greater force may indeed work through Maglor, for his brother’s lithe form holds strength it ought not.
“I will not allow it."
Maglor kisses Maedhros on the cheek, lightly as a butterfly, as he will each who comes before him.
The priestess lifts the veil again, bidden by the Bride's speech. Maedhros goes dizzy from the dais. He falls to his knees before the closest altar, and prays to Eru after all.
I'm going to do a different wip because you've read the first lines of the big wip! From a @silmsmutweek wip:
Maedhros woke in the cold light of Himring with a splitting headache. He was often thus afflicted, and so he thought little of it. He called for iced water, and his manservant brought him a bowl of half-melted snow he might splash upon his face.
literally all of these titles are SO juicy but arranged marriage au? or lhod_ss?
For you, both!
lhod_ss is a gift fic but the RECIPIENT knows about it and I'm not going to finish it in time for the intended exchange so I can talk about it, lol. @what-alchemy look away if you don't want to see this.
It's the "Genly gets promoted/reassigned and then Estraven gets pregnant" fic where they've been kemmer FWBs but are in denial about their FEELINGS:
I began to wonder idly how a Gethenian ship’s crew might handle kemmer. I didn’t know enough of the biology of either time dilation or kemmer to speculate on the effects. We’d need all sorts of studies, I decided; we ought to begin to design them right away. I looked about for a pen and paper and found my date book, and began to scrawl a list beneath the little ink star on Orny Gor.
This way I allowed my mind to carry me with ease away from thoughts of the promotion, of the decision it would require. There was no pressing sense of time, after all. I had only just learned the news, and could be allowed a moment—a day, a halfmonth—to ruminate. So I sat at my desk, my orsh grown cold, and made notes on the kemmer cycle and space travel until afternoon, when I heard a sound and looked up to see Estraven fuzzy-eyed in the doorway of the office.
“Have you been in here all day?” He was dressed and holding his own mug of orsh.
“Most of it.”
He came and sat on the edge of the desk and read over my shoulder. “You think we’ll all be in space before long,” he said.
“Every world that’s joined the Ekumen has made progress towards faster than light travel, if they haven’t attained it already. And all of them have at least one citizen working for the organization itself. Some Gethenian will too, eventually. So we’ll have to work all this out.”
“And yet I still wonder what would possess a man to think he could fly.”
“You saw the ship come down yourself.”
“So I did,” said Estraven, quietly. He shook his head as though in disbelief. “It was like something from a dream.”
Arranged marriage AU is actually a Russingon fic where the Valar force Fingon to go with Fëanor and his family into exile as idk a kind of weird cultural exchange meant to heal the rift btw the families. But also they make them get engaged for formality's sake? This was one of the first wips I started getting into the fandom and I think I want to take it in a more gothic direction if/when I get back to it.
He had not seen the sons of Fëanor assembled in many years, perhaps not since he was a child. They were mostly in Formenos and did what they would there, and came seldom to Tirion, and though Fingon saw some of them sometimes on the street when they were in the city they did not greet one another or give any sign of recognition. Once he had been very close to Maglor, the second eldest, in a crowd, and he had caught Fingon’s eye and given him a nod and the beginnings of a tight smile, so he had a vague impression of Maglor as kinder than the rest. Of Maedhros, he knew little, only that he was older than Fingon, at his father’s right hand, and apparently less of a smith than Fëanor would have liked. And unmarried, which had been convenient.
“Well,” said Aredhel, a little too loudly. “At least he is pleasing to look at. Ow, do not pinch me, Turno!” She jabbed Turgon with her elbow so hard that he gave an enormous pained grunt. Several seats down Fingolfin’s rictus faltered.
He was, though Fingon had to squint past the glare of his adornments to see it. He was the tallest of his brothers. His hair was copper, which Fingon had remembered, and he wore a matching copper circlet that gleamed about the crown of his head. His face was long and proud and pale, yet crowded with freckles, which lent him a warmer demeanor than he might have otherwise. Like Fingon, he wore white, though unlike Fingon’s simple and unadorned robes Maedhros’ swarmed with rose gold and dove grey embroidery. Somewhere in Formenos, a seamstress was surely nursing blistered fingers. In truth, he was beautiful, but Fingon had seen many beautiful things, and less beautiful he had cared for more. He looked on his intended now and felt nothing.
Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it!
some of these you might recognize since they've been lingering awhile...i hope to finish my longer wips this summer, sigh.
i was tagged by @meadowlarkx to post my lock screen, home screen, last song played and last picture saved.
my lock and home screens are both @eol’s super skrunkly maedhros judging my every move, and last saved photo that isn’t some social media thing i screenshotted to complain about is this bingsu i am desperate to consume from a dessert place here.
