#silmarillion fandom problems

[squirrelwrangler]

I love Elf/Edain pairings and friendships and most of my strongest OTPs are Beren/Luthien and Aegnor/Andreth and even some non canon pairings ... But one of my strongest NOTPs is Haleth/Caranthir.

[squirrelwrangler]

heget’s terrible Silmarillion fanfic bad habit #221:

Do not replace the names of the Valar and Maiar with the obscure Sindarin equivalents.

Just because you found Yssion and Gaerys as the Sindarin alternates for Ossë doesn’t mean those should appear anywhere but in footnotes of a more appropriate fic. Not the one you’re writing.

[songsoftheirdeeds]

I would kill for slash between canonically married Silmarillion characters that doesn’t go for ‘cheating is empowering and liberatory!’ or ‘canon spouse just wasn’t enough for me!’ or ‘canon spouse is frigid’ or ‘canon spouse doesn’t treat me right’ or ‘I only married them for the kids’.

like have you considered:

canon spouse thinks it’s hot for me to have other partners

canon spouse and I have a consensually negotiated open relationship

canon spouse also has other partners

canon spouse and I have a strong and healthy and mutually fulfilling relationship and also fuck other people because it makes us happy

canon spouse and I object to the idea that we can own each other’s capacity for love and intimacy

canon spouse might join us sometime, if you’re into that

[squirrelwrangler]

Some days it's not worth it to leave the Girdle.

[squirrelwrangler]

I swear both times it was unplanned Ents in my Bëor fics. also, bless Edain Summer Event, because I wrote two more-or-less fics in one day after a lapse of writing nothing for the Silm fandom for a while.

Yeah, that says a lot about what parts of the novel I find worthy of interest.

[squirrelwrangler]

Coming across a really nice Silmarillion Line-art of an elf with a scarred face and missing hand. Getting really excited because you think it's a pensive Gwindor. CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT to realize it's yet another Maedhros.

[squirrelwrangler]

One thing when you read the Lay of Leithian (or actually, the Silmarillion)-

Beren and Lúthien?

Did not met in the woods, see each other and fall in love at first sight at first meeting.

He stumbles- blindly stumbles - into her dancing. And the strangeness and beauty and peacefulness of it is what leaves the impression on him- he reaches out to touch her arm as one of those 'what are you and are you even real' gestures, and as he wanders afterward he is deliberately comparing in his mind the safety of the woods of Neldoreth and the magical and possibly unreal scene he saw to the nine years of struggle and torment and the Nightshade that became of his home, the Valley of Dreadful Death he just crossed.

And Lúthien? Her first reaction is to be startled and afraid. She bolts. Then she circles back around and follows Beren, stalks him for a little bit unseen, then leaves.

Then an entire year passes. Beren doesn't see Lúthien (I notice the poem's mum of if she ever returned to the woods).

But come the spring again, Lúthien returns to the woods and repeats her song for spring- this time alone.

And Beren finds her again and this is the "Tinúviel! Tinúviel!" moment - he doesn't know her name, he doesn't know if she's a hallucination he dreamed up last year, he's begging her not to dissipate or disappear. And Lúthien this time decides to stay and face him, because she hears in his voice "such love and longing" and gives him "one moment" (stressed twice).

And it's that moment he touches and gives her a kiss - and she kisses him back.

(Note too - Beren "kissed her trembling starlit eyes". Lúthein returns the gesture by going after his lips. a~huh)

And then after that second post-dance meeting when Lúthien stays and they have their "falling-in-true-love-kiss" moment - she leaves and Beren falls back into despair until she returns that evening. And she visits him each evening and they hang out (this whole adorable passage) and court each other for an entire season.

And only when Daeron rats on them to Thingol does Lúthien bring Beren to court and when he questions Beren's intentions towards his daughter - and if he has bewitched Lúthien in anyway or a general trespasser with secretive dark motives- then Beren brings up marriage. The classic retort of honorable intentions to the girlfriend's overprotective father.

So please. They knew each other as long as Arwen and Aragorn (double-checking and those two also spend a full season in Lothlórien before pledging there love) and yes there are parallels but it isn't the same. And Beren and Lúthien certainly aren't a Romeo/Juliet love at first sight, marriage the next day, Shakespeare play condensed time fairy tale.

[squirrelwrangler]

Building the "Greatest Poetry Works of Beleriand"

Lay of Leithian

Narn i Chîn Húrin

Aldudénië

... and then the Noldolantë. Maybe. If Pengolodh would tell me if there was a proper lay for the Fall of Gondolin, I want that too, and frankly that ranks higher. And not even getting into Bilbo's poem for Eärendil (with input from Aragorn) which is an original creation from the old hobbit but as the whole inception for all of Tolkien's Middle-earth comes from a line in a poem about Earendel, there must be an elven song. (And then all the hymns to the Valar, Elbereth in particular).

But to break it down:

"Of the deeds of that day much is told in the Aldudénië, that Elemmírë of the Vanyar made and is known to all the Eldar."

The Silmarillion, pg  81

Okay- all the Eldar - that is, non-Avari elves- know this poem. Which means it's composed before the Noldor leave and they carry it with them to Beleriand. Or comes to Middle-earth during the War of Wrath and afterwards. But it's not just an Amanyar-only poem.

"Many songs are yet sung and many tales are yet told by the Elves in the Lonely Isle of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, in which Fingon fell and the flower of the Eldar withered. But here I will tell as I may a Tale of Men that Dírhaval (5) of the Havens made in the days of Earendel long ago. Narn i Chin Hurin he called it, the Tale * of the Children of Hurin, which is the longest of all the lays that are now remembered in Eressea, though it was made by a man.

...

This lay was all that Dírhaval ever made, but it was prized by the Eldar, for Dírhaval used the Grey-elven tongue, in which he had great skill."

HoMe The War of the Jewels pg. 232

The Narn is a really important and treasured piece of culture and history, and for all that the primary protagonist is a man and the author is a man, it was prized by the elves (Tol Eressëa means Aman as well as Middle-earth) as well and is in fact their longest literary work.

  Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien. Of their lives was made the Lay of Leithian, Release from Bondage, which is the longest save one of the songs concerning the world of old; but here is told in fewer words and without song.

The Silmarillion, pg 190

Man, I don't even have to explain this one's cultural importance. "Most fair still" - they are still quoting and name-dropping and doing full recitals of this poem late in the Third Age. What I'd love to know is the author of the Lay, but I haven't found the quote yet.

Of the enslaving at Alqualondë more is told in that lament which is named Noldolantë, the Fall of the Noldor, that Maglor made ere he was lost.

The Silmarillion, pg 95

And for Maglor, he that is second only to Daeron?* Well, there is a record of the name of a lament he wrote. So some of it must have been preserved. Nothing about how widely known or appreciated, so we assume what we can.

Is it the greatest work written? No. Not even the one the elves get the most emotional over. 

Please, the next time someone says anything about how great the Noldolantë was, prove to me that it even ranks up there with the three poems and epics also named in the Silmarillion that were explicitly pointed out as well-known and prized by the elves, let alone the humans.

*

Daeron the dark with ferny crown played on his pipes with elvish art unbearable by mortal heart. No other player has there been, no other lips of fingers seen so skilled, 'tis said in elven-lore: not Maglor, son of Fëanor, forgotten harper, singer doomed,

who, young when Laurelin yet bloomed, to endless lamentation passed when gem in tombless sea he cast, nor any other harper fair nor piper whose reeds did stir the air.

"Lay of Leithian" Canto IV, lines 128-140

and the older draft:

Tinfang Gelion who still the moon enchants on summer nights of June and kindles the pale firstling star; and he who harps upon the far forgotten beaches and dark shores where western foam for ever roars Maglor; whose voice is like the sea; and Dairon, mightiest of the three.

Lay of Beleriand, Lays of Leithian Canto III

(For your sake, Maglor, I hope there is more to your artistic accomplishments that "The Fall of the Noldor", because from the sound of it, that the only known piece from you is a record of heinous deeds from one of its perpetrators, is terrible. That we must hope it contains more than just sorrow for the bloodstained and culpable victors. That before lost means not before some genuine remorse for the victims and others beside the Noldor that chose such actions that warrant the term a moral Fall.)

all quotes emphasis mine