#silmeme

[junk-whunk-punk]

Witches from Shrek Forever After vibe so much like Nazgul or do i need therapy asap

[theserpentsadvocate]

@porsena picked 2, 12, and 20 for the Silmarillion Meme:

My favourite Elf is Mablung, except for occasionally when it’s Fingolfin.

Eh, I have various feeling on most of the Great Elf Strongholds, mostly on a spectrum of ‘meh, not worth it’ to ‘wow you suck’, but I’d probably pick Nargothrond over Doriath. That said, at least Doriath is relatively stable, so if I’m choosing where to live rather than who to support, I... guess I pick Doriath?

I am going to be super cliche and say that if I was a Silm character I would be Haleth, partly because then I would be as badass as my soul yearns to be, but also because she had a pretty good life (aside from that part where everyone died but still) and didn’t die young, etc. My back-up plan is to be Haldan, for similar but less cool reasons. (Also his life was less traumatic.)

[theserpentsadvocate]

Headcanon Meme, Day Twenty-Seven: lifespans of the Kings of Gondor

So today is something about death.

Okay, so we know that Aragorn was in a position, like the Kings of Numenor, to just keep on living until he sat down one day and was like ‘Okay. It’s time.’ and put his affairs in order and then just let it happen.

And all things considered, it makes sense that Eldarion (and his sisters) would have that same option too – even more so than their father, really, since their mother is an Elf, and that’s like a giant refresher to the life expectancy of the line of Elendil, really.

But eventually, it’s going to run down again – as it should – and death is going to become slightly less voluntary. (Not that it was ever completely voluntary; you don’t pick a time, you die unpleasantly and slowly in your dotage, as we learned from Numenor.)

And for some reason, I like to think that, whoever it is who’s the first king to end up with a (give or take) normal lifespan – the kind that doesn’t necessitate deliberate dying, anyway – is super anxious about the whole thing. Because obviously he doesn’t know he’s going to die without deliberate forethought, and he’s just super worried about timing; what if he goes too soon, and robs himself of ten or twenty years with his wife and children? What if he waits just a little too long and sets a bad example for his heir? What if he waits just a little too long and then becomes too feeble-minded to realize it’s time and Gondor is stuck with a senile king for years all because he was too selfish to die. Maybe he should definitely do it earlier on, while he’s still got his mind. But what if he jumps the gun, would there be anything more horrible than dying thirty years early just because he was anxious, ARGH.

And then he dies in his sleep of a silent heart condition brought on by age.

And on the one hand it’s a huge relief. But on the other hand it’s like fuck, I spent my ENTIRE LIFE worrying about this!!!

[theserpentsadvocate]

Headcanon Meme, Day Twenty-Six: Beregond

Today is something about parents.

And I talked about Bergil yesterday, so I guess it’s Beregond today. Also I already did Handir/Beldis and Brandir.

Sooo. Like I said yesterday, I’ve always thought of Beregond as a widower. He’s got one kid, who’s good-hearted but a bit of a handful. (I stumbled across Borlas late in the game , so he hasn’t really made it into my headcanons. Maybe that will change when I get to his section of HoMe.)

And urrrrr, I just have all these feels! Like, if you know Beregond, you know he’s stoic in that really rare way – not unfriendly or even close-mouthed, just uncomplaining and to the point. He’s steady and unflinching and strong and in most media that would carry an automatic helping of grim seriousness, but not Beregond. He’s kind and friendly.

And thinking of him dealing with the death of his wife and the raising of his son that way – goddamn it.

This is a headcanon meme, not a wibble meme. I will do better.

Okay. So. I think by the time we meet him, his wife’s probably been dead for about three or four years, so he’s been on his own with Bergil since then. (No word on whether Bergil’s Uncle Iorlas is Beregond’s brother or his brother-in-law, but he lives in Lossarnach anyway. But he’s totally Beregond’s brother-in-law, duh; his name doesn’t  start with ‘B’.)

And they have a bit of a pattern, or maybe I should call it a silent deal: Bergil can have as much freedom as he likes during the day, provided:

-he doesn’t get into serious trouble

-he doesn’t get into less serious trouble (for stupid kid stuff) more than one or twice a month

-he’s home at a reasonable hour (he does kind of have a canonical curfew, so.)

-he spends time with his father when Beregond isn’t on duty (exceptions made for escorting visiting pheriannath around the city, obviously)

There’s a deal with their neighbour that if Beregond is pulling night duty, or late evening duty, she checks up to make sure that Bergil is keeping his curfew and eating actual food for dinner instead of all of the sweet-cakes out of their pantry.

And… yes. Maybe I will go more into the more complicated interpersonal details sometime, but that’s much harder to articulate. And anyway I can’t make too many posts about Beregond, can I? :)

[theserpentsadvocate]

Headcanon Meme, Day Twenty-Three: Elanor

Something about the time after the story ends.

For what definition of ‘story’ though? :) But I’ll say the cutoff point is the end of LotR.

Short one today I’m afraid, but here goes:

‘Elanor’ becomes a very popular name in the Shire. Not immediately, of course, but after a while it becomes not uncommon to borrow your child’s name from the Mayor’s children (he has so many, after all, and it’s a very respectable connection even if it’s ever so tenuous). And Sam is Mayor for a long time.

And then Elanor Gamgee grows up and marries Fastred, and the names of the Fairbairns enter into the general consciousness, so the name begins being used generally. Later, there are a whole spate of babies named after relatives who were originally named for her.

One hundred years later, ‘Elanor’ stays pretty steady as one of the twenty-five most common names for hobbit girls, although most of the time no one really bothers to remember where it came from unless they’re related to the Gardners.

[theserpentsadvocate]

Headcanon Meme, Day Five: Boromir

Today is a character you wish you were related to. :)

Oh, God. SO MANY. Um… I think Boromir. Aside from the fact that I just love him and I think he’d be the best older brother in the world (well, he already is, but I’m female and currently an oldest child, so it’s different), like, protective but fun, the way he treats his actual brother just… it just…

I mean, it’s canon that

a. Everyone thought Boromir was the awesomest thing ever,

b. This included both Boromir and Faramir, and

c. Boromir adored his brother and was really close to him and looked out for him and that kind of thing.

THAT IS SO RARE, OH MY GOD, especially in fiction – he has a high opinion of himself, and a younger sibling who never seems to measure up, and he doesn’t look down on him.

So for the headcanon part: It’s floating around out there that Boromir, you know, stuck up for Faramir with their father. I don’t think that’s true, though. I think he didn’t realize just how much in his shadow Faramir was, and so he didn’t really know how much of their father’s favourite he was. (And of course it didn’t get really bad until after he died.) But Boromir may have generally agreed with the idea that he was the best thing since lembas, but he always thought Faramir was awesome too, he was just a different food group – you know, the awesomest thing since fresh peas. (Which are more boring than lembas, but probably healthier.) (Especially if the Twinkie-lembas theory is right.) And you wouldn’t compare lembas and snap peas, so it just didn’t ever really occur to Boromir that people might hold Faramir up to him and find him wanting – he was Faramir, duh. We can’t all be Boromir.

[theserpentsadvocate]

Headcanon Meme, Day Four: Brandir (again)

Today is a character who is probably a bad influence on you.

HEY CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW I AM WASTING MY LIFE BY SPENDING IT ON THE INTERNET AND STARTING GIANT PROJECTS I DON’T HAVE TIME TO FINISH AND IT IS ALL BRANDIR’S FAULT

Like I mean, realistically, I’d be doing a slightly toned-down version of the same thing with Salazar if Brandir had never come along, but… yeah. It’s his fault.

I bet you expected him to be the good influence. HAH NO.

Mooore Brandir headcanon. No problem.

I’ve realized this is headcanon mainly because it's always sneaking into how I view different AUs – anyway. I’m always thinking of him as kind of touch-starved.

Like, it was fine when he was a kid. Kids get lots of physical affection anyway, and his mom liked to put her arm around his shoulders and his dad liked grabbing him and swinging him around and there were generally lots of hugs from the grandparents and the great-grandparents and uncles and aunts and even his cousins.

And then he got a bit older, and he was still fine, but he started holding himself back a bit, because by now he’d broken his leg and gotten used to being different and to being left standing back when the other kids rushed in (and anyway he couldn’t really run in for hugs anymore). Everyone was busy and distracted and unhappy because of the huge decimation at the Nirnaeth and there was just… less cozy hugging in general – but no one really noticed.

But then he got a bit older, and started half avoiding physical contact with people who weren’t family because sometimes they would get odd about his walking stick and anyway he never knew what to do with it (drop it and have to pick it up again? Change his hold on it awkwardly? Leave his grip the same and risk accidentally whacking them with it? Pause, lean it against something, and then hug them?), and because there was this silent unspoken pressure about being strong and capable because he had so much to make up for it, and without actually thinking about it he chalked up his need for human contact half to weakness and half to childishness, the same way he did with his need for support and reassurance. But it was still okay, because fifteen isn’t too old for your parents to hug you and they didn’t care anyway.

His mother died when he was nineteen and Handir didn’t really have the same way with gentle arm-touches that could reassure you all at once… but he did have a penchant for really concentrated hugs – the kind of full-body, not-brief ones that carry I love you or I’m proud of you or even Goodbye easily inside them, and if anything those came a little more often after Beldis died. So that was all right, for a while.

But there was still a lot of pressure (and a good bit of it was definitely internal) about getting things right and doing things right, especially as he took over as the Haladin’s main healer, and that meant not showing his own weakness or vulnerability to anyone except his father (even if they wouldn’t think less of him, there was a strong feeling that it wasn’t right to burden other people with his insecurities; he had a responsibility to them, not the other way around) and it meant a certain distance – what we’d call professionalism.

And then Handir died, and if a healer was almost always technically ‘on the job’, a chieftain always is, so it feels irresponsible to him not to hold himself aloof in certain ways – keep his stronger emotions, weaknesses, wishes to himself – and on top of that, after getting blindsided by Hardang’s attempted upset, he doesn’t feel like he can really trust people the same way – before, he let his guard down around family, but Hardang was family.

So he stops inviting touch, and that means that most people stop touching him, without any of the people involved really being conscious of what’s going on. He gets the occasional pat on the shoulder or clap on the back from Hunthor, or sometimes a hug if Hunthor or Manthor is particularly drunk – and aside from that, he’s the one touching people, always, to fix them or calm them down or make his advice stick, and he doesn’t mind that but it’s not the same. It’s not the same at all.

He’s happy, before Turin gets there, and content with his life, but sometimes he’ll just feel incredibly lonely, and he never knows why. What he really, really wants is to have someone touch him but he doesn’t realize it. If he ever slips for a moment and fantasizes about Niniel, it’s not about kissing her – what he’d want most is to sit very close, so their legs and sides pressed together, while they did something perfectly ordinary. But thinking like that was unacceptable, because she had what she wanted and it wasn’t him, so he would always push the idea out of his mind before he could realize what it meant.

[theserpentsadvocate]

Headcanon Meme, Day Three: Hunthor

Today is a character who inspires you to be a better person.

This is… like it’s always super hard, because the only times I remember invoking a fictional character, like “What would X do?”, in a non-thought-exercise context, is during physical ordeals. (Read: gym class.) Like, the time we had to run laps around the arena for an hour, or the double-block torture they called “the stair run”. “The beep test” was even worse. (I don’t want you to think  my gym teachers were sadists; the arena run was once a year in middle school and ‘fitness’ (torture) was once a week for the first three years of high school and often government mandated. Ordinary classes were fine. We also were apparently the only high school ever which made dodgeball enjoyable, since I never see anyone begging the teacher to let them play dodgeball in fiction.) I’d be like “Holly Short had to do ten times this in LEP training!” to convince myself to keep running. But while characters might have a profound effect on my life, they don’t usually have direct effects on my choices. Um, but. If I had to pick… I guess… Hunthor? I also considered Merry and Boromir, but I’m doing Boromir for a later one and I can’t think of any headcanons for Merry.

So. Hunthor has a wife (which is canon). Her name is Andis. There we go, requirement fulfilled. :) But anyway, my headcanon for today is that they were together pretty much since they were like, fifteen; they never really dated anyone else, they were disgustingly loyal and devoted to each other, the only thing which kept them from being stereotypical high school sweethearts was the lack of high school in Brethil… Everyone always knew Hunthor and Andis were going to get married, and they did. But before that they were that disgustingly sweet couple – the one that got embarrassed if they got caught making out in public but that held hands like 24/7 and said “I love you” when one of them left to go to the bathroom and were always kissing each other just briefly and calling each other honey and everyone wanted to gag but they couldn’t because it was kind of weirdly adorable the way Hunthor and Andis didn’t realize how disgusting they were. They evened out a bit when they got married and stopped making goo-goo eyes at each other in public and everyone felt weirdly let down.