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Today I read about the European eel (Anguilla anguilla):

Rachel Carson wrote in 1941 of an eel that grows different come autumn - its own autumn alongside the changing leaves - and an unknowable longing draws it out to an ocean "deliberate and inexorable as time itself."

Patrik Svensson wrote in 2019, What kind of voice lets it know it's time to leave?

[The Brantevik Eel] overcame every obstacle, survived everyone around it... Yet even so, it never got to go home to the Sargasso Sea. Circumstances trapped it in a life of endless waiting.

This, too, is an elf.

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chinese craftsmanship 螺钿luodian/mother-of-pearl inlay

chinese mamianqun fashion inspired by 螺钿luodian

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Éowyn 🍂

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Curufin, Caranthir and Cleeg🕺

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I am asking you to endure it.

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honestly, Luthien and her descendants don't own the Silmaril because she fought for it or because of weregild or whatever. the weregild situation in the Luthien drama is the weapons of Curufin that Beren takes from him; that's the payment, the weregild, the gold you pay for a wrongdoing. it's Angrist and Curufin's other weapons. not the Silmaril. you need to understand that Tolkien says super explicitly that the Silmaril ownership system is morality (and therefore religiously) based. he declares super clearly, black on white, that the sons of Feanor had right to the Silmarils before that right is forfeited because of their deeds, that presumably meaning Alqualonde's theft of ships and ensuing fight already. that right is forfeited, not as payment, but inherently, metaphysically, which Tolkien also reinforces by having the Valar, authority of Eru in the embodied world, bless them so that only clean hands can touch them. but mind you, what clean and moral hands means is completely arbitrary. the dwarves don't burn for killing Thingol, Beren doesn't burn for killing the dwarves. am I meant to read, say, the dwarves' overreaction to an insult as justified killing, then? as moral? it's okay if they kill someone because he's not giving them what is theirs? it's not possible to construe this narrative unless we understand that its fate is simply not a force of balanced moral judgement, but a force with a specific aim, and it's not possible to make of the story an even field because of it. fate is such that Beren can cross through the girdle; Melian cannot keep him out. in short, the Silmaril's ownership is not a consistent external logic, it's an internal morality that hinges on religious exceptionalism and fatal, near-authorial say-so. remember that Glorfindel is reembodied early explicitly because he aided the divine plan in saving little Earendil: religious favoritism and authorial say-so are a thing (they're the same thing. this is a story, nothing exists that the author doesn't decide. that the in-story divine plan corresponds with the story the author wants to tell and therefore pushes forward with the deus ex machina, that makes it ultimately nothing but Tolkien's say-so). remember also, however, that the final fate Tolkien envisions for the Silmarils is the liberation of their light to remake the world. the imbuing of their beauty for everyone to share. and whatever my opinions on that, it's miles better and a much more apt fate than whatever hoax a rigged religion-based sort of moral ownership represents.

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(lost tol sirion again and spent half an hour looking for it, convincing myself that it had somehow disappeared from the map while i was gone)

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The Maglor that lives in my mind most - apart from the Magpie - is probably Phi’s. The crown fit, but the cloak didn’t. 

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i personally think maglor didn’t commit enough war crimes. he needs to commit twice the number of war crimes so he can release his next album. i’ve been waiting for too many ages for even his next single. let me make him worse

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serious silm comics only

original

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Just let all the misery and injustice burn! For even if we suffer to the end of the world, we will never yield to the Mighty One.

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fave war criminal: maglor

my secret santa gift for @catsgambit <3 hope you had wonderful holidays and wishing u all the best for the new year! @officialtolkiensecretsanta .

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Fëanorian ~ 

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Fëanor tells all of his kids how much they look like Miriel.

They do not.

Maybe there's a touch of her in Maedhros's calm grey eyes -- but Miriel's, all say, had been sparkling as the leaves of Telperion, her gaze constantly flitting from one thing to the next, as though in search for someone who was not there. No, Maedhros has his mother's level gaze, her manner of holding eye contact a moment too long.

Maybe there's something of her in the delicately carved features of Maglor's face -- he resembles her in the way all beautiful people resemble each other, in a certain sharpness and cohesiveness of features. There might be something of her curls in his loose waves. but no single feature can be said to have come from her -- not his lips nor his nose, nor even his long, arrow-straight eyelashes.

Celegorm finally gives Fëanor something. His hair is silver, only a shade darker than his grandmother's had been. When he is young the softness in his features almost passes for likeness; but he grows broad-shouldered and heavyset, where his grandmother had been petite and light; his hands are quick but huge, his fingers thick. If he resembles anyone, he resembles Mahtan. His brothers tease him about growing a beard. Fëanor quietly mourns that might have been.

Caranthir looks like his mother. That is inarguable; all who see him comment on it. It is the dark brown hair, a trace of red visible yet under bright treelight, the square face, the rounded nose. Fëanor loves sees Nerdanel in him and loves her. But his eyebrows, he says, his eyebrows are just as Miriel's had been -- if you ignore the shape of the arch and the particular set over the eyes.

Curufin looks just like his father. Proud, tall Fëanor-- Fëanor who looks so much like Finwë. When he grows older he will have Miriel's height, and nothing else. Not her chin, not her jaw -- not her eyes or her nose or her lips. He joins Fëanor in the workshop. He has no patience for fabric craft.

Fëanor holds his twins in his arms, looking over their sleeping faces with horrible desperation. He sees her in their curls, he thinks, in the constellations of freckles over their noses. But no-- no. Those are Nerdanel's freckles. His father's curls, just as obvious in the descendants of Indis as in his own family. Even here, she has left him.

There are stories of those who had died in the old world, before any of the elves had come to Aman, born again. They come back to their families in spirit, people say, as babes newborn upon this fair land, but their parents know them and rejoice.

The house is full of children's laughter. Nerdanel, more precious to him than any other, is tired. He cannot have more children only to sate his grief, only to look for a silver-headed, quick-eyed girl who shall not come.

Telufinwë, he names his youngest, and thinks of him as his last abandonment.