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🤏elrond 🌻 glorfindel + brush test

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Incredibly Long Feanor Headcanon (Part 1)

This was intended as a comment reply. The tale, as the Professor would say, grew in the telling.

The decision of the Valar to drag all of the Elves to Valinor was a monumentally stupid one. Eru intended the Valar to make Middle-earth safe enough for Elven civilizations to arise there. Instead, the Valar basically abandon those Elves who stay in Middle-earth and focus all of their energies on making paradise exceptionally shiny for those Elves who followed them.

That’s fine for the Teleri, who mostly don’t care about the Valar and are perfectly happy singing by the seashore; it’s fine for the Vanyar, who really will be happy worshipping the Valar. But it sucks for the Noldor. They’re the craftsmen of the Elves, the engineers, the scientists. The “Noontide of Valinor” is their Renaissance. 

And paradise is a lousy place to be a scientist. One of the essential driving forces behind human creativity is the desire to improve the world. (There are other, less noble ones, but I really do believe that most of the “Noldor” among us are motivated by a genuine desire to understand the world better for the sake of improving it.) 

So you have Feanor, among others, inventing in a world where their inventions will not really matter. Creating works of spectacular beauty - but even their greatest works are stripped of all significance. Feanor will never be able to do what every doctor in our world has the chance to do every day. His brilliance, his genius, his inventions will never save a single life. (I probably got this from Dawn Felagund’s fantastic Another Man’s Cage, which is a must-read if you’re interested in the House of Feanor).

That would be sufficiently frustrating for anyone in paradise. But it’s especially frustrating for someone for whom paradise isn’t exactly paradise. Feanor is the product of the only broken family in all of Aman. He lives with the knowledge that his mother will never be permitted by the Valar to return to life (and yes, he resents them for this.) His father told him when he remarried that he remarried because he wanted more children; young!Feanor took this to mean that he was insufficient, that his mother is condemned to Mandos’ Halls for all eternity because he was not a good enough son for Finwe. His half-brothers are loved more in Tirion, because he spends all his time exploring the countryside, creating stuff, and being a father of seven (none of which leaves much time for the duties which would traditionally fall to the King’s heir, and all of which Fingolfin takes up in Feanor’s stead.) So Feanor’s relationship with his family is intensely strained, by merely existing he killed his mother… Valinor isn’t paradise for him. At all.

And still he manages to achieve extraordinary things there, chief among them the Silmarils. I believe that he was also a pretty good father: the portrayals of him as abusive don’t explain why his sons were all so intensely loyal to him. I see him as someone who loved people intensely, passionately, and who managed for their sake to bridge the differences he had with his half-brothers and to suppress his feeling of being trapped in Valinor. 

Until Melkor gets released and spends 90 years more or less singlemindedly focused on destroying Feanor. Melkor is able to play on the Valar’s deceits (not telling the Elves anything at all about men was pretty stupid) to direct Feanor’s strengths (his desire to make a difference in the world, his intense love for his father, his independence of thought, his creativity) against him. 

So there’s the most evil being in the universe actively manipulating the Noldor with the sole aim of screwing up Feanor’s life. And still it takes 90 Valian years (900 of our years) for him to succeed. That’s when the famous sword incident takes place.

Now, drawing swords on one’s half-brother is not a Good thing to do, but under the circumstances it’s actually rather understandable. Let’s keep the context in mind.  Tolkien’s Valinor seems to have rested on a lot of the traditions and social context of medieval times: honor and loyalty are everything. And Fingolfin openly, before the full court of Tirion, tells Finwe that two loyal sons remain to him. He’s basically calling out his brother as a traitor in front of all of the Noldor. Is drawing a sword an overreaction? Is it stupid? Yeah. But it’s not a minor insult! In most royal courts of the time you could challenge people to duels to the death over less. 

Now, the actions of the Valar from here on forward are inexcusably stupid. Firstly, they exercise their royal authority to override Finwe and kick Feanor out of the kingdom. I don’t think Finwe follows his son north just out of love; I think it’s also a bit of a stand on principle against this heavy-handed bit of idiocy. First of all, it makes it near-impossible that Feanor and Fingolfin will reconcile. Secondly, it makes it clear that kingships in Valinor are more-or-less a joke and that Manwe will just do whatever he wants whenever something catches his attention. Thirdly, it convinces Feanor of what he already half-believed: that the Noldor in Valinor are just adorable little pets for the Valar.

My country fought a Revolutionary War over a rather smaller bit of interference by a King who we no longer felt represented us. Freedom from tyranny is a powerful motivator. And I think any political theorist in Valinor at the time could rather easily make the case that the rule of the Valar is unjustified. There’s sure no concept of consent-of-the-governed, or of rule as a social contract. Do I think the Noldor were starting to think in these terms? Yeah, actually, I do. I mentioned earlier that I think of the Noontide of Valinor as the Renaissance of the Elves. Thy were certainly smart enough to start asking themselves the questions that human philosophers have been considering since ancient Greece (and probably earlier). When Feanor more-or-less calls Manwe out on this, asking by what authority he’s appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner, Manwe says, basically, “Well, if that’s your problem you’re out of luck. Because I rule the whole world, not just Valinor; if you’ve got issues with my rule that’s tough.” Worst. Possible. Response. Patrick Henry would be screaming “Give me liberty or give me death!” by now. 

Then, Manwe decides to make a point of his absolute power by ORDERING FEANOR TO ATTEND A FESTIVAL. Seriously? And while Feanor is there, of course, Melkor murders his father, takes all of Feanor’s personal wealth, destroys his home, terrorizes the people of Formenos, and takes with him the SIlmarils, the greatest technical achievement of the Noldor. 

And the Valar, previously so eager to exert their authority over all of Arda, do what? They sit there. Silently. The Vanyar hold vigil with them. Look closely at your SIlmarillion timelines; this isn’t a couple days of contemplation. At least a month or two (and quite possibly as much as six) passes between Finwe’s murder and the Oathtaking, and in all of that time not one Vala stirs his/her butt from Taniquetil. That’s just about the worst abdication of responsibility conceivable. Imagine if someone murdered the president and put out the sun and none of our leaders saw fit to comment for two months.  

So, Feanor is, at this point, half-mad with grief. His father, who he canonically loves more than the Silmarils, has been brutally murdered while he is at a state-enforced party; the people of Formenos are terrified, having fled their shattered hometown; everything he worked to achieve has been destroyed. So what does he do? Unites his people, persuades them to go to war, avenge their King’s murder, and build a new civilization. 

Was he wrong to do this? I don’t think so. Until Manwe’s herald arrives (several days or weeks after the Oathtaking), he has no reason to believe that defeating Melkor is impossible. Overreacting after a terrorist attack is a fairly common problem, but declaring war on the terrorist in question isn’t even really an overreaction. The Oath shows a remarkable naiveté (doesn’t everyone know that swearing open-ended and unbreakable oaths is a terrible idea?), but let’s think about why he’s so naive.

Our culture has a millennia-old literary tradition of heroes being brought down by pride, poorly-worded oaths, prophecies that are fulfilled by the effort to avoid them, and rulers overreaching and losing everything. Theirs did not. Because there had never been a war in the history of the world before. To us, Feanor’s mistakes are blindingly obvious, even archtypal: he is King Lear in his determination to see traitors among the people who love him, Achilles in his obsession with his own pride over unity for his people, Oedipus in his ill-considered oath taking and the way that, trying to avert a prophecy, he fulfills it. He is Icarus who trusted too much to his own craftsmenship, and risked too much for his own curiosity; he is Alexander the Great whose kingdom crumbled on his death; he is Napoleon charging towards Russia. He summons all of those examples to our mind. But he would have heard of none of them. Should he have figured out, through pure reason, what it took humanity a couple painful millennia to internalize? That seems like expecting a bit much, even of the greatest of the Noldor.

He thought he could win. 

He was wrong.

But he wasn’t evil. 

(Continued).

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I can't stop thinking how similar the tsugikuni brothers (kokushibo and yoriichi) are to feanor and fingolfin..

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While I agree that media representation of SA is important and should be treated as a serious matter, people have to understand that the infamous Talia/Bruce plotline was literally three panels that went:

Talia: HAHAHA BATMAN I a ARAB woman knew that you couldn't love me as your other white lady lovers club, so I ASIAN woman put a nodescribeddrugpotion in your drink (even if we were already getting it on)to make the 110th perfect human weapon in DC HHAHAH because I'm EVIL and ASIAN

Bruce:😱😐

And then they never brought it up again. At best it was a excuse to make Bruce a shitty father towards Damian. It was badly written and trust me the writer just wanted it for shock value. Probably didn't even stop to think that it was in fact non con. If you want to talk and defend survivor so much why don't you start with Tara Markov, Sandra Woo-San ,Jade Nguyen and Starfire?

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funniest tumblr experience is waking up to 20+ notifications all from ONE person who has obviously just found my account and they then proceed to like and reblog my last dozen or so posts which is then followed by a mysterious anonymous ask. brother who are you trying to fool

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Am I the only one who finds this extremely funny

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Silver of fist

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Happy birthday to me, 21 with huge eye bags </3

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The Tale of Beren and Lúthien

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I completely understand the temptation to write Fëanor off as a bad father, but personally I always imagine him as being an amazing one for two reasons.

First is because of his relationship with his own father. Finwë was his only parent. The Silm, which is not shy about describing his faults, explicitly states that Fëanor loved his father more than anything else. You can’t convince me that he wouldn’t want the same thing with his sons.

Secondly, it just makes it so much more tragic. A good amount of the inherent tragedy of the Silm comes from watching Fëanor lead his sons to death and ruin and the doom of the Oath. If He had always been a bad father, then it doesn’t hit half as hard.

So let Fëanor be a good father. Let him be the kind of father who used to sit by Maedhros’s crib all night, utterly in awe of his firstborn. The kind of father who made Maglor’s first harp, and then listened to every single one of the songs he learned, without fail. Who taught Celegorm and Caranthir how to ride, and raced them all across Valinor. Who could always, always tell Amrod and Amras apart, and treated them like individuals rather than halves of a whole. Let Fëanor be a good father, and then cry even harder when it all falls apart.

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Stfu Tumblr im not updating this app

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I don’t agree with this fanon interpretation and won’t tag the meme since the author didn’t ask for opinions. But would Celebrimbor really avoid his Noldorin pride, heritage, and Fëanorian blood? Was he really ashamed of it? Nope. He is so unapologetically himself that he literally carved a giant Fëanorian star on the Doors of Durin.

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Idril meeting Tuor for the first time xD

Idril is having a full shoujo manga experience, while Tuor is trying to navigate a political drama loll

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Douma’s fat boobs