#WE GET IT TOLKIEN MADE UP NAMES. WE GET IT

[erendur]

The Doriath royal family, a cursed family and its jewellery

I have been thinking for a while about the relationship between the Doriath royal family and their particular brand of tragedy, that is to be unable to let go of that Silmaril, and of how this fits into the pattern of the grand tradition of the Cursed Jewellery in Germanic/Nordic myths (most notably in the myth of Sigurd/Siegfried ; a piece of jewellery or treasure to which a curse is attached, and that brings destruction to its owners, who are unwilling/unable to get rid of it), from which Tolkien clearly took inspiration, even if of course he did his own thing with it.This started small, and then I tried to make it more coherent, and then this.

So the main idea, as you can imagine, is that the Silmaril is cursed (cf for instance Tolkien's letter to his editor which should be in the introduction to most editions of the Silm, that says just that), and that Thingol and co's problem is that they keep hanging on to it. And no, I am not going to define super precisely what I mean by "curse" (neither did Jirt !), and proceed with vibes instead (or enter into a discussion of whether a holy object can also bear a curse ; Tolkien used the word "curse" and I'm running with it ; and also unsurprisingly Tolkien seemed to have changed his mind about that as well so...).

(In terms of how the Doriath family's story fits the general pattern/tropes of tragedy, I'll refer to this post, that puts it more succinctly than I would (we know from the beginning that they are doomed (not Mandos doomed, just regular doomed) ; they have multiple occasions to be not doomed ; we know they won't take them), and run with it.

So here goes : the Doriath royal family, their curse(s), their jewellery: I'm going to proceed generation by generation, because I feel it is thematically important there, starting of course with :

1. Thingol

Thingol is the one with whom the whole Silmaril-shenanigans begins. We all know about how he asks Beren for that Silmaril, and I have made a longer post about it, but if I sum it up here :

Fate brings Beren to Doriath and allows him to enter the Girdle ; Beren is brought in front of Thingol after having sworn not to kill him ; Beren is at first unable to speak (too impressed), and Lúthien answers Thingol's questions for him, but Thingol then insists he speaks for himself, and then" it seemed to him (Beren) that words were put into his mouth" (ominous) ; those words are a comparison between Lúthien and jewels, and an expression of his desire for Lúthien and his determination to possess her (ew, but beside the point) ; Melian at that point tells Thingol to be careful about what he is going to answer, because he won't be able to kill Beren, and their fates are tied together ; Thingol does not listen to her advice, but answers Beren, using the same vocabulary and comparisons Beren himself has used (with the words that he felt "had been put in his mouth"), expressing his desire for a Silmaril, and asking Beren to get him one, hoping to get him killed, and that's how, the text tells us, "he (Thingol) wrought the doom of Doriath, and was ensnared within the curse of Mandos". The end of that scene is even more ominous : "A brooding silence fell upon the woods, and the shadows lengthened in the kingdom of Thingol."

The wording of that demand "I too desire a treasure that is withheld", and the fact that Thingol picks it from Beren, is significant : Finrod tells Beren soon after that "It is plain that Thingol desire your death ; but it seems that this doom goes beyond his purpose, and that the Oath of Fëanor is again at work. For the Silmarils are cursed with an oath of hatred, and he that even names them in desire moves a great power from slumber (...)."

So basically, if we go back to our ingredients of tragedy and curse, we already have a lot there : fate bringing Beren to Doriath ; fate putting words in Beren's mouth, that Thingol unwisely echoes (in spite of advice to the contrary) ; Thingol expressing a desire for a Silmaril, and also wanting to go around his oath not to kill Beren by having him killed indirectly (bad) ; Thingol asking for a cursed jewel, and the expression of that desire "moving a great power from slumber". Thingol thereby bringing upon himself "the curse of Mandos", and putting into motion "the doom of Doriath". The end of that story is already written (he, and his kingdom, are doomed). But Thingol could still stop it, at that point, and at several moments after ; but he doesn't, and we know he won't.

The next time we see Thingol, he is given an opportunity to change his stance Silmaril-wise, and maybe, his fate. Beren and Lúthien return. He could let it go, and let them marry. He does not, but "he looked in wonder upon Beren, whom he had thought dead ; but he loved him not (...)". Not only does seeing Beren alive, when he had sent him to his death, does not change his mind, but he reiterates his request for the Silmaril (the very cursed piece of jewellery, at that point). He is sticking to his fate, and his doom.

Another opportunity to change the course of things comes after Carcharoth is slain : Beren is slain, but, dying, gives Thingol the Silmaril that has been removed from the beast's stomach. I'm thinking with my Greek mythology brain on here, and not my Nordic mythology one, but if a cursed item of jewellery that originally eluded you makes it way to you via the stomach of an animal, it is very, very bad news. If it's given to you by your son-in-law who is dying because of the hellish beast AND the cursed jewel, it's even worse news. At that point, if you care at all about Thingol, you should be yelling at him to throw the cursed thing into the nearest river.

But there we reach the end of the story of B&L and it moves on to Beren and Lúthien's happy ending, leaving Thingol and his choice of what to do with the jewellery pending.

After that we meet Thingol and the Silmaril is in the next chapter, where it is mentioned in the context of Maedhros asking for it. And things seem to have happened between Thingol and the Silmaril in the meantime !

Melian tells Thingol to give the Silmaril back to Maedhros, another opportunity to get rid of it, but of course, for tragic reasons, he does not.

We are told : "Thingol was filled with anger, thinking of the anguish of Lúthien and the blood of Beren whereby the jewel had been won, despite the malice of Celegorm and Curufin. And every day that he looked upon the Silmaril the more he desired to keep it for ever ; for such was its power".

I find two things very interesting in there : the first one that Thingol seems to completely forget the role he played in the "anguish of Lúthien" and the "blood of Beren" being spilled, or, indeed, why Lúthien was in a position to be subjected to the malice of C&C in the first place (she was alone in the woods without protection because she was escaping from Thingol - as villainous as C&C are in B&L, she could have had even worse encounters (C&C were in the woods themselves because they were hunting down wolves sent by Morgoth, for instance), and they seem like an easy, if justified target for his anger).

Now, while his motivations and his angry reaction to Maedhros' "haughty" demand, as well as his anger at C&C and his downplaying of the antagonistic role he had in the B&L business make perfect psychological sense, I'm also interested in the fact that his angry response is also mentioned in the same breath as his growing, greedy, desire for the Silmaril. That string of arguments for not returning the Silmaril sounds very motivated by the nefarious influence the Silmaril is having on him, and I think we are meant to read it that way. Comparisons with the One Ring come to mind. Isidulr also comes up with some bullshit excuses to keep it. And like Isildur, Thingol is advised not to keep his cursed jewellery by someone wiser (Melian).

As a result of his decision, the union of Maedhros is weakened, and C&C swear destruction on Thingol and his people. This is not meant to be read as a good decision. A motivated one, but not a good one.

We go back again, finally, to Thingol in the aftermath of the Túrin situation. Thingol is even more under the sway of the Silmaril as before : "For as the years passed Thingol's thought turned unceasingly to the jewel of Fëanor, and became bound to it, and he liked not to let it rest even behind doors of his inmost treasury ; and he was minded now to bear it with him always, waking and sleeping". I think here that the reference to Fëanor is not innocent (on top of the text always referring to the Silmaril as Fëanor's when not presenting the point of view of members of the Doriath family). Like Fëanor did, Thingol now loves the Silmaril with a greedy love.

He decides to have the Silmaril set in the Nauglamír. Now, what could possibly go wrong, by having the jewel-cursed-with-an-oath-of-hatred-and-stolen-from-the-Devil's-crown-by-the-guy-you-sent-on-a-quest-in-order-to-get-him-killed-and-subsequently-retrieved-from-the-stomach-of-a-hellish-beast-and-handed-out-to-you-with-his-dying-breath-by-same-aforementioned-guy-that-you-wanted-dead set into the necklace-that-was-the-most-prized-possession-of-your-kinsman-whose-death-you-provoked-by-asking-for-the-cursed-jewel-and-that-has-been-recently-retrieved-from-a-dragon's-hoard-from-the-ruins-of-aforementioned's-kinsman-kingdom-(ruin in part provoked by you)-by-a-very-cursed-guy-after-he-killed-a-dwarf-for-it ? At this point if curses and bad vibes were radioactive, the kingdom of Doriath would just melt.

Note that Húrin, while angry (he misunderstood the nature of the relationship between Túrin and Thingol), still spells it out for him : "For this is the Nauglamír, whose name is known to many among Elves and Men ; and I bring it to thee out of the darkness of Nargothrond, where Finrod thy kinsman left it behind him when he set forth with Beren son of Barahir to fulfil the errand of Thingol of Doriath".

But at that point of course Thingol is wayyy too far in. He proceeds with his plan, is killed by dwarves, in a scene in which Thingol's greed is matched by the Dwarves', and his "pride" and "wrath" (two very defining characteristics of Thingol) are matched by theirs as well. Angry, prideful, greedy Thingol is killed by angry, greedy, prideful dwarves (they want the necklace, and lash out at Thingol out of greed and anger when he hurts their pride). He really shouldn't have insisted on Beren talking.

That is also the end of his kingdom. According to the notes in The War of the Jewels, Tolkien apparently changed his mind several times about the chapter "The fall of Doriath", and the final version in the Silm took quite a lot of editing/decisions on Christopher Tolkien's part. What is clear though from the different versions and chronologies we have there is that, for Tolkien, this it it : Thingol's death means the fall of Doriath. Dior's tenure as king is an attempt at restoration, minus the Girdle but with a Silmaril instead (what could possibly go wrong ???) Cf also Celeborn's beef with dwarves.

2. Beren and Lúthien

They are the heroes of B&L of course, so get off more lightly than Thingol, but it does take two divine interventions to get there, which is never a good sign ;

Beren, hero that he is, reads also very much like an instrument of doom. Again, his presence in Doriath is due to fate, he is instrumental in forging Thingol's fate (see above), and he also brings death and destruction to Finrod and Nargothrond.

He is also instrumental in bringing forth his and Lúthien untimely demise, courtesy of the Silmaril, and in passing down the cursed jewel to his descendants. On top of the fact that Beren knows for sure of the Oath of Fëanor (Finrod told him about it), remember this during the fight against the dwarves after Thingol's death :

"In that battle by Sarn Athrad Beren fought his last fight, and himself slew the Lord of Nogrod, and wrested from him the Necklace of the Dwarves ; but he dying laid his curse upon all the treasure. Then Beren gazed in wonder on the selfsame jewel of Fëanor that he had cut from Morgoth's iron crown, now shining set amid gold and gems by the cunning of the Dwarves ; and he washed it clean of blood in the waters of the river." The rest of the treasure of Menegroth recovered from the Dwarves is thrown in the river because of the curse, "but Beren took the Nauglamír and returned to Tol Galen".

The Silmaril gets an extra curse out of the episode, and do I need to spell out how bad an idea it seems to be keeping and wearing a piece of jewellery many times cursed that you have "wrested" from an enemy you have slain and "washed" of its blood ? The vibes are not good. Note also the "but" : that necklace should have gone into the river with the rest.

So, yeah. Beren is given PLENTY of opportunities to let go of the Silmaril : during the quest, after escaping from Sauron, when Lúthien gives him the choice to fulfil his oath to Thingol, or go away, he chooses to go with oath ; later on, when he gives the Silmaril to Thingol ; after fighting the dwarves. He does not. Curse. Tragedy.

At some point Tolkien had considered having Melian go to Tol Galen and get mad at Lúthien for wearing the Silmaril, telling her it has been "unhallowed" by having been in contact with Morgoth. It's not in the final version, but you can't tell me the vibes are good anyway.

Sure enough, about Beren and Lúthien's death, we are told that "The wise have said that the Silmaril hastened their end."

3. Dior

Dior takes part in the fight against the dwarves, and then goes on to try and restore Doriath. The odds are not exactly on his side : there is no more Girdle, a lot of Elves have been killed in the fight against the dwarves, the treasure of Thingol is gone, and to top it off Doriath is completely isolated and with almost no allies.

Out of its traditional allies : Nargothrond is no more (courtesy of the Silmaril quest) ; the dwarves have become enemies (courtesy of the Silmaril) ; Cirdan is not in any position to help (courtesy of Morgoth courtesy of the failure of the alliance of Maedhros courtesy of the Silmaril quest).

Let's add to the mix that Doriath is no longer protected by the Noldorin kingdoms to the North and East, destroyed in the Nirnaeth (in part as a result of the Silmaril quest), and that Morgoth is in a position of unprecedented power.

So at this point, the question is : shall it be death by dwarves (in revenge), or by Morgoth ?

It turns out to be death by Fëanorians, thanks to the Silmaril ! Dior, like his father before, unwisely refuses to return it, C&C remember that they had vowed destruction on the people of Doriath, plus, you know, the regular Oath.

Dior and his people seem to be under the same fascination, Silmaril-wise, as Thingol had (minus greed, I would say). They seem to think that its influence will be positive, instead of perceiving it to be very at the root of so many of their problems ! They look very much like moth attracted to light, leaving them seemingly completely unaware of danger.

But like, a blessing, really ? Fëanorians aside, it's still very much MORGOTH'S Silmaril (as in, he will want it back), and Dior should know first hand what manners of curse and bad vibes are attached to it, even if he does not perceive the Fëanorians as a threat prior to the attack.

He does not let go of it, because, like his father and grandfather, he seems unable to. Curse, tragedy, you get the gist.

4. Elwing

Once we reach Elwing, she is the 4th generation of the family "cursed" with the Silmaril, and it seems to me that thematically her thing is that she keeps keeps making the same doomed choices her family and herself have made :

like Thingol, she cannot let go of the Silmaril because of what it represents (grief, family heritage : it is "the jewel which Beren had worn and Lúthien had worn, and for which Dior the fair was slain") ;

like her father, she puts the Silmaril over making alliances (the Fëanorians offer "friendship", along with presenting demands) and she and her people seem blinded by the Silmaril's "blessing", overlooking the danger it represents (on top of the Fëanorians, Morgoth is still in the picture...I get the dwarves are too far away.)

her own doom seems to be to choose to save the Silmaril, over saving her own family. Twice she is in a situation where her family is under attack - by the same attackers-, and twice she flees to save the Silmaril, leaving twin boys behind (and I'm talking thematically here, not entering into details about how she could have smuggled her brothers out of Nargothrond, the respective size of Silmaril vs boys or her youth : I think that the fact it happens twice means something)

The way I see it, Elwing is also the one by which the "family curse" is broken : by throwing herself into the sea, she saves the Silmaril but also her own children from having to care for it. The Silmaril is gone, Elrond and Elros' story won't centre around caring and dying for it. She gets a kind of happy ending out of it thanks to divine intervention.

To go back once again to my point about tragedy, all of these are choices. She could let go of the Silmaril, at any point. She could choose the twin boys over the Silmaril. She doesn't.

5. Parallels between the Fëanorians and the Doriath royal family

I think that they are in a way meant to be mirroring one another : while the Fëanorians' actions are defined by their doomed, increasingly desperate attempts at regaining the Silmarils that always escapes them, the Doriath royal family is defined by their equally dogged determination in not letting go of the Silmaril. It ends in tragedy, for both. It ends in utter destruction for the Fëanorians, and in not completely but almost utter destruction for the Doriath royal family (they have the Valar, divine intervention and only murdering non-Elves on their side).

I also find it interesting that in the case of the Fëanorians, we see the same people making the same ill-fated choices over and over again, ending, again, in their utter destruction. In the case of the Doriath royal family, however, the pattern is generational. It's generation after generation of the same family that keep making the same choices, and then die.

I'd end up with an open question, which is, what would the Doriath royal family have done, if "their" Silmaril had been taken away from them ? Imagine for instance that, instead of Beren and Dior getting to the Dwarves first, Celegorm and Curufin did (like Tolkien at some point imagined), and retrieved the Silmaril (like Tolkien did not imagine) ?

Would they have let it go ? Or, given that we know how determined they are to keep it, and also perfectly capable of violence of their own, would they have launched an attack of their own against the Fëanorians to get it back ? Or anyone else who would have gotten their hands on it, for that matter ?

[beardedmrbean]

[Huey Zoomer Anon]

“If the department of education is destroy, kids won’t read!”-BITCH THE RUNNING JOKE IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IS THAT AMERICANS ARE SO STUPID BECAUSE HOW SHIT OUR LITERACY RATES AND CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS ARE THE WORST IN THE FIRST WORLD!

Tumblr have a lot of people from different parts of the world here…but you seen how dense they are to basically storytelling!

I mean since l was 13 and got into stories discourse I go “How the fuck you got THAT interpretation?”

Than it got much worse…seriously these cannot handle complex shit

Also the department of education doesn’t mean it a free for all. And while it was bad with unhinged millennials on social media in the 2010’s

My generation comprehension skills makes me go “KILL THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TRUMP, AVENGE THOSE WHO WAS MADE STUPID BY IT! SAVE THE GEN ALPHA!”

It not going to be a mad max free for all y’all…but would love not to have 54% of the population unable to read past, 5th or 6th grade? Seriously how are we so stupid?

“If the department of education is destroy, kids won’t read!”-BITCH THE RUNNING JOKE IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IS THAT AMERICANS ARE SO STUPID BECAUSE HOW SHIT OUR LITERACY RATES AND CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS ARE THE WORST IN THE FIRST WORLD!

There's a whole lot of irony involved in saying so many Americans are stupid and thinking we should keep the DOE which has been around long enough for us to be able to chart the downward direction we've gone in education since it was put into place.

Sometimes you have to try something different, because what's going on now is obviously not working.

Tumblr have a lot of people from different parts of the world here…but you seen how dense they are to basically storytelling! I mean since l was 13 and got into stories discourse I go “How the fuck you got THAT interpretation?” Than it got much worse…seriously these cannot handle complex shit

Sad part is even when things are spelled out for people they still don't get it at times.

That and things like people saying that Tolkien's works aren't Christian despite the man saying that yes they're Christian, or the students arguing with Ray Bradbury about the interpretation of his own book and telling him, the author, that he was wrong.

The arrogance is astounding, you can read it how you like but you don't get to tell the author they're wrong about their own book.

My generation comprehension skills makes me go “KILL THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TRUMP, AVENGE THOSE WHO WAS MADE STUPID BY IT! SAVE THE GEN ALPHA!”

Nothing wrong with baseline standards being given, everyone that graduates HS should have knowledge of XYZ isn't bad, but different districts should be given more of a free reign to adapt their curriculum to the students they have.

It's a thing that people closer to the ground need to have a big say in.

DOE says, all 8th grade graduates should be able to name the 3 branches of the US government and give a rough description of what their role in running the country is.

Then they leave it up to the various state and local governments and school districts to come up with how to accomplish that.

It not going to be a mad max free for all y’all…but would love not to have 54% of the population unable to read past, 5th or 6th grade? Seriously how are we so stupid?

I would like that fixed for sure, number is way too high.

Never figured out what that whole thing means since I know it doesn't mean that people are illiterate, not like everyone should be reading Tolstoy or anything like that.

If you can make it through the new Percy Jackson book without trouble that should probably be mostly ok for anyone imho.

Voter information packet comes out and things in it make sense you should be good really.

Or maybe that's just me

[nexus-nebulae]

grgrggrr i love creating magical bestiaries

[vexwerewolf]

So I want to tell you a little story about writing In Golden Flame, because it made me feel better.

I have weekly writing groups for IGF with a few trusted individuals, and we were working on a fight wherein a streamer confronts you with a swarm of drone mechs remotely piloted by members of their stream's audience. Each one has a unique callsign that, ideally, should read like something you'd see in the userlist of a Twitch chat. So we had a list of names that looks like this:

SwordGuy69 StellarIndexer DeludedSquirrel NonCannon ShadowCat 3CH0 ProPipe ThunderSkink Aiden26 MrDisco

And I remembered this old Penny Arcade strip that was about banning player usernames that were weed jokes, which had the absolutely stellar weed pun "Bram Toker." I wanted one of those in the callsign list, so me and the writing team - particularly my old friend Greg, who's an inveterate stoner - set about trying to think up a suitable weed-related pun.

Greg quickly came up with a few, which we agreed were okay, but not of the calibre we required. Then, he came up with the phenomenal "TomBongadill," which I agreed was the sort of 10/10 content we needed but was sadly unusable because I felt it was too specific to the modern day (do they even have Tolkien in 5016u?) and also I didn't want to get sued by Tolkien's estate. We puzzled over the matter for a moment in silence. I wracked my brain for a suitable pun. I needed this.

Then, like a flash of divine light, its radiance almost blinding, it came to me, and I quite literally screamed it into the Discord chat.

UtokeanPillar

In that moment, I felt like Archimedes.

[astronicht]

Hi I hope this isn't presumptuous, but so, that post you made about Tolkien making the lads leave their weapons outside the hall and CS Lewis thinking the hall was gonna get burned down by a lady who also wanted to kill herself... what's the historical precedent for that? Is there a trope in medieval lit where people like... do that? I ask because uh. I am obsessed with Children of Hurin and there's a scene where that like, happens. And I'm obsessed with that scene, and would love to know if there's like, cultural/mythic context that would enrich my knowledge!

OH BOY, sorry I'm getting to this late, it's been uhhh a summer, but one, this is a very good question!! And two, yes there is absolutely precedent, particularly in early medieval literature, and high medieval literature set in the early medieval (circa 500-1100 AD) past. I'll let someone else debate how often people actually historically locked their enemies into a hall and burned them, but especially in Old Norse literature (and if Fellowship felt like it leaned a little more on Old English literature, Two Towers, where Eowyn appears, felt a little more Old Norse) this is common. Off the top of my head, you've got many Icelandic family feuds ending in burning the whole family in their hall, like Njal's Saga (Old Norse), Attila the Hun dramas (yeah he's a big guy in the burning halls circuit, but actually not in the way you might expect) like his cameos in Volsung Saga (Old Norse) and Nibelungelied (Middle High German), and my vague recollection of a few Irish and Welsh versions that no search engine is giving up for me right now.

This, predictably, got long and slightly off topic.

Disclaimer: As usual, I should say I come from an Old English-centric background, and Old English literature is actually notable among all its neighbors for not burning down too many halls. Second disclaimer, all links are not proper citations, they just go to wiki.

Hall-burning in literature is, to my understanding, part of the concerns of a few early medieval cultures in which revenge is not only expected but in many cases legally reinforced and codified, and one in which conflicts could spiral to engulf -- figuratively, or literally and in flames -- entire families. Many medieval Icelandic sagas are focused on this exact type of destruction of whole families or friendship/community units. Most relevant of these to Eowyn, Two Towers, and the vibes of Edoras (since alas I am only partway into RotK and can't speak to Children of Hurin yet!) is Volsung Saga, which is set on the Continent, not Iceland, and actually has to do with Attila the Hun. As mentioned before, an incredible amount of stuff turns out to have to do with Attila. We will come back to him!

So, on the particular post you're talking about, a few people iirc have replied pointing out that the hall in TT is clearly supposed to be based on a hall from Old English literature, namely the hall in Beowulf, which famously did not actually get burnt down. And that's all true! I was not posting with much nuance; I was mostly having a joke at the expense of CS Lewis. However, I was also referencing a very very common trope in Old Norse/early medieval stories, and I personally think JRR was as well (AND I think Beowulf was also very consciously referencing the exact same motif anyway) (no one has to agree with me, a tumblr blog, on any of these points).

The thing about the hall when our heroes approach is that the scariest damn thing in that hall is Eowyn. Certainly not every hall-burning story requires a woman with no other recourse to set the fire (in fact, the "warrior band approaches unknown hall which might have a grudge against them" is a trope that can get you killed in a pretty homosocial environment, as I guess Aragorn at least was aware, being a big reader). Still, the presence of a woman who is swiftly running out of options does fit what I'd consider one of the or perhaps The best known version of the early medieval burning hall trope: Gudrun, who shows up in at least a dozen different texts in both the Scandinavian and the German language traditions, including Volsung Saga, a text which itself often gets paraded around as the basis of lotr (which I'm sure it is, in that JRR appears to have simply and very fairly based lotr on every piece of early medieval vernacular literature I can think of).

In a portion of Gudrun's story (which of course changes a bit in each retelling), after her first marriage she is unhappily married to Atli, who is none other than our main man Attila the Hun. After Attila kills her brothers for reasons (in one version, her father), seeing no other way to take the necessary revenge and no other way out, she kills the two sons she had by him, serves them to Attila for dinner, has Attila killed, and then sets fire to the hall with everyone in it. After this, she attempts to drown herself.

The self-destruction of this act is a really important beat, and has only gotten more-so as a comparison to Eowyn the further I've read into RotK (currently, I'm at the houses of healing after merry and eowyn take on the witch king). It's a lot clearer in the book than the films, for me, that Eowyn going off to battle was not so a straightforward empowering and/or freeing move, despite allowing her some agency, but more the one path she saw as available to her with which to die with honor (which was pretty much exactly what Gudrun was facing as well). Like Gudrun, whose first husband was a great hero but has died, Eowyn's romantic choice is a hero who is presumed dead (sorry Aragorn they did Not believe in your ghost skills). In fact, in some versions Gudrun does put on armor and fight with her brothers before they're killed. She kills Attila with her own hand, with the help of another man who needs to avenge a blood feud against Attila.

So while Eowyn didn't get forced into marriage to Attila Wormtongue (with apologies to both historical Attila and that one historical skald also called Wormtongue who was reportedly hot) and burn the whole place down, she's still trapped, and like Gudrun chooses destruction alongside her household.

Reading her arc feels so much like watching Tolkien write a fix-it for Gudrun. What if she got this one little chance, and this one other little chance, and this one more -- tiny little shifts in the narrative that allow her to get out, and not through fire, and not through death.

Anyway, this got away from me. I hope it added some context to the Children of Hurin arson case! Thanks for the ask

[elswing]

i hate posting discourse it's pointless and doesn't do anything for me except prolong my annoyance but i'm Tired™ and feel like shouting into the void. apologies to my beautiful feanorian mutuals please look away i love u

i neeeeeeed everyone to stop claiming they like elwing if their characterisation of her is completely made-up biased bullshit that paints her as an immature and disdained ruler (?????) who couldn't balance her responsibilities with the husband she married too young (at 22. practically a child bride honestly) and the children she never wanted (where. where does it say this). she's clearly such a bad mother that she abandoned them at first opportunity (she knew the feanorians were more than capable of killing a pair of twin boys because they literally already did that. that's very much a thing that already happened. to her brothers) and it was her selfish nature that made her soooo eager to flee (she had no reason to think ulmo would save her it was literally a suicide attempt. she wanted to make sure the deaths of her people and presumed deaths of her sons weren't in vain by ensuring they never obtained the silmaril)

like i'm gonna touch your hand as i say this. it's okay if you hate her! just don't pretend that you weren't thriving in the 2016 era of silm fandom where everyone pushed all their male fave's negative traits onto any other woman in a 5 mile radius to grab Poor Little Meow Meow status for war criminal #1 #2 and #3 to then turn around and spout the exact same (factually untrue) sexist rhetoric concealed under seven layers of buzzwords just because it's the year of "unlikable and complicated female characters" like buddy who are we talking about here. have you perhaps considered making an oc?

and i'm NOT saying i want the whole fandom to mimic my exact opinions and thoughts about elwing i realise that one of the best parts of the silm is how divisive it is and how you have so much wiggle room to come to your own interpretations because of how VAGUE the source material is but i'm genuinely convinced everyone's just parroting shit they saw in ao3 fanfics where maglor is secretly lindir and the premise is elrond sneaking him into valinor and elwing yells at him for slaughtering her people. TWICE. and this is framed as a category 5 Woman Moment so elrond disowns her and calls maglor his real dad

(eärendil misses this entire ordeal because he went on a voyage to save the world that one time and no one's let him live it down since because the whole fandom as a collective decided he did this because he's a terrible dad and not because the whole continent was at war and about to be wiped out and maybe he came to the unfortunate but reasonable conclusion that leaving is the best thing he could do for his family if it meant there was a chance his sons could grow up safe in a world that wasn't ruled by Fucking Satan so now his whole Beloved Sacrificial Lion: The Thin Line Between Doomed and Prophesized Hero™ shtick is tossed out in favour of.... *checks notes* Guy Who Forgot To Pay Child Support? oh and they're a lot louder about this because he's a man so no one can call it misogyny that's why no one ever goes the #girlflop #ILoveMyBlorbosNastyAndComplicated route with him and he gets dubbed as that one asshole who just wanted fame and glory even though that goes against the general themes for tolkien's hero characters. and tolkien loved that dude to bits that was his specialist little guy so you can't seriously tell me you think that's what he was trying to portray???????? is that seriously what you think he was trying to portray????????? babe????????????

also there's a BIG difference when it's a character that's only named in one draft and doesn't exist in the rest or gil-galad who has like three and a half possible fathers but ELWING??????? the only possible way you could be coming to these conclusions is if you read the damn book with your eyes closed. FUCK.

[sweatervest-obsessed]

Black Dog

Pairing: Spencer x Reader

WC: 758

TW: Love of Zeppelin, mentions of Satanism <3

A/N: Sorry I've been gone but now IM BACK. She's ALIVEEEEE

Have you ever woken up to Led Zeppelin's Black Dog playing distantly in the shower?

Spencer Reid has. 

It’s his own fault really. He’s the one who invited you back to his place, and he should feel guilty, should feel bad about breaking one of Hotch’s rules, but you were just so fucking pretty, it made his brain malfunction.

He should feel fucked about the situation, and he did, just not in the way he probably should have. 

You had walked out, wrapped in a towel, humming along, having turned the music back down thinking he was still asleep. 

The water droplets dripped down your legs caused him to blush slightly, smiling shyly at how fucking gorgeous you looked, embaressed by the thoughts of the previous night. 

“Morning Spence.” You whispered, dropping your phone on the bed, and moving over his body, placing a kiss on his lips, a dreamy smile across your face. 

“Morning.” He whispered, sighing your name as you kissed his jaw. His hands wrapped around your waist, letting you collapse and place your weight on top of him. 

“I just showered..” You mumbled, continuing to kiss his neck and jaw, examining the damage you caused. 

“And who’s fault is that?” He kissed your head. He took his hand and laced it through one of yours, bringing it to his lips. 

“We have work, handsome.”

“I’m actually not the one on top of someone else.” 

You huffed and rolled off of him, standing up. “Yeah Yeah, whatever. At least you don’t have to show up to work in the same pants as yesterday.” 

Spencer laughed a little bit before getting up with you. 

“I didn’t know you liked Led Zeppelin.”

You whipped your head around, eyes filled to the brim with excitement. “You, Doctor Spencer Reid, know who Led Zeppelin is, and like them?”

He pulled on a pair of khaki trousers you had seen a million times before. “Don’t seem too surprised. Jimmy Page was known popularly as a satanist, even though he wasn’t. He agreed with Crowley’s philosophy of personal liberation, however plenty of Led Zeppelin's songs deal with the supernatural, or more pagan like elements. For example, the cover of Zeppelin IV is commonly believed to be straight out of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but in actuality, it’s the symbol of the hermit from Tarot. I–” He stopped himself, and looked up at you, not fully expecting you to still be listening. 

But you were. Looking at him with such patience and adoration, and a genuine interest in whatever he was saying. “What?” You looked at yourself and then back at him. “Why’d you stop?” 

He opened and closed his mouth for a second, furrowing his brows. “Sorry. It’s just, uh, no one ever really lets me ramble, let alone listens…”

You shook your head. “Well that’s idiodic because you have a lot of very interesting things rattling around in your brain. And now I know that the very handsome man I slept with last night, likes one of my favorite bands…or at least has a good breadth of knowledge about them.” You pulled your shirt over your head, tucking it into your pants, starting to look around for your shoes. 

Spencer was still staring at you. 

“Spence do you remem–babe, please. Stop staring and keep talking please.” 

He swallowed and nodded, fumbling with the shirt in his hands. “I-uh-I, don’t remember, um–”

“That's fine.” You called from under the bed, having located where one of your shoes got kicked. “Tell me something else about Zeppelin.”

 “Uh-uh speaking of Satanism.” He pulled his shirt over his head, staring at your ass completely unashamed. “Did-did-did you know that, uh, Televangelist Paul Crouch believed that if you played Stairway to Heaven backwards, it would have satanic messages?”

You slid on one of your shoes, hunting for the other one still. “Oh please Spence, you’re slipping. Everyone knows that. And it’s a bunch of bullshit, kinda. It does sound like some devil words but truly who has the time to plan that out, and then execute it?” 

“T-that’s what the band said!

You smiled at him, kissing his cheek as you walked out into his living room, determined to find this other fucking shoe. 

“What’s your favorite song by them, Spence?” 

“Oh well I don’t actually listen to them…”

“Spencer please. You’re breaking my heart. I’m picking the music in the car, and you’re going to suck it up.” 

Spencer has never been more excited to listen to music at 7 am before.

[magicalmanhattanproject]

okay i have to talk about my obscure blorbo fíriel ondoheriel. literally no one cares about her except me. not even tolkien cares about her. she has Zero canon traits. no personality, no physical appearance, not even a death date. here's what we know about her

in 1940 TA, Arvedui, then-prince of Arthedain* marries Fíriel, daughter of King Ondoher of Gondor, uniting the two realms after a long estrangement

[loads up Tolkien Gateway to cross check dates] HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS

in 1938 TA, Aranarth, eldest son of Arvedui is born. Now, if we're being real with ourselves, Jirt made an oopsie here and no one caught it. But, no one caught it and the only numbers we have are Aranarth, son of Arvedui, is born in 1938 and Arvedui marries Fíriel in 1940.

So, like, what's up there? Did Arvedui and Fíriel meet before their wedding and elope? Was Aranarth born in Gondor and hidden to protect Fíriel's reputation? Or did Fíriel have to make an excuse to stay in Arthedain and hide her pregnancy and then abandon her child until a proper marriage could be arranged? Was Arvedui married to someone else first and a widower? Was Fíriel a second wife and a stepmother to the real heir? Was Aranarth a bastard and Fíriel brought in to produce the real heir? Had Fíriel ever left home before? Did she have any feelings about being sent away from her whole family to be a queen for a man who already had an heir? Did she have a child she had to travel with? That she was desperate to reunite with? That she wanted nothing to do with? Did she love travel? Hate it? How did she feel about Gondor? Arthedain? We don't know. Tolkien doesn't care.

Anyway, back to what I already knew about.

in 1944 TA, Ondoher and both his sons are killed in the invasion of the Wainriders.

How does Fíriel feel about this? What's her relationship with her father like? Her brothers? Presumably she has a mother in there somewhere too? We don't know. Tolkien doesn't care.

Now, the doozy.

later in 1944 TA, Arvedui sends messages to Gondor claiming the throne both as a descendant of Isildur and as the husband of Fíriel, who would have been ruling queen according to Númenorean law.**

How does Fíriel feel about that? How does Fíriel feel about claiming the throne of her father and her brothers and her homeland through her blood for himself? We don't know. Tolkien doesn't care.

This is the last mention of Fíriel in the text. We don't know what happens to her after this. Maybe she trips and falls down the stairs the very next day. Maybe she lives a long life and dies of old age in her sleep. We don't know. We know what happens to her family though and it's not pretty.

Arvedui ascends to the throne of Arthedain in 1964 with the realm already struggling under invasion from Angmar. In 1974, the Witch-King invades and captures the capital of Fornost. Arvedui escapes to the Ice Bay of Forochel where he is aided by the locals over the bitter winter. Aranarth, a young man at this point, gets word to Círdan that his father is stranded there and Círdan sends a ship to bring them aid. When the ship arrives, Arvedui wants to leave immediately, but the locals warn him against leaving, saying that the Witch-King's power wanes in the summer and the bay is too dangerous.

Let's backtrack a moment. The name Arvedui means "last-king" and was given to him at his birth by Malbeth the Seer. Though, the seer said, "a choice well come to the Dúnedain, and if they take the one that seems less hopeful, then your son will change his name and become ruler of a great realm."

Arvedui does not. He takes the ship Círdan sent, which is sunk in an ice storm. Arthedain falls. Aranarth becomes the first Chieftain of the Rangers.

There's one last piece to all this. Name meanings. Tolkien likes them. I was looking through canon name meanings for OC names and I decided to check Fíriel out and I got fucking flashbanged.

See, something you gotta remember about the descendants of Elros is that a lot of them resent his choice. It's said that the line of Gondor failed because the kings were too busy contemplating immortality and their ancestors to look to the future and have heirs of their own. That's maybe not fair to the kings whose lines failed, but it's certainly a trait they all share.

So, what does Fíriel mean?

Mortal Maid

Look at everything else about her and everything that happened to everyone she loved and realize that she was born to the name She Will Die

How did she feel about that? We don't know. But I want to.

*The northern kingdom of Arnor had long ago split into three kingdoms. Arthedain is the one from which the eldest and true line of descent from Elendil continued. The other two had already fallen by this point.

**For the record, Ondoher was the 31st king of Gondor and somehow the issue of a ruling queen has not been litigated before now. Not a single time in the past 30 generations has a daughter been the eldest child or only available heir. That... stretches plausibility. This is easily explained by Tolkien forgetting that women exist until they become immediately plot relevant, but it certainly gestures in the direction of things about Gondorian kings that are rather unflattering.

[tossawary]

Regarding "The Hobbit" film trilogy, even if I ended up personally disliking and resenting how much time and focus the elf characters (and others) ended up taking away from the dwarves whom I think deserved more focus as rich internal characters (I know that studio pressures are a factor in that terrible love triangle and so on), I still... vaguely appreciate the effort to create and include named female characters like Tauriel, when the book is sadly lacking in them. I think she's fine, actually. Comparatively, there are many other elements in these adaptations that I think are much, MUCH worse.

But still, if you want to add female characters to this story, the obvious answer to me seems to be to just make half the Company into dwarf women? (With similarly fancy beards and other facial hair! Because I think that's fun.) It's just... so much easier?

Do NOT come at me with that "dwarf women are rare" bullshit. Unreliable narration. Logistically unlikely. Also, if you believe that "men are the warriors and craftsmen, the women stay at home" is how dwarf society strictly functions (boring, honestly, on top of being incredibly sexist), I could argue that the Battle of Azanulbizar and other struggles probably left a significant dent in this dwarf group's male population, leaving behind many widows and mothers without children to pick up the work. The battlefields have come to and TAKEN both Erebor and Moria from the dwarves. I see no good reason why dwarf women would not have equal investment in reclaiming their home and the gold. Many of the Company are not presented to be formally trained warriors, anyway.

Now, ideally, we could do way queerer stuff in terms of both romance and gender here, but we know cowards with veto powers would not let this happen. Still, I feel like basic genderbending would have been a very doable move and is, actually, a very reasonable ask of an adaptation that would have added some depth to the story even if you didn't acknowledge the change at all.

Like, preferably, this would be an adaptational change that would be directly addressed. Maybe all of the Company appear male at first due to traveling that way (and assumptions made by humans and hobbits), then Bilbo might learn that some of the Company are dwarf women when he becomes closer to all of them. We could have a brief scene acknowledging that dwarf women are fighting these battles for their pasts and their futures too. It doesn't have to be a big thing! They can just be there. Existing. Participating.

I even think it would be fun if two of the dwarves were actually an older married couple traveling together, instead of brothers or cousins, because loving married bickering and battle couples are fun. You can have running jokes in the background about how Smaug's invasion ruined their wedding day, and going back and forth with "you never take me anywhere nice" @ each other whenever they're stuck in Goblintown or the Mirkwood dungeons. (I like seeing good marriages & partnerships in fiction and established couples going on fantasy quests together. I just think it's neat.)

But another (sillier) direction is that you could just cast some actresses in beards to play some of the dwarves, then leave the fact that some of these characters are probably dwarf women (traveling as men) as a fun detail for the audience. Bilbo is either too oblivious to notice or much too polite to bring it up at all. It's canonically compliant to the text this way!

Now, obviously some few people would have complained that Tolkien's work was being ruined by "political correctness", but they complained anyway about Tauriel (when there are MANY other bad choices in these movies), and what worthwhile arguments could they have possibly made against genderbending some of the THIRTEEN dwarves? Like, most casual fans I know cannot NAME the entire Company, who get so little character development in the book that the films had to come up with unique designs and backgrounds for most of them anyway. Bro (directed towards someone objecting to the idea of including female dwarves), be real, there's no way that you honestly cared this much about "Nori the Dwarf" before right now.

[apoloadonisandnarcissus]

Has anyone noticed the similarities between Sauron and Gollum in “Rings of Power”?

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum. The Hobbit

Riddles were all he could think of. Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before he lost all his friends and was driven away, alone, and crept down, down, into the dark under the mountains. The Hobbit

They cursed us. 'Murderer', they called us. They cursed us, and drove us away. And we wept, precious. We wept to be so alone. And we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind. We even forgot our own name. Return of the King (2003)

“What a pity Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had the chance!”

“Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity."

“He deserves death"

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end, and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many--yours not least"

Fellowship of the Ring, Shadow of the Past

The “my precious” face:

Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo’s knee – but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.” The Two Towers

This is not random, because not only Sméagol was corrupted by the One Ring (Gollum), but he was also captured and tortured by Sauron himself for information in Barad-dûr (Mordor) to learn who had the One Ring, in the Third Age (in the books, Sauron is not a giant eye ball on the top of a tower).

However, Sauron let him go (instead of killing him), which is odd not only by Sauron’s standards, but because Gollum knew Sauron’s plans, and releasing him would be a terrible risk (especially for a being as secretive as Sauron). And indeed it was, because it allowed Gandalf to know that Sauron was planning to use the Nazgûl to get the One Ring, and that he was aware that Bilbo had it, and the Nine Riders were headed for the Shire.

However, that’s what Sauron does. And why? Tolkien himself answered, in the Unfinished Tales: Sauron saw something on Gollum.

“He [Sauron] did not trust Gollum, for he divined something indomitable in him, which could not be overcome, even by the Shadow of Fear, except by destroying him.”

What did Sauron see? We don’t know, because Tolkien does not say. Only that Gollum made him uneasy, and he was not able to discern why.

Some theorize that Sauron might have seen Eru’s plan for Gollum in the creature (he would be the one to take the One and cast into the fire), and couldn’t kill him by “divine intervention”. To me, this theory doesn’t make much sense, because if this was what Sauron saw, why release Gollum, in the first place? Why not keep him a prisoner in Mordor to prevent this from happening?

Others say that Sauron did not trust Gollum but knew he would seek out the One Ring, and he could use this to his advantage, and that’s why he let him go. This is more likely, but still doesn’t explain why Gollum stir something in him.

And it seems that “Rings of Power” might be exploring this angle by giving Sauron some Gollum inspo. Which might mean that Sauron shared a recognition with Gollum. Which makes sense, since the he was corrupted by the One Ring, which holds a part of Sauron’s soul.

This makes me wonder, if we’ll get a scene like this in future seasons:

Frodo looked straight into Gollum's eyes which flinched and twisted away. 'You know that, or you guess well enough, Sméagol,' he said quietly and sternly. 'We are going to Mordor, of course. And you know the way there, I believe.' 'Ach! sss!' said Gollum, covering his ears with his hands, as if such frankness, and the open speaking of the names, hurt him. Two Towers

Frodo's calling Gollum by his true name has opened a door within him that had long been shut. It’s Gandalf that tells Frodo Gollum’s real name in the chapter The Shadow of the Past in “Fellowship of the Ring”.

Gandalf uses the name “Sméagol” in the past, never in the present (he calls him “Gollum”): this establishes a duality between the two names: Sméagol vs. Gollum. Pretty much the same as Mairon vs. Sauron. Sméagol is the “forgotten things” of Gollum’s past; like Mairon the Admirable is to Sauron. Gandalf admits he has hope that “Gollum can be cured before he dies”, meaning redeemed. This was Halbrand in Season 1; the Repentant Mairon.

Frodo, by addressing Gollum as Sméagol, evokes (or hopes to) the memory of these “forgotten things” (like Gandalf told him). Of course, Gollum is far into his corruption (being a ring-bearer to the One for over 500 years), for a mere evocation of his true name to redeem him, however, it could open the door to the hope of.

Indeed Gollum himself makes the distinction between the two: “Don't ask Sméagol. Poor, poor Sméagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he's lost now.” Or “No precious, no Sméagol”. In Gollum’s mind, “Sméagol” was lost not with the murder of Déagol centuries before, but when he lost the One to Bilbo.

In the Peter Jackson adaptation, this scene translated into this:

Frodo: Who are you? Gollum: Musn't ask us. Not his business, gollum, gollum. Frodo: Gandalf told me you were one of the river-folk. Gollum: Cold be heart and hand and bone, cold be travellers far from home. Frodo: He said your life was a sad story. Gollum: They do not see what lies ahead, when sun has failed and moon is dead. Frodo: You were not so different from a Hobbit once, were you... Sméagol? Gollum: What did you call me? Frodo: That was your name once, wasn't it? A long time ago. Gollum: My... my name. Sméagol....

In Season 2, it was Gandalf who had to earned his name via finding his staff. His character arc parallels Sauron’s in “Rings of Power”, which makes me wonder if his real name (Mairon) might come into play in Season 3.

Especially since we had so many mentions of him having “many names” in “Rings of Power”, already.

Which raises another question: did he, like Gollum, forgot his real name?

But who could come into play in this scene? The character who’s paralleling Frodo and Bilbo, of course: Galadriel.

[whereserpentswalk]

It’s fascinating that you think trans people’s names come to them like wands in Harry Potter, you can’t just culturally appropriate bc you’re trans

Ok, this is about comments I made like a year ago on a comedy bit. While I stand by my feelings that the bit was bad and transphobic, my reasons why are a lot diffrent.

When I first wrote the comments my arguments were very thermian. I treated the story the comic was telling as if it was real and objective. Which feels right for most people, because stand up comedy is often presented like conversation, where we do treat stories like that as real things. But that's not how comedy works, comedians don't tell stories the way we do in conversation, they're creatives, the stories they tell are basically fictional, the art form might look like real conversations but it's not.

Comedians want to make you laugh, and sometimes want to send a message or make you think about things in a new way, but they have no reason to want to portray events accurately. They might be basing some things off of real experiences, but that's true for everyone, Tolkien might have chosen to explore his experience in world war one in lord of things, that doesn't mean we have to argue about orcs as if they're real entities when we're talking about if those books were racist.

So let's actually look at the skit, and analyze its outlook on trans people keeping in mind its a story that a cis man is telling, and not actual events: So the summery of the skit is that a white trans man comes out to his to his family, and he picked a name you'd expect a black person to have. He has older black relatives (who are implied to fully accept him, which would make him possibly the only trans person on earth with a fully accepting family) who refuse to use this name, and instead call him "the boy". The sketch ends with the comedian saying he should pick a name like Kevin, because even if he's trans he's not interesting (keep your thoughts on that last one).

Now, ignoring how this would play out in real life, what does this as a peice of fiction say about trans people:

First off: it's creating a plausible but unlikely situation where the woke thing to do is to not respect a trans person's identity. A lot of political humor exists to call ideas into question with hypotheticals, and the idea being questioned here is the idea that trans people's identities deserve respect.

Second off: it's creating a situation where a trans person is entitled and arogent for wanting his identity respected. In the fiction this trans person is that. But it's promoting the idea that they are in real life. Transphobes will show you a lot of spooky examples of trans identities that are unreasonable to respect, but that's not useally ever what it's like in real life. (An otherkin robotgirl isn't going to demand you communicate with her through beeps and boops, she probably just wants you not to laugh at her.)

Third off: it's pitting minorities agaisnt eachother. Conservatives love this, but it's super common when people try to convince progressives to a specific group from their advocacy. It shows us a world where trans rights and poc rights are at odds with eachother, in the real world they aren't, in the real world they're part of one larger struggle and diminishing one is diminishing the other. A lot of people do this with different identities, lgb types do it with gayness, terfs do it with womanhood, class reductionists do it with class, trscum do it between trans people. But it doesn't help one oppressed group when you shit on a diffrent oppressed group in their name. It's white conservatives who love it the most when trans people and poc at pit agaisnt eachother, and it's trans poc who suffer the most.

Fourth off: it's feeds into a very old myth amoung queerphobic progressives, which is the idea that queer people are privileged people looking to pose as the marginalized to get special rights. This is a myth we really have to get over, because its been internalized by a lot of people, and we get these hunts for fake minorities. This is why the "you're not interesting" line sticks out to me. Most trans people don't give themselves appropriative names, but trans people as a group constantly get accused of trying to steal other people's struggles. This is a myth that preys on the fact that white skined white colar queer people are more visible, and its one that is based on treating that disparity in visibility as a fact. We have to cut this out, nobody fakes minority status to get privileges because minorities aren't privileged. It's not true for queer people, even the queer people other queer people hate like bi people and ace people. It's not true about mentally ill and ND people, or converts to non Christian religions, or East Asian people, or anyone who gets accused of this. Stop it dearly.

Fifth off: this entire sketch is based in the idea that families can accept their trans kids, but only conditionally, only if they prove themselves to be doing it for the right reasons, and they please their family's whims. This is a transphobic idea, it's a transphobic idea most neolibs hold. Comedy bits are a lot like story books (no shade at either) where a problem is presented at the beginning, and a solution at the end, that the audience is expected to take for their own problems. And the solution here is a form of transphobia, the idea that trans people aren't owned acceptance, they need to earn it. I've seen a lot of trans people tormented by their families over that idea. And when a person of color goes and stage and wraps that idea in racial justice, it's young trans poc who get hurt by it the most.

Sixth off: not a huge point, but I feel like a cis black man, of all cis people, should be the most likely to understand that calling a trans man a boy is dehumanizing and insulting. I guess this goes to show he's not interested in thinking about how trans people's struggles are like his, he stands alongside a lot of marginalized trans people there.

Finally I kind of don't know how to end this. This is long. Really long. I don't know whose going to read this, because its a lot. Hopefully you got a bit of media literacy from reading all of this. Early on in my tumblr career, when I had just moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, I had read an essay by @wifelinkmtg about a concept called the ditch. The idea was we often argue about media wrong, talking about things in hyper literal cannon obsessed terms, and that was the ditch, the ditch we dig for ourselves when we ignore things like themes and audience experiences. Hopefully this series of words dug less of a ditch than my words did a year ago. Sorry I don't have the actual sketch on hand. Mabye I'm wrong, but if someone wants to prove me wrong I'd rather they do it outside of a ditch. Mabye the ask wasn't even about that post. Mabye I'm tired. Maybe you should be tired too.

Sorry for the long post. Media literacy matters. Black trans lives matter. Goodbye, enjoy your night well.

[darkwing-ramblings]

What makes a happy silmaril?

For context we must consider that the silmarils are written as living is not intelligent beings in a way and that they were derived of trees and so are a probable never-before-seen-gem-plant-hybrid-creature-with-opinions-just-no-mobility. Also I am @darkwinganimus by another name, to be clear, and this moves a previous discussion @eri-pl and I were having in the replies of one of their posts over to a format with no restrictively frustrating word limitation.

As @eri-pl puts in their Silmarillion reread part 6: "They loked like diamonds, so canonically white-ish. their fire is made of mixed Treelight, so I would assume warm white is canon.

They shone like stars of Varda but had real life inside — I really need this in English! OK, I googled it.

OH. Something else but: "he pondered how the light of the Trees, the glory of the Blessed Realm, might be preserved imperishable" — It may be me jumping on things + Tolkien's poetical wording, but this seems like a strong suggestion of "Fefe wanted to jump higher than his head" (he was not the first one) and sheds a light (pun intended) on his sttitude towards the Silmarils later.

Anyway back to that part about life: "and yet, as were they indeed living things, they rejoiced in light" So they are living things, not just "like" living things. Silmarills = baby Trees is canon! (OK, somewhat canon? but they *are* alive, and by logic they must be bred not made-in-the-strict-sense by Feanor)

So they glow by themselves with warm white, but also they are iridescent like diamonds. Beautiful indeed."

(Opinions such as disliking Morgoth then Carcaroth enough to burn him when the former wore them in his underground torture fortress Angband and the latter rudely ate them).

Anyway, the discussion points I actually want to raise are below, now that the nature of the silmarils are established as probably-living- beyond the possibility of poetic and figurative language along those veins merely sounding cool- is explained:

@eri-pl Hmm, okay, so per your reply attached to this post "Melkor (to be precise this was his name at that point :D ) wanted to kill Feanor anyway. He thought Feanor would be home too, iirc from the book. And still, Fefe could have worn them to a well-guarded situations, at least. But he was too paranoid." let's imagine Feanor takes the measure of no vault and just wears the silmarils everywhere, because he's pretty sure no one else distrusts Melkor enough to be sufficiently on guard. Melkor now has no reason to attack Formenos during the party so I don't know waits to ambush Feanor travelling on the road back from it, directing Ungoliant at the trees for a distraction etc and stealing the silmarils+killing Feanor as planned. Good for Melkor he achieves all his goals.

I humbly ask how this then might end up in your opinion better for the silmarils in question, aside from more time outside out and about Aman in sun years per your "Feanor wearing them might have ended up better for them anyway. At least he could have worn them to well-defended occasions (like That One Party), but he didn't because he was paranoid about the normal Valar too.". Because without Feanor and with Finwe alive there a question of if the flight of the noldor even happens afterwards- which they were agitating let's assume so and skip the how-that-happens/goes for now- and about the oath.

Now the oath is terrible for most beings involved, yes, but is it terrible for the silmarils themselves? It's a force of dedicated warriors specifically trying to retrieve them from Melkor their evil abductor- a force of dedicated warriors who make their retrieval from Morgoth so fraught a topic Thingol invokes it in an arguably rash and spur of the moment to Beren arguably meaning "I-would-see-you-dead-before-I-give-permission-for-you-to-marry-my-beloved-daughter-go-die-to-Morgoth-and/or-the-feanorians-over-a-silmaril".

It sees one of them get out of Angband in the hands of Beren and Luthien and enjoy free-range-ish years in the open then ultimately make it to Earendil upon Vingilot's prow. Earendil and Elwing's arrival with said stolen silmaril also helps petition aid from the valar in the war of wrath successfully leading to one ending up in the ocean (not terrible for pseudo-plant-gem-creatures as an environment) and a random volcano that maybe also got swallowed by the sea (at least there's no Melkor and it has possible gem-friends in its volcano). If there is no oath all of the latter is in question and whilst things could end better for the silmarils probably (and definitely those who died because of the oath on both sides, but that's not the focus here) they could also end up worse.

Now, Feanor's son's swear the oath of their own initiative when he begins to but on their own with him dead it's not exactly assured say Kanafinwe is going to see to it a very similar one is made.

I understand entirely that it is a lot of words however so won't be offended if you'd rather call it a day/don't actually read this all. Either way putting it together in one place has pleased me greatly whether any response, staggered yay or nay, results.

[vivwritesfics]

Shine A Light Into The Wreckage

Chapter Eight - Save Me

Bob Floyd was many things. He was an instructor at Top Gun, a lover of Tolkien books and a huge fan of coffee. But Bob was also clumsy. That was how he bumped into the table, knocking her drink onto her notebook. He felt bad about it. Bad enough to come back time and time again, in the hopes that she would be there. And, every time, she is. Each time looking a little worse for wear. It doesn't take Bob long to realise he has to save her.

Warnings: Abusive relationship! Abusive hair pulling! Abusive choking! Forceful sex! Domestic abuse! Seriously don't read if you're affect by stuff like this! Talks of stalking (but in a non serious manner), talks of non consensual groping. she gets called a whore, choking, SA, 'missing' birth control, blood

Series Masterlist

Worried wasn't the word Bob wanted to use. He didn't know her plans, didn't know what she was going to do. He'd desperately hoped that she'd break up with Ken, that she'd call him to help her move out.��

But it had been three days and he hadn't heard anything. He'd called and texted, but nothing, no response. Alarm bells would have been ringing if she hadn't at least been looking at his texts. 

God, he hated how much he missed. All it took was seeing her in his house, in that old Star Wars shirt one time, and he was hooked. It was a sight Bob would never get enough of. And, after not hearing from her in a week, he couldn't think of anything worse than never seeing her in his house, in his clothes, again. 

A week and a half after he'd dropped her at her apartment, a week and a half since he'd heard her soft, melodic voice calling out his name, Bob was given a distraction. A welcome distraction in the form of Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw. 

How long had it been since Bradley visited? Bob wasn't entirely sure, too caught up with other things. But, if Bradley was here, it was because Maverick was also here. 

They almost had all of the Squad back together. As much as Bob loved Jake and Natasha, Rooster and Maverick made a welcome change. Having them down at The Hard Deck while Slow Ride by Foghat, of all songs,  played brought back too many good memories, Bob could hardly grasp them all. 

They didn't even never to ask about her. It might have been one offhand comment about Bob's dating life and there he was, telling everyone about the girl he had fallen in love with. His cheeks were pink the entire time. 

It wasn't his place to detail the abuse, so he didn't. But he made it clear that Ken was an asshole, something that Phoenix and Hangman confirmed. Bradley's fighting spirit immediately came out to play. "Why don't we go jump the guy, get Baby Bob's dream girl back?"

But they all knew they couldn't. 

Until the next Saturday at The Hard Deck. Bob stared desperately at his phone as he waited for any sign of her. It had been two whole weeks since he'd last heard from her, abd he'd done nothing but mope around. It really was pathetic, wasn't it? But he couldn't help it. His dream girl seemed to be gone. 

And then Bob's phone rang. His breath hitched as her name appeared on the screen and he rushed outside to answer it. "Hey Doll," he said, holding the phone up to his ear. 

There was a noise, a noise like she wanted to say something, and then nothing. 

Muffled voices, that was all Bob could hear. He pressed his phone tighter to his ear like that would make any sort of difference. The voices muffled, but he could just about make out what was being said. "Barbie, there's still blood on the counter!" Roared a male voice. Kens voice. 

When she spoke, Bob could hear it a lot clearer. "I'm getting to it, Ken! I swear!" Her voice was hoarse, terror wrapped around her every word. 

The reply was muffled. There was so much happening in that apartment, and Bob didn't know what. It was so fuckibg terrifying.

The next sound he heard was a pained whimper. Natasha had come out to check on him, pausing and listening when she saw the look on Bob's face. Her eyes widened a the next noise, like something hitting the floor or the wall. 

Fuck, Bob couldn’t listen to this anymore. He said her name gently. "If you can hear me, lock yourself in the bathroom. I'm coming to get you."

There was no reply, the call just ending. 

Now, Bob wasn't stupid. He knew there was no way he could get in there and get her out without causing more harm. That was why he went up to Rooster, Hangman, and Phoenix. "I need your help."

That was all it took to get them into Bob's truck. He drove, knuckles white against the steering wheel as he headed to her apartment. The others found out what Bob wanted them to know, what he wanted them to do. 

It was a plan of sorts, but the word plan made it sound cartoon-y. Natasha was gonna keep the car running while they somehow got into the apartment. Bob was gonna get her while Jake and Bradley dealt with Ken. They didn't know what dealing with Ken meant, but they were prepared for anything. 

When they arrived at the apartment Natasha climbed into the driver's seat and Bob, Jake and Bradley climbed out. Bob led the way. He pushed into the entryway, but then he stopped. Which one was her apartment? Fuck, he should have asked on the phone. 

But then he heard shouting, loud and clear from the apartment on the top floor. 

Bob took off running, the others behind him. He took the stairs two at a time. At the very top of the stairs, he threw his shoulder against the door. 

When they met him at the top of the stairs, Bradley and Jake joined him, forcing the door open. It didn't take long before it gave and they were bursting in. 

"What the fuck!" Came the not so familiar voice of Ken. "Get out of my apartment!" 

Bob ignored him as he looked around. "Where is she?" He asked in a low voice, one the others hadn't heard from him before. 

Ken straightened up. "Oh. It's you." 

Before he could say more, Rooster strode forward. In an instant he had Ken up against the wall, holding him by the collar of his shirt. "Where is she?" He roared, spit flying into Ken's face. 

Bob left Jake and Bradley deal with Ken as he walked through the apartment. He ignored the broken glass on the kitchen floor and continued on. 

The first room he got to was the bedroom. It was a mess, sheets everywhere, broken photo frames and a smashed up phone on the floor. Paper everywhere, filled with writing but ripped up. But no her. Swallowing the lump in hid throat, Bob continued on.

There was just one other room. Bob tried pushing on the door, but it was locked. Knocking, he called her name. "Are you in there?" 

Pressing his ear to the door, he heard a muffled sob. "I'm here," he tried, pushing at the door handle again. "I'm gonna get you out of here. Can you let me in?" 

He heard the door unlock so he pushed his way in. He was slow, giving her time to move away from the door before he threw it open. 

And there she was, knees pulled up against her chest as she sat under the sink. The tears freely fell, but she didn't bother to wipe them. Didn't even bother to look up at Bob. 

His breath caught in his throat as he looked down at her. When he held his hand out towards her, she flinched away. His heart snapped in two. 

"C'mon," he said softly. She finally looked up at him. "I'm getting you out of here." 

As soon as she placed her hand in his, Bob pulled her to her feet. Immediately she was against him, holding onto him, arms thrown around his neck. "I got you," he whispered again and again and again. 

He held her against him as he walked her out of the apartment. She had nothing besides herself, but that was more than she ever thought she'd make it out with. Her hand was against his chest, feeling the way his heart was beating in his chest. 

It didn't stop the tears as he took her down the stairs. He didn't know what Hangman and Rooster were doing, just hoping they were following. And, on the stairs, she slipped. She would have fallen to her knees and all the way down if it wasn't for Bob holding her. "I got you," he kept saying as he got her to the bottom of the stairs and out to the truck. 

Bob was a gentleman. He would have helped her in no matter what. But there was no way she would have been able to do it on her own, not in that moment. 

"What now?" Natasha asked as Bradley and Jake climbed in. (Jake climbed into the back with her and Bob, but Bob kept himself between the two of them).

"Drop me back at mine," Bob said quietly. She was holding his shirt so tight, it was almost like she was never gonna let go. "I'll pick up the truck tomorrow.”

The drive back to Bob's was silent. His arm stayed around her, large hand comforting against her back. It was only a short drive, Bob kept a hold of her the entire way. 

When they pulled up, Bob helped her out. The others were silent, only exchanging looks with him as he opened the door and helped her in. 

He heard the truck pull out of the driveway, but the wasn't what he was concerned about as he sat her down. She furiously wiped at her eyes with bruised hands. Hands that Bob gently took into his own and laid them on his lap. 

"What happened?"

She looked so tired, so goddamn tired as she looked up at him. There were bruises all over her skin, lip split open. She looked terrible. But she kept her mouth shut, didn't answer him. 

He could have begged, could have demanded that she answer him, but what good would that do? Instead, he stood, walked into the kitchen, and got her something to drink. 

When he came back with a steaming hot tea and a glass of water, she was already sleeping, face pressed pressed against the arm of the sofa. Bob lifted her ever so slightly, slipped a cushion beneath her head and threw a blanket over her body. 

He left her there, sleeping on the sofa. Now, don't get me wrong, Bob would have carried her to the bed. But he'd never seen her so scared before, didn't want to do anything would would scare her more than she already was. 

He kept his door open, though. Any noise that she made had Bob in the doorway, checking on her. But she slept right through, Frodo curled up against her.

Taglist: @nurse-sainz

@not-nyasa

@burningwitchprincess

@darksparklesficrecs

@primroseluna

@littlemsbumblebee

@wretchedmo

@imaginecrushes

@calpalsbestie

@hiireadstuff

@lyn-js

@emma8895eb

@teacupsandtopgun

@finnydraws

[cilil]

Something neat about... Varda

Varda is a queen not just in title, but everything else as well, arguably the true powerhouse on Taniquetil, the boss aspiring boss babes out there wish they could be. She knows what she wants and what she doesn't want and she will let people know.

What is often forgotten while talking about Varda rejecting Melkor is that she did so at a point where he was vastly more powerful than any other Vala individually and even all the other Valar combined, able to daunt his own brother with his gaze, so... it was, simply put, extra scary for her to do so (and I know us afab people in particular can probably feel that primal terror of trying to say no to a man we know can hurt us right now, if we imagine ourselves in her shoes).

((And please know that I do not blame you if you were too scared to say no in a similar situation, we aren't archangels immune to death after all. You are loved and Varda would fight these men for you.))

What enables Varda to spot shady characters early and call them out is her, shall we say, bullshit radar and foresight. Yes, she doesn't know everything in advance either, that's also not the point, but she knows when you're up to no good and she'll tell you off. Seriously, what would Manwë do without her (probably get scammed. A lot).

 ˚ ੈ✧̣̇·˖ 　˚ .　　　✶ ˚　　✦　. 　 ˚　.　　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚　

“Something Neat About” (SNA) is a mini series on my blog where I say something I like/find cool/interesting/neat about various Tolkien (right now mostly Silmarillion) characters. 

Please feel free to add your own thoughts/ideas/headcanons about the character in the comments/tags, link fanworks you or others made, show pictures of your pet you named after them, whatever you want to share; my only request is to keep it positive.

More of SNA for your perusal here. You’re also welcome to message me/send asks about characters you’d like to hear about :)

[hyenafu]

After that last page you posted here for Slightly Damned, I'm actually curious! Sign Lingo is what Kieri and Buwaro are learning. But are demons using sign language also use Sign Lingo, or are they using a demon version? DSL, if you will?

Demons don’t have their own language, and that goes for sign language as well. Nikkei (the deaf fire Demon with yellow and red fur seen in St. Curtis) uses Sign Lingo, which is why the word balloons look the same (although I think I’ve mixed up the background color on the word balloons before, switching between white and pink).

So this answer isn’t too boring, here’s some ideas about language I’m mulling over in my head that are not 100% complete:

- in the beginning there was an ancient root language that the gods used to speak to their creations: the Angels, the Demons, and then later, the Medians (comprised of Humans, Jakkai, Fairies, Khamega, and Merfolk)

- Angelic is the closest to this ancient language but it’s not exactly the same. It inevitably changed over a long period of time.

- Lingo is derived from Angelic but it’s even more different from the original tongue. This is the language that most everyone speaks. Angels (as a society) are insular and see others as beneath them because they were created or co-created by their sworn enemy, Syndel.

- Sign Lingo is its own language, of course, but… for all intents and purposes, sharing its name with Lingo is made to indicate that it’s a common language shared among all

- The different countries of Medius don’t have their own languages just for the sake of storytelling convenience. Look, I’m not Tolkien, I’m too busy making my OCs kiss sorry

- this means some of the more “exotic” fantasy names in the comic are from Lingo. The characters are not technically speaking English; the comic has just been uhhh localized into English so that we on Earth can understand it (and other Earth languages as well, by fan translators with hearts of gold 💛)

- however, Fairies do have an innate secret language. Perhaps it cannot even be perceived by other races. But being able to understand the language can be bestowed onto people of other races by a Fairy (Samantha learned it from Duster).

- I think it would be neat if Merfolk could communicate through song to a certain extent, but maybe it’s not as precise as Lingo. Maybe it’s more useful for underwater communication and coordination, or mating calls, but not for arguing with your friend about which fish tastes best and why

These ideas are still being tumbled around in my brain so no one is allowed to get mad at me for it being dumb or claim it’s canon yet ;)

[djarintreble]

I loved your recent fic about mom!reader x dad!eddie finding out their pregnant. I would love to see arwen's reaction if they found out they were having a boy

notes: HI! sorry this took so long anon! this was my last semester of school and i stopped writing to focus on finishing up! i just graduated and sat down to start writing out some of these requests! i hope you enjoy! welcome to the munson family, baby boy 💛

“it’s a boy!! ” // e. munson

pairing: dad!eddie munson x fem!reader

word count: 2,325

tags: pregnant reader, dad!eddie, mention of eddie’s mom, arwen munson is literally my child, fluff, chosen family, all the fav characters make an entrance, uncle steve, gender reveal, spoiler it’s a boy, apart of my arwen munson universe!

quote: “What are you gonna do this time then? Aragon for a boy and Éowyn for a girl.” Dustin teased. “It would keep with the Tolkien theme.” Steve nodded.

This entire pregnancy, you swore you were having a girl. It made the most sense. The baby was just like Arwen when you were pregnant with her. Slow heartbeat, many mornings of sickness, breakouts. It was all the Old wives tales of having a girl. So when you found out you were having a boy… you were most concerned about Arwen’s reaction.

It was 4 months into your pregnancy and it was finally time for the appointment where you would find out the gender. With Arwen, you let the doctor tell you right away in the office. But this time, you wanted to know with the whole family. You had your ultrasound and asked the doctor to put the results in an envelope. The temptation to open it, the answer at your fingertips, was difficult but you managed to give it to Nancy Byers to complete the surprise.

The Byers were dear to you and Eddie. In fact, your entire friend group has become your own little family. With Arwen calling your friends Uncle Stevie, Uncle Jonny, Aunt Robin, Aunt Nancy, and all the boys. Sometimes she’d put an uncle in front of Dusty but for the most part, she just added a “Y” to all of the boys' names and called it a day. Nevertheless, Dusty, Lukey, Willy, and Mikey all loved her and treated her just like their own niece.

The plan was to have a small party with your friends and family to find out the gender of your baby and to have Arwen there with you to celebrate. Nancy offered to host at her house and Eddie thought it would be fun to do the big reveal with some color themed confetti. So off Nancy went with your results to get either pink or blue confetti poppers for everyone.

You drove home to find Eddie was still not back from picking your daughter up from school so you laid on the couch for a moment of silence. Looking down and rubbing your stomach you asked out loud, “what could you be? Can we agree no matter what, you won’t be called Eddie Jr. Don’t tell your dad that but it’s not happening.”

With that the door opened and the sound of Arwen’s jelly shoes squeaked through the house. “HI MOMMY!” she yelled, throwing her backpack down on the floor and jumping onto the couch to give you a big hug. With a huff, you greeted her back.

“Hi, Ari. How was school?”

“Good. I can count to 10 in ALL!” she said, sticking her hands up to count in what she meant to say was ASL. You couldn’t help but laugh.

“That’s really cool, baby! Are you ready for the baby’s party? Are you still sure they’re a girl?”

Your daughter shrugged, “they is.” You laughed at her incorrect sentence but ran a hand through her hair with a smile.

“I like your confidence.”

“Hello, beautiful.” Eddie called from around the corner.

“Hi, daddy-“ “Hey, handsome-“ You girls both responded. Eddie shook his head with a smile and leaned down to kiss your stomach.

“And how are you little Eddie Jr.” He leaned back up to kiss you.

“I love you but I’m not naming them Eddie Jr.” You said back, tapping his nose.

“Eddie Jr. is a boy's name. It’s a girl, dad.” She responded, sass laced in her voice.

“What happens if they end up being a boy, though. Remember we talked about this, it doesn’t matter we will love them the same.”

“I guess.” she attempted a smile. She was so adamant about a sister it wasn’t funny. Ever since her friend, Clara, told her she has a baby sister, it’s all Arwen wants. Of course it would be endearing to watch two little girls playing dress up and matching outfits but you also love the idea of a little rockstar or Eddie mini me.

“Well let’s go get dressed for the party!”

-

“Are you sure you’re not having twins?” Robin asked. You scoffed jokingly.

“Okay ouch, Buckley.” Clutching your stomach and turning away from her.

“They say the bigger you carry, the better chance it’s a boy. And a better chance I’m right!” She pointed at her “team boy” button Nancy passed out. You rolled your eyes.

“Glad you're here, Robin! We’ve missed you.” The banter ceased as you gave her a tight squeeze of a hug. Robin left Hawkins a few years ago to go “get a real life” as she puts it. You couldn’t help but notice how much she seems to make as many excuses for a visit. She misses home. And you all have missed her.

“If it’s not a girl, I am screwed because I lost the receipt,” Steve mumbled as he walked over to drop off his gift and grab a drink from the table.

“Just save it for the next Munson kid.” Robin remarked. “Or have your own.”

“Fair point.” He responds.

“Hi Steve, thank you for coming.” You gave your long-time friend a hug.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Munson. Wow it is weird calling you that. Still hasn’t settled.” He said.

“Hey, pretty boy!” Your husband wrapped his arm around Steve.

“Hey, man.” Steve returned the hug. “Congratulations on the baby. What do you think it is?”

“Little Eddie Jr. gonna be just like his old man.” Eddie shrugged before patting Steve’s shoulder and moving over to you. He wrapped his arms around you just like he did Steve but planted a kiss on your cheek.

“I-” you started.

“She doesn’t like the sound of Eddie Jr.” He answered for you.

“Still not sure on the names huh?” Dustin made his way into the conversation. The young kid with the pearly smile has grown up into a handsome young college graduate.

“It’s quite simple really. Robin if it's a girl and Buckley if it's a boy” Robin suggested.

“Why does she get her name honored like that?” Dustin scoffed. “I think I get some sort of acknowledgement toward a name. Thanks to me you're even together.”

“That is true… he was the one that made me apologize to you all those years ago and then you asked me out.” Eddie leaned into you.

“That’s not how that happened but okay.” You giggled.

“So Dustin if it’s a boy, right?” The curly haired graduate asked.

“Sure, kid.” Eddie messed with his hair like he did when he was in high school.

“We haven’t named our kids after any of you yet for this exact reason.” You added.

“What are you gonna do this time then? Aragon for a boy and Éowyn for a girl.” Dustin teased.

“It would keep with the Tolkien theme.” Steve nodded.

“Arwen got her name because Return of the King was the book she read to me while I was in the hospital. I joked that Arwen was a beautiful name and our daughter should be named that. There was a memory there.” Eddie explained.

“Still Tolkien.” Robin grabbed a cupcake off the table and took a bite causing her words to be mumbled, “What’s her middle name again?”

Arwen snuck into the conversation after hearing her name and leaned against her father who put his hands on her shoulder.

“What’s your middle name, Arwen?”

“Elodie” she said. “Like my grandma.” She smiled. Eddie smiled and kissed the top of her head.

“And you are beautiful just like her.” He responded.

Naming your daughter after Eddie’s mom brought a type of sentiment you didn’t realize Eddie had in his heart. He rarely spoke about his mom. You knew of his dad and the trouble it brought Eddie throughout his childhood but his mother’s mention was scarce. One day you asked Wayne about it. It was Wayne’s sister after all. He gave you a soft smile when you asked about her and told you how much she loved Eddie. She died when he was barely a teenager. That was when he was to live with his dad.

“She was always sick.” He’d say. “It never stopped her from showing up to all of Eddie’s events. First day of school, grade programs, his first talent show. But one day she got really sick and…” He would fade off. You knew what he was not saying. Later that day you’d ask Eddie to tell you about his mother and he finally was in a place to paint a picture for who this amazing woman was. Ever since then, it made so much sense why Eddie was the way he was with Arwen. It made sense why he would get extra precautious when you’d catch a cold or not feel well. Having Elodie as Arwen’s middle name meant so much to Eddie.

“Arwen Elodie Munson. That’s cute.”

“Okay Munson family, are you ready to find out if this baby is a boy or girl?” Nancy chimed, entering the backyard.

Eddie kept one hand on Arwen’s shoulder but moved his other to wrap around your waist. He gave your temple a quick kiss before patting your side. “You ready, sweetheart?”

You nodded. “You?”

“Always. Let’s go.” He let go and followed Nancy to where everyone was gathered. There waited Nancy’s husband, Jonathan, all the boys, El and Max, Joyce and Jim, your parents and Uncle Wayne.

Eddie squeezed you lightly and acknowledged everyone before saying a word.

“Thank you for coming, everyone. You all mean so much to us. I genuinely wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for all of you. Thank you for being there for me and my family. Man, we’re really getting old huh?” Eddie acknowledged your chosen family and looked back to you. “My wife is so strong and has helped me raise a beautiful and smart girl and I can’t wait to bring another baby into this world. Do you have anything you want to say?” He asks you.

“Thank you, love.” You responded. You looked out and it seemed the hormones suddenly hit because you felt tears begin to pour.

“You okay, mom?” Arwen asked, tugging your dress. A small laugh came out as you wiped your eyes.

“Yes, baby. I am just so thankful for all of you. You have loved me and my family and that is something that I am forever grateful for. This has been such a wild adventure and it’s only going to get better. Sorry,” you wiped a tear. “I blame hormones. Thank you everyone. Let’s find out what our baby is.” You laughed, getting a laugh from everyone else.

Nancy walked up to you with three confetti poppers. She gave your family the poppers and stood back. Eddie asked, “Alright final guesses?”

Everyone threw out guesses with a mixture of “A boy!”, “A girl!” “I don’t know!”.

“Arwen, when we countdown to 1, you're going to twist this at the bottom to send it off.” You showed her where to twist. She watched before holding hers to replicate you.

“Like this?” she asked, but she actually twisted it, causing the confetti popper to, well…

POP!

Shrieks came from all over but mainly Arwen who didn’t think she actually set it off. “I’M SOR- What?!?” she shrieked as she saw blue confetti fall around the three of them.

You were having a boy.

Eddie’s triumphant screams mixed with Arwen’s cries of disappointment was a sound you’d never forget. It made you want to laugh at the exact opposite reactions but you felt bad for Arwen. She was so excited for a little sister and her young brain couldn’t comprehend the fact it wasn’t something you could control.

The rest of your chosen family cheered, especially Robin who held her hand out to Steve waiting for him to pay her for winning their bet.

“It’s a boy!” Eddie stopped jumping around long enough to grab you and give you a big emotional kiss. You placed your hands over his and kissed him back with equal joy.

“It’s a boy” I say back, smiling. You hoped your son looked everything like your husband. His big brown eyes, his wife smile, even the curly hair that framed his face. Eddie was handsome and he was yours, it would be even more of a gift if your son came along to look just like him.

“I hope he gets your eyes,” Eddie says. You laugh as you were thinking the same thing toward him.

“Mom!” Arwen tugs onto your shirt, breaking the moment between you two.

“Yes baby?” you respond, leaning down as much as you can to her level.

“The baby is not a girl?” She pouted.

“No, it’s a boy. You’re going to have a baby brother! And hey,” You brushed her hair away from her face like you always do to comfort her. “You’re going to be the best big sister. Your baby brother is going to love you so much because you’re so cool.” You try to encourage her.

Finally, after a few moments of sulking, Arwen pulls out a small smile as she looks up at you. “Will he watch movies with me?” She asked.

It took everything out of you not to laugh at such an innocent question but of course you chuckled. “Of course, sweetie. He can watch all the movies with you.”

“I guess we can work it out.” She shrugs, trying to find a way to be excited.

“And, you get to go help me pick out boy clothes. You’re going to be my helper getting him dressed.”

“Dress up!!” Arwen perked. You nod. “Okay, baby brother.” She nods back, gleaming at her new older sister's duties.

Time seemed to freeze as you leaned back up and relaxed in Eddie’s arms. You just stood there taking in all the emotions that surrounded you. Personally, you didn’t care if your baby was a boy or a girl, you just wanted them to be healthy and loved. Clearly, your son was both of those things.

—————-

thanks for reading!!

series taglist: @geekmom3 @ruinedbythehobbit @dark-academia-slut

honorable tags I think would enjoy this story based on previous interaction (I love your comments on the last stories so hi ily): @aesthetic-lyssa @yodelingtea @wintermunsonreads @lovelyladymayyy

eddie munson taglist thread: @catpjimin @senthiasworld @foxsmvlder @a-lil-pr1ncess @cryuki-patootie