#also my girl fingon did his best is my point as well

[welcomingdisaster]

I think it's interesting how we judge the outcomes of the battles of Beleriand when the elves are up against a foe that, objectively speaking, cannot be defeated by elven might. Like, you can say the outcome of this battle or that battle might have been different, but it seems like there is no way to defeat Morgoth without drawing on the gods and also breaking the land itself.

I think there's a way that this turns questions of strategy into questions of honor. The question "how do we best defeat Morgoth?" has a very simple answer ("you don't"), and I think by the end of the first age most of the elves know that. So there's that feeling I get that the real questions of the latter battles are more along the lines of doing the right thing than doing a sensical thing. Is it more honorable to try to hold out for as long as possible against an unstoppable force, or to go out in a blaze of glory? Is it more honorable to retreat and save what men you can, or to rush in and die alongside your men who are being slaughtered?

[tanoraqui]

Re: resolving Celechwes with your preferred Gil-Galad parentage, (as I also am very fond of her now), why not just make the 3some ‘canon’ and have a) no children/no children survive, b) girl children c) have the child sail after the first age?

yes, I think I'll go with they just never got around to having a child for some reason - maybe it took them longer to get together, maybe it took them longer to figure out a stable threeway marriage bond and/or make a baby from it...and/or Maedhros had some tasty-I-mean-terrible sexual trauma from Angband that he'd been ignoring for centuries that they had to work out first...

But they did have the name "Ereinion" picked out, so when the bright young captain from Nargothrond whom people had started to call "Gil-galad" needed some political support, Lalwen - whom I like to think is the 1 Finwean sibling to fully survive Middle Earth - ...well, she just straight-up lied and told one of two people, "oh yes, that's Fingon's son, he was hidden as a child for his own safety. don't spread it about, though ;)"

I'd totally go with they had a daughter first, but I prefer to live in a world where elves don't gender their inheritance like that and the family trees are the way that they are due to some combination of coincidental prevalence of males and Professor Tolkien having sexism blinders on when he translated certain things. I just haven't settled quite on how I think it shakes out. (By which I mean: my desire headcanon that he assumed all "kings" to be male so we should just flip a coin to determine which of them actually are, VS my desire to enjoy fanworks without working around huge contradictory headcanons that developed just to spout a man from the 1950s.)

Alternately, this fic, which is the best non-human take on eldar genders I've seen. But the point remains that I can't have my preferred "Gil-galad was just some guy who stepped the fuck up" if Celechwes has the time and ability to beget a feud-settling heir for the Noldor.

[arlenianchronicles]

Hi!! :D I really liked the last post about Fëanorians because I had trouble imagining their personality and this helped a lot. ^^ I would love to see your Nolofinwëan headcanons ❤❤

Hello again! I’m so happy you liked my Fëanorian headcanon post and found it helpful! :D I understand it can be tough to imagine character personalities when there’s not much of them; I still have trouble imagining some of the Fëanorians haha ^^;;

I have a clearer image of the Nolofinwëans, so I’m excited to go into them XDD I’ll admit I did some projecting onto Fingon especially, but it’s mostly me projecting one of my OC’s personality/backstory onto him too. Tbh, this is more of a sketch of how I imagine Fingon’s childhood played out, so be warned that this post is a long one. I should also warn y’all that my headcanons for these guys aren’t very happy ^^;; I’ll put in a content warning for mentions of bullying and emotional abuse (mostly caused by the Fëanorians).

If you don’t like these headcanons and they don’t help, that’s totally okay! Lots of people have their own interpretations of these characters, so I’m sure there’s some that are much happier than mine ^^;; I’ll put everything under the “keep reading” tab so you don’t have to read mine if you change your mind. And I’ll also bold the main names like in my previous post; I hope it helps for search purposes, just in case.

Let’s start with Fingolfin. As a child in Finwë’s house, living with Fëanor and Findis, I imagine that Fëanor bullied him a lot. Why? Because Fëanor saw him as a threat, given that Fingolfin is the first-born son of Indis. I think that Findis, and later Írimë, wasn’t viewed with much suspicion by Fëanor because they’re girls (and I even headcanon that Fëanor might’ve had a soft spot for them). And once Finarfin comes along, Fëanor sees him as a wimp, someone who can’t do much to stop him. So Fingolfin is the main target.

Now, to be clear, I sympathize very much with child Fëanor when he’s just lost his mother and his father marries a stranger. This Fëanor is likely more grown-up, though I’m not sure how much; I feel deep down that his actions would be akin to emotional abuse, but that’s a heavy term and I’m not sure if this is a good point in the tale to use it ^^;; So for now, we’ll stick with bullying. Once Fëanor’s a full-fledged adult, then I think it’d classify as abuse. Please feel free to give me advice or clarity, if you want!

So back to Fingolfin. Because of all this happening, I imagine he grows up with self-esteem issues and stress, and some anxiety on the side. He'd believe Fëanor and think that he's not good enough to be Finwë's son, etc. Finwë thinks that Fëanor can't be wrong in anything, so Fëanor must be right about Fingolfin. At the same time, he still loves Fëanor as his brother and wishes for a return of that love. It might stem from a desire to please Finwë (y’know, showing that they can be a real family and that Fingolfin’s making an effort), but also, I imagine he admires Fëanor's confidence in public situations – and especially now that Fingolfin lacks confidence and trust in himself.

Also, if you’re wondering about Finwë, he only scolds Fëanor when he thinks his son is being a bit too harsh, but doesn't do anything for the root of the problem (nor does he know about what goes on away from his sight). Given that Fëanor is his favourite son, I doubt he’d really see his son’s actions, and if he does, he’d be in denial about them.

Despite all this, I've always imagined that Fingolfin grew up with a desire to help others. He's good at diplomatic talk and politics, but he's not good at defending himself from Fëanor, even after he becomes an adult. Fortunately, he moves out once he's older, and being away from Fëanor allows for improvement.

And then he meets Anairë. I envision her as very loving and kind, and nurturing. She supports Fingolfin as he gains more self-confidence. I also headcanon that she wears a gold circlet in her hair at times, while Fingolfin wears a gold crown, and these both inspire Fingon to wear gold in his hair.

On that note, let's talk about Fingon. Essentially, his childhood is somewhat similar to Fingolfin's. However, there's now the added stress of being caught between Fëanor and Fingolfin's houses. He wants to make his father proud and uphold their family name, but that’s a lot for his young shoulders to handle (nor did Fingolfin and Anairë ever pressure him). I also imagine that Fingon, when he was very young, witnessed how badly Fëanor treats Fingolfin – perhaps at a family gathering when the others have gone somewhere else, and Fingon's waiting for his father, hiding behind a pillar or wall etc. It'd be frightening for young Fingon to witness that, seeing someone whom he loves and upholds as a figure of strength be hurt so much, and it would increase his fear of Fëanor too.

But, lo and behold, he becomes friends with Maedros. I'm still not sure how they met, but in any case, Fingon is glad for Maedros' kindness and admires his ability to shoulder leadership responsibilities near easily, not to mention his ease in a public crowd. Fingon ends up visiting Maedros at Fëanor's house, where Fëanor and his other sons are. You can probably imagine how that'd turn out.

Fëanor sees Fingolfin as a threat, so Fingon is also a threat by extension. I don't think Fëanor would treat Fingon with quite the same intensity, but it'd still be some form of emotional abuse. Fingon would be deeply affected by it; his own confidence would go down, and he’d think that he’s not worthy to be Fingolfin’s son or a prince of the Noldor. And let’s not get started on Fëanor’s sons (but yes, let’s).

As I mentioned in my Fëanorian headcanons post, his sons bully Fingon both out of jealousy (because Fingon is Maedros’ favourite) and anger and to get Fëanor’s approval. I imagine mainly Celegorm, Curufin, and Caranthir doing this; Amrod and Amras might take part at times (following their father and brothers’ example), but are also uncertain of whether it’s a good idea or not. Maglor probably turns a blind eye since he’s too busy perfecting his music.

Maedros would, of course, scold them for being harsh, but that doesn't solve the root of the problem. Nor does he know of how far back the hurt goes. And I think Fingon would be afraid to tell him of what’s really going on because Maedros loves his family a lot. Fingon fears that, if he told him, Maedros would get upset and possibly resent Fingon, and he might not want to be friends anymore. And Fingon doesn't want that. All in all, it’s all very emotionally exhausting, and I think that Fingon would have some crying sessions to himself, since those can be quite cathartic.

Fingolfin doesn't know what’s going on at first either; I think he’d expect that Fingon would be safe with Maedros. But then he ends up recognizing Fingon’s behaviour and how similar it is to what he had, and he asks Fingon about it one day, and Fingon breaks down and tells him everything. Fingolfin comforts him, of course, and tells him not to listen to what the Fëanorians say, and even shares his own experiences so that Fingon knows he isn’t alone. And Fingon doesn't feel alone anymore. Fingolfin becomes his greatest supporter hereafter.

But boy oh boy, now Fingolfin is furious. This is when I imagine his ferocity comes up; he goes to Fëanor and confronts him about it, and Fëanor is startled by Fingolfin’s fierce side since he’s never seen it before. You can think of it as something similar to my painting of angry Fingon, if you like XDD And this is where Fingolfin shows that he is capable of defending others, if not himself. He is fully prepared to protect Fingon however he needs to. And after this, I think Maedros would have to come over to Fingolfin’s house, since Fingon isn’t about to go over to Fëanor’s house and be bullied more (nor would Fingolfin allow it).

(As a side note, Fingolfin showing his fierce side doesn't really help with regard to Fëanor’s suspicions. In fact, it may even increase them a bit, if not a lot.)

Like Fingolfin, I headcanon that Fingon grows up to be good at diplomacy and stuff, but he is also kind and compassionate, quiet and solemn. And also aroace, since I go with the version of canon where he doesn't marry and has no children. I’m sure he’d be a good partner, but all this in consideration, he’d worry about not being good enough as a father, and he wouldn’t want to put his child through the same pain that he and Fingolfin went through. His family’s well-being is his priority, and he loves them dearly. And on that note (if y’all are still reading this ^^;;), let’s bring in Turgon and Aredhel :D

So Fingon has some siblings now! He loves them so much he thinks his heart will burst. It’s only until there’s a family gathering, and Turgon encounters Fëanor’s sons, that Fingon realizes his duty to protect his little brother from suffering the same hurts as Fingon did. In fact, he gets angry when one of the Fëanorians – Celegorm still seems the likeliest one to me, or Curufin loll – insult Turgon, or something like that. And just like Fingolfin, one of Fingon’s strengths is to defend others (even if he’s still not confident enough to defend himself). Because of Fingon’s protection and the combined family nurturing, Turgon grows up stern and confident and with a firm dislike of the Fëanorians. As canon says, he becomes good friends with Finrod (gosh I haven’t even started thinking of headcanons for the Arafinweans aaahhh). I also think of him as a very good architect with excellent visualization. And, of course, he loves his elder brother like no other :’’’)

Aredhel, on the other hand, befriends Celegorm and Curufin (as said in the Silmarillion). How did that happen, you ask? I’m not so sure myself lmao The best idea I have so far is that the two brothers thought her fierceness and spunk impressive for a Nolofinwëan, and they found that she was more risk-taking and no-nonsense than they gave her credit for. As for her, she wants to explore and hunt and be a badass, and it seems that she can learn to do some, if not all, of those things by being with them. And yet I also headcanon that Aredhel adores Fingon as her older brother, so how does this dynamic play out?

An example I have is a little scenario that I thought up; in her youth, Aredhel overhears Celegorm talking crap about Fingon, and gets angry with him. She says she’ll never speak to him again unless he apologizes, but he’s not about to. So she goes to Fingon and tells him. Essentially, he says that he’ll be alright and she doesn't have to worry (he’s not brave enough to defend himself, but he’ll defend her if Celegorm spoke ill of her). Eventually, Celegorm does apologize to Aredhel about it, but it’s not genuine (something like those “I’m sorry I made you feel that way” apologies). She accepts the apology anyway, even though he technically didn’t do her any wrong. This is because she genuinely wants to be his friend, and if she did notice that it wasn’t genuine, she denies it because she wants to believe it was.

I think she becomes more aware of what’s going on between Fëanor and Fingolfin’s houses, but she still wants to keep the connection between Fëanor’s sons and herself. I haven’t really developed that far into her relation with them yet, just her and her family ^^;;

Finally we have Argon. He’s the youngest of the siblings, and at this point there’d be an age gap between him and Fingon. Since Fingon’s settling in his duty as a prince and doing princely things (alongside spending time with his friends and all), I’d imagine he’s not able to keep as good an eye on Argon as he did with Turgon and Aredhel. Nevertheless, he forms the closest bond with Argon due to the shared emotional exhaustion they experience; I headcanon that Argon is deeply affected by the tensions and stress between Fëanor and Fingolfin’s house, and it takes a toll on him as a young child. So he gets some social anxiety and is afraid of large crowds, but when big brother Fingon is with him, he feels a little braver.

And there we are! My headcanons for the Nolofinwëans, as requested :) I might’ve forgotten something, but for now, this is all I have. Thank you for reading this far, if you did!! It was super long, and I’m sorry to have bored anyone ^^;; I actually thought about writing a fic of Fingon’s childhood, but I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon hahaa Thanks again for messaging me anon, and I hope you have a good day/night! <333

[ambarto]

Finwean Ladies Week Day Two: Lalwen

Headcanons again today, and this time I’d like to talk about my headcanons for Lalwen, which I think I have mentioned a little in the past but what better occasion than @finweanladiesweek to ramble about all my thoughts. I can tell you Lalwen is definitely one of my favorite characters to think about.

Lalwen was what we could call a biologist. She was fascinated with animals, and in particular with all the kinds of bugs, spiders, and various little creatures that crawl on the ground. She liked other animals too, although still of the small kind, and usually animals most people don’t overly like (think lizards, snakes, that kind of stuff). She maintained that those small and often unseen parts of the ecosystem were much more fascinating than the macroscopic world of large mammals and birds. She described many species, and while animals were her favorite field of study, she was also the first in Valinor to posit that mushrooms were not plants, which was a rather controversial statement at the time.

Out of all her siblings, she was the one who got along the best with Feanor. She was quick to brush off any unkind words he might say, and had a sharp enough tongue to put him back in his place. She actually rather enjoyed talking with him, as he was also a scholar, and could keep up with her discussions of the efficiency of spiderwebs even if it wasn’t really his field of study.

Regarding her other siblings, Lalwen’s favorite was Fingolfin. They argued a lot, but it was usually the kind of sibling spats that got forgotten quickly. He was always the most willing to engage with Lalwen’s interests, and to go with her on rides exploring Valinor. Findis and Finarfin, on the other hand, both had a fairly different temperament than Lalwen, and different interests too. While all four siblings loved each other, usually Findis and Finarfin stuck in one corner talking about one thing, while Fingolfin and Lalwen sat in another talking about something else.

Despite being a Princess, Lalwen’s presence in the politics of Valinor was almost non-existent. She learnt early on that all the occurrences of court didn’t interest her, and if she could avoid being present at any given occasion she did. Findis used to scold her sister much for this, calling her irresponsible, as she thought as members of the royal house it was their duty to engage with politics. Fingolfin, on the other hand, usually enabled his younger sister, thinking that there was no need for her to be as involved as the rest of their family.

Lalwen was always, and especially in her youth, a very restless spirit. Already as a child she was the kind of kid who was always outside and running around, and would hate having to be in the house for an entire day. Growing, she became that sort of girl who her parents almost never saw, so much she spent with her friends, and partying, and going on trips. And since she was old enough to travel on her own, she would so often take her horse and leave Tirion for days or weeks, or sometimes months too, to explore all there was to see in Valinor. It was because of this restlessness that she followed Fingolfin out of Valinor - the idea of an entire other continent she had never seen before was too big a temptation for her to stay behind, no matter how much her mother begged.

In Beleriand, she never had a land to rule over, because she never had any interest in ruling. Not only the various details and politics involved were things she had no interest into, but governing would also mean that she’d have to spend most of her time still in one place. For the most part, she made herself a home in Fingolfin’s lands, but would often travel around. It actually made her brother worry himself sick, as Lalwen had the tendency of leaving whenever and without sending letters or word of where she was, until six months later she would write him saying that she was staying in Himring for a while and also did Fingolfin know about this cool worm she had found?

She survived the Dagor Bragollach, but not easily. She was wounded on the field, and was carried out unconscious as Fingolfin’s forces retreated. She lost her hearing in one ear, and one of her legs was wounded in a way that left her with a heavy limp. The impaired mobility in particular wasn’t easy for her to deal with, as it made traveling so much harder. Not that she had much wish to entertain herself, not right after her brother had been killed. She remained in Fingon’s lands until the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, at which point she instead moved to the Falas with Cirdan, and later followed him to Balar. While she couldn’t fight on a battlefield, she had developed a great knowledge of poisons thanks to her studies on various venomous animals, and she helped develop cures for many of the poisons Morgoth used in his weapons.

After the War of Wrath, Lalwen decided she wouldn’t stay in Lindon under Gil-Galad. Part of the reason was that by then she had seen so many of her loved ones die that it brought her genuine pain to be around Gil-Galad and remember that he was almost all the family she had left, let alone have people call her ‘Princess’, as if the title meant anything by then. There was a loneliness in Lindon that could only be cured by being more alone, or at least, not with people who would constantly remind her of everything she had lost. But also, Lalwen’s desire to explore had never really stopped, and by then she had learnt how to deal with her disability, so she took a horse, and left.

Eventually, after much traveling, she realized that she was turning into an old lady, as Men said. She had traveled through all of Middle Earth, much of Harad, and had even decided to go look if she could Cuivienen a couple times, and she was growing tired of always being moving around. When she was a girl, that would have been the ideal, but after many thousands of years Lalwen found herself wishing to find a place to settle in. Not to mean that she would never travel again, just that she would have liked to have a nice house to go back to and rest, and know that there were people she knew waiting for her there. That being said, she also still wanted nothing to do with politics, not to mention that everyone else seemed to be handling things well, and she didn’t feel the need to upset any political balance with her reappearance. In the end, she decided to settle in Greenwood at some point during the Third Age. She did come clear to Thranduil about who she was, and he allowed her to stay so long as she did not cause trouble, which was alright by her. Other than him, very few people knew or suspected who the eccentric Noldo with a cane and a lot of opinions about taxonomical classifications was.

Lalwen had had through her life many romantic stories and affairs, and definitely more than many would deem appropriate for a Princess. With some Elven ladies, occasionally she’d fell in the bed of a mortal, and maybe once or twice in that of a Dwarf. The longer she lived the more she found old Valinorean ideas on marriage and courtship and so on rather stuffy. That being said, she had never really ruled out a wedding altogether, and the day she realized a Silvan hunter of Greenwood was starting to mean a lot to her, she decided maybe she was old enough to leave her amorous adventures behind and get herself a wife. Fortunately, her lady didn’t mind finding out that Lalwen was a mostly forgotten Noldor Princess, and Lalwen’s proposal was accepted with enthusiasm.

Eventually, Lalwen sailed back to the West with the Last Ship, together with Cirdan and Celeborn. She had seen as much of Middle Earth as there was to see, and while she did love the land, she had long since started thinking back about her homeland. Her wife, while not Eldar, had also started to get weary of a land that was more and more mortal and less and less suited for Elves, and decided that like many others of her people she also would have liked to follow the gulls.

Now, Findis, firstborn of Finwe and Indis, Princess of the Noldor, sister to the High King Arafinwe, known poet and debater, was as a general rule against violence, but when she saw her sister hop off a ship after six thousands years of no contact with a wife and apparently uncaring of having basically disappeared, her fist might have just happened to collide with Lalwen’s nose.

[femslashrevolution]

On the Beauty of Women: Becoming a Femslash Author

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

I was well into a decade of writing Silmarillion fan fiction before I became a femslash author. For years, I supported femslash–my archive, the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild, had signed on as an official participant for the International Day of Femslash beginning in 2008, and in the interest of civic spirit, I had occasionally written something for it–but it would be another five years before I would identify myself as a femslash author.

My excuses were myriad. I was straight and married–not only married but happilymarried to my high-school sweetheart. And the Tolkien fandom was conservative. When I joined the fandom in 2005, slash was controversial, and femslash was nonexistent. Slash writers tended toward their own sites and communities where they were safe from incessant objections to their stories: homophobia disguised as canon. These fans wanted to celebrate, share, and squee over Tolkien’s world just like the rest of us, and I do not blame them for avoiding the unremitting criticisms they endured in many mainstream fandom spaces, but their absence from my experience meant that I lacked models, inspiration, the impetus to see Tolkien’s world as a more diverse place than my heteronormative interpretation had heretofore allowed.

These were my excuses.

The truth is that I struggled to see the same value in women’s stories that I saw in the stories of men. I struggled to find their stories worth my time to tell them. I struggled to see their beauty.

And I struggled to see all of these things in myself.

I was the kind of woman who was always more comfortable with men than with other women. I can trace back the reasons. I was tormented by my peers in elementary school, and that torment came almost entirely from the girls in my class. I found much more acceptance from the boys. I had a group of girlfriends in the eighth grade, but those relationships were stretched to the breaking point when I opted to attend a magnet school for math, science, and computer science rather than my home high school. One of those girlfriends went with me to that school, and when I began dating the boy who would one day become my husband at the end of our ninth-grade year, our friendship was unable to weather the balance I couldn’t achieve between my best friend and my new boyfriend. From that point forward, my closest friends were almost always men.

I was the only girl from my high school to go to the university I attended for undergrad, but several boys went, and we remained friends. I worked as a cook in a family restaurant through university, in the kitchen subculture that was hypermasculine: foul-mouthed and physically grueling. I was proud of my ability to lift cases of fries and ice cream or deep fryers full of scorching-hot oil, just as well as any man, and I rebuked anyone who suggested otherwise. After graduation, I went to work as a statistician for a law enforcement unit; there were never more than two women working there besides me during my six years there. One of them had been the first woman allowed into the state police academy; feminineness was stricken to signal equality. When I became a teacher–traditionally a woman’s profession and one where nurturance is assumed prerequisite–I accepted a position at an alternative high school for boys with emotional and behavioral disabilities. It was a hands-on school staffed almost entirely by men; I was taught to break up fights and restrain young men who were sometimes twice my size. And I did. Many women stood aside from the physical encounters our job occasionally produced. I started weight training to minimize my chance of injury. I wasn’t invited to happy hours by my few female colleagues, but I earned cred among my male colleagues for being fearless and a reputation for sharp-tongued ribbing liberally sprinkled with four-letter words of Anglo-Saxon origin.

I considered myself a feminist but not particularly feminine, and I never noticed the dissonance in that. To be equal was to be invited to the same playing field as men; it was not recognition that maybe the rules of the game themselves were all wrong.

Fandom began to change that.

Less than 4 percent of the Tolkien fan fiction community identifies itself as male. When I began my fanfic career as a solidly genfic writer, I developed deep female friendships for the first time since I was a young teenager. My fandom friends were incisive and brilliant, opinionated, and strong-willed–and they were also generous and warm and compassionate and unabashedly women: as seemingly unafraid of being tender or sexual as they were to immerse themselves in the textual minutia of a male-dominated geek culture.

Because there was that too: geek culture and fandom was often male-dominated–even aggressively masculine–in its mainstream form. But then there was fan fiction: This room of our own that we’d carved for ourselves out of the larger fandom. While men argued on forums over whether Balrogs had wings and computed the sizes of the various armies of Middle-earth, we wrote Maedhros and Fingon–two of the most battle-blooded characters of The Silmarillion–in tender love with each other and reverse-engineered their deeds to prove that love as canonical. Where Tolkien turned his attention to the colonialist business of conquest and settlements and battles, we turned our attentions to the friendship, families, sex lives, social customs, and everyday existences of characters the books rarely showed without a sword in hand. When Tolkien dismissed a character’s actions under easy explanations like “pride” or “heroism,” we delved deep into the minds of people–human beings–capable of such acts and plumbed out the motives and the rationalizations and the pain of those acts. And we wrote those stories for each other, for none of the rewards–money, influence, fame–that the world of men had told us signaled our worth.

We were widely dismissed by many in the Tolkien fandom and, of course, the male-dominated, capitalist business of mainstream publishing. Our writing was dismissed as escapism and wish fulfillment, and we were accused of wanting to change ourselves and change men from our (and their) supposedly inherent natures, for we weren’t so beautiful and so brave, and men didn’t love as we imagined they did. No one ever considered that we weren’t trying to change ourselves or men as much as we were trying to change the world.

Writing slash began for me as a political act. Although I began as a genfic writer–one who once professed to “not get slash”–I got it quickly enough and read it from time to time and once even wrote a Maedhros/Fingon story for a friend. But I didn’t become a slash writer until my sister invited me to lunch one day and told me that she was bisexual, she was leaving her fiancé, and she was in love with a British woman she’d met online.

If writing fan fiction is supposed to be escapism, then why was it the only way I found to make sense of where I suddenly found myself? I’d always supported LGBTQA+ people in the vague, detached way of someone doing her duty as a good progressive but who has no skin in the game. I am not proud of that, but in my university years, I cared more about injustice against animals than against LGBTQA+ people. But in the midst of the Bush II years, sitting opposite my sister in that restaurant, suddenly that administration’s attacks on LGBTQA+ people wasn’t an abstraction; now it was my family, people I loved, who were suffering. If my sister’s relationship worked out–and it did; they’ve been married more than ten years now–that meant that I would lose one of my best friends to the bigoted laws of my country that would sooner drive one of its own daughters from its shores than to accept the woman she soon after made her wife. My body didn’t seem big enough to hold my rage.

A friend dared me to write a PWP of Fëanor/Erestor, two characters who appear thousands of years apart in the canon. She knew I didn’t write slash, but she was a good enough friend to shove me into unfamiliar waters and trust that, as I flailed and bobbed along on the waves, I wouldn’t accuse her of trying to drown me. I wrote a novel in response. I remember it bleeding from me, from some angry, wounded place, in gouts of words. It remains one of the finest stories I’ve ever written.

But it was M/M, not F/F. In retrospect, I wonder at this, that I would choose to unknot the conflict between my love for my motherland and that nation’s cruel disregard for my sister by writing a novel about the love between two men. Of course, there was the convenience of my friend’s challenge to me, and there was the fact that, in the Tolkien fandom, femslash didn’t really exist yet. I could probably count on one hand the number of femslash stories I’d seen before that point. There was the fact that I still hadn’t learned to value the stories of women, despite being a woman myself in a community of women, representing in my writing a distinctly feminine worldview (although I didn’t yet recognize the latter).

At that point in my life, I still lacked woman friends in my offline life. I still took pride in my characteristics that marked me as masculine and dismissed or downplayed those that marked me as feminine. I thought of the former as strong and the latter as week. I still believed that what I wrote was a fantasy: not what the world was like at all.

Becoming a femslash writer was likewise a political act.

But it was subtler in how it happened. There was no provocation, no epiphany, no angry hemorrhage of emotion. Becoming a femslash writer was not a statement–as my becoming a slash writer had been–and more a slow evolution, shaped by fandom, by the women I admired and loved in that community, and by my art. It was an awakening to the fact that I wanted to use my art to express that women are beautiful and the world we, as women, have the potential to make is also beautiful.

It wasn’t fandom alone that provoked this realization. In my work with disadvantaged, emotionally disabled young men, I was physically strong, I was fearless, I broke up fights, I expanded my repertoire of swear words, and I was unflinching (even when I was scared). Yet none of those reasons were why I was successful with those students.

These young men suffered for a lack of love: often abandoned by their families, cast adrift in a careless succession of foster and group homes, shuffled from one school to another that didn’t want them, affixed with labels to justify the isolation and injustice to which they were subjected. And I imagined myself full of so much love to give them. There were days that I could feel it pushing to be free of the bounds of me. “The love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay,” I would say to myself. “Love isn’t love till it’s given away.” This wasn’t masculine, that claimed that they needed to be shoved and squeezed into the expectations of our society. This was feminine, that sought to understand, to love, to heal.

I began to realize my power, and it didn’t lie in my impersonation of masculinity.

The world of women is beautiful. It is a world of compassion and understanding. It is just. It does not make pecking orders; it does not lock horns. I began to understand that, for me, feminism was not only access to the same playing field as men but the power to change the rules of the game. To say that conflict, competition, warfare, and strife were not the only ways by which the world could be governed. To insist that acceptance, love, justice, and peace deserved equal consideration, and that as feminists, we must lay aside our conviction that the way men have done things for all these thousands of years is superior and advocate for a better way.

If fan fiction is wish fulfillment, then this is a wish that could only be fulfilled in its entirety through femslash. As I have been told by more than one man explaining to me why Tolkien wasn’t sexist, there are so few women in his books because they are books about war. And war is the province of men. Fair enough. Then to fulfill my wish of imagining a world without war, then I must also imagine a world with women at its center. For even in the gentlest of slash fanfics about Tolkien’s characters, the hands that caress so tenderly know or will know the stains of blood. They will become toughened by spear and sword. The minds that love will turn also upon plans of treachery and war; the hearts capable of passion and devotion can be hardened also against mercy and compassion. Even in the prelapsarian innocence of Valinor, their love is shadowed by what they will–what they can–become in the world of men.

But not the women. The Silmarillion is a posthumously published prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where the Elves are brought by the godlike Valar to inhabit an “deathless realm,” isolated behind impassable mountains and illuminated only by the light of two sacred trees. When one of the Valar rebels and destroys the Two Trees, plunging the land into darkness and murdering one of the Elven kings as he goes, the son of the slain king swears vengeance and pursuit of his father’s killer into Middle-earth. But Tolkien’s Elven women largely rejected the flight to Aman, which in The Silmarillion was preceded by an attack by the armed and armored Noldor upon the Teleri, who wielded only light bows, after the Teleri would not give up their ships to the Noldor. And even though these women are possessed of little more than names and a place in a family tree populated almost entirely by men, Tolkien bothered nonetheless to explain one woman’s motive for remaining: “Fingolfin’s wife Anairë refused to leave Aman, largely because of her friendship with Eärwen wife of Arafinwë … though she was a Noldo and not one of the Teleri.”

This obscure line about two women barely characterized would become the canonical basis for my femslash OTP, but more importantly, it would define the world of my fantasy. What woman would forsake her husband and her children for a friendship? One guided by compassion for the stricken; one whose sense of justice will not allow her to condone a journey–however just in and of itself–that was inaugurated with an act of violence. One with little interest in conquest or vengeance. One who believed in a world that could be founded upon love and justice and knew that the bloodshed perpetuated by the Noldor upon the Teleri had no place in that world. In The Silmarillion, one of the Valar curses the departing Elves–“tears unnumbered ye shall shed,” he forewarns–but though accurate in his prescience, we need not blame the curse: We need only to look at the world built by men, where violence multiplies in the ways of the proverbial Hydra’s heads. Their world is our world, and I dream of something better.

In one of my earliest stories, Anairë and Eärwen coordinate the governance of their people whose kings have chosen exile after their land was deprived of light. In later stories, these women became lovers in their youth and pillars in each other’s lives as they navigated their roles in the Eldarin monarchy, became wives and mothers in accordance with duty and tradition, and resisted the division of their people. They are keepers of a vision of the paradaisical realm of Aman that is neither that of the autocratic Valar nor the power-lusting Noldor but a distinctly feminine vision that seeks to heal and progress.

My feminism has changed; my view of women–and of myself–has changed.

I used to imagine that gaggles of women were inherently frivolous and that I’d be unwelcome by default because I wasn’t interested in babies, mani-pedis, or shopping. I was a loner or a friend of men. My fandom friends taught me differently, and I began to open my heart to–even to seek–friendships with the women in my life.

If my stories are a vision of what it means to be human, then writing femslash freed me from the idea that every story worth telling was a precursor and an explanation for a future violent act, or a reaction of the heart against inhumanity. My femslash stories let me explore a world untouched by war (though not violence or injustice), where the conflicts were centered on love and justice. They kindled in my mind possibilities I’d never imagined in our own world.

Writing always awakens me to what is important. Fan fiction made me realize that I wanted nothing more than to teach the love of words to young people, especially underprivileged young people. Now my work as an author has convinced me that I must be an active artificer of the world I hope to see, which is very different from the world I have.

Three weeks ago, I journeyed with a dozen other women on a twelve-hour overnight bus journey from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom to the Women’s March on Washington. I was new to Vermont–a flatlander–but they accepted and welcomed me. We shared toothpaste and wine on the bus; we held hands when the crowds thickened and threatened to separate us; we stood in the middle of the sidewalk with signs held high, calling like crows until we located anyone separated from the group. We watched out for and took care of each other in the midst of an event that was physically and emotionally overwhelming: not only the crush of a record crowd but the sudden manifestation of a movement inspired by many of our ideals.

We weren’t even back for a few hours before we were planning our next steps. Our first meeting was standing-room only and opened with a series of swift commitments: inclusiveness to all who wanted to join and an approach that sought common ground and resisted partisan dogma. In the midst of the meeting, I realized how happy I was to be there, building this world by women.

About the Author

Dawn is an author and archivist in the Tolkien fandom. She is the founder of the

Silmarillion Writers’ Guild

and moderates on the

Many Paths to Tread

archive and for

Back to Middle-earth Month

. Sometimes she gets dressed up fancy and presents at Tolkien conferences. Dawn is a Vermont teacher and activist with big dreams of raising milk goats, living off-the-grid, and changing the world.

[ambarto]

Headcanons for Maglor’s and Curufinwe’s wives

Don’t you guys just love how so many of “canon” female characters in the Silm end up being basically your own OCs? Anyways, pretty much what it says on the tin, my Feanorian wives OCs. A little bit of these headcanons are in my fic Much, more, less, nothing already, but I’m gonna expand on pretty much whatever my thoughts are. Very long post under the cut (and I sure hope the cut is working because if it isn’t this is gonna be long to scroll through).

Maglor’s wife - Vílerë

- The name for this girl is my own probably kinda sloppy work. I found in some Quenya dictionaries the word “vílë” which means “gentle breeze”, and it fit perfectly within my vision of her. The ending -rë is feminine and can denote an agental meaning, making the name mean “[girl] who makes a gentle breeze”, or something along those lines. I want to point out I have never studied Quenya at all and so this goes off entirely on various dictionaries I’ve been through.

- Vílerë is the girl’s mother-name, and it refers to two things. The first, is that she was born with very weak vocal chords, meaning her voice always sounds barely louder than a whisper. The second, is that she is also a very skilled flute player.

- Her parents are Noldor, but her grandmother is Teleri. Vílerë’s eyes are dark brown, which comes from her Teleri grandmother. Her hair is black, and she wears it long and plainly braided. Her skin is a light brown color. She’s not considered exceptionally beautiful, but not ugly, either. By Noldor standards, she’s cute, but in a little plain way, and a little on the shorter side.

- She’s a quiet girl, she doesn’t speak much. Partially it’s because of her voice, but it’s mostly just her personality. She doesn’t like drawing attention to herself, and she prefers being alone or with a few good friends rather than in the middle of a crowd. Because of this, she also doesn’t play her flute a lot in public, although she is known for being one of the best players and her music is loved by anyone who hears it. With those who know her, she’s kind and sweet, full of smiles and with a sharp wit you would not guess at first.

- While quiet and introverted, she’s got a strong will, and she will let people clearly if there is something that displeases her. She picks her words carefully, and if angry she’s good at getting her point across in the most cutting ways.

- She and Maglor met through music, and spent a great deal of time playing and composing together. She understood his more introspective moments better than most others, and she was drawn to his more caring side. She was good at getting him out of any bad mood and at humoring him when he got involved in some kind of musical competition with others; and he in turn helped her get out of her shell a little, but never tried to force her to come out on the spotlights with him. She took a liking to him from the start, although she sometimes rolled her eyes when his Feanorian pride showed through a bit too much.

- While still deeply in love, she did not follow him in exile. She did not agree with the Kinslaying, especially being part Teleri herself, and thought that it was absurd to do all of this just because of some rocks, no matter how beautiful they were. She didn’t want to leave her husband, and was also quite curious to see what was on the other side of the sea, but in the end she stayed in Valinor with her family.

- Other than music, she also enjoyed poetry and theatre. She had an appreciation for painting, but she never really learnt how to do it, and was more content with just looking at art rather than creating it. She also knew a bit about woodworking, because it was her parents’ profession, but she never really liked it. She enjoyed traveling too, and seeing new landscapes, and after marrying Maglor took her around to see all the cool places he had been to with his father and brothers.

- Some people had to say about her and Maglor marrying, because Vílerë lived in a village outside of Tirion and her family was one of the common folk. Some particularly vicious ones also complained that she didn’t look beautiful enough, but they had all learnt very well to not badmouth the beauty of the wife of someone of Feanor’s line. She was honestly more annoyed by receiving all that attention than by the negative comments in themselves, because she hated the positive attention too.

- She has one younger sister, who married before her and had two children. Vílerë herself married late in life compared to the average, although she was still a couple centuries younger than her husband. Out of her in-laws, the people she got along with better were Maedhros and Nerdanel, and she also was on friendly terms with Fingon and Finrod. While she did not have any quarrels with Feanor or with Maglor’s more outgoing brothers, she did find them exhausting in the long run, and better dealt with in small doses.

- While she grew to resent the Valar, although not as strongly as her husband’s family, when she was younger she liked to spend time in Lorien, and the quiet presence of Irmo and Este.

Curufin’s wife - Vanien

- Her name I took from RealElvish.net because I got lazy, although for some reason it’s not listed there anymore? For some reason? The closest it lists are Vanie and Vaniel, idk why they got rid of the specific one I used. Just my luck. Anyways, Vanien comes from “vane”, which means “fair or beautiful”.

- Her name says all about how she looks. She is the picture of Noldor standards of beauty. She has black hair and strikingly blue eyes, her skin is pale, and her facial features look like they could be put on a statue. She’s the kind of woman who could compete in Tirion Next Top Model, if they had it.

- Her family is entirely Noldor, going back all the way to Cuivienen, and fairly respected. They’re not nobles, but her parents are very good healers, which in Valinor mostly meant they were spectacular surgeons who could fix any idiot who had gotten attacked by a wild boar or something of the sorts. She was herself a healer, and very skilled.

- She and Curufin met though work as well. She had been developing a theory that perhaps one could enchant jewelry to give it properties that would make healing and recovery faster, and she had decided to go look for a good smith who could help her with it. It turned out making that kind of magical jewelry was extremely difficult, but she did get a husband out of the deal.

- She’s a city girl and at ease in the middle of the hustle of Tirion. She’s got a charming smile and she’s an excellent conversationalist. She’s a good girl, but she’s also got a rather competitive and petty streak, and if someone pisses her off she will get herself a nice revenge. Nothing truly bad, of course, but she’s not above turning her husband’s hair green if he acts too annoying. She’s more mischievous than harmful, however.

- Her main flaw is probably that she is a bit vain. She’s very aware of her beauty, and will do her best to flaunt it. She has excellent taste in fashion and hairstyles, and a husband who can craft her some of the most amazing jewelry one could think of. If she goes to a party, one can bet she’ll make sure to be the most breath stoppingly beautiful person in the room.

- She’s more outgoing than her husband, but she doesn’t mind that he sometimes ends up working on a project for days on end, although it does annoy her, as a wife and a healer, how he sometimes ends up forgetting to eat and rest. He often looks for her input when coming up with a design for something. Bitching about people who annoyed them is a bonding activity for them, but of course not their only topic of conversation. They like to go out on rides together, either along or with Curufin’s family. They are both ridiculously proud spouses, Vanien is extremely proud of her handsome, clever, and talented husband, and Curufin is extremely proud of his beautiful, smart, and talented wife. They’re also a good match when it comes to being stubborn.

- Celebrimbor is the only son they had, because Vanien struggled to get pregnant and carry the child to term. Sadly ironical, for a healer, and she was very protective of her son once he was born. She was a caring mother, and the kind who likes to cheer her brooding son by tickling him until he’s out of whatever tantrum he was throwing.

- Officially, it’s said Curufin’s wife stayed in Valinor, but I like to think that she came to Beleriand with him and Celebrimbor. She was a headstrong woman, who had her husband’s resentment towards the Valar and almost enough pride to match him. She did not directly participate in the Kinslaying, but cured the Noldor who had been wounded in it, and got on the ships with her family. Unfortunately, she ended up being killed in the Dagor-nuin-Giliath, and because of her rebellion she was held in Mandos until after the end of the First Age.

- She gets along well with most of Curufin’s family, especially Celegorm and the Ambarussa, and bonded with Feanor by answering all his questions about the body as well as she could. She became good friends with Aredhel, too.