#cannot wait for someone to accuse me of being -phobic when I am part of the aspec community myself

[frisbee-equine]

I am once again exhaustedly begging aro people on Tumblr to stop using their identity as a cudgel in what is essentially fandom drama and shipping bullshit, because for the last goddamned time, fandom having a focus on shipping is *not* amatonormativity and arophobia. It is AT BEST a symptom of societal amatonormativity and arophobia, in the same way that M/M being more prevalent than F/F can be a symptom of societal misogyny, but someone wanting two fictional characters to engage in romance and not a platonic relationship is not directly fucking oppressing you.

In fact, it waters down the actual meanings of said words and oppression. You are, again, at best making aspec people look obnoxious and like they don't have real problems if this is the most "dire" thing to complain about, at worst just spouting off homophobia in a rainbow-colored wrapper.

You know what's actually amatonormativity and arophobia? Society explicitly being organized in such a way that aspec people would be better off legally, financially, and even socially if they were in romantic relationships. That people who prefer not to be in relationships (or "worse," those who might only be interested in sexual relationships, i.e. aroallos) clearly have something wrong with them mentally or emotionally that should make them be avoided and warned about like some kind of predator.

And a healthy dash of cishetero-patriarchial misogyny on top with the implication that aspec women in particular need to "settle down" and be a Good Wife™️ to some cishet man, that their orientation is something that can and should be fixed.

It is not fucking some rando going "I think these two fictional characters should kiss and fuck nasty."

[garden-ghoul]

Well it’s time for Aldarion and Erendis

“the mariner’s rewife song”

this story starts out with a guy I vaguely remember, named meneldur. no, wait, maybe that meneldur was the FATHER of elendil, not the son of elendil, because the other elendil was definitely like the 23rd king of numenor and this guy is the 4th king... needless to say, I’m starting this one off strong by getting pissed off at mr johnald rolkien again.

well meneldur is special, because he Hates Doing Anything and also instead of being gay for the sea like the rest of the edain he is instead gay for the sky. it also says his wife was a woman of great beauty, which I am getting really tired of. I’m not sure we’ve had really ANY women who were not of great beauty. I love women as much as you, johnald, but where are the ugly women? who are still cool and awesome? did you HAVE to make, for instance, morwen beautiful? anyway aldarion the titular is one of meneldur’s sons. he also has the tar- prefix, which I think is like... specifically to differentiate Dunedain We Like from The Bad Ones (eg ar-pharazon has lost his T by being wicked).

aldarion is a really cute kid. he has a great relationship with his grandpa, the captain of the king’s ships, and he learns to sail really early so that “before he was full grown he could captain a ship of many men.” so far he is kind of a prototypical numenorean. oh and his other name is anardil, and his grandpa calls him anardilya, that’s the cutest thing. it sounds like a russian diminutive. dilya and granpa set out for middle earth, a great sailing adventure! dilya’s dad is filled with Prophetic Foreboding, but he can’t say no to those puppydog eyes, so off they go!

in summary, the one thing dilya cannot do is stop adventuring. he MUST sail. he MUST befriend all the elves on middle earth. after his dad becomes king, he MUST start a Venturers’ Guild and build a beautiful houseboat so he can always live on the water. this really feels like a Boys Club Story from like the 40s. so dilya goes about, sailing, tending the forest so they’ll always have more timber, and when he turns 100 his dad wants to proclaim him the official heir. here we also meet erendis, who is beautiful in a totally different way than numenoreans because she’s of the house of beor. I am SO SICK of beautiful women. sigh. well, erendis gets a crush on aldarion because he is hot and presumably buff from all the sailing he does. but he’s never around the castle or whatever they have in numenor, because he’s in the forest trying really hard not to think about sailing. it doesn’t work! he starts preparing to leave on a seven year voyage, like, immediately afterward.

his dad is angry. his parents start trying to set him up with erendis, because she already likes him and he’s got to marry SOMEONE. and maybe if he falls in love he’ll stop sailing so damn much?? well, he does, kinda! after king meneldur refuses to give his blessing to dilya’s departing ship, erendis sneaks the queen’s blessing to him, and he’s like, wow she’s so nice! and he brings her back a diamond from his journey. “you shouldn’t throw around nice gifts unless you’re going to MARRY SOMEONE,” says the king. “okay fuck you I’m never giving her a gift again,” says dilya. nevertheless, the next time he illegally sets sail erendis brings him another blessing.

while he’s gone, meneldur bans sailing, basically, and especially cutting down trees for new ships. when dilya comes back he is furious!! he was really good at forest husbandry!! he was a super responsible shipwright!! I’m never coming back here, dad!! this time he gets no blessing at ALL, and he’s away for fourteen years, during which time his ships and the port he founded get beat all to hell by ill fortune. because meneldur wouldn’t bless him. erendis moves back to another part of the island because she thinks he is dead. ALSO in his absence people have been using trees super irresponsibly! I love the emphasis here on responsible forestry.

while surveying the forest, he meets erendis and suddenly realizes how much he missed her. they immediately go to ask her father if they can get married, but she is filled with foreboding. the responsible forestry fixation is revealed as a metaphor! erendis is afraid that if she marries anardil she will always be competing for his attention with the sea. it says she loves the forests way more than the sea, and now I get what the setup is: you need land with trees on it, and farms and stuff, to support going to sea. if it’s true that mariners will always return to the sea, it’s equally true that they must always return to port. presumably, if they get married, he will take really good care of her like she is a forest, but she will still be sad that she doesn’t get to see him often. I can’t help but compare these two to elwing and earendil, who had to sail together to be happy and successful. I’m just saying, erendis. maybe learn to sail. get brawny and chill on the sea with your soon-to-be husband.

no, it turns out she Hates The Sea. she goes sailing with dilya and despises it; in return she asks him to hang out in the pastures with her. she accuses him of chopping down lots of trees to make boats, which is fair, and he tells her to name any tree she really loves, and he won’t chop it down. “I love ALL of them,” she says. “every tree on numenor is my personal friend.”

he says nothing to this, and apparently that did NOT mean he promised  not to chop down any trees. after the get engaged, the venturers’ guild starts bugging aldarion to chop down more trees to build more boats, and also give them money to sail further. I love this passage where he’s riding out to visit erendis in the westlands and inadvertently gets too close to the sea--

Then suddenly the sea-longing took him as though a great hand had been laid on his throat, and his heart hammered, and his breath was stopped.

this is how I feel about the sea too... meneldur says “please, son, get married!!” but

“It has come upon me again, Atarinya. Eighteen years is a long fast. I can scarce lie still in a bed, or hold myself upon a horse, and the hard ground of stone wounds my feet.”

he’s like a selkie or something. I love this crap boy. he visits erendis and is like “hey want to go sailing with me?”

“I thought you came to talk about our wedding :( ” she says. “also if I sail out of sight of land I will Die. the sea Hates me.” it’s not really clear if she’s phobic or if she’s actually cursed (there is very little difference in my experience). but she can see he’s dying too, from seagayness (a serious sickness!) so she tells him to go and sail. this time he’s away for six years, and everything on middle earth has started to suck in the 19 years since he last visited. his port was destroyed and everyone hates numenoreans, for some reason. but he comes back, and they get married! I want to sleuth out how old she is by now... let’s see... um, she’s at least 80. they met in year 800 of the second age, and now they’re getting married in year 870. so clearly the house of beor doesn’t have ENTIRELY standard human longevity... and yet they’re still worried about erendis dying! (from the appendix: turns out she was 101 when they got married. HM.)

some eldar come to the wedding and give some Parable Presents. they give a white tree to aldarion; “it must have great wood!” he says. “we don’t know,” say the eldar reprovingly. “nobody has ever cut one of these down. they’re too beautiful.” they give a pair of magnetic birds to erendis; “how shall I keep them?” she asks. “let them fly free,” say the eldar. “they’ll always come back to you anyway, they love you.”

they have a daughter a few years later, named ancalime. I think this is the one gogol told me is an awful baby. just after she turns four, dilya goes sailing again. take your daughter with you!! be a good dad!! share your passion with your kids!! well, maybe when she’s older. the image of baby teen ancalime learning to sail with her dad is so precious. except it would make her mom really sad ::( erendis is already sad, actually. she is SO fed up with men right now. she takes ancalime to dwell in sheepland and creates a Magical Foreboding that makes men not want to come to her house. so ancalime never meets any. in most fairy tales, this kind of thing backfires and she falls in love with the first man she meets. but the first man she meets is a 6-year-old kid who offers her some bread because she’s too skinny, so maybe there’s hope.

dilya has been away for 5 years by the time he comes back, despite the fact that he promised he would only be gone for two. nobody is there to greet him at the quay. he goes to his house in the capital and finds it locked and empty. he hears from his father that she went to live in emerie, so he rides there and gets a very cold welcome. “I can see that I don’t have a wife any more,” he says. erendis replies, “well you don’t have a daughter either I GUESS.” the next day he meets ancalime, who is grumpy at having to wake up early and has no clue who he is. he addresses her very charmingly as “lady ancalime,” and then rides off for some kind of errand. erendis gnashes her teeth in vexation, because anardil is being a REAL ASSHOLE to her.

aldarion goes to a party for one of his shipmates’ homecoming; everyone there is happy and his wife and son love him. aldarion is Bitter.

an interlude: meneldur reads the letter his son brought from gil-galad. the letter reads, “your son is a great guy! if possible, please send soldiers for when sauron inevitably attacks us. yrs, gg.”

now back to aldarion! he is still Bitter. he is SO BITTER that he has his house demolished and cuts down all the trees except the white tree, which he names after his daughter. he stares at it and then casually says something that probably links their fates together forever. “I will call you also Ancalimë. May you and she stand so in long life, unbent by wind or will, and unclipped!” a little while later meneldur declares that anardil is going to be king now, so he invites his family for the coronation. scepteration, whatever. erendis declines to come because she hates him, but she lets ancalime come. 

UNFORTUNATELY the story is unfinished and fragmented, so we don’t get to hear how that went. we hear that dilya set off almost immediately after being scepterated, and had a fairly bad time in middle earth. we also hear that ancalime has much the same relationship with court that her father does with the sea; she goes there for long periods and peacocks around and has fun, and then flees back to emerie to recover from overstimulation. she thinks BOTH her parents are right to hate the other and hates the concept of marriage.

“Men would be craftsmen and loremasters and heroes all at once;” says Erendis to her daughter. “And women to them are but fires on the hearth - for others to tend, until they are tired of play in the eve­ning. All things were made for their service: hills are for quarries, river to furnish water or to turn wheels, trees for boards, women for their body's need, or if fair to adorn their table and hearth... Anger they show only when they become aware, suddenly, that there are other wills in the world beside their own.

“Thus it is, Ancalimë, and we cannot alter it. For men fashioned Númenor: men, those heroes of old that they sing of - of their women we hear less, save that they wept when their men were slain. Númenor was to be a rest after war. But if they weary of rest and the plays of peace, soon they will go back to their great play, manslaying and war. Thus it is; and we are set here among them. But we need not assent. If we love Númenor also, let us enjoy it before they ruin it. We also are daughters of the great, and we have wills and courage of our own. Therefore do not bend, Ancalimë. Once bend a little, and they will bend you further until you are bowed down. Sink your roots into the rock, and face the wind, though it blow away all your leaves.”

ANCALIME IS MY FAVORITE TREE. She is determined to be a powerful queen and do Whatever She Wants. “She was clever, and malicious, and saw promise of sport as the prize for which her mother and her father did battle.” oh no. my dear girl. they aren’t doing this for FUN they are doing it so that NO-ONE WILL EVER HAVE FUN AGAIN.

There’s a bunch of low-resolution stuff about the shenanigans Ancalime got into as the king’s heir. she ends up marrying a rather disingenuous shepherd guy to spite her cousin so he won’t ever get to be king, but she doesn’t like being married, as she predicted. she also forbids everyone who works for her from getting married, but her husband arranges a spite party where they’ll all get married and invites her, just to be a dick. her family hates and fears her until she dies, I guess? DEMOTED from favorite tree status. favorite tree is now hirilorn again.

when erendis gets old she wants to see aldarion again, but he’s out voyaging, obviously. she “dies in the water.” probably from the Curse. there’s also a tonnnn of footnotes that I’m not going to read. there we have it! everyone was miserable, and then they died! the moral of the story is, don’t marry someone if you are constantly going to be mad at them for doing what they love.