#i just know that feanor who once slammed the door in morgoth's face would be proud of him throwing that hammer

[kazz-brekker]

celebrimbor throwing that hammer at sauron…yeah he really is feanor's kin

[sweetteaanddragons]

hey again!! still love your writing, and if you still take ideas (you can totally tell me no if you're busy or don't feel like it!!!) i would love to know your take on what would happen if feanor is still alive when Fingolfin and the Gang get over the Ice. like. what would that epic familial disaster even look like if feanor had to, for once, face the consequences of his actions.

So at last! At last I can answer this question!

Mainly by providing a link to the relevant story: It's a Good Day to Die (But Not as Good as Other Days).

Short version:

If Feanor lives, I don't think Maedhros gets captured. Or, at least, he doesn't get captured at the canonical ambush. Feanaro "Slammed the Door in Morgoth's Face" Finwean is not interested in negotiating.

Naturally, Maedhros - or someone else - could still get captured some other way, but I've played with that particular narrative thread before, so let's go a different direction this time.

If no one can be conveniently rescued, then reconciliation gets, in some ways, trickier.

In other ways, this is still easier because the two people who actually have beef with each other are both here to fight it out, and neither of them has been recently tortured.

I don't think the version I posted in the link above is inevitable by any means, but I do think that unless there's some extreme external factor, either Feanor ends up king at the end of the day, or we end up with two separate kingdoms of Noldor (or possibly one "kingdom" that is in reality functioning entirely like two kingdoms except they'll both turn to glare at you if you call it that). Feanaro just . . . won't bend to Nolofinwe. Not unless you push him to the breaking point. (Or unless you interpret him very differently than I do. Which is fair!)

That doesn't mean Feanaro wouldn't have to make some concessions. What they are, and how these ripples would spiral, could play out any number of ways.

[veliseraptor]

Top 5 Silm scenes, RIGHT BACK ATCHA

okay okay okay. I’m sticking to the published Silmarillion because or else I would 100% need to include “The Mariner’s Wife” and then I’d have to lose one of the ones I did pick.

1. “Therefore when Eol was brought before Turgon he found no mercy; and they led him forth to the Caragdur, a precipice of black rock upon the north side of the hill of Gondolin, there to cast him down from the sheer walls of the city. And Maeglin stood by and said nothing; but at the last Eol cried out: ‘So you forsake your father and his kin, ill-gotten son! Here shall you fail of all your hopes, and here may you yet die the same death as I.’” (Of Maeglin)

So of course I was going to have some Maeglin on here, and I went with this one (and included a different one as a bonus, though I really could have reversed them - this one is just angstier). It lays out, I think, so much of Maeglin’s life from here - this is a major turning point for him, and the grounding for a lot of his later issues and how I think about his characterization. And the visualization of it, too - standing aside, watching your father executed, and basically having him spit in your face, right after you’ve seen your mother murdered...damn, there’s a lot there.

2. “Then hate overcame Feanor’s fear, and he cursed Melkor and bade him be gone, saying: ‘Get thee gone from my gate, thou jail-crow of Mandos!’ And he shut the doors of his house in the face of the mightiest of all the dwellers in Ea.”

FEANOR LITERALLY JUST SLAMMED THE DOOR IN A SEMI-DIVINE BEING’S FACE. as the kid’s say: we stan a legend. (Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor)

3. “Then Fingolfin beheld (as it seemed to him) the utter ruin of the Noldor, and the defeat beyond redress of all their houses; and filled with wrath and despair he mounted upon Rochallor his great horse and rode forth alone, and non might restrain him. He passed over Dor-nu-Fauglith like a wind amid the dust, and all that beheld his onset fled in amaze, thinking that Orome himself was come: for a great madness of rage was upon him, so that his eyes shone like the eyes of the Valar. Thus he came alone to Angband’s gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth to single combat. And Morgoth came.” (Of the Ruin of Beleriand)

There’s a reason this scene is set to the possibly most metal song on the metal Silmarillion album, and it’s because the whole thing, top to bottom, is totally fucking metal. In my opinion it’s hands down one of the most epic scenes in the entire Silmarillion, and I love it.

4.”And looking out from the slopes of Ered Wethrin with his last sight he beheld far off the peaks of Thangorodrim, mightiest of the towers of Middle-earth, and knew with the foreknowledge of death that no power of the Noldor would ever overthrow them; but he cursed the name of Morgoth thrice, and laid it upon his sons to hold to their oath, and to avenge their father. Then he died; but he had neither burial nor tomb, for so fiery was his spirit that as it sped his body fell to ash, and was borne away like smoke; and his likness has never again appeared in Arda, neither has his spirit left the halls of Mandos. Thus ended the mightiest of the Noldor, of whose deeds came both their greatest renown and their most grievous woe.” (Of the Return of the Noldor)

I love this. I think...it’s so much Feanor, that even in the face of certain defeat he says “you know what? fuck that, we’re going to keep going anyway.” I know there are people who criticize him for this - for holding his sons to a hopeless task. But...they’re already Doomed. There’s nothing any of them can do to change that, as far as they know. If he backs down now...they’ve lost so much for nothing. 

Better to forge onward. 

And just...that last line. Their greatest renown and their most grievous woe. Damn.

5. “For the Dunedain held that even mortal Men, if so blessed, might look upon other times than those of their bodies’ life; and they longed ever to escape from the shadows of their exile and to see in some fashion the light that dies not; for the sorrow of the thought of death had pursued them over the deeps of the sea. Thus it was that great mariners among them would still search the empty seas, hoping to come upon the Isle of Meneltarma, and there to see a vision of things that were. But they found it not. And those that sailed far came only to the new lands, and found them like the old lands, and subject to death. And those that sailed furthest set but a girdle about the Earth and returned weary at last to the place of their beginning; and they said: ‘All roads are now bent.’” (Akallabeth)

I wrote about this in my thesis - it’s just...so much of what I love about the Silmarillion. The melancholy, the sense of loss. The sense of things gone beyond retrieval. 

Narratives of decline at its best.

BONUS 1: “Yet it is said that Maeglin loved his mother better, and if Eol were abroad he would sit long beside her and listen to all that she could tell him of her kin and their deeds in Eldamar, and of the might and valour of the princes of the House of Fingolfin.” (Of Maeglin)

I just love thinking about bb!Maeglin sitting with Aredhel and listening rapturously to her stories, and there’s also something so sad about this - the secrecy of it, the closeness of the two of them, especially knowing what is ahead.

BONUS 2: “But Aredhel said, ‘I am your sister and not your servant, and beyond your bounds I will go as seems good to me. And if you begrudge me an escort, then I will go alone.’” (Of Maeglin)

YOU FUCKIN’ TELL HIM, BABE.