#imagine proud standing Noldo

[shisui-uchiha-anon]

I decided I shall make an elf verse for Shisui (The Lord of the Rings-based elf)).

[lamemaster]

Call Me Mommy (Nerdanel x Reader)

Pairing: Nerdanel x Reader

AN: I love her and I write this with my heart. I am a proud and shameless Nerdanel simp.

"What are YOU doing here?" Makalaure now known as Maglor asks you.

"Hmm let me think," you dramatically tap a finger on your head as you don a brooding pose. "Wait a second what are you and your brothers doing here? Last I heard you left for the noble quest of avenging your grandfather."

Maglor glares at you with whatever meager rage is leftover after all the ages worth of suffering. "How long have you been here?" In this situation 'here' is the very spacious and 'constructed optimally to capture the best sunlight throughout the day' house that Nerdanel owns.

Despite the confrontational tone, you cannot bring yourself to be mad at the princeling in front of you. "I have been here for four ages," you ease back into your chair trying to ease the pain in your back, age certainly was catching up with you. Despite being immortal it was creeping into your bones. "Someone had to be here," you try not to remember the earlier days of your presence in this house.

It had been a ruin. A house decaying with its owner, who was none other than your friend, Nerdanel. Someone you grew up with. The one you shared your days of prime with. Your partner in stealing peaches from a guarded orchard and your companion in getting caught running away with the fruit.

"Are you trying to take my father's place now that he has been doomed from the world? Trying to woo my mother in her vulnerable state?" Your breath hitches at the accusations. You turn around trying to sense another presence besides yours and Maglor. There is none but relief is short-lived.

Maybe you should have expected this but then again expectations have always failed you...most of them have. "I expected nothing Prince Maglor. I stopped doing that long ago."

It had stopped when your friend gushed to you about the Noldor prince who came to study at Mahtan's. You had smiled with her and laughed with her, you celebrated her love for another with her. You could not fail her as her friend. Your heart would not allow that.

"I have been here nothing more than a friend." You try to ease the agitated elf next to you. It wasn't surprising that Maglor had caught on to your secret. He was smarter than his brothers, sharper with his mind and his notes. "And trust me, I got the hint when she had seven of you with your father." You try not to remember the vivid letter that Nerdanel sent you announcing each one of her pregnancies.

"I will believe what I want," Noldo announces with arrogance lacing his words. Irmo's healers were too good at their job. From the crazed seaside elf to this...they should have worked a little less on his pride.

You stand up from your chair. Straightening your gown you prepare to leave before Maglor can further stall you. "Well then I guess you can call me mommy," you barely restrain your laugh at Maglor's half disgusted, half shook expression.

Maglor sits next to his mother on a chair so high that his legs barely touch the ground. But he does not care, he is sure his mother will catch him at the slightest falter.

His mother sits on her desk which is sprawling with designs for sculptures and other commissions. However, today a section of the brimming desk is meticulously cleared to spread out a series of letters.

Maglor listens carefully as his mother reads to him every single letter. The letters speak of his grandpa Mahtan's town. They are vivid and written in painstaking detail.

They seem to delight his mother. And Maglor giggles with his mother. He mirrors her smile and laughter.

However, in moments when his mother is caught in reading the words Maglor's smile crumbles. Despite the jolly words and colorful scenes painted by the writer of the letters, Maglor can't help but sense the lingering desire for something unsaid.

Late at night when Maglor lies in his bed he cannot help but imagine a solitary writer putting all those words into a piece of paper just for his mother. A writer who does that with a hidden motive.

[anipologist]

Finrod Thoughts...

These are personal opinions/ideas but a fair number of them are extrapolations of canonical texts.

I don’t think Finrod is an especially gaudy elf (I have a hard time imagining any elf as gaudy actually) They like the stars and jewels remind them of the stars but I have never heard the night sky called garish and I think that even the most jewelry obsessed of elves probably still manage to be tasteful.

He likes beautiful things (he probably as a collection of silver and gold strung harps somewhere) but he is not possessive...he absolutely loves descending on friends and family with armloads of gifts. Then stands around hoping they'll like what he found/made for them. It's mostly endearing...Galadriel used to give him a hard time about it but after he dies she just desperately misses it.

I think he loves light (even a bit more than the average elf - Tolkien makes such a brutal point of him dying in the dark) and Nargothrond is a city of lights. I think he hangs lamps all over the city and there is an ever changing kaleidoscope of light and shadow dappled across the high ceilings and polished floors.

I think he loves the water and probably wears a lot of blue and green and grey but not much white (white reminds him too much of Alqualondë) he likes red but even Valinor he didn't wear it much because it usually led to pointed comments from Feanor about a Vanya in a Noldo's clothing.

Most of his sculptures are probably closer to Bernini than Michelangelo. And there is probably at least one hall that resembles a carven forest with trees rendered in stone, so life-like that you expect them to sway in the wind and the acoustics are mind-blowing. He likes going there when it is empty and working out new melodies.

I think the Teleri/Vanyar side come out more frequently than his people like, why can't his heart just be undivided Noldo...his amilessë is "The Noldo" isn't that supposed to be prophetic? Things would be so much easier, but he also loves having this un-Noldo side, he likes his weird and varied interests and he knows people say sharp and unkind things about it but he actually finds he doesn't mind being considered a little mad. Especially once he comes back to life.

He finds metaphysical and philosophical wandering just as fascinating as literal wandering. It’s like the intellectual Vanya side got mixed up with the Telerin wanderlust side and the results are vaguely terrifying. He is relentlessly curious and soaks up lore and knowledge and linguistics like a sponge. When he was very young he used to pester a couple of the more approachable Maiar with the dreaded questions of “why” and “how”. When he got older and had so far not been struck by lightning or anything he moved up the ranks and started talking to Nienna and Ulmo and Vaire and on one memorable occasion Manwë and Varda. It’s one of the reasons he clings to his respect of the Valar in Middle Earth (see the Athrabeth).

He tries desperately to be calm and in control and he mostly succeeds on the outside. Everyone seems to rely on him being a peace-maker and with Angrod, Aegnor and Galadriel as siblings not to mention the rest of his kin he can't really afford not to be. Not to mention he is at a severe disadvantage age-wise against the likes of Thingol, Fingolfin and Maedhros. He needs to be taken seriously as a leader. So he makes himself a diplomat...he already likes meeting new people and talking...how hard can it be?

I think he and Arafinwë are reflections of each other in a lot of ways, Finrod gets the proud, headstrong side of Finwë in a way that his father alone does not. So Finrod spends a lot of time and effort trying to be more like his father and manages fairly well on the surface. he is not a hypocrite...but pride takes time and patience and experience to overcome. He generally does a good job of catching himself but every now and then he sounds rather patronizing.

Arafinwë on the other hand sometimes wishes he was a bit less horrified by conflict and he does his best to seem sure and confident and in charge...but inside he absolutely detests even friendly conflict. Because of this most people think that Finrod and Finarfin are more like twins than father and son because they both hit a sort of happy medium on the surface.

But underneath, Finrod is all wild explorer and passionate adventurer, he wants to know things and discover everything and he is never happier than wandering somewhere no one has ever been before (either intellectually or otherwise) with nothing but his eager mind and his songs. Finarfin is never happier than when his family is safely asleep in the same house and he can go star-gazing with Earwen.

I think he is one of those odd people that has a foot firmly planted in in both the material world and the spiritual world and that is mostly a good thing. It gives him ridiculous amounts of control over illusions and songs for one thing. His illusions started off as party tricks and art and then he realized the espionage potential in Beleriand. It also makes him a little eldritch and terrifying but he usually keeps that side well hidden.

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Do you have any personal headcanons about Celebrimbor's mother and her relationship with Curufin? I always thought that it's weird we don't have even the barest information about that considering Celebrimbor's unique position as the only next gen Feanorian. (Sorry if you already talked about this somewhere!)

thanks for the ask! i have, but i'm not going to pass up an opportunity to blather on about my ocs for several paragraphs

curufin's wife (she lacks a name because i hate giving characters names and will delay it until i absolutely have to) is noldorin, she lives in valinor in the years of the trees. i haven't thought much about her family, but i suspect they're middling nobility at the highest the did-valinor-have-social-classes debate is a whole different rabbit hole. she's a metalworker like her husband (she probably specialises in a slightly different subcategory but idk enough to say what) and is a member of the same tirion artisan guild. it's in that context that they meet and begin their Intense Crafting Rivalry

you know that trope where a pair of rivals are so obsessively devoted to one-upping each other it's blindingly obvious that what they actually want is to kiss? that's them, that's their relationship. their specialties are just similar enough they do a lot of the same stuff but just different enough their approaches tend to be radically divergent. what starts as the two of them trying to prove the superiority of their own artistic circle or whatever evolves into them trying to show up him/her specifically, s/he's wrong about x and i know i can do better, why does my family keep asking if we're dating yet????? their competition gets absolutely ridiculous in ways only a pre-scarcity society can get, like building an entire fountain out of solid silicon specifically because he said she couldn't do it (he actually said shouldn't but screw him (not literally cousin oh my valar))

but yeah. their relationship grows an undercurrent of the-only-one-allowed-to-push-around-my-archnemesis-is-me, and they find themselves fighting back to back (occasionally literally) when tirion guild politics takes a turn for the tirion guild politics. they just slowly come to trust each other, more than anyone else, and soon there comes an appropriately dramatic moment for them to suddenly kiss. they're still always trying to out-craftself each other, celebrimbor grows up in a house that's about 70% forge to the background noise of his parents insulting each other's work, but they're comfortable with each other in a way neither of them could have imagined in the early days, and when things get rough they always have each other's backs

things do, in fact, get rough. maglor won't meet his wife until beleriand, caranthir's relationship with his spouse slowly falls apart along with the political situation in tirion, but curufin's wife is loudly team fëanor. she suffers from an acute case of finwean spouse disease, she thinks going to middle-earth to build their own world is an awesome idea, she's deeply embedded in the tirion artisan scene with an entire social circle as think the same way, and when the inevitable civil war flares up she'll probably be even more eager to fight the fingolfinians than her husband. she goes with him and their-still-pretty young son to formenos, and when the trees get eaten and fëanor does the speech she prepares for the adventure of a lifetime

then, alqualondë. i stand by my conviction that nobody on the noldorin side walked in planning to steal the boats, let alone murder the teleri, but it was dark and the world was ending and everybody had sharp things. like everybody else involved in the first kinslaying, curufin and wife got caught up in the battle because somebody shouted 'they're attacking us!' in the distance. she is at first more trying to stop them from stabbing her, obsidian fishing spears glancing off ornamental steel, but then she lashes out and she hits someone in the chest and -

there was this recurring trope in her and her husband’s endless mutual critique. she’d create something beautiful, artfully devised and elegantly constructed, showing off a whole ton of design principles and doing things with the material no one had ever done. he would look at it skeptically and go ‘okay, but what use is it? what is it for?’

red liquid running down the fuller of the exquisite sword she forged herself, light guttering out of another elf’s eyes as he coughs up blood, she knows, sure as once were the light of the trees, what the piece of metal in her hands is for

the next few moments are a blur. she threw the sword into the water, she knows that. somehow she wound up running out of alqualondë, tears streaming down her face, as buildings burned and people screamed behind her. she found a concealed spot by the road, tore off her armour, peeked outside, and watched. when the fires were dying down and the boats were clearly gone, she mustered her courage and went to save her family

in the centuries to come, very few people believe celebrimbor when he tells them his mother tried to get his father to come back by, among other things, appealing to his better nature. nobody believes that it almost worked. but curufin was still only starting out on the road to hellbeastery, and his wife was his eternal partner-in-crime. right there at the beginning, staring out over a burning city, she saw where the road the noldor were walking would eventually lead them, no matter how much they tried to deny it. no dreams could be worth that, she told him. no ideals. and she was always the idealist, wasn’t she?

she was. maybe that’s why he, who had so very few ideals to mark his path, refused to abandon this one. their discussion rapidly devolved into a screaming argument half the camp could hear, much like curufin’s last argument with celebrimbor, centuries later. soon enough, though, it became clear that he wouldn’t turn back, and she refused to go on, and neither of them could change the other’s minds. the only thing left between them was celebrimbor

celebrimbor was eight (-ish in elf years), and completely freaked out, and eight, and knew almost nothing about what was going on, and eight, and had grown up listening to his grandfather’s dreams, and eight, and was surrounded by adults who very loudly thought going to middle-earth would solve all their problems, and eight, and couldn’t tell why his mother was abandoning them. panicking, on the spot, he buried his face in curufin’s smock to wipe away his tears. when he looked up, she was gone

so yeah, curufin’s wife went back with finarfin, that’s why she didn’t go to middle-earth. she initially stayed with nerdanel because almost everyone else on both sides of her extended family remained by (and later burned) the boats, i’m only just realising the horrible curufin argument probably wasn’t even the only one she went through that night, jeez. also she really needed a hug. the sun rose, alqualondë started rebuilding, and she ended up head of her and her husband’s former mutual craft guild, mostly because nobody else with the skills to do it was left. decades turn to centuries, news slowly filters back from beleriand, and her worst nightmares are proven so awfully right

probably the biggest emotion she feels towards curufin in the aftermath is betrayal. they were partners, in every sense of the word, they took on the world and they did it together, using their constant competition to drive each other to ever greater heights. they listened to each other, they trusted each other’s judgement, and she knows he understood the point she was making. him continuing on anyway, and diving face-first into the void - the elf she thought she knew would never have done that. as time passes by, the grief and the loneliness get subsumed by a deep abiding rage. if she ever sees the thing her husband let himself become again, she’ll throw a welding torch in his face

but that anger, that heartbreak, none of that applies to her son. when the hosts of valinor began gearing up for war - she’s the leader of tirion’s most prominent metalworking guild, she can’t not go. while they’re unloading supplies and siege equipment and stuff onto the isle of balar, she happens to pass by this relatively short dusky-skinned noldo hauling some smithing equipment about. as soon as he gets a proper look at her, he gasps. she looks back in confusion, and then she meets his eyes

later, she’ll hear his tales of his adventures in the hither lands, all of the hardships, yes, but also all of the brilliance. later, she’ll learn about the person he’s grown into, someone she can be unreservedly proud of in his choices and works. later, they’ll talk about the future, about his ambitions of making his grandfather’s dream come true, but with open hands and a light to be shared with all the peoples of middle-earth. for now, though, she wraps celebrimbor in a massive hug, and lets the tears flow down her face, because no matter how much they’ve lost, no matter how deep the darkness around them, right here and now, her son is alive