#me: no ... and also I am now oathbound to destroy your soul

[famewolf]

cishet men really do just be saying things to me because they think i am also cis

i am often appalled at the things they decide are ok to say/think out loud to other men because they think it's a 'safe space' to say it

[daywillcomeagain]

⭐?

aaaaaaaaaaugh i had this whole post WRITTEN and then tumblr DELETED IT and now i have to WRITE IT AGAIN. (quiet pouting)

here goes again: i want to talk about its own reward. it was born pretty heavily from my recent thoughts and discussions about redemption, both on tumblr and discord. specifically of note is @undercat-overdog​‘s incredible post:

But… feeling guilty, feeling sorry isn’t redemption. It’s not even repentance....But what is necessary, if perhaps not sufficient? Well, first and foremost, not continuing to hurt people. Part of it is coming to an understanding of morality, if they don’t already have one (*coughSauron*), coming to a moral place where if they were put in the same position again, they would not make those same choices: that is, if they could go back in time and relive their lives, Sauron wouldn’t make the Ring or attack the Elves, Gollum wouldn’t betray Frodo to Shelob, Maedhros wouldn’t attack Sirion.

i think that this is both (a) really fundamentally correct and (b) means that, with my interpretation of how the Oath works, the eight Oathbound can never be redeemed.

which... Ouch.

(this is mostly because i disagree with undercat’s parenthetical: i don’t, actually, think that they had a choice at that point. this isn’t because i don’t think they have agency--or, maybe it is, but only in the sense that the Oath was them using their agency to give up their future agency? people do this irl, though, too, in ways such as “checking themselves into rehab and telling everyone to make them stay no matter how much they beg to be allowed out to have drugs”, or “putting their money in a trust where they can’t have it even if they change their mind”--precommitting yourself to future action, even if you’ll regret it, is absolutely a thing that people can do without being any less of people. so under my interpretation, the Oathbound don’t actually have a choice about a lot of their actions, once they’ve taken the Oath--they have some, yes, but not enough to avoid the Second and Third Kinslayings--and so they can never fully repent of Doriath or Sirion except as “I repent of taking the Oath and of all the evil actions that came as a result of that”.)

this passage is probably the most obvious callout of this:

“Redemption can be given to many who have done terrible things; it would be useless if it could not. People who have done terrible things is exactly what redemption is for! No. You, dear brother, are incapable of redemption because you do not regret any of the things you’ve done. Not really, not in any way thatmatters. You can toss and turn with misery at night and tell yourself you love your hostages as your own children, but if tomorrow they were to withhold a silmaril from us, what would you do? You would kill them with the same sword you have already used to kill their kin. And then, I am sure, you would cry about it, as though tears were enough to buy forgiveness for what you have done.”

...

We have sworn for ever! And being a good person will always, always come second to that Oath. You know this as well as I, but I daresay we have all learned it well. Certainly it looks unlikely that it will come into play again; yet neither did any expect the success of Beren and Lúthien. So long as we are destroying cities, I see no point in combing through the rubble for absolution. We can do penance all we please, but we will never be able to redeem ourselves as good people so long as we are bound.”

“So you just gave up?”

“Indeed. What is the point in playing a game you have already sworn to lose?”

Maedhros, at this point, knows that he will never be redeemed. he is, of course, incredibly sorry, intensely guilty, intensely self-flagellating, but he also has recognized that this doesn’t actually matter so long as he would do it again tomorrow. he’s also pretty no-good-deed, after all he’s been through: all of his actions, including the ones intended for good, have either failed or backfired, from Losgar to the Nirnaeth to the search for Eluréd and Elurín. as a result, he’s completely given up on ever being a good person, or ever doing good things. 

Maglor, on the other hand, doesn’t. he is trying desperately to do good, but more than that, he wants to be a good person; this underlies his decision to take the kids and raise them instead of, say, sending them to be raised by someone else who did not traumatize them and destroy their city. and he does believe, to some extent, that things such as “doing good” and “being sorry” can make you a better person, even if you are... still the kind of person who would kill a city to get a silmaril.

they’re both right about some things and wrong about some things; they’re also both being deliberately as vicious as they possibly can. maedhros hates himself and maglor both a whole fuck of a lot; maglor is trying so desperately not to hate himself that he’s kind of putting everything else aside, and also he’s bitter and angry at his older brother for letting him down and leading him into evil, and... wow they are just extremely unhealthy all the time huh.

essentially: rescuing children doesn’t absolve you of murder, but it’s still a good thing to do anyway. maedhros and maglor are both able to recognize exactly one half of that sentence.

but. i really, really didn’t want to end it at that, because wow is “end-of-first-age-mae is right, actually, and the oathbound can never ever be redeemed” a hopeless message! not to mention, this whole debate is really remarkably self-centered: until the end, when Maglor goes to give Elrond some singing lessons, the people they’ve hurt never come up; it’s only discussing the terrible deeds and whether they can come back from them, with no discussion of the actual people they’ve hurt or what they want. so. elwing happened. 

it’s really important to me that forgiveness is a different thing from redemption: someone can be absolved but unforgiven, someone can be forgiven while still being just as unrepentantly evil. forgiveness is a thing given freely by the victim and is never owed one way or another to the person who hurt them. in a lot of ways, the ending is really unfocused on the question that’s been debated the whole time; in fact, it leaves it entirely up in the air. instead of saying whether or not anyone’s a good person, or what they deserve, or whether their sins still stain their souls, it says: look. i don’t have the power or knowledge of that kind of thing. things are complicated. this is what i do know: the consequences of your actions, both good and bad. here they are. they matter, too. (also: rescuing children doesn’t absolve you of murder, but it’s still a good thing to do anyway.)

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