#obligatory disclaimer this is just my personal opinion/experience. i shouldn't have to say I don't speak for everyone but obviously i don't

[princesskuragina]

My last post was being snarky but here's my genuine pronoun etiquette opinion in case you actually want to know: it's pretty much never a good idea to directly ask someone their pronouns in front of a group of people, especially if you're in a position of authority, i.e. a teacher. The stakes of this question are very high for some people and you are putting them on the spot to decide what they want to share and what is safe to share. If you have decided you want to ask for pronouns at all, you can introduce yourself with your own to remind people that they can share theirs if they want to. And for the love of god whatever you do please do not just single out the most gender non-conforming or "trans looking" (to you) person and ask only them and no one else

[arofili]

okay so idk why but recently i saw a lot of people on my dashboard talking about how shipping incest is gross etc. and you shouldn't do it and now idk, does russingon count as incest? technically seen they're cousins, right? the same for russingold(?), i know a lot of people ship russingon but this really made me unsure because it's still incest, isn't it? anwyays, sorry for bothering you, i just don't know who to ask, i'm pretty new in the fandom

[obligatory disclaimer that this is just my opinion, i speak for no one but myself, and also that i’m exactly 0% interested in having a debate over shipping morality; you are free to unfollow/block me if you disagree but i’m not about to engage with this mess of a dis.course. anon seems to be asking in good faith which is why i am answering. keywords have been censored so they don’t show up in tags/searches.]

anon, it looks like you’ve stumbled into some shipping dis.course. there are people in fandom spaces who are all about ship purity and policing what “good” ships are and what ships are “problematic” and what ships make you a “bad person” for liking. my advice to you is stay away from all that nonsense! shipping is more than just “this is a perfect relationship i want them to be together forever uwu” - there’s lots of reasons to ship something, from exploring dynamics to finding their story interesting to just thinking it’s cute and/or hot and so on.

but onto your actual question: yes, Maedhros and Fingon are cousins, and yes, lots of people ship them together anyway! it seems you’re aware of Russingold, too, but there’s lots of ships between the Finwean cousins, pretty much every combination you can imagine! and between closer relations, also, though those tend to be less popular bc more people are squicked by them.

here in the Silm fandom - in my experience at least - most of us are not really concerned with ship dis.course, especially when it comes to in.cest. we have in.cest in our canon, and Tolkien made almost every goddamn character related to each other, so like...if you (general you) are gonna get up in arms about shipping related characters, this probably isn’t the fandom for you. that isn’t to say that if shipping in.cest makes you personally uncomfortable, you’re not welcome here - you can blacklist tags, create your own content, etc, whatever you want! but trying to police the Silm fandom for purity of content, especially purity of ships, is going to get you laughed out of the room, tbh.

the thing to remember is that this is fiction, not real life - real life in.cest is a very serious thing that is always wrong, but fictional in.cest is just not the same thing because no Real Live Person is getting hurt over it. two not-real elf cousins getting it on is not putting any real person in danger unless you decide to doxx someone over shipping dis.course.

in Silm canon we have the Idril and Maeglin situation that says elves don’t marry their cousins...but specifically for Russingon (and, by extension, Russingold) Tolkien actually has an exception in his “elves don’t do in.cest” rule for half-cousins that makes it okay in the eyes of Elf Society! i broke that down in a meta here, so definitely check that out. and regardless it is important to remember that Maedhros and Fingon are half-cousins, which is significant both when it comes to their ship potential and also to the plot of the Silm. (also worth pointing out that there’s irl historical precedent of in.cest in royal lines...not that that’s like, an excuse, or a good thing, or anything like that - but uniting your feuding sons’ lines by marrying their children to each other? that’s some interesting shit right there! that would make an excellent AU!)

tl;dr: yep, Maedhros and Fingon are cousins; they share a grandfather, but they have different grandmothers. so yeah, that’s technically in.cest. but your morality is not defined by what you ship. fictional relationships are not the same as real life relationships. honestly, Tolkien probably shipped Russingon (the rescue from Thangorodrim is the most goddamn homoerotic thing I’ve ever read and that’s after Chrissy T took a knife to it). you are not a bad person for shipping Russingon, and in fact you are in good company! there’s a reason Russingon is the most popular ship in the fandom :)