#silmposium

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

Sorry for getting distracted by your tags on that one post but what's this about feanor and fingolfin and the brotherfathergod experience 👀

babe the tags are there to be distracted by….that is their purpose, the goal for which they were long prepared in the deeps of my mind….you come into my house bearing gifts, do not apologize for them ♡

anyhow the fëanor-fingolfin relationship dynamic is just. off the charts. i am on it like a buttercream cake. if i am a pig, fëanor-fingolfin is my beloved mud pile.

like..fingolfin wants fëanor to be his brother but also fingolfin is finwë and fëanor is míriel. fëanor will never ever want fingolfin fraternally and fingolfin knows. fëanor will have fingolfin paternally or not at all because he can’t be angry at finwë. fingolfin lets fëanor threaten and humiliate him repeatedly because at least he has his attention. they have to be at family and governmental functions together. everyone just calls them finwë’s sons. fingolfin breaks faith with the gods to follow fëanor and fëanor betrays him and then burns a hole in history. their kids are friends. fingolfin leaves his wife to go with fëanor into darkness and war. fingolfin dies fighting fëanor’s battle. fëanor is still dead. their dad just wants them to get along. they don’t talk. they think about each other all the time. welcome to the pit i live in.

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

ouagh….you get me tumblr user yavieriel….i’m swooning lavishly over this interpretation….our brains are frolicking through the fields together at this very moment…..

you’ve touched on something that i left out, which is the conflation of the taxonomic jock vs. the himbo, the jock being separated from the himbo most notably by their capacity for meanness. the himbo is fundamentally based in kindness and goodwill (see ‘pure of heart, dumb of ass’) but you are so right!! the jock is an unknown quantity with ‘dumb jock’ as only one possible subtype, and their social power should not be underestimated!! i’m gnawing at a celegorm who’s so popular and talented and charming that he’s basically untouchable, he can play contrite if he wants but he doesn’t need to; other people jump to make excuses for him first….a celegorm who’s absolutely confident that he can force lúthien into marriage with no consequences because who would ever ever believe her story over his and who doesn’t see huan’s betrayal until it’s far too late because he was always the one to walk out first….mean jock celegorm who’s smart enough to know his own strengths and play to them in perpetuity

getting in a real crabbysulk about the jockification of celegorm. i think it's largely due to the modern status of hunter characters as invariably sporty non-intellectuals roughing it in the dirt, with hunting itself as a sort of extension to athletic competition. and it can definitely be that! but it can also be a huge extravagant political opportunity to schmooze around in pavilions with servants and rich food and nice clothes and hundreds of people all trying to impress someone important while looking their best on a horse in the most lavish showy harness imaginable. the secondary reason i think is the cause for celegorm being thrown under the himbus (himbo bus) is the desire, conscious or un, for him and curufin to fit the jock/nerd archetype. because curufin is marked out textually as conniving, and therefore intelligent, a perceived dichotomy is set up that can only be fulfilled by celegorm folding up into the role of brawny yes-man or the oft favored handsome and comical jock, who, naturally with neither interest nor capability for slyness, frees up the stage for curufin to play the smartypants manipulator or political mastermind. and this is the one that really gets me. because not only does it erase celegorm’s canonical traits (he’s politically-minded! he’s cunning! he’s nasty and quick-tempered and an active force within the architecture of multiple stories!), but it pushes aside a potentially compelling dynamic in favor of what’s expected. like give me a celegorm who’s the only son of fëanor to join the lambengolmor! give me a celegorm who creates new writing systems to translate canine folktales or transcribe birdsongs! give me a celegorm who’s just as clever and smarmy and obnoxious as curufin but knows how to sneak around without getting noticed! give me a celegorm and curufin who capitalize on peoples’ assumptions about which of them is the one to watch out for! give me nerd celegorm!!

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

morgoth’s ring excerpts got me acting unwise…fomenting ideas in my brain about the drowning of beleriand being melkor’s fallback option to preserve in some capacity his living arda vs. the valar’s last-ditch attempt to get rid of it forever..sailors in the second age encountering lots of strange things at sea…

if the horror of mordor is that it’s a fundamentally dead place, the horror of beleriand under melkor is that it’s alive. every wild thing, every plant, the land itself, all of it can be bent and shaped to the will of that which wants you gone. woods with vines to choke and trap and strangle, bogs replete with depthless pools and paths that lead nowhere and clouds of mosquitoes that can turn your blood to poison. leave a wound in the open air and by nightfall infection will have set in. goats and sheep are born shrivelled and eyeless. springs that if drunk from will bloat your belly and waste you away to nothing. deer watching with too many eyes, boars running mad and foaming even after they’re felled. just endless possibilities for fear and havoc and destruction, and all of it is intended…there is no comfort in the randomness of nature when nature hates you personally