#the vowel of feanor if you will

[telemna-hyelle]

HOLD ON A COTTON PICKING MINUTE

a name in welsh it may also be, but noble maiden is not welsh! DO YOUR RESEARCH PROPERLY

[eri-pl]

TIL the Oath is in alliterative verse and I had to share it.

(bold: where I think the beats are)

Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean, brood of Morgoth or bright Vala, Elda or Maia or Aftercomer, Man yet unborn upon Middle-earth,

neither law, nor love, nor league of swords, dread nor danger, not Doom itself, shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor's kin, whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh, finding keepeth or afar casteth a Silmaril. This swear we all: death we will deal him ere Day's ending, woe unto world's end! Our word hear thou, Eru Allfather! To the everlasting Darkness doom us if our deed faileth. On the holy mountain hear in witness and our vow remember, Manwë and Varda! 

Older version

Be he friend or foe   or foul offspring of Morgoth Bauglir,   be he mortal dark that in after days   on earth shall dwell, shall no law nor love   nor league of Gods, no might nor mercy,   not moveless fate, defend him for ever   from the fierce vengeance of the sons of Fëanor,   whoso seize or steal of finding keep   the fair enchanted globes of crystal    whose glory dies not, the Silmarils.   We have sworn for ever! 

[dlatl98]

Tolkien did not know how respectable a linguist could be.

Poor Tolkien. He obviously didn't know King Sejong (who was a brilliant linguist of his own language, and developed his own writing system to replace the existing inefficient borrowed writing system. It was successfully established and still used successfully hundreds of years later). If he had known how much Sejong was respected hundreds of years later, the elves would have spoken of Fëanorians more respectfully in his writings. Tolkien clearly had no idea how much respect the person who invented a convenient writing system could command. People living in the Korean-speaking world still generally call King Sejong "Great King" rather than just "King" with respect.

Of course, To exaggerate a bit, King Sejong's achievement was similar to replace Egyptian hieroglyphs with the alphabet, so Fëanor's achievement was not comparable. Fëanor's achievement… From what I understand, it seems to be introducing vowels more clearly into Arabic letters.

Anyway, as a result of deriving a reasonable writing system, the working method is similar to Korean letters ('The most notable characteristic of the Tengwar script is that the shapes of the letters correspond to the features of the sounds they represent' from https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Tengwar). When you think that Tolkien didn't know about Hangul and King Sejong, the convergent evolution is really funny. I think that was the dream of linguists who correct phonetic letters……Anyway, if you achieve a great feat like King Sejong, you will be honored as a saint by even future generations of democracy. That could be the dream of linguists……

If Tolkien knew about King Sejong, he would have thought it was really cool. King Sejong's writing system spread to the common people as soon as it was announced, and it is still actively used today, and he gained immortal fame and respect from those who use it (If you look at the link, you'll see that King Sejong and Feanor have more similarities than you'd think, but Tolkien probably didn't know King Sejong. Mmm.....He certainly didn't know, because… King Sejong's father was also greatly respected because he had a good son, but he killed all his half-brothers and his daughter-in-law's family. And at least the people in South Korea generally consider it a worthwhile sacrifice to ensure that Sejong obtained a stable country).

[polutrope]

What’s the weirdest thing you have researched for the sake of a smut fic? Can be within the scope of Tolkien canon or on a topic completely outside it. 

Thanks for the ask!

There might be some weirder stuff in older fics that I don't remember, but recently I spent an inordinate amount of time perusing texts on the Tengwar and linguistics before throwing up my hands and asking the more knowledgeable people in the Silmarillion Writers' Guild server for a linguistics question that Finrod could use to distract Feanor from catching two of his relatives in the act in Snakes and Ladders.

This is the passage:

“Then I just blurted: ‘Uncle!’ — he grimaced at that — ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about a point in your recent lecture on the tehtar.’ ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Er yes,’ I said, frantically trying to remember something from the talk. ‘Ah! Yes, well, as you know, I am fluent in Telerin,’ — he huffed and rolled his eyes at that — ‘and I was interested in your point about the roots of Quenya méla as it relates to Telerin māla.’ He raised his brows impatiently, but his eyes lit up. I think my youthful enthusiasm must have saved me from humiliation. ‘Well, my Telerin prince,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t,’ then he took me by the arm and indulged me with an hour lecture on the coalescing of vowels, which might have gone on until Laurelin’s flowering had not your mother tracked us down and dragged him away. But it was a small price to pay to keep him from coming upon my sister and her lover. Can you imagine!”

Only in Tolkien fic...

[exercise-of-trust]

the character dynamics here are already delightful but i did also get extremely nerdsniped trying to figure out how you'd make scrabble work in quenya on a mechanics level, so. enjoy.

my first thought was "huh, is there a hebrew edition of scrabble? what's the playstyle like on that?", since the tengwar operate pretty similarly orthographically (base letters are consonants; vowels are mostly represented as floating diacritics). a webpage cataloging non-english scrabble variants informed me that hebrew scrabble does (did?) exist, but in actual practice it's mostly the province of children and people learning hebrew as a foreign language. (Shockingly, All-Consonants Scrabble Is Not Fun Or Interesting To Play For Adults Who Are Fluent In The Language.) also, per PE17 [1], primitive eldarin roots are (unlike in hebrew) not purely consonantal, so the absence of vowels as full letters in the tengwar is a purely orthographic quirk that doesn't actually represent some deeper linguistic truth. so our quenya-scrabble should definitely include some sort of vowel representation!

after messing around for a while i think i have something figured out that at least holds up under very basic testing:

this board is 11x11 instead of 15x15, which is totally intentional due to the condensed vowel system and not at all an arbitrary choice based on the size of my sketchbook, and yellow has been introduced to the color scheme to reference the finwean heraldic symbols. tengwar go in the big boxes, and tehtar go in the little ones: vowels in the right box, above the consonant they follow, and other tehtar in the left box below the consonant they apply to. (example: the top word in the second image is mirroanwi, so it gets played [malta][i-dot] + [romen][double-letter-tilde][o-hook] + [short-carrier][a-dots] + [numen] + [vilya][i-dot].) to compare, here's the actual word written out:

probably tengwar and tehtar tiles are drawn from separate bags, in roughly even amounts (how many total? do you take as many of each as you place? is it random? can you trade vowels for consonants and vice versa?). this format means you generally have to play by syllable (or, like, CV group, whatever) instead of by letter, but i think you can still add tehtar to a tengwa someone else has already placed in order to make your word work, as long as the original is still a valid word. (example: if the person before you plays min, meaning "one," and you want to branch off the last letter with a nyare, meaning "to tell/recite," you can add a two-dot tehta below the [numen] and a three-dot tehta above it to give minya, meaning "first," and then play the rest of your own word if you've still got the tiles for it.) i'm not sure how tengwar and tehtar should be scored relative to each other but there's probably some complicated rule about that too.

of course the most important question is: how do these mechanics affect finwean game nights? and to answer that, we have to consider some extremely important factors:

this is not an alphabet that lends itself to scrabble in the slightest, given the number of diacritics, their wild positioning relative to the base letters, and the frequent combination of consonant clusters into single glyphs, e.g. the single tengwa anca representing the [nc] cluster, despite [n] and [c] having their own separate letters already. also the guy who invented this alphabet is sitting at the table.

who actually came up with quenya scrabble? feanor? one of his kids? an off-the-books lambengolmor committee absolutely sloshed on miruvóre? whoever it is, they're getting almost as much heckling for designing the game as feanor is for his unplayable alphabet. the only person getting heckled more is whatever coward keeps suggesting they pick a different game if they hate this one so much.

quenya, like its real-world inspiration finnish, is a highly agglutinative language. there are so many allowable prefixes and suffixes. as an example, these are some of the possible inflections of the word cirya [2] — just grammatical ones, to be clear; we're not even touching on common adjective-noun compounds. behold:

you play a nice simple noun that you think is far enough away from the good strategic spots that you'll be safe and then BAM. your little brother comes crawling out of the woodwork to slap on a -lissenitya [3] he's been building up to for three rounds and gets a triple word square as he informal-thou's you to your face. good luck coming back from that one.

"valarin loanwords do NOT count" vs "commonly used loanwords following quenya phonotactics are fine" vs "telvo and i use that word all the time, intra-twin communication is a valid dialect of quenya, stop dialect-shaming us, if you can't pronounce dušamanûðân that sounds like a skill issue, yeah of course we always use these three high-value tiles to write the non-native sounds" <- and the worst part is they do have a solid phonological reasoning for those tile choices

in conclusion. this game would be a nightmare even if normal people were playing it but when half the participants have the equivalent of a doctorate in linguistics simply through childhood osmosis it transcends nightmarish and arrives somewhere in the realm of a flagrant affront to god, and if that isn't noldorin culture i don't know what is.

[1]: "In Eldarin structure every base consisted of a consonantal frame, most frequently biconsonantal, as K-L; but this was not complete or significant without its characteristic vowel (Q. sundóma [sic] 'root-vowel'). Thus KAL, KIL, KUL were distinct bases, not necessarily related in sense, indeed usually quite unconnected." PE17, J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Gilson, pp. 104-105.

[2]: this wild case list is from eldamo, imo the best elven dictionary available on the internet bar none. i'm gonna marry their search system when i grow up.

[3]: -li, partative plural (a subset of a larger group); -sse(n), locative case (in/on/at the base noun); -(i)tya, informal 2nd singular possessive pronoun (quenya, like korean, german, french, and many other languages including english even up through the early modern period, has polite and informal modes of address, and we don't take advantage of this nearly enough in fic). -sse is the singular locative, while -ssen is the plural — if your opponent adds this to one of your words, your only recourse is to start a fight about whether the -li already implies the plural, making the -n redundant and shortening the full word from ciryalissenitya to ciryalissetya, which is still bad but not as wildly humiliating, and if you're lucky everyone will be too busy arguing about grammar to remember how thoroughly you got dunked on.

I desperately would love love LOVE to introduce Feanorians to a Quenyan version of Scrabble and watch them explode

I imagine that they'd make a bigger board to be able to fit 10-12 players and it would go on for days. With bickerings on the validity of words and with Moryo as the score keeper who can't quite keep his mouth shut and joins in on the bickering on wheter the word choice is "so fucking stupid, Tyelko. It should be banned on principle. What the fuck-". Each of the Feanorion just keeps on making up new rules especially after the Ambarussa makes up new words and argues for a whole hour and a half that it "totally counts as a word. Trust us, Nelyo-", that time Meadhros tried to pass a whole ass sentence as a "word", when Feanor took almost 12+ hours to think up an appropriate word to put down and etc.

Because come on guys. Ñoldor? "Those with great knowledge"? Feanor? The guy who created a whole ass writing system (the Tengwar)? His family? Who is just as intense and competitive as him? His step-siblings who would no doubt love an excuse to throw down without getting into trouble with the Valar or Finwë? Scrabble is THE BEST for Ñoldor Family Game Night(s).

I can just imagine Feanor playing scrabble with Finwë, Indis, Nolofinwë, Arafinwë, Írimë and Findis. Oh boyy. Findis is keeping score but everyone keeps trying to justify how they should have a higher score that word. Nolo and Feanor are shouting. Accusing each other for cheating. Ara made a throwaway joke once and suddenly BOTH his brothers are shouting at him. Indis saw the chaos and wanted to put away the game but was immediately stopped. Finwë is just happy to spend time with his family. Írimë is, in fact, the one who is cheating

Edit: More Feanorion shenanigans here! For part 2

Edit: And another! For part 3

Edit: Part 4!

[Edited to keep it to one post. Was too excited to post]

[lalaithion]

Ranking the Sindarization of the Names of the House of Finwe

A completely objective list

The Good

Irissë -> Aredhel. Look, Irissë is a great name, but Aredhel, pronounced properly, with a voiced "th" sound, like in "this", and a tapped "r", like a "r" in Spanish or Italian, just sounds so wonderful. (Actually, can we talk about this? English speakers tend to refer to both the tapped r and the trilled r as "the trilled r", so which is it? Most of the written sources say “trilled r”, but most of the speaking samples I can find just tap the r instead of fully trilling it.)

Artanis Nerwen -> Galadriel. Artanis and Nerwen are both just such boring names. Galadriel has four syllables each more awesome than the last. High Queen of the Noldor in my heart.

Nelyafinwë Maitimo -> Maedhros. Not that I dislike either of his Quenya names, but (with the same pronunciation notes as Aredhel) Maedhros just sounds so cool. And yes, the fact that he's a war criminal with the name "sexy readhead" is just too funny.

The Meh

Curufinwë Fëanoró -> Feanor. Boring! You just cut the "ó" off the end. Feanor doesn't do anything by halves except this. Okay, granted, his family did this to him – he was a linguist, I'm confident he could have done better if he had been a better tactician.

Turcafinwë Tyelkormo -> Celegorm. These are all good names. Alright, the "finwe" theme of Feanor's father names are really bad, but his mother name and his Sindar name are both good. Still, Tyelkormo is better.

Morifinwë Carnistir -> Caranthir. Yeah, these are both fine. I personally have a hard time actually pronouncing "Carnistir" correctly without tripping on the unfamiliar-to-english combination of the tapped r and the n (It's not pronounced like carnage! You need to tap the r).

Curufinwë Atarincë -> Curufin. Once again, Boring! Maybe I shouldn't be so confident that Feanor could have done better than his family, if Curufin is also just going to cut off the last vowel.

Telufinwë Ambarussa -> Amras. Abarussa is a super cute name for the twins to call each other and for others to refer to them as a group, but this is better Sindar name of the twins, so it gets to go in meh.

Ñolofinwë Aracáno -> Fingolfin. Thank Eru he went with his father name instead of his mother name; Argon is a bad name for a minor character but it would be even worse for the High King of the Noldor.

Arafinwë Ingoldo -> Finarfin. Not great, not awful. I can't help but think of dogs for the "arf", but in honesty he does sound like the cuddliest of Finwë's sons.

Artaresto -> Orodreth. Both good names. Nothing to see here.

The Bad

Findekáno -> Fingon. Oh my god. Findekáno is great and this name change sucks. Why did you do this to me, Tolkien.

Turukáno -> Turgon. Okay, at least Findekanó is doing better than his brother. Whenever I see Turgon my brain autocompletes it to "turgid", which is not a good epessë to be carrying around.

Kanafinwë Macalaurë -> Maglor. Once again, what a loss. Macalaurë is so fun and beautiful to say out loud. Maglor sounds like a depressing brand name from the 50s.

Arakáno -> Argon. That's an element dude. Also another "gon", which sucks.

Ambaráto Aikanáro -> Aegnor. Not as bad as the upcoming Rods, but. It's still bad.

Angaráto Angamaitë -> Angrod. This is the first of the Rods, which round out the end of this list.

Pityafinwë Ambarussa/Umbarto/Ambarto -> Amrod. Another Rod, so nothing needs to be said.

Findaráto Ingoldo -> Finrod. It's just so bad. I'm sorry, I just can't deal with this one.

[lendmyboyfriendahand]

Next bit in Unified Kano theory, follows immediately on the previous snippet where Maedhros agrees to show Maglor what Angband was like.

Rated Explicit. Warnings for rape roleplay and very undernegotiated kink. 2.4 k

That next afternoon, Maglor was naked in his brother's bed. Maedhros directed him to grasp the headboard behind him and tied Kano’s hands in place, having Kano hold the end of the rope whenever Maedhros needed to step around him. “After all, it’s your fault I can’t hold both ends myself.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you will be when I’m done. Check the tightness, I want you to still be able to play your harp when we’re done.”

Maglor obediently flexed his fingers. “It seems good, but I’ll tell you later if it starts to fell odd.”

“If you do, you might not like the results. You want to experience Angband tonight, and there’s no pity there.”

“But there is respect for usefulness.”

“Sometimes, though your useful function is rarely what you wish it to be. You don’t need hands to scream in that pretty voice, after all.”

Maglor gulped, and nodded. “I understand. My hands feel fine.”

“Perhaps you are starting to, though you’ll be able to go back safely to our brothers in the morning no matter what I do tonight.” Maedhros tied one of Maglor’s ankles to the bedpost, then crouched to look Maglor in the eye. “This is your last chance to back out. After all, none in Angband cared if I screamed, or begged them to let me go, or truly thought myself on the brink of death if they gave me but one more wound.”

“I won’t go back on what I said. I want to understand you, whatever it takes.”

Maedhros nodded, and reached into the bedside table. He pulled out a scrap of fabric, and unceremoniously gagged Maglor.

“Your voice is pretty, but I’d rather you not sing the place down.” Maedhros circled the bed as he talked, voice smoother than normal, the vowels stretched long. “I’d survive of course, but my master would be so upset to lose you. With Feanor dead and his eldest stolen from me, you’re sadly the best I’m going to get.”

Maedhros ran his hands over Maglor’ body, checking his muscles like a newly acquired horse. The touch was clinical rather than passionate, arousing neither of them.

“I suppose it’s not too poor a prize. After all, the other two had such indomitable wills. But a sweet little songbird like you, I bet you change your tune quite easily. What do you think, will you sing prettily for me?”

Maglor shook his head to protest, but let out a surprised yelp when Maedhros’s hand abruptly found his ass.

“Oh, does the little prince have objections? Does he think himself too great to yield for a Maia? We can fix that, if you like.”

Maedhros said the next words in Maglor’s ear, his voice once more his own with no pretense. “There is one you’ve always let use you.”

“Your brother was so strong, so smart, so handsome. Everyone admired him; of course that included you And when he asked to touch you, how could you deny him? He was finally treating you as a peer, not just a child tagging along behind him and his friends.”

“Not that he ever really saw you as an equal. You were just a warm body to him; he fucked you so often only due to convenience. I suppose your form is more pleasant than many, and your lips practiced from the flute. A fuck toy that can hold its breath for minutes is more fun as well. But that’s all you were to him, a pretty toy. If you had asked him to marry you, he would have laughed, and left you by the wayside. By the next day he’d have someone just as pretty in his bed, and never wonder about you again.”

Maglor protested.

“What, do you think my assessment of him unfair? That I can’t possibly know? He was in my power for years. I learned everyone of his deepest desires – and he never mentioned you as anything but a desperate little slut.”

“Or perhaps you’re saying you would complain if he cast you aside. You would shout in the streets, that Maedhros was unfaithful to his brother-lover. Write a song to get every ear on Tirion on your side- or at least against him.”

Maedhros had opened up Maglor’s ass while he spoke. His caresses were mocking though, giving the sort of deep sensual touch that Maedhros usually lavished on Maglor’s cock to his wrist instead, treating his brother’s hole with all the intimacy of plopping a hat on his head.

Maedhros fucked Maglor then, not hard and fast, but reveling in his own pleasure. He didn’t avoid Maglor prostate but neither did he seek it, rutting after his own high as if the body beneath him was nothing but so much meat.

Maedhros came, and wiped his cock off on Maglor’s thighs to clean it.

Maedhros began speaking in that smooth silky voice again, as ‘Sauron’ dropped the act. “You do look pretty, with my seed in you and your cock hard as you wish for release. But not particularly unique. I think you ought to have some way to mark as you different than the other slaves, don’t you? After all, a Prince of the Noldor shouldn’t be mistaken for common rabble.” Maedhros adjusted Maglor’s appearance as he spoke, tucking a bit of hair back behind one ear, moving his arms to a more pleasing angle.

Maedhros reached the foot of the bed again, and massaged Maglor foot. He moved his hand up, caressing Maglor’s calf and groping his thigh. Then he said, “yes, here will do nicely.”

Maedhros took out another length of rope and put it around Maglor’s left arm, right against the shoulder and armpit. Then he grabbed Maglor’s knee, and raised it towards his chest. With a few deft motions, Maglor’s left leg was tied up out of the way, exposing one ass-cheek to his tormentor.

“There. Everyone’s going to be seeing you from this angle, so it’s really the best spot for a mark of authenticity.”

Maedhros turned to the table, and to Maglor’s surprises did not turn around with a pen to write insults on his bare skin. Instead, Maedhros was holding a needle.

Maedhros jabbed the needle into Maglor’s ass, making him yelp from behind the gap. Then Maedhros withdrew the needle, and jabbed it again scarcely a hairs-breadth away.

Maglor flinched and whimpered at the first line. When Maedhros started the second, Maglor squirmed in the ropes. He had not expected the pain to be tedious, but it really was.

Maedhros said, “hold still,” and poked the needle into Maglor’s balls. When Maglor shrieked and his free leg shot straight out. Maedhros waited for a moment, then resumed drawing the star of Feanor.

“It’s lucky that your father chose such a simple symbol. Something like the twin snakes of Arafinwe would require a knife, and your whole back.”

Maglor did his best to stay still, as the tedium was obviously something Maedhros had experienced as well.

At the end, Maedhros said, “There. Now you are marked as a proper whore of Feanor, a slut of the house of Finwe.” Maedhros angled a small mirror so that Maglor could see his own ass. There was indeed a star of Feanor, bright red, in some places dripping with blood and in others only inflamed. The star was only a few inches away from Maglor’s hole, still dripping with spend. Maglor was so arrested by the sight – both fascinating and repulsive – that he nearly missed Maedhros’s next words.

“Really, there’s no need for you to see anything else is there? A mark depicting your rank is all anyone who plays with you will see, and you don’t deserve to see more than them.” Maedhros got out a long strip of cloth and tied it around Maglor’s eyes. “You can think on that sight for a while”

The gag fell away, and Maglor started to ask what ‘Sauron’ meant to do next. It was clear quickly enough though, as his lips brushed against Maedhros’s limp cock.

“You’re renowned for you talented tongue, put it to use. Your appearance is hardly enough to arouse, but perhaps you do have some physical skills.”

It was not the first time, or even the hundredth, that Maglor had sucked his elder brother’s cock. The only downside was being unable to see the look on Maedhros's face, or cradle his thighs. Even though Maedhros had come less than an hour before, it did not take long for him to stir at Maglor’s tongue.

Maedhros fucked Maglor’s throat for a few strokes, then pulled out. “You are a useful slut,” Sauron’s voice said as the gag was re-tied around Maglor’s mouth. “I have been remiss in my hospitality though. Feanor’s whore ought to be used by Feanor, but I haven’t given you the opportunity to fulfill your purpose.” Maedhros’s voice changed again. “He made so many beautiful things, and used them all only for his own glory. Is it any surprise that he would use his sons the same?”

Maglor shook his head in denial. This was going too far, and surely Maedhros wouldn’t actually impersonate their father during sex?

But Feanor’s voice continued. “What, did you think I would swoop in and save you, if only I could? Don’t be ridiculous. If you cannot rescue yourself, you are nothing more than baggage that was weighing me down.”

Maglor felt something enter his hole – likely a finger, but he couldn’t see. “You are a millstone around the neck of the entire kingdom.” Feanor’s voice spoke from next to Maglor’s throat, and followed each sentence with a sharp bite.

“You pulled your elder brother into depravity, when he could have had his pick of eligible bachelors in Valinor. Your soothing songs charmed us all into a false sense of peace, rather than preparing for the war we knew was coming.” The finger pulled out, and there was a blunt object at Maglor’s rim.

“If you had been more focused on seeing the truth rather than happy little fairy tales, you would have been a better soldier. You could have saved my life.” Maglor’s hole opened around a cock as his father’s voice spoke in his ear. “And yet you were not constant even in your cowardice. If you had spoken up alongside Maedhros, perhaps Amrod might live.”

Maglor screamed for Maedhros to stop, but it was muffled by the gag. Whatever the torments of Angband had been, Maglor did not need to hear his deepest shame revealed in between Feanor moaning for pleasure.

Maedhros paid no heed, though. He kept fucking Maglor, but slower than before. Instead every thrust was as inevitable as the bow of a hammer, treating Maglor’s prostate like an impurity in the metal to be beaten out.

And Maedhros kept talking as well, still in the tones of Feanor, full of barely contained fury. “You are a failure as a king. Leader of the Noldor, the best craftsmen the world has ever seen, and what do you have to show for it? Two camps of undressed stone, the only decoration where people have written their names on their houses.”

A hand began toying with Maglor’s nipples.

“You were left in command of the grandest army anyone has ever seen, and you did nothing with it. You did not win any great victory, you did not even make any attempt. You hid behind walls while your brother was on the brink of death. You left him to be tortured and penned a polite letter to you half-uncle.”

Maglor reached out his mind to Maedhros, to beg his brother to stop the charade, but Maedhros’s walls were as solid as the earth and as smooth as glass. His cries went unanswered, and Maglor could not even tell if Maehdors heard him.

Still the voice of Feanor continued, as did the thrusts inside Maglor’s body. The hand stop tweaking his nipples, but that was no relief as it instead went lower, until Maglor felt his father’s hand stroke his cock.

“You claimed to have no crown out of honor to the dead, but truly it was because you did not dare ask anyone to craft it for you. You know that you are a weak son of a stronger father, too incompetent to forge your own jewelry, but with no respect form your people. They would not have heeded your commands.”

Maglor was weeping openly, as his father’s cock continued to reshape him, and his father’s hand brought him pleasure.

“This is all you’re good for, you know. A pleasant distraction for those who deal the real work. Your voice can relax and soothe, and that’s not always a bad thing. Nor is such a lovely body. You just need to give in, and stop trying to reach above your station. Admit that you’re useless as anything other than a decoration. Stop trying to fight or lead, and lay back where you can be used.”

Despite the insults filling his ears, Maglor couldn’t help his body’s reactions. His cock was hard under the other’s hand, and more than once he caught himself pushing his ass back for more.

“Your skin is so beautiful and golden, my son, how I love to touch thee, to split you open on my cock. Your are so obedient, every one of my commands makes you moan. Can you be a good boy for your father?”

Maglor shook his head and tried to cry out. But the voice in his ear paid no heed, and the hand on his cock sped up.

“Oh, I think you can. You’ll be a perfect little slut for me. Maglor, come.”

Maglor did with a sob. A moment later, he felt the other release in his ass.

Feanor – no, it was an illusion by Sauron – Maedhros, who Maglor had asked to do this in the first place, pulled out. He spoke in the smooth tone of Sauron now, rather than imitating their father.

“Now, was that so unpleasant? You got to spend time with your family, and you certainly enjoyed it.” A hand reached down around Maglor’s cock, painfully tight but making him well aware it was covered in his own spend.

Maglor whimpered.

“Really, you ought to be thanking me. But if I’m not wanted, I’ll leave you alone. There are plenty of trolls who want a chance at the elf prince.”

[undercat-overdog]

Elves invent the IPA, or, the most embarrassing thing I have ever written:

“This is intolerable,” said Rodhiniel. “The Tengwar might be a brilliant creation but it is entirely insufficient in representing the diversity of phonemes found in the various languages of Elves and Men and Dwarves – to say nothing of representing phonetic distinctions! Why, just a week ago Ilmandil refused to believe that my representation – and thus analysis – of the intra-syllable contour pitch languages was correct: he scarce believed there was such a thing!”

“It’s Ilmandil,” replied Celebrimbor, whose rivalry with the man had only grown sharper over the last dozen years. “Of course he’s being contrary and refusing to accept any analysis as superior to his own, like mine are.”

“Oh I know: you certainly complain about it – and him – often enough to me! But anyways. I have no choice but to correct the situation once and for all. No more kludges, and no more relying solely on enspelled gems to capture sounds. Pity the ones that recorded native speakers almost all were lost in the fall of Ost-in-Edhil. Had I known I would have to deal with certain contrary Lambengolmor in Aman after my return from Mandos – well, I knew I would die, but I did not know about Ilmandil and his ilk – I would have sent them from the city to Lindon with dire threats if no one set sail with them and placed them aside for my later use. But no, I shall create my new mode of the Tengwar that can represent a full inventory of sounds.”

“Oh?” said Celebrimbor. “Are you for once giving up grousing in favor of attempting an actual solution? And here I thought journeying through Mandos did not affect one’s fundamental personality.”

“Mandos certainly didn’t take away your penchant for being intolerable!” Rodhiniel retorted. “But just you see. Besides, no doubt you’ll insist on inserting yourself into my project.”

~~~

Celebrimbor did indeed insert himself in Rodhiniel’s project, and a few fortnights later sat with her, listening as she explained her initial drafts, and also enjoying hot pot in the private room of her favorite restaurant. He smirked when the sesame sauce into which she had just dunked her fish ball dripped on one of the papers spread across the table, but Rodhiniel took no notice.

“Feanor did understand the core of it, letters that show the relationship between sounds,” she was saying, “but his sample size was far too limited. You know, I rather regret not embarking on this project in Eregion; Sauron no doubt would have had interesting and worthwhile thoughts. Pity that he valued his evil empire over the advancement of learning.”

They were valid points, Celebrimbor reflected, not that Sauron abandoning his academic priorities was Celebrimbor’s chief complaint about the man.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Yet I am glad in some ways that Feanor only had knowledge of the Amanyarin languages: You shall do just a fine job as he would have, no, finer! Historical linguistics is a fine area of study, but our own advancements focused more on languages as they are, not how they change, and I think that a superior perspective for creating this writing system of yours.”

She flashed him a pleased smile. “I’m glad someone appreciates my genius. Anyways, I’ve decided to keep the extended stems to represent affricates. The only aspirates in Proto-Quendi were stops, but other consonants can be aspirated too. Hmm, should we use that tehta to mark unvoiced vowels, do you think?”

Celebrimbor tilted his head. “Your mode is primarily made to represent phonology, but phonetics, or at least allophonic variation, is also worthy of note. Don’t you think you should have a separate tehta for voicelessness, perhaps also to mark when voiced phonemes are allophonically voiceless? It might be worthwhile too for use of representing the different realizations of tense and lax consonants, and not rely solely on stem placement.”

“Possibly,” said Rodhiniel, “but that’s a phonemic distinction and the realization can be explicated through prose. Let me think on it, though I think you’re right about using different tehtar; I just need to think of one that’s pleasing – I have so many now, and they need to fit aesthetically.”

He made a murmur and looked at some of her other notes.

“Using tehtar to mark tone is correct,” he said, “though I think it better if they not be universal but specific to the language. You could make them universal – interesting that such a system to our admittedly incomplete knowledge only evolved among the various Windanin languages and while they vary it’s few enough to make universal, yet still: one of the better things about the Tengwar is how it can be adopted and changed to fit a specific phonology. Obviously for our purposes we generally do want signs to be fixed to particular phonemes, but in this particular case I think we should keep it variable.”

“We, really Tyelpe? It’s me, you know.” But she was smiling, and reached for one of the papers to scrawl on it before turning it around so he could read it right-side up. “What do you think about this?”

~~~

Over the year Rodhiniel added to her system – not her Tengwar mode itself, but on standardizing the notations they had used in Eregion for syllable and metrical structures. Their new colleague Calasse, born in Aman but a long year ago but attracted to the collaborative approach of the old Mírdain, inserted herself too in the project: her theory of how the satisfaction of conflicting constraints led to the transformation of underlying forms to the words realized in speech was too worthy of standardized notation.

But Rodhiniel ended up presenting her Tengwar in public over three dozen years after it was finished and she satisfied with it, for Merendis her wife had arrived in Aman, sailed from the Grey Havens; Rodhiniel set aside all her work and the two were inseparable as they grew to know each other once again. Celebrimbor was vaguely surprised she hadn’t carved out some time to present her phonemic alphabet earlier, but was so very glad to see their happiness.

The next time they were both in Tirion she came to the house of Finarfin where he was staying and shoved a treatise at him.

“I’m inviting Merendis and myself to dinner at your uncle’s palace,” Rodhiniel said, “or your cousin’s palace, or kinsman’s, or however you describe the relations in your overly complex family tree. You can make sympathetic noises as Merendis voices her dissatisfaction with the lack of color in this city.”

“Uncle is the term I go for – it seems a bit presumptuous to call the high king cousin. Presumptuous too to invite yourself to dinner. But I’ll arrange it in a politer way if you wish.”

She shrugged. “What’s the use of your vague claim to royalty if you won’t do favors for your friends? But in the meantime here’s the treatise I wrote on i hloníti Tengwar Rondorieldo. Do me the favor of proof-reading it, will you?”

“I Tengwar Rondoriel Tyeperinquaro, you mean,” he said, and laughed when she made a face at him.

But he was already glancing at the papers. /i l̥oˈni:ti ˈtεŋg^war rondoriˈεldo/ was how the title was written; underneath it she had an additional three representation of her title, two for how she had settled on representing the onset and codas, one syllabic and one moraic; and one denoting the actual metrical pattern; he was both amused and pleased that she used the notations for stress rather than pitch, for the Exilic Quenya they both spoke used stress accent after the Sindarin, while Amanyarin Quenya had kept to the original pitch accent.

“Well of course I did!” she said when he commented on it. “It’s what I speak, and is not lámatyave a very worthy concept? I find it more pleasing to the ear.”

He flipped through the pages and saw that she had gradually switched from Book Quenya in the common mode to her own mode, and by the end the prose was in Exilic Tarquesta.

Celebrimbor smiled at her. “I am sure there is nothing to change, but I will be delighted to read this, and more delighted still to see your work in use.”

[nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui]

Thank you for asking! Although it’s a joke, it’s actually a very good question. Curiously enough, it wouldn’t be! When the Z sound disappeared from Quenya and was replaced by R, it was no longer represented by the ázë (then árë) Tengwa in writing but by rómen, which already existed for sounds that had been R all along. The newly vacant ázë/árë, clearly recogniseable by looks as related to silmë (i.e. the S sound), was then used to represent the frequent SS (which is technically the same sound as S but ??? for some reason spelled differently), because there’s no reason to let a perfectly fine Tengwa go to waste or use two S next to each other when you can stack them in a more aesthetically pleasing form. So basically, while azë became árë, words that formerly had the Z-sound in them were then spelled with rómen. Whereas words that have the SS-sound in them (which is actually the same as just regular S, a voiceless alveolar fricative) and ended up written with essë had already had that sound, it was just written differently. This shows that the Eldar are perfectly capable of making pragmatic decisions when it comes to their language, as long as nobody is getting unduly emotionally attached to any specific sounds

Ruthandol? How the everloving fuck would you come up with Ruthandol? There’s. There’s a reason that it’s written with a double-S. Means that it has shit fuck all to do with the TH -> S development (not to mention that… not all later Quenya S once were TH?! Some have always been S? silmë as an individual Tengwa exists? I mean, it’s a fairly significant sound in, IDK, Silmaril?!). The double-S in transcription represents a whole-ass Tengwa of its own (essë)? This isn’t even complicated or ambiguous it’s just… IDK? Revisionism? Hypercorrection? Pseudo-Fëanorian bullshit? I mean, you can name an OC Ruthandol (or rather, Rúthandol) because rúsë/rúthë “wrath” exists. It’s correct Quenya. But. It very much isn’t a valid form of Russandol (Don’t mind me, I’ve been reading the AMA with Bill Fliss and someone asked the poor man whether Ruthandol would be more correct than Russandol. He wisely abstained from answering and declared that he was out of his depth there. I, however, am not.)

[eri-pl]

Tengwar <3

It's the best thing Feanor made. Seriously. Nobody will murder you for using Tengwar. Nobody will hack your brain when you use Tengwar in the wrong moment. (The lamps are ok, but kinda meh, Tengwar is better)

Did you know, just did you know, that every consonant has a name, and the name is a noun, and some are really cool (and foreshadowing)? (chart and translations below the cut)

So, if you want a chart, here is a chart. And the names are (I don't have diacritics, so I just double the long vowels) (Quenya mode, with some historical notes from LotR appendix and elvish.org):

"Normal stuff Feanor had on his desk" row:

T tinco - metal

P parma - book

K calma - lamp (like those Feanor made? Or... like those Aule made)

Q quesse - feather (birds are important!)

"Things that keep you trapped" row:

ND ando - gate (like... the Door of Night?)

MB umbar - doom (doesn't need a comment...)

NG anga - iron (also, used in sword names, even for non-iron swords)

NGW (in TA changed to NW) ungwe - spider's web (foreshadowingsight on Feanor's part? :) )

"Mountain things???" row

S suule - spirit or breath (Manwe Sulimo... king of winds and stuff...) | TH thuule - spirit or breath, but I'm a Feanorian, or at least I'm a linguistics geek and love the phonetic scheme (me! but otoh it sounds dumb :( ), or I love the Teleri and/or Sindar, who use it as th (Finarfin, iirc).

F formen - north

H (h before t) harma (voiceless velar fricative phonetically /x/... I think. the sources are confusing. In TA mostly softened into a breath h.) - treasure (my precious Silmarills...) | aha (later renamed, idk when) - rage (my Silmarils! and, even more importantly, my father!)

HW (like "wh" in "why" especially the fancy British way of saying it where it's actyally h-w, not w-h) hwesta - breeze

"We need to name a row after places of articulation" row

NT anto - mouth (couldn't you think of a better name? I get it's a place-of-articulation row, but i don't like it anyway)

MP ampa - hook

NC anca - jaw

NQ unque - hole

"Things that Melkor likes" row:

N nuumen - west (Numenor...)

M malta - gold

NG (by TA: N) noldo - Noldo, as in type of Elf. Yes, it was initially Ngoldo. I mean, initially initially it was a gnome, so...

NW nwalme - tornment

"I have no idea but vaguely positive-metaphysical?..." row

R (pre-consonant or end-of-the-word R | non-vibrating r, whatever this means. My bet is that it's "r" as in Japanese --- position like "r", movement like "d") oore - heart (or: rising. Guess whose name includes this component. funny that it's the same word as heart, especially given that heart is also defined as conscience here)

V vala - power (duh.)

Y (? it has some history) [there was a consonant here]anna - gift (totally not made into a sus word by now...)

W/V (Initially W, by TA changed to V) wilya - air / lower sky (funny how those two names are next to one another. )

"Really, I think Feanor ran out of ideas for coherent name sets" row

R (vibrating, typpical "rrr") romen - east (the same sound being written with "East" and with a word alternatively translating to "heart" or part of Melkor's name --- I love it! Why? See my recent post. I love that. Call it a coincidence, but I love it)

RD arda - realm

L lambe - speech

LD alda - tree (!)

Now we are not in regular rows, so, the extra letters:

S silme - starlight (or... metaphysically important light in general? because guess what word is connected to this one. Also, funny how it's just after "tree"). It's always S, never TH.

(nuquerma is just "flipped" or something I guess)

Z aaze - day / sunlight (in Noldorin changed to Z - aare) | SS esse (Numenor and later, because they did not use the "z" sound, I think) - name

HY (Numenor and later: H) hywarmen - south

I yanta - bridge

U uure - heat

(doesn't have a sound, in Sindarin it's A) osse - terror (I guess he isn't a very nice Maia?)

H (voiceless h: /h/ not /x/; in TA replaced by harmen) halla - tall | gasdil - stop

(short wovel carrier) telco - stem

(long carrier) aara - dawn

The Tengwa names after directions are also used as marks in the compass (like we use NSWE) And snarky comments aside, I love the schema and how the names connect into many interesting and often Silm-events-related patterns. I love how each (almost) row is named after a set of similar things.

I'm not an expert, and if I made some mistakes, I'll be grateful for corrections.

[undercat-overdog]

Hi! For the ask game, would you answer to 5, 16, 30 and 38? Thanks and have a lovely day 🌸🌾

Thank you! Fair warning, this is a long answer!

16. Do you research for your fics? If so, how deep of a rabbit hole have you gone down by accident when researching?

Answered here.

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words.

A non-spoilery bit from a scene that is causing me no end of trouble:

Annatar ignored him; he seemed... not worried, exactly, not quite apprehensive. If he were another person Celebrimbor would think it nervousness, but in the two and a half great years they had known each other Celebrimbor had never seen him nervous.

But Annatar sighed, and sank into the couch, and smiled, rueful. “I do like you, you know.”

“I know,” said Celebrimbor softly, “and against my better judgment I am fond of you.”

When Annatar reached out a hand to him, he took it and let Annatar tug him down to sit next to him. Celebrimbor turned towards him, wriggling to get comfortable, and threw a leg over one of Annatar’s, pressing against him as Annatar pulled him in close. The coldness that had seeped into Celebrimbor just then melted away, but the apprehension that had crept into him more and more over their recent arguments did not. Still:

He caught Annatar’s hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it.

“In truth,” he told him, “you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

38. What does your writing process look like? How chaotic is it on a scale of 1 (very tame) to 10 (you can’t handle this kind of chaos)?

Like, a two? I sit at my computer with either coffee or wine depending on the time of day and I think about stories as I walk my dog.

5. What are your fanfic pet peeves? Do they have a huge effect on whether or not you decide to read something?

Under the cut for space.

Huh. With regards to prose, there are some things that stick out to me, but it’s never a big deal. I happily read google-translated non-English fic and am inured to things like "the bluenette." Spelling/grammar is likewise a non-issue and I have my own sins there: my comma use is so not what style guidelines call for.

I do have some Tolkien-based pet peeves, salt ahead that I acknowledge is 100% me personally.

Thauron and Thindarin from a speaker of Exilic Quenya is nails on a chalkboard to me. And - this is hypocritical; I have elven sentences in a couple fics which I should take out probably - I dislike the use of non-English words for words that have a perfectly good corresponding English word (e.g., ellon rather than man, keikaku rather than plan). Also, and this is the pettiest, stupidest thing ever and I acknowledge that, but diareses bug me. I can tolerate them word-finally and to indicate a vowel hiatus (I know Tolkien used them in the books published during his lifetime but they're unnecessary and he didn't use them in his non-published work), but ones in the middle of a word make me twitch. Oh, and mention of ears twitching or flattening against the head or anything about Elven ears moving, I do not love it.

But there’s not much that will make me not read a fic if I’ve clicked on it. (I don’t read a lot of fic though, mostly because I only read about a couple ships and a few characters. Not reading fic centered on the Sons of Feanor - nothing against them, just not my particular jam - alone cuts out 75% of the tag, and I have plenty of other things I don’t read. Not because there’s not excellent authors! But just what interests me.)

[carlandrea]

Legolas: wait fuck!! You’re—you’re feanor

Feanor, looking over his vowel charts etc.: yes I suppose that is how you would say my name in your language

Legolas: ok ok. Ok so I’m gonna try to break this gently to you (because I don’t want to be fucking murdered)

Feanor: what

Legolas: you know. Maybe. Maybe some things are more important than like. Your fancy rocks . You know? Like maybe—

Feanor: oh my god you want to steal my fancy rocks

Legolas: I literally would rather die

Fun fic premise: Legolas somehow time travels back in time to treelit Valinor. No one can understand this tiny (he comes up to your average Valinorean elf’s collarbone) scared elf babbling in a heavy regional dialect of a language that no one speaks yet.

Feanor, linguistic enthusiast that he is, decides to take on understanding this weird little elf as a project. Legolas, who in theory would call him feanor, but whose people more likely call him and his sons, interchangeably, the silvan word for “that bastard,” does not, at first, realize who “Feanaro” is. Shenanigans hijinks etc.

[telemna-hyelle]

Technically there’s three! I only know how to write in two, though, and the second one I can really only write my name with any reliability XD

The one I wrote in, and the one I know the best (though not 100%, i forget some of the double-letter-sound symbols) is tengwar, famously invented but Feanor! It has two modes, Quenya and Sindarin--I write mostly in Quenya fashion, where the vowel markings are placed on the preceding consonant. In Sindarin fashion you put the vowel markings on the following consonant. This is because in Quenya words often end with vowels, while in Sindarin words often end with consonants! Such as ‘telemna’ or ‘telpë’, Quenya for Silver, while the Sindarin cognate is ‘celeb’. 

Feanor, for once, however, was not the originator of this particular invention! There’s the Sarati, the Alphabet of Rumil, from which Feanor took inspiration, and which I do not know how to write in or read at all XD It’s very neat though, it’s written from top to bottom, unlike any other script!

The last is the Cirth Angerthas, also known as the Cirth Daeron or the Angerthas Daeron, invented (as you might have guessed) by the Sindar Daeron, and is therefore tailored to Sindarin sounds. It was invented to be carved into wood, stone and metal (and is inspired by the real-life script known as the Futhark). It fell out of use and was usually only used for formal writing as the tengwar became more and more widespread--except for with the dwarves, who preferred the Cirth as tengwar is a lot harder to carve into stone. This eventually ended up with a lot of men being under the mistaken impression that it was invented by the dwarves, which is not true, though they did have a couple versions, the Angerthas Moria and the Angerthas Erebor, where they adapted and added some runes in order to suit Khudzul better. 

I don’t know a lot of Cirth, and as I said earlier, can only reliably write my (real) name in it. I’m much more comfortable in Tengwar, though I know I don’t use it 100% correctly

📝