#they’re my little meow meows

[someforeignband]

S5 wheeler siblings WIP anyone?😳

[loverboybrightsideghost]

this is YOUR 🫵🏼 sign to start making random noises when you feel like it. meowing? go for it. random squeaking? hell yeah man. make noises 🫵🏼 let it out dog

[static-kills]

Drew this on my little whiteboard during English class

[ilovebeingaturtle]

I’m so upset I’ve gone so long without having this extended scene in my life

[cloudsofteeth]

Wanted to draw more of the skinny freak <3

[starryjax0]

jim kirk, dying: i need you to know why i went back for you

spock: because you are my friend

jim kirk, who was 100% planning on telling him that they’re actually madly in love: can i please die faster

[loopyarts]

A art dump highlight of some of my most liked pen and pencil doddle spreads, that I had did in my notebook from March to April. Also, cough cough it’s mostly just Ichiji with some Niji and Sanji sprinkled in there and one tiny rough doddle of Yonji as well. OvO’)

[wazzappp]

BISCUITS

[luoniiel]

my thinblood turned malkavian, clemency! + their pet rat fergus :3

[deltapelagicpetrel]

i was listening to the dark river audiobook and he sounded a bit too texan, so now all i think is this little texan cat

[newts-and-sharks]

Say hello to my new sona ✨

[ambrosethedarling]

Gotham Kitties

[eloise175]

behold the babygirls

[thelordofgifs]

In Defence of the Sons of Fëanor

Wait, again? Yes, always. But not anything really bad! Kinslaying, I hope we can agree, is pretty indefensible. But an accusation I often see levelled against the younger sons - that they failed to rescue Maedhros from Angband out of cowardice/stupidity - is bugging me. So! Before I get a fandom reputation as "the Gil-galad poster", I thought I might write something about a character I actually care about - Maglor! Also his younger brothers, but Maglor is the one I’m particularly invested in defending.

In fic (particularly a lot of Russingon fic) the views I tend to see expressed by characters, and backed up by the narrative, go something like "The Fëanorions heartlessly refused Morgoth's offer to release Maedhros and left their brother to torture for thirty years! Dangling from a cliff in full view of their camp! But then heroic Fingon showed up and immediately rescued him with nothing more than a bow and a harp - he barely even stopped to eat first!"

Firstly, I obviously understand that views expressed by the characters are not that of the author. It is absolutely valid for Fingon to accuse the Fëanorions of cowardice, and completely in-character for Maglor to feel incredibly guilty about not rescuing Maedhros (and in fact a pretty essential part of their dynamic, in my opinion). My issue is with fics that very much imply that this view is the Only Correct One. There are a lot of things Maglor does wrong over the course of the Silm. This is not one of them.

Beginning with the refusal to surrender to Morgoth in exchange for Maedhros’ release - I hope nobody seriously considers this a bad decision? A crushing one, certainly. You can write really sad fic about this (I plan to). But the Noldor had just received an excellent lesson in why trusting Morgoth to parley was a bad idea. They had no reason to believe that Morgoth would actually release Maedhros if they surrendered - which is correct. He wouldn’t have. The published Silm adds, “and they were constrained also by their oath” - incidentally, a fairly compelling point of evidence in favour of the oath being binding in nature to some extent, but not the point here. The point here is that they couldn’t have surrendered to Morgoth, and shouldn’t have anyway.

So, with that out of the way, we can accept that what Maglor et al are being accused of is not refusing to parley with Morgoth, but failing to mount an independent rescue mission.

(Incidentally, it’s generally assumed that Maglor, the second-eldest brother, was the one in charge during Maedhros’ captivity. I usually subscribe to this myself, but I would also like to note that Maglor is not once named during the description of these events. It’s always “the sons of Fëanor”, as a unit. You could make a pretty strong case that they were deciding things together, or even that one of his younger brothers had usurped him somewhat - C&C have form in that area…)

Actually before I move on from Morgoth’s proposed deal, an important question: did Maedhros’ brothers know that he was alive? According to (I think) the Grey Annals, Maedhros was captured in YT 1497, and suspended from Thangorodrim in YT 1498 - presumably after his brothers had refused Morgoth’s offer. That’s potentially around 10 years in which they heard nothing, before Morgoth makes them the offer! Perhaps they reasoned that Morgoth wouldn’t have put such a valuable prisoner to death; perhaps not. It’s doubtful they were offered actual proof that Maedhros was alive, at any rate.

“Sure,” you might say, “but they definitely knew he was alive once they could see him suspended from Thangorodrim!” I can’t actually express how strongly I disagree with this common headcanon. The Fëanorions couldn’t see Maedhros on the cliff! Where did people get this idea from? I presume it’s because of Legolas’ various physics-defying feats of eyesight in LoTR. I would like to make the argument here that there’s no reason to assume Noldor accustomed to the light of the Trees could see as well in the starlight as a Silvan Elf of shadowed Mirkwood, but that’s not really necessary. There’s much stronger evidence pointing clearly to the fact that Maedhros wasn’t visible: Fingolfin’s host marches right up to the gates of Angband and nobody notices him. He even yells for help, and they don’t hear him! There is no way that anyone knew he was there (and the Sun had risen by this stage, too. If he was visible, they’d have seen him.) I’m allergic to geography, so don’t take my word on this, but my understanding is that Thangorodrim is a whole little mountain range or something, not like a single cliff. As additional support for this, Fingon gets lost on his eventual rescue mission (in which he’s trying to break into Angband itself, because that’s where he thinks Maedhros is) and only finds Maedhros when he hears him singing. The Fëanorions were absolutely not spending thirty years going “ooh look clear day today! Give Nelyo a wave!”

The next thing to tackle is the odd implication that rescuing Maedhros was really easy, actually, and his brothers were cowards for not even attempting it. Not only do I think this untrue, I don’t see why you’d want it to be true? Fingon’s rescue of Maedhros is one of the best parts of the silm. It’s moving because Fingon is so so brave, and he’s brave because what he attempted was impossible. There is seriously NO reason why that should have worked, and that’s what’s wonderful about it. Suggesting that Maedhros’ brothers held back from attempting a rescue because of cowardice or not caring about him, and not because it couldn’t be done, imo really devalues the magnitude of Fingon’s act of grace.

On a more practical level, nothing about the description of the rescue mission suggests it was easy and anyone could have done it? I genuinely hate to make this joke but… one does not simply walk into Angband. Fingon is specifically described as “aided by the very darkness that Morgoth had made” - a darkness which, you recall, he had made in response to the light of the new Sun. If you’d tried to walk up to Thangorodrim before Morgoth had made his smog, you’d have been caught! There were orcs there! And probably all manner of other fell beasties! Maedhros absolutely couldn’t have been rescued before the rising of the Sun, and specifically Morgoth’s response to it.

A final point - the somewhat common claim that Fingon immediately, the instant he learned what had befallen Maedhros, set out to rescue him, and didn’t even stop to like, brush his teeth first. This is a nice image! The Russingon feels are unparalleled! Unfortunately, I don’t think the text backs it up. The published silm states that Fingon went to Angband “resolved to heal the feud that divided the Noldor”. This rather strongly implies that Fingon only left on his mission some time after he arrived at Mithrim, since there was clearly time for tensions to arise between the two hosts. One of the Annals (Grey or of Beleriand? I get them mixed up - at any rate, the timeline on Tolkien Gateway) puts this in even starker terms, stating that Fingolfin’s host arrived at Mithrim in Year 2 of the Sun, and Fingon rescued Maedhros in Year 5. That’s three years of waiting around before he set out! Now, you could headcanon that maybe Maglor et al told Fingon that Maedhros was dead, and he only later learned that they meant “captured and we never found a body” - but it’s also possible that he knew Maedhros was a captive the entire time, and still didn’t do anything. Three years is obviously not the same as thirty, but I find this detail interesting even so. It rather muddies the dichotomy of “Maedhros’ brothers didn’t care enough to rescue him, Fingon immediately saved him” that I often see.

tl;dr the Fëanorions weren’t cowards who didn’t love their brother, they were sensible and it’s tragic.

Right I hope that was a fairly measured and reasonable post (it was supposed to be at any rate) so now I can very quickly say how DARE you imply that Maglor didn’t love Maedhros consider how close he settles to Himring consider how he’s the only one Maedhros brings with him to the Mereth Aderthad consider their last debate ie the most heartbreaking dialogue in the entire book consider how he’s right and yet he still follows Maedhros in stealing the Silmarils consider how he only finally breaks after Maedhros’ death you can pry that tender loving codependent relationship from my COLD DEAD HANDS ok I’m normal now :)

[monkeyniples]

Guys i know the target audience venn diagram is abysmally small but uhhh, is lieutenant Columbo more of a Kim Kitsuragi or a Harry Dubois????? On the one hand, notebook and a saint, on the other hand he really IS my poor little meow meow!

[miranita]