#this transcription always writes dor-lomin as dor-16min it's very charming

[garden-ghoul]

more children of hurin (4 of them?)

“I can’t remember how long I’ve been doing this”

CHAPTER 8: THE LAND OF BOW AND HELM

I’m sorry I haven’t even started reading this and I’m already thinking about silmarillion SBURB au. one of those jarjam-like games that is fundamentally broken and more and more people keep joining and horrible things happen to everyone. “au”

also holy fuck I just discovered readmores I’m so sorry everyone

this chapter starts out strong with mȋm "look[ing] with a jealous eye on the love that Turin bore to Beleg.” why is everyone gay for turin? he’s OKAY but he’s a truly inadvisable teen human. he’s not THAT great. anyway mȋm hates beleg So Much and presumably beleg is like, friendly and mild to him at all times because I think it’s funny. mȋm’s curse on androg, that he’ll die if he ever shoots a bow and arrow again, ALMOST kills him, but beleg heals him because he’s a valuable member of the team! mȋm is fucking pissed.

turin gets so famous for harrying orcs from mȋm’s hill that people come and start building camps and forts around amon rudh. all the nargothronders are like “orodreth what if an actual army went to help? those guys are doing really good” and orodreth presumably said “don’t be an idiot my armies aren’t trained in guerilla warfare, which is what makes that guy so successful. all elves know how to do is march gloriously onto battlefields.” turin is so successful, meanwhile, in the cookie clicker that is war, that he can afford ANOTHER NAME: gorthol, or “dread helm.” that brings our total up to “turin neithan gorthol ben hurin.”

beleg thinks this is premature, because turin knows absolutely nothing about governing a large number of people, or like taking care of them in winter. turin is like, “whatever I guess. if morgoth kills me at least I will have died in a totally sicknasty manner.”

there’s also a fun bit where tolkien offers two conflicting histories: one where mȋm is so sick of beleg being great and handsome that he goes to the orcs to tattle, and one where he gets captured and his remaining son is held hostage for the information. I LOVE this “yeah actual history is super murky” thing and I wish he did it more often! he comes up with enough alternate versions of stuff anyway, he could totally just legitimize them in this way. also just, I generally want more trappings of a history where he cites what documents he gets info from (”so was it written in the book of xyz” or “in the recovered correspondence of orodreth and thingol” or “maeglin’s angsty diary” or whatever). I love. I just really love anything that presents itself as an archive rather than as a straight-up story.

orcs attack amon rudh and turin & co are boxed in at the top of the hill. wait--”Then Turin and Beleg with the ten men left to them drew back to the centre of the summit...” is he doing this on purpose?? the thing where every party has 12 people in it? or is it just a coincidence caused by rounding and the two-interesting-character maximum? oh yeah also turin gets carried off by orcs

CHAPTER 9: THE DEATH OF BELEG

beleg goes to track the orcs who took turin, and comes across gwindor in the woods! I skipped over gwindor’s awful fate, but it was basically watching his brother be horribly dismembered as a taunt and then being sent to a mining camp for 2 years and losing a hand while escaping. I really like this unnecessary detail about his normal-ass lamp:

These Noldor possessed many of the Feanorian lamps, which were crystals hung in a fine chain net, the crystals being ever-shining with an inner blue radiance marvellous for finding the way in the darkness of night or in tunnels; of these lamps they themselves did not know the secret.

gwindor and beleg rescue turin from the orcs, but as beleg is cutting turin free his hand slips and he pokes turin in the foot with his sword. turin, naturally, LEAPS up out of a dead faint and kills him. then lightning flashes, illuminating beleg’s face (bringing with it a musical sting) and he realizes what he has done. then he just sits there, dissociating, while gwindor cowers nearby thinking I escaped from the mines for this? what the fuck is *wrong* with humans?

EOL’S CURSED SWORD CLAIMS ITS FIRST VICTIM. I hope once turin adopts it, it will whisper to him about beleg’s totally avoidable death while he’s trying to sleep. also it says here in the text “now turin has ptsd.” tolkien literally wrote that. weird right

luckily I guess gwindor is more than willing to be beleg’s replacement. turin never lacks for people eager to follow him around and help him despite how many bad decisions he is constantly making that get other people killed. gwindor takes turin to the magical lake maintained by ulmo in purity even though it’s really far inland. here it says “turin just stopped having ptsd. he was cured. cool right.” fuck this

I leave you with this great dialogue:

'Then have you seen Hurin son of Galdor, the warrior of Dor-lomin?' said Turin. 

'I have not seen him,' said Gwindor. 'But the rumour runs through Angband that he still defies Morgoth; and Morgoth has laid a curse upon him and all his kin.' 

'That I do believe,' said Turin.