#you: request barahir for character meme

[gurguliare]

If you're still in the mood, and if you haven't done him already, could you do túrin? Or Barahir, if you've already done Túrin/ if you'd rather!

HM okay I’ll do Barahir because I’m not sure I have the wherewithal for Turin at the moment

1-3 things I enjoy about them

Second son untimely promoted

I think literally every day about the lost tales version where he’s named Aegnor

idk sometimes I forget that “stay and defend a nuclear waste zone” was not actually Beren’s idea bc he took it to SUCH A DELIGHTFUL, LOGICAL EXTREME but Barahir is a fun dude, I like how he entrusted his preternaturally quiet 20yo son with key spying missions

Something interesting about them based on tenuous circumstantial evidence

idk I love that we get Barahir’s whole… compressed leadership arc in the background of, well, the ruin of Beleriand and the fall of Fingolfin; to me it’s one of the most cinematic uses of the interleaved relative timescales in the Silm, where it’s simultaneously like, one long, miserable battle, fluidly falling out from the eruption, the evacuations, etc., and also: Barahir inherits. Barahir receives Finrod’s oath. Barahir takes up the lordship of his house and almost simultaneously directs his people into exile, while resolving himself to remain. He recruits where he can. Fingolfin dies dueling Morgoth in a thunderous, operatic play-by-play, and the thing we come right back to is Barahir scrounging for some decisions in the newly-minted Forest under Nightshade. His band dwindles, his people escape, and if he half-expected reinforcements and a turn in the tide of the war, some kind of repayment for his incredibly additive sacrifices to date, then instead he gets the exact opposite of that—this unbelievable encroaching poison. It’s a lifetime in a couple of years, or at least a reign. This isn’t, like, an observation based on circumstantial evidence, I guess I should have put it under things I enjoy, but like, Barahir is not—Barahir is one character for whom the events of that chapter aren’t simply or manifestly hopeless, Barahir is like…. making tough calls while under the impression that there’s a future to plan against, and that’s interesting. It’s like having someone else’s version of the Darkening of Valinor happen in the background of Dagor Bragollach; for the Beorians, this is a kind of a first instantiating cataclysm of their lives in the west, obviously there was the terrible journey but (as with the Amanyar) I think that’s sort of faded out of immediate-immediate memory at this point, right, and besides was premised on the idea that this was going to be better, or at least different. So then darkness, fire, refuge, flight, and finally the bitter realization of the sheer extent of their betrayal, how utterly they’ve been failed by the land itself, all in a very different open space from that of say, the Noldor, who have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s great. I really love this chapter.

Also like, to be clear, I’m not arguing for this as the 1-1 equivalent of what happened in Valinor, part of what’s interesting about humans vs elves is like—humans carry it right through! if the Helcaraxe was terrible, how much moreso the whittling-down in Dorthonion; and Beren as the endpoint of that doesn’t find a new country to settle and a new purpose in battle, he’s thrown straight from [hideous trials made endurable by pride + grief] into the dream sequence of the various quests, and then again into death, without any delay—I don’t necessarily count the interludes with Lúthien because that’s more like, regenerating the faculties he even needs to live, you know, rather than gaining some kind of established footing or time in which to prevaricate. It’s a very different destruction-for-renewal narrative from the Noldor’s in a lot of ways. But like w an echo.

Hmm do you think while Barahir was courting Emeldir he used to run into Andreth at Emeldir’s grandparents’ house and not. quite. understand why she was there. sitting by the fire, at noon, with the drapes shut. but he was too afraid to ask

A question I have about them

What did Beren do with his hand. Bet he wished he’d kept that

A random relevant line I like

~Their bedwas the heather and their roof the cloudy sky~

My preferred version, if there is more than one version of their story (or part of their story)

Im not saying Beren as Andreth and Aegnor’s secret baby is GOOD im just saying it’s FUNNY,

Favorite relationship(s)

Beren, Emeldir, Finrod, Gorlim, GRANDPARENTS IN LAW ADANEL AND BELEMIR no idk

Reaction to Tom Bombadil

“help” and then Tom Bombadil helps but his influence only extends to the blessed outskirts of Aeluin’s domain which is where they live anyway so like, thanks, Tom

[dawnfelagund]

"What if Celegorm had managed to kill Luthien when he shot at her?" (First Ramble Meme Post!)

So @urloth asked, "What if Celegorm had managed to kill Luthien when he shot at her?" and requested the first of May, so here I am.

Two ways come to my mind as approaches to this question. First is to think about how such a narrative choice by Tolkien would have affected the overall theme of the Legendarium. Such a decision would have profoundly altered the larger theme, to say the least. Just tonight, I posted to the SWG @heartofoshun's biography of Barahir. The whole essay is worth a read, but the final paragraph is particularly lovely and salient to my point here as well:

This sense of devastating loss, which also echoes the dark fatalism of the Norse epics of which Tolkien was so fond, is certainly central to The Silmarillion and most particularly evident in its Chapter 18, "Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin."25 We move from a world wherein the shaky balance between the forces of light and darkness is directly threatened and, to steal the words from the poet W. B. Yeats, "[t]hings fall apart; the centre cannot hold; [m]ere anarchy is loosed upon the world, [t]he blood-dimmed tide is loosed. . . ."26 And yet within that smoke-blackened and terrifying world, where the center no longer holds, there remain unwavering heroes like Barahir, with his determination and his hard-won family heirloom, who project hope down through the Ages and into the eucatastrophe of The Lord of the Rings.

As I put it, more or less, in a comment to Oshun on this subject, Barahir is a cog in the larger eucatastrophic machinery: His story is unrelentingly tragic, but we are to understand that his existence ensures defeat of Darkness in the far future. Therefore, the tragedy is acceptable. If he's a cog, Lúthien is a whole clockwork unto herself. If ever there is an emblem of literal and figurative light in the midst of darkness, here you have her, and destroying her in such an ignoble way by a character depicted as all but incorrigible would hamstring the theme of eucatastrophe.

The second approach is to think about how the story would change in an AU scenario where Lúthien dies at this crucial point, prior to recovering the Silmaril. (Because I don't care who was holding the knife: Lúthien totally scored the goal on that one and Beren had the assist.) Most obviously, the Silmaril would not have been recovered, and the existence of key characters like Elwing, Elrond, and Elros would have been rubbed out. If ever you needed to see a scary albeit fictional example of how a single action can completely rearrange history, here you have it in imagining the Second and Third Ages without the peredhil.

Before I get ahead of myself, without Elwing, there is no delivery of the Silmaril to Aman, no war against Morgoth, and Beleriand is not destroyed.

But it's perhaps more interesting to imagine the more immediate consequences of such an act.

I imagine Thingol--already no fan of the Fëanorians and crushed by his daughter's death--waging all-out war against them. This is not a crisis that even the most skilled diplomacy and brother-wrangling of Maedhros could avert.

What of Beren? Unlike Thingol, we get no suggestion that he is a vengeful character. I mean, he's a vegetarian for Pete's sake. It could be that Tolkien, to preserve that innocence and goodness, would have kept Beren's hands unbloodied and allowed him a death of grief.

But in a world (use your movie trailer voice if you want) where eucatastrophe has been essentially erased as a driving principle, what need is there to preserve Beren's goodness? Perhaps he would have become vengeful, ironically healing the rift between himself and Thingol in the interest of pursuit of a common enemy.

Because we also would not have had the second and third kinslayings--no Silmarils to slay over, remember?--I think Lúthien's death would have shifted the focus from the war on Morgoth to a civil war among the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. Now that is a scenario with modern relevance: the inability to unite against a common enemy because of infighting among one's own kind. (We do see hints of this in the refusal of Thingol and Orodreth to send forces to fight alongside the Fëanorians against Morgoth but nothing so overt as actual civil war.)

It may be that there is no line to continue into the Second and Third Ages. It may be that the Fëanorians prevail and become the heroes of those ages. Or it may be that eucatastrophe reasserts itself, and from the grievous loss of Lúthien, a new and unseen source of hope arises.

If there's a topic you want me to ramble about, there's still plenty of slots open in the ramble meme! Drop me an ask of reply to this post with your topic and date.