maedhros did nothing wrong

like obviously “x did nothing wrong” is a satirical phrase but have u considered. your honor that is my emotional support war criminal please adn thankyou. no charges on account of i love him.

this post is about

Wait while I'm still thinking about wedding things, I haven't shared my favorite thing we came across while looking for wedding readings, which is THIS:

(From The Nature of Middle-earth, and yes, I was looking up obscure excerpts from Tolkien's more academic writing for wedding readings)

Anyway we ended up using a lightly-edited version of it as one of our seven short readings because I can't believe that Tolkien pretty much outright said "Yeah elves have queerplatonic relationships. Here's some cute words for platonic partners, derived from the Quenya word for love because friendships are a kind of love, too"

--And I also can't believe I didn't know about it until now, although admittedly these particular notes were not properly published until 2021. The Tolkien Estate was keeping queerplatonic elves from us. Queerplatonic elves!!

I for one would like to kick the term "zucchini" to the curb and just use Elvish instead. I am new to the fandom and do not know anything of Quenya grammar, but if there's a way to have a gender neutral form of melotorni/meletheldi for nonbinary folks I hereby move to adopt this as the new term for a queerplatonic partner.

So if you want to follow a similar pattern and have the gender-neutral term translate to "love-sibling," Quenya does offer the root "hese" for "sibling," although there's a slight linguistic subtlety that's possibly missing, considering the word "otorno," more commonly means, like, a brother-in-arms than a biological relative (which also speaks to Tolkien's commitment to having various good platonic words in his languages, tbh). This is partially because the prefix o/ó- literally means "with," and it commonly used to describe "the meeting, junction, or union of two things or persons, or of two groups thought of as units" and toron/torn- is an older Quenya word for "brother," so literally, "with-brother."

Sister is a little more complicated -- the Quenya word for sister, broadly speaking, is "nésa," but an older word for sister "seler," comes from the root "thel," which is clearly where "meletheldi" comes from. No idea if Tolkien would have considered it at all similar to "otorno" in terms of non-familial meaning also, but this is the word for sister that "meletheldi" comes from and possibly not coincidentally from around the same time in the language's development as "toron/torn-"

Meanwhile, "hes" for "sibling" comes from a really old source, but I feel like it's still valid for this exercise. So the gender-neutral term for an elvish queerplatonic partner might be something like "melehesë," or "melohesë if you want to use the "with" affix ("melehesi/melohesi" in the plural, like in the original examples).

maedhros and an oc that i drew for someone on discord.. their little bit of them meeting was very cute.

Mini Maedhros and mini fingon wiiiii Maedhrosito y fingonsito ❤️💙

Is this an AU where they're gnomes? Or do they just have funny hats? It's up to you lol

Just a little doodle I made to cheer myself up hehe

Ainarë and Earwen

the greatest silmarillion adaptation never made

original gonch poster by @/beelzeebub and milker by @/cy-lindric

I’ve mentioned this a couple other places but I often think of children born or growing up in Hithlum after the Nírnaeth, who hear the rumors about Morwen and accept them as much as they accept anything else…perhaps some Hadorian children fear her more than their oppressors. But likely some hope the stories are true; they hope there is a witch in the woods who defies and frightens the incomers. Perhaps one even tries to find her, out of this hope.

"average elf uses 3 brain cells a year" factoid actually statistical error. average elf uses 0 brain cells per year. Braincells Elrond, who lives in Imladris & uses 10,000 brain cells every day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

This might fall slightly outside the timeframe, but if it is allowed, I will throw in a last preview of a WIP design for Nerdandel for what would have been day 7 of @feanorianweek 💝 I really love this week so dearly, so much content bestowed onto my favorite elves. Until next time!

Ella siempre atormentará la narrativa + She will always haunt the narrative

@feanorianweek #7 – The Founder

Can we just consider how everybody in LOTR and The Hobbit was so kind to Gollum? Bilbo let him live when he could've easily killed him (indeed, Bilbo has killed other potentially dangerous creatures, such as the spiders, on his adventure). Because of Bilbo's pity for Gollum, Frodo pities him too. Sam is distrustful of Gollum but lets him be. Before he escaped from Mirkwood, the elves let him have fresh air and exercise, in hopes that he could change.

Maybe all of it made no difference in the end, but it's still very important to me. They did not blame Gollum for falling under the corruption of the ring. Sure, the kindness towards Gollum could've been entirely fueled by pity and little empathy, but even pity shows that there is another option in the face of hate. Gollum, even when it seemed obvious to the readers or viewers that the ring has possessed him for too long, was never deemed too weak or broken to be given another chance.

I think there is something about it that is so beautiful in its tragedy; that even if you are lost and unforgivable and damaged beyond repair, you are not the villain.

@moompl's tags 🥺

The most interesting and most important thing about Lord of the Rings is that Frodo fails the quest. He fails the quest, he can’t destroy the ring, he claims the ring for himself, only for it to be taken and accidentally destroyed by Gollum. There are so many ways to interpret that moment!

You can say: evil always defeats itself. The ring destroyed Smeagol, and Gollum destroyed the ring.

You can say: it’s divine providence. Fallible mortals cannot attain grace by their own power. No matter how they try, they will fail unless providence lifts them up. But providence will lift them up. Very Romans 9:16. It depends not upon man’s will or exertion, but upon God’s mercy.

You can say: actions have unpredictable consequences, and here, a series of unrewarded acts of compassion finally gained their reward. There is such a thing as fate, and it is, in its own way, fair. Multiple characters had the chance to kill Gollum, and a good reason to do it too, since he tried to kill them first, and was still a threat. But Bilbo chose to spare him, Frodo chose to spare him, (during the Council of Elrond it’s briefly mentioned that Aragorn and Gandalf and a serious number of elves chose to spare him), and a few minutes before he attacked Frodo, Sam very reluctantly chose to spare him for a final time. If any of them had chosen to kill Gollum, even in reasonable self-defence, he could not have played his part in destroying the ring. But in the decisive moment, the world showed compassion to Frodo as a reflection of the compassion he had shown.

You can say what LeGuin said: Frodo and Gollum are essentially two halves of the same person. Of course the hero can only complete his goal after a violent struggle with himself, only it’s the good half of him that fails, and the evil half that in the end achieves the quest.

You can say: the last time Frodo and Gollum met, Frodo forbade him from ever laying a hand on him, and cursed him to fall into the flames if he tries. The power of the ring, or the power of Frodo wearing the ring, actually caused this to come true. (See this post about Frodo laying a geas.)

What I myself feel and say is this: Gollum thought he was attacking Frodo and taking the ring for himself. What he was actually doing is saving Frodo and saving the world. He saved Frodo from the Ring, from Sauron, from the failure of his quest, from something far worse than mere death. And he’s the only one who could do it: Sam had carried Frodo, he had fought Shelob for Frodo and would gladly die for Frodo, but he could never have hurt him, or taken the ring by force. Gollum could, but only because he didn’t know why he was doing it. He was a sleeper agent of Good. He thought he was attacking Frodo and grabbing the ring for himself, when in fact he was giving his own life, to save his Master whom he loved.