they/he, 23. Current fandoms are the Silmarillion and the Cosmere (Stormlight archive specifically) and while this blog may have been here for 9 years I certainly wasn't here all that time so do let me know if I ever like, breach ettiquite or whatever
Brief assessment of Maglor’s stint as king/regent while Maedhros was chained to Thangorodrim:
Not agreeing to Morgoth’s demands in order to get Maedhros back? Zero blame. It’s Morgoth. Morgoth cannot in any way be trusted. He’s going to break any deal he makes. The Silm explicitly states this (“the Sons of Fëanor knew that Morgoth would betray them, and would not release Maedhros, whatsoever they might do”).
Not rescuing Maedhros? Zero blame. There was no reason for him to think it was possible, and for most of that time it almost certainly wasn’t possible. Fingon succeeded because of 1) all the orcs and other creatures of Morgoth hiding inside Thangorodrim from the newly-created Sun and 2) Thorondor. Maglor didn’t have the former and, due to still holding to an oath that involved the committment and willingness to murder innocent people, probably wouldn’t have had the latter even in the very unlikely event it had occurred to him to ask. (Obviously, he still does get blame from me for the Oath.)
Not attacking Thangorodrim? He gets points for that, it would have been stupid to do so.
Not taking any action to explore Beleriand, make contact with other groups (Falathrim, Doriath), develop alliances with them, or really do anything at all that contributed to the Fëanoreans’ goals? That’s his key failure, that’s the part that makes him a bad king. (Granted there was no sun yet, but the Sindar managed without one for centuries.) It’s a wholly unnecessary delay. They’re in a fairly strong position as there’s not a lot of orcs at first (“from the [Dagor-Nuin-Giliath] returned of all the hosts that [Morgoth] had prepared for the conquest of Beleriand no more than a handful of leaves”), and they could have used that time to good effect rather than sitting around making no progress while Morgoth rearmed. Given that they had no reason to expect either the Sun or Fingolfin’s arrival, being locked into that kind of stasis is not a good indicator. It’s only after Maedhros’ rescue and abdication of the kingship to Fingolfin that “[the Noldor] sent forth messengers far and wide to explore the countries of Beleriand, and to treat with the people that dwelt there”. Fingolfin showing up makes a difference not only as reinforcements, but because he’s actually a proactive and intelligent leader.
(Bonus: Not abdicating to Fingolfin as soon as he arrives? I think that both morally and pragmatically it looks like the right call, except for the fact it would almost certainly have led to outright conflict between a Celegorm-led camp and Fingolfin-led one because I don’t believe Maglor had any ability to get his brothers to abide by it. But that lack of control over his brothers would also indicate that he’s a bad king.)
Obsessed with Ye Olde Fashioned people who cut holes in people’s skulls when they had headaches to relieve the pressure. I too currently wish to have my head chopped open and gouge my eyeballs out with spoons. Modern medicine does approximately fuck all to alleviate migraine pain but these old guys reallllly sound like they were on to something, are we sure that wouldn’t make me feel better? Does anyone have an ice pick they wanna lodge in my brain? I’ll pay you to do it tbh. I’m thinking one on the top of my head, one just above the top of my neck, and then two small ones through the front to shatter my cheekbones, they ache too
slightly strange question: people who went to high school, would you please share what your daily routine was like in high school? like, an average day of school. A Day In The Life Of A Teenager.
I was a sports person so my routine varied a little based on what sport was in season at the moment but it generally went something like this.
- wake up, stuff face with breakfast, get dressed, run out door and to bus stop (I hated getting up early) 6:45-7:15
- sit on bus until arriving at school, go hang out in band room before class started with friends 7:10-7:40
- first two classes happen 8:00-11:00
- lunch happens 11:30-12:00 (there was an extra hallway outside the band room that the band director let all the band kids eat lunch in, so we would all go there for lunch and hang out very loudly while downing ham sandwiches and containers of soup or w/e)
- third and fourth classes happen (each class was 90 minutes long, lunch was 30, passing periods between classes were 6) 12:00-2:30
- after school sports happen! Lots of variation occurs here depending on the sport, but I generally had 15-30 minutes in between the end of fourth period and the start of practice to change, get a snack, cram homework, etc. and then do 2-3 hours of sports practice. If it was a game day it was more like 4-5 hours of activity
- go home and eat dinner (timing anywhere from 4:30-9:00, ‘tis a wide range)
- do homework, procrastinate, call friends (I did a lot of advanced classes, so HW took me anywhere from 2-5 hours depending on the specific day)
- collapse into bed and prepare to do it all again tomorrow (midnight)
This changed in the winter when it was swim season, and the pool was only open to us in the mornings before school started, so practice started at 5:00am (I got up at 4:20 for both the meme and practicality) finished at 6:00, and pretty much the entire team ate breakfast at a bagel shop or a bojangles between the pool and school. A highschool having its own pool is boogie shit and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!!!! Then I would go home directly after school since I had already done my sports practice for the day and would collapse in bed closer to 10 than 12 to ensure 6hours of sleep.
If any of this is region or time specific I am in the southern US and was in highschool in the twentyteens!
This does mean that everyone had iphones while I was in highschool, and they weren’t brand-spanking-new either, so we would frequently be on them while we were supposed to be doing activities. I think I hit the sweet-spot time-wise where teachers were mainly of the attitude “I won’t take your phone if I catch you on it, but if you fail I’m not bumping your grade up either” So I tuned out my environmental science teacher and read fanfic the whole time, but I paid attention to my physics teacher and only ever used my phone in his class as a calculator.
A lot of people seemed to like my Nelyar “Who’s who?” post, so here’s the Quendi “Who’s who?” Edition! Includes details and my musings in the notes, and mostly correct proportions in the pie chart. For the sub-sections of Sindar and Nandor, I split them evenly since, to my knowledge, there is no known number.
Most of my information came from “The War of the Jewels: Quendi and the Eldar.”
Before I talk about Numenor, I need to explain some background.
Over the course of several centuries, the people who would one day be known as Māori sailed across Polynesia to Aotearoa in great ocean waka (boats).
Today, when Māori introduce ourselves in a formal setting, one of the first things that we say is the waka we descend from. Then we say our tribes, our kinship groups, our family, and our name. (Often we’ll also say other things, like where we grew up or our ancestral/tribally significant mountain and water.) Iwi (tribes) descended from the same waka have strong ties to each other and see ourselves as distant kin.
I got thinking; what if Numenorians do something similar? What if they remember the names of the ships that their ancestors used to sail to the Isle of Gift, and they pass that knowledge on through the generations? Give me Numenorians introducing themselves by naming their ancestral ships and kinship groups. Descendants of Eärendil list Vingilotë as one of their ancestral ships - this includes Elrond and his children. Dunedain carry on the tradition around dimly lit campfires in the wastes of the North, reciting their links to a homeland that was long ago lost forever.
Perhaps Numenorian descendants in Gondor carry on the tradition. Perhaps not. Either way; on the morning of Aragorn’s coronation, when his ancestry is recited, so are his ancestral boats.
It’s a bright morning at the start of a new Age. The sun is still burning off the clouds in the hour or two after sunrise. Most of the stars have long since faded, but one still shines in the last vestiges of dawn. And when the name of Vingilote is recited, the last star of the morning twinkles a little brighter.
Okay, so we all know that iconic scene in Two Towers where Gimli and Legolas compare their kill counts from the battle (THAT STILL ONLY COUNTS AS ONE). But in my not so humble opinion, the book to movie transfer just did not capture some of their best moments in this saga and I am here to rectify this tragedy.
So naturally, Gimli’s the one who starts it:
Legolas responds dramatically and patronizing, as usual “Two? Sure, not bad. I mean, I’ve got 20, but who’s counting, right?” Oh Legolas
Gimli comes back later with exactly one kill count over Legolas’ previous score and you cannot convince me that that was not out of sheer pettiness. Meanwhile, Legolas has been racking up points fruit ninja style but…he’s only killed like 4 more? Two dozen is 24 right? And he had at least 20 earlier? I really want him to just have thought that there was no way Gimli could’ve caught up to him, then he saw that Gimli was definitely catching up and oh shit better kill some more to stay in the lead and he barely scraps by 21-24, but of course acts a though that was the plan all along.
After this there’s a break, until Legolas comes looking for Aragorn because he can’t find Gimli to brag about his new high score (39). I love that Aragorn thinks Legolas is looking for Gimli because he’s worried about him and tries to reassure him that Gimli is a strong dwarf and probably fine wherever he is, and Legolas is just, woah, what, no, I just wanted to brag. Who cares that they are in the middle of a battle right now. Nope, Legolas is just like gotta find Gimli and tell him I am KICKING HIS ASS.
honestly these two
AND THE IRONY when he DOES find Gimli, Gimli’s in the lead 42-39. I like that Legolas has killed two more in this time. I can’t help but hope they were ‘Grrrr I can’t find my dwarf where is he’ passive aggressive killings, like two orcs who just happened to get in his way mid-rant. Because of course, we all know that he actually was worried about Gimli in all of this.
So, Gimli wins.
BUT THEN
We get THIS GEM
When Treebeard isn’t sure about letting Gimli into Fangorn, Legolas freaking uses Gimli’s high score to brag about his dwarf to impress Treebeard and it works.
Legolas just proudly proclaiming Gimli’s victory to Treebeard to validate his presence in Fangorn feeds my soul and I love this so much
So there’s my take on the REAL reasons behind their friendly casualty count. God I love these two so much
The way kinslaying is presented as the ultimate crime by the elves in the silmarillion never really sat well with me. Because murder is murder right? What makes this worse exactly? Supposedly it’s about killing your kin, which can be interpreted to mean your family, and in that case yeah, I get it, killing your sibling, parent or child can definitely be taken as more reprehensible from a moral standpoint than some stranger in many circumstances.
But that’s not what it is. I’m my view if you’re distantly enough related to someone to marry them without issue then you have passed the point where it means enough to significantly worsen the severity of a crime. At that point, even if you’ve established the killing of one’s family as a uniquely severe crime (and I’m not saying this is necessarily correct even of itself, in cases of abuse for instance), murder is murder.
In the case of the Feanorians and the Teleri and Sindar this is definitely true. Perhaps by the connection of Finwe to his brothers Feanor may have killed one or two of his first cousins? Maybe? And the other Feanorians their second cousins? But the thing is they don’t mention any specific crime as being kinslaying. They talk about the incidents as a whole being kinslaying. And through this logic they are talking about entire races being kin to each other.
Which makes no sense from a moral standpoint. At all. Through this logic every elf is kin to every elf. And that’s exactly what they’re saying. That’s it that’s the crime. An elf killing another elf. Which is just pure racism through any interpretation. All this label serves to highlight is that some people *cough, Thingol* view Elvish lives as the only ones that really count. That killing an elf is more serious because the other species don’t matter enough. Note that no other species seems to make this distinction. It’s literally just the elves.
This is why it’s alright for them to slaughter the petty dwarves but it’s a permanent condemnation of the Noldor as whole to kill the Teleri in what could possibly be called a semi mutual conflict. Also note his tendency to lump an entire race of elves into one box because of the actions of a minority with his hatred of the Noldor and possible complicity with whatever the fuck Eol was doing to Aredhel.
The Feanorians did loads wrong. They killed people. They’re murderers. But I think this particular label says more about the people using it than the perpetrators. They committed horrific crimes and those crimes would have been equally horrific if they were committed against any other race.
To add onto the racism angle, elves also seem to expect men to have no problem killing other men. I forget when it became clear that Morgoth had men on his side and if that was before or after the nirnaeth, so I’ll focus on the second age for my evidence, and look at the last alliance.
While gathering said alliance, the elves know Morgoth had men on his side. They know Sauron served Morgoth and is emulating him with the whole dark lord shtick, and even if they haven’t seen direct evidence of men working for him, it’s a pretty damn safe assumption. The conflict also lasts long enough that even if they weren’t sure at first, they can double check in the early battles. They ask men to be their allies and go fight Sauron and his forces anyway, knowing they’re asking men to go fight and kill other men. While holding that elves fighting and killing other elves is the highest crime. Hypocrites! The lot of you!
We never see this circumstance play out with dwarves or hobbits or ents, but we do see this with maiar. Gandalf and Saruman were part of the white council put together to hold off Sauron. Elrond sends Gandalf off as part of the fellowship of the ring to kill Sauron! It’s not unacceptable when MAIAR do it either, and they’re primordial god-adjacent beings! Get off your high horse!
