The inescapable collective boner that the Silm Fandom has for Maedhros is my least favorite thing. Worse than championing Feanor, the misogynistic double standard for female characters, it’s how Maedhros is lionized and prioritized. Thanks to how impossible it is to escape that, he has slithered his way down to my second least favorite character – possibly of all.
Tag: engage girdle
🔥 all five of Finwë’s children
Fëanor is a would-be fascist, certainly isn’t a champion of free-will (a control freak who mistrusts, betrays, and murders anyone would disagrees – or just doesn’t give sole loyalty to him- is not a champion of free thought), is not a good father, and is all-around loathsome. What little sympathy I had for his character shriveled a long time ago. His Tirion speech makes my soul shudder and that the ‘deeds worthy of song’ speech, while pretty out-of-context, has as its context the statement that he feels absolutely no shame or guilt for attacking and stealing from innocent non-violent neighbors and allies and will brag about the infamy of it – that makes the quote absolutely vile.
unpopular opinion meme time, i am not pulling my punches
Findis is more interesting and easier to write than some of her siblings, at least for me. I have very clear ideas of her personality and what she does in Valinor. She had to face the ugliness of her half-sibling and doubts about the legitimacy of her parents’ marriage and her very existence on her own until Fingolfin’s birth.
Fingolfin’s fruitless attempts to try and win his half-brother’s tolerance, while laudable for trying to be the decent man and understandable because of the imperfections of family and heart, still were a waste. The Flight of the Noldor was wrong, there was never the formal atonement and gesture of apology, I cannot divorce him and the Noldor from the imperialistic grossness. Still he accomplished far more than Fëanor ever could against Morgoth and didn’t lose sight that the goal was to fight and try to injure and inconvenience a God of Evil.
Lalwen was one of Fingon’s only other friends, the family member who stood by him, shared her hobbies with him, was placed by Fingolfin as Fingon’s adviser and regent following his death, and Fingon rebelled against having to defer authority and kingship to his aunt and sent her away.
Finarfin was politically savvy. He wasn’t a coward. The act of admitting his was wrong and turning back was astronomically braver and showed the moral strength and sort of attractive personal qualities that no duel or fancy words with disgusting subtext can come close to. He was closer to his brothers-in-laws.
Indis and her children >>>>>>>>>>>> Finwë > Fëanor
Please don’t let fandom ruin something you love. Walk away and unfollow the fans and enjoy the thing by yourself, or find a limited circle of people who ignore the discourse, or get your irl friends into the thing and collectively ignore the Internet community, or blacklist from here to the moon if you need to and only ever scroll through your rarepair ship’s tag on AO3. But don’t let fandom distort a show or a movie or a book or a comic you used to love so badly that you can’t enjoy the original anymore. Please. It isn’t worth it.
🔥 + television, 🔥 + silmarillion, 🔥 + sims
[breathes in deep for long rants]
television: I watch perhaps five shows total, and online if I can. Meh tv. And meh most BBC shows. Formulaic Korean drama shows, even suffering through cultural and literal translations and that I still can’t pronouce any of the names, are more interesting for me to watch than US or British equivalents. At least their same exact love triangle character types and even the amnesia plots don’t tire my patience the way every American lawyer/cop crime drama or Friends/Coupling singles-living-in-big-city or sitcom family character types do. Watched a few episodes of Doctor Who, didn’t see the overwhelming appeal. Will never watch Sherlock– the main actor is unattractive and a big turn-off.
silmarillion: Maedhros is awful and unattractive. Fingon is very uninspiring. Fëanor is a fascist. All are boring characters. Neither Thingol nor Mandos was harsh enough to the Noldor. Celegorm has black hair (which he dyed various colors and all were obviously fake), and Huan leaving him was Huan’s redemption moment. As plot tokens – which is all they really are- the Silmarils as written are lacking. I like LaCE.
sims: The lack of clean sharp textures for Sims 3 is worse than the “pudding-face” aesthetic and a ridiculous flaw in the technology. I neither had and never will be interested in Sims 4. Sims 2- the Maxis Match trend was okay for objects and good for building, but why on earth did anyone like the style for hair textures? Too many green plumb-bobs. The ghosts are awful and we didn’t need more types and more focus on them.
🔥roleplaying!
I don’t find it interesting. Something about the format bugs me. It feels like poorly-written round-robin fic, which I pretty much strongly dislike anyway.
Castamir or Fingon }:)
Oh honey, this is so easy.
Castamir by huge leagues.
Which character is actually interesting? Which character has a more compelling story? Which character overall comes across as more competent in scheming and political leadership and ruling?
Castamir as part of the most interesting period of pre-Ring Gondorian history. Who stands with his cousin until his well-planned and executed betrayal, steals the throne using the popular support of the people of Gondor, rules for years making more enemies, that you could write a Shakespearean tragedy so easily about the whole thing, and then Eldacar returning in the one Return of the King for Gondor I have zero problems with – that Castamir and all his triumphs and cruelties and mistakes are so very real to history. The parallels to not just ancient Roman, but anything. The playing on Númenorean purity – and how such blood purity fears were proved by history to be wrong. How this leads into Gondor’s problems with Umbar. How this echoes down into Faramir and Eowyn. Exciting meta and great story setting potential!
Fingon has the tag bland beige wallpaper boy for a reason, and one of the reasons I like Gil-galad as his son is that it gives Fingon a great accomplishment of being at least the sperm donor to a great king and an excuse to pull into the narrative the OCs of the Sindarin ex-rulers of Mithrim. Fingon is the too-brash lesser son of a great man who when you read between the lines was not trusted to rule over his own territory (said territory gifted to the Edain). He’s Takeda Katsuyori to Fingolfin’s Takeda Shingen. Quite frankly I don’t get too upset at the idea of Maedhros stuck hanging off the side of Thangorodrim for all of the First Age. Fingon’s greatest feat = meh. So much M/M fic and art it would have spared us. Fandom puts him on a pedestal I see very little reason to have earned it. He wasn’t the one to make alliances and bring kingdoms together – that was Finrod and to a much lesser extent Maedhros. Fingon is a kin-slayer and I never saw on-page signals of his repentance for it. Yes, Castamir is also a Kin-slayer, but the text treats him as vile for it and he pays for it. I will always like a good villain admired as a villain over a lackluster hero who inspires boredom.
kazaera replied to your post : [[MOR] Let’s me honest, the more unpopular…
as it so happens my
Elwing plotbunny is attempting a justified Dior so if I manage to write it YOU MAY ENJOY THAT. and yeah I try to stick to my own corners of fandom myself!
When even defenses of Elwing make sure to state that Dior was in the wrong, and I’m left here thinking that under no circumstances should Dior -or Thingol- have handled the Silmaril over to them – if nothing else Thingol has a solid case that with Melian’s Girdle the Silmaril is safe from Morgoth taking it back, which, oh gods let me laugh hysterically, the idea that the Fëanorians would be able to keep the jewel out of Morgoth’s hands for more than a few years at the most is optimistic. Not to mention a Silmaril is the only object that comes close to balancing the incredible were-gild that the Fëanorians and other Noldor owe to the Teleri for the murders and the theft and destruction of the Swanships which were accounted by Thingol and Dior’s kin as equal to those three jewels. Then again, I also have zero interest in calling Beren and Lúthien out as unlawful thieves, which is a very common argument. Thingol and Dior don’t have the best claim to the Silmarils, imho, but only because the two people that I believe have a better claim are the Valar and Olwë.
And that is not an opinion championed by the BNFs in the Silm fandom.
I’d love to hear/read more about this Elwing plot bunny 😀
Let’s me honest, the more unpopular apologist attitude is to say you think Dior 1000% did nothing wrong. And that Thingol’s Ban wasn’t a terrible thing, nor his refusal to give up the Silmaril.
That the second you start arguing for the Fëanorians’ rightful ownership of the Silmarils, you are therefore also validating the ownership and authority of the Valar over just about everything in Arda, including but especially the light of the Two Trees, as the ones who created or inherited said ownership of creation from their father and must uphold a vow and duty to rule and maintain it and thus the Fëanorian-led Noldor rebellion is unlawful, unholy, unjustifiable.
Unpopular fandom opinions (character addition)
Y’all, because I’m new to expressing online my fandom opinions, I’m trying to wait a while until I start talking about certain characters.
Because a lot of what I feel I’ve discovered seems to run counter to what the majority of opinion I come across. But it’s hard. I’m biting my tongue and waiting for when I plan on mentioning it where I think the appropriate time to ease into it.
However- I will say this- I was always sympathetic to Elwing and don’t criticize her for leaping off the cliff with the bloody Silmaril.
Reblogging this old post yet again, and thinking about rewriting it. But the basic gist being that I have NEVER blamed or desired Elwing to hand over the Silmaril instead of flinging herself and Silmaril off the cliff. And I wish that Maedhros’s decision to fling himself into a fiery chasm after flinging the Silmaril into it – and Maglor’s own chunking of the Silmaril into the ocean- was given half as much scrutiny and disdain as Elwing’s choice. Because they too were deciding that if they couldn’t hold the Silmarils and fearing they would soon be captured, no one could benefit from them.
Because the Fëanorians had sacked and destroyed Sirion, killing the overwhelming majority of people there, of which many were survivors of the previous time the Fëanorians had invaded and sacked and killed off a major city, and thus there was NO WAY anyone believed they would show mercy. Because the way to stop them would be to remove this cursed gem from the equation, plus a guarantee that by throwing herself and the Silmaril into the sea she was also keeping it out of Morgoth’s hands (seriously people, do you think even if Maedhros and Maglor reclaimed that Silmaril during the Third Kinslaying they would have been able to stay out of Morgoth’s hands when they were ridiculously overwhelming outnumbered and had burned just about all possible bridges with allies and Morgoth was controlling 99% of Beleriand at this time and tell me how well Maedhros’s last confrontation with Morgoth went. I’m waiting.)
Because the Fëanorians value ownership of the Silmarils over consideration of other people’s lives. Explain to me how that isn’t canon. Please.
Because I am so tired of the sexist damnation of her as a bad mother. Because as long as Elwing was taking the Silmaril to the edges of the city, away from the cave where Elrond and Elros were hidden, she was drawing them away from her children. That this scenario is the one that first came to me as I read the text and the one I thought obvious – that she wasn’t making this ‘bad mother/leader’ decision to choose the Silmaril over her sons’ lives, but was trying to save them, to buy time for them to escape, or even just to get that one last act of defiance and revenge against the people that had murdered her mother, father, older brothers, destroyed her first home, was in the process or were completing the process of destroying her second. And why isn’t she allowed by readers to have that desire? The Noldor were motivated by revenge (and xenophobia and colonialism). Because she’s a young woman? Because she isn’t one of the ‘fan favorite bad boy’ Fëanorians?
And it’’s that damn Plot MacGuffin Silmaril that messes with people’s minds and brings as much woe as the One Ring and too bad there was no Mount Doom to destroy the damn things that shouldn’t have been made, if you want my bitter true opinion.
My very first meta post to tumblr was a defense of Elwing and my low-key rage at criticism that she was a bad/selfish mother and that Maglor and Maedhros, the twins’ kidnappers, were better parents. Even long ago in my first fandom year when Maglor + twins wasn’t the rage button it now is, negative attitudes towards Elwing and Earendil were still loathsome to me. Look through my tumblr Silm posts, especially the earlier ones before I blocked and ignored most stuff, and this should be very clear. I haven’t seen the Elwing bashing post; i don’t need to. Don’t want to. There’s nothing new and nothing I accept as true. And choosing not to kill the twins (despite anybody including remaining family believing the Feanorians capable and willing to) is not Maglor’s redemption – now if he actually returned the twins to their family and people instead of keeping them with in the hands that murdered almost all of their neighbors and friends and sacked their only home…then we’d start to get somewhere.
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