earlier today I was just about knocked over by the realization that if you accept the full Statute of Finwë and Míriel as canonical, the entire tragedy of the Silmarillion and of the Noldor is basically built on the fact that a man felt entitled to a woman’s body despite her continued and consistent refusal of his advances

I absolutely do not believe that Tolkien intended to make this extremely feminist point but it sure as hell is a feminist point

w—

what in the goddamn hell are you talking about

so in the full Statute of Finwë and Míriel as it appears in HoME volume 10, Míriel dies and leaves her body and goes to Mandos, and then ten presumably solar years later, Finwë goes crying to the Valar about how he can’t get laid anymore. ten years is an elvish minute, tbh, that’s like No Time At All.

he insists he’s entitled to a wife and more children, and he knows Míriel won’t come back, and he goes on and on about how he’s Lonely and Grieving and Sad and Miserable and the whole thing comes across like him whining about being deprived of sex

Míriel refuses to return, saying she left her body to escape great sorrow - which, yeah, can believe that if this is your husband’s reaction to no longer being able to get laid. Finwë refuses to consider her needs, insisting that he be allowed to remarry because He’s Sad, Isn’t It Sad, Am Deprived, Need Wife. he’s like a guy on AITA asking if he’s the asshole for wanting a divorce because his wife spends all day dealing with postpartum depression and she’s no fun to be around.

I was kind of being hyperbolic in my first post but also not really. Boy he comes across badly. And his remarriage and mishandling of all his parenting tasks causes all the later tragedy.

Ok so the last person to try to pick apart this flaming trainwreck of a post was suicide baited so let’s see how I go.

No. Just. No. This is literally the least charitable reading of a character that I have ever seen. You cherry picked one specific version and then did some olympic level mental gymnastics to justify this “woke” “feminist” take.

This is the passage dealing with this from the shibboleth. Notice how it talks about how great finwe’s grief is? Yeah i noticed that that was missing from this take. Sure looks like a dude who is super upset about this whole thing to me.

Not only that, but the passage above clearly shows how bullshit your line about him repeatedly making advances on Miriel’s body is. In that, he’s not insisting that Miriel return, because she has said that she does not want to. He’s just asking if he is supposed to remain alone forever.

Which brings us to the crux of this whole matter. People who go through spousal death (which this is, it’s an unprecedented situation in-universe, but Miriel stating that she probably will never want to return is about as close as an elf gets to true permanent death) have the right to move on. The fact that your post completely shoves onto Finwe the valar’s decision that if he marries Indis, Miriel will never be able to return, is honestly like you’re just looking for someone to blame. This is another thing that is deeply fucked up btw, telling someone that they can either be alone probably forever, in a world where literally everyone else is paired off and playing happy families if you go by LaCE, or he can move on but his wife is definitely gone forever is. that’s some real fucked up shit ngl.

What gets me the most about this whole thing is your insistence that ten years for elves is “nothing”. Unless you can point me to where it literally says that elves just live differently in time and ten years is actually ten minutes, ten years is still ten years no matter how old you are. A week seems less long to me now than it did when i was young, but it’s still a week. When it comes to Maedhros’ torture, do you say that ~thirty years is nothing to an elf? Of course not, a year in pain is still a year in pain no matter how many you have. The same applies to grief.

I also find deeply troubling some of the implications in this post where you repeatedly tie Finwë “whining about being unable to get laid” to “the tragedy of the Noldor is basically built on the fact that a man felt entitled to a woman’s body despite her continued and consistent refusal of his advances.” I am certain that it was not your intent to call Finwe a marital rapist but it sure makes it sound like it.

Also, I cannot believe you have literally blamed Finwe for everything that happened in the silm like… melkor doesn’t exist? Or that other characters, who have their own agency and own mistakes, also exist?

What really gets me the most about this post is, I don’t care if you like Finwe or not. That’s fine. But this post just raises so many questions if you are this desperate to make him into a villain. Why does anyone have to be the villain of this tale? Surely the big tragedy of the Noldor is because it’s actually so easy to see it happening in real life. People who make poor choices but in the end are really just trying their best.

I don’t even like Finwe/Indis, and I personally think he should have waited for Miriel, and that is how upset this post has made me - I am arguing against my own natural inclinations here because this is such an awful take on grief and moving on. It can be argued that the real analogy for Miriel would be that she’s in a coma, but since Miriel has made her wishes known that she does not want to return, with only a very very vague “maybe” in future, I am considering her dead.

Miriel has a right to happiness, of course she does, but crucially this is Finwe respecting her wishes. It is Miriel who does not want to return. Finwe’s son is growing up and ten years may not be a lot to an elf as you have said, but it is a lot with a growing child. This is speculation verging into headcanon territory but I feel if you are allowed to so blatantly character assassinate Finwe, I am allowed to speculate that perhaps Finwe wanted a mother for Feanor. Plenty of single dads irl do.

Tl;Dr this is one of the worst posts I’ve ever seen and I’ve been angry about this for the last three days and anyone who has uncritically reblogged this post without questioning it needs to take a hard look at themselves and question how they would respond to someone irl who had waited for years after their spouse died (with a young son) and wanted to remarry. Because if it’s like this, then I worry for you.

Yay, Middle-Earth arguing! So, I’ve reblogged the original post, so presumably you’re talking to me (I think I also added that Finwë sucks and I do stand by that), and I’m a little baffled by your final paragraph. Your argument is based on the Shibboleth, while the original post is about the full Statute, as set out in Morgoth’s Ring. I’ve often said “Finwë sucks!” and boy do I stand by that!

“Thus Finwë was aggrieved and claimed justice. But when he called her and she did not return, in only a few years he fell into despair. Herein lay his fault, and failing in Hope. But also he founded his claim mainly upon his desire for children, considering his own self and his loss more than the griefs that had befallen his wife: that was a failing in full love.“  (The Statute of Finwë and Míriel)

This paragraph is from the original Statute, and is my primary basis for being like, “Finwë sucks.” But I’d like to respond to a few of your arguments, because you’re apparently worried for me.

* Talking about grief and blame, it’s pretty clear that Finwë wasn’t so much grieving his wife Míriel so much as he was grieving his wife “Finwë’s Wife,” or what I call the wife-shaped hole next to him. He was grieving–and in the Shibboleth, part of the later writings that Tolkien used to inject some morality into a lot of his morally-grey characters, that’s codified differently. Personally, I prefer a more morally-grey version, because I like the things that happen in stories to be the fault of a character, rather than just random things that happen. It’s a narrative choice for sure; speaking of narrative choice, the narrator of the Statute is the one who says “This was a failing in full love.”

* With regard to whether elves perceive time differently, two things! First, well, we don’t know that they perceive time the same, but we don’t know that they don’t. I like my elves pretty non-human, but let’s set that aside. The thing is, even if you perceive time the same way, there’s an expectation of lifespan that’s different. If I have a 12 year old horse that could live until 30, but only if i put her through a dangerous and invasive surgery? I’d probably do it. But for my 12 year old Labrador Retriever, who will probably only live until 13-14? I probably wouldn’t, and let her have some comfort. Finwë might be grieving desperately (I beg leave to doubt but that’s my reading), but he has every reason to believe he will live for thousands more years. What’s wrong with waiting another ten, twenty? 

* Míriel isn’t in a coma–she chose to pass away. She has agency in this. Finwë being unable to accept this is literally believing he has rights to her. That doesn’t make him a rapist (I don’t think the original ever implied that?) but guess what, you can be gross to women without going that far.

* You mentioned that he might be shopping for a mom for Fëanor–which is interesting, because in the Shibboleth, which you’re using for the grief passage, Míriel doesn’t die until Fëanor was fully-grown, and we know that he moved out of Finwë’s house and apprenticed with Mahtan around that time. So he’s literally an adult who is living on his own at this point, in the version you’re using. 

* It’s stated that Finwë is primarily angry (again–in the full Statute, not the Shibboleth–if you want to talk about the Shibboleth we can certainly do that but it’s a whole other discussion!) about wanting more children, and feeling that it was unjust that “he alone” would have no wife. That’s kinda wild to me, since plenty of elves in the story either don’t marry at all, or have already died on the way to Aman, which Finwë would know, since he was one of them. 

* I think your point about “other characters exist” isn’t quite on the nose, from a storytelling standpoint–obviously things could still have gone tragically, there’s the Doom to consider, and the Marring of Arda–but this is originally a want-of-a-nail argument, which is fascinating to consider. What is the inciting incident of the Doom of the Noldor? It raises interesting questions!

I’m down to hear other takes! I don’t personally like Finwë very much, and I don’t like the weird impetus that’s put on Fëanor in the Shibboleth (where it talks about how Finwë didn’t have “much comfort” from Fëanor after Míriel’s death….??? why is that your son’s job??? weird??), but I’m always down to talk about how the Valar Aren’t Very Good At Valaring too.

hey @nikosheba

Kinda cowardly for you to block me immediately after you reblogging me so I wouldn’t respond

I think that says everything it needs to say about your “take” on this

earlier today I was just about knocked over by the realization that if you accept the full Statute of Finwë and Míriel as canonical, the entire tragedy of the Silmarillion and of the Noldor is basically built on the fact that a man felt entitled to a woman’s body despite her continued and consistent refusal of his advances

I absolutely do not believe that Tolkien intended to make this extremely feminist point but it sure as hell is a feminist point

w—

what in the goddamn hell are you talking about

so in the full Statute of Finwë and Míriel as it appears in HoME volume 10, Míriel dies and leaves her body and goes to Mandos, and then ten presumably solar years later, Finwë goes crying to the Valar about how he can’t get laid anymore. ten years is an elvish minute, tbh, that’s like No Time At All.

he insists he’s entitled to a wife and more children, and he knows Míriel won’t come back, and he goes on and on about how he’s Lonely and Grieving and Sad and Miserable and the whole thing comes across like him whining about being deprived of sex

Míriel refuses to return, saying she left her body to escape great sorrow - which, yeah, can believe that if this is your husband’s reaction to no longer being able to get laid. Finwë refuses to consider her needs, insisting that he be allowed to remarry because He’s Sad, Isn’t It Sad, Am Deprived, Need Wife. he’s like a guy on AITA asking if he’s the asshole for wanting a divorce because his wife spends all day dealing with postpartum depression and she’s no fun to be around.

I was kind of being hyperbolic in my first post but also not really. Boy he comes across badly. And his remarriage and mishandling of all his parenting tasks causes all the later tragedy.

Ok so the last person to try to pick apart this flaming trainwreck of a post was suicide baited so let’s see how I go.

No. Just. No. This is literally the least charitable reading of a character that I have ever seen. You cherry picked one specific version and then did some olympic level mental gymnastics to justify this “woke” “feminist” take.

This is the passage dealing with this from the shibboleth. Notice how it talks about how great finwe’s grief is? Yeah i noticed that that was missing from this take. Sure looks like a dude who is super upset about this whole thing to me.

Not only that, but the passage above clearly shows how bullshit your line about him repeatedly making advances on Miriel’s body is. In that, he’s not insisting that Miriel return, because she has said that she does not want to. He’s just asking if he is supposed to remain alone forever.

Which brings us to the crux of this whole matter. People who go through spousal death (which this is, it’s an unprecedented situation in-universe, but Miriel stating that she probably will never want to return is about as close as an elf gets to true permanent death) have the right to move on. The fact that your post completely shoves onto Finwe the valar’s decision that if he marries Indis, Miriel will never be able to return, is honestly like you’re just looking for someone to blame. This is another thing that is deeply fucked up btw, telling someone that they can either be alone probably forever, in a world where literally everyone else is paired off and playing happy families if you go by LaCE, or he can move on but his wife is definitely gone forever is. that’s some real fucked up shit ngl.

What gets me the most about this whole thing is your insistence that ten years for elves is “nothing”. Unless you can point me to where it literally says that elves just live differently in time and ten years is actually ten minutes, ten years is still ten years no matter how old you are. A week seems less long to me now than it did when i was young, but it’s still a week. When it comes to Maedhros’ torture, do you say that ~thirty years is nothing to an elf? Of course not, a year in pain is still a year in pain no matter how many you have. The same applies to grief.

I also find deeply troubling some of the implications in this post where you repeatedly tie Finwë “whining about being unable to get laid” to “the tragedy of the Noldor is basically built on the fact that a man felt entitled to a woman’s body despite her continued and consistent refusal of his advances.” I am certain that it was not your intent to call Finwe a marital rapist but it sure makes it sound like it.

Also, I cannot believe you have literally blamed Finwe for everything that happened in the silm like… melkor doesn’t exist? Or that other characters, who have their own agency and own mistakes, also exist?

What really gets me the most about this post is, I don’t care if you like Finwe or not. That’s fine. But this post just raises so many questions if you are this desperate to make him into a villain. Why does anyone have to be the villain of this tale? Surely the big tragedy of the Noldor is because it’s actually so easy to see it happening in real life. People who make poor choices but in the end are really just trying their best.

I don’t even like Finwe/Indis, and I personally think he should have waited for Miriel, and that is how upset this post has made me - I am arguing against my own natural inclinations here because this is such an awful take on grief and moving on. It can be argued that the real analogy for Miriel would be that she’s in a coma, but since Miriel has made her wishes known that she does not want to return, with only a very very vague “maybe” in future, I am considering her dead.

Miriel has a right to happiness, of course she does, but crucially this is Finwe respecting her wishes. It is Miriel who does not want to return. Finwe’s son is growing up and ten years may not be a lot to an elf as you have said, but it is a lot with a growing child. This is speculation verging into headcanon territory but I feel if you are allowed to so blatantly character assassinate Finwe, I am allowed to speculate that perhaps Finwe wanted a mother for Feanor. Plenty of single dads irl do.

Tl;Dr this is one of the worst posts I’ve ever seen and I’ve been angry about this for the last three days and anyone who has uncritically reblogged this post without questioning it needs to take a hard look at themselves and question how they would respond to someone irl who had waited for years after their spouse died (with a young son) and wanted to remarry. Because if it’s like this, then I worry for you.

Hi—I haven’t been involved in this discussion before, but I’m a friend of Absynthe’s and she’s been keeping me posted on what’s going on so I’d sort of like to throw in my two cents.

The problem with the way you’re refuting her post reminds me a little of the problem with the way people talk about Maxim de Winter from Rebecca. (And before the issue of moral equivalency rears its head, yes, I’m aware that Maxim killed his first wife and Finwë did not.) He’s been treated unfairly, he’s suffering, etc. etc. etc., therefore he shouldn’t be criticized for his behavior around his remarriage. I understand that in the Shibboleth Finwë comes across pretty well in all this (just like in the Hitchcock movie Maxim comes across pretty well), but that’s not the only version of the story out there and I think it’s unfortunate that people have been jumping immediately to invective and to some deeply personal accusations rather than parsing out which version of the canon says what.

Here’s Morgoth’s Ring on Finwë’s motivations (I’m typing this up myself because the only version of the book I have is a hard copy; the page numbers in the Harper Collins trade paperback are 243 and 258 respectively if you have access to that version):

And:

You could argue the second one based on how you read the word “eager”; I read it as a euphemism for “horny” but, sure, there are other ways to interpret it too. The first quote, on the other hand, is pretty much exactly what Absynthe is saying and is right there in HoME, just not in the part of HoME most fans are the most familiar with.

In fact, I did some googling and it turns out as early as almost twenty years ago people were having this exact same discourse minus the feminist angle. Here is a thread from “thetolkienforum.com” in October 2002 where people are hashing out this exact same question. This isn’t some sort of new slick Refinery29 pseudowoke take of Absynthe’s, it’s an interpretation that’s been around for a while, as has yours.

tl;dr It’s true that if you look at the Shibboleth Absynthe’s assessment of Finwë is pretty obviously unfair, but there are other versions of the story where the text overtly agrees with her.

Absolutely feel free to discount what I’m saying here since I’m not exactly a neutral source on fandom drama that a close friend of mine is involved in, but if you find this response substantive or helpful then so much the better.

I am absolutely not saying that Finwe cannot be criticised. In fact, I specifically say in my post that I actually think that Finwe was wrong to agree to the statute. I am arguing here not that Finwe was 100% blameless as you seem to have me doing, but that cherry picking one specific portrayal and then looking at it through the most bad faith lens possible is unfair. I’m not particularly interested in arguing if he was right or wrong, what i am arguing is that there is nuance that the original post completely disregards in order to make that point, and that it deserves looking at. Especially since people in the notes were saying stuff like “wow i hate finwe now”. So i just wanted to add another opinion in that was uh. Less incendiary than moringottos.

I do not think that people have to like Finwe. But I think that accusing him of just “being horny” and saying that he “felt entitled to a woman’s body despite her continued and consistent refusal of his advances” is more than a little unfair.

Finwe certainly made bad choices, i am 200% aware of this. But for me, the real tragedy of the silm is that they were not maliciously bad choices, and that the original people behind them were, at heart, decent. But if you’re out here just looking to blame someone, don’t speak to me.

earlier today I was just about knocked over by the realization that if you accept the full Statute of Finwë and Míriel as canonical, the entire tragedy of the Silmarillion and of the Noldor is basically built on the fact that a man felt entitled to a woman’s body despite her continued and consistent refusal of his advances

I absolutely do not believe that Tolkien intended to make this extremely feminist point but it sure as hell is a feminist point

w—

what in the goddamn hell are you talking about

so in the full Statute of Finwë and Míriel as it appears in HoME volume 10, Míriel dies and leaves her body and goes to Mandos, and then ten presumably solar years later, Finwë goes crying to the Valar about how he can’t get laid anymore. ten years is an elvish minute, tbh, that’s like No Time At All.

he insists he’s entitled to a wife and more children, and he knows Míriel won’t come back, and he goes on and on about how he’s Lonely and Grieving and Sad and Miserable and the whole thing comes across like him whining about being deprived of sex

Míriel refuses to return, saying she left her body to escape great sorrow - which, yeah, can believe that if this is your husband’s reaction to no longer being able to get laid. Finwë refuses to consider her needs, insisting that he be allowed to remarry because He’s Sad, Isn’t It Sad, Am Deprived, Need Wife. he’s like a guy on AITA asking if he’s the asshole for wanting a divorce because his wife spends all day dealing with postpartum depression and she’s no fun to be around.

I was kind of being hyperbolic in my first post but also not really. Boy he comes across badly. And his remarriage and mishandling of all his parenting tasks causes all the later tragedy.

Ok so the last person to try to pick apart this flaming trainwreck of a post was suicide baited so let’s see how I go.

No. Just. No. This is literally the least charitable reading of a character that I have ever seen. You cherry picked one specific version and then did some olympic level mental gymnastics to justify this “woke” “feminist” take.

This is the passage dealing with this from the shibboleth. Notice how it talks about how great finwe’s grief is? Yeah i noticed that that was missing from this take. Sure looks like a dude who is super upset about this whole thing to me.

Not only that, but the passage above clearly shows how bullshit your line about him repeatedly making advances on Miriel’s body is. In that, he’s not insisting that Miriel return, because she has said that she does not want to. He’s just asking if he is supposed to remain alone forever.

Which brings us to the crux of this whole matter. People who go through spousal death (which this is, it’s an unprecedented situation in-universe, but Miriel stating that she probably will never want to return is about as close as an elf gets to true permanent death) have the right to move on. The fact that your post completely shoves onto Finwe the valar’s decision that if he marries Indis, Miriel will never be able to return, is honestly like you’re just looking for someone to blame. This is another thing that is deeply fucked up btw, telling someone that they can either be alone probably forever, in a world where literally everyone else is paired off and playing happy families if you go by LaCE, or he can move on but his wife is definitely gone forever is. that’s some real fucked up shit ngl.

What gets me the most about this whole thing is your insistence that ten years for elves is “nothing”. Unless you can point me to where it literally says that elves just live differently in time and ten years is actually ten minutes, ten years is still ten years no matter how old you are. A week seems less long to me now than it did when i was young, but it’s still a week. When it comes to Maedhros’ torture, do you say that ~thirty years is nothing to an elf? Of course not, a year in pain is still a year in pain no matter how many you have. The same applies to grief.

I also find deeply troubling some of the implications in this post where you repeatedly tie Finwë “whining about being unable to get laid” to “the tragedy of the Noldor is basically built on the fact that a man felt entitled to a woman’s body despite her continued and consistent refusal of his advances.” I am certain that it was not your intent to call Finwe a marital rapist but it sure makes it sound like it.

Also, I cannot believe you have literally blamed Finwe for everything that happened in the silm like… melkor doesn’t exist? Or that other characters, who have their own agency and own mistakes, also exist?

What really gets me the most about this post is, I don’t care if you like Finwe or not. That’s fine. But this post just raises so many questions if you are this desperate to make him into a villain. Why does anyone have to be the villain of this tale? Surely the big tragedy of the Noldor is because it’s actually so easy to see it happening in real life. People who make poor choices but in the end are really just trying their best.

I don’t even like Finwe/Indis, and I personally think he should have waited for Miriel, and that is how upset this post has made me - I am arguing against my own natural inclinations here because this is such an awful take on grief and moving on. It can be argued that the real analogy for Miriel would be that she’s in a coma, but since Miriel has made her wishes known that she does not want to return, with only a very very vague “maybe” in future, I am considering her dead.

Miriel has a right to happiness, of course she does, but crucially this is Finwe respecting her wishes. It is Miriel who does not want to return. Finwe’s son is growing up and ten years may not be a lot to an elf as you have said, but it is a lot with a growing child. This is speculation verging into headcanon territory but I feel if you are allowed to so blatantly character assassinate Finwe, I am allowed to speculate that perhaps Finwe wanted a mother for Feanor. Plenty of single dads irl do.

Tl;Dr this is one of the worst posts I’ve ever seen and I’ve been angry about this for the last three days and anyone who has uncritically reblogged this post without questioning it needs to take a hard look at themselves and question how they would respond to someone irl who had waited for years after their spouse died (with a young son) and wanted to remarry. Because if it’s like this, then I worry for you.

so tumblr glitched abd deleted half my tags so i had to recreate half from memory and im gonna make that everyone else’s problem

^^^^

earlier today I was just about knocked over by the realization that if you accept the full Statute of Finwë and Míriel as canonical, the entire tragedy of the Silmarillion and of the Noldor is basically built on the fact that a man felt entitled to a woman’s body despite her continued and consistent refusal of his advances

I absolutely do not believe that Tolkien intended to make this extremely feminist point but it sure as hell is a feminist point

w—

what in the goddamn hell are you talking about

so in the full Statute of Finwë and Míriel as it appears in HoME volume 10, Míriel dies and leaves her body and goes to Mandos, and then ten presumably solar years later, Finwë goes crying to the Valar about how he can’t get laid anymore. ten years is an elvish minute, tbh, that’s like No Time At All.

he insists he’s entitled to a wife and more children, and he knows Míriel won’t come back, and he goes on and on about how he’s Lonely and Grieving and Sad and Miserable and the whole thing comes across like him whining about being deprived of sex

Míriel refuses to return, saying she left her body to escape great sorrow - which, yeah, can believe that if this is your husband’s reaction to no longer being able to get laid. Finwë refuses to consider her needs, insisting that he be allowed to remarry because He’s Sad, Isn’t It Sad, Am Deprived, Need Wife. he’s like a guy on AITA asking if he’s the asshole for wanting a divorce because his wife spends all day dealing with postpartum depression and she’s no fun to be around.

I was kind of being hyperbolic in my first post but also not really. Boy he comes across badly. And his remarriage and mishandling of all his parenting tasks causes all the later tragedy.

Ok so the last person to try to pick apart this flaming trainwreck of a post was suicide baited so let’s see how I go.

No. Just. No. This is literally the least charitable reading of a character that I have ever seen. You cherry picked one specific version and then did some olympic level mental gymnastics to justify this “woke” “feminist” take.

This is the passage dealing with this from the shibboleth. Notice how it talks about how great finwe’s grief is? Yeah i noticed that that was missing from this take. Sure looks like a dude who is super upset about this whole thing to me.

Not only that, but the passage above clearly shows how bullshit your line about him repeatedly making advances on Miriel’s body is. In that, he’s not insisting that Miriel return, because she has said that she does not want to. He’s just asking if he is supposed to remain alone forever.

Which brings us to the crux of this whole matter. People who go through spousal death (which this is, it’s an unprecedented situation in-universe, but Miriel stating that she probably will never want to return is about as close as an elf gets to true permanent death) have the right to move on. The fact that your post completely shoves onto Finwe the valar’s decision that if he marries Indis, Miriel will never be able to return, is honestly like you’re just looking for someone to blame. This is another thing that is deeply fucked up btw, telling someone that they can either be alone probably forever, in a world where literally everyone else is paired off and playing happy families if you go by LaCE, or he can move on but his wife is definitely gone forever is. that’s some real fucked up shit ngl.

What gets me the most about this whole thing is your insistence that ten years for elves is “nothing”. Unless you can point me to where it literally says that elves just live differently in time and ten years is actually ten minutes, ten years is still ten years no matter how old you are. A week seems less long to me now than it did when i was young, but it’s still a week. When it comes to Maedhros’ torture, do you say that ~thirty years is nothing to an elf? Of course not, a year in pain is still a year in pain no matter how many you have. The same applies to grief.

I also find deeply troubling some of the implications in this post where you repeatedly tie Finwë “whining about being unable to get laid” to “the tragedy of the Noldor is basically built on the fact that a man felt entitled to a woman’s body despite her continued and consistent refusal of his advances.” I am certain that it was not your intent to call Finwe a marital rapist but it sure makes it sound like it.

Also, I cannot believe you have literally blamed Finwe for everything that happened in the silm like... melkor doesn’t exist? Or that other characters, who have their own agency and own mistakes, also exist?

What really gets me the most about this post is, I don’t care if you like Finwe or not. That’s fine. But this post just raises so many questions if you are this desperate to make him into a villain. Why does anyone have to be the villain of this tale? Surely the big tragedy of the Noldor is because it’s actually so easy to see it happening in real life. People who make poor choices but in the end are really just trying their best.

I don’t even like Finwe/Indis, and I personally think he should have waited for Miriel, and that is how upset this post has made me - I am arguing against my own natural inclinations here because this is such an awful take on grief and moving on. It can be argued that the real analogy for Miriel would be that she’s in a coma, but since Miriel has made her wishes known that she does not want to return, with only a very very vague “maybe” in future, I am considering her dead.

Miriel has a right to happiness, of course she does, but crucially this is Finwe respecting her wishes. It is Miriel who does not want to return. Finwe’s son is growing up and ten years may not be a lot to an elf as you have said, but it is a lot with a growing child. This is speculation verging into headcanon territory but I feel if you are allowed to so blatantly character assassinate Finwe, I am allowed to speculate that perhaps Finwe wanted a mother for Feanor. Plenty of single dads irl do.

Tl;Dr this is one of the worst posts I’ve ever seen and I’ve been angry about this for the last three days and anyone who has uncritically reblogged this post without questioning it needs to take a hard look at themselves and question how they would respond to someone irl who had waited for years after their spouse died (with a young son) and wanted to remarry. Because if it’s like this, then I worry for you.

Curufin and Celebrimbor

I started to reply to this interesting post about Curufin by @curufins-smile, but it got long so I made a new post!  Now, OK, Celebrimbor’s early history in canon is all over the place, so to an extent, First Age Celebrimbor is a build your own character. 

You could choose to write Celebrimbor as so young he had no choice but to leave Valinor with his father, but I prefer a Celebrimbor who made his own decision, even if he did it very young. People who are very young can make valid decisions, and Elves canonically mature in mind faster than humans (not slower, though I know that headcanon is everywhere!  I stick to LaCE on this: young elves seem older in mind than humans of the same age, even though they grow more slowly.) 

To me, that makes more sense with the Doom of Mandos: “On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East”.  That wording puts Celebrimbor in a somewhat unique position: he’s the only one who didn’t take the Oath who is none-the-less condemned to the wrath of the Valar, and can’t get out of it by choosing not to follow the House of Fëanor.  He’s not following them, he’s one of them, but neither age nor not being an oathtaker excuses him. 

Keep reading

Thanks for this great addition!! Reblogging so people can see :)

Okay here’s the thing

I’m seeing way too much 2017 negativity on my dash right now, so while it’s still New Year’s Eve, share some happy memories and tag some people to do the same. Me first:

In 2017, I wrote over 100 pages for my novel. I spent a lot of time with people I love most. I went to two convents. I created this blog and made wonderful friends. ♡

@wrappedinchocolateblanket @algralithiel @lady–of–greenwood @kat-anni @pendragoth @svogliata-mente @eruscreaminginthedistance @incorrect-middleearth-quotes @raksh-thedemonlady go! ^-^

Nice idea!!! Honey, yiu tagged me twice xD

My sister got married and it was beautiful. I got to pet a fawn! Wonder Woman and Ragnarok happened, and Homecoming too. I got back into the Silm and Tolkien in general, catapulting me straight into this beautiful fandom.

@cerulean-shark @alia-andreth @fiinwe @fellowshipofthegay @fuindar-valen @irreverentecthelion

Hmm. 2017 was a rough year. I’m not gonna lie.

I visited the UK for the first time.  I made new friends.  I started writing more.  I made some progress on some Personal Demons that have been bugging me for a long time.  My friends and I toured Scotland, and it was beautiful.  I discovered I like mead.  I went to a Foo Fighters Concert.  My boyfriend and I are closer than we’ve ever been before.

@grundyscribbling, @cycas, @mainecoon76,  @saltysquidtea, @cataclysmofstars, @feanore, @feanorrrwashere, @feanoriansappreciation, @feanoriel, @woodlandcrowns, @probs-dying, @astorey91, @adcuiliell3, @morgause1, @lightofthetrees, @silverphantomcat, @filmamir, @vidumavi, @curufinsdaddyissues, @elvenqueen-thenerd, @kanawolf, @spagaytti-sauce, @use-less-nesss, let’s see, if I’ve forgotten anyone, I’m sorry bout that!

Gotta say, 2017 has definitely had some rough patches right up to the end.

But, I graduated from college, I got back into writing (original fiction and fanfiction (for the first time)), I improved my LSAT score, and I finally became a part of the Silm fandom and have had so much fun so far.

@violinclad, @meaninglessprose, @theoriginaldrink, @ingoldamn, @vampiraptor, @swilmarillion, @vanimore, @erudammit, @nzagul, @rose-of-the-bright-sea, @bluestaratsunrise, @darksabreassassin, @fiinwe, @celebbun, @bodhvild, @raisingcain-onceagain, @gaolcrowofmandos, @barad-doom, @set-h, @animecrazy13ify, @mirkwoodminstrel, @queen-haleth, @berthulina1314

I started playing d&d this year!

I also got involved with the Silmarillion fandom!!!

@swilmarillion @suzannart @musinshadw @probs-dying @morgause1 @melkorwashere @cy-lindric @chiwandering @cinemairon @celebbun @alyruko @asgardian–angels @verymaedhros

This year had its difficulties, as it did for everyone, but that’s no reason to wallow in them.

I returned to my fandom after too long an absence and am grateful for their quiet and affectionate reaction to my return.

I gave up coca cola.  I got to cook Beef Wellington with my sister.  My first Angbang fanfic broke 100 kudos.  I’ve taken my writing up a level!  I started a new story and have ten completed chapters and three in progress.  I got to work with a woman I like immensely and respect just as much!  I was able to be there for my mom when she fractured her collarbone.  I’ve spent more time with my family this year than I have in the last two decades, including extended family, not just the nuclear fam.

I made new friends - several of them here on Tumblr.

I’ve been able to promote positivity in my Fandom Community!

@hazelnutshippingco ,@radioactive-earthshine , @fackfackfackfack , @mortomary , @lieutenant-admirable @evilbrat2013 , @samwise-po-tay-toe-gamgee , @dragonofmordor , @sirensofmisery , @gandalfwho , @misbehavingmaiar , @gotlostinthefandom , @sorrowssinger @nixiegenesis @russandildo @afoxamongthetrees @vikslamp @feanope @heartofoshun , @fantasychica37 @elfmaiddryope @ithilielthechosenone @celebbun 

My loved ones in the Age of Sail Fandom: @conquistadoradelmar and @oceansode  Because this should cross Fandom lines!

And there are more, but I’ll give someone else a chance but…

@morgause1 - you are one of the very best things I’ve found in this year.  Thank you for being so wonderful!  (((((((<3!!))))))

And @meaninglessprose - thank you for tagging me!  I hope you’re feeling better! <3!

well.. for me 2017 was a hella fine year and i hope 2018 will be just as good though i already know that the first month will be quite stressfuk - and for all of you who struggled 2017 was shit i hope 2k18 gets better for you!

thank you for brighten my dash with lovely art, links to very good fic and amazing edits, friends old and new.

@nyolofinwe @violinclad @cycas @nelyafinwes @nevui-penim-miruvorrr @gaaladrieel @actualmermaid @crackinthecup @feanory @nixiegenesis @feanore @markedasinfernal @mythlorn @kamikazekatze @nyarnamaitar @raisingcain-onceagain @ladygagalion @imindhowwelayinjune @urloth @gandalfwho @acommonanomaly @flurgburgler @shiremaiden @feanoriel @varaenthefallen @curufins-smile @vanimore @dawnfelagund @alystraea @corinthian-13 @melkomelko @jrrtolkiens @mikhailvalhidris @mishacolins @woodlandcrowns @themirkyking @shewhodoesnotexist @rose-of-the-bright-sea @glorfindel-of-imladris @glorfy-the-bright-haired-ellon @magpiescholar @incorrect-middleearth-quotes @gaolcrowofmandos @set-h @alikuusketchdump / @alikuu @silmladylove @moriquendii @starlightwalking @ungoliamt @edgeoflight @justadutchperson @calmtokienreader and everyone else i have forgotten. for that i am sorry.

Thank you for @musinshadw @feanope and @gaolcrowofmandos for the tag! You are all awesome and have made my experience on here great!

In 2017, I finished another round of revisions for Fireborn, I worked up the courage to divorce my husband and leave a toxic situation, started painting and drawing again, and officially joined the silm fandom after lurking for a few years. 

Thank you to everyone else who makes my tumblr experience EXCELLENT. My BFFF @acommonanomaly @elesianne @nelyafinwes @nyolofinwe @curufins-smile @eomer @legolasgoldy @alystraea @alikuu @cycas @grundyscribbling @gurthang @garden-ghoul 

I’ve been tagged on this three times at least now <3 So how’s that for some 2017 positivity

Let’s see, 2017 was alright in a lot of ways! I finally got my dream career of becoming a mortician. I got to meet @gandalfwho in person and now we all have semi-weekly hangouts so that’s fun as hell. I have two kitten children now. I have an AMAZING group of friends in the Silm Squad and I would die for them. I reconnected with a lot of people. Changed my writing style for the better and started experimenting with things outside of my usual comfort zone with a lot of success. Oh and I won my first NaNoWriMo!

Oh and I found my Brazilian twin @nelyafinwe

uhhhh who hasn’t been tagged yet? @fellowshipofthegay @madtomedgar @theotherwesley @first-son-of-finwe @arafinwion @curufins-smile @nelyafinwe @crocordile @raisingcain-onceagain @risepersephone @nzagul god i’m so terrible at tagging things but I love all 1200 of yall so much

Thanks for all the tags everyone :)

In 2017 i finished epic pokemon! And a load of other really fun projects :D I got my budgies who i adore, and although it was stressful, had a year in a job I love. I’ve got loads of fun things planned for 2018 so I’m excited!

most people have been tagged already haha but I’ll tag a few i think haven’t done it: @alackofghosts @mythlorn @narmaite @hereff @xredriverx @saintvader @shinyforce @lieutenant-admirable sorry if I’ve missed a load of people as I’m certain i probably have!

Salty Ask List

*several of these questions are taken from a list that was not rebloggable

f-ennekins replied to your post:

Oh gosh your jokes about Chuck Norris!Fingolfin is freaking hialrious, thanks reminding me X°D I hope you don’t mind me listing all of them here because they’re so great, I need to share it.

The last one especially canon, nobody can tell me otherwise.

more because this train cannot be stopped

scientific ones (to make Fëanor suffer):