ATLA Writers, Let’s Talk About Steel Ships And What Can Go Wrong With Them

This time of year is always very nostalgic for me bc I used to be the Token Gentile at an office and every few months there'd be a Jewish holiday and my friend would be like "Hey, I need you to do Gentile things for us" and I'd be like hell yes dude. Gentile Things often meant I'd sign things in exchange for a few dollars on venmo but Pesach was a special time for me because it meant everyone gave me boxes of pasta, cereal, and other baked goods. The first time my friends were like "Hey for reasons we won't bother getting into we're going to give you all of our bread" I was like, it is a powerful responsibility but as an Ally I cannot refuse. Best time of the year, frankly

Anyway, post-canon/resurrected/reborn/survival AU/Halls of Mandos Fëanor is much more interesting to write because that's the cooldown time, that's the time for character development, for consequences, for despair, for moving onwards. Some people are so caught up in their own burning sense of single-minded purpose that they need to burn out before they can even begin to change.

[ID: a digital painting of Finduilas, princess of Nargothrond. She is facing towards the viewer, standing by a floor to ceiling window through which golden light is flowing into the room. Finduilas's head is tilted down and to her left, as she looks away from the window at something below her eye level in the interior of the room. Her left hand rests below her jaw and her right at her waist; her expression is pensive. She is dressed in a floor-length, light yellow dress with light blue embroidery at the neckline, bottom hem, and ends of the short sleeves. The dress is belted about her waist with a thin, tassled ribbon of the same light blue. She also wears a purple shawl draped over her right shoulder and arm, a golden or bronze bracelet on her left wrist, and white gemstone earrings. Her golden hair is pulled back from her face but left loose and curling down past her waist. End ID.]

Finduilas for moynal ⭐

Silm Time Travel “prompt”

I use the word “prompt” loosely. This is really just a not-fleshed-out story.

Time travel fic where, instead of Maglor doing the time travel, it’s Maedhros. Let’s say he’s been missing for xyz years and one day just poofs up in the forest with no Silmarill in sight (last thing he remembers is jumping into a chasm of fire). His hand is still burning something fierce but he grabs his sword anyway. Some of his brothers find him and he thinks they’re hallucinations or trying to kill him or something of the sort. He attacks his brothers and the only way they can subdue him is to knock him out.

He wakes up with his mother by his bedside (everyone figured that even not in his right mind, he wouldn’t hurt her. They were right). He’s super confused and she explains what happened and somehow, Maedhros figures out that he time traveled. He insists that he see his father immediately and says it’s very important. When she brings Fëanor in, he tells them that he’s from the future and that the future of the entire world depends on Fëanor not capturing the light of the trees in gemstones. Fëanor decides to put off his plan to do exactly that until he’s sure of whether Maedhros is right or wrong.

After all that, the other Fëanorians come piling in the room. The Ambarussar (about nine in elvish reckoning) are nervous around him and aren’t sure it’s him because of all the scars. Everyone else is horrified by the scars to but are tactful enough to not say anything (only barely in Celegorm’s case). He helps the twins to get over their fear by letting them touch his hand-stump and assuring him that it’s really him. Thus the Silmarills are not made and Maedhros gets to heal.

Over time, he slowly reveals things about his past that explain his behaviors. He’s so vigilant and on edge all the time because he’s been fighting for centuries. He keeps his hair short because having it long brings back bad memories. He doesn’t like being touched, especially by surprise, because of his time in Angband (if you want to know specifically why, go read @outofangband’s stories. They were my inspiration for this bit). He doesn’t tell the littler ones that. They’re only told to ‘make sure your brother can see you before you give him a hug.’ And bit by bit, he heals.

Azula invented modern chemistry to synthesise Copper (I) Chloride to make her fire blue.

Shes got a lab in the palace, she disappears in there for days.

Fic idea:

There is a hall of waiting for men in Mandos too, right? For them to wait for their loved ones before they go on together? (If I made that up it’s just the fic premise now, but isn’t this where Beren was chilling when Luthien came for him?)

Anyways Elros figures out while he’s waiting for his kids that he can use his Descendant of Luthien powers to pop over to the Elvish side and meet all the dead elvish relatives he wouldn’t get a chance to know until the breaking of the world otherwise.

He realizes most of them are either gonna be there forever cause they demonstrably Can’t Get Over Their Shit, or Valinor will end up a burning pile of rubble as they are released and forced to face their shit whilst alive.

This is a problem because Elros knows his brother craves family, and while they both accept he and his twin cannot be together forever in life or death, he expects these layabout relatives to get off their dead asses and start making up with each other, so when his brother ends up in Valinor, whenever that may be, he has a loving supportive family that isn’t dragging him in a hundred different directions.

Cue dead Elros playing life (death?) coach to a bunch of dead elves. Some of them are conscious enough it’s like having a normal conversation. Some of them are in soothing or disturbing dreamscapes, with various degrees of awareness of where they are, what they’ve done, and what has happened since they died.

Helpful sidekicks include:

- Soon to be released Glorfindel!

- Finwe, cause he’s sick of his family being idiots and sad his BFF Elwe isn’t talking to him.

- Elros’s extremely argumentative wife, who’s a little confused, but she got the spirit.

- Namo very deliberately Not Helping, because they are Breaking Rules, but who keeps giving them hints like “It would be a shame if you dragged this person’s soul by it’s metaphorical ear to talk to that person’s soul, which of course is interfering which is Bad, I hear.”

- A maia representative sent by Nienna (who thinks this is brilliant). It’s a Maia who really loves elves, and is really interested in how to get them to stop self sabotaging with their own stupidity, and yeah. It’s Gandalf.

Pervading questions:

What happened to Dior and the first set of Peredhel twins?

Where are the Feanorians? Did they really get sent to the void?

Why would anyone want to live forever dealing with this nonsense, is Elrond a martyr or just an idiot. It’s just Finwean family drama? forever?!?!Elros is very confident he made the right choice.

I’ll definitely write this outside my head >>

Do you ever think about how staggeringly in bad taste it is that Gandalf brought a firework that turns into Smaug to Bilbo’s birthday party

Like how were you hoping that would go

I’ll just let the piece speak for itself.

Mood.

What I find interesting about Boromir being the first of the fellowship to succumb to the ring is that it wasn't because he was evil or less pure of heart than the others, but because he didn't truly believe the ring was evil or that it answered only to Sauron, he thought he could use it make it answer to him. It was only after he tried to take it from Frodo that he realized he was wrong.

This is my belated @officialtolkiensecretsanta gift for @arlenianchronicles. Both my laptop and my phone up and died on me (in December... I've got conspiracy theories if anyone wants to hear them), so this was rewritten and posted on a computer loaned to me by a very generous and patient family member. Merry Christmas, y'all!

by Penelope_S

In the midst of a desert, a wanderer comes across a journeyer whose face is hauntingly familiar, though they have never met.

Words: 2320, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Daeron (Tolkien), Aragorn | Estel, OC inhabitants of southeastern Middle Earth

Additional Tags: Daeron’s been mourning Lúthien’s disappearance for ages, I decided that he needs to do something more constructive with his life, Storytelling, deus ex machina-ed culture in an unspecified part of southeastern ME