This Looks Like Love

Part 6 of Tolkien's Women: Aerin

CW: vaguely implied rape, suicide. Basically it's canon compliant.

The revulsion she feels is not for him as a man, for he is fair to behold and not unkind to his servants and thralls. In other circumstances she might have liked him, even. But she was never offered a choice. And so she detests every gift from him, every touch, every word of affection. She resents him for the pretense of a marriage he has forced her to take part in. To her, he will always be the invader, the conqueror, never the loving husband.

At times she envies Morwen. Witch-woman, the invaders call her. They shun her, they go to great lengths to avoid her stern, unflinching gaze. They whisper about her kinsman, Beren, who rose from the grave through the dark sorcery of the elves. Even Brodda fears Morwen, fears what curses she may lay upon him. Every time he passes by her house, he makes signs to ward off evil. Aerin sneers at such behaviour. The only evil in Dor-lómin is the one he has brought with him, the darkness he serves.

Most of all she envies the menfolk of the House of Hador. She envies them their swift deaths at swordpoint, so much more merciful than the slow death of a life in captivity. Many a night she has lain awake in the darkness, clutching her dagger, calculating how many throats she would be able to slit before someone raised the alarm, thinking, would she have time to plunge the dagger into her own heart before they caught her. But there are too many of them, and she knows that her people will pay tenfold in blood for every life she takes. So she plays at being the dutiful wife. She tries to make the most of what influence she has with Brodda. Many a child of the House of Hador makes it through the winter thanks to the food she smuggles to their families. And with every small victory, every tiny act of resistance, she feels a little bit less dead inside.

Until the day Morwen's son strides into Brodda's hall and she is caught in the gaze of those stern, accusing eyes. When he cuts through the guards, when he puts her husband to the sword, every blow is a reprimand for the years spent under the thumb of the enemy. As if he could ever understand restraint in the service of honour and duty.

In the end they are the only two people left in the hall. And Aerin faces him, unflinching, without shame.

"Know this, son of Húrin. Our people will suffer for what you have done here. I hope you learn, before it is too late, to leave more than ashes in your wake."

She sees the pain in his eyes then, yet knows that he is too young, too blinded by his own sense of earth-shattering importance, too weighed down by pride and doom, to ever turn from the path he has started down. He will burn, and he will make the world burn with him.

But one gift has he given her. With Brodda and his household slain, with everything she has built through her life crumbling around her, duty to her people no longer holds her back. With one last look at the sky, she drops a torch on the oil-doused floor. Aerin stands tall at the chieftain's seat, watching her prison go up in flames, and when the fire reaches for her, she unsheathes her dagger and plunges it straight into her chest. Smoke and darkness cloud her vision, but through it all it seems to her that a piercing light shines through. Aerin sinks to the floor with a smile on her face, free at last.

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.

One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal. 

Saw this on Instagram and I couldn’t agree more.

Whenever I read LotR and reach the battle between Eowyn and the Witch-king, I get the impression that the reason why the prophecy loophole works isn’t that the Witch-king is unkillable except for some illogical weakness nobody had thought about yet for misogynistic reasons, but that the Witch-king himself derives so much of his power from the fear he instills in others and from his own belief that he is unkillable. Eowyn doesn’t fear him, because she doesn’t fear death. When she twists his words right back at him, she’s not trying to exploit a prophecy loophole, she’s just making a play on the double meaning of the word «man» with fairly standard battlefield bravado.

But, crucially, it gets the Witch-king wondering if there might be an actual loophole in the prophecy. He starts doubting his own invincibility. There’s no logical reason why a woman might be able to kill him if a man cannot, but prophecies are tricky things. What if …

And this is what undoes him, in the end. This last minute doubt. The Witch-king, deep down, believes that Eowyn can kill him, thus making it possible for her to do so.

Fëanor: I put the “war” in “Tengwar”

Curufin: I put the “goth” in “Nargothrond”

Elros: I put the “men” in “Numenor”

Galadriel: I put a frog in Fingolfin’s boot once. They don’t even know it was me

"Elrond raised his eyes and looked at him, and Frodo felt his heart pierced by the sudden keenness of the glance." - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Council of Elrond.

So. What do you want to bet that when glorfindel came back to middle earth he had a heart attack because elrond looked like maeglin.

(This means that the list of people glorfindel has considered trying to murder about this exact topic is elrond, bilbo, and aragorn. Plus a bunch of elrond's other human fosters but none of THEM fell for arwen so aragorn was def the most severe)

And since arwen is exactly like elrond in every way, this is yet more proof for my theory of "every character named twilight + son/daughter is a meaningful parallel"

I don't think people without sensory sensitivities understand that what I'm asking of them is no more than I ask of myself.

I practice ways to avoid setting off both my own sensitivities and the sensitivities of others. I've taught myself to chew and swallow as quietly as possible, to scoop ice cream and stir tea without clinking the metal spoon against the side of the ceramic cup, to not smack my lips, to never clear my throat unless there is no other option and then to only do it once or twice. I repress my stim of touching my nose and upper lip when in the presence of one of my siblings because for some reason it bothers them (they don't have sensory sensitivities so I'm not sure why they dislike it, but I'll respect their preference).

I don't choose to have these. I would get rid of them if I could, but no amount of exposure and trying to stay calm has vanquished them. My sensitivities come and go as they please, and some have been with me for as long as I remember.

Yet somehow when I ask others to not set off my sensitivities, I'm told that I am overly sensitive, lazy, and just trying to annoy them.

Can I please ask for your top five theories on why the Ringwraiths become so much more powerful over the course of the LotR trilogy? By the end of the books a single Ringwraith holds an army of 6000 men in paralysing dread from a height of a mile, they're dismaying hosts of men, etc. And in the beginning, they're easily defeated by "jumping behind a tree," "pretending to be in a different room," "getting on a little boat," "man with a stick on fire," etc.

hmm ok

1) their power depends on how physically close they are to sauron/mordor

2) they consciously weren’t unleashing their full power early in Fellowship bcos it didn’t seem worth it when they were just dealing w hobbits

3) they just woke up from a REALLY long nap and it takes them a while to fully come ‘online’

4) their power just waxes & wanes sometimes

5) hobbits are their One Weakness