Flamelurking

Someone thought it was appropriate to send written porn to an 11 year old to encourage her to attack the author.

This resulted in a very awkward conversation where I had to explain to multiple horrified parents the anti culture that is becoming so prevalent. The fact that there are adults who use that purity message to groom kids. The way they escalate and how it bleeds into real life. One parent told me she'd wondered why her 14 year old was suddenly concerned about the two year age gap between her parents. The more I explained, the more absolutely ludicrous it sounded and the more baffled these poor mums looked. More than once I was told "but the characters aren't real, it's really weird but it isn't hurting anyone". Which is the point. The fictional situation isn't hurting anyone. The person who sent porn to an 11 year old is.

Was the person who sent it the author? Doubtful, that thing was tagged in the extreme. Was the person who sent it an adult? Almost certainly. The parent who's child received the original message has found more concerning stuff and gone to the police, but from the language the person doing the sending was in the US. We aren't. Did my daughter receive it? No, she isn't interested in that fandom and therefore wouldn't have bothered with it. Is this the fault of the author? No, they didn't send the link, they didn't ask to be harassed, they wrote a story and put it on ao3, the website created in response to rampant censorship and designed to allow for all kinds of fiction. Is this the fault of the parents? Partially, they should have been looking at their daughter's internet use and clocked what was happening sooner. Is this the fault of the child? No, she's 11, she didn't know better.

This has been a difficult day. Multiple parents have had their eyes opened to parts of fandom culture they had no idea existed. And the thing of it is, they aren't concerned about the why of anti rhetoric. They don't care about the adults writing about teens or rape or incest or torture or any of the rest, because they looked at the clearly tagged and rated fics and figured that it worked the same as a warning on any streaming service. They only cared because some utterly vile individual decided to expose their child to something this girl might not have looked at for years.

Would the Valar have taken them away by force anyway? It’s obvious that the Silmarils were not the only way to restore light to Valinor, but in that moment, the Valar were rather acting as though they were…so would they have done it? Or would they have just shrugged and made the sun and moon instead?

I’m still in the middle of my write-up about the Valar partly covering this subject, but I’ll just say that I’m a hundred percent positive that the Valar wouldn’t have done anything. I couldn’t be more convinced of that. 

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.

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.

This is really the crux of the matter.

And the fact that the Valar took “all future change and choice” away from Miriel, basically trapping her, speaks volumes about how much they cared about her healing and her well-being, in short about her as a person.

(no idea how long tumblr will allow this to exist so enjoy while you can lol)

“We finally meet, nephew,” [Maedhros] said, while she was still unwrapping the headscarf that covered the rest of her face – a long black strip of silk, lined with gold embroidery like her tunic and trousers and gloves.

Maglor propped her long spiked club on the ground between her legs and rested her arms on the flat bottom of the handle. Her hair was pulled back from her face, making the angles and dips of her face stand out in an unsettling way, like she had just dumped an etching of herself on the chair next to Maedhros. She was bare-chested and barefoot. It would have been hard for anyone to imagine they were face to face with the most talented singer of the Ñoldor.

Gil-Galad hadn’t been expecting her to actually show up in Lindon dressed like that, despite Celebrimbor’s tales.”

- Orcs’ Brew by eldvarpa

@finweanladiesweek, Entry 7: Freeform- Suretal, an OC of mine.

I wrote this for my own sake, so that I could bang out and jot down my hcs for Suretal, who I’ve had in several fics at this point. This needed to happen, and Freeform day was a good opportunity! If you like this too, that’s just a bonus!

A very short look at the life of Suretal the Seamstress, sister of Miriel Therindë .

Miriel was a little girl, and Suretal was only a bit bigger when they met. They’d never been quite sure of the age difference, too young and time too nebulous then to bother keeping track when the people who would have known for certain disappeared. Suretal had only known that the silver-haired girl was small, and she might run faster but she screamed louder, and it was her duty to pull the girl around her age into the bushes. Miriel had wailed and spit and bit at her hand, but Suretal kept her quiet and pinned while the dark ones prowled.

Then the slaughter dispersed a little and warriors from a neighboring camp came too late.

They hadn’t even known one another’s names, but they held hands as they were rescued and fed. They were washed together- their families’ blood scrubbed from their faces and hair- shepherded along to the next camp together, and they went to sleep together. The next morning, Suretal woke up to the little silver-haired girl staring at her, and she said, “My names Mirë.”

“Surië.”

@finweanladiesweek DAY SEVEN: FREEFORM - THE DAUGHTERS OF FËANOR (AU - GENDERBENT):

But one day he could not find her. He looked and looked. He even got his big brother Kano's help. Made him promise not to tell anyone. Finally in the evening they found her.

Everything was well...

Until original Kírin came back and saw herself replaced by a lookalike. She was Not Impressed. A great battle for honour ensued. Celegorm carried those tiny battle scar until his death. It was a defeat against a much worthier foe after all.

And practiced his Cattish Language even more. Obviously.

The less said about his family's reaction, the better.

Based on-