Unable to shut up

thank you for tagging me @starspray !! <3 my focus has been Detective!Cel lately, nearing the end of chapter 4 !! Maedhros has finally entered the picture, Tirion's femme fatale.

Fëanor haunts many lands, this one in particular. For how quick a death, and how swift his burial on the wind, he clogged the veins of the world with his conflagration of breath in both his coming and falling. Celebrían remembers laughing, and remembers Galadriel coaxing out her laughter, despite Celeborn’s warning stare.  And then, she turns to look at Maedhros and the feeling in her chest–telling her, as her mother did, that laughter is silky-smooth and good for the soul; and what you do when you hear such foolish stories about foolish, idiotic men–it goes away like a flash of lightning, like a body burning quick. Maedhros peers down at her, and he must think she is confused for he blinks his hollowed-out eyes and says something about the maid, and the wine, and the way his father must now look to the city of Tirion–to Aman, as a whole–and he will never get live it down now, even if he died and was brought back twice.  “But you do not believe it to be wine,” Celebrían says at last. “That is why you are here, yes?” Maedhros does laugh, this time, bitterly. “The way my father lies is by trying to force the belief upon you. He will tell you the lie as fact; and leave very little freedom for your own thought. It does not work on me.”  Celebrían finds she is glad that someone other than her and Finrod have seen through the foolishness. But if Fëanor does not confide in the eldest of his sons, who does he speak to? She thinks fleetingly of Nerdanel, but then remembers her words and air—idiot, she had said. But that may have been an epithet reserved for him regardless of the near-death. “And what are your thoughts?” Celebrían asks him.  “I had first wondered if Amillë decided at last to exact her revenge, but she would not save it for them alone, she would have admonished him in the public eye if she wished to genuinely dampen his spirit.” Maedhros dusts the front of his robes. His right hand does not move, it sits placidly against his thigh, as if he has forgotten it was there. “I believe he was poisoned, as do you–perhaps by someone who does not adore the fact that Mandos has let him out to roam.” “Fëanor has many enemies,” Celebrían remarks. She thinks of Nerdanel, though he does not. Then wonders if he truly does—but what sort of son would incriminate his own mother? “Those he has killed, and those whose lives he led to ruin.”  This does not, she notes, strip blame entirely from any of his sons.

author is scared of me = terrified of ambiguity, uses excruciatingly precise language to avoid being misinterpreted, treats diversity as a box-ticking exercise, bends over backwards to explain itself when Literally No One Asked, all morally grey actions have to be immediately justified and resolved

[for the Silm Fic Rec Ask Game]

3. The fanfic author you wish you'd read more from.

The answer is: way too many, but I'll stick to the ones that are always at the back of my mind. Warning: as a rule I think I have a problem with fics (and books as well) because whenever I have a strong feeling I'm going to become completely *insane* about one I just postpone reading it. I like to edge myself, I suppose.

So I'd love to read more from user clovis_unleashed/ @tobermoriansass I've read his Maedhros fic for the trsb2025 and the one about Miriel/Feanor and I went completely bonkers over both of them. I've been putting off sisiphyus for as long as I've been active in this fandom (!!). Many fics in my tbr are actually his.

My most recent discovery is user @angamaite-der-ritter/ Angamaite. I saw his published fics, opened several of them (I actually finished one, another is still sitting sadly in an open tab. sigh sigh), and went "okay byeeee" (too good. poor me).

Also, user @i-am-a-lonely-visitor/lonelyvisitor and the Magolfin ship, which I've yet to embark on, but the concept is just chef's kiss.

I don't think that's healthy. I'm missing out on a lot, honestly. And like I'm sure the list is longer than this.

6. A fic you love about a rare character, ship or a legendarium setting.

hiiii tysm for the ask!!! I also still think about that snippet <3

I got so excited I made a little moodboard too!

Grace didn't remember when her room had turned into their room, but she wouldn't change it for the world. The steady clicking of the keys on Cami's laptop had somehow never bothered her sensitive ears, and Cami didn't seem to let Grace's ceaseless piano playing disturb her—something not even Elijah could say for himself—hence, Grace's piano room, or rather, their room.

I have been remiss in my tags for Snippets or WIPs lately.

Thank you for the tags @aroacebaggins @thescrapwitch @ladysterndust @ffigwit and anyone else I may have missed.

The only thing I've worked on in the last month that isn't TRSB, is The Thrall's Trauma. (And an OC that is not related to Tolkien at all)

I also did a tiny bit on my Nerdanel and Anairë fic, but that was literally a few lines.

Below is an actual snippet of my WIP The Thrall's Trauma.

His lord had sent for him. High King Fingolfin was going to hold a great celebratory feast during the coming spring. The name brought a flash of a sword in memory,  but nothing else. As Lord Maedhros continued, he spoke of the great feasts of Tirion and how he missed them. Tirion did invoke a memory. Well not quite a memory.  It invoked a feeling. Something about feeling happy and overly full after eating.  That was definitely not a memory from Middle-earth.  Until Himring he had known only hunger and thirst.  At least those also were a memory now. For a moment he was excited that he may sit at a feast again.  That felt familiar, as if another life had been forgotten. Then Maedhros shattered that with a single command. He was to be a member of the guard. He hid his disappointment.  Of course he was a member of the guard! To be invited to the table was above his station.  He should know that! He was a guard and nothing more. No matter how his faulty memories lied to him. He bowed his exit upon dismissal and then went to hide in the armoury for a moment.  Why did he think he should be at the table? Whatever that was, it was a life long gone. Even if he could have remembered it, it was no longer his life. He was just a guard, as his lord commanded.

No pressure tags.

@infiniteriver @skatesfullofsunshine @annarobots @balrogballs @idleleaves @endless-natterings @starshadeemilyart

Some fluffy, some angsty prompts

As a hello

With a hoarse voice, under the blankets

A scream

Over a cup of tea

Over a beer bottle

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, the late sunlight glowing in your hair

As a thank you

As an apology

When baking chocolate chip cookies

Not said to me

With a shuddering gasp

When we lay together on the fresh spring grass

In a letter

A whisper in the ear

Loud, so everyone can hear

Over and over again, till it’s nothing but a senseless babble

When the broken grass litters the floor

From very far away

With no space left between us

As we huddle together, the storm raging outside

Over your shoulder

Muffled, from the other side of the door

Through a song

Without really meaning it

In a blissful sigh as you fall asleep

Broken, as you clutch the sleeve of my jacket and beg me not to leave

A taunt, with one eyebrow raised and a grin bubbling at your lips

When I am dead

Slowly, the words dripping from your tongue like honey

Too quick, mumbled into your scarf

In awe, the first time you realised it

In a way I can’t return

On a post-it note

Before we jump

Prompt: A very, very belated entry for @tolkiengenweek day 3: grey spaces

Summary: Here is the one, she thought, who will bring our deliverance.

Hope comes to Minas Tirith. Finduilas still withers.

Rating: T

Word Count: 8.5k

Finduilas stood before the wall of the Citadel, tiling her face to the cold clasp of the morning mist and dreaming she wore the sea on her skin. All was white and cold around her, and she imagined it the foam of the sea flung up about her, frozen in stasis.  

On mornings like this, when the mist crept inland, borne upon the shoulders of the Anduin, she could almost envision she was again in Dol Amroth, where the sea mist would coil about the feet of the towers of the palace, and she would step into the cold clutch of morning, roving here and there through the mist, passing like a ghost upon the cold sands of the shore and through the brackish marshes.

If it were not for the deep quiet of the dampening mist, she could even have dreamed herself in the sea, borne upon its shoulders in the cold hours of morning, cut loose from the world, drifting on endless seas.

But the sea was not quiet. It lapped caressingly about her ankles, whispered promises beneath the window of the castle towers, teemed in the seething darkness of sudden summer squalls. It was a lover’s voice always murmuring in the back of her mind, familiar and beloved.

Minas Tirith was not wholly quiet, either. It never was. Distantly, in the circles beneath, she caught the ringing of hammers of smiths at work, the calls of the guardsmen as the fore-dawn watchmen retired to their quarters and the dawn watch assembled, the trundling of handcarts as servants and tradesmen went about their work in the cold hours of morning before the city woke fully.