I forgot how long ago I made this

I'll start:

Preface: We know Maiar and Valar don’t need to do anything a mortal body does, such as eat and sleep, and the more they do those things the more tied to their physical body they become.

Mairon is too hectic to ever sleep. He’s got things to organise. Plans to formulate. People to torture. Melkor’s armies to look after. If he stayed still he might actually combust.

Melkor, on the other hand, has been spending so much of his fëa in his works, placing so much of his soul into the world that he is exhausted all the time, and increasingly so. Despite this, sleep does not come easily for he is pained by old scars and tormented by nightmares.

Mairon notices the dark circles under Melkor’s eyes, the slump of his shoulders as he walks and the shuffled gait where once he strode magnificently. His dark lord has become less of a mountain and more of a landslide. He creeps into his master’s bedchamber and sees the restless fluttering of Melkor’s eyelids, the crease between his eyebrows and the shallow breathing through grimaced mouth.

He doesn’t even think twice, it’s instinctual. Mairon climbs into bed and wraps his arm around Melkor, stroking the long dark waves of his inky hair with his other hand whilst pressing his chest tight against his master’s back until the swell and recede of their rib cages match. He feels Melkor relax before he dares peek over and sees the brow is smooth, the eyelids still, the mouth gently open.

When talking of canon, I think it's totally valid to discuss Melkor and Sauron as master/servant. This is a power-dyanmic that existed between them explicitly and is quite fascinating, especially in terms of Sauron's characterization.

But what I'll never accept as an honest interpretation of the text is the idea that Sauron's free will is in question or that he is a slave/thrall. I like to think that Tolkien is good at choosing his words and it's telling that, throughout ALL of his available texts and different drafts as they've been made available, Sauron is NEVER called Melkor's slave or thrall, even though Melkor DOES have slaves and thralls aplenty.

Sauron is described as Melkor's chief captain, the greatest and most trusted of Melkor's servants, as Morgoth's chief lieutenant, as the chief of Melkor's friends and spies among the Maiar etc. etc.

There is a class/power-imbalance. But Sauron freely chose to follow this one person. He chose to attach himself to Melkor just like Olorin chose to attach himself to Manwe (which is a parallel Tolkien himself establishes in his letters) .

Because of the connotations the word "servant" carries in our modern cultures, readers tend to forget that the word does not carry the same negativity in Tolkien's writings. Tolkien is the one who, in Morgoth's Ring, presented Sauron's service of Melkor as the one thing that made Sauron a better person than Melkor. Tolkien is the one who wrote one of the most important emotional bonds in The Lord Of The Rings as a master/servant dynamic.

"The horrible abuse is definitely there, it’s subtext, but it’s there, trust me!!!!"

Well, no. Either bring actual quotes from the books or don’t force your personal headcanons on anyone as if it's gospel truth.

And I’m not saying that JRRT thought of Melkor and Mairon as a wholesome romantic pair! But it’s also not a crazy idea to say there’s no evidence of constant mistreatment, manipulation, or never-ending torment. Sauron choosing to switch sides because he deemed it the better fate for himself, and because he considered Melkor more worthy of his service than the Valar, is not against his canon personality in any way.

Which wouldn't be my problem if the very same people didn't harass and insult shippers whose opinions differ from the popular fanfic authors...

But also I just don't understand how you can be a fan of something and not want to read the books and form your own impressions, independently of what fanon tells you.

"Why make the time to read books when you can just watch several quick tiktok edits and judge on whether or not you ship something based on whether or not the art depicted is hot enough? And if they ARE hot enough to ship I will either look for gics of em sorting by kudos and decide what their canon relationship is off of those" Is the thought process here and yes it genuinely does explain a lot unfortunately.

But I also continue to hope that one day she will return, not necessarily to post more writing (though that would, of course, be a huge delight to me and, I'm sure, to many other angbangers as well), but just to be here again with the rest of the fandom and share her thoughts with us

•The scholars

•The artists

•The memers