StarShadeEmily

🎵First Song 🎵

Completed Fëanor commission, but specifically a young adult Fëanor, around about the time of Finwë’s remarriage, hence has the stark features of my usual Fëanor but also the light of youth suffuses him, and the desire for augmentation and penchant for mood lighting is growing within him at the moment.

tagged by dear delightful friends @starshadeemilyart and @angamaite-der-ritter to have my go at starting the professor spinning in his grave at such a velocity that he escapes the pull of planetary gravity once and for all and slingshots off into the ether. rolling this up in a bottle and sending it off on the kindly sea towards @ulmondil, @tobermoriansass, @antlered-vixen, @outofangband, @ecofutural, @seaemberthesecond, and @melians-griddle if you're in the mood for some light theoretical manslaughter <3 Rules: Go into your fic archive and pull out 5-10 lines that you think would put an end to JRR Tolkien once and for all, were he to come across the thing. They don’t have to be funny. You don’t have to explain why they would kill him, but you can if you want. 5 extra points if at least 50% of them don’t have anything to do with shipping and/or LaCE.

1. "Findis had materialized for herself a glass of golden wine, from which she swallowed with vicious intent. 'You know, you were wasted on Fëanáro. Everyone said you were plain, but I didn’t think so. Men are so vile. Most of the time I hate them—sometimes I wish they had all gone. Anything my father could do I am more than capable of. I am a better husband than he ever was. He never brought my mother a gift like you. You’re beautiful.'" (Fitly food for tragic poets) [the findisgender and eldarin radical feminisms would simply be too strong for that old man, let's be real]

2. "Even Fëanáro with his talk of conspiracies and corruption would be hard pressed to find fault with quarter-Jews, baptized one and all and as pure in the church registry as in the sight of God. The business with Turukáno’s engagement was a little unfortunate, to be sure, but Elenwë’s family was a good, patrician one, even as his own mother’s had been, and although Elenwë, unlike Indis, looked upon conversion with the slight disdain of ancestral pride (her gentleness of manner belied a circumstantially fierce will, and when she had announced at the breakfast table that she cherished no plans of a marriage at La Madeleine, Nolofinwë and Anairë had simply nodded and passed the preserves), what enlightened mind would condemn a match contracted so clearly out of love?" (A devout kiss, the saber's hilt) [antisemitic agitator fëanor and jewish vanyar and half-jewish fingolfin, besides the fact that they're all french. dead in a multitude of ways!]

3. "Or perhaps you hope my brother would be more unorthodox than to beat you—after all, you did do somewhat more than simple insubordination. Would he drag you to my chambers with your hands bound like a prisoner and make you watch him fuck me better than both of you together ever could? Or would you rather he make you both serve him as you did me? He’d be a far crueler master than I am, although I daresay—false friend that you are!—you would get something more than you ought from watching Hyamno cry and choke." (Heated chivalry) [six flavors of bdsm, royals behaving as they oughtn't, and sibling incest make for a difficult pill to swallow]

Here's a bit from In All My Dreams I Drown (Voronwë-centric about the time he meet Ulmo)

The two still do not look at each other. If someone were to cross by them, they would assume they were strangers or worse, enemies negotiating the terms of their peace treaty. They have know each other for over twenty years. She has stayed in his house for nearly the same amount of time as well. He is her father-in-law, well, one of them. In truth they should be closer than this, and in most moments they are. It is simply the way they dig into the past, they way they move down that lane of history to share their stories, that makes them estranged once more. "Tell me," she asks. Her dress whips in the growing wind and yet she seems untouchable by the elements. Like a statue she stands tall and unmoving. There is a goal set in her mind, a tale just within reach—she will not let some flimsy weather move her. The former sailor sighs once more. He can't deny her this, not when it's a subtle beg for connection, not when he knows that she too will see the Great Sea one day. She needs to be prepared, but there is no true preparation for that.

(Skipping paragraphs)

It was about…eleven months into their seventh year, closer to beginning than the end, that the signs started appearing. At first it was small things, like sudden patches of rain during a cloudless day or fish flopping onto the deck. So many fish ended up beached that they couldn't prepare or eat them all. Dark-haired Canyolor said it was a bad sign, but everyone let those thoughts pass over them like fog. Then the wind stopped and they were stranded in the blue sea.

tagged by @starshadeemilyart, even though I usually write in a fairly canon-compliant setup, considering my propensity to drawing from 20th century modernist interwar literature + my contentious relationship with the authority of the Valar and LaCE even if I don't outright ignore them this one should be interesting

Rules: Go into your fic archive and pull out 5-10 lines that you think would put an end to JRR Tolkien once and for all, were he to come across the thing. They don’t have to be funny. You don’t have to explain why they would kill him, but you can if you want. 5 extra points if at least 50% of them don’t have anything to do with shipping and/or LaCE.

I put one hand against the stigma of the scar on his collarbone, arrow to arrow, and the other around the iliac crest; I put my unwashed mouth to his salty throat. We fuck on the rocks bloody-handed like wild dogs, all watching the shadows of mutilated carcasses warp, and don’t speak of it in the morning. (Bloodtoil) (homoerotic, sadomasochistic, fetishising violence)

“But we were not made for easy things,” says the knight, nose to throat, chest flush to back, almost at a whisper. “What kind of man wishes for a simple life? A mindless man, a beast-man, glutting himself, wasting himself, eating and shitting and fucking and never knowing what it is like to be tried and find himself true. You’d drive yourself mad.” (Last Salute in the Pyre Glade) (given the characteristics of the Shire I don't think he'd agree)

“You are right – I only need the writ,” the other mouth murmurs back, kissing him, not without teeth, not without blood but still so greedily. “Not her bond, not her love, not even her agreement. But she will agree. We will make her agree.” It seems then as though the lights were going out under the vaulted ceiling, though Laureo belatedly realises it is only the drag of the prince’s fair hair and his own, blacker than the firmament, mingling as they shift in one perpetual unending motion that lies on the crossroads of vice and holy delirium; the coals burn hot on the edge of his sight, searing with a heat so potent that every loose strand has already been sodden, sweat and diluted viscera clumping them together. He was made to endure – as long as his hand once again finds purchase, holding onto Tyelkormo’s shoulder-blades – and thus he demands no concession, nothing less than what is offered, no half-measures either from the prince or Eru Illúvatar himself, taking with whole bites, swallowing down even those accursed bitter dregs. (also Last Salute) (homoerotic, sadomasochistic, and against LaCE)

“Your mouth can be the preferred host for my cock. I don’t know what kind of tapeworm it is.” (Knight Roland's guts, strewn all over the marble ground)

“What I think is irrelevant. It was not a viable choice, because you can’t argue with thralls.” Tyelkormo draws in a deep breath, lets his head fall to the side. “Have you ever seen a thrall? From time to time, a slave escapes Angamando’s pits—or at least, he thinks he has escaped, but in truth the chain has been loosened on purpose and now lies in wait for an order to snap it back, and when it happens, he’ll kill and lie under Moricotto’s will like an animal. There is no reason; there is no freedom, even to admit their own unfree nature. How should you argue for the shucking of bonds with a man like that?” “Are you telling me Olwë and his people—my mother’s people--” “ Not for lack of fondness, nor faith, nor goodwill, but for wariness of the Valar’s wrath. Their words, not mine; I merely heard them spoken to my father. Is that not thralldom?” Findaráto frowns, and the cold is still pervasive. He looks into his cousin’s eyes with lips tightly pursed and eyes all but foreign to any man who knows him less well.  “I hope you are not asking for forgiveness,” he breathes out, and though it is hardly a command, even his quiet voice is hard. Tyelkormo smiles, both wan and vicious. “I would not dare to. The choice was mine, as is the blame.” “You said you didn’t have a choice.” “Correct. Yet I made one.” (Die Nelke) (implicitly anti-valar, philosophically too modern)

“The green one? The same you brought to the celebration of my mastery?” The scepticism doesn’t let up, but for -- different reasons, this time. “Oh, no, not the same. This one didn’t contain any hallucinogens.” Tyelkormo stretches out a hand, as if to inspect the play of starlight on his rings or the give of the cobweb of scar tissue beneath them, turns it one way and another. “Not any medically significant amount, anyway. Insilarquen suffers from unbearable spiels of generosity when he’s drunk, and I’m in no mood for arguing with Findekáno’s bastard of a chamberlain if the liquor gets into the wrong hands and someone pisses into the firepit for fear of arson. Ammonia on the fire is a stench straight out of the black pits.” (Herzkranzgefäß)

“Death does not undo an oath, little as you would know of faith even if it fucked you in the arse.” (Henbane)

[23] Eruenvinyanto. Coronation of Arafinwë Ingoldo, King of the Noldor. FA 7, Royal Palace of Tirion (fresco) (From Charcoal to Nigrosin: Historical Perspectives on the Heraldic Role of the Colour Black in Noldorin Society) (I don't think he'd enjoy me putting Raphael in Valinor)

Forwards, forwards, where mountains loom black, capped in the starless eigengrau of fresh-fallen snow on the advent of inescapable war. Forwards, forwards, back turned to foreclosed treason and exiled faithlessness. Forwards, forwards, abandoning all egotism between fatherhood and brotherhood, the unweaned child with its umbilical cord still bleeding and the embryonic conception of a brother that had not quite become born. (Bloodsacrifice) (way too modernist)

Bonus: “Don't act self-righteous now, Macalaurë -- if it had been Russandol who ordered you to bring the Þindar under fealty, you'd be dragging yourself over the table like a prostitute just to do his bidding!” (33 years of carrion WIP)

oh hello there! Up to the quest!

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

I've already answered this but truth is the moment I hit the post button new examples came to mind yeee so, I absolutely *need* to read more from the @thescrapwitch. I've definitely read something recently, and I'm almost sure I read some of her work back in my lurking days. I'm especially dying to make my way through the whole Maglor Is an Eldritch Horror series, along with many of her other works. Another incredibly prolific author, I just can't keep up! And speaking of series, I'd love to read everything @starshadeemilyart has written; I'm especially looking forward to reading Gnostic Gnomes, but of course her sex series are also on the menu. I'm sticking to these two for now! Ask me again tomorrow and I'll probably come up with a whole new list lmao.

14. Unhinged Award: the fic author who always surprises you.

Thank you so much for giving me the chance to talk about exactly the person I had in mind: @annarobots. How do you even put Anna into words? Collects rare ships the way I collect delusions. Blends the gorgeous prose I've had the pleasure of becoming familiar with over the past year with the absurd and the sexy - the eroticism of the absurd; the dark side of comedy; you tell me. I'll let the exhibits speak for my case (aka my recs):

Elf-Absorbed  [Maglor/Original Male Orc Character] (I think about this one a lot)

Needst Thou a Hand with That? [E, Fingon/Anaire]

many many others.

15. That fic idea you're not going to write, but desperately hope another fanfic author will.

I've already answered this and besides my Maedhros x Himring brainworms I'm not sure what else to say. I do think my other elves deserve to have weird-as-fuck relationships with their realms. Turgon of course immediately comes to mind, Turgon makes this so easy, honestly. His beautiful, sheltered heaven in the valley: if only he could have kept Elenwë safe, if only they could have built Gondolin together, if only they could both, together, have kept their daughter safe. But never mind, Turgon will look after Idril, and Gondolin will shelter her like a mother. And isn't Gondolin beautiful, really? Gentle in its protection, alive with crafts, ideas, life. And given the chance, wouldn't Turgon inevitably fall with her - I mean it, it, Gondolin; wouldn't he follow it, not into the ice this time, but into the flames consuming its beautiful towers? Why would he ever leave?

But also. You know. The towers.

But I think Elrond should be just as strange about Imladris, and Galadriel about Eregion and Lórien. Elves being profoundly, unsettlingly attached to the lands and Arda they're bound to and all that.