#gardensofthemoon

returned with more thoughts!!! what about fucking the MOTHER before killing the father? mostly considering fëanor and maeglin but lúthien’s a strong candidate too

Ahh hii, thank you for the prompt!! <3

Sing, O Muse

[Maedhros/Maglor | T+ | 1,1k | ao3]

Maemag + a kiss in danger from this list

When it happens, Maglor is entirely unprepared.

He and Maedhros are out hunting for the first time since they moved East, spring finally spreading its fingers across the cold north. Both the Gap and Himring are still more construction than actual stronghold, but the winds have changed and the sun offers tentative warmth, and so, they had thought, things were looking up.

It made them careless.

Maglor should have been prepared. It is nigh on unforgivable that he is not. But he is not, and so the Orcs break through the treeline just as Maedhros turns his back, and everything descends into bloodcurdling chaos from there.

They are surrounded and separated within moments. If they had been prepared, they would have been fine. If they had seen this coming, if Maglor was not so distracted by Maedhros fighting in his periphery, by their guard trying and failing to break through to him—

If Maglor had been prepared, they would have been fine. But he was not, and so the Orcs fall not as quickly to his blade as they ought to.

They might not win. They might lose, the possibility crystallising like all his most well-worn nightmares come true.

And so he does what he promised himself never to do, by some tenacious remnant of hope that there might be one thing of himself not to be sacrificed to this accursed land. He does what he promised not to and raises his voice in song—after all, what is the point of keeping a part of himself untainted if it means accepting the grim resignation on Maedhros’ face as the Orcs swarm him?

And so Maglor sings. Sings of jagged mountain tops and their breaking, of tearing earth asunder. Sings of loss and guilt and the bright, dazzling rage of it, sinking into the hollow places between bone and sinew. He sings of blood, the price its drawing demands, and how it feels on your skin once it cloys. He sings and sings and sings, until the world goes still and he no longer feels like breaking open, like spilling all his failures across the frozen ground until he finds his lifeless brother’s mangled body at the end of them.

You can ;) Hello! <3 

[Reflectionin glass]

The light twinkled and jumped, from one shardto the other of the barely held together mirror. Dust caked the outer pieces,the ones closer to the frame, and the blurred lines, repeated once and again asEmma approached, seemed to tremble and dissipate only to appear again thesecond her hand hovered the surface.

Sticky dots of water and dust painted fleckedpatterns on top of her face as she stared at what had once been Regina’s mirrorand for a second she could only focus on the cobweb of thin lines and cobaltblue shadows that dusted the places in where the glass had cracked. The soundof her own gasp, however, broke the moment and so she zeroed her attention onthe brighter light that framed her own body, the one that came from the openedpassage -closed for who knew for how long- and led to the outer world, the cemeteryin where nothing but dead leaves danced to the whooshing of the wind.

Biting down her remorse, Emma touched thesurface, hissing as her fingertips grazed over one of the lines, bloodtrickling down her finger as she quickly pulled away, willing her magic to healher and yet failing to do so.

Regina’s vault was empty, empty of magic orlight and the consumed candles that littered the corners were proof of that aswell as the silence that floated above her, entering into her lungs as shegasped, touching the mirror away and letting the infinite versions of her eyesfloat to her from the other side of the glass.

She shouldn’t have abandoned them. The ideacame blazing as she kept on staring to the slowly warming surface of themirror, on the way the frame was slightly crocked. The cracked glass reflected the grey light that came from outside, now not as bright or as white-hued thanbefore. Painting the surface with reddish stains, the blonde moved away from themirror, remembering all too well Regina’s words and expression a moment so longago it could have been a story on Henry’s book of how they were very much thesame; special as she had put it. Different. Equals.

She should have told her. The idea didn’t hurtbut it made her sob nonetheless, the green on her eyes swimming as she took onefinal glance to the mirror, one in where she could almost have sworn the shadowof another woman looked back at her with equally sorrowful eyes.

By the time she looked again there was no onethere but the line that was quickly drying and her own face, pale and tremblingas she sighed one, then twice.

“I miss you, I miss you all.”

4. What are some words or phrases you feel like you overuse?

Oooh, this is a tough one. Off the top of my head, I know I overuse the word elliptically too much. I also think I probably talk about everyone's grey eyes and high cheekbones too much and you can probably reverse engineer one of my formative fandoms from that 🫣 I feel like I am also constantly end up ripping off Browning's "the lark's on the wing, the snail's on the thorn, God's in his heaven and all's right with the world" thx to Wodehouse's own overuse of it.

But besides that I genuinely don't know & tbh would be VERY curious to have reader feedback on this!!!

18. How many WIPs do you have and how many do you expect to finish?

I have 9 and by god I will finish them all. I am SO disciplined (lie).

20. Share your favorite kiss scene from [insert fic]. If there's no kiss scene, share your favorite moment of intimacy (romantic or platonic)

Ooooh listen okay so. The answer is not one, because its two that are essentially bookending each other. And those are the curufinrod kiss in chapter 4 of rules of betrayal and the curufinrod wedding night kiss in chapter 40 of sisyphus, which both repeat / echo each other: the hesitation, Finrod thinking this must have been how Enel felt when he saw Enelye first / Curufin thinking this must have been how Tata felt when Tatie and he married, the "this must be a dream" which ends in "just a dream" v. "not a dream". But for my money, the rules of betrayal one is my fave for just how romantic it is (and how quickly Curufin ruins the moment):

This was how Enel must have looked, waking by the waters of Cuiviénen and seeing Enelyë for the first time, lit only by the silvery light of Varda’s stars — how he must have felt, married. A deeper hunger awoke in him, then, to taste and know what such revelation felt like; to learn enlightenment by the mingling and union of two spirits, deeper than touch, deeper than mere words and deeper than even thought itself.  Finrod stepped closer. Curufinwë leaned back, his eyes, his mouth, his body already shaping themselves invitingly for him. Finrod pressed the length of his body against his, hip to hip, legs entangled with each other, chest to chest. Curufinwë was damp with sweat and ripe with the smell of what Finrod now knew was sex. His heart was hammering inside its cage when Finrod touched his chest. Finrod brushed a stray strand of hair away from his brow and tucked it behind his ear.  “Ingoldo,” said Curufinwë, soft as the sea breeze.  Finrod cradled his cousin’s jaw. This close, he could count every single one of his cousin’s eyelashes, long and sweeping and delicate like a doe’s. There was a tiny cut on his upper lip, where Finrod had struck him earlier and torn the skin. Finrod pressed a tiny kiss to it. His cousin's breaths were shallow and tiny and Finrod could feel each of them striking gently against his lips.  “This is a dream,” he murmured, his lips brushing against Curufinwë’s. "Atarinkë." Curufinwë shivered, beneath him. “Yes,” he breathed. “That’s all.” Curufinwë’s mouth was soft and pliant under his, though his cousin was still like some terrified prey creature, tensed to flee. They kissed softly for several moments. Then Curufinwë’s mouth moved against his and his arms enveloped Finrod. They kissed like ravenous, starving beasts; elves who had never known another’s touch. How easily Curufinwë’s mouth parted for him and let him enter. His tongue slid searchingly, hungrily against Finrod’s. His hands grasped his neck and tangled in Finrod’s hair. Finrod found himself cradling Curufinwë’s face, eagerly running his thumbs along his cousin’s high cheekbones, the sharp line of his jaw, along his ears, twitching and trembling at the touch. They kissed like this till their minds were opened to one another and their spirits entangled, till they were one mind, one body, one spirit and the strength of their pleasure was as mighty as the infinite sea and as deep as the light pooled in Varda's wells. Finrod lost track of how long they stood there, entwined in each others’ arms and kissing and sunk deep inside each other's spirit. When they parted, dazed and breathless and reeling from the intoxicating headiness, there was more gold than silver in the light. Finrod gazed deep into his cousin's eyes, reluctant to let go and slip out of the dream. But he could already feel Curufinwë pulling away, closing himself off to Finrod.

this is a great question because this "finrod lives au" is basically what i turn over in my head as i go to sleep and consequently i have something like five variants at this point (all of them curufinrod, obvs) because i am so normal (pls be advised, all of this is like, basically a glance into my most self-indulgent id):

vivat patria variant - the very rough sketch of this one is that curufin betrays and deposes finrod for petty jealousy/revenge reasons because their marriage went south (because curufin cheated on finrod with maedhros bc finrod was treating him too nicely). curufin is regent of nargothrond, so there's no coup, but because they've all foresworn the oath, celegorm goes along with finrod and beren, so its celegorm who dies in tol sirion. meanwhile, curufin has kidnapped luthien for revenge purposes, gets kicked out of nargothrond and is more or less in self-imposed exile. after the nirnaeth, curufin rouses the second kinslaying with the green elves, again just for revenge purposes, because finrod is alive and nargothrond does not go through the horrors of turin, nargothrond comes to their aid and finrod ends up killing curufin, but in a weeping toddler with a gun kind of way. he sails after the end of the first age. there is a lot of fourth age drama after this.

fake married au - luthien reached tol sirion in just about enough time to rescue finrod and finrod is returned to nargothrond to recover, where he exiles celegorm & curufin from the noldor. nargothrond still falls, but much later on in the tale, and finrod ends up fleeing to sirion along with the survivors. as high king of the noldor once gondolin falls, he is in a unique position to treat with the SoF regarding the last silmaril. both m&m haven't been involved in the second kinslaying anyway, bc of their ambivalence towards celegorm, so both really hang up their swords and its the twins who lead the third kinslaying. this is important because maedhros becomes finrod's advisor and because maedhros is an asshole, he pressures finrod to get married and have an HeirTM.

finrod, however, runs away and accidentally stumbles into curufin, east of the blue mountains, where curufin has a) had a glow up and b) got really into being the local elf to the dwarves. finrod is horny and confused, curufin is suddenly cool (outwardly), finrod hatches a plan for them to pretend to be married so maedhros has to shut the fuck up. they go back and m&m are like doubt dot jpeg about it, not least because curufin and finrod are very obviously pining about each other all over the place and if they WERE married, they could just fuck about it. anyway, there were subplots about flirting with other people to make each other jealous, before finally getting it together and falling in love (i think possibly maglor is the one who figures out they've both been lying?????) and it all resolves happily when finrod just appoints gil-galad his heir and abdicates.

regency social world au - soooort of like above, except for some reason i decided it would really be fun for finrod to get maedhros & maglor to challenge elwing over the silmaril over a game of cards, which they lose, because finrod has sharped the cards (maglor suspects, but never challenges him about this, bc maglor is playing his own game as per usual). maedhros pressures finrod to get married to one of the sindar in this one iirc because the noldor are virtually bankrupt after the war of wrath & there's a couple of wealthier sindar from the east. however, curufin throws a spanner in the works by showing up, having made mint off the dwarves a la caranthir in the first age. there was some deranged subplots about finrod sneaking out to a masquerade and gambling away the silmaril by accident, except he did it to curufin and now curufin has to pretend he has no idea about any of this. i have to be so real. it was basically all 10 of my favourite georgette heyer plots smashed into one. very self-indulgent, 11/10, great fun to imagine.

finrod wins against sauron au - this one is like legitimately a completely naked glance into my id so i am putting it beneath a cut.

thank you!!!!! 💕

10. How did you approach writing the fic? (e.g. wrote it start to finish in order, started with the ending, starting with the twist)

I wrote sisyphus, unhappy almost entirely in order from start to finish except for all the interlude scenes - the ones preceding acts i, ii & iii were all written AFTER i wrote those particular movements; the final valar chapter was written after i finished almost the entirety of the fic, just so i could get the thematic elements right. also at some point i got very excited about the end of part four so i skipped ahead and wrote it... six months before i got to actually write it (and part of it was repurposed from a chapter that i had written even before that)

i just really like maglor okay.

11.What was the most challenging aspect of writing it?

Worldbuilding the background politics hands down lmao. For nearly everything else, I could either look up what Tolkien himself said or look up some scholarly work about music and then riff off that. Unfortunately Tolkien does not believe in politics or economics except in a hazy Great Man theory kind of way a la classic conservatism - which is something I was explicitly trying to deconstruct with this fic.

This meant I had to actually a) read up on the history, politics and philosophical transformations leading up to The Glorious Revolution (which is what I based some of the elements off) + the history of courts in Early Modern England and b) had to sit down and actually think through 8000 - 9000 years of Noldor politics, including the evolution of the kingship (and for whatever reason, I decided to start with the evolution from the Great Journey onwards), the creation of a class society in Valinor and how that came about (which is why I spent three days posting about it on tumblr) and then work out what some of the biggest flash points of conflict were right from scratch, who belonged to what faction and why. This gave me nine political factions of the Noldor, with different and specific grievances linked to both religious issues and political ones and alksjhdlaksjdhalskdjahsdajsdkahdklaskjdhfalksjdfhaslkdfjhaslkdfjhaskdfjalsdf. Leaving aside the very long threads that got posted on tumblr that worked up to a 5k word essay to myself explaining who was who and how things worked together (or didn't).

Anyway, word of advice: don't think "oh I'm used to keeping track of regional politics with five or six different factions jockeying for influence, I can just write fanfiction about the fictional version of this". You will suffer. Especially when its not the point of what you're writing and is just background detail that is going to make up like, a grand total of two fucking paragraphs.

16. Talk about the fic’s biggest moment & how you came up with it

There are 3 big moments in the fic. One is Maglor giving a variation on the "but Brutus is an honourable man" speech to the Noldor and then straight up blackmailing the Noldor lords about their vices after. The other is Maglor's symphony. The third is Finrod abdicating (in a direct echo and refutation of Nargothrond).

The latter two were originally just one scene! Originally people were meant to be startled by the sounds of what is clearly Finrod and Curufin fucking on record. Finrod was meant to come on stage and abdicate right there and then, in an echo of the disastrous play scene at the end of act iii. The first scene was originally meant to be focused on a very high stakes debate in the Upper Chamber into which Maglor barges, surrenders his family's claim to the crown (no dramatic speech) and which is mostly Celebrimbor revealing who the author of the anonymous pamphlets was, ending with Maglor blackmailing everyone into good behaviour.

Anyway, I listened to enough Nabucco while writing that at some point Maglor just commandeered the stage and so he gives that speech about Feanor - which echoes back to the themes I lay out in the opening interlude to Act IV - and he did some blackmail (as a treat to me) and he got an entire chapter for his own symphony, which served as a means of bringing together some of the themes re. "Leithian" and the possibilities of heresy as moving away from the will to power - in Tolkien heresy is always linked to will to power - and instead in it interrogating / smashing the categories of hierarchy that define Elvish society, especially centred around gender and marriage and reproduction and racial purity (which are so often bound up together for the Noldor, specifically). And Finrod got an entire chapter that allows him to finally look the Nargothrond coup in the face and re-experience it without feeling like he's throwing himself to his death - sort of a means of demonstrating to the Noldor that he's become their whipping boy scapegoat, but reasserting his personhood in the face of that.

So it did tie up thematically but um most of how I came up with these ideas was that I a) listened to a lot of Verdi, b) I followed my [heavily italian grand opera influenced] id (lots of messages essentially going "would it be cool or what") and c) I edited everything after the fact to make it work lol.

11. What scene are you most hyped for this fic?

With absolutely zero context and spoilers, the one in which Maglor plays Mark Antony (and more) to the Noldor which is the only scene where I wrote part of it months before I actually arrived at it.

12. What emotions do you expect your readers to feel?

whenever i see questions like this, i always feel like "but what are emotions" and "what is truth" about them. anyway. the author is dead, but i hope you experience all the regular emotions while reading and maybe a few new shrimp ones?????