The Life and Times of El

I have wrought two conflicting canon points about Celeborn into a mostly seamless if you don't look very hard timeline!

I should give credit where credit's due: this was all due to one of coppertone 's posts, in which we got around to comparing cracky Silm OTPs (she ships Caranthir/Angrod). And I mentioned that I liked the idea of Celeborn/Luthien.

Yes, I did say Celeborn/Luthien. Don't go away, please, I can explain it all.

What we know about Celeborn: he's a Sinda. He pwns. He's married to Galadriel. He lives in Lothlorien. He's a prince of the Nandor who's lived on the eastern side of the Misty Mountains since the dawn of time.

No, wait, he used to live in Doriath, and he's the grandson of Thingol's brother Elmo (YES I KNOW XD), and he went east with Galadriel.

So here we have two majorly conflicting character backstories about an important canon character. In the Silmarillion, he's in Doriath, and in LOTR he's a Nandor Elf in Lothlorien and always has been. (Second Age is more complicated, but boils down to Not Letting Annatar Into Lothlorien (And Celebrimbor, Stop Hitting On My Wife Or I Cut You).) The fact that we're not sure when Galadriel went east either doesn't help things, but here's my story of Celeborn:

Once upon a time, Celeborn was sweet on Luthien. You know how it goes: they're young and carefree, it's the Age of the Stars with nary an orc in sight across all of Doriath, Thingol and Melian aren't keeping a very strict watch on their daughter. There's probably a lot of dancing under starlight involved. Celeborn writes very bad poems, Luthien turns them into Disney-esque songs.

And then Thingol finds out. (Probably tipped off by Daeron, showing that old habits die hard and that Luthien really needs to learn not to trust everyone she meets.) Melian's all 'o_0... is this how all Elven romances work?'; Elmo's feelings are unknown because we don't know where he is, and Thingol's ready to chop Celeborn into tiny pieces and set fire to them for daring to recite really, really awful love poems to his precious daughter.

And then Luthien intervenes, bats her eyelashes at her father and calms him down. Celeborn gets exiled from Doriath and spends the next two ages hunting orcs with the what-will-be Lothlorien Elves, his youthful love affair gradually fading to a distant memory. Luthien goes back to the woods and dances, but now she's dancing alone under the stars, just waiting for another partner. Eventually Beren* wanders in and the whole fiasco happens again, proving that nobody in Doriath learns from their experiences...

Thingol: Cousins, psychotic minstrels, and now a mortal. She must have been off dancing when the ability to pick a good husband was being handed out.

...and they go off to get the Silmaril &etc.

The First Age ends, Doriath is destroyed, Galadriel passes over the Ered Luin, and Celeborn lets the past go and they become the most awesome couple in Arda.**

That's my version of the events, anyway. (NB: this is what happens when I don't have enough things to think about.)

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*And I can imagine Celeborn getting so freaked out about THAT. He'd be all 'wtf, Thingol lets his daughter marry a grubby mortal but not me?' and probably goes to Valinor just to yell at him.

GHOST OF BEREN (WHO HAS BEEN SUMMONED BY GALADRIEL'S TRIAL RUN OF THE MIRROR*** OR SOMETHING, FUCK, I DON'T KNOW): At least my children didn't end up with three eyes.

CELEBORN: Yeah, but yours had a beard. That's worse.

**Don't ask me to explain the other story about Celeborn being a Teleri and Olwe's grandson. That's just the same problem with a different woman. And C&G are second cousins in the published Silm, so it's not that much of an improvement...

***Which deserves its own post, because suddenly there's a magic mirror, presto, and nobody knows where it came from! (I guess it is magic. Magic A is Magic A.)

These prompts of ours must have flicked a switch in my brain, because I wrote five drabbles for them in the space of about two hours. For some reason I got a very strong Galadriel vibe off them, so mine are going to be about her. Warning: the following drabbles contain Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales references, but they worm their way into just about all of my LOTR fics.

I finally got around to doing one of these again. In light of Christmas/Midwinter/Wintereenmas/Equivalent festival, I'm offering drabbles as gifts. (Although I cannot be held responsible if a drabble turns into a monstrous page-eating fic or equivalent.)

Leave your requests in the comments, and I'll do a post on 25th December with all of them. I'll keep it open until around the 23rd, which gives you twelve days. (Heh, Twelve Days of Drabbles.)

Available fandoms:

• Lord of the Rings
  
• The Silmarillion
  
• Firefly/Serenity
  
• Doctor Who
  
• Discworld
  
• Harry Potter
  
  
  And happy ficcing to all of you. :D

There are Things I Am Not Allowed To Do At Hogwarts and at the PPC, so I thought Tolkien needed some too. Suggest more things in the comments!


 

Well, this is what happens when you have errant muses and an impending exam for Ancient Greek and Roman Culture. The exam was tolerable, and the fic almost wrote itself. I seem to do humour better. Apart from uni subjects, the thing that inspired me was Greywing's hilarious fic Mistaken Identities - go and read it.

Title: Mythic Grandeur
Disclaimer: Tolkien owns the Valar, Greek mythology belongs to the Greeks, and the crack belongs to me.
Summary: The Valar have different reactions to the latest collection of tales about them to come out of Middle-earth...

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Title: It’s A Kind Of Magic
Summary: ‘They followed my song…’ Maglor reflects on his part in the rebellion of the Noldor. (Slight AU.)
Rating: PG-13, for some angst and references to the Kinslayings.
Word count: 499
AN: ‘One dream, one soul. One prize, one goal. One golden glance of what should be – it’s a kind of magic.’ Yes, I was inspired by Queen, so sue me, but it fits the idea of music as magic, doesn’t it? Because Eru and the Ainur created (a vision of) the world through song, magic and music are very closely intertwined in Middle-earth. Melian would have used song, Finrod disguised his soldiers by magic and later fought with Sauron through song, and Galadriel (who learned a few things from Melian) would probably have used it with her Ring of Power.

All this got me wondering – if magic is performed by singing, then couldn’t Maglor, whose musical skill is bested only by Daeron, be a magician as well? And knowing the Fëanorian tendency for dark secrets, this was the result...

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Cross-posted to fanfic_realm, humor_realm and silwritersguild.

Title: The Darkening of Valinor
Author: Me!
Rating: Teens
Warnings: Teens for very slight swearing, and general irreverence. Fëanor would probably approve.
Genre: Humour
Word count: 1844
Summary: Yavanna is distraught, Manwë has a headache, Fëanor tries to fix things and Vána has a speaking part. A slightly different story of how the Two Trees were destroyed, and why the Noldor left Valinor.
AN: Disclaimer - I own no characters mentioned. Even Fëanor did the whole 'irreverence for the gods' thing first. Sadly, I couldn't find a way to mention Nerdanel, but hey, you get Vana instead.