Anghraine

This anon said:

thanks for answering my question about faramir :) i also had a similar follow up q if you didnt mind: what do you think drove eowyn's attraction to faramir? its a common criticism that it seems like a sudden about face for her character, especially in light of her prior attraction to aragorn & how she turns from warfare to peace... but again, imo a near death experience and the loss of someone close to her is as good a cause as any

I replied:

You’re welcome!

I think it’s somewhat fair to criticize the abruptness of Éowyn’s shift in terms of how it’s presented (rather than the literal time scale, which is less important in the circumstances IMO). We see Faramir and Éowyn briefly interact, then they have these conversations we don’t see, and when we see them again, they’re friends/he’s fully in love with her. I think that if we saw more of this offscreen development of their relationship, and perhaps some grounding for the peace/healing/gardening turn beyond the symbolic, there’d be less criticism of how abrupt things are (still some, but less).

Their story is tangential to the wider narrative, in fairness, and I think it’s generally quite beautiful as written, just a little rushed structurally.

Setting that aside, though, there’s something about the shift from Éowyn/Aragorn to Éowyn/Faramir that I think gets a bit overlooked—

—and it’s that Faramir is quite a bit like Aragorn.

It’s not that he’s a second-rate replacement for Aragorn, to head that off right away. But he does possess the qualities that Éowyn genuinely finds appealing in Aragorn; he’s very tall, a great warrior, a charismatic leader, stern but capable of lightness, thoughtful, intelligent, learned, bold when necessary but self-controlled, and is both human and Elvish/wizardly in his air, beliefs, and abilities (and this list is not exhaustive!).

However, part of Éowyn’s attraction to Aragorn also springs from a mix of immaturity and misery. Tolkien remarked that the disparity between Aragorn’s actual age (80s) and appearance (only middle-aged) makes his impression on her all the more powerful. For this very reason, though, Tolkien decided the pairing didn’t work—he’s too old for Éowyn, and the impression he leaves on her leads to infatuation/idolization rather than mature romantic love.

On top of that, Éowyn’s situation in Meduseld is inexpressibly nightmarish and and in Aragorn, she sees a path out of Rohan that would lift her ‘up’ above her suffering and shame. Once there’s no chance of that, she goes seeking death—not truly because of ‘love’ for Aragorn, but because she’s been so trapped and can’t see any other way out that coheres with her ideals for her house and for herself. It’s significant that she ultimately tells Faramir that she no longer desires to be a queen—that was a significant part of Aragorn’s attraction for her.

And the thing is that the qualities that made her infatuated but not really in love with Aragorn are the things that are mostly not there with Faramir. Tolkien explicitly says that, while Faramir has a ‘high’ air, it’s not as high or remote as Aragorn’s can be. Rather, it’s more immediate and constant. Faramir isn’t old or overwhelming; he’s quietly impressive in a way she respects without being swept off her feet into infatuation. He doesn’t represent a way out; he’s not going to rule Gondor for much longer and has no idea what his future will be, yet she’s drawn to his gentleness and dignity anyway. They’re friends. They talk about things, they bond in these incredibly difficult moments when she finds herself drawing close to him. It’s not a relationship she’s built up in her head; it’s all real.

Even though this is all happening quickly in calendar time, I think it’s quite gradual in the emotional sense, as Éowyn goes from respect (and, I think, attraction) to friendship to falling in love without quite understanding what’s going on, to finally understanding what’s actually going on in her head and heart, and seeing a way to live that isn’t about escape or glory, but—living. I think that her newfound value for life and her subconscious love for Faramir have been building through all their interactions, and in the end, come naturally together in this flash of realization.

Tagged: #rambling a lot but this is def how i feel about it generally #her transition is mostly framed as war -> peace #which is certainly there #but i think it's also very much from imaginary -> real

I talked a few days ago, under f-lock, about some painful RL experiences around being perceived as deeply boring and incapable of feeling pain (or feeling most emotions, really). And I wanted to make an addendum to that, one that I don’t think really needs the f-lock.

I’ve made many complaints about various fandoms + multifandom spaces and trends over the years, and I still consider most of those complaints valid. Nevertheless, fandom has typically been a much less bleak environment for me.

If someone in fandom finds me boring, they usually do not tell me so, or treat me in a way that makes this apparent. They simply don’t interact with me. And people who do follow me or interact with me don’t do it because of my family’s involvement, or because I’m a package deal with more interesting/attractive/charismatic friends, or because of some other figure in my meatspace life at all. In fandom, none of that matters. At least, it hasn't for me.

Even the followers who don’t particularly care about me as a person are following me for my own sake in some capacity, rather than for the sake of someone else. Sure, some of these will leave if I get super into something they find dull, or stop posting or whatnot, but their interest in my opinions about the thing they’re into is still about my opinions of that thing, or how I express my opinions, or something about my online persona.

And there are also people who don’t share my preoccupation with a current fixation, or don’t find my take on it interesting, and are thus kind of bored, but they like me personally enough to stick around, anyway. This doesn’t usually trigger my “oh no I’m being boring” issues, because if they’re invested enough to stay, despite disinterest in my current thing, they’re evidently still engaged at some level with me.

Beyond that, people in fandom don’t typically lecture me on my general demeanor. It’s happened, but not often. In fact, while fellow fans sometimes express respect for my—let’s say, often rather severe manner of presenting myself and my opinions, they don’t generally act like it is required of me to be that way or that it somehow precludes a capacity to feel. We’re all in fandom because we feel things!

And that’s been very powerful for me. I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until I was well into my 20s, while I’ve been directly or indirectly excluded or distanced from many RL social circles ever since I was a child. I’ve certainly been treated as if I and the things I care about are objectively dull and emotionally unengaging.

But throughout my entire adult life, there has always been one glaring exception to this. There really was a social sphere in which my experience of others and of myself could be different. There was fandom.

For all of online fandom’s many, many flaws, this has been part of my experience of it from even before I was an adult—in fact, from the time that I made my first post. At the time, I was extremely shy and anxious, so I lurked a lot, and was very worried about breaking some rule somewhere if I actually said anything on the big scary Internet. But I had feelings. I was in high school and I had such feelings.

Many of these were Pride and Prejudice feelings. In high school, I started collecting copies of P&P just so I could read the introductions/editorial content and see what other people thought about it, since nobody I knew IRL cared about it the way I did. This was both my first step into academia proper and a sort of proto-fannish activity. But my Austen feelings were not actually the ones that propelled me into breaking my self-imposed Internet silence and detachment from online communities. A lot of Austen fandom didn’t really seem like my people. I was also into Harry Potter, but HP fandom similarly did not seem like my people.

Actually, speaking of boring other people, I’m going to be really self-indulgent and rewind even further for THE FULL SAGA of what brought me into fandom.

( Read more... )

2020 fic writing post!

2020 was not my most productive year, but apart from the general state of 2020, I had a lot to do for my PhD and sleeping problems, so … /shrug. Anyway, this year—

- I got inspired by my “eh” feelings about TROS to outline a big chunk of my f!Luke series, and after (I think) four years of no updates, wrote some eighteen and a half chapters on The Jedi and the Sith Lord in something like six weeks. It’s now 67k.

- I updated my very niche Guild Wars 2 fic, pro patria, a kind of fragmented AU in which the “Missing Sister” option to say that the PC/Deborah are proud Ascalonians has a major effect on the PC’s character and story. I got Althea through a bunch of Ebonhawke/Fields of Ruin stuff, which was 50% of the motivation for writing it at all. It’s now at 89k.

- I finally finished the gift of men, the Eldarion/Faramir-and-Éowyn’s-daughter fic that has been rolling around my brain/Google Drive for years. It’s only a little over 1k, but I was really glad to get it finished and posted.

- I was overpowered with Ascalon/fuck the Searing feelings while playing the original Guild Wars and wrote a fic about the Prophecies PC’s last day (creatively called the last day) before the Searing. It’s also just over 1k and almost nobody read it, but it was really for me, so that’s okay.

- I updated tolerably well acquainted, my canon-compliant book-only P&P fic about how Elizabeth falls in love with Darcy from Pemberley onwards. Lydia just ran off with Wickham and Elizabeth reunited with Jane; I wrote about half of another chapter, but didn’t finish it. The fic as a whole is now 27k, which is kind of astounding to me tbh.

- I’d always thought of my Éowyn-meets-f!Faramir fic, we also are daughters of the great, as a one-shot, but got inspired by their canon scenes to take it further … and then got waylaid by Merry feelings? I don’t know. I also wrote about half of another chapter of this one before exams struck, so that’s partly done. I’d really like to get to the hair mingling scene! Someday. It’s 4800 words.

- I haven’t posted much of it (just this) or named it, but I started a fic about Darcy’s family (canonical and head-canonical) reacting to his engagement to Elizabeth/Elizabeth herself. It’s part of the tolerably well acquainted continuity, I think, and a kind of fun experiment with different voices. It’s 1500 words so far.

- I started a fic about Faramir’s birth and early childhood, but it stalled partway through dealing with tiny Faramir’s first dream of Númenor. I might get back to it someday. It’s 1300 words.

- I also brainstormed a Star Wars/Dungeons and Dragons fusion where Anakin is an aasimar (as are Luke and Leia), but the composite setting drifted far enough from either that it became an original fic in a universe powered by the blessings/curses of the gods. It follows a sorceress of the god of the Void who takes on the care of a troubled demigoddess. I wrote a ton of background material, but only 1200 words of actual fic.

- After only cutting things out and fixing the gaps for years, I wrote two full chapters of my original fantasy novel; I’ve decided to take out a big chunk of one of them, but even so, it’s very satisfying, and (after a lot of cuts) brought the whole thing to 72k.

And I think that’s everything!

An anon said:

Ok I need to understand when Faramir has time to process his emotions after his healing...what are your head canons on this? I get why narratively we need to move through the stuff with Eowyn, Aragorn becoming king, etc, and actually in general it seems we rarely get a deep look at Faramir's innermost life but like...how can he not be seriously depressed after everything that happened?

I replied:

I do honestly wonder about this. We know that the full story of the pyre etc was supposed to be kept secret from him until he’s completely healed, which is … I mean, it’s understandable that that would be the order given, but it’s going to be incredibly difficult to keep things from him, even things in which he personally is not concerned.

So my first question is whether he’s actually accepting what he’s being told at that point and not asking further questions. He seems to have his shit together emotionally/intellectually when he meets Éowyn, at which point the secrecy would still be ongoing. Is Faramir, of all people, really not noticing that something significant is being kept from him? If he has noticed (which seems overwhelmingly probable), is he not curious/concerned about what it is? Does he have no idea what it is, or has he some educated guesses that he’s either processing or purposefully not thinking about? Or does he pretty much know already? And how does this interact with his behavior around Éowyn at this time?

It’s—at the absolute least, he would know that Denethor suddenly died and that he’s now the Steward of Gondor. We have no idea what he thinks or feels about this, you’re right. Things were so painfully unresolved between them and then just … ended. Perhaps he’ll hear about how upset Denethor was and know that he cared, at least, but we don’t know if that would help. Boromir is dead and Denethor is dead and Imrahil is off to Mordor and his own future is completely up in the air, and it just seems like this kind of awful situation before he finds out that his father tried to burn them both alive. And he doesn’t give a whisper of a hint of that!

My second question is when, exactly, does he hear the full story of what happened? It seems like it would be before his engagement to Éowyn, but there’s no sign of any kind of reaction. The book is preoccupied with other things at that point, so it’s not a major flaw, but it does seem like the Denethor-Faramir tension just dies with Denethor and that Faramir’s role as a character is thereafter subordinated to Aragorn’s and Éowyn’s, in different ways.

But I’m curious what he felt when he did hear, whether it affirmed what he already thought or was worse than he’d imagined or was a total shock. And I’m especially curious if he ever betrayed any vulnerability about it to Éowyn, or if it’s easier to be sympathetic to others’ vulnerabilities than his own, or if he didn’t want to make her sorrow and suffering about him, or if he just … couldn’t deal, and buried it for the time being. Or maybe it did come up, or he at least said something, and we just don’t see it—which would be odd, but it’s possible.

This has more questions than answers, sorry! But while I’ve thought about it a lot, and way back in the day read various scenarios for it a lot, I’ve never quite settled it in my own mind. At the moment, though, I’m inclined to think that his awareness of what happened would became clearer and clearer over time through both deduction and his natural abilities, and he’d have put together at least a basic idea of what happened before anyone guessed he had, and that he revealed little if any of this to anyone.

I don’t want to downplay his real sympathy and love for Éowyn, but I do think his personal sorrow probably reinforced them. Likely it was in some ways easier for him to focus on her and her troubles than on himself, particularly as I think he’s someone very used to self-denial.

The text definitely focuses on Faramir’s impact on Éowyn much more than the reverse, but I do like to think that she had one. It seems possible to me that her friendship in that time might have gone a really long way, even if he couldn’t yet bring himself to explain why.

I reblogged this illustration of Faramir and Éowyn by cycas on Tumblr and added:

#A SUDDEN CANON DEPICTION APPEARS #mingling hair!!!! height difference!!! i LIVE! #also this is beautiful op #kasdfjkl;fdas i've finally seen a faramir with longer hair than éowyn... i'm just #!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s a day that ends in Y, so I’m thinking about Byzantine Gondor again

Tagged: #someday i WILL commission faramir and éowyn in byzantine robes in the 'white lady of rohan' scene #it's not today (i have too many ocs i want lol) but it will someday happen

Not to harp on the same points eternally, but…

Tolkien denied that using Old English to represent the language of the Rohirrim meant they are functionally old English, but at the least they seem to be roughly northern European. OTOH, he very heatedly insisted that Gondor is not northern European and compared it at varying points to Italy, the Byzantine Empire, and ancient Egypt. In particular, he described Minas Tirith as analogous to Rome and Byzantium (which one depends on the context).

Nothing is 1:1 in Middle-earth, but those are at least the closest inspirations.

And sometimes I wonder about … aesthetics, you know? Not just horses vs trees, but say—Éowyn and Faramir’s wedding in Rohan, with Éowyn in her Eorling gown and Faramir and perhaps Lothíriel et al in Byzantine Gondorian robes, and all the different hairstyles and different musical traditions and so on. And like, is the starry mantle a sort of whatsit … chlamys? What about hairstyles/pieces? Does Aragorn switch from Ranger gear (whatever that looks like) to robes like Justinian’s?

Or … I don’t know, but I’m just curious about what the contrast between Rohan and Gondor could look like. 

Tagged: #i am genuinely thinking of commissioning faramir/éowyn art that really shows a contrast between their backgrounds and cultures #there's a lot of pretty art but i think the generic medieval conception of rohan and esp gondor touches quite a bit of it

Back on 3 June 2019, I posted a pair of quotes about Éowyn and Faramir:

1: Éowyn

“In whom do my people trust?”

“In the House of Eorl,” answered Háma.

“But Éomer I cannot spare, nor would he stay,” said the king; “and he is the last of that House.”

“I said not Éomer,” answered Háma. “And he is not the last. There is Éowyn, daughter of Éomund, his sister. She is fearless and high-hearted. All love her. Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone.”

2: Faramir

at last the red sunset filled all the sky, and the light through the windows fell on the grey faces of the sick. Then it seemed to those who stood by that in the glow the faces flushed softly as with health returning, but it was only a mockery of hope.

Then an old wife, Ioreth, the eldest of the women who served in that house, looking on the fair face of Faramir, wept, for all the people loved him. And she said, "Alas! if he should die.”

❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Tagged: #peak power couple who marry for love! #what a ship #there's something deeply satisfying about everyone in-story loving my faves ;kjafd;jkaf #and that's separately

Then, in Sep 2020: I reblogged this and added:

#my extremely lovable beloveds :) #also #háma #ioreth #i love them both a lot too! #i was just re-reading ioreth's section for the éowyn-merry-fíriel fic and she's just...bless her

I reblogged my original posting of this f!Faramir/Éowyn fic, and added:

I’m having very powerful Éowyn/Fíriel feelings rn ;_;

Tagged: #my fave genderbent characters will always be lucy and catherine/philadelphia but fíriel is very very dear to me #and so is her whole verse! #i didn't intend it to be fíriel/éowyn but the lure was irresistible so OT3 IT IS