Darkstarrydame - Reyla

my bucket list

• find a gf

• kiss gf

• lesbian sex

• marry gf

• lesbian sex

• adopt pets with wife

• lesbian sex

• hav children with wife

• lesbian sex

• live happily ever after with wife

Reyla's Metaphor

Imagine, if you will, that each of us lives inside our own house. Each of our houses are different. Some are small some are big. Some are plain and simple, while others are complicated and eclectic. Some are low maintenance or easy to fix. Some are constantly broken or need repairs often. While growing up in our houses we've seen them grow and change with us. We decorated them, replaced or re-arranged the furniture, painted, remodeled, added an extension, removed and extension, etc. Some of us are comfortable in our homes, and some of us aren't. Most of us like our homes but would change some things if we could.

For the most part, I didn't hate my house. It did what a house should do, and it did it reliably. I even had a lot of fun in it. But then one day, I found a door in my house that I hadn't ever noticed before. It had a window. When I looked through it, I saw that my home had a backyard. I opened the door and stared out in disbelief.

"Had this been here the whole time? I've been living in this house for 31 years and I'm only just now seeing this?!?"

I was cautious at first and it wasn't a good time to explore my new-found space, so I closed the door and went about my normal indoor business. Over the next several months and years I revisited this door and began to explore the backyard. It was bigger than the house. It amazed me with all sorts of gardenia and outdoor living space. And the more I explored, the less I wanted to go back inside the house. In the backyard I came alive. There, I could feel things I never felt before, and more vividly. The air was fresh and I could breath deeply and more easily. The sky dazzled magically out there.

Then one day, I discovered a gate.

"Another mysterious door? A second backyard perhaps?"

Delighted at the prospects of having even more space to explore, I let my curiosity put my hand on the latch. I was not prepared for what I opened into. For on the other side of that gate, was a vast and endless countryside. Mountains, hills, canyons, valleys, lakes, rivers, maybe someday I'll even find oceans!

The more I travel this countryside, the more I learn about myself. Having found and opened that gate changed everything. And now I want my house to emulate the beauty and grandeur of this countryside. This is where my very soul resides.

This is what it's like to realize that there is more to your soul and your identity than your body's genome. And it is certainly more magnanimous than 2 or 3 mortal chromosomal proteins can embody. Having found a greater version of myself, my true self which I'm still exploring, I want my house to be a better representation of who I am. Something much more genuine. I've redecorated and I'm remodeling. I'm rediscovering designs that I thought weren't for me because they were too 'Fem' or whatever.

Thinking back on it, I had looked out that window before on several occasions throughout my life. I just never realized it was actually a doorway.

I know some people don't like the way I'm decorating my house, even to the point they think it shouldn't be permitted in public (or even in private for some extremists). And there are people who think I should be locked inside the old version of my house never to see the mountains or stars again. But you can't undiscover yourself anymore than you can uncrack an egg. I can never go back, and I will stand up for everyone else who wishes to enter their own backyards.

Some people discover their backyard very early in life. Some people see the door, get scared, and never look at it again. For Cis people, their backyard is already congruent with their house. Well, mostly congruent anyway.

Hello! Can I respectfully request the promised lecture and Powerpoint about Fingon/Maedhros? I'll be honest here... I just do not see it, and I truly do want to understand. There are other relationships in the Legendarium that I really do think Tolkien deliberately and unequivocally coded as queer, and I've used all those same examples you list to back up my arguments. And I do see the parallels with Luthien and Beren (just as Sam/Frodo has parallels with that). But otherwise, I don't see a lot of queer coding. Which is not to say that I think it's a bad ship, just that I don't really see much in the text to support it or see much indication that it's what Tolkien intended. I would love to be convinced, though! I swear I'm not trying to bash Russingon or provoke anything. It seems like you have put a lot of thought and research into this, and I'm honestly curious, because this is a ship that has always puzzled me a bit.

First, thank you for asking! It’s always a pleasure to talk about my boys and my OTP to end all OTPs

I want to start what’s probably going to be a long series of self-reblogs by saying something that’s going to be important in the long haul: there is a difference between “I personally interpret this in a way that enhances the story, and it’s canonically compliant” and “I think and will seriously argue that Russingon is supported canonically by things that explicitly exist to point toward it being more than friendship”. The line can get kind of fuzzy, but it does exist, and the foundation of any good queer analysis is recognizing that.

So before I get into Sarah Waters, Mary Renault, and what the British legal system has to do with any of this, I’m going to make three lists.

Stuff That Probably Doesn’t Mean Anything, But That Is Fun To Examine From A Shipping Perspective:

Maedhros wears a copper circlet, Fingon wears gold in his braids

Maedhros abdicated the throne in favor of Fingon entering the line of succession

Maedhros stepped into a position of military authority after Fingon took the throne, working closely with him specifically to attack Angband after the Bragollach

Fingon is stated by Tolkien himself to have never married nor had biological children, and Maedhros never married nor had biological children either

Stuff That Is Ambiguous In Intent, But Is More Significant Than The Above:

Fingon clearly still cared enough about Maedhros that despite probably not knowing whether or not he burned the ships, he set out to rescue him alone in a display of loyalty to the rival royal line that put his priorities firmly in the “this nér whom I love” camp. It’s worth noting that Maedhros’s family are the reason that his sister-in-law is dead, the reason many of his own people froze to death, and the reason his brother is dead. Maedhros’s rescue, and forgiving him, is more important to Fingon than any of that. Why?

Morgoth’s battle plan for the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (as relayed in the Grey Annals in The War of the Jewels) involved forcing Maedhros and Fingon apart and trying to take both of them down simultaneously. Fingon was of course ultimately killed by Balrogs, and Maedhros avoided being killed by allies-turned-spies, but the goal was to keep them apart and incapacitate them both. Why?

Maedhros’s mental stability, willingness to exist in a society, passion for fighting Morgoth, and desire to curtail his brothers’ worst impulses all evaporate after Fingon’s death and Fingon’s death specifically. Why?

Maedhros and Fingon maintain a relationship with each other that is significantly more important to their actions than similar relationships between Finwëan cousins. Aredhel is never recorded as prioritizing Celegorm to the same extent, and Finrod only goes on a hunting trip with Maedhros and Maglor after things between their families are patched up. Why are they different from others in this way?

Stuff That Actually Matters In Analysis:

Fingon and Maedhros, Beren and Lúthien, and Frodo and Sam all share very nearly the same story at a crucial point. All three feature a situation where a rescuing party feared the one they loved was dead, discovered they were actually held prisoner by Sauron, went alone into peril, and used a song to find who they searched for successfully. Both Maedhros and Beren lost a hand in the course of their journey. Frodo lost a finger, and Sam cut the hand from the orc whipping him. All three pairs were rescued by at least one of the great eagles. Sam and Frodo have on-page declarations of love. Beren and Lúthien are the self-inserts of the author and his wife. This connection is not accidental; the author explicitly compares Frodo and Sam to Beren and Lúthien on the Quest for the Silmaril in the text of The Two Towers. If Maedhros and Fingon are being linked thematically with the central romantic relationship of the Legendarium, there is a reason why.

The Grey Annals tells us that Fingon rescued Maedhros “and their love was renewed”. That’s a direct quote from the text, not an exaggeration. This is more canonical proof of love than we get for some married couples (notably Fëanor and Nerdanel, who are never stated to love one another in the text).

Laws and Customs Among the Eldar explicitly states that half-first-cousins are allowed to marry without it being considered incestuous, so long as their parents aren’t close. That seems like an extremely odd standard, until you remember that there is an unusually close pair of half-first-cousins whose parents don’t get along.

(Obligatory note: the published Silmarillion does state that Idril and Maeglin are too close to marry. The published Silmarillion’s treatment of Maeglin is also almost certainly invented by Christopher Tolkien - Maeglin in the drafts written by JRRT himself is wildly different than how he appears when Chris writes him. Tolkien himself avoided making any such statements about cousin marriage and Turgon opposed Maeglin marrying Idril because he didn’t think it was a love marriage.)

The Grey Annals also discusses one of the histories of the green elfstone that Aragorn receives from Galadriel as a wedding gift - in this draft, it was made by Fëanor, and Maedhros gave it to Fingon. When Aragorn receives it, it’s been set in a brooch in the form of an eagle. Here we have another thing that passed between Maedhros and Fingon that is explicitly linked to romantic relationships between two characters echoing Beren and Lúthien. This is once again not accidental.

Fingon’s harp is almost certainly a reference to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, which also heavily inspired Lúthien pleading for Beren in Mandos. Yet again, we have deliberate intent by the author to position this relationship in a light that reflects romance above all else. You could even go further and point out that there are parallels between Thingol’s hostility toward Beren and Fëanor’s distrust and hatred of the Nolofinwëans. Túrin and Beleg, who get to kiss on the page, are also echoes of Russingon - early bliss marred by a kinslaying, a hopeless quest alone armed with a bow, an injury that results from freeing the captive party.

The fact of the matter is that none of this is accidental. Tolkien was deliberate in his worldbuilding, his parallels, his setups and his plot choices. There is a reason that Fingon and Maedhros are linked to so much romance, a reason that they are positioned on equal footing with other more clearly queercoded ships, a reason that it’s their relationship that shapes the First Age. When you accept that none of it happened accidentally, that allows you to broaden your scope, and look at Tolkien’s inspirations, his life, his friendships, cultural influences, and why he might have been so cagey about his M/M ships when they aren’t just important but vital to the text. (After all, Sam and Frodo’s happy ending comes after Sam’s time in heteronormativity, and Túrin and Beleg fall apart in a similar fashion.)

It’s just - it’s not crazy or insane or Shipper Goggles to say “these relationships matter, and the stories actually don’t make sense without them”. That’s all.

(Next time, if you like, we’re going to talk about historical fiction, and there will be lesbians.)

The person I reblogged this from deserves to be happy

I tried to scroll past this. I really did

Studio Ghibli + Holding Hands

If you're deciding whether or not to have kids. Just know... There WILL be glitter. 9 years I've kept this house glitter free. 9 years! In one fell swoop. oh, there it goes.

The more despair I endure in life, the more I love Frodo. I'm just. I'm so glad that Tolkien wrote him like that. He was a hero and it broke him. He was given too much to carry. The circumstances were dire, everyone was doing the best they could, and Frodo tried so hard, for such a good cause, and he...broke. And the narrative has pity for him, the characters show him kindness. Even after victory, his hurts did not heal, and it isn't considered his fault. He must go to the undying lands, to seek out peace there. In universe, he is forgiven for being human - don't be pedantic - and his great torment is recognized. He fell. He could not have done it alone. He is still a hero.

And, I think that's important.