Your post on Melian being the Maia of love, and how the Ainur all had their “domains” has got me wondering, what do you think Mairon’s would have been before corruption or if his corruption had never happened?
Always an interesting question, and thanks so much for being curious about my opinion!
I think his domain was the same before and after corruption, just like Melkor.
The chaos and extremes Melkor represents didn’t need to be evil, in fact they go into how his contribution is almost a way of swirling the domains of the different Valar together, like how Melkor’s influence on Ulmo’s domain creates clouds that allowed him to be close to Manwe… that’s off topic, but I want to point out that corrupted or not we should still be able to see Sauron hold down the same skills as he would as Mairon.
My initial instinct is that he is the Maia of Order, which intensifies into a need for control when he defects to Melkor. This gives us the idea of Sauron being the order in Melkor’s chaos, making his defection an inevitable part of his nature.
Tolkien was writing LotR in letters to his son fighting in WWII at one point, and the parallels between fascism and Mordor were not subtle as a result. Sauron seeks order and to implement that he needs control and for that he needs power. This drives him, and his understanding of systems and order makes him very, very good at getting it.
The rings are very neat and orderly in concept, a heirarchy of power created with numbers significant to each race- there were 3 original elves, 7 fathers of dwarves, and we can assume based on that pattern, 9 was the initial number of men.
But I also think a lot about his symbol being the red eye, and his perception being stifling and practically a weight characters have to bear. He was initially Melkor’s spy in the years of the lamps, so information might be his domain.
Now, Aule would definitely be the Valar of knowledge, so it’s not quite that, but he has a desire to share that knowledge (see creation of the dwarfs) and Mairon was initially one of Aule’s maiar. Also, can I just say that knowledge being the forbidden fruit in Christian mythology and Aule having as much if not more knowledge of the workings of the physical world as Melkor? Very clearly this is why his Maiar keep getting corrupted.
So if I were to marry the idea of order with the eye imagery which screams observation, I think it he would end up with a domain of…
Math.
I’m kidding but I’m also not kidding. Calculations and analysis that orders the world based on observation… hyper intelligence and recognition of patterns, association with chaos…
I think Mairon is the Maia of patterns and calculations… which is basically math.
Trust a liberal arts professor to make their villain a math guy, smh.
Really, information and organization of that information are his strengths, and I think it’s really significant that he ultimately falls because he did NOT have all the information and failed to understand all the factors until it was too late.
Ok, his domain is Order, final answer. But I still secretly think it’s math.
I hate to be that person but.. if all fics are cannon in Passerine... did the green god plan this? Butterfly reign, the DSMP, Tommyinnit's clinic for supervillains among other things. Think about it. When BR!Theseus asks Dream how to be a good crowned prince, doesn't his awnser seem off to you??? You can't tell me it doesn't.
“You find everything that they are attached to,” he says. “And take it away from them.”
/dsmp /rp
Rewatching VODs again and it's sad to see how at the start of his imprisonment, Dream was trying so hard to downplay the prison's conditions and stay optimistic about them.
During Tommy's first visit, he says to Tommy, "It's not too bad, right? I can write and I can read and they bring me food." He talks about the new game he can play with his clock.
When Bad visits, Dream admits that Sam sometimes gives him less food when he burns his clock, but that he's not starving because he "[has] potatoes." He says that Sam is "treating [him] amazing" and that he's fine when Bad asks him if he's okay.
Tommy visits him again a month after the first visit, and by then Dream's attitude has changed entirely. Tommy says he's been suffering from success, and Dream replies, "Me too. Except for without the success part, just suffering." Then when Quackity visits him the first time and asks how he's been, Dream only says, "I've been."
Later after Techno gets locked up with Dream, he no longer attempts to downplay anything. Techno jokingly complains about Dream not being positive, and Dream can only think of saying, "Since you've been in here, I haven't been tortured. So I'll give you that much, that's been better." He tells Techno how there's absolutely nothing to do in the cell and how he's been eating nothing but "raw, disgusting potatoes" for the past months.
Dream did his best to convince himself and others that everything would be fine, that he could deal with the prison's conditions. He tells Sam that he thought the prisoner (himself) "would be fine with potatoes, would be fine with not seeing the courtyard." That he didn't realize how bad it would be. But the longer his imprisonment lasted, the harder it became to deal with it. Dream tries one last time to ask Sam for better food and to see the courtyard and then is forced to give up, trapped behind glass and with no hope of ever getting out.
the fact c!tommy said he felt like a fucking pet in exile of all things always breaks my heart. like, he also described himself as a toy and a puppet but for some reason that one just always fucks me up the most. i guess bc it really shows that his insistence that c!dream hates him is a desperate survival mechanism? like, you don’t hate a pet. it’s obviously an incredibly fucked up demeaning and dehumanising way to treat a person, but it’s not a way you treat someone you hate. because, like, obviously c!dream doesn’t hate c!tommy. he's got very complicated thoughts on him, but he doesn’t hate him, even if he hates and resents parts of him.
and like, deep down, c!tommy knows that? he gets c!dream a whole lot more than he lets on, and he knows that c!dream on some level sees him as a friend, even if that’s in an incredibly unhealthy and abusive way. but he has to convince himself that c!dream hates him. because if c!dream doesn’t hate him, then what’s the point of even struggling against his conditioning and trying to heal? c!tommy is desperate for friendship and validation, and he feels abandoned by everyone else. if he lets himself ever believe that c!dream will ever provide him that stability and affection he desperately longs for, he'd fall back into his exile mindset so quickly, because he doesn’t care if he’s tortured or hurt- he openly acknowledges that exile was torturous to him even when he’s still struggling with seeing c!dream as a benevolent friend in bedrock bros- because he thinks he deserves it. he just doesn’t want to be alone.
A Drean SMP Fanfiction Fanart/Sketches of TommyInnit from a AO3 fanfic called “Rewind” by @a-non-ymouswriter_
Then here’s one where Theo/Future!TommyInnit and Technoblade fight in the pit in Chapter 56.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/28238295