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kanafinwe-makalaure · 2 years

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My headcanons on Maglor's personality and how it changes over the ages with everything he goes through:

I already touched on this in this post a little bit but obsessed with the implications of what happens when Maglor does get Removed from the shore by a loved one and put on a ship and he gets to go home and be reunited with his family and he gets to heal and make amends, BUT ALSO he does remain forever changed, because you don't just bounce back from what he's been through. I feel like after the First Age and his endless wandering, he'd almost seem like a completely different person at first to people who once knew him, and I want to elaborate on that and share my personal headcanons in terms of what he's like and how people react to him.

(I edited this little introduction to better reflect what the post is about in case you came here from a reblog)

(Please read the footnotes also if you like this post, they're cute little bonus headcanons)

Basically, it's not so much Maglor's personality that changes drastically (though he has gone through some development by that point) as it is the way he acts about it, and perhaps how genuine he is. His general vibes.

By the time he gets home, he has spent an age driven to murder by a terrible Oath, watched everything he built go to ruin, watched his brothers and cousins die, and then he's spent another like one or two ages in bottomless despair and loneliness, lamenting and regretting and stewing in his own self hatred, and then he's somehow overcome that, or pulled himself (or allowed someone to pull him?) out of that, somehow found enough hope for himself for something good to happen in order to allow himself to go home and try to get better and try to be at peace again, despite the voice in his head that screams at him that he deserves none of that.

Imagine the strength that would take. I always see First Age Maglor as someone who is a follower, not a leader, and maybe also a little afraid to openly question his leader (which is, at that point, usually Maedhros, Fëanor before that). He's most comfortable just going along with whatever it is they're doing, and if he voices protest at all, that's already huge. Of course that doesn't necessarily make someone weak-willed or, well, weak in general - many good qualities go along with that, such as faith and trust and loyalty - but Maglor, I believe, thinks of himself that way.¹

And then after millennia of stewing in that, he performs this incredible feat of strength, and he knows that despite all the pain he's still in, mentally, but also his physical weariness, he's capable of finding some joy and peace if he sets his mind to it, and he can be around people he loves and he can do his best to make amends and find healing.²

So that's what has changed since the first Age: he finds more resolve, and he finds, buried deep within himself, some love and respect for himself that he works on honouring, and he slowly gets better and better at it, and his self-loathing begins to lose power over him. He opens up, he talks about his feelings, he starts expressing his needs and setting boundaries. In the First Age and after, he did none of this, and before that, in the Years of the Trees, he did some of it, sometimes, but only if he could somehow conceal it.

Which takes me to my next point - Years of the Trees Maglor - he would do anything not to let it on that he's like, talking about his needs, thoughts or feelings: he's all flair and drama and he hides them by like, presenting them in an extremely, theatrically overdramatic way so that people won't really take them seriously because "that's just how he is, he doesn't really mean it" or straight up disguising them as a joke or writing songs about them so he can pretend it's just art ~ and nothing more. He somehow simultaneously wears his heart on his sleeve and keeps it in a chest behind ten locks, and he threw away all the keys. He's so loud all the time, always singing, playing some musical instrument, tapping a rhythm with his feet, because he's secretly so afraid he'll be forgotten, because he never managed to really let anyone in enough to form any truly meaningful connections with anyone around him. Of course he's not doing any of this consciously, and so he doesn't really understand why he can't seem to make any real friends or why a lot of his cousins or brothers seem to be close to each other on a level and in a way that he just can't manage and he doesn't know why. He talks fast and loud and gesticulates wildly and will call onto anyone who like randomly walks by to come join the conversation; he just appears like a classic extrovert.

He's also kind of arrogant, or at least comes across as such. His music is his, it's the only thing, in his eyes, that he's good at, that sets him apart from the others, that allows him to have the spotlight, to have admiration and praise, for a certain amounts of time, and he revels in it, but to him, this also means he has to be the best at it. He knows a lot about music, the technical aspects of it - after all, he is Noldorin, and so he crafts his compositions like finely tuned machines - and he loves picking it apart, analysing it, and putting down the parts of other people's songs that either don't do things the way he does, or dont do them, in his eyes, as well as he does. He's close to Fingon and Finrod because they're musicians as well and both are around his own age, but they'll do their best not to actually talk about music with him because he's so annoying and nitpicky about it. Unless it's his own, that is, because he loves nothing more than to talk about his own music.

And all that is why, when he gets home from Middle-Earth, those who knew him before and not in the First Age, like Nerdanel, have to get used to him again: Everything about him is different. He feels like a different person. From Beleriand to then, it's not as drastic a difference - he had already been humbled in Beleriand, after all, and pretty quickly - but from the Years of the Trees? Everything about him seems completely changed, maybe even a little wrong at first until you get used to it and maybe even love him for it.

As I already said, he's less afraid to be genuine and open with people, and he trusts in the connections he has and is sure of them, and no longer feels the need to fill that void in him with anything other than honesty and change. He talks gently and more slowly, and he becomes this soothing presence, and his words always seem to carry a sense of deep sadness but also gratitude for life itself, love for the world, instead of volume and a (usually somewhat fake) cheerful tone.

And then there's the thing about his music. It has existed on his own for so long by that point that he has begun to appreciate it as such. It's no longer a performance, it's just a part of him, of his heart and his soul, that he makes because he loves making it. His endless lamenting at the beach has stripped all the performance from it - there it was just his own, an end in itself, not for anyone else, yet he had no control not any idea who might or might not be listening to it, and that stopped being important. Bis music is no longer a performance, and none of it is performance. It comes from his heart and that is the only thing that matters to him now, and he understands that all music is inherently valuable in that way, not just his own, and analysing or rating songs as was once his favourite hobby just seems like something so empty and stupid now.

So what all that means for Maglor himself is he's been through hell and back multiple times and he's definitely never going to forget any of it and he's never going to be unburdened and carefree again, but it also means that in a lot of ways, he's better, he's far better equipped to deal with what has happened to him, he's wise and reflected, he's genuine, capable of soaking up even the smallest of joys like a sponge, and he connects to everything and everyone that he loves on a deep and profound level rather than a superficial one. None of that is shocking to him, of course, because he's been there every step of that long, long way.

But to others who haven't seen him in all that time (aka mostly Nerdanel, but also his remaining grandparents, uncles, cousins and brothers when/if they return) it is a stark contrast at first. They've been remembering him the way he was for so long and now that he stands before them, he's a stranger. He walks slowly and silently like a ghost, almost gliding over the floor, and he talks in a soft almost monotone compared to how he used to speak, yet with a strange melody to his words, he has this sadness and longing in his eyes yet they light up when he smiles, and he smiles a lot because the smallest things seem to make him happy, and he tries out new compositions right wherever he stands instead of locking himself in his study and delights in sharing his every note, and he genuinely loves things that would have been too inferior for old Maglor to even look at. Also, he's this weirdly quiet, soothing presence now, cooling your head after a long exhausting day, as opposed to always trying to rile people up and create excitement and being the centre of attention.³ At first they think he must have lost all the fire in him, maybe he's already nearly faded, he's barely himself anymore. He initially moves in with Nerdanel for a while to get accustomed to Tirion again, and of course at first she's just glad to have her son back, but then she begins to despair a little as she watches him - to her, he seems like a ghost of her Makalaurë, who is so unlike him, and when he is like himself, to her it all just seems like the faint memory of habit, and she catches herself occasionally thinking that he would have been better off if he'd gotten to join his brothers in Mandos; and others feel similarly about him. That is until they get to know him again and realise that no, he's just been through a lot, but he's still the same person. None of his core traits have changed - he's a musician, he feels things deeply and is always a little emo troubled, he likes being surrounded by people, he likes the sea, all that is still there, only he's so much more in touch with it all and expresses it differently.

---

¹ Probably starting with the capture of Maedhros; he has to step up as king and leader, something that already doesn't come naturally to him, while he's all alone and in a new world essentially with a whole cursed host of people looking to him for directions, despaired as they just lost two kings in a row, and while he's lost his brother to the enemy right after losing his father; of course he's not going to be doing his best work as king, but he's also in a dark place that causes him to blame literally everything that goes wrong ever on himself and gets caught in this negative feedback loop and he really, really internalises the notion that he's weak.

² I'm adamant about the notion that the Valar always, by their nature, try their best to be merciful and to do what's best for everyone instead of acting as these like divine punishers (and I'm willing to go on a whole tangent about that, but not right now, lol), even if they haven't always succeeded, so I'm convinced they wouldn't punish Maglor when he gets home; he is both very regretful of his actions and has put himself himself through enough, arguably more than enough. At most they'd like. Sternly tell him to apologise to some people and to, for the love of Eru, find himself a good therapist. (Whether I think they'd actually let Fëanor and his other six sons out of Mandos is a different subject altogether, although I'd like it if they did, but if Maglor is alive, that's different, and they have to do something with him, and again, I don't think that something would be something cruel. He's alive and he doesn't seem to be interested in the Silmarils anymore and he's willing to get better, at least to some degree, and isn't all that enough reason to just let him be?)

³ This ties into my headcanon that he really just internalises the sea while he's at the shore. He moves and talks more "like water", he sounds and moves more like the sea, calmly, peacefully, harmonically, instead of "like fire" aka loudly, visibly, fast, hotly, if that makes sense? That's what I really mean when I say his vibes change. Also my pet headcanon, by the time he gets home, he even smells like the sea, and that never changes again, but even in his youth, his connection to water is foreshadowed by the fact he has blue-green eyes like the sea as the only sibling (&also likes to wear the same colour as a consequence to match his eyes) & i give him a Falmarin spouse. All this is only loosely connected to the text, basically only by the fact he throws the Silmaril into the sea, but also I do think that there's some symbolism in having the last Silmaril of Fëanor (who is associated with fire) thrown into the ocean, into water, after the second to last ended up in a volcano thanks to Maedhros (also associated with fire) and then Maglor stays by the ocean and laments there. He also seems to get more tranquil & prone to looking for harmony near the end of the Silmarillion eg when he takes in Elrond and Elros, when he's happy Earendil's Silmaril is now safe, when he begs Maedhros to hearken Eonwë's summons and go home. So yeah. Maglor = Water Son.

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inkskinned · 7 months

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the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

#writeblr #warm up #this is longer than i wanted i really considered removing that part about myself and what i went thru #but i think it really fucking bothers me that EVERY time i talk about being an artist #ppl assume i just like. had the skill and ability to drop everything and pay for grad school.#like sir i grew up poor. my house wasn't a safe space. i gave up a FREE RIDE TO LAW SCHOOL. for THIS. bc i chose it.#was it fucking hard? was i choosing the hard thing?? yes.#but we need to stop seeing artists as lazy layabouts that can ''afford'' to just ''sit around and create''#when MANY - if not MOST - of us are NOT like that. we have to work our fucking ASSES off. hard work. long and hard work #part of valuing artists is recognizing the amount we sacrifice to make our art. bc it doesn't just #like HAPPEN to us. also btw it rarely has anything to do with true talent.#speaking as someone with a chronic condition i hate when ppl are like u have it easy. like actively as i'm writing this my hands r #ACTIVELY hurting me. i haven't been posting bc my left hand was curled in a claw for the last week #this isn't fucking luck. after a certain point it's not even TALENT. it's dedication & sacrifice.#''u get to flounce around and do nothing with ur life'' is a narrative that is a direct result of capitalism #imagine if we said that about literally any other profession.#''oh so u give up 10 yrs of ur life to be a doctor? u sacrifice having a social life and u get SUPER in debt?#u need to work countless hours and it will often be thankless? well i wish i was that lucky''#we should be applying that logic to landlords ONLY #''oh ur mom and dad gave u the money to buy a house? and all u did was paint it white and rent it? huh.''

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