eowyn
MIDDLE EARTH FIC RECS!
Ever since BOTFA I’ve been reading LOTR/Hobbit fic, so I oughta turn around and share them with everyone else!
My fanfiction taste has always been weird. Fic I like usually falls under one of three categories: 1. HECK YES IT’S CANON COMPLIANT 2. HECK YES IT’S ABOUT SIBLING/FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS or 3. HECK YES IT’S ABOUT A LADY. Or, in the best cases, all three…
(also, these are all pretty much focused on the Race of Men. My faves.)
On The Flood by acacea
A Gondorian soldier finds Boromir’s war-horn in the river. Just the sort of fic I love, love, love.
The Care and Feeding of Hobbits by Baylor
This fic has been around for a long time I think? But if you haven’t read it READ IT IMMEDIATELY. Boromir is the narrator, the hobbits are the Hobbits, and everything is lovely.
The Lady of the Valley by Evandar
A character study of Sigrid, with a bit (a small bit) of background Thranduil/Bard. It’s really nice and sad and thoughtful and exactly the kind of minor-female-character fic there should be more of
Bittersweet by Selkit
As is this one! This one features Sigrid and her father as she adjusts to being a Princess of Dale. Sigrid is my favourite of the Bardlings, and I absolutely love this view of her.
Requiem for Boromir by maranya14
Faramir asks for the details of his brother’s death. It has songs in it! Really good, fitting songs!
Worse Than The Witch King by Virtuella
Eowyn is determined not to wear the wedding dress that was picked out for her. A fabulous short story about Eowyn, her life post-Ring War and the little things that humanise her
Letters from Faramir by Agape4Gondor
Faramir writes letters to his brother both before and after his death. It’s as sad as you’d expect, but beautifully, beautifully done.
“Aragorn tells Eowyn that she can’t come with him on The Paths of the Dead because her people need her and that renown isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. He’s not wrong, exactly, but he basically tells her it’s her duty to stay behind, something he would never say to her uncle or brother. And she calls him on it. Flat out. She tells him, “All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.” Think about that for a moment. Not only is she calling him out for sexism, she lays out why it’s sexist and does a pretty damn fine job of distilling down the lot of women in this culture. To whit: if there aren’t men around, you don’t really matter, and you definitely don’t get to decide for yourself how you live OR die if you’re a lady. That’s very powerful, especially in a series that deals a lot with the trappings of war and glory from a distinctly masculine point of view.” — “I am No Man” Doesn’t Cut It: The Story of Eowyn | The Mary Sue (via themarysue)
And again she looked at Faramir. ‘No longer do I desire to be a queen,’ she said. Then Faramir laughed merrily. ‘That is well,’ he said; ‘for I am not a king. Yet I will wed with the White Lady of Rohan, if it be her will. And if she will, then let us cross the River and in happier days let us dwell in fair Ithilien and there make a garden. All things will grow with joy there, if the White Lady comes.’
Éowyn fighting the Uruk-hai in the Glittering Caves [x]
LOOK AT THIS LIFE IS GOOD and it’s 4.30am i think i should sleep now probably. probably. if i can.
FUCKING.
FINALLY.
Look, I do get why they cut this out of the film – they wanted to make Eowyn more of a symbol of female power, and in order to do that effectively they thought they needed to keep her powerless for as long as possible; preventing her from fighting the orc pack, putting her down in the caves with the others who “couldn’t” fight. I disagree with that – I think the battle of Helm’s Deep would have been far more effective with women fighting alongside the men – but I do get it.
However, this scene to me is just so important, because it shows exactly what Eowyn says earlier in the film: those without swords can still die upon them. She does all of this fighting with no armor, no shield, just the sword that she probably had to sneak down there and in a long, hella impractical skirt with her long, hella impractical hair down. And she still wins. She takes on what, like a half-dozen uruk-hai and kills all of them to death really hard. This is the movie that I would’ve loved even more than the movie I got, and I love that movie A LOT.
Tolkien mostly forgot that women/females existed in his stories, but that doesn’t mean we have to.
Anonymous asked: yes talk about eowyn and antifeminism
Okay, so this might be a little lengthy.
I will admit, when I first read The Return of the King (I was ten) and I realized that Éowyn had “given up” fighting and warfare for healing, I was offended. I was hurt. Éowyn was a lot like me – fiery, headstrong, determined – and suddenly I was faced with this realization that I was expected to settle down and be quiet and be nice and just not do what she did. I hated it. She was still my favorite character, but I really resented Tolkien for doing what I thought was something horribly sexist.
And then? Well… then I grew up. Oddly enough I sort of became Éowyn. I grew depressed. I fought not to protect others but because somewhere in the corners of my heart I sought death. I fell in love with the idea of someone rather than the true person, and it turned me hard and cold. And suddenly it made sense. Suddenly I understood that she didn’t fight for any healthy reason. She went to war to die, both because she felt trapped by society and because she felt she had no other choice. She wanted the glory of battle, not the joy of knowing that she was protecting her homeland. This I think is best evidenced in her argument with Aragorn – he’s pointing out (very wisely) that she’s not being left behind with the women and children, she’s being charged with the defense of Edoras. Somebody has to stay behind and rule and do queenly things, somebody has to protect those who cannot fight. And she doesn’t want to do that. She wants to fight for herself and her own reasons, she wants the glory. Aragorn calls her on it, tells her that soon she could be called to fight, “valor without renown”, and she hates that. So she suits up, goes off to battle, and seeks to die because she thinks that being left with the responsibilities is somehow lessening her value as a person.
It takes a stint in the Houses of Healing to show her that she’s wrong.
I almost think that it was her relationship with Faramir that brought her around. Not in a “love transforms you” sort of way, though. Because Faramir is the opposite. He doesn’t seek out war and valor. He wants to fight to protect his people, but his true joy is in peacetime. I’d say that being exposed to that mindset helped her see how wrong she was, which is why in the end she chooses to lay down her sword.
Personally I don’t think she stopped fighting, but I think in the future she fought to protect her people rather than for her own gratification.
I see a lot of myself in Éowyn. Always have. And so it’s hard for me, looking at Tolkien’s work eleven years later, to see this very natural character growth as antifeminist. Especially when we’ve got women like Lúthien, Aredhel, Nessa, Nienna, Varda, Galadriel, Míriel, and Haleth to show that Tolkien did in fact respect women, did believe that they could be valiant and could be whatever they wanted. I think his message with Éowyn was not “women shouldn’t fight”, but “if you fight, fight for the right reasons”. It doesn’t help that he was very opposed to war and to bloodshed for its own sake.
This is the only Meta Fridays post I’m probably going to reblog here, but it’s because I’ve gotten a lot of questions/comments about Éowyn from readers and it pretty much sums up my thoughts in one post.