Everyone Dies (Except Galadriel)

Chapter 11: Of the Sun and the Moon and the Hiding of Valinor

I finished the last chapter and I was like "oh thank fuck that's done" and went to start on the next one before realizing that I have to talk about the Valar doing jack shit, slamming my laptop shut, and proceeding to not work on this for like four months.

I read back through a lot of it and you can see me becoming more and more comfortable with swearing as the book goes on lmao. 

I feel like I also got saltier.

Lol, Lighthazard if you've gotten this far, hi. 

He decided to read this and inspired me to write more. I can't dedicate it officially but I'M DOING IT IN SPIRIT. 

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"It is told that after the flight of Melkor the Valar sat long unmoved upon their thrones in the Ring of Doom; but they were not idle, as Fëanor declared in the folly of his heart. For the Valar may work many things with thought rather than with hands, and without voices in silence they may hold council one with another." 

So, at the beginning of this chapter, after Melkor destroyed everything and yote off into the sunset and Feanor did his whole like, murder everyone thing, the Valar...sat on their thrones without moving...?

Wow. We are starting off strong!

Ok. Like. I don't know about y'all but the fact that the Valar sat around and just like, had a mental group chat still doesn't convince me that they weren't being useless as all hell. 

Nice try, Tolkien, but I'm not buying it. 

Anyway, they sat there and were sad. Which. I don't really care about? 

Apparently, they were valorous while doing it. Which I also don't give a fuck about.

After a while, Manwë's herald Eonwë came back and he was like "welp they told us to go fuck ourselves"...because...if y'all remember, an eternity ago after the First Kinslaying, Mandos proclaimed Doom and Manwë's folks tried to get Feanor and co. to come back, to which our wayward Noldo basically said "the Valar suck ass lol" and ignored him. 

Manwë then proceeded to cry which is...actually something he has done multiple times in response to bad stuff happening.

Useful. 

I thought that was Nienna's job?

Anyway, apparently, Feanor had said that the deeds of the Noldor would go on to be sung for a long time afterward, which is actually true and has a lot to do with the fact that his second eldest son is a composer and a musician. Manwë's all like "ahh but at what cost" as if Feanor actually gives a damn about being sung about, and then Mandos prophesizes that Feanor will die soon and says he's evil and seems super satisfied about it. 

So to sum this up: Feanor basically just told the Valar all the stuff they did wrong a few chapters ago, and all they get out of it is that people are going to sing about it? And that he's still evil, obviously, and not the victim of some really horrible stuff? 

Just...trying to make sure I got that right.

I honestly did not remember the Valar sucking this much the first time I read the book, holy shit.

Jesus fucking Christ on a striped purple unicycle. 

Manwë's then like "Yavanna, Nienna, y'all should go heal the world" or whatever, so Nienna goes and cries a lot and Yavanna sits in the shadows being sad, which really doesn't sound like she's even fucking trying, but sure, ok. 

Nienna's crying doesn't work. 

I'm...honestly not surprised? I don't really know why it would?

Also...if Manwë's like all-powerful and the strongest of the Valar, why doesn't he go and do it himself? It doesn't sound like he's doing anything else. 

Lazy bitch. 

At the start of this, I kinda had the opinion of like "ok he's a powerful and cool dude I guess" and now we've gotten to the point where I'm now remembering just how much he's a piece of shit. 

At any rate. 

The trees are officially dead, which we knew like four chapters ago, I think, but some of their fruit still remained behind? 

Manwë "hallowed" them, whatever the fuck that means, and gave them to his equally frustrating wifey Varda, who makes them into the sun and the moon. 

Then there's lots of over-dramatic filler text that NOBODY CARES ABOUT because we were kind of in the middle of a story...just saying...

Apparently they were even prettier than the trees. Cool.

This actually annoys me a ton, because it appears that they already had a solution. 

The Valar don't need the Silmarils. 

They never did. They had a solution all along. 

To finish off, Morgoth didn't like the sun and the moon so he tried to get some shadow spirits to go get rid of them which failed, and then the Valar decided to magically hide Valinor away or...something I guess. 

Because as long as they're protected from Melkor, the rest of the world will be FINE right?

Seriously. Fuck those guys.