In Defense of Celebrimbor by AdmirableMonster

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Fanwork Notes

Fanwork Information

Summary:

An essay on the subject of Celebrimbor, sin, and pity.

Major Characters: Celebrimbor

Major Relationships:

Genre: Nonfiction/Meta

Challenges:

Rating: General

Warnings:

Chapters: 1 Word Count: 1, 854
Posted on 1 February 2025 Updated on 1 February 2025

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In Defense of Celebrimbor

Comments on In Defense of Celebrimbor

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AdmirableMonster has requested the following types of constructive criticism on this fanwork: Organization/Structure. All constructive criticism must follow our diplomacy guidelines.

👍 🧡 I like that analogy with Bilbo!

There are many different takes on Celebrimbor, I feel, as you hint also, with all the canon gaps and some confusing semi-canonical material.

Your "antithesis" does resemble a Celebrimbor (or  Celebrimbors) I have seen, although I find it difficult to tell whether this kind of take  is at present a majority view, exactly (the shifts in fandom so hard to track!). And I think at least one source of such interpretations is that letter by Tolkien that criticizes elves as "embalmers". According to this, I suppose, one possible argument goes that Celebrimbor gets tempted, duped or blinded by Sauron due to his own "embalming" tendencies. Personally, I don't doubt that Tolkien did mean that criticism of the elves, writing that letter, but it doesn't feel right to me to take it as a key to the whole characterization of the post-First Age Elves in his fictional writings. It feels like a very partial truth. And as for fic, it seems to me very much like an idea you can take on board, but do not  by any means have to, if that makes sense!

Honestly, yeah, no idea if it's a majority take--I'm sort of glad to hear you've at least seen it because some part of me was like "did I make this all up out of my own head and then start arguing with it" (which is fine but also I would like to know XD)

I haven't read all Jirt's letters by any means, would you happen to have a source for this one because I'd love to read more about this specific point? I don't think I've read the passage about Elves as "embalmers" and it sounds interesting.

Definitely agree in general that with fic you can take on board which bits of canon please you and which don't! (Especially given how much Jirt changed his OWN mind on a lot of this)

There is quite a detailed summary of that letter here on Tolkien Gateway, which should give you some idea of what's going on there: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_154

As with all the letters, you can see that the addressee is also important, for perspective.

If you would like to talk more about the embalming passage in particular, we can discuss it over on the SWG Discord, at some point.