Character of the Month: Marach
There are few details in the texts about Marach, but he is noteworthy for his allegiances and his descendants, who would become pivotal to the history of Middle-earth and the eventual defeat of Morgoth and Sauron.

Would it never end? Would there always be one more mother standing on the shore, looking out to sea, full of a grief made more terrible by hope?
Elwing and Nerdanel in Valinor in the Fourth Age; a story about children coming home.

Part fandom-commentary and part literary-critical reading, this essay considers the interpretive ease with which Elrond’s “kindness” is conflated with moral coherence, particularly when it comes to treating his affective attachments to the Fëanorians and/or Elwing and Eärendil as absolute ethical verdicts. Drawing on affect theory, trauma theory and adaptation analysis, I explore a way to read Elrond’s kindness as a cultivated practice which is not incapable of bias or harm. By reframing Elrond as a figure whose kindness arises from ambivalence rather than moral certitude, I try to offer a perspective that considers how 'virtue' is not an innate or fixed quality but one shaped by violence, grief, loss and the structural constraints of doctrine.

Elrond asks about his mother, in 100-word drabbles.

Songs for Elwing, Earendil, and the family they lost.