Something Special, Something Sacred

Warning: This is a multi-section author note. It contains a lot of explanation and elaboration on the themes of this story -- as well as the actions of the characters and my choices. If you think you can make it through this, I feel "Something Special, Something Sacred" will be enriched by it.

I. Thank You

There are people I feel I need to thank, or else S4 would never have made it -- *I* never would have made it through this. My initial beta for this was Larien Elengasse, and though the subject content was not something she thought she could continue with, she still encouraged me to write it, and sent me in the direction of the permanent beta for this. Thank you, Larien.

Alex Cat has been amazing. Alex was there for every little pitfall of this plotline, and helped with the pacing and content of several of the chapters. One could not have asked for anything more of her, and I am grateful she took on this piece. Thank you, Alex.

Fimbrethiel -- dear Valar, I bugged this woman at work, at home, on vacation... lol. She helped in discussing many of the psychological aspects of S4, helped me when the fic became darkest, and I am forever indebted to her for that. Right until the end, Fimbrethiel has stood beside me in the writing of this fic, even going so far as to give me her ideas on the binding ceremony. She has become a dear friend, and an amazing encouragement to me. Many thanks must go to her.

Ilye . What can one say about the person who kicks their ass? Who makes them live up to the potential they have? Ilye is one of the most frank and friendly people I know, and I am so honored to call her my friend. When I thought to toss S4 aside, she happily whapped me back into gear. Thank you, Naneth.

There are others, whose feedback and comments, IMs and emails meant so much as this piece lagged. Vesta and Aprilmoon were always leaving detailed discussion comments on the Erestor list that were amazing and so educational. But, I must also send thanks to the people who just stuck with it, no matter how dark it got: Danielle, Elfscribe, LK, Mirasaui, Niniel, Denise ( Sian), Sarah ( skon), Eowyn, Rennwench, Ryo, AJ, Majinbakahentai, Ivorybrowneyes, Lisbet, Elf Eater, Wilwarinandamar, Ankatarin, Kaila, Rainien, and finally the Anonymous poster on AFF.net who left a large review, bringing to mind some unresolved issues in the storyline.

I only have one more set of thanks, and I did save them for last because they mean so much to me: Erik, Maya and Kit. My family -- my loves and my best friends. Thank you all, this could *not* have been done without you, and I love you so very much.

II . Personal Experience

I am a twenty-five-year-old married, bisexual, polyamorous woman. I am a sexual submissive. I have bottomed for the same top for almost nine years now. For the most part, I have experienced much of what I had Glorfindel experience, though the storytelling was mostly through the top's POV. That was something I had to learn from my dominant -- and he was extremely helpful in all aspects of writing this story. What he did not know personally, I researched.

In my time as a submissive, I have done what is called 'topping from the bottom' -- and my dominant was kind enough to quickly put a stop to such behavior. Unfortunately, Erestor did not stop Glorfindel from doing so.

My BDSM relationships are built on a strong foundation of love and trust. Though love is not necessary for all BDSM relationships, it is for my own. To me, when I trust someone that implicitly, I also fall in love with them. I tried to show that Erestor tended to not make lovers of his BDSM partners, to show that it is not always sexual, but for me -- it is. I am a very sexual person, so I cannot separate the non-sexual aspects BDSM from the sexual acts of my lovers.

This is why I threw in Erestor's confusion, his difficulty with dominating his lover. While my husband is adept at separating his role as master from his role as husband, not everyone can do this; Glorfindel and Erestor were unable to draw the line between their BDSM life and their everyday life.

That is an important boundary, and one they were only able to draw after being put through terrible trials. I find myself very lucky that my husband and I never had to do that, that he could look at me outside of a session and see his wife, not his submissive, and that I could look at him and see my husband, not my master.

III. Intent

I've been in the LotR fandom for just over a year now, and was a voracious reader for most of that time. Those who know me well have undoubtedly seen pictures of my bookshelves full of binder after binder of printed fanfiction. I've read a lot of stories with BDSM warnings, and in all but a couple of special cases, I have been at best disappointed, and at worst disgusted and offended.

The BDSM warning within this fandom has come to represent a variety of non-consensual deviant sexual behavior, and as a member of the BDSM community, I felt that such fiction did a disservice to the lifestyle. What also disturbed me was the enormous popularity of such fics. Here was an entire class of fiction by misguided or misinformed authors who were portraying non-consensual sex, rape, torture, sadism and dehumanization, and it was generating this large following of people who associated all of that with the term "BDSM".

One particular story comes to mind. Out of decency, I won't use names or specific events. Character A comes across character B and rapes him, but justifies it by saying that because B had an orgasm, it wasn't "really" rape. When B is cast out of his home, A allows B to live with him. But A subjects B to all manner of dehumanizing behavior and forces him into a situation where he is stripped of his name and identity, beaten publicly (among other tortures), and repeatedly raped -- almost always motivated by anger, not desire. For some reason, though, B falls in love with A and forgives him all the cruelties and indignities. Apparently, it is this fact that made the author feel justified in labeling the fic as BDSM, despite the total absence of safety, sanity, or consent.

I am not saying that the author is a "bad author" or trying to make any other statement about the author. All I am saying is that it is this type of story that, more often than not, is marked as BDSM. In order to try and combat this unflattering perspective in some small degree, I came up with the idea for this story. The entire intent of S4 was to portray BDSM for what it truly is.

To do that, I knew it would take more than my simply showing a successful BDSM relationship with no conflict. Apart from being a very boring story, it would do nothing to instruct, redefine, or inform. Stories like "Asking Price" and "Checkmate", while fun, were not informative. Someone with no knowledge of BDSM would likely have no more idea of the principles and foundations of the lifestyle when they finished reading it than when they began.

A rose-colored-glasses version of BDSM would have been just as ineffective. Jumping right in and throwing the philosophy and ethos of BDSM at a reader with preconceived notions of the genre would likely be turned off instantly, or if not, would never understand or reconcile the concepts with their expectations.

The pace of the story was carefully laid out so that three-quarters of the plot was devoted to smashing preconceptions by seeming to cater to them. Erestor and Glorfindel's relationship degenerated very quickly into a caricature of other BDSM relationships elsewhere in the fandom. Erestor seemed overbearing and cruel, while Glorfindel appeared cowed and beaten into submission.

Then the rug is pulled out from under the reader, and the world goes topsy-turvy. We see that Erestor wasn't really in control after all, and Glorfindel was actually being demanding, but in a totally passive-aggressive way. At this point, those preconceived notions are thrown into disarray and collapse on themselves. It's only at this point that the reader is ready to accept a new explanation.

To paraphrase Spider Robinson, map-making isn't that difficult. There are essentially four steps. Two, three, and four are observe, record, and integrate. But until you do step one, the other steps don't make any sense. Step one is "throw out all your old maps". By the same token, the only way that I could push a different view of BDSM onto a reader was to first make sure that they couldn't trust their current view.

IV . Theme

The themes of this story were reiterated time and again: love, pride, guilt, fear and miscommunication.

Erestor and Glorfindel were in love before the BDSM was part of their relationship. They loved for years, and pined for each other long before they came together as a couple. It is this love that allows them to eventually rebuild their trust and their relationship. It is also that love that drives Erestor to give up all he is in order to meet Glorfindel's intensifying demands. Their love is both a blessing and a curse throughout the story.

Pride. This was mostly Glorfindel's sin. He was so proud. He did not want to admit that he had limits, and this led to him pushing and testing Erestor, controlling their sessions and forcing his will upon his master. Every time Glorfindel stepped into the role of submissive, the playroom -- and later their own bedroom -- become a battle ground. His will against Erestor's. In the end, his will won, and it nearly cost him his life.

Glorfindel's guilt ate at him and pushed him to desire intense punishment. This guilt was instilled by Námo, but Glorfindel held onto it, even when he was released from Mandos. In all his years, he searched for ways to atone for sins he was *not* accountable for -- but his twisted sense of honor made him take on the blame for incidents he had no direct control over. Erestor's guilt came from the extent of his actions with Glorfindel. His sanity hung by a thread when he strangled Glorfindel, and it was only by Elrond's will that Erestor did not simply lose his mind from the guilt that ate at him.

Both parties had deep rooted fears. Glorfindel feared failing. His pride did not permit failure, and that became his driving force for part of the storyline. Once he was removed from the relationship, though, his fears mutated to never being with Erestor again -- which caused new guilt to bud within him. Erestor's fears, which were not revealed until the very end, had been loss of control, of showing his weakness. He had idolized Glorfindel from afar, and once he had the Elda in his possession, he could not bring himself to appear weak before him. This meant he had to always top, always control their lovemaking. Those fears overshadowed their love and fed their guilt.

And the true core of this story: miscommunication. At every step, the two Elves were never open or honest with themselves or each other. They were not honest with their friends, and the deeper in the mire they became stuck, the less they communicated. This is what led to the destruction of the relationship and what fed the pride, the fears, and the guilt. Had they spoken openly to one another at any point in this story, most of the heartbreak could have been avoided.

But, if they had done that, no lesson would have been taught and learned, now would it? *winks*

V. Heart of the Story

What is the heart of this story? Well, it's very simple. When the BDSM is stripped away, what you have left are two individuals whose relationship falls apart from their own doubts and insecurities. Nothing more, nothing less. Glorfindel and Erestor each had private demons in their lives that they battled in silence and solitude, with too much pride or fear to confide in the other and deal with their difficulties openly.

I could have written this story without the BDSM, and it would have been just as compelling a tale, I believe. However, I chose to place their relationship against the BDSM backdrop for two reasons. Firstly, because the whole intent was geared toward revising misconceptions of BDSM. And secondly, because the use of BDSM sessions allowed me a more visually obvious way to show the degeneration of the relationship. But in the final analysis, it's nothing more than a tragic love story, similar in pace and form to the monomyth that Joseph Campbell espouses in his book "Hero with a Thousand Faces".

VI . Communication, Negotiation, and Contracts

Communication is the beating heart and soul of a successful BDSM relationship. Honest, open communication between dominants and submissives is the only way to maintain the levels of trust and understanding necessary to keep a BDSM relationship from degenerating into a battle of wills. Constant communication is the cornerstone of *any* successful relationship, frankly, but it is especially important in non-traditional relationship forms like BDSM and/or polyamory.

Before entering into a BDSM relationship, the two (or more) partners should ideally have a long discussion regarding limits. Typically referred to as 'negotiation', this is a chance for everyone involved to lay out to everyone else their desires, their fears, and their limitations. The latter comes in two forms: hard limits and soft limits. A hard limit is a line that is never to be crossed under any circumstances. A typical hard limit is drawing blood, for instance. A soft limit, by contrast, is a limit that can be gently pushed under the right circumstances. This is generally something that the partner is curious about exploring, but wants to approach slowly and cautiously.

Sometimes, these negotiations are explicitly preserved in a written contract. I personally disagree with such trappings, as it seems to be only a way to determine accountability should something ever go wrong. With effective, honest, ongoing communication, that should never be necessary. However, I felt it important to mention that they sometimes happen and why I chose not to include it between Glorfindel and Erestor.

VII . Safe Word in BDSM Relationships

Another theme I found constant in the feedback was 'Why doesn't Glorfindel use the safe word?" I feel I need to explain about the safe word.

This word is meant to be used in extreme cases of discomfort, pain, humiliation, etc. It is not meant to be idly thrown about. To do so would lessen the power of the word, and a submissive would be hard-pressed to find a dominant who would tolerate such misuse of so sacred a word.

In this story, what ultimately prevented Glorfindel from using the safe word was his own pride; he did not want to fail in Erestor's eyes. And by the time the acts he was participating in had reached the point where use of the safe word was what Erestor *wanted* from him, Glorfindel had found the means to enact the punishments he believed he deserved.

Glorfindel, prior to his near-death experience, was never meant to use the safe word. It was against his established character and, I admit, Erestor permitted him to believe that to use the safe word was a failure.

VIII . Tops, Bottoms, and Switches

These are not terms that apply solely to a BDSM context, but also to descriptions of roles in gay relationships, too. A lot of people, and particularly a lot of slash authors and readers, seem to believe that those in gay relationships would necessarily trade roles on a regular basis. While this may be true in some relationships, it is actually more likely that one partner will top the other a great majority of the time.

I feel it necessary to point this out because of several emails I received asking me to show Glorfindel topping Erestor -- not in a BDSM sense, but in a pure sexual sense. The simple fact is, though, that the Glorfindel in this story is a confirmed bottom. He simply has no desire to top Erestor. There really is no reason for it; that's simply his choice and preference. He enjoys being taken by his lovers. The one time that he does top Erestor is an awkward situation for him, and is done really only because Erestor knows that he needs to overcome his fear of appearing weak and vulnerable before Glorfindel.

Erestor, meanwhile, is a top in every sense of the word. He may have been trained as a bottom, and he may have bottomed for three of his lovers in the past, but the reason for that has to do with the particular circumstances of those relationships. The majority of the time, though, he has always been the dominant partner. And that's just how it is.

Most gay relationships do not switch roles within their own relationship. Every gay or bisexual man that I know (and I've met quite a few) identifies as one way or the other. A true switch is very rare, and even rarer are relationships with two true switches.

In BDSM relationships, there is even less crossing over. A true BDSM switch is a very rare thing indeed; most people are most comfortable as a dominant or a submissive, and rarely is a person equally confident and comfortable in both roles. I may be willing to dominate in a particular relationship, but that does not change my self-identification as submissive. I would never be just as comfortable in a topping role, and I do not actively seek out those roles.

The exception to this rule is the SAM -- the "Smart-Assed Masochist". The SAM is someone who ostensibly identifies as a bottom, yet uses that position to exert control over the dominant. This is also called "topping from the bottom", which is what Glorfindel was doing throughout most of his relationship with Erestor, albeit unknowingly. He pushed the sessions farther and farther, forcing Erestor to struggle to keep up or risk losing him. As an established dominant, Erestor should have recognized the signs and put a stop to the behavior. His feelings toward Glorfindel prevented him from wanting to do anything to jeopardize their relationship, though.

IX. Blame

Many times throughout the writing of this fic, I received floods of emails either demanding that Erestor take responsibility for his horrible actions or demanding that Glorfindel stand up to Erestor and kick his ass. Everyone wanted to blame Erestor.

And I can't say that wasn't intentional. I deliberately told things from Erestor's point of view, dropping Glorfindel's POV out of the narrative entirely once he began falling too deeply into his submission. The initial impression is that Erestor bullies Glorfindel into this, goads him into pushing his limits, and gets off on his mastery. Without Glorfindel's input, we don't see how he willingly sacrifices his own identity. Erestor's thoughts and feelings overshadow the fact that Glorfindel *never* withdraws his consent.

Traditional stories like to identify the "good guy" and the "bad guy". The bad guy is the one in the black hat trying to ruin the good guy's life. Real life is rarely so cut and dried, though. Blame almost never solely rests with one person; everyone involved in a situation must accept some measure of responsibility.

In the story, the responsibility must be shared between Glorfindel, Erestor, Elrond, and to a lesser degree, Elladan. Glorfindel pushed Erestor to continue punishing him; Erestor was too afraid of appearing weak to put a stop to things; Elrond had too much decorum to step in even though he knew things were unhealthy; and Elladan pushed Erestor to lay all the responsibility with Glorfindel and deny his own part in the unpleasantness.

In any event, my hope is that the writers of those emails have seen that placing the blame was ultimately less important than ensuring that everyone involved admitted their part in what happened and learned to better themselves as a result.

X. Infidelity

There was one chapter that spawned a host of emails demanding Erestor's head on a plate, one chapter that was a throwaway chapter, not even in the original outline for this story -- he assists Celeborn with his session with Haldir. While I fully admit Erestor was unfaithful, I must stress that Glorfindel knew of the infidelity. In Chapter Eight, Erestor's narrative says:

" He had not spoken to Glorfindel of his time with Celeborn and Haldir, and the Elda had not asked about it. There were times when he thought he saw a shadow in the azure eyes of his lover as they regarded him, and Erestor would feel the need to pull Glorfindel into his arms and love him long into the night."

Erestor suspected Glorfindel knew of his activities with Celeborn and Haldir -- and he had every reason to believe Glorfindel knew. Elves do share the ability to telepathically communicate, I do not feel that it would be too far fetched to say that Glorfindel always 'feels' Erestor, and Erestor always 'feels' Glorfindel. I did not go into that within the story since the infidelity was never to be a minor plot point. Ever. Suffice it to say, Glorfindel knew and chose not to say anything, be his reasoning that Celeborn talked him into it, that Glorfindel felt he somehow deserved the treatment, or that he simply did not care.

As for the other three instances of 'infidelity', I feel I must also remind the readers that when Erestor took Elrond, Elladan and Elrohir to his bed, he had already terminated his relationship with Glorfindel. When Glorfindel allowed Elrond to take him, this was still in effect -- Erestor had Elladan inform Glorfindel that the relationship was over. This removed all boundaries of fidelity from both parties, and thus, 'cheating' could not have occurred.

XI . Polyamory: Many Loves

There is another minor theme in this story that was very subtly dealt with, and therefore, largely missed. Polyamory is a large part of my life, and so I felt it necessary to work in a nod to that lifestyle. Elrond's love for Erestor did not have to stop simply because of his marriage to Celebrían. Celebrían and Elrond are secure enough in their relationship and their level of trust to feel that neither felt any reticence or were threatened in any way by allowing Elrond to give Erestor the comfort that he needed. The twins relationship as well was just as established and secure, so there was never any fear about inviting Erestor into their bed.

In the case of Celeborn and Haldir, the concept of open, honest, consensual non-monogamy is also shown. In the companion piece "The Bridge We Cross", it's shown that Galadriel is very supportive of her husband's secondary relationship and gave her blessing to the commitment ceremony. When Celeborn invites Erestor into the playroom during his stay in Lórien, it is because his relationship with Haldir is stable and open, and Haldir consents (and is in fact eager) to share himself with both Elves.

The core of infidelity is not sex outside of a relationship. The core of infidelity is dishonesty. Sex outside of an established relationship -- indeed, entire relationships outside of an established relationship -- can be handled openly and honestly between all partners involved and can be successful. Once again, as with most themes in this story, the key is honesty.

XII . Conclusion

If you have stuck it out to this point -- congratulations. I commend you for your dedication to my story and to my commentary. :) And it is here that I conclude my soapbox ramble on my story, BDSM and the fandom.

This story has taken me close to 8 months to complete. It has been an emotional roller coaster and a great drain of my emotions. It is also one of my greatest accomplishments. I set out to create a world to show all of you *my* world, and I would like to think I have. Erestor and Glorfindel suffered greatly for their doubts and demons, but in the end, their love was great enough to overcome those obstacles. I can only hope that most relationships find a fraction of the happiness Erestor and Glorfindel were able to achieve through their suffering.

Thank you -- all of you -- for joining me on this journey.

I also want to say that a great portion of this fiction was inspired by George Michael's "Father Figure". Upon hearing that song, I saw everything, from start to finish, from Erestor's point of view. That song speaks of his needs, his desires and his expectations of this relationship. As the story progressed, though, I found two other songs that aided in the creation of this tale. "Figured You Out" by Nickelback is also from Erestor's viewpoint, how slowly the relationship changed from something he treasured to something he loathed. And "Slave to Love" by Bryan Ferry -- this is more of a general statement or mood for the end of this story, it expressed the lengths they would go to in order to salvage what they once cherished.

I hope you have enjoyed this, I know I have, and I encourage you to, now that you have read all this and the story is over, to go back and reread "Something Special, Something Sacred". Armed with my reasoning, my views and my statements, and without pause for chapters, the story may now make more sense, may now have more impact, than when everyone initially began to read it.

Thank you.

Orchyd Constyne
August 28, 2004
9:16pm EST