Destroy Everything you Touch Part II

So. Celebrimbor.

First of all, I am a major Silvergifting (fictional relationship pairing of Celebrimbor and Sauron/Annatar) and you really can't convince me otherwise about it. You neither allow someone to ruin you that way OR bother with ruining someone that way unless there is something more happening than just friendship/general conquest.

And understand, I am a Sauron fan no matter how he's portrayed. Make him a victim of circumstance with conflicting emotions and morals about what he's doing? Fine. Make him repentant during the 4th Age, awesome. Make him an unapologetic villain who revels in his ability to talk people out of their power? Even better.

I am a little pickier about how they portray Celebrimbor. I don't like it when he's seen as just ambitious and blind to what's happening. I don't like it when they make him naive. He'd lived through the First Age with killers and assholes. He was smart enough to walk away from them. I don't buy that he doesn't SEE the potential danger Sauron poses to him.

Here's my theory. Celebrimbor is very broken after the First Age. Basically, everything good in his life was stripped away. He lost basically every person he'd grown up with except one. He watched people he loved and respected become murderers. He lost home after home after home. 

I think he really internalized the idea that his family ruined everything. I think he was horrified by the idea of harming someone else and when he saw Annatar (Sauron) and realized he was a Maiar, for the first time, he realized this was someone he could NOT destroy. 

See, I don't think it was just the prospect of Annatar's power that drew Celebrimbor in. It was the protection that power offered their relationship. Celebrimbor knew he could never break Annatar into pieces. 

The fact that Annatar could do that to him didn't really hit him until later. But even then, I think he felt that was still better, still emotionally easier, than him destroying Annatar. I mean, yeah, it probably disturbed him what the Rings could do, but on a basic relationship level, the one thing he feared could never come to pass.