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Day 21: Some post-Angband Maedhros research. Most fics/art set during his recovery have him recover physically quite fast, missing hand notwithstanding, but I want to explore other options.

Disabled characters series

Rambling under the cut, ID in alt.

[Discussion of his canon torture and injuries, going a tiny bit more in depth]

So aside from the previous torture, for which we can invent basically anything, he was hanging from the wrist for 30 years. I'm pretty sure that would kill a human in a matter of hours, but since he survived, in my mind he's got some serious shoulder and spine issues. Those stay for the rest of his life, but with a combination of support garments, elf-PT and just sheer force of will, he does manage to walk again and fight. I don't think he ever gets a great range of motion or much feeling back in his right arm.

This is me making use of one of my weirdest special interests (medical immobilization devices). I have a bunch of different design ideas for braces at other stages of his recovery, and this is just basic research for now. Here he still needs his arm in slight abduction and full support for his spine, and the big metal arm thing is correcting the angle of his shoulder (otherwise it is very dissymmetrical with the other).

In my mind, this is maybe a year after his rescue. 30 years of torture aside, I also headcanon that elves might heal more (as in, they can survive a lot more) than men but they also heal slower in the same way they grow up slower. Not pictured here is the fact that he's still mostly using a wheelchair.

This is a wild mix of pre-50 spine braces, modern shoulder and back braces and pure fantasy, and it's probably the simplest of the designs I have in mind 😅 Design-wise, I was thinking about the fact that it was probably made by Curufin people used to making armour, so it's the same materials (steel and leather) and similar kind of shapes. It would perhaps be more decorated because Noldor but I didn't have time for that today.

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A brief reunion in the Halls

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commission of my beloved makalaurë for @samarqqand 💙 thank you so much!

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Peace in paradise

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↳ And there in the forest of Neldoreth Lúthien was born, and the white flowers of niphredil came forth to greet her as stars from the earth.

✦ | ✦ | ✦ | ✦

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Hey friends! I get paid by patreon tomorrow, so I was thinking of sharing my page here in case anyone wants to subscribe to it-

If you've ever wanted to see more of my art I don't post anywhere, it would mean the world to me if you guys could boost my patreon ♡ I really want to restart ssris to manage my ocd better, if you'd like to help at all ♡- I'm also only 40 usd short from my goal on patreon! Thank you so much!

Adding the link in an rb so tumblr doesn't kill the post ♡

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Our girls Findis and Írimë!

I missed @finweanladiesweek 😭

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I've been mulling something over lately. It's almost a given that one will find questionable elements to older texts; some are overt and some sneaky even to the modern eye. There are, undeniably, many such elements in Tolkien's work, and they cause a lot of trouble for marginalized readers and for fan creators grappling with it in relation to meta and fic.

That the Silmarillion is a largely-omniscient myth-text narrative, composed from a variety of drafts, the discarded versions of which we also have access to, further compounds the issue. Who has read what? Who samples from what? How deeply do some themes pervade both the text and the fandom? There are discarded portions that raise eyebrows (and thankfully, were edited out at some point). However, there are moments where those discarded portions shine through the cracks in exposition, dialogue and reasoning left in the official composite text by the sweeping style of the narrative. The composite can be seen to still rest on certain narrative and valuational presuppositions of Tolkien's - presuppositions he assumes the reader to share.

In the text, of course some have value or more of it, some have honor or more of it, some overcome darkness while some naturally succumb to it. The narrative certainty in these characterizations rests on these lurking (racist, antisemitic, ableist) presuppositions, and in some cases handwaves any deeper exploration or explanation.

There seem to be two fan solutions to reckoning with a cross-draft-consistent bigoted theme. 1) Write meta that explores its traits and manifestations in the text and syncretizes canon assertions with authorial biases, and/or fic that directly addresses the in-text impact of these biases. 2) With an awareness of the bigoted themes, create headcanons, new verses, and fic that subverts, rewrites, or negates the original theme. The former refuses to allow the presuppositions of the text to become the presuppositions of the fandom. The latter allows (particularly marginalized) fans generative space, fodder to create anew, breathing room, and expanded perspectives. Different functions, parallel purposes, both important.

Because it's fandom, and it's large, and our idea of on-the-side fun and not our job or our marriage, we do not have the same preferences for how we go about dealing with these textual issues or the cohesive pressure to be like minded (even as we recognize the need to deal with them). One person's way of reckoning with textual biases or gaps may strike another as reaching too far from canon to be of appeal. This is a common reaction to headcanons, canon divergences and alternate universes, and crack or humor, particularly in the tolkien fandom. However, personal preference is not a basis for asserting that someone is reading the text wrong, especially when the issue at hand is one of reparative analysis and creation.

I am drawn to the issue of the Petty Dwarves. Most information on them comes in pieces from disparate drafts and satellite texts. Some information was erased entirely from the published Silmarillion. However, many people have noted the continual issues in Tolkien's treatment of the Dwarves, the iterative issues with his treatment of the Petty Dwarves, and rightly begin to link the two, plumb them down to their connecting factor, and begin excavating the silences in the narrative which Tolkien allows to be filled by presupposition.

I have found that people who cite personal preference may bring up canon elements to excuse or disprove certain readings; I would argue that the canon elements cited are less often exculpatory of our faves and more often proof of deeper biases, proof of biased presupposition as a stand in for rich characterization. Let me explain. We hear from the Sindar that the Petty Dwarves are reclusive, aggressive, and territorial (on this they base their initial assessment that the Petty Dwarves are two-legged animals for hunting). We hear from the Dwarves who cross the Blue Mountains later that the Petty Dwarves descend from expelled Dwarves who were the smallest, weakest, most conniving and self-serving, and violent persons. At one point, Tolkien describes the Petty Dwarves as older residents in Beleriand than both the Sindar and the eastern Dwarves, and the original inhabitants of Nargothrond, and it is them who Finrod hires to finish its construction. Tolkien describes the Petty Dwarves as agreeing to do this under false and duplicitous pretenses (for what reason, he doesn't say); later, Mim tries to kill Finrod (again, the narrative is sparse on motive), and Finrod alternately outs the Petty Dwarves from Nargothrond or pays the other Dwarves to turn them out. Tolkien evidently means for this to paint a picture of a group of people who are inherently wicked, cannot help but be so, are hated and pitied (for one does not preclude the other, and all good people should pity bad people, after all), and bring about their own diminishment. There's the in-universe justification for it.

I mean to explore why it is not satisfactory to leave the matter alone at "the Petty Dwarves brought about their own downfall." To begin, why does Tolkien rely on the characteristics he does when describing both the Petty Dwarves and Dwarves in general? These are multiple pieces of bigotry at play, chiefly some old antisemitic stereotypes (which have already been unpacked at length and by Jewish fans who are more knowledgable than I; if other have more to add, please do so). But I will give it a try.

First, Tolkien never pins down why the Petty Dwarves are expelled westward, only vaguely pinning it on their inborn characteristics. One old piece of antisemitism held that Jewish people were smaller and weaker than gentiles; Jewish men are still held to be less masculine, which can be traced from a medieval supposition that Jewish men menstruated. Coupled with the ableism of expelling the stunted and the inutile, Tolkien describes here a sort of itinerant and pitiful scrounger who does not belong in a society to which it cannot contribute and into which it cannot assimilate. The concept of vagrancy and the homelandlessness (consider the antisemitism in the concept of the cosmopolitan Jew, and Tolkien's deliberate linkage of Dwarves and losing their homes), is further connected to antisemitism by the Petty Dwarves being duplicitous, self-serving backstabbers toward Finrod, who Tolkien sets up as innocent and trusting enough to sleep unguarded near Mim, further juxtaposing the two. Furthermore, the gentile assertion that Jewish people are violent is escalated to accusations of blood libel and sorcery. Tolkien may not go that far, but he ties this predisposition for violence into the passage about Nargothrond, and their territorial defensiveness and their aggression toward the Sindar. Jewish people have long been stereotyped as insular, traditional, and cold to outsiders (consider the gentile furor over "goy"). All of this passes under the surface of the text - where Tolkien does not elaborate, this rises to the surface to color the reading.

When fans identify these elements in the text (and realize they are very similar to Tolkien's handling of the Dwarvish sacking of Doriath, or gold sickness, or Dwarvish isolationism as a whole), they begin to investigate the places they show up in text. The meta they write must try to syncretize the canon of what is said with the authorial context applied in the characterization. The fic they write must try to fill in lazy gaps left, and to imagine and then confront the missing exigence to the conflict while refuting the antisemitic presuppositions upon which the text relies in place of characterization.

Because it's fanwork, some people may have concepts that you think miss the mark or push further with assertions than you think is logical. However, no one who is in good faith creating, exploring, or trying to remedy the issues of the text, can be accused of using their ideas as a cudgel against canon or against others. Discussion is welcome, when it is conducted in good faith as well.

Relying too heavily on the surface-level assertions of canon to shoot down these musings at times verges upon what I have described above: leaning into the in-world justifications of hierarchy and subjugation to excuse the real-world hierarchies upon which these presuppositions are built. It is not so important how or when the Sindar realized the Petty Dwarves were people: what matters is that Tolkien created a character group, designed to be hated and pitied but never respected, onto whom he mapped real world stereotypes, and set them up in events where these stereotypes lead. It's highly worth considering why we are defending portions of text that are inherently bigoted. The whole broth here is the issue, but people are quibbling over whether they've fished out a potato versus a turnip.

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Happy indigenous day!💛

These were created over the last year or so when i indigenized popular media✨

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Fingolfin speedpaint from twitter

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Came back wrong this, came back monstrous that

What if they came back loving? What if they came back in love. What if the necromancy worked and you cheated death and it's everything you've ever wanted, but now they love you in a way they never did before and you cannot know if that is because they finally know the lengths you are willing to go for them, or because something in this deathless magic bound their soul to yours to guide them home and it left them no. choice.

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hanging out 🌸

ko-fi, accepting commissions!

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“But when Tuor had lived thus in solitude as an outlaw for four years, Ulmo set it in his heart to depart from the land of his fathers, for he had chosen Tuor as the instrument of his designs […] ”

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“But in the bearing of her son Míriel was consumed in spirit and body; and after his birth she yearned for release from the labour of living.” or, the version in which míriel remains until fëanor is an adult and she has his permission to depart

i forgot that i could post my ao3 fic links on here too

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they who watch over the woodlands

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peoples of middle-earth ❖ the mithrim

"Now in Mithrim there dwelt Grey-elves, folk of Beleriand that had wandered north over the mountains, and the Noldor met them with gladness, as kinsfolk long sundered..." - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, "Of Beleriand and its Realms"

[ID: a picspam comprised of 12 images in shades of dark and light grey.

1: A misty lake surrounded by mountains, containing a single island from which some birds are flying / 2: A carved igbo door depicting people and animals / 3: White text reading "mithrim" in all caps on a dark brownish-grey background / 4: A black model wearing a grey headscarf that they hold out to either side of their head / 5: Forested mountains in the mist / 6: Several white pelicans in dark water / 7: Traditional igbo cloth decorated with white designs, including a drawing of a cat-like animal / 8: A lake amid mountains or large hills / 9: Three black models standing together, all wearing grey shirts. Two of them have braided hair and they all are looking at the viewer / 10: Same format as Image 3, but the text is all lowercase and reads "grey-elves" / 11: Fishing nets / 12: Trees seen across water through fog /End ID]