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Slender as the Willow-wand

For @fall-for-tolkien's Scribbles and Drabbles

All pictures from this collage were taken by me in a nature reservation so beautiful it might as well have been pulled straight out of Middle-Earth, and going there makes me want to burst into merry song.

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anyway mablung appreciation post. my guy has done nothing wrong ever in his entire life and yet continually suffers by association with the people that he cares about and has major survivor's guilt multiple times over before he dies. someone give him a hug please.

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apple trend but with Turin & Beleg

It was always going to be poisoned...

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The raven ponders if he enjoys the gore, while he takes the frontal lobe and eats some more

the king and the herald having a late night chat... or a hunt, maybe.

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Maglor

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It’s Friday! #FuckitUpFriday #MyBirthday

Curufin in galvorn armor. I wanted to draw something self indulgent :)

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6. Caranthir

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On the list of essays about Tolkien stuff that I'd write if I was smart enough: Beren and suicidal ideation

Not that I think it's a particularly controversial thing to say that Beren is at least at one point in the story literally suicidal (I mean. I don't think there's a lot of other ways to read "But sorrow now his soul had wrought / to dark despair, and robbed his life / of sweetness, that he longed for knife, / or shaft, or sword to end his pain / and dreaded only thraldom's chain. / Danger he sought and death pursued / and thus escaped the fate he wooed"), but like the thing for me is... though it may switch to a more passive form after, I don't actually think Beren ever quite stops wanting to die, during the main events of the story (I don't think there's enough data to say how things are after Lúthien goes and bargains for a second chance at life for him, though I'd like to think it's easier for him, afterwards, the other option feels like a downer)

I mean of course there's a certain nonchalance about deadly peril that's just an expected baseline for a fantasy hero, but... I think Beren can go a little beyond that, particularly given that we already have an undeniable statement of past suicidal tendencies

yeah idk i'm not smart enough to write the proper analysis essay that deserves but. that's a thing i think about sometimes

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19. Finwë (the Great Journey)

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not even JRR Tolkien, who famously developed the concept of the Secondary World and firmly believed that no trace of the Real World should be evoked in the fictional world, was able to remove potatoes from his literature. this is a man who developed whole languages and mythologies for his literary world, who justified its existence in English as a translation* simply because he was so miffed he couldn't get away with making the story fully alien to the real world. and not even he, in extremis, was so cruel as to deny his characters the heavenly potato. could not even conceive a universe devoid of the potato. such is its impact. everyone please take a moment to say thank you to South Americans for developing and cultivating one of earth's finest vegetables. the potato IS all that. literally world-changing food. bless.

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Hear me out: Thingol got the Silmaril allowing the marriage of Beren and Luthien, the marriage that took Luthien to chose mortality, in a sense, it reminds him that his daughter must die some day. Then he got the naugralim as a gift (as a mockery in the beginning) by Hurin, like a thanking for having fostered Turin. But we know that Turin was already dead (by suicide not less, that must be an harder pill to swallow), and maybe in some part Thingol accused himself of not protecting Turin from his fate as much as he could. Then he put the Silmaril in the naugralim, as a reminder of the grief for both his children, the one that he couldn't protect from death and the one he couldn't protect from life. And then the jewel representing his grief is what kills him in the end

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Eärendil and the Door of Night

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Ran across this sketch of Daeron from like November (??) where he’s playing the hurdy gurdy to Doriath’s resident geese. I have no memory of drawing this and no idea why I’m posting it but surely someone on this forsaken website will enjoy it

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i think decision fatigue is a big deal for elves and may be part of the reason why the concept of an heir existed when it seemingly didn't need to

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Thinking about a potential version of Finwe who had already either lost or had all his immediate and extended family stay behind in Cuivienen (or be lost on the Great Journey, I suppose). In either case, it is fascinating that we get so little about Finwe's family pre-valinor, considering that we do know that both Elwe and Ingwe had siblings and we even have a mention of Ingwe's father. I think there's even a mention out there of early elves being quite...eager in their growing of their families, so it's a fair assumption that Finwe must have had more family before what we see in Valinor. I'm imagining Finwe getting to Valinor, marrying Miriel, and being so excited to finally build his own family away from all the separation and loss he'd experienced previously...only to have that dream ripped away by Miriel's death. Even in Valinor, his dream of a family of his own seems impossible to him in that moment. No wonder he is so depressed by her death that "alone in all the Blessed Realm he was deprived of joy". In this interpretation, it would be far from the first time that a loved one had been torn away from Finwe's life either by their own choices or by forces beyond them. With Miriel, it's even a little bit of both. No wonder he struggles so much with the idea of having to wait for her to return, if she were to choose to return at all. Perhaps she reminds him of the separation and loss he has experienced before and thought he never would again.

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Goldberry! The river daughter!

I’ve been listening to the fellowship audiobook at work and gotten really obsessed with the concept of a river-daughter. LOVE IT!!

My dad had a dog called goldberry when he was younger and she used to get drunk off rotting pears and would fall asleep in the sun. Dream lyfe.

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I love that Frodo, a professional lil' shit, is calling out Sauron, a professional hater.