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Elrond

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it shouldnt be illegal to kidnap a guy if he looks really sad and you know he would have a better life in captivity

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Baby Arwen and her mama :)

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Today’s train-sketch isn’t my best work, I don’t draw animals, but thought Comrade Maedhros hive might enjoy him and dog-Elrond indulging in some light reading out on the porch 😇🐶

inspired by a pic of a very studious dachshund @grey-gazania sent me

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Good day! Your art is gorgeous (especially the Halenthir pieces, you are making me fall in love with this ship AGAIN and it was one of my favorite ships already). If you are still taking suggestions what to draw I'd love to see Cirdan in your style for two simple reasons: 1. Your style, 2. I'm not usually into visibly older men/elves but something about Cirdan does it for me.

I was surprised about how sure I am about Cirdan's facial features. I made a version with and without a beard because I liked how his face turned out so much.

I'm not currently taking suggestions anymore, but the few I have in my inbox I may or may not use as inspiration in the future.

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i could never give a wife to Fingon or Maedhros because i respect women too much 🙏

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"His body recovered from his torment and became hale, but the shadow of his pain was in his heart; and he lived to wield his sword with his left hand more deadly than his right had been. "

(The Silmarillion, ch. 13)

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— "The Boss of Me", Patricia Smith

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WIP Wednesday

Thanks to @starspray and @nycterisg for the tag. I'm still plugging away on Nerdanel and company, huzzah! Have another snippet:

Fëanáro is best with babies, and with young ones, who are ever curious and impressionable and eager to learn from him. To love him, in his great enthusiasms. To adore, as he adores. Once they grow into a different kind of questioning, however, his edges sharpen. What has been encouragement becomes demand: for skill, for energy, for loyalty. Their sons learn to function as gears in a greater machine that is the House of Fëanáro. There is joy in that, and pride, and satisfaction. But the fraught affairs of their hearts they bring to Nerdanel: bruises from friendships gone awry, felt failures of craft or art, misadventures, embarrassments. They crave her stillness, her quiet sympathy. Fëanáro, focused ever on a problem, is an uncomfortable confessor – he cannot hear of trouble without fixing it, or wishing to. And when the trouble comes from cousins…well. Half-cousins, Fëanáro will declare, and in seeking to solve the problem, worsen it.

Tagging @zealouswerewolfcollector @melestasflight @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras @swanhild @katajainen @balrogballs

What's in your WIP folders, if you're inclined to share?

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for Prayers to Broken Stone readers, I remember I promised a demo of how the Kozhikodan dialect differed from “normal” or “pure” Malayalam, and I finally got my mother to record an example, everyone say thank you to Mother Balls for letting you experience being yelled at by the Comrade.

So here’s three simple sentences (“he got up and left”, “where are you going?” and “please throw that away”) said first in pure Malayalam, and then repeated in a heavy Kozhikodan dialect. For an in-fic comparison, Fingon would speak like the first, and Maedhros like the second.

Hope this makes it clear as to what I mean when I said while it’s technically mutually intelligible, the Kozhikodan dialect is considered harsh/vulgar in comparison to “pure” Malayalam, and is also associated with being “lower class” where class as used can refer to economic position but also religious/caste positionality as well… hence why the Syrian Catholic Finarfin/Fingolfin et al don’t speak like that, while the Muslim Fëanorians do. As I said, easiest English comparison would be Cockney slang vs RP English.

Anyway, never say the Balls family doesn’t deliver!

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Hi! I love your Silm meta, and I was wondering about your thoughts on the origins of Feanor's proto-ethnonationalism? Do you think it started with Melkor's release/Formenos, or did he have some sort of "Noldorin supremacy" thing going on even before that? I'm inclined towards the latter, esp because I think the Noldor in general had that problem, what with their tendency to "give" condescending or outright disrespectful names to the other tribes.

Ah, thanks! I've been thinking a lot about this recently as well, and I broadly agree with you that there was a streak of Noldorin supremacy going on before that. There are two pieces of information in the Shibboleth of Feanor and the chapter on Key Dates in Nature of Middle Earth that point to this being likely.

From The Shibboleth of Feanor:

The chief of the linguistic loremasters at that time was Fëanor. He insisted that þ was the true pronunciation for all who cared for or fully understood their language. But in addition to linguistic taste and wisdom he had other motives.... So it came about that to Fëanor the rejection of þ became a symbol of the rejection of Míriel, and of himself, her son, as the chief of the Ñoldor next to Finwë. This, as his pride grew and his mood darkened, he thought was a ‘plot’ of the Valar, inspired by fear of his powers, to oust him and give the leadership of the Ñoldor to those more servile. So Fëanor would call himself ‘Son of the Þerindë, and when his sons in their childhood asked why their kin in the house of Finwë used s for þ he answered: ‘Take no heed! We speak as is right, and as King Finwë himself did before he was led astray. We are his heirs by right and the elder house. Let them sá-sí, if they can speak no better.’

There's a further note on the linguistic aspects of this in Vinyar Tengwar, issue 41, as supplement to the Shibboleth of Feanor:

The Noldor, before they made the change, accused the Vanyar of confusing the two sounds. In fact if left to unheeded change they would probably have merged in Quenya hw. Their near approach (by slackening the spirantal friction of f) before the separation of Vanyar and Noldor is seen in the development of phu- > *hwu- > hu-, as in Quenya huine 'gloom', unrelieved darkness (as a night without stars or moon), Telerin fuine of same sense, Sindarin fuin 'night'. Later when the merging had been checked in Noldorin it was one of Feanor's jests to declare that the Vanyar called his father Hwinwe and himself Hweanaro.

Both suggest to me that there is an emergence of Noldor "national" identity that emerges in this divergence of Quenya dialects. The latter is concerning a split from Vanyar pronunciation; the former an intra-Noldor split. I think we focus on the personal question of Feanor's relationship with Miriel, but as the full Shibboleth quote above suggests, there is also a highly charged political valence to the question of Miriel's position in Noldor memory + polity and therefore, by extension, Feanor's position.

We've discussed this before, I think, but essentially Feanor has to be aware of Indis' relation to Ingwe and Ingwe's position as both a) High King of the Elves and b) a known favourite of Manwe and Varda. The Silm more or less references it multiple times and there are multiple references to the Vanyar being favourites of Manwe at the time. Given the fact that the Valar break with previously established precedent to allow Finwe to marry Indis, I think we can infer that there was some question about whether Miriel's line or Indis' line would eventually inherit the crown. The first Shibboleth quote more or less presents this as such. The linguistic divide thus becomes a critical question of political identification, affiliation and loyalty testing(how Noldor are you? can you prove your Noldor-ness by speaking in this fashion or not?); as well as one of identity border policing, i.e. of identifying true Noldor, v. Noldor who have been led astray implicitly by Vanyar influence (Indis), even though its the Noldor themselves who adopt the s sound over the thorn; and "national" supremacy (our pronunciation is the superior, more scientific pronunciation*, because it is rooted and grounded in a science of linguistics).

(It's also relevant to examine the meaning and origins of the word Shibboleth here - since shibboleth as a word in English, relating to a belief/custom that identifies a group of people as one & therefore the most likely sense in which Tolkien is using it here, comes from a Biblical passage in the OT in Judges chapter 12, in which the Gileadites use the pronunciation of the word "shibboleth" to identify Ephraimites (who pronounce it sibboleth) escaping the battlefield and kill them. The association of pronunciation and an emerging racial/national identity here in this context is not accidental, I believe, especially given Feanor's later actions.)

There is another strain that is relevant, I think, especially regarding Feanor's assumption that the Valar are looking to replace him with someone more docile and more accepting of their interests. This is referenced as the "heresy" in Nature of Middle Earth:

Younger elves (who never personally heard the Voice of Eru) doubt the existence of the Valar (of whom they heard from Melian?). The do not waver in allegiance, but in pride believe that their mission is to fight the Dark, and ultimately to possess the world of Arda. This “heresy”, though driven under at the Finding, is the seed of the later Fëanorian trouble.

and

The “heresy” awakes in new form: the Valar clearly do exist; but they have abandoned Endor: rightly as the appointed realm of the Quendi. Now they are becoming jealous, and wish to control the Quendi as vassals, and so re-possess themselves of Endor. Finwë, a gallant and adventurous young quende, direct descendant of Tata (therefore 25th gen.), is much taken by these ideas; less so his friend Elwë, descendant of Enel.)

Does Feanor hear of these ideas from Finwe himself? From other Elves who were on the Great Journey? Whatever the "source" of this transmission, the quote in the Shibboleth re. a "plot" of the Valar to oust him, would align with this particular "heresy" and its long entrenchment amongst the Elves. Its relevant, because a big element of his later speech to the Noldor is that they will be the masters of Arda & lords of the Unsullied Light - which harks back directly to "their mission is to fight the Dark, and ultimately to possess the world of Arda". This is the point, I believe, at which the belief in their own divine appointment & therefore divinely appointed racial supremacy derives its roots - the Vanyar may be the favourites of the Valar, but Feanor is drawing a line back to Eru Iluvatar directly, whose authority supercedes that of Manwe. Therefore, while the Vanyarin line may have the favour of the Valar, the real Noldor - who know and understand language - have the favour of Eru Iluvatar himself.

Therefore, if he has the favour of Eru Iluvatar, anything and everything is possible and ergo, the much later ugliness that will follow.

*I also believe that the specific focus on sa-si and Hwinwe and Hweanaro has a specific connotation of effeminacy - a refined lisping that in Tolkien's milieu would have been identified with a certain sort of effeminate & dandyish if not outright queer mode of speaking - and that there is implicit in that mockery, a construction of the proper, real Noldor as more masculine to the effeminate, cozened Vanyar or Vanyarised Noldor (a sentiment later echoed in his speech to the Noldor re. "let the cowards keep the city")

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Since Elves can sleep with their eyes open, I propose the headcanon that Galadriel sleepwalks. She falls so far into another universe in her semi-asleep state and just. starts sleepwalking. She sleepwalks A LOT under stress.

Celeborn is so used to it that he just stands/sits/lies there staring at her, completely awake and done with this shit. He needs to make sure she doesn’t do some dumbass thing like walk out the door (which she’s done many times before).

Some unlucky Elf on night watch has felt this cold wind rush past him and it’s not a ghost or Orc, no, it’s the Lady of Light dashing out of the Caras Galadhon manor and running to absolutely who knows where followed by a very panicked Lord Celeborn launching himself after her yelling her name, barefoot too. That poor guard got a raise come morning.

Sorry I don’t know how the fuck I missed this one my Tumblr inbox truly is the Wild West in all senses of the word but I am fucking PISSING myself. I love the idea of Galadriel just. Walking around doing shit in the pitch darkness. Straight up doing DIY projects or, idk, walking about in the forest reciting poetry (idk. feels like something the Finweans would do).

In fact I would even go so far as to claim this is why people in the surrounding regions just assume there’s a witch in the forest. Like on one hand yeah mortals don’t get elvish customs, whatever. On the other hand. If I ever walked into a forest in the dark, idk, hunting rabbits or whatever, and I come across the most beautiful woman in the world drifting around making soup in a cauldron with a very tired looking guy behind her just sitting there like this is a normal Tuesday night occurrence… you bet I’m going to go back home and tell people there’s a whole ass witch in the forest.

(thank you for this wonderful imagery and once again i am v sorry this drowned)

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- maglor in his wandering-years admitting to círdan that the most lasting effect of parenting half-elven children who can’t just make do with two hours of sleep like full elves, is that maglor himself has gotten addicted to the concept of “afternoon naptime” and simply cannot get through the day without one

jesus christ. fine. ill say it. im sleepy. im sleepy, okay? do you know what being sleepy does to a person? to their spirit? i should be pitied.

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Virtus et Scientia Chapter 7

“My dear gentlemen and lady, ye have heard the words of one who proudly boasts of his butchering of our most ancient and honorable and elegant tongue. Shall we heed the folly of one so deluded as he? Shall we suffer our tongue to change according to his groundless whims? The Dialectic Society most certainly should NOT adopt the s in replacement of the thorn, for to do so would be misanthropic, anti-intellectual, and would foment ignorance and confusion and division.” -Irime Lalwende Finwiel

Chapter summary: As Feanaro's proxy, Lalwende faces off against Nolofinwe in a thorny debate. Sibling conflict ensues.

Read on Ao3 / Read from the beginning

Full summary: Discourse is the realm of men in Tirion; a realm that young Anaire desires to enter. She has two goals: to woo Nolofinwe and to join the Dialectic Society, an all-male debate club. Lalwende is her accomplice in all things, but she faces her own private struggles. The two of them navigate issues of womanhood, femininity, sexuality, philosophy, and the hot mess of Finwean family conflicts. Nolofinwe is there with them, experiencing growing pains as he comes of age.

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I like to shit on the 2010s as much as anyone, but when all is said and done, 2013-2016 was truly my peak era

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a little sketchbook entry of good old bird guy Manwë for @thelien-art ‘s Draw This In Your Style: travel-pan watercolours for the most part!

Take a look at their DTIYS here! one of my favourite Tolkien artists with a very cool style. Thanks for this v fun challenge keeping me occupied on two delayed trains 🤩

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Melkor/Morgoth for @thelien-art

Your art is always a pleasure to see. I adore all of your characters designs, they just so *chef’s kiss*

As always, my art style never stays the same, but as predicted, I deeply enjoyed drawing your version. You’re one of the first artists I saw and continually recognised on Tumblr and in the Silm fandom, so I have a very soft spot for you and your art style. Much respect and admiration for you <3