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by Jonathan Duriaux

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𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘺𝘳𝘢𝘴 / 𝘍𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 🇫🇷

𝘉𝘺 ©️𝘓𝘔®️

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On conservation and survival

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a banner of war

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Images from the 1985 Tolkien calendar illustrated by Inger Edelfeldt (Sweden, b1956)

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The Long March of the Calaquendi. The three caravans follow Oromë on his white steed Nahar across Beleriand. Long and slow was this exhausting march through Middle Earth, first along the shores of the Helcar sea, then past the Hithaeglir, the towers of mist, the mountains on the borders of Eriador. Black clouds of smoke still linger in the north above the ruins of the war against Melkor and the destroyed fortress of Utumno. All of this out of a longing to return to the Light of the Trees and the beauty of Aman.

I read the Silmarillion again and stop to draw a scene whenever it inspires me.

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The Grey Company sets out from Rivendell.

This is from last November! Inspiration kicked me in the face and I had to draw this scene of the Lads leaving the Last Homely House to go to their Doom... I am still completely obsessed with the way Lord of the Rings Online expanded upon what is only a footnote in the books, and took us on a journey of angst and heartbreak; so my plan is, as I replay the content, to illustrate every step and write a fic about my own character's involvement in it.

But yea. I cannot imagine the Grey Company without the Ranger NPCs from LOTRO anymore.. <: They are now canon and beloved to me. Here we have Lothrandir on tiny grey Mithul, Tirirandir (who is my character) on his borrowed horse Pîn, his best buddy Candaith on a liver chestnut I don't believe has a name (?) and Halbarad the gigachad with Arwen's banner.

I still have a love/hate relationship with the colours, but it's one of the better pieces of last year. 2024 in general was one of the better years in terms of personal art; I wholly attribute that to getting into drawing Tolkien fanart and discovering new communities!! After seven years of film school, I'm finally inspired and motivated again to create and share, and that's bliss to me!

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Emily Pangnerk Illuitok

Birds Nesting in Cliffs, c.2007

~

Born in 1943, Illuitok was an Inuit master sculptor from Kugaaruk. She created detailed, delicate ivory/bone carvings that mostly represented hunting or nature scenes. Illuitok often worked with found materials that she then shaped into works of art. She passed away in 2012.

The above work shows birds nesting and is made of whale bone and ivory. Notice the little detail on the bottom right of a polar bear hunting some seals.

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If you're still taking requests and have the time, I'd love to read what you get from the "how far can you carry this?" prompt

“How much farther?” Fingon called into the wind. “How much farther can you bear us?”

The eagle’s cruel, hooked beak did not move, but his great voice echoed in the minds of those that huddled upon his back.

“I am Thorondor, Lord of Eagles. My wing beats are the crack of mountain thunder and when I stoop to kill it is the strike of lightning. My wings span thirty fathoms and my strength is the strength of the rising storm. I can carry you as far as is needful.”

“Thirty fathoms exactly?” said Fingon. “And how much do you weigh?”

Thorondor blinked his golden eyes. “What?”

“We’ve been doing some calculations back here,” Fingon said, oblivious to his confusion. “The average harpy eagle has a wingspan of about a fathom and can carry its own body weight - say twenty pounds - for short distances. If we were to extrapolate your weight and scale linearly, you’d be able to carry our combined weight with ease.”

“But the matter is vastly more complicated than linear scaling,” croaked his cousin. “Based on wingspan and weight, an unladen eagle would induce a velocity change on air of almost eight miles an hour - forgive the approximation, I don’t have parchment or sufficient blood - and would require a tremendous amount of energy.” 

“Factoring in the additional weight of two adult Eldar-“

“-plus armour but sans several litres of blood-”

“-the energy requirements would be ludicrous. And that’s without getting into the tensile strength of muscle, bone, etcetera.”

“You understand,” said Thorondor slowly, “That I am a maia of Manwë, cloaked only in the seeming of an eagle?” He was remembering again why, Oaths and murders aside, he found the Noldor such a thoroughly disagreeable people. 

“Well yes,” said Fingon the Valiant. “But that’s no excuse for the crafting of a shoddy fana.”

“O Heirs of Finwë,” said Thorondor. “Behold! For we have found precisely how far I can carry you and it has nothing at all to do with the power of my wings and everything to do with the limits of my patience.” He folded his wings and dived towards the mushroom patch of tents that marked the Noldor’s camps upon Lake Mithrim’s shore, his passengers clutching tightly at his feathers and at each other.  

They landed in a hurricane rush of wind that tore several tents from their moorings, and the raking of great claws that tore great furrows in the brown earth of the lake’s shore. 

”Right,” said the Lord of Eagles, turning his head to peer at the elves upon his back. “Fuck off.”

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In order to push back against a traditionalist/conservative glorification of stay-at-home motherhood and the nuclear family, people tend to point out that it takes a village to raise a child, and that before the nuclear family, larger multi-generational families lived together. When childcare wasn't the responsibility of the mother and the mother alone, when it was shared in a larger community, the burden was lessened.

But a lot of people push back against that, because while the nuclear family sucks, multi-generational families could be worse: instead of freely given mutual support, they were often hierarchical structures that worked women even harder. Obey your husband, AND your in-laws, AND their parents, AND whoever else was in the household before you. If a woman got meaningful help with childcare and housework, it came at the cost of other women, all the unmarried aunts and widowed cousins and various poor relatives with nowhere to go, all the girl children doing woman's work. (@larkandkatydid wrote about this really well but I can't find where.)

And I want to push back even further, not just against the people who insist that an abundance of free care work was available sometime in the past, but also against the people who point out that it was still only available at the cost of women's freedom and girls' childhoods. Because I suspect that for most of history, there was a severe shortage of care work, no matter how many women and girls were doing it all day every day unpaid. For most of history, most children (and sick and elderly) lived in what we'd recognise as serious neglect. Even if everyone involved did their best, there's a finite amount of time and manpower in the world. I talked to visiting nurses who'd worked in the 60ies, and they remember stuff that seems horrifying today, and was horrifying then. If someone has an infectious disease, they sleep in the barn. If an elderly person becomes incontinent, well they can't stay in the bed, on the floor they go, maybe they get some straw to lie on. Nobody can look after ten children, they'll look after themselves. Especially when it's harvest time, and all adult hands are needed, babies are just handed off to small children. There never was not a crisis of care, we're just starting to have a way to maybe do something about some of it.

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"Girl..."

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Emotional Walls Your Character Has Built (And What Might Finally Break Them)

(How your character defends their soft core and what could shatter it) Because protection becomes prison real fast.

✶ Sarcasm as armor. (Break it with someone who laughs gently, not mockingly.) ✶ Hyper-independence. (Break it with someone who shows up even when they’re told not to.) ✶ Stoicism. (Break it with a safe space to fall apart.) ✶ Flirting to avoid intimacy. (Break it with real vulnerability they didn’t see coming.) ✶ Ghosting everyone. (Break it with someone who won’t take silence as an answer.) ✶ Lying for convenience. (Break it with someone who sees through them but stays anyway.) ✶ Avoiding touch. (Break it with accidental, gentle contact that feels like home.) ✶ Oversharing meaningless things to hide real depth. (Break it with someone who asks the second question.) ✶ Overworking. (Break it with forced stillness and the terrifying sound of their own thoughts.) ✶ Pretending not to care. (Break it with a loss they can’t fake their way through.) ✶ Avoiding mirrors. (Break it with a quiet compliment that hits too hard.) ✶ Turning every conversation into a joke. (Break it with someone who doesn’t laugh.) ✶ Being everyone’s helper. (Break it when someone asks what they need, and waits for an answer.) ✶ Constantly saying “I’m fine.” (Break it when they finally scream that they’re not.) ✶ Running. Always running. (Break it with someone who doesn’t chase, but doesn’t leave, either.) ✶ Intellectualizing every feeling. (Break it with raw, messy emotion they can’t logic away.) ✶ Trying to be the strong one. (Break it when someone sees the weight they’re carrying, and offers to help.) ✶ Hiding behind success. (Break it when they succeed and still feel empty.) ✶ Avoiding conflict at all costs. (Break it when silence causes more pain than the truth.) ✶ Focusing on everyone else’s healing but their own. (Break it when they hit emotional burnout.)

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Write Characters with Deep Emotional Wounds

(Without Making Them Walking Tragedies)

╰ Start with the scar, not the stabbing. Everyone talks about what happened to your character (The Big Trauma) but honestly? It’s the aftermath that matters. Show me the limp, not the bullet wound. Show me the way they flinch at kindness or double-check locks three times. The wound shapes them more than the event ever did.

╰ Don't make them "Sad All The Time" People with deep hurts aren’t just dramatic sob machines. They make bad jokes. They find weird hobbies. They have good days and then get wrecked by a song in a grocery store. Layers, my friend. Pain is complex and it sure as hell isn’t aesthetic.

╰ Let them almost heal and then backslide. Real healing isn’t linear. One good conversation doesn’t erase ten years of bottled-up grief. Your character might think they’re over it, and then one tiny thing, a smell, a phrase, a look, knocks them right back into the hole. Make them earn their healing. Make us ache for them.

╰ Give them armor and show the cracks. Maybe it’s sarcasm. Maybe it’s perfectionism. Maybe it’s taking care of everyone else so no one notices they're broken. Whatever mask they wear, show us the hairline fractures. Let us catch the moments where they almost drop the act.

╰ Don’t turn their trauma into their only personality trait. Yes, they’ve been through hell. But they also love spicy chips and bad reality TV. They have dumb crushes and secret dreams. A tragic backstory isn’t a substitute for a full human being. Let them be more than the worst thing that ever happened to them.

╰ Let their wound warp their decisions. People protect their wounds. Even badly. Especially badly. They might sabotage good relationships. Or push away help. Or cling too tightly. Make their past live in their choices, not just their flashbacks.

╰ Don’t make the world validate them for existing. Not everyone is going to understand your wounded character. Some people will misunderstand them. Blame them. Get frustrated. And honestly? That’s real. Let your character find their people, after facing the ones who don’t get it. It’s so much sweeter that way.

╰ Wounds can make them kinder—or crueler. Pain changes people. Some become protectors. Some become destroyers. Some do both, depending on the day. Let your character’s hurt make them complicated. Unpredictable. Human.

╰ Don’t heal them just to tie a neat bow on your story Sometimes the best ending is messy. Sometimes the healing is just starting. Sometimes it’s just hope, not a full recovery montage. That’s okay. Healing is a lifelong, terrifying, brave process—and readers feel it when you respect that.

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Elrond’s cape & robe in 4k 

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The Guardian of Mirk-Wood by Kinko-White