Silmarillion - Blog Posts
last doodles for tonight: tiny Olorin helping Varda to put the stars in place, and tiny Mairon bringing some fire to the forges of Aulë
Tolkien Playlists Masterpost
I made a lot of Tolkien related playlists on spotify during the last year to organise my music library, if anyone is interested here they are:
The Legendarium
From the Ainulindalë to the War of Wrath, with an extra mention of the Dagor Dagorath at the end to close the narrative (events in chronological order, mostly metal with some acoustic and ambient pieces)
Second and Third Age, from Numenor to the events of The Hobbit to the full lotr storyline (events in chronological order, mostly metal with some acoustic and ambient pieces)
From the Ainulindalë to the end of the Third Age (events in chronological order, instrumental classical and acoustic music only, including the movies soundtrack)
One Playlist To Rule Them All: a selection of my favourite Tolkien astists on spotify (mostly metal, tracks sorted by artist)
Chill Roadtrip AU: small selection of Tolkien themed chillhop and downtempo
Characters
Eärendil: mostly ambient metal and some acoustic tracks to journey through the stars
Thingol and Melian: Doriath ambient playlist, with some medieval and acoustic tracks, enchanted forest and fae court vibes
Aragorn: acoustic and metal songs for reclaimed kingdoms and long distance love stories
Tar-Miriel: slow and haunted vibes for the Downfall of Numenor, water and drowning themes
Legolas: soft acoustic and folk tracks, relaxing and nature themed with some sea longing vibes
Maglor: metal and acoustic songs for the poorest little meow meow
Fëanor: power metal only for the Spirit of Fire himself
Sauron: mainly black metal, playlist for evil necromancers only
Vibes only
Not strictly Tolkien related lyrics but if you need more vibes I can offer you these playlists:
Cuiviénen: ambient metal to wander under the starry skies
Dreamless Sleep: lullabies for the enchanted forest
Lugbúrz Lo-Fi: dungeon synth ambience for your tower dwellings
Mordor Metalfest: black metal for your evil festival needs
The Party goes on a Roadtrip: epic metal for your epic quest
Sword and Sorcery: ultra epic metal for your ultra epic quest
Songs of Enchantment: soft acoustic folk and fantasy songs to sing in a field
wip death of fëanor
some colourblocking with no obvious light source but now we can tell them apart and see hints of thangorodrim in the background
Galadriel hunting with her brothers !
here's Finrod, Galadriel, Aegnor, and Angrod! Orodreth is either resting at home, or this drawing takes place in the universe where he isn't a son of Finarfin, haha. but anyways I hope you enjoy!
Look sometimes I just so much want to write fairytale story involving faded Maglor haunting little remote villages in the East
Like, mortal men at the East seashores had this tale of beautiful sad singing voice near the sea
But this voice was not the evil voices that lured you into danger
This voice guided you to safety
If you swim too far away in the sea and got swiped away by the waves sometimes this voice came to you and suddenly the waves released you and allowed you to go back to the shore
There were fishermen and sailors swore that they only found their way home alive in some heavy storms due to a strange singing voice
Orphans and children left alone at home sometimes heard lullaby on the nights they could not sleep
Occasionally when someone got really sick beyond help people took them to some places near the ocean and sometimes they got better like a miracle. Even in the case they still die they died peacefully with little suffer. They said there was a voice there singing illness and pain away.
There were tales about people being chased by orcs near the ocean, then they heard songs and somehow the orcs could not see them anymore and ran directly into the sea and drowned
There was this village got attacked at night (sometimes armies of orcs took whole villages of people away and nobody knew where they went), and a voice warned people in their dreams, and those who followed the voice was lead away from the orcs, which was supposed to be impossible, they were surrounded from all directions
Sometimes when you walked along the shoreline you could hear songs of a beautiful language you could not recognize. It was so sad and but it was also extremely beautiful. In this East land there was little hope but those who heard the hopeless song somehow had a little bit of hope again. If something so beautiful like this existed, then the dark king of the world might not be all powerful. There were things beyond their reach.
There were people who tried to talk to the voice. “Who are you? Why are you here? What are you singing about? Do you have a home? Why are you so sad?”
But the voice never replied.
Along the ocean people prayed. Yes in many areas they were required to pray to the King of the World, but how can you sincerely worship the Lord of All that sent monsters to take away your children and turn their into monsters? If there were other gods who were good and kind, how could these gods allow their life to be this way? If there were gods they were enslaved by one and abandoned by the others.
But people still pray to things, to the ocean to the land to the sky to the stars above, like a child in dark night cry for a mother even when their mother was dead or taken away.
Some people prayed to the voice too.
Some people prayed for the voice.
—————
(I love the idea of Maglor being dragged back home but I also love the idea of Maglor gradually finding peace in his self-exile and helping people he did not know and somehow kept being adopted by local mortal kids even when he no longer had a body)
(There is just so much peak aesthetic in “beautiful regretful voice lingering by the sea”)
On that note, I'm delighting myself translating the word "friend" in Tolkien as bestie. Lots of fun sentences but none beats the alliteration of "Beren became the bestie of birds and beasts"
Maedhros!
This was an entry to mossgroove's dtiys on Instagram
God I missed drawing Maedhros so much, I'm so glad to finally have the occasion to draw my favorite angsty elf again!
I really enjoyed making this drawing, it was so fun to make!
Hope you'll like it as well!
I just spend 45 minutes on Microsoft Excel charting and colour coordinating Elrond’s family line. All this was to mathematically prove that he is not halfelven. Elrond is, in fact, 56.25% Elven. Here is my chart.
Oh you think you’re so mature, huh? Tell me Celeborn’s other name without smiling.
Akallabeth
Melkor: *fucks some shit up and gets yeeted into the void*
Sauron:
The Valar:
Tuor but he’s played by Owen Wilson and he just walks around Gondolin saying wow until Idril falls for him and Maeglin hates his guts
If we’re being honest these titles pretty well embody the plots of the books.
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it so sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.”
- The Hobbit: Chapter 1, An Unexpected Party
I’m challenging myself by reading through The Hobbit again and illustrate it in my style as I go along. I fully expect it to take a long time, but I’ll keep posting my progress on here. I’ll be using the movies as reference for some things but I also want to draw it how I see it. So consider this part 1 of… who knows how many. Thank you so much for any and all support!
Silm headcanon #1
feanorians's oath was a pinky promise
maglor made it look more dramatic in his songs so the future generations don't laugh at them
elrond knows what it really looked like only bc maedhros talks in his sleep, is silent about it out of mercy
galadriel had no mercy
not a silmarillion girly but this guy in my tarot deck looks just like a character i keep seeing on my dash from the silm fanart accounts
Tolkien writing kingdoms' moral decay and eventual decline: they exploited nature, destroyed forests and cut down trees
Tolkien writing male characters' moral decay and eventual decline: he stopped listening to his wife
Thingol hating on Maedhros is so crazy hilarious to me because imagine beefing with your bestfriend's grandson
Celegorm canonically speaking animal languages is so funny because how many times he went to his brothers and told them "A little birdie told me" to embaress them with some gossip and then watch their house descend into complete chaos as his brothers try to figure out who exposed them
And it was really a little birdie, a real bird, with whom he spoke, because he understands his language
I know Manwe's pardon was a stupid idea and he should have think more about it, as King of Arda, but I can't help but feeling so much for him. He's a younger brother, he doesn't understand evil and even if he did, he would have forgiven Melkor anyway. That's his older brother, of course he's gonna give him another chance, of course he believes he can change, of course he forgives him.
That's what younger siblings always do.
Jedi stans do not know Tolkien lore
It's so funny, cause... it's literally what Tolkien actually wrote in his opus magnum Silmarillion! It happened when Valar, despite having almost angelic powers, practically abandoned Middlearth and Beleriand and allowed Morgoth and his cronies to kill and enslave Elves and Dwarves and lead part of Humans away from them(enslaving others too). They allowed everything built and created by Elves to be destroyed, for a huge part of Noldor elves to die in horrible ways, for Eru's children to suffer. No matter how narrative attempts to frame this, Valar are accompliced by their inaction. Even before the First Kinslaying, they had practically forgotten about Sindar and Nandor Elves living under Morgoth's feet, about Dwarves and yet-to-be-awakened-Humans.
Their inaction was not deemed as something inherently good in any piece of Tolkien's works except the Myths Transformed. In The Book of Lost Tales(which i consider really good for analysis and explaining some plotholes of published Silmarillion and presenting Valar in more or less sympathetic light) the majority of both Maiar and Ainur are so afraid of Morgoth that they practically force Manwe(who is their king) to hide Valinor from the world! It happens despite both Manwe and Ulmo pleas for Noldor's sake and Manwe telling all secrets about Elves and Humans Eru entrusted him! Myths Transformed, on the contrary, present Valar as ultimately morally right no matter what happened - and it is the reason why they seem so unlikable and problematic for many(and may be the reason Christopher never used this concept). Even in the published Silmarillion Valar are presented as misguided and not totally right in the end.
Also, let's adress Tolkien himself. He never considred Lord of the Rings the major book he had written in his life and the book what tells about his views most is actually Silmarillion! And this book actually has more complex take on "good and evil", explaining, why Tolkien viewed his charactres as they are.
What in Tolkien's mind separates morally grey character(like Feanor, his sons, Turin) from the villain(like Morgoth, Sauron, Eol, Saruman)? As it can be seen through the text, it is an ability to love and care about someone while seeing them as persons and loyalty to another person or their people or devotion to a large-scale goal character has. The reasons that his characters are "good" are not because of their service to some institutions or fighting evil, but because they are productive, creative and their major goal is making the world a better place. They are something except the fighters and destroyers and it what made them good. It's evil who reacts on "good characters" doing something, like it was with Sauron's deeds during the Second Age(founding Mordor in response to Numenor's victorious wars against him, falsely giving up to Ar-Pharazon in response to latter nearly destroying his kingdom, attacking Gondor and causing War of the Last Alliance of fear it will take root) and Morgoth's before the First Age(creating Dissonance in responce to the Eru calling him out, manipulating Noldor princes out of envy for their artificial gems, especially the Simarils).
Meanwhile, Jedi are purely the reactive force at the time of Prequels. They do nothing, they create nothing, they only serve a corrupt goverment doing whatever it asks and ignoring it sliding more and more into the autoritarism. They ignore literal and corporal slavery in Canon, and crime syndicats(like Findian syndicat), long-time civil wars, dark cults(like Bando Gora), planets getting attacked and suffering from epidemics and starvation in Legends. They do even less than IRL Templars and Hospitallers did(guarding the piligrims and giving them shelter, which was the primary goal of such institutions except fighting Muslims). We have never seen the Jedi travelling from one planet to another to build or create something(or heal somebody), they does not harbor any global project involving something potentially useful for all of Republic citizens.
In comparison, many Tolkien's favourite characters and nations are something except the warriors and fighters. If we will take hobbits, they are wonderful farmers. Teleri Elves are the shipbuilders and saliors. Noldor Elves and Dwarves are blacksmiths, inventors, artificial gem and jewelry makers. Sindar Elves are singers. Numenorians and Gondor people are scholars, explorers of the world, alchemists and inventors too. Even Rohan people are not only the fighters, they are wonderful horse breeders. I won't even start with master inventor Feanor with his belief that Eru's children's mind can overcome Ainur and Celebrimbor with desire to heal Middlearth from wasting away. Do Jedi present something of themselves except the enforcing and partly dimplomatic organisation?
None. And there is the reason Jedi could not and should not be compared to Tolkien characters. They grew complacent and distant from the people. They only react - while Tolkien heroes act. We never see Jedi "bravely going where no people had gone before" or moving to some planet in order to create a medicine for some illiness, even if they are stated have their own special Service Corps divisions for this. Ironically, that is actually makes them having a lot in commin with Ainur, whom Jedi Stans tend to compare their faves with. Complacency, which in the end lead to the tragedy.
They compare Ainur to the angels, ignoring the textual evidence that their complacency lead to the practical genocide of Elves. And ironically, an actual Tolkien fandom - and the Professor himself - tends to see these "Angels" in more or less critical light.