Tolkien - Blog Posts
Juuuust when I thought I'd found all the ways the works of take-my-heart-gently-in-his-hands-Tolkien could bring me to tears youse gotta hit me with a take like this. How dare. Well played.
Once again thinking about the “Tolkien elves are physically superior to humans in every way” thing as a disability parallel
My soul belongs specifically here
Autumn in the Shire, a mood board 🍁🍂
Y’all are too hard on Éowyn for marrying Faramir as if having a husband will somehow strip her of her individuality.
Have y’all MET Faramir? This is NOT a guy who saw the attractive Princess of Rohan from afar and was like “I want her to be my ball and chain.”
This is the guy who fell in love with her while she was at her lowest, physically and mentally. He fell in love with her when she was beaten, exhausted, weary, wounded, grieving, and depressed. He fell in love with her when he found out what she did on that battlefield. He fell in love with a kindred spirit, the only person who could truly understand him and his own sufferings. He saw her for exactly who she was - someone strong and brave and bold and unconventional and independent - and that is what he loves about her. When he says “you are beautiful,” he is speaking to her soul too, and not just her face.
As her husband, he will only dote on her and seek her opinions on everything. He already treats her as an equal and cultivates her true self; who says he’ll suddenly stop doing that when they’re married? He would rather die than suppress or hold back the powerful mind and spirit that he fell in love with in the Houses of Healing!
If he was like most other men, would she have married him? Heck no! She has standards, and he meets them.
She married the only guy who would ever let her be herself. This girl got it right. She did not settle, and her being with him does not take anything away from her.
Something quick and simple with Feanor and Fingolfin
The arrow is kind of random because I didn't want to give swords to both of them. Don't judge me!
Nah actually nothing bad ever happened in Arda
I love unreasonably long braids 😗
(Open it if the quality looks bad)
I came up with the idea for this sketch ages ago but kept forgetting to draw it
limited palette amrod and amras
I have one light hearted complaint for the silmarillion fandom and that is that we don’t draw characters with hair coverings often enough.
I used to do metal work and if you don’t cover your hair you’ll absolutely set it on fire at least a little at some point. also if you’re doing dusty work with wood or stone or anything like that covering your hair to keep the dust out of it is a win
limited palette caranthir
I’ll probably do the rest of the seven in limited palettes for funsies
Galadriel my beloved
I saw a post where someone essentially said “baby Elrond or Elros with glowing eyes floating ominously in the doorway saying dads I threw up” but I can’t find it anymore so if anyone knows who made the post let me know so I can credit them!
* the OP is @thesummerestsolstice !!!
a very sad little child
I’m back on my elves wearing mourning veils shit
I know opinions on maeglin are mixed which is honestly valid but for me I just see him as more tragic than anything. like dude’s life was so shitty in a way where everything going horribly wrong just kind of seemed inevitable
the last two standing
I can’t remember where I saw it but someone made a headcanon that elves wear mourning veils and I absolutely loved the idea. I can’t see maedhros wearing one most of the time since he kind of needs to be recognizable. I also vibe with idea of elves having complex and meaningful hair braiding practices but it’s just so much more fun to paint loose hair
when you just wanna live your life but then accidentally invent ppd, die and somehow it all gets worse from there
I may not be the number 1 luthien fan but she’s just so pretty I couldn’t not draw her.
Aredhel Ar-Feiniel
now I usually like to portray her with darker skin but I really wanted that strong white on black contrast and almost ghostly look for this piece
a very stylized painting of thee most eldest daughter coded character in all of tolkien’s writings
The King of Theule (1896) by Pierre Jean van der Ouderaa
Bernard Hill as Théoden, The King of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) by Peter Jackson, Costumes by Ngila Dickson & Make-up by Richard Taylor
Nerd Rage, general hatred of Amazon, and, yes, a certain degree of racism are surely aspects of it for some people, but I think that the backlash against the "Rings of Power" is more prosaic than any of this.
What I think that it boils down to is that "Lord of the Rings" was made with love. Tolkien was certainly not writing it to make huge amounts of money off of it, he did it out of love; the generations of children who grew up RPing Elves and drawing detailed maps of Osgiliath and somehow forcing their way through the text of the Silmarillion were acting out if love; even, yes, the Peter Jackson movies, which were absolutely capitalist enterprises from top to bottom, would not have been what they were without the love of the people working on them.
And then along comes Amazon, for whom this obsession, this passion, this love is just a market segment. Amazon, the economic equivalent of a malignant brain tumour, to which all things are always and only IP to be consumed. And they show complete disregard for the original text, because they just don't care. To them, it's an aesthetic. Something they can market to fans of Game of Thrones or the Witcher. A centrepiece for their own forays into streaming.
So that's the basis for the pushback. It's not because Galadriel has the wrong heraldry or because the Dwarven women are beardless. It is the revolt of culture against being puréed, processed, and packaged into #Content