Tolkien - Blog Posts
commission
«Love me, Tyelpe.»
«...or die.»
quick sketch
Tentacles. now the full version is available on my boosty: https://boosty.to/cddeathbody
huh evil cunt
Trying to break out of a rut with sketches приложите член к экрану(сорри нот сорри за ступид шутку)
Hi guys, just dropping by to wish you a very merry Christmas with this Tolkien's drawing! Have a good one!
SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FROM J.R.R TOLKIEN’S LETTERS FROM FATHER CHRISTMAS (PUBLISHED IN ONE BOOKS BY HIS SON CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN IN 1976).
@superkingofpriderock @mademoiselle-princesse @amalthea9 @anghraine
He’s so unhinged I love him so much
I know everyone talks about how Tolkien infused his war ptsd into LOTR but did you know he wrote letters to his kids from 'santa' and they include a full on war with goblins to save Christmas?? And polar bears and elves (the shelf kind) getting injured and starving like this man could never be chill he had to have a battle and I love that for him
The Lord of the Rings is so full of goodness. It's good on a literary quality level, but it's also just crammed full of good things written by a guy who understands goodness. It's good on a literary level, good on a moral level, good in its appreciation of so many different kinds of good things. You've got the vastness of ancient myths and the homely coziness of small towns and casual heroism from the most ordinary people. It knows a hot bath is good, an ancient legend is good, giving up everything and everyone you've known in a desperate attempt to save the world is good. So many different layers of what good is, and it understands and appreciates all of them. Very few books are to-the-core Good the way that this one is.
It's a cliché to say that Tolkien's experiences in WWI affected all aspects of his writing, how he wrote about friendship and grief, how he wrote about desolate blasted landscapes. But I wish someone who knows more about Tolkien's military career could help me understand how Tolkien related to retreats. His description of Faramir keeping his people together on the retreat from Osgiliath is one of the best-written sequences in the trilogy, and hardly anyone remembers it. It's about a desperate retreat, and a leader whose presence, whose strength manages to keep it from turning into a rout. There's something very vivid in the descriptions: don't break formation, don't start running or they'll pick you off one by one, keep together, keep moving, hold all of that fear at bay. Tolkien describes that retreat as genuinely heroic, a superhuman act of will, one that exhausts Faramir almost to death, and Denethor still does not accept it as heroic because it's a retreat. It saved men but it lost territory, therefore in his eyes it's a failure.
Tolkien has strong opinions about heroic retreats, in the Silmarillion he sometimes gives the retreat-through-the-dangerous-wilderness plotline to female characters (Emeldir, Idril), he always writes them with respect. Sometimes, getting out of there and keeping most of your people alive is a great act of valour. I feel like he must have had a personal experience about what it means to retreat, and what it means to hold a retreat together, and what it means to get no thanks for it.
Silm Ways to Die
Kill a dragon and then yourself Run afoul of the Kinslaying Elves Be crushed by God with the biggest mountain Break both your arms and then drown in a fountain
Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die Dumb ways to die-ie-ie So many dumb ways to die
Set on fire by your dad Make Sauron really mad Be poisoned by a javelin thrust Fight all the Balrogs then spontaneously combust
Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die Dumb ways to die-ie-ie So many dumb ways to die
Insult some Dwarves to their face Get crushed by Morgoth's mace Take advice from the guy who's really cursed Stabbed by your best friend; that's just the worst
Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die Dumb ways to die-ie-ie So many dumb ways to die
Enrage the father of the Black Sword Fight a suicidal battle with the Dark Lord Believe what Sauron says about your wife is true I wonder … what does this Silmaril do?
Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die Dumb ways to die-ie-ie So many dumb ways to die
Have a bunch of kids and then eat yourself alive Have one great kid then refuse to be revived Get thrown off a wall while kidnapping your cousin Jump in a volcano after stealing a Silmaril Have such amazing hair that it kills you They may not rhyme, but they're quite possibly
Dumbest ways to die The dumbest ways to die Dumbest ways to die-ie-ie-ie So many dumb So many dumb ways to die
---
Characters referenced as well as explanations are under the cut in case you want to guess:
Túrin Turambar (killed Glaurung and later threw himself on his sword) Unspecified residents of Alqualondë, Doriath, and Sirion Ar-Pharazôn (buried under falling hills in Aman. He was probably not crushed by Taniquetil itself, and is possibly not technically dead, but poetic license.) Ecthelion (in The Fall of Gondolin he's said to have lost the use of both his arms but still managed to kill Gothmog the Balrog by stabbing him with a spike on his helmet and then throwing them both into a fountain)
Amrod (in one version he was asleep on the Swan-ships when Fëanor set them on fire) Celebrimbor (refused to give Sauron the location of the Three Rings, so Sauron tortured him to death, shot him full of arrows, and displayed his corpse as a war banner in front of his relatives) Aredhel (killed by a poisoned javelin thrown by her husband Eöl) Fëanor (fought with several Balrogs almost alone and received mortal wounds, and his body fell to ashes as his spirit left him)
Thingol (insulted the Dwarves who had set the Silmaril in the Nauglamir for him, so they killed him) Finwë (killed by Morgoth while defending Fëanor's house. In some versions his head is said to have been crushed.) Orodreth (listened to Túrin's counsel about the bridge of Nargothrond, which caused it to be discovered and lead to his death) Beleg (tried to free Túrin and was mistaken and killed by him for an Orc)
Mîm (killed by Húrin for his betrayal of Túrin) Fingolfin (rode out to duel Morgoth alone after Dagor Bragollach) Gorlim (betrayed Barahir's outlaws to Sauron in exchange for being set free to be with his wife; Sauron then killed him since his wife was already dead) Dior (refused to give up the Silmaril which led the Fëanorians to attack Doriath)
Ungoliant (had many spider children including Shelob and eventually ate herself when her hunger grew too great) Míriel (spent her spirit in giving birth to Fëanor and then bound herself to stay in Mandos forever) Maeglin (laid hands on Idril during the Fall of Gondolin and was thrown from the walls by Tuor) Maedhros (cast himself into a fiery chasm after he was burned by the Silmaril. I really don't think it can have been any named volcano but "gaping chasm filled with fire" does fit the technical definition of "volcano") Glorfindel (fought a Balrog on a mountain pass who dragged him off the cliff to his death by his hair)
---
Thanks for playing! Remember to never 1v1 a Balrog, love not too well the work of your hands, never swear any oaths, and always listen to your wife.
you GOOD MORNING gandalf? you good morning him like he is selling buttons at the door? oh! oh! adventure for hobbit! adventure for hobbit for Thirteen Months!
Ereinion Gil-Galad, son of Fingon, Idril and Earendil in the Havens of Sirion. First meeting.
Fëanor Lives AU
Inspired by comment-tags on my poll about whether Fëanor or his sons were worse, I’m going to try to theorize what would have happened if Fëanor hadn’t died within a few weeks[1] of landing in Beleriand.
First, there’s the question of whether, even if he had survived Dagor-nuin-Giliath, he would have survived until Fingolfin arrived. There’s a decent case to be made for no. His sons are fairly rudderless and inactive after he dies and Maedhros is captured, and don’t do a lot between that point and Fingolfin’s arrival; that would not have been the case if Fëanor had lived. (Setting aside the possibility of “he lives but is too severely injured to do anything,” just because it’s not what I’m interested in here.)
I don’t see him just sitting in Hithlum (even if Maedhros was captured, and I don’t see that happening either if Fëanor had lived; it feels like another product ofhis sons’ disorientation in the wake of his death). And considering his mindset from his speech in Tirion and Oath through to the point where he dies in canon, I can see him throwing his army against Angband until a large part of them are dead, and potentially until he himself is dead. Given that they successfully take out pretty well the entire orc-army in Dagor-nuin-Giliath (“Ten days that battle lasted, and from it returned of all the hosts that [Morgoth] had prepared for the conquest of Beleriand no more than a handful of leaves.”), they might have even made it into Angband. This isn’t Morgoth as of the Dagor Bragollach or Nirnaeth Arnoediad, when he’s got dragons and the accumulated armies of 400 years; at this point he’s got balrogs and Sauron and some other Maiar and a fortress and some kind of reserve forces. Morgoth may be best off retreating enough to lure them into into Angband, and then capturing or killing them when they’re in the dark, disoriented, separated, in mazelike tunnels.
So that’s one possibility: that by the time Fingolfin arrives, Fëanor and much of his forces are dead or captured. The ‘captured’ possibility lends itself to interesting AUs by itself.
In any possibility where Fëanor does survive until Fingolfin arrives, but has realized he can’t defeat Angband on his own, I feel like there’s an extremely high likelihood of another Kinslaying then and there. Not primarily because the elves who crossed the Helcaraxë are angry with him, though they certainly are, but because we’ve seen Fëanor in this position before: with a determined sense of what he wants to do, without the resources to do it, and with someone else denying him those resources. That was Alqualondë. Given the mindset Fëanor has displayed all through the Return, he would see it as Fingolfin’s usurpation standing between Fëanor and the forces he needs to conquer Angband (and would not recognize that the other elves’ total unwillingness to accept him as king is associated with him stranding them at the far end of an icy wasteland, more than with Fingolfin specifically, and that killing Fingolfin is not going to get them on-side). This battle would be fairly brutal, with a lot of bad blood on both sides; it would be very amusing to Morgoth, and pretty well put an end to any chance of an equivalent to the Siege of Angband ever coming to pass.
(I know there are plenty of fanfics where Fëanor survives and Fingolfin recognizes him as king. I just can’t see this happening; not only because of the very justified resentment, but because Fëanor’s decisions have been uniformly terrible, and not abandoning his people to that kind of terrible leadership was the main thing motivating Fingolfin to join in the Return at the start. In the extremely unlikely event that Fingolfin did, I don’t see most of the Noldor who crossed the Helcaraxë following him rather than breaking off under Turgon or someone. The reason why Maedhros’ abdication is so crucial in canon is because it’s the only thing that’s ever going to enable the Noldor to form a united front.)
So yeah, I have to agree with the people on the poll who said it’s probably for the best that Fëanor didn’t survive longer. What he would have done if he had been alive during the later parts of the Silm feels like a moot point because I can’t imagine a scenario where he survived but events were otherwise similar to canon. He’s a force of nature; he makes the narrative different, it’s what he does. It’s why him setting everything off and then suddenly dying makes for such a great story.
[1]: I’m making an educated guess.The Fëanoreans travel up the Firth of Drengist and into Hithlum, start setting up camp by Lake Mithrim, and are attacked by orcs before they can finish making camp; the battle against the orcs, Dagor-nuin-Giliath, lasts 10 days, and Fëanor diesat the end of it.
the boy
The dysfunctional House of Finwë at one of its finest moments, work in progress.
This will surely take me ten thousands years but it's fine. That's what the lockdown is for. And I do love my doomed Noldor.
(Sketching this was so HARD. It took me 20 perfectly happy minutes to sketch Nolofinwë, but Feanaro... I redrew him at least ten times before landing on this pose...and I am sure I will tweak it a thousand times in the greyscale rendering)
Luthien Tinuviel in the halls of Menegroth
"As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tinuviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering"
Frodo, to himself: Don't be intimidated, Frodo. Try to imagine them in their underwear.
*puts on Ring*
OH NO THEY’RE HOT NAKED!
If the Nazgul didn’t wear the black robes, they’d be invisible, which would make them even more deadly and scary. But they’d be able to see each other being naked and it would probably be super awkward for them. That’s why they wear the robes.