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I’m a fucking idiot. I’ve been turning over in my brain why nobody in the Silmarillion seems to get a redemption arc, why nobody seems to be able to make up for the harm they’ve done, etc.
One of the biggest themes in the Silmarillion is “the fall.” The fall from grace, the doomed, the railing against the impossible. Of COURSE nobody gets a redemption arc! It runs counter to the whole point of the book!
Now, Lotr specifically is different. Lotr is about finding hope when all seems lost, and finding allies in unexpected places against the darkness. This allows characters like Boromir to “fall” and yet redeem himself in his final moments, is what allows Sméagol to peek through in Gollum, is what lets Theoden lift his head from Grima’s ear and instead take Gandalf’s counsel.
But the Silmarillion? The Silmarillion is about the fall and doom of the Noldor, the decimation of Beleriand, and the consequences of failing to stop Morgoth. Of course nobody recovers. Of course.
Inside of you there are two wolves.
One wolf says that Sam and Frodo’s relationship is not romantic, and all the affection and moments between them that might make a modern reader question how platonic it truly is are simply moments inspired by soldiers in wwi, where tragedy and horror brought people together, ignoring societal norms such as the amount of affection you can show your friend before it’s seen as anything other that what it really is. When you live in a reality where death is all around and you’re lonely and starving and miss home and you might die tomorrow, and you got no one else but your companion, you are bound to become closer and create a bond that is unlike any other friendship. Their relationship is also influenced by the fact that Tolkien is a medievalist, and in the Middle Ages affection between a pair of friends was more normalized and there’s plenty of medieval literature where the characters have relationships similar to those of Sam and Frodo. The reader needs to let go of their modern lenses and see the story while acknowledging it’s temporal context and background.
The other wolf says that Sam and Frodo’s parallels with Lúthien and Beren, Tolkien’s amount of queer friends, and just how different their relationship has been since the start, before the horrors even began, is gay asf. He also says, and I quote, “if Frodo isn’t gay I’ll eat my hat”.
Both wolves are correct.
just got here and i'm happy to see so much silmarillion content on tumblr. but everyone's doing ANYTHING to get new content. fighting for crumbs, i've seen morgoth vs fingolfin as giant christmas cookies and crochet elves (cute). at least we found each other. maybe the real silmarillion was the friends we made along the way
you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.
I'm going back to my roots. I've decided to reread lord of the rings, the second ever book I read :) (after the hobbit ofc)
the franchise gives me so much nostalgia. I love it sm.
and I love the movies too. ofc we always watch the extended cuts, it is the law
Of Celebrian
Having a lifetime love of Elrond means that, of course, I have a keen interest in the characters around him. Perhaps the easiest character to love, simply because of the lack of textual evidence of her and so as a reader your imagination can go wild, is Celebrian.
I have gathered all mentions of her in Tolkien’s works and they will all be undercut, with any additional information, in the hope that it will be a resource for all fans of Elrond, Celebrian, or any other character that she may have come into contact with. Please reblog if you have found it helpful, and let me know if you would like further posts like this for other characters.
This should be all you ever need to know about her all in one place!
If you have found any errors please message me. If there is any missing information please message me.
Keep reading
Maybe Turgon chose to follow his family to cross the Ice partially because his daughter kept having dreams of 'Tirion' getting destroyed in fire
(After Gondolin was built Idril would one day look at the city from some tower and went "oh no")
I honestly have no concrete opinion right now, I like letting all versions exist simultaneously for the most part. But other than the usual son or Fingon or Orodreth, some others I've heard, ranked on outlandishness:
Lalwen's son
Glorfindel's kid, where Glorfindel is in turn Lalwen's son
Son of Caranthir (sometimes +Haleth)
A random kid Círdan found in the trash and said "yeah, I can work with this"
Finduilas in disguise
Actually Círdan's kid somehow, not Noldorin at all, they're running a con
Either Eluréd or Elurín in disguise. Or both depending on the day.
A Maia who got bored
Two dwarves in a trench coat
The ambiguity is so funny I love it.
PLEASE send me ur who-is-gil-galad theories i am losing my absolute mind rn
do you ever think that elrond, who was born amidst war and lost nearly his entire family, created a house of his own to look out for all the war-torn, displaced families seeking refuge ?
Elrond: Hostage or not, sometimes it's nice being held.
Gil-galad: Are you okay?
2 other things i really love from this translation of finrod song battle!!!
1) the use of "a lo lejos" (far away) to describe nargothrond, and in the next line the use of "mucho más lejos" (much farther away) to describe the western sea. it feels to me like an emphasis on how far from home finrod is in this moment. its very bittersweet to me
2) "EL VIENTO SE LAMENTA" FOR "THE WIND WAILS." ALSJAKDHSHJAH. ok let me explain. this is the first phrase following the description of the kinslaying at alqualondë. yes lamentarse can technically be translated as to wail but it also has an obvious connection to lament, regret, grief, and so on. much more powerful i think in this context (probably not intentional but i could also connect this to manwë mourning the fall of the noldor and the slaying of the teleri...... just saying)
Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings is Queen of Nothing by The Crane Wives!
requested by anon!
We all know that Halenthir has impeccable vibes, but no one can convince me that Haleth isn't a raging lesbian. Luckily, there's an obvious solution to this problem: transfem Caranthir. In this essay I will-
linguistics hcs: voseo in (fëanorian) quenya
i am currently taking a course on spanish dialects and yesterday we talked about "voseo" which in oversimplified terms is a variation in 2nd person informal pronouns and verbs, e.g. tú tienes -> vos tenís. the rules and commonality of voseo depend largely on the region, so in some places it is the default, in some places it is not used or barely used at all, and in some places it is a complicated little shit (for example, here in chile, you will sometimes hear the tú pronoun with the vos form of the verb, e.g. tú tenís, and the vos pronoun is reserved for Very familiar or informal situations).
my knowledge of quenya grammar is pre-elementary, so everything i am about to say is based exclusively on what i think would be fun, but!!!! let's go back to valinor in the years of the trees. while i'm pretty sure tolkien never made a distinction between formal/informal 2nd person in quenya, i do think the noldor would have naturally created one (they were big fans of their monarchy which would lead to quite the hierarchical society, they canonically mess around w grammatical rules for fun, and i also can't imagine they wouldn't employ a high level of formality when speaking to the ainur or at least the valar in particular).
now, i am a big fan of the hc that fëanor created the exclusive 1st person plural in quenya (as in "WE do this but YOU the listener do NOT") so he could make subtle grammatical jabs at indis and her kids. we also know the fëanorians used linguistic differences as political markers (see: shibboleth of fëanor). ALL THIS TO SAY, i think fëanor also created a quenya equivalent of voseo. it's not an exact equivalent because of historical context and reasoning for the shift in spanish, but suspend ur disbelief. here's what i think happened in quenya:
c. the noldor's arrival in valinor, they introduced a formal 2nd person form ("usted" for the sake of comparing this to spanish) (this was probably also picked up by the vanyar, if u care) (i will think about telerin languages another day, i'm already giving myself a headache)
fëanor, in an effort to distinguish his house and followers from the rest of the finwëans (specifically the nolofinwëans bc this is fëanor we're talking about), introduced a More Familiar informal 2nd person (see: chilean voseo) used only among the fëanorians
fëanorian "voseo" functions very similarly to chilean voseo overall. the pronoun itself is reserved for very informal/familiar contexts, close relationships, etc, but the VERB takes over from the standard informal form ("tú" conjugations) in the fëanorian dialect as another political marker
so for example, fëanor would "vos tenís" his kids, but "tú tenís" fingolfin's kids
i am inclined to say that this shift happens after the unchaining of melkor, when the political divide is a lot more dramatic, and therefore the whole thing is very controversial, but definitely is the standard in formenos during the exile
could also be used for dramatic effect
imagine the scenes if fëanor addressed fingolfin w the Fëanorian Super Informal Pronoun in "get thee gone and take thy due place"
imagine the scenes if fingolfin addressed fëanor w the Fëanorian Super Informal Pronoun in "thou shalt lead and i will follow"!!!!!
the fëanorians in beleriand definitely preserved this, bc of course they did
whether this phenomenon exists in other languages besides quenya i am unsure
i am too exhausted after all that to write any sort of proper conclusion. i hope it made sense. feel free to ask questions or add things on. live laugh linguistics
Made this a little while ago, I'll be doing more when I have the spoons for it lol.
The Silmarillion as Vines
So during Rings of Power season 2, there was a bit of theorizing going around that Mirdania would turn out to be Celebrían. Personally I'm glad that wasn't the case. However it got me thinking. What if Celebrían was one of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain? With her parents living in Eregion for a while and all that, it could potentially fit in very nicely. I had to draw her of course.
So I've been obsessing over that AU(?) idea... I haven't got much concrete yet but I definitely have Ideas.
I've been trying to get back into writing more recently, so there is a chance I'll try to put together a fic with this concept. It would be my first real attempt at fanfic. 😬 I enjoy reading it but I've never really tried it for myself. So. Not sure. I'll see if this goes anywhere but I at least wanted to share the art.
it's crazy how people will use AI, something that kills trees, to 'create' Tolkien 'art' like JRR Tolkien himself wouldn't have hated AI with his entire being just for the tree murder alone... and that's not even getting to the artistic theft.
"average elf uses 3 brain cells a year" factoid actually statistical error. average elf uses 0 brain cells per year. Braincells Elrond, who lives in Imladris & uses 10,000 brain cells every day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.
For @aspecardaweek: Day Seven: Freeform
Elrond....was as noble and fair as an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as summer.
do you ever just think about how Elrond and Celebrian likely represent Tolkien's fear of being left alive, alone, without his wife, Edith... and then that very thing comes to pass... and then just start crying.... everyday i think of letter 340 and slowly feel my heart breaking more and more
Late 1st Age Noldor: We've made a king :)
Círdan: You've ruined a perfectly good child is what you did. Look at him. He has anxiety.
The tapestries made by the Aubusson manufacture based on the art of JRR Tolkien are currently exhibited at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris until May. @actual-bill-potts and I went there yesterday, they're so beautiful!!
These are all handmade tapestries, each is based on a Tolkien artwork (the Rivendell one has the facsimile on the right for scale).
Under the cut: group ID and bonus details
ID: 7 photos of the tapestries, which are each about 3m high, located in a 13th century monastery. The first is the map of middle earth, the others are illustrations Tolkien made of his books. The bonus photos below are details of the tapestries.
And Finrod fell before the throne
Piece inspired by the Duel of Finrod and Sauron from the Lay of Leithian rock opera.
See under the cut for some more inspirations (and a Leithian photo dump)
The pics with the screen background come after I already started on my piece but they match perfectly the aesthetic I was going for and I just wanted to post them anyways.
Another big inspo was the art used for The Battle of Finrod and Sauron by Clamavi de Profundis, here’s a mediocre screenshot:
Last in my inspirations were several fanarts I saw on tumblr using the a similar colour scheme with abstract swirls to represent the song of power.
Work in progress
The golden beads were too small even for my smallest, thinnest needle so I had to put them one by one directly on the thread. Time consuming but so worth the hassle, and the blue bit is done!
Now I can start on the red part, with even more tiny beads!
I was discussing with a friend about the translation choice for The Fellowship of the Ring in French. In the first translation, the translator Francis Ledoux uses ‘communauté’ for ‘fellowship’, in the meaning of ‘a group of people united by a common goal or shared traditions’*. This is almost exactly the same definition the online Cambridge dictionary** gives for ‘fellowship’. However, ‘fellowship’ has another meaning, a little outdated, that keeps the idea of a shared goal or interest but with the added nuance of a bond of friendship formed over this goal.
And that’s where the new French translation comes in, with the title La Fraternité de l’Anneau instead of La Communauté de l’Anneau. Daniel Lauzon chose ‘fraternité’ for fellowship, meaning ‘the bond between people within a same group, working toward a same goal’*** There is an outdated and specific use for ‘fraternité’ in the context of a medieval, feudal society, to design the bond between knights who swore to protect each other in battle and always fight for the same cause. And knowing just how much Tolkien was influenced by the Middle Ages for his universe, this seemingly trivial difference of translation has me foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. Because it means the translator, Daniel Lauzon in this case, really took the time to study and look for the exact nuance of a word to best render the idea of The Fellowship of the Ring in the translated title of the book. This is so in line with Tolkien’s love for languages and words, I am over the moon.
There is a big debate amongst French speaking Tolkien fans about old vs new translation but I am a hardcore defender of Daniel Lauzon’s translations of The Lord of the Rings because it’s the one that made me fall in love with Tolkien’s style and poetry even though it was not the original version, and that’s a feat. It’s not perfect, no translation is ever perfect, but it had this feeling of deliberate choice for each word to best render the multiple meanings of a sentence or poem. Francis Ledoux’s translation feels too dry and artificial to me, even though I love how he translated Strider by Grand-Pas, or ‘Big-Steps’
* https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/communaut%C3%A9/17551
** https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fellowship
*** https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/fraternit%C3%A9/35113
The riddles for tonight’s trick-or-treat are done. It’s by far not my best calligraphy work but for being something done in an hour while under heavy pain medication, it’s pretty good. I had a little accident with the ink at the end so I decided I might as well embrace the messy old scroll look and smear ink everywhere.
The ‘scrolls’ with a seal are riddles from The Hobbit and the other two are easier riddles for the younger kids.
Just a little poll to share some of my embroidery ideas and maybe inspire fellow embroidery enthusiasts. Feel free to make one yourself, and tag me if you post the result on tumblr so I can see it.
The difficulty level is largely based on the size of the embroidery. The larger it is, the easier to stitch. I do love a very small and detailed piece (see my Golden Flower Locket) but it isn’t very beginner friendly.
Anyways, all of these are on my to-do list but I already have at least four other projects to start and complete before Christmas so they’re not very high on my priority list. I already embroidered the horse-head banner of Rohan on a shirt I am making so it’s one ticked off on this list but I put it anyways for inspiration. The Doors of Durin (see profile pic) is the first "big" embroidery project I ever made and it was very fiddly with the details because of the small scale of the design.
Yandere Thranduil and female fairy reader headcanon.
YANDERE THRANDUIL X FEMALE FAIRY READER
🪽 he first met you in them woods he caught glimpse of your beautiful fairy wings . And as the king it his duty to find out what creature had such wings ( at least that what he told himself.)
🪽when he finally spoke to you he felt that you were ethereal.
🪽starts to call you his little butterfly and takes you back with him.
🪽he lets you explore as long as you don’t leave with out him.
🪽he starts to tutor you on how elves live and there past but in return he expects you to tell him all your fairy secrets.
🪽when you said you wanted to leave he agreed however he wanted one more night with you. He gave you lots and LOTS of wine too much for your body to handle.
🪽by then it was too late you woke up naked and a ring on your finger on his bed.
🪽he later explained it all to you and how now you can’t leave because you are a queen.
🪽you sobbed and begged him to divorce you but he declined saying “what about my reputation as king?” …
🪽you can’t leave now and if you do he will tear those pretty little wings off … so it’s best to stay by his side.
🪽he has no rivals .
🪽Legolas felt sadness for you he truest did he try to talk his father out of this madness he really he did . But his father ignored him.
🪽Gifts you jewels of pure starlight for you to parade around wearing.
🪽enjoys showing you off.
🪽one of the bad yanderes to have not the worst but definitely not the best.
🪽I wish good luck to you I really do just stay in line and you both will get on just fine ❤️
Thank you for this request ❤️❤️