Tolkien Writing Kingdoms' Moral Decay And Eventual Decline: They Exploited Nature, Destroyed Forests

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!

👑Nerdanel 👑Eärwen 👑Anairё

on a scale of one to spontaneous combustion, how pissed off would you be if your rightful property was

Stolen

Stolen

Claimed by another

Stolen

Stolen

Passed down as an heirloom

Wilfully kept from you

Passed down as an heirloom

Wilfully kept from you

Actively removed from your vicinity

Used as collateral in an underrepresented diplomatic negotiation

Sent to space.

Random moments from The Silmarillion part 4

Now I can’t get the idea out of my head of Finrod talking to every sea creature he can, trying to get messages to Maglor. Everything. Crabs, seagulls, pelicans, you name it. If it’s a creature that inhabits the sea or wanders the beaches, he makes friends with it.

I bet you anything he sings to whales and speaks dolphin.

Maglor doesn’t understand why he can swear he hears them singing his cousin’s songs to him.

Tove Jansson’s illustrations of Bilbo Baggins are my absolute favorite. I’m obsessed with the Roundness. He’s an officially certified Little Guy

There’s also something so powerful about seeing such a small round character design suddenly whip out a sword:

Lúthien is such an interesting character. She could’ve easily been written as just a pretty princess sitting in a tower, waiting for her beloved to come back with the treasure he stole from "a dragon". But instead, we get her rescuing him from one villain, then heading straight to the main bad guy and doing all the work herself AGAIN.

And it doesn't mean Beren didn’t deserve her or anything—it just proves they were equals in that journey. They both wanted to be together, and that’s why she was so eager to help and save him. It was her fate on the line too, and she wasn’t about to take a passive role, just sitting around hoping Beren would succeed or accepting failure if he didn't.

And I adore how cruel she could be when she wanted. Remember the words and threats she threw at Sauron—he totally deserved it because, well, he’s Sauron—but still! Seeing her as not just the quiet, lovely maiden all the time, but actually being allowed to express anger and be intimidating? That’s so fucking cool. I wish more people in the fandom focused on that "bloodthirsty" part of her personality, by the way. I want to see more fanarts of her being furious and scary.

I know it doesn’t seem that extraordinary today because we have plenty of badass heroines now, but Tolkien started writing this story over 100 years ago. Sure, he refined it over time, but still. He gets criticized for how he portrayed most of his female characters—rightfully—but I think it’s really impressive that someone who could’ve just been a stereotypical princess actually got the chance to take a large part in the action, even a bigger role than the hero and her lover. (Of course, that’s not the sole reason why she’s interesting and well-written—there’s way more nuance to her personality than just being able to kick ass and cast magic)

Here’s a sketch of Maedhros from my work-in-progress fanfic about the Ambarussar starting a religion. Mae hasn’t heard from the twins in years, so he goes to check on them. He soon starts to feel severely overdressed when he arrives at the twins’ isolated ascetic cult community where everyone wears the same brown tunic (he has zero clue what he’s walking into.)

I aim to draw the twins next but alas they will be less sexy since they are quite emaciated, especially Amrod

A5 paper, markers, took about three hours