Children of Arda

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)?

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

💼 - What do they do for a living?

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies?

🎯 -What do they do best?

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories?

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

🌂 - What genre do they belong in?

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

🙌 - How many sibling does your OC have?

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival?

🎓 - How long have you had the OC?

like yes, tolkien said sauron is less evil than melkor bc he is devoted and obedient to him, i.e. catholic theological legalese, since love and obedience are the catholic virtue things that dont originate from evil. cool. ASIDE FROM THAT.

and like, melkor is totally MORE POWERFUL than sauron by like orders of magnitude. sure. melkor is the evil soup that suffuses the world like original sin and the fall do in catholic theology.

but like if in looking at intent and what they do, i dont think you can say that for sauron's relative power, i hesitate to say he is more evil, but he is evil in a more insidious and dangerous way common to our age.

like i see melkor very much representing the evil of the natural world (and to some degree part of the universal plan of eru iluvatar). he is volcanoes. he is the blight of winter. he is disease and pestilence and decay. he is the coming of darkness, the destruction of creation. the entropy of the universe. he desires the spark or life but can only subdivide endlessly like bacteria.

but that is part of the fallen world in theological terms even if it shouldn't be part of a healed world of immortal quasi spiritual (or actually spiritual) beings. it is imperfection if the goal is deathlessness. but it is part of the world.

and to a degree i see valar as having this sort of impersonal force of nature quality about them. not just melkor. they all do. tolkien describes them like heavenly bureaucrats. they arent tied to the world and dont understand the world in a tangible personal way that even the maiar do.

sauron is different and i think there is a reason sauron is the villain in the books in the second and third age and specifically in the main book he published. he is the evil of our modern world.

because most mythologies dont have two dark lords. one representing chaos and destruction and one representing order and coercion and industry.

it represents a fundamental swing in how cultures started to conceptualize evil. we mastered science and thus a lot of the things that were a curse from the gods were being solved. and yet. the world wasn't becoming less evil. we still want to control each other, to subjugate others. we want to tame nature so much it kills her and makes her barren. we covet power because we are afraid of the lack of it.

so yeah. sauron and melkor are both evil. but sauron was subject to melkor (or natural evils) until we subdued and chained him. and then sauron's evils were dominant.

(is this character analysis or fictional theology? idk.)

i love these characters because they are symbolic of how we conceptualize evil in the world, as well as being stand-ins for a certain character archetype. i dont have to write them just as them being evil. but they are great for writing about difficult subjects because of their symbolic nature.

Nan Elmoth in the days of Melian and Thingol

Special edition to my forests of Beleriand series! The ecology of pre sun and moon Beleriand is so fascinating to me

Melyanna's Love - Oil on canvas, framed 49x59 cm - "This painting depicts the extraordinary love between Melian, the Maia, and Thingol, the King of Doriath. Their bond was so profound that they both left their origins behind to live together. Together, they founded one of the most important Elven kingdoms in Middle-earth. As my first work with oil paints, it was important to me to capture the mystical aura of Melian and the regal presence of Thingol in a harmonious and timeless scene. The love and unity between the two are reflected in every brushstroke." Painted in 2023 No AI was involved in the creation of this artwork. The signed original painting and other prints, will soon be available in my shop ( www.linestyle-artwork.de )

(Music in Video by www.frametraxx.de)

"-for Lúthien was the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar. Blue was her raiment as the unclouded heaven, but her eyes were grey as the starlit evening; her mantle was sewn with golden flowers, but her hair was dark as the shadows of twilight."