just another blog about Tolkien

Calling all creators of Middle-earth—whether you wield a pen, stylus, or keyboard, it’s nearly time to return and see what stories are waiting for you this season. Artists will soon begin shaping the works that set everything in motion, and from there, writers will find the pieces that call to them and carry those stories forward.

From quiet corners of the Shire to darker roads best not walked alone, there’s room here for every kind of tale.

Whether you’re returning or joining for the first time, we’d love to have you along for the journey.

okay since people seemed to like my maglor design from the WIP crop of the enormous mereth aderthad painting, here is maedhros from the same! currently in way way more of a WIP stage than his brother as you can tell and i’m still deciding between giving him a pipe or a hookah, but do note the ear-tip prosthetic he’s wearing 🥰

Elrond Peredhel (dead wife montage edition)

1/2 of my offerings for @celrondweek is this fanwork-of-a-fanwork, a portrait of elrond as i picture him in the years start coming and they don't stop coming by @i-am-a-lonely-visitor ie the celrond of all celronds, which had the exact same foundational and formative impact on mid-twenties me as realising my favourite barbie was but a pumice stone session away from fitting into my favourite ken's clothes (i named them ben) was on 6-year-old me. anyway you know when you read a fic and you see someone write a character so remarkably and you're just like YOU GET IT. YOU GET THIS FUCKER. that is visitor's series for me. both elrond and celebhîr, but this one is elrond's moment. my little princess man, the dead wife in his husband's dead wife montage (yes i know elrond is technically alive but does elrond-in-late-third-age really count as alive the man would flap off the terrace in his slutty grief corset if even 0.005 more teaspoons of sorrow entered him), as imagined by celebhîr in aman.

The Silmarils, gouache on bristol paper, 42 inches (3.5 feet) in diameter

I made a thing! Illustrations about the story of the silmarils in red-figure pottery style. It was fun to work on such a large scale.

"Authors write for themselves" –> yes, and they post to share with others, kudos are great but comments let authors know what the readers actually liked about their fics, and interact with the readers

"I am so bad at responding to reader comments, I wish there was just an option to leave a heart to a comment like on Tumblr" –> a simple heart or a thank you is enough sometimes. If you expect readers to comment, then be expected to reply to those comments. Also one of the BEST things about fanfics is fandom interaction??? Like pls, let's talk even more about our favourite characters!!!

"I don't want to artificially inflate comments on my fic" –> ao3 is not a social media, no one fucking cares if you have 300 comments and half of them are your replies or if you have 300 comments that are just normal comments.

I don't know, I feel like with the social media going on, we stopped appreciating just being a part of the fandom and talking! AO3 is a platform to share our interests, to share our fics and most importantly, talk about them! We as a fandom cannot survive if there is no interaction. And personally, commenting and never getting a reply feels isolating.

Tagged by so many incredible people over the past three weeks; @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @balrogballs @starshadeemilyart @atlantablack @comeontakemyname @mircallaruthven @angamaite-der-ritter @seaemberthesecond @endless-natterings @bad-writer @beatles4ever65 @queerofthedagger @annarobots @nerdanelparmandil Tagging you all back! And also adding @fatbishonen @isilme-among-the-stars @ettelene @melestasflight @iceyvovo @amorbidcorvid

“Father!” It is Macalaurë, now, and Curufinwë younger, who hiss in worry. And hisses Ringil, also, as steel cleaves clean through hoary winds to meet Fëanáro’s cheek, cutting into flesh and nipping, even, into that gracile bend of his cheek’s bone. Blade hits skull. The aftershock climbs Ñolvo’s arm in little quakes, awfully warm. Dark and pin-fanged satisfaction blooms in him, a burgeon neath the ribs, which grows wilder still to drink from Fëanáro his stifled noise of hurt. My turn, Curufinwë, to mark you as mine. Finwean blood falls in streaks of highbred redness, rivulets curling to fill the shapes of Fëanáro’s burns afore they hit his collar’s lace. It is magnetic; hard to look away from. Even as they close in on each other again, slipping back into their dance, Ñolofinwë stares still, entranced by the path he has carved onto Fëanáro, and no less the idea he has altered Fëanáro evermore. “There is no shame in yielding.” How sweet to get to mouth such words. He rides the pleasure-wave and presses his advantage— more, and more, and more.

thinking about the practices like beta'ing (please tell me, did it make sense, the way their bodies moved in space? how did it make you feel? did it touch your soul? were there any typos?); translations, illustrations, affectual comments: the ongoing reciprocity of affect and the labor that goes into that.

thinking about fanfics written to be gifted: combing through a friend's ao3/blog/etc to make sure you know exactly what kind of freak they are because you want to give them the ultimate pleasurable fantasy experience (happy birthday, here are some feels, i crafted them for you by hand). then posting it publicly as a tagged gift so everyone else can join in too. a present for all.

thinking about the history of slash fanfiction practices spanning the last 50+ years and the way female and queer fans clawed out spaces for that, not only within the heteronormative patriarchal culture at large but within fandom spaces:

het fanzines and later websites refusing to publish slash or, at best, doing stuff like publishing it with a whole page warning and on a differently colored paper

cishet women writing and drawing slash smut for each other and having to hide it from their husbands; their secret, erotically-charged lives shared only with other women

diy typing out and printing of slash zines, of a 100, 200 pages each, to avoid printer screening and tracking; having to start own printing shops or finding queer-run ones; the materiality of it all

mailing slash zines for free and in secret to avoid not only copyright but sodomy and obscenity laws, like the (still active) federal mail law that criminalized mailing pornography, whether images or text (and how, when the 1964 Supreme Court ruled it inapplicable to noncommercial letters between consensual adults, the precedent excluded homosexual letter exchange)

thinking about fanartist Virginia Lee Smith, who, in the 1980s, drew explicit af K/S smut for a dozen zines, and her interview in 2009 about donating her 200 zines collection, where she said, laughing, "The reason I handed this over is because I know that my poor kid, if I die, will be so embarrassed[...] I know he's gonna burn them. Lost forever. So, I have no idea how many k/s fanzines have been burned quietly for that reason." thinking about how she said she outgrew it when she stopped drawing; and yet she kept all 200 of them anyway.

thinking about the ephemerality of pleasure and the continuance of shame.

«O death, where is thy sting?O death, where is thy victory?»