Silm & Lotr Sideblog

galadriel's been around since the beginning, like, for pretty much all of middle-earth's history you understand, she has Seen it all and despite what you may have been led to believe is at all times this close to snapping. also the reason lothlorien is so chill is she has this magic ring that makes it so the whole place exists slightly outside normal time

i can't emphasize enough how much of a post-apocalyptic horror story thranduil lives in. homeland destroyed and half his people massacred. has fucken sauron in his backyard and the spawn of the primordial beast that eats light puttering about on his lawn. a dragon lives next door. does NOT have a magic ring and is therefore obliged to rule over his murderforest in normal time

just so we're all on the same page here, legolas' day job before joining the fellowship was to hunt the spawn of the primordial beast that eats light and it's not like, a big deal or anything. he just has to do it. he's used to it.

Ancalagon is an anomaly. Far too large to live in any meaningful way. He was born to die in the War of Wrath and to take as much of the world with him as he could.

He is created from thousands of parts. He is erratic, fragmented. He is constantly in agony.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds died in his development. Elven thralls who were forced to aid in and die for the creation of a weapon meant to destroy their homes and people. Those some of his parts came from. Those who simply got too close.

Bones fracture when his wings expand, acrid blood falls from the sky, staining the rocks of Thangorodrim, long before Eärendil lands a single wound to him

His flesh and bones poison the earth, the sky, the water.

A necklace was made for Finrod Felagund, king of Nargothrond. This epic device made all of its owners especially beautiful. But Finrod was beautiful by his own.

Arwen: I will give up my immortality, and my chance to see my mother and father again, because I would rather die with you than live forever after you’re gone.

"we're elves, but men want to replace us / you didn't hear it here, but daddy's a little bit racist"

Its very foundations shift and grown as the mountains struggle to accommodate it. Doors vanish, the passages are deliberately designed to be disorienting and, as I talked about on my time and space in captivity post, only a few beings have any extensive knowledge of the fortress’s plans.

Many of the denizens can traverse easily in the dark so entire sections of the fortress have no need for lighting. Prisoners sometimes wander for days or weeks in the darkness there and the isolation and despair this invokes means it is sometimes deliberately used as a punishment

The deepest caverns are as gaping maws and more than a few are swallowed by them. Rumors and horror tales of dangers beyond the denizens of the fortress travel around the prisoners but also among the soldiers and higher ups.

Angband will eat you alive, will trap you in its walls like a fly in amber…

He didn’t attack Luthien and Beren while they possessed the Silmaril, nor did he pursue Dior, or later Elwing after her father’s death. And it makes sense: he knew about the Oath and he wanted the Feanorians to do the work for him. He wanted to see elves slaying other elves, which was both practical and immensely satisfying to him. And it seems all of these factors were much more important than reclaiming ownership of the jewel.

Melian served in the gardens of Estë which are within Irmo’s domain and I’ve long had the thought that a similar magic that surrounds the gardens of Lórien is imbued in the Girdle.

I imagine the outskirts of the Girdle as disorienting, its borders mostly invisible though with some distortions of light in places that you can see if you look closely.

Strange lights can lead you astray and stepping upon certain rocks or patches of moss can render you witless, like in faerie stories of creatures that take the shape of plants or stones to bewitch unwary travelers who trod upon them

There does seem to be basis in canon for this too; in The Children of Húrin, when young Túrin and his guardians, Gethron and Grithnir, make it to Doriath, they are able to enter the girdle however they become “enmeshed in the mazes of the queen”. They would have starved if they hadn’t been found by marchwardens.

“Thus it was in Gondolin; and amid all the bliss of that realm, while its glory lasted, a dark seed of evil was sown.”

(ver. with mild blood under the cut)

Fingolfin!! for @southaway 's dtiys!!!! (I love the way you draw clothes, but after doing these "flowers", I understood they are too much for me. Like, how do you even do it???)