The Stars in Arda

Im on vacation which means that I can experiment more around so have a overshot perspective of Elrond watching his Fish in one of his many ponds

(I used different brushes a unusual perspective + tried to do mosaic tiles)

Under the cut have a non moving version plus the bg gif without elrond and the stones!

Two Ladies on the Balcony by Hamman Edouard Jean Conrad

The Grey Havens are inspired by Santorini and Budapest´s mosaic roof

Fëanor & Curufin: Splendor. They are wearing Noldor informal daywear inspired by Baroque/Rococo European Aristocracy (17th–18th century), especially the Sun King and the extravagant courts of Versailles. Opulent, luxurious robes with theatrical flair and shimmering footwear. Fëanor is wearing the dramatic gemstones that once belonged to Míriel. Fingolfin & Turgon: Discipline. They are dressed in Vanyarin court fashion inspired by late Ming Dynasty China (17th century). I tried to portray the restrained elegance of high-ranking Ming officials and princes. Layered hanfu, structured silhouette, and minimal jewelry. Refined nobility rather than ostentatious wealth. Finarfin & Finrod: Harmony. They are the most timeless here in my opinion. They are wearing Telerin outdoor fashion inspired by Ancient Mediterranean clothing (particularly Minoan and Classical Greece) mixed with Art Nouveau. Lots of drape and movement, sandals (because the Teleri love walking by the sea), gold jewelry, olive greens, laurel-style headpieces, wrapped waists. I tried to go 'less' historical noble and 'more' idealized gods.

Close-ups of my favorite details I'm forcing upon y'all

FARAMIR & ÉOWYN

"And so they stood on the walls of the City of Gondor, and a great wind rose and blew, and their hair, raven and golden, streamed out mingling in the air."

latest finished commission, where i had the opportunity to go with my own vision of the characters, and here's what i landed on... they may look like squares but i know they freak4freak in their hearts etc.

And thus the Dagor Dagorath came to an end, thus the Second Song had sung, thus Arda, as it had been known for time and time was falling, changing, morphing.

And yet Namo did not feel relieved, not yet, not until he found him, as he waded through the debris, the people - Maiar, Valar, Orcs, Elves, Men, Dwarves, all in that hurricane, in an all-encompassing opus of destruction, after which only Eru Iluvatar knew of what would happen.

He had to find Melkor, his beloved, his one person, the one he had been waiting for all that time.

Melkor.

And he felt his own heart beat loudly, aching.

Melkor.

He had to move fast, before all disappeared.

And finally, he saw him, at the edge of the world, standing tall, waiting. "Melkor, my heart!" He called him, and stretched his arm towards him, eyes glassy, both desperation and love and relief and happiness all written all over his face.

And Melkor smiled, genuinely, stretching his arm too and grabbing Namo's hand, pulling him into his arms. "I am here, Namo, my little one."

Chaos and Death, Destruction and Doom, Storm and Silence.

Meeting for one last time, entangled forever even as all things ended. Them both now shedding warm tears of joy and happiness - they got to be together till the end, they both got to walk on the uncertain path hand in hand until the end.

Melkor leaned towards Namo, as the latter laced his hands at the back of his neck, smiling brighter than any star. "At last... No more pain, no more war. My end has come, and it was always tied to you." The Black foe told the Lord of Mandos, voice full of love and tenderness.

"I have waited for you, and you are here. I am glad, and without regrets. We shall have our soft ending." And Namo's words overflowed with the same love and tenderness.

They would be together, beyond Arda, beyond Ea, beyond the Void itself and whatever would come after, would carry the ashes of their love, along with the echoes of their last words.

And as the last sunset fell beyond the horizon, they kissed, their lips finding their way to each other, laced now in eternity.

And there was no pain, no sound, as they both faded away from existence, their bodies still pressed together, them still kissing each other lovingly, in spite of it all happening.

And when even the last ray of sun disappeared, leaving only an eternal night, they both were no more.

Only the ashes of their love and the echoes of their last words remained.

Ship + AU

Character(s) + word or phrase

Kissing in 3-6 sentences

curufin has better things to do than pose for picture day. he has a son to raise. baby tyelpe decided that he also has better things to do, like seeing if his father’s hair is good leverage for climbing (spoiler: it’s not)

see the rest of fëanorian picture day portraits

speedpaint below | support me on kofi!!

Going to claim these guys as my birthday art this year!

Here are all of the little guys that have reached their destination so far and have already been posted

They are, in order: Háma, Námo, Celebrían, Maeglin, Hiswiel ( @tar-thelien 's OC), Maglor, and Elwing

I genuinely appreciate everyone who took part in this. It was incredibly fun to make and be able to physically give art to people!

I think I might do this again in the future!

1. Who poses and who encourages the other by yelling sweet things at them?

2. Who sighs and rests their head on their partner’s shoulder while the other pulls them closer?

3. Who is more likely to start a pillow fight at an obscure time at night?

4. How do they greet one another when they come home?

5. Who laughs and exposes their cover when they try to playfully scare their partner?

6. Who starts the dance off in the kitchen while they are baking cookies?

7. Are they more likely to built a pillow fort with aesthetically pleasing string lights or sit in a bed of a truck looking up at the stars?

8. Who continually tries to prank the other but fails each time?

9. Who is ready to throw down and who is ready to make a flower crown?

10. Who gets the spider out of the house?

11. Who laughs so hard that they make no sound and whose laugh can you hear from a mile away?

12. Who is more likely to create an absolute disaster in the kitchen?

13. Who tries their best at a new hobby and who is ready to hype their partner up?

14. They get looped into going to a party they don’t wanna go to, do they, A) Get out of it with a mediocre lie, (what is the lie) B) Go and decide to try and have a good time, C) Go and decide to start chaos or D) Go and steal some food?

make sure to include the pairing(s) you are wanting these questions to be answered for . these should work for poly ships as well as monogamous . feel free to edit these as you see fit .

💕 How did they both realize “oh wait, this is actually love”?

🌹 Who fell harder & who fell first?

🫂 What’s their favorite way to hold each other when words aren’t enough?

🔥 What’s the pettiest thing they’ve ever argued about?

💋 Who says “I love you” first & how?

🌙 Who’s the little spoon & who pretends they hate it but secretly loves it?

💍 Would they ever get married? What would the proposal look like?

🧸 Who still has the very first gift the other ever gave them?

😈 Who is more likely to start chaos “for the vine” & who films it?

🎶 What’s their song - the one that makes them both tear up / grin like idiots?

☕ Who’s the morning person & how do they lure the night owl out of bed?

🛡️ Who jumps in front of danger for the other without thinking?

😳 What’s the most embarrassing thing they’ve walked in on the other doing?

💔 What’s the one fight that almost ended them?

🩹 How do they comfort each other after nightmares?

👀 Who gets jealous more easily & how obvious are they about it?

🍳 Who cooks & who sets off the smoke alarm trying to help?

🧳 If they had to run away together tomorrow, where would they go?

😏 Who is bolder in public (hand-holding, kisses, etc.)?

🌧️ Who steals whose hoodies when it rains?

🎂 How do they celebrate each other’s birthdays?

🖤 What’s the darkest “we’ll never tell anyone” thing they’ve done together?

💌 Who leaves little love notes & where do they hide them?

🛌 Who hogs the blanket & who ends up freezing dramatically?

😴 Who falls asleep first & who watches them with heart-eyes?

🚪 Who’s more likely to say “we’re not leaving this room today”?

🌸 What nickname do they have for each other that would mortify them if others heard?

🎤 Who sings in the shower & who secretly records it for blackmail?

💞 How do they act when one of them is sick?

🩸 Who would literally kill for the other & who would help hide the body?

🌅 Do they go on sunrise / stargazing dates? Which one do they love more?

😤 Who apologizes first after a fight, even if they weren’t wrong?

🧩 What tiny habit of the other do they find unbearably adorable?

🎪 Who plans elaborate surprise dates & who just wants to stay in?

👑 In their relationship, who’s the king / queen & who’s the knight / advisor?

🌪️ What’s the most chaotic thing they’ve done together on pure impulse?

💤 Who has the weirdest sleep-talking lines that the other quotes constantly?

🧡 What color reminds each of them of the other?

🕰️ If they could go back in time, what moment would they relive together?

😶 Who’s terrified of saying “meet my parents” & why?

🍷 Who gets tipsy first & starts spilling embarrassing love confessions?

🌿 Do they want kids/pets/plants together? What do they name them?

🪞 Who takes longer getting ready & who hypes the other up in the mirror?

💥 What’s the biggest risk one of them took for the other that the partner didn’t find out about until much later?

🧣 Who steals the other’s scarf / gloves “on accident” every winter?

🌌 What’s their “we made it through hell” memory they’ll tell their grandkids?

😘 Who kisses the other first thing in the morning, morning breath & all?

🩰 Slow dancing in the kitchen at 3 a.m. - who starts it?

⚓ If one of them had to leave forever, what would they leave behind for the other?

the problem of racism in tolkien fandom will not be resolved for as long as people believe that the mere act of critique is a violence in itself, and that therefore having made a critique, the person who has made a critique can either be unpersoned or that norms of politeness no longer apply. of course, this fandom is too "polite" to do slurs in askboxes for the most part, but there are other mechanisms of rude communications that fly in the name of "debate". do you think its polite to misread someone and then accuse them via that misreading, of not extending enough grace to a dead historical figure? personally, i think that's quite rude as a quibble, not least because of the total disengagement with the actual arguments being made. do you think its polite to send people snide asks for weeks on end, insisting on them defending their viewpoint, their specifically racial critique of the canon? personally, i think not! but you know, ymmv.

the problem of racism in tolkien fandom will not be resolved for as long as it takes (primarily) non-white fans doing the careful work of exposition and critique in order to uncover and engage with tolkien's racism and genealogies of his thinking for any non-apologetic engagement with tolkien and race to occur in fandom. and what do i mean by non-apologetic engagement? i mean that so far outside of a very small selection of tolkien academics (and a tiny handful of white fans) who i can all roughly count on my fingers, very few expositions of race in tolkien's work are not accompanied by a cringing apology that insists that a) tolkien was not racist himself personally and b) he was a man of his time and c) that there clearly were "exceptions" to his racial ideology in his works. this defensive pose allows the protective psychological mechanisms of political whiteness to continually step in and therefore absolve itself of engagement with race in tolkien's text. to put it plainly: i am claiming that the problem of racism in tolkien fandom, in specifically making tolkien fandom a hostile space for fans of colour, will not be resolved for as long as white fans cannot call tolkien a racist. if that sounds hardline, so be it.

the problem of racism in tolkien fandom will not be resolved for as long as it is largely only non-white fans investing the time and energy in expositing and critiquing race and tolkien specifically within a fandom space. it will not be resolved for so long as non-white fans are forced to rehearse and explain racist ideas, histories and thinking to white fans who refuse to do any amount of research themselves, or who settle on an anodyne "listen to non-white voices". believe me it is not very hard to do the research if you are actually interested in creating a non-hostile atmosphere and space for non-white fans. but that process has to be co-creative. i am inviting you to participate in actually doing this hard work of critique and conversation because you care about race and because, hopefully, you care about your non-white brethren within fandom spaces.

the problem of a hostile atmosphere towards non-white fans in tolkien fandom is not a problem that non-white fans can resolve, but one that i think falls to white fans to police, resolve and make socially unviable. if there is something i want to communicate persuasively, i think it would be this: what exactly do the norms of "politeness" in the fandom serve? how are you thinking about what is polite and what is not? what feelings are you prioritising when any attempt to engage with race is treated as "hurting" people's feelings or making things "less fun"? what feelings are being prioritised when discussions abt race in the texts are labelled "fandom discourse" or "fandom wank"? what feelings are being prioritised when a non-white fan is being asked to extend grace to a dead white historical figure? are you able and willing to police such communications even internally, even when you think non-white fans are absent from your conversations? when they aren't watching? or is it only something you become aware of when a non-white fan turns their eyes on you? these are questions i would like liberal white fans to ask themselves and to have a serious debate about.

Thanks for the question, and please bear with me re asks gang, I was stupid enough to leave inbox on for a while, not realising the post would break containment, so I’m snowed under atm ☠️

So there’s a lot of talk about Tolkien being ‘of his time and class’ but precious little about what that environment actually looked like other than comparing him to his fellow religious conservative Oxford dons. ‘Of his time’ is not a neutral statement and it certainly isn’t applicable to Tolkien, but more importantly, ‘norms of his time’ seem to often be, in this fandom, calibrated to ‘what Tolkien said’ rather than ‘what was actually happening then’.

Anyway, I will try to be a little more direct than in that last post. So the “the fundamentally racist elements of the legendarium are because Tolkien was a man of his time” line really annoys me (and others!) because imo it lets Tolkien's own Oxford tea table stand in for the entire twentieth century as if there wasn't an entire world outside the Inkling Orgy arguing furiously about race and empire.

I can give you an example literally from Oxford itself! The Indian Majlis had been meeting at Oxford since 1896! The Majlis, for those who might not be aware, was a full-on political and debating society which produced a fuckton of the people who'd go on to lead independence movements across South Asia. This was not some obscure footnote he would need to trudge to a specialist archive to dig up, and I can confirm that attending debates and discussion groups is, was, and has always been a large part of Oxford University life. Ie this was happening in his university in his lifetime among people of his class group he'd have had every opportunity to meet and engage with, whose existence he absolutely would have been aware of.

r u ok melkor