This sideblog is for additional reblogs from the Tolkien fandom, as an alternative to my main blog @hhimring.
I have made no particular rules for myself, but types of reblogs I imagine you might be especially likely to find on here are: edits, gifs, fics and rec posts.
Someone was asking about fic about the Angmar Wars, so I dug out this snippet about Firiel:
But then, Kaylee asked about where Aranarth was , and I found I had to write a second ( short) fic in order to work out where he was and what he was doin'.
[AO3] A "what if humans are space orcs" take on Dagor Dagorath. (Aka the prophecied apocalypse of Middle Earth. Scifi story accessible to non-LotR nerds!)
Elves weren't really supposed to leave Earth. That's what they told us—the Elves, that is, told people thousands of years ago, when Elves could still be found here and there. When I was born, elves were nearly as much a fairy tale as they’d been on Ancient Earth.
Elves weren't supposed to leave Earth, the Elves said in the fairy tales, and in a few old scraps of records scattered around known space. They literally weren't made for it. They could only do it if they brought Earth with them—Arda they called it, leaves or dirt, water or a rare bubble of air, perfectly preserved in a white crystal. There are tons of tales about Elves losing their lifeline jewels—their hearts, their silimirs—and roping people into epic quests to get them back before they—the Elf—faded to nothingness.
things to do in valinor when you're visiting for the second time
Thranduil hardly notices it at first: a stiffening in his fingers, an oaken tone to his voice, a tangling of his hair into something resembling leaves stirred by wind. He has always felt the blood of the forest pulse within his veins, sensing the moment the Necromancer settled in the shadows upon Amon Lanc, and he tells himself that this is no different.
But he cannot deny that Celeborn looks upon him differently, regarding him with an expression that strays somewhere between pity and fear. There is a new tone in his voice when he speaks to Thranduil, not as one lord to another, as they have for all the years they have dwelt together beneath Eryn Lasgalen’s green roof, but as a subject to his king.
More dangerous and less wise, the Noldor once called his folk, Thranduil recalls, drawing the words out of the dim recesses of his memory, where his memories tangle with the deep roots of the forest. He had laughed, once, and flicked his fingers. Let them say so, who have spilled so much blood over jewels. Less trouble shall we have if they fear us!
Perhaps, he considers now, regarding the knobbed lines of his fingers, their words were true.
I will leave soon, Celeborn tells him on a night of autumn, when the winds run keening through the branches and shake the leaves from the trees. I have tarried too long. He does not ask if Thranduil will leave with him.
Thranduil nods his assent, and Celeborn averts his gaze from the crown of living branches that grows upon Thranduil’s head.
He leaves with the dying autumn.
Thranduil strays deeper into the forest. As winter gnaws root and sap, he changes ever more and walks rootless amongst the decaying leaves, nameless, sorrowless, forgetting.
↳ tolkientober day 26: forests | AO3
Elrond has only snippets of memories of that night: Mama is gone somewhere beneath the waves, and around them the tower burns, and the wind howls like a hunting dog, and a huge white crane soars above the sea. Then around them the tower burns, and the window is broken, and the flower pot that was upon the windowsill is turned upside down, and Elrond wants to pick it up and to sweep up the clumps of dirt that litter the floor because he doesn't like how the roots look exposed to the air like that.
Then Elros is prying their fingers apart, Elros is saying something to him, Elros is pushing him away and going out, out the window after Mama and the sea and the bird, tiny among the white crowns of the waves. Then someone, a woman, picking Elrond up and carrying him down, wailing like the wind, past the fire, and they are on the beach.
Maglor--who is not Maglor yet but a cold wet stranger--is coming out of the sea, and in his arms is a little wet bundle of rags that Elrond does not at first recognize as his brother. He doesn't think to ask, then, if Maglor had dived for Elros or for the gems, and later he will not, because the answer will scare him. Instead he looks at the white clouds in the sky and the seagulls and the little brown pebbles underfoot and coughs because of the taste of ash on his tongue. Will the flowers be alright, he asks, will the flowers on the windowsill die? No, someone says, Maglor or the woman (who had the woman been?), no, they'll be alright. And the tower burns.
Part 32 of toi's indigenous tolkien series
[image description: eight green blue and black images
1: a forest lake at night, white text "The Awakening"
2: two Kogi (indigenous people from Colombia) people sitting by water
3: clear water with rocks below
4: mountain lake at night, white text "sweet ran the waters under unclouded stars"
5: lake shore with rocks
6: Kogi people sitting at base of a tree
7: Kogi man on a rock by a stream.]
Gwindor can hardly say what he notices first: the cold air that stings upon his still-raw skin; the scent of clean, clear air that slips beneath the smokes and fumes of Angband; the silence and stillness of the night, unbroken by the clanging of hammers; the feeling of his lungs inflating more fully than they have for the past fourteen years.
It is the light, he decides at last, blinking against the cold wind. Though it is night, it is not the utter darkness of the pits and tunnels, where the only light permitted to them leaked from the lanterns the overseers swung as they chose their next recipient for the lash.
A pale light casts over the broken ground, illuminating his way, and Gwindor peers up. The movement is painful—he has spent too many years bent and hunched, toiling in the dark—but he cannot resist looking up, even so. Bright points of light fill the sky—stars, he remembers, digging past lash and overseer and pain to memories he had long left untouched, fearing they might become sullied.
The light of the stars is cold and clear and lances through the darkness, piercing his heart, and he stands transfixed, remembering.
↳ tolkientober day 22: stars | AO3 | based on this art by @singsofecho
Heh. This was my very first work in Silmarillion fandom -- about Elfwine son of Lothíriel daughter of Prince Imrahil -- the streak of elven blood in Elfwine is actually fundamental to the plot. He is out at sea, and through some Valar machinations, finds himself in long-lost Beleriand, and has fallen in with a bunch of kinslayers, no less.
I honestly didn't know what I was doing, for this first work, and Bunn (inspiration and beta) had a heck of a time continually herding me in the right direction. Writing Tolkien is hard, and I respect all you writers who can keep the languages straight, let alone the cast of hundreds. :'D
But it was so much fun to explore the landscape and people of northern Beleriand, and end the whole thing in Gondolin. I really fell in love with that city, and have enjoyed everyone's writings about it ever since.
But anyway. Half-elves via the Silvan streak! Please enjoy Elfwine's adventures in Beleriand for @halfelvenweek.
THE EUROPA CLIPPER LAUNCHED THIS MORNING, AND I AM SO NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT!!!!!
Space is so fucking awesome. We're headed to one of JUPITER'S MOONS!
Every time a launch happens, it makes the latent space enthusiast in the back of my brain jump up and down. It also derailed all my plans for today. I did have plans.
Instead, someone made one comment about how I could now maybe make mission patches on my embroidery machine, and the space thing crossed over with my current hyperfixation (silm) to produce THIS:
Mission patch for the launch of Gil-Estel! A bit messy, but a good place to start!
Design and linguistics details under the cut, because I put WAY too much thought into it and now must talk SOMEONE's ear off about it. Feel free to ignore this bit:
i.
She stumbled into the settlement out of the dusk. Annael first thought her a trick of the mists, which lay thickly over the lake—the first harbinger of autumn. But a cry pierced the mists, and Annael, running to the blurred shape that dropped suddenly to the ground, found a woman heavy with child lying amidst the reeds.
She pushed away his probing hands, checking her for injury, and rose unsteadily and made as if to leave.
Annael caught her shoulder gently. “Stay,” he said, gesturing to the lights of the houses clustered around them. “Stay and let us aid you.”
ii.
Rían’s labor pangs came on the morning of the first frost. She labored from dawn until dusk, her cries carrying beyond the walls of the healer’s house.
Annael paced outside until her cries ceased, and the midwife came to announce that she had borne a son. Tuor, she named him, and said he would bring great good for both Elves and Men.
But Annael, admitted inside to help tend to her, read in her eyes the words she did not say: she saw no future for herself.
“Stay,” he murmured as he dried her brow. “Stay and recover your strength.”
iii.
In the days after Tuor’s birth, Rían slipped into a deeper grief and hardly stirred from her bed. Annael came to her bedside and combed her hair, grown matted and tangled, in slow, soothing strokes. He carried a basin of water to her bedside and washed her hair, then plaited it as a crown about her head.
Stay, he wove with his fingers. Stay and heal.
Rían did not speak but instead sat silent and hunched, facing east, a lock of golden hair clutched tightly in her fist.
As he left, Annael saw the traces of tears upon her cheeks.
iv.
Her milk came in fitful starts, and Tuor squalled in hunger. Annael’s folk had no wet nurses to provide the milk Rían could not, so Annael sat often at the table by her window and ground handfuls of meal into a powder that when mixed with water formed a thin gruel. He fed Tuor from the tip of a ram’s horn. When Rían had the strength, he placed Tuor in her arms and she did the same.
Neither acknowledged the satchel that sat by her bed. But as Annael laid Tuor in her arms, he whispered, “Stay. Stay and rest.”
v.
Rían regained enough strength to venture from the house and walk the shores of the lake in the early mornings. Her face had regained some of its color, though she still looked more bone than flesh.
She meant still to leave, to pick her way over the teeth of the Ered Wethrin and through the enemy-choked Anfauglith. With every step, she drifted farther from Mithrim.
Annael feared she would not survive the journey. He feared she did not care if she did.
He caught her arm as she stumbled. Stay, his fingers pressed. Do not throw your life away needlessly.
+1
Rían bade Annael farewell on the morning the snows came. Silently she placed Tuor in Annael’s arms, averting her gaze.
“I bid you safe passage,” he said as the snow fell softly around them.
She turned.
Stay, his heart said, for the mountains will be impassable and you might die before ever you cross them. Stay, for even the thickly falling snow shall not hide you from the enemy.
Tuor’s cry broke the snowy silence. Annael held him close.
Rían hesitated.
Stay, his heart said again, hope welling.
She turned and took Tuor from his arms. “Might we stay longer?”
↳ tolkientober day 9: devotion | AO3
Bilbo Baggins has found an old letter in Imladris, and enlists the help of Glorfindel to understand it.
I wrote this for @imladrisweek but it ended up being completed very late. Whoops. 4,405 words, gen, really just gentle ramblings of a retired gentleman-hobbit.
As our ProBoards polling feature is being glitchy please vote by sending an email to [email protected]
Self-rec time! What are your favorite five fics that you've written and why? After replying to this ask, feel free to pass on to five other writers to spread the love. 💗 — @emyn-arnens
My dear @emyn-arnens, you sent this to me weeks ago, and I saw it and then unfortunately forgot to answer it, because Real Life has been kicking my ass, so I want both to thank you for the ask and to apologize for how long this took me.
In some ways this series is the bane of my existence, and in other ways it's one of my favorite things I've everstartedwritten. I began planning it in 2011, began posting it in 2015, and, uh, still haven't finished it, whoops, because I think I need to drastically restructure the whole thing before I can proceed. But I've had a lot of fun creating my conlang, and Tókhesh/Tavoreth is one of my favorite OCs I've ever come up with for any fandom, not just Tolkien. I also really wanted to give the Easterlings the chance to be well-developed people in a well-developed society, instead of just being a glorified plot device, and I like to think that I've succeeded.
This story is by now quite old, written in 2011, but it was both my first foray into writing Caranthir and my first attempt at writing in 1st person -- a style I've since found works particularly well for Caranthir, or at least for my version of him. It was also my second story featuring Parmacundë, though she had yet to earn that epessë at the time this story is set, and was the beginning of my plan to work her into the broader story of The Silmarillion. I think I conveyed a particularly vivid picture of how I imagine adolescent Caranthir and what kind of person he might risk befriending.
I hold great affections for the Kidnap Family, as you have probably noticed, but damn, those poor twins must have been pretty messed up by the time they were returned to their parents' people. Transitions are hard even when you haven't began kidnapped and raised by the people who tried to murder your mother, and I thought it would be interesting to explore the turmoil the twins must have felt through Elrond's eyes. I feel like Elros often ends up getting treated as the conflicted twin, while Elrond is the one who is wise and serene, but I think Elrond should get the chance to be an angry adolescent full of turmoil, too.
This story is a favorite less because of anything I've done with the characters and more because writing it was a trip down memory lane. I spent large swaths of my summers as a child at a camp in the NJ Highlands, where we spent a lot of time hiking in the woods and swamps and learning about the nature that surrounded us. My fondness for those hikes and that part of NJ was really the driving force behind this story. I first encountered and learned about both ghost pipe and water hemlock at summer camp, which are the two plants that anchor this story.
Bet you guys were starting to think we'd get through this list without any representatives from my Woman King AU, but fat chance! The Woman King AU is my life's work, and this is my favorite installment of it. It's short, but I think I did a very good job of portraying Ereiniel's grief and pain following Fingon's death. Fingon and the shadows he cast after his death were a massive influence on the woman Ereiniel grew into, the Gil-galad she became. In some ways the Woman King AU is just as much about Fingon and his wife as it is about Ereiniel, because their choices, successes, and failures echo down to their daughter and shape the woman she grows into.
[Fingon/Maedhros | Explicit | 5k]
Written for @silmsmutweek Day 2: Seduction, Hook-ups, and a mesh of the inspo prompts!
Tags: Mereth Aderthad, Getting Back Together, Mutual Pining, Improper Use of Ósanwë, UST, Angst with a Happy Ending
Summary:
“A pity,” Fingon says, and his grin looks only a little forced. “Will you dance with me regardless?” Maedhros first instinct is to say no. Elbereth, he should say no. But he looks at Fingon with his flushed cheeks, the braids coming loose, the banked hope in his eyes. The way the slant of his mouth reveals that he expects a rejection, and how he asks regardless. Maedhros has always been terrible at denying him anything. It is why he had put half a continent between them, why he knew that coming here was a mistake before he so much as left Himring’s walls. --- Maedhros believes that Fingon deserves something better. Fingon disagrees.
We all know that Beleg Cuthalion met Gwindor in the woods of Dorthonion and that together they rescued Turin from the orcs.
This fic bravely asks: what if he didn't?
"A truly A+ failure on everyone's part to learn anything or change in any way." - the comments
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Major Warnings Apply (but everyone is very poorly behaved)
Category: Gen
Characters: Beleg Cuthalion, Turin Turambar (the one and only), Sons of Feanor (all seven), a Vulture
Words: 6063
Check out the full art here.
And Read the fic here:
Many thanks to @chechula for being an absolutely delightful partner and @tolkienrsb for running another excellent event.
Fireside chat / Glorfindel / Ecthelion
