elthbe

Latest Posts by elthbe

Tove Jansson’s illustrations of Bilbo Baggins are my absolute favorite. I’m obsessed with the Roundness. He’s an officially certified Little Guy

There’s also something so powerful about seeing such a small round character design suddenly whip out a sword:

Again, about how the Legendarium begins and ends in fire...

Melkor being drawn to the Flame Imperishable started a whole story. The One Ring perished in the fire, and new beginning was made.

Fëanáro born in fire started a compilation of his actions. As he died in fire, a new era was made.

Maedhros coming back as fire provoked a flipping of narratives. Dying in fire started a new Age.

However, Nerdanel, while starting in fire, did not end in fire. She ended in water, where her story will remain to be written and mourned, and never ended and never started anew.

The same goes for her son, Maglor, who held fire in his soul, and did not end in fire, instead walking along the shores that separate him and his kindred.

In Tolkien, fire is of endings turning into new beginnings.

In Tolkien, water is of a story that never quite ends and that never quite begins afresh, forever haunting the timeline.

Maglor & Nienna

Not pictured: Maglors brothers being an absolute nightmare to mandos. He has them together, they immediately start making plans to break out. He separates them, they are somehow going more insane. At some point he just doesn't stop their escape attempts anymore. They are now the only elves to be illegally reborn.

btw niennas design is vaguely inspired by a statue of Mary

Tolkien writing kingdoms' moral decay and eventual decline: they exploited nature, destroyed forests and cut down trees

Tolkien writing male characters' moral decay and eventual decline: he stopped listening to his wife

Idril meeting Tuor for the first time xD

Idril is having a full shoujo manga experience, while Tuor is trying to navigate a political drama loll

At some point in the third age

Galadriel: I am the last member of the house of finwë on these shores. My brothers, my cousins, my uncles; everyone who came here with me is long gone. I am my family's last survivor.

Meanwhile Maglor on the shore:

Galadriel: Sometimes I can still here their voices

Feanor: You can trust me! Let's not forget who pulled you out of the lake when you were six.

Fingolfin: Let's not forget who pushed me in.

jrr tolkien: I write literally every kind of character jrrt: this is Beren, he's a wifeguy jrrt: Tom Bombadil, a total mystery but also a wifeguy jrrt: Treebeard, former wifeguy jrrt: Samwise Gamgee, future wifeguy jrrt:... jrrt: Turin Turambar, wifeguy gone terribly wrong

wdym i can't hug that guy that hangs on that mountain on his one hand? he's just a little girl

Tolkien writing kingdoms' moral decay and eventual decline: they exploited nature, destroyed forests and cut down trees

Tolkien writing male characters' moral decay and eventual decline: he stopped listening to his wife

A day in the life of taking care of hyperactive elflings~

Our favorite eldritch and less than sane beach bard, for day 2 of Feanorian week! I drew a very young and pleasant Nelyo for yesterday, so I thought it'd be fun to do crazy old Maglor today. I did try to make a more cropped version so you didn't have to see my messy sketchbook pages, but it just wasn't looking right (and the size didn't work well in a post). So please enjoy the random doodles, smudges, a stick helping me hold the page down, and what may or may not be a sneak peak for what's to come on the left ;0.

Close ups:

Maglor miiiiight be my favorite, so I really enjoyed drawing him!

Best uncle 🌟🌟

(the age here are probably not canon but hey, i'm free 🫡)

wish gimli was real so i could hangout with him. need a chill guy like that in my life

Morwen and Hurin

When Maedhros comes back from Thangorodrim, the sun burns him. It burns him like it burns orcs, burns him like he is one of Morgoth's fell monsters. And sometimes he thinks that the sun must be able to recognise the darkness in him, the fact that he truly is not so different from the other creatures of Angband that he slays. It's only centuries later that he realises: oh, gingers just do that

Currently thinking about the phrase "argue like an old married couple" and how elves live for thousands of years. Do you think there's been verbal domestic arguments that have gone for a week straight, no food, no water, no sleep, just one trying to leave the room only to say "AND ANOTHER THING!" before bringing up something that happened 750 years ago, pushing the argument on for at least another week?

Also thinking about interspecies relationships, imagine being married to an elf with a long ass life span where time doesn't mean anything and having to yell "fine you pronounced that stupid wine blend correctly, now can we stop talking about it, it's been TWO DAYS!"

do you ever think abt how crazy it is that tolkien meticulously crafted an entire world history, complete with discrete languages, cultures, value systems, the works, but then also popped in this one jolly fellow who likes to sing and love his wife. and oh he's been alive for fuck knows how long. might've even been around at the same time as og big bad melkor. no one knows what he is. elrond's just like he's a 'strange creature'. oh and he's also somehow impervious to the most dangerous object in the world. no biggie guys

The older I get the more I realize my dream man is Tom Bombadil.

⚘️⚘️⚘️

(insp)

I just dipped into Appendix F for an unrelated reason, and I think it’s funny that out of everything Sauron ever did — a master craftsman and teacher, a commander and conqueror, a deceiver and seducer, who achieved so much and, even in defeat, usually came verrrry close and tended just to reappear later all the stronger — one thing he utterly failed at was making Black Speech the common language of all his servants. He made grammar and vocab and syntax, and then the orcs could never figure out how to use his system. They ended up with such a hodge podge of fragmented, bastardized versions of the language that they were often incomprehensible to each other and had to fall back on Westron, the language of their enemies, to be understood even within Mordor.

It feels extremely JRR to me that he would let his Big Bad Villain kill and maim and enslave and despoil the environment, but he simply couldn’t allow Sauron to succeed at…linguistics.

all i want from life is to be goldberry of withywindle, living in the old forest with my weird little husband tom bombadil

Every fantasy story should have a Tom Bombadil type character. Fantasy takes itself way too seriously these days. Throw in a fucking random singing fairy weirdo you cowards. Oh it doesn't fit the tone of the story? Grow up. Your story isn't too good for a a random vaguely eldritch wife-guy singing random rhymes about on his walk through the woods.

"And it is told of Maglor that he could not endure the pain with which the Silmaril tormented him; and he cast it at last into the Sea"

man i wish romance was real and not just something Tolkien made up for his books

I was thinking of Beren and Lúthien and how their story is so much more interesting than they get credit for. I mean, on the surface it reads like a fairy tale but it also elevates the rest of the story, it uses common fairy tale tropes but turns them upside down, and the way we see the heroine asserting her agency in this story is so fascinating. I think the story of Beren and Lúthien provides much needed contrast for the rest of the Silm, and both become more poignant because of this contrast. 

The familiar fairy tale goes like this: there's a a poor but resourceful peasant, set with a difficult task (which is in fact designed to be impossible to complete), but thanks to some magical help he is successful, retrieves treasure, and as a reward he wins the king's daughter and lives happily ever after as a prince, gaining all the earthly glory one can have in this life. But in the Tale of Beren and Lúthien, the hero is a traumatised outlaw, the king's daughter IS the magical help, she is an active and equal participant in the quest for her own hand in marriage, the treasure may actually be cursed, the hero and heroine die, and the ultimate reward is not a social rise from rags to riches. Beren does not become a member of the power-wielding elite of Doriath and he and Lúthien are not promised that their second life will be happy or long. But just that chance is worth it, and by choosing it they actually change the course of history. Lúthien is offered all the bliss that is possible to have in Arda, if she will give up Beren, but she decides that the love she has for him is still more valuable. And that idea, of loving someone so much that your love shifts the world, is so compelling to me. 

And I love that the story of Beren and Lúthien is also a rendition of Orpheus and Eurydice, and that just as the world was created in the Music of the Ainur, so is Lúthien's song powerful enough to change what those original notes dictated. She changes it with hope and a song. That is so simple and yet so beautiful, in the way some of the best myths are. (Insane that this is essentially a love-letter to Edith Tolkien.)

There is this fascinating contrast between Beren and Lúthien: at the time of their first meeting, Beren has lost literally everything and his family is either dead or lost beyond retrieval. Stumbling across Lúthien, he is fresh from terrible ordeals and suffering. But Lúthien's life has been full of happiness and without care, and she has lived in a literal fairy kingdom as the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar. She could have her pick of any prince of Eldar. But here she comes across this mortal, who has nothing to give except for his love and even that only for a brief time, and she is willing to risk all she has for it. The gall and courage it takes to take such a chance! She chooses this man and her choice changes everything. 

And that is brilliant! Because Lúthien starts with so little power and agency, and she is constantly belittled or even abused by those with more power around her. She is treated as a pawn, her will is undermined and she is coerced and imprisoned to make her compliant. But Lúthien shows her determination and courage in holding fast to her choice even when it's just her and Beren against the world. In the end, she wins agency and freedom to determine her own tale. In her beginning Lúthien is a maid dancing in the woods; by the end she will have faced Satan and death itself, and changed the world forever. Truly, to call her story "Release from Bondage" is more than appropriate. How insane is this all from Beren's point of view? He has lost everything, he is an outlaw, and has nowhere to go. What is left of his family is scattered who knows where. He has nothing but the clothes on his back and nothing to give. But here is this immortal princess, and she will go to hell and back with him! She will cross the Sundering Sea to bid him farewell! She pleads with inexorable death and for her, an exception is made!  It's so on brand for Tolkien that these two achieve with their love, and precisely because they act out of love, something that others with armies behind their backs can't even imagine doing.

Yeah. It's such a good, hopeful, bittersweet tale.