#all i know is that i want my melkor design to be dynamic in the fourth dimension. and maybe include black holes. he's gotta be void creatur

[winds-of-zephyr416]

Eldritch evil? No, no no no no no. You mean angry barbie doll.

All jokes aside I've been incurably obsessed with the way Morgoth deteriorated throughout the Silm. Especially reading it as his own fault. There's something so fascinating in a villain who had nearly all the power in the start and basically none by the end, not because of some glamorous defeat, but because they wore themselves so ragged by being evil that they destroyed themselves in the process.

And also I wanted to mess with his hair again. I'm a simple man.

[edensrose]

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ꒰❀꒱ 𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐲!𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐮 ❜࿔

( ❀ ) ˙ ˖ manwë⠀& melkor⠀ ❜࿔

· ⊰ synopsis. manwë deals with his bastard of a brother whilst they try to pick a new colour scheme for their syndicate. he quickly remembers that there is no one who can drive him up the wall more than melkor ( dark themes ៸៸ blood mention ៸៸ corpse ៸៸ strong language )

· ⊰ note. idk but I've just been feeling them lately. their dynamic in this au is one of my favourites

─────── .°୭̥ ✿ˎˊ˗ au info post

♡. — 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒂 𝒅𝒂𝒎𝒏 𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒖𝒓

"Hmm."

Pale violet sweeps over the newly decorated wall. His cruxed index finger pressed against his lips and his thumb stroking beneath his chin for added effect.

"Not sure. Don't think I quite like the shade of red."

A click of tongue sounds through the office.

"You complain too much." Manwë rolls his eyes to the ceiling and flexes his hand against the wall. "What's wrong with it? You didn't like blue, you don't like red, what exactly do you like then?"

"Maybe black?" Melkor offers, running a thumb along the wall. As though feeling the new colour was possible.

"Vilisse is black." Drips Manwë's obviously exasperated tone as he arches his brow. "I thought Vilisse was green?" Melkor counters to which his brother sighs and shakes his head so that white locks bounce around him.

"Are we gonna settle on a colour or are you just going to paint fucking rainbows all over the syndicate?"

"That a challenge?" Melkor meets his sibling's irritated expression with a grin and a quirk of his brow. "I quite think your desk will look splendid in hot pink." He motions to the aforementioned wood to which Manwë tightens his fingers once more.

"That's Italian Maple you dick."

"Oooo fancy." Shrugs the older as he flicks his finger and sends a droplet of crimson onto the revered Italian Maple desk. "As if you couldn't just import a new one, Tweetie. Don't be such a scrooge."

Manwë inhales, reminding himself that his brother is right and refraining from slamming his head into the desk he had just stained. Instead, he fights back the urge to roll his eyes once more at the childhood nickname. It was hard to believe who was the true older of the two.

"The task is still at hand. What colour are we transitioning to? Lest you want to keep the old man's design?"

Melkor groans and hangs his head back after stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Decisions, decisions. . . How about purple? Maybe blue?"

"I thought you said no to blue?"

"Well I change my mind."

"For fucks sa —"

"You know what? I actually quite like the red."

With that last sentence from his brother, Manwë finally relaxes his fingers from the head of hair he was flushing against the wall. A loud thud echoes through his office and he nonchalantly steps past the body laying on his rich wooden floors. The crimson stains drip from the wall and soak into the ground as Melkor admires the 'shade of red'.

"Hey now," the older chuckles as Manwë's shoulder knocks with his as he makes a beeline for the door. "No need to throw a tantrum." He muses, spinning around to face the other's back. "All that blood's gonna get on your precious Italian Maple y'know!"

"Clean it up then." Manwë mutters, retrieving his handkerchief to clean his fingers from the sorry soul whose blood became a paint sample. "And come find me when you're done playing these fucking games."

He receives only a mocking croon before Melkor thinks to himself. Just before his brother leaves the doorway he calls out, stopping him dead in his tracks.

"You know, I think gold would do the trick. What do ya say?"

A moment of silence fills the office before Manwë glances over his shoulder with a curl on his lips. "Gold for glory. I like it." And with that, he steps out, yet not before calling back.

"I'm serious about that blood. Clean it up, lest I overload your flask with gasoline."

"Bastard."

"Dick."

· ⊰ masterlist. 

· ⊰ tip jar. 

· ⊰ get tagged for my writing. @kiatheinsomniac @m-shade @qwerty-19923 @tinkywinky27 @weird-addiction @yonjisu @a-contemplation-upon-flowers @noldorinpainter @singleteapot @floraroselaughter @a-world-of-whimsy-5 @ashfromvolcanoes @miriel-estelwen @wandererindreams @cilil @natchayaphorn @someoneinthestars @asianbutnotjapanese @cipherwheeldecoder @stormchaser819 @all-things-fandomstuck @tumblertatiana

( ❀ ) ˙ ˖ please consider liking, reblogging and / or commenting if you enjoy my work! all feedback is greatly appreciated ♡

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

@restitutor-orbis: I saw bad takes about Manwë, so can I kindly ask for some headcanons you have about him and Varda?

Ewwww people still think it makes them special to hate on Manwë? Their loss :)

Anyway, I am always thrilled to provide headcanons on the ultimate power couple. Also I have some more headcanons on our beautiful bird king here so if you want to look at those

Both of them are levelheaded, open-minded people, so while they can have serious disagreements, it hardly ever escalates to the point of raised voices being involved. Most of the time, when they don’t agree on something, they talk about it and give each other the space necessary to express their opinions. When there are strong emotions involved, they take some time to cool down before approaching the issue. Basically, communication is A+, so nothing ever threatens their relationship.

Since I headcanon that the Ainur identify each other more through “feeling” each other’s ëala rather than through the five physical senses like the incarnates, their sense of identity isn’t at all changed by appearance. (For example, Varda could decide to take the form of, say, a glowing orb and all the other Ainur would still recognize and think of her as Varda as easily as if she was in a more humanoid form.) Which means Manwë and Varda have fun switching up their appearances, into all sorts of wacky physical forms, and showing each other - to them it’s just the same as making clothes and getting each other’s opinion on the designs.

Bantering and bickering, all in good humor. So many inside jokes between them. They were close friends long before they were married, and their general dynamic hasn’t changed.

Before Melkor’s fall, the three of them were a happy trio. Varda also has no personal hatred of Melkor, but she is disappointed in and frustrated with him the way a sister would be disappointed in and frustrated with a (very badly) misbehaving brother. Both Manwë and Varda mourn Melkor’s fall, although Manwë takes it harder. When he’s feeling dejected, distressed, angry, etc., over what his brother’s doing, Varda is his chief comfort.

Before Eä, when the two of them were younger and still figuring out what they could do with their powers, they would get together and show each other the new gimmicks that they came up with. Varda was probably the first person that Manwë showed a “tornado” to, and Manwë was the first person that heard about Varda’s idea to make these spheres of light...

They know how to relax! Before they descended into Eä, their down-time was a lot more chaotic than in later ages. Since they didn’t need to worry about destroying anything in the Timeless Halls, and there was infinite space for them to go off and do their thing, they could basically try out anything they wanted with their powers to blow off stress and worry. After making their home in Eä, they’ve adopted more “human” ways to de-stress that won’t cause the elves to run away in fear. Wine is nice, though neither of them can ever really get drunk due to the flexible nature of their physical forms. Reading together, just basking in the silence and in each other’s presence, is a favorite too.

I know Tolkien said the Ainur don’t have sex, but I see nothing and hear nothing. (In seriousness, though, my Ainur can and do have sex, but they can also choose not to. I have thoughts™ about the Ainur and their interactions with the more physical side of things, which you can see here.) Manwë and Varda, too, enjoy it, although neither of them have a super high/insatiable drive. Don’t want to get too spicy on a fairly wholesome list of headcanons lol, so I’ll just say, the people who think the Ainur are all “conservative”, and that Manwë and Varda probably have a super dull sex life, are dead wrong :) 

Both of them are naturally down-to-earth and approachable people, and they like interacting with the elves in Aman. They’d much rather be close and friendly to others than get the whole “hail the king and queen of Arda” shtick, so over the years they’ve actively encouraged the elves to be less formal with them. It paid off - often you can see them separately or together, walking among incarnates, visiting shops, meeting and talking to people, etc. They’re good friends with Ingwë especially, and very close to his family.

Manwë and Varda know each other extremely well, to the point that it’s hard for either of them to hide things from each other. More times than not they can probably guess exactly what the other is thinking, and even if it’s not exact they can easily gauge each other’s mood from just a glance. For many people it might be unnerving to have someone else know you so well, but Manwë and Varda both take great solace in the fact that they’re so intimately familiar with each other. They both know they have each other’s back always.

They’re on the same wavelength when it comes to comforting each other. Their favorite method, of comforting and being comforted, is the same - they just let their ëala meld together, and stay like that in silence for as long as they need.

[lady-byleth]

Hey, why do you ship Angbang so much?

Anon! Omg anon, you have impeccable timing and I’ve been waiting for this question my whole life! Or, well, since I joined the fandom anyway xD

are you one of the three who’ve been going through my angbang tag and liking everything? COME OFF ANON SO WE CAN CHAT!

Okay, there’s two answers to this so settle down!

One: because I absolutely love imagining their dynamics. Melkor is the guy who wants to destroy what the Valar and Eru put into the world because he doesn’t like any of it. It’s not what he wanted, not what he imagined, so it has to go! 

Simply put, his ultimate goal is the destruction of anything that wasn’t his. Out of envy, hurt pride, all the good stuff. 

He was the Chaos of the two.

Mairon, on the other hand, really wants everything to be completely perfect. He wants order, he wants control, he wants beauty of his own design, and he has this desire to control! If he has to subjugate all of Middle-earth to achieve his own form of order, so be it.

So basically, Chaos and Order. They should have clashed, it should have been impossible for them to work together. But it wasn’t! It worked out perfectly for them because Mairon didn’t actually want to rule. He wanted to serve and Melkor needed a powerful second and somehow they fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

And imagining how that worked out, how it happened in the first place, and what their interactions were like is absolutely fascinating!

The second answer is much more personal… 

I have clinical depression. I have clinical anxiety. I am gonna be in a clinic sometime this year because of it and am actually officially handicapped because I am unable to live a normal life. 

Most days, I can’t imagine a single reason why anyone would like me. 

Hell, I can barely wrap my head around the idea that my friends don’t all secretly hate me.

So, if I look at certain Angbang fanworks - by others and by myself - and see these absolutely horrible people find love, real and soft and genuine love, I think “if these assholes, these world destroying and unrepentantly evil villains, can have that…who’s to say I can’t?”

Ya know it’s…very personally important to me. You could say I use it to cope…

Wow, that got kinda heavy there. Uhm…so anyway, thanks for this anon. I really, really needed this today. 

seriously, come off anon so we can chat!!!

[asgardian--angels]

for @maylovely because you asked about why some people don’t see melkor as evil. i didn’t want to hijack your post with this super long thing. this is something of a summation of many different metas i’ve never gotten around to writing but i hope it even begins to express my thoughts on the matter (as nothing i write is ever comprehensive enough...). i’m not trying to disagree, because every person in the Silm fandom views the story differently. Hope this helps you maybe understand where some of us are coming from though? 

OK HERE GOES

I think it comes down to a couple things: what source material you’re looking at (just published Silm, Unfinished Tales, HoME, etc), and what perspective you view Middle-Earth from. I am definitely in the camp that believes Melkor isn’t evil, because to me Tolkien designed a world with no ultimate good or evil, that everyone is a mix, and furthermore, what is ‘evil’? Evil is a human (out-of-universe speaking) construct used mostly to judge other humans. In-universe, evil is used to represent that which actively works against the freedom of the Children of Iluvatar and seeks to mar Arda away from the vision of the Valar, which supposedly is also the vision of Eru himself. These are both extremely flawed ways of thinking when looking at Melkor, because 1) he isn’t human, and 2) defining evil as something that threatens your existence as you know it is super anthropocentric and does not tell a complete story.

To explain:

I know you tend to focus on the elves in the Silmarillion. A lot of people do. We’re going to obviously gravitate to groups of characters that act and think like us. Thus, you and others are looking through the eyes of the elves as they view the acts and deeds of Melkor - of Morgoth, as they call him. If one is looking through a purely mortal lens, then yes, the things Melkor does is the epitome of pure evil and you’re both goddamned terrified of him and absolutely loathe him with a burning passion (I know you don’t, but I’m just saying, if you were an elf). He threatens everything you know and hold dear. He’s tortured your kind and keeps them as slaves. He spilled the first elven blood. By every definition there, yep, evil. That’s valid, that’s fine! Obviously we are supposed to view Middle-Earth and its stories through the eyes of mortals. No one’s rooting for Sauron to get his ring back, not even me.

But I choose to see things from the perspective of the Ainur, and that which is even greater than the Ainur - Eru and the Great Music, and when possible, even beyond that to question what is the nature of Ea and the Void and hell, where did Eru come from anyway? Loads of fun, never many answers. But looking at the story from this POV changes a lot, especially how one thinks of Melkor. Melkor is the greatest Vala, the most powerful Ainu, he who was given the special gift of the wisdom of all other Valar combined - that is, while each Vala governs a specific element of Arda and can only comprehend that one small piece of reality and the great plan of Eru, Melkor can see it all. This is HUGE. One could argue his worldview is actually the most accurate, if you can sift through the resentment and shame and abandonment issues that cloud it. He knows more of Eru’s design than even Manwe (so why isn’t he king? ‘i’m not bitter,’ melkor says, bitterly with a bitter expression). Thus, it is fair to say that his treatment in Arda by the Valar is unjust. This is a really big topic, I’ll tl;dr it. They cannot possibly understand his role in Arda because it’s beyond their sphere of influence. Only Melkor can know what Melkor’s purpose is, even though he can know all of theirs.

So what is it? Like all Valar, he governs a realm, that which he thought of himself in the Song. His is even more expansive than his kin, to match his knowledge of the other elements. Fire, ice, rock. The core materials of Arda. More than that, decay, upheaval, entropy. Change. He is the Vala that maintains Earth’s dynamism. That’s his job. It’s a big one, and Eru made him fit for it. He needs the knowledge of how all things on Earth work. Now, Melkor is ruled by fate and his nature, and he cannot fight this, nor should he. Would one demand Ulmo live on land, or that Orome never hunt again? The rules are the same, and yet, he is treated differently. This is because his duty conflicts, in the limited perspective of the other Valar, with the intent of Eru, which is the maintenance of Arda as a paradise, eternal, unchanging. Melkor’s work destroys their creations, and thus it must be wrong. This is their biased point of view, for they cannot know Eru’s true intent. So you have the Ruling Powers all against Melkor, even his own brother, and they pass this on to the elves, starting them off with that viewpoint, and no one except Melkor (and his chosen few, Mairon included) actually freaking understands that his job is necessary and he’s just doing what he was made for. The Earth cannot be stagnant, change - even cataclysms - must occur for life to grow and evolve. It threatens that which exists, but offers opportunity for adaptation and survival, and a new place for those in the future. In the long run, Melkor’s work would help the creations of the other Valar, particularly Yavanna. It would never wipe out the Children of Iluvatar, just force them to evolve, become wiser, more wary, skillful, and hardy. However, the Valar and the elves see it only from the present - our creations and livelihoods are threatened, he wants to see it destroyed. He is Evil. No, he is the Earth. Impartial to that which inhabits it. The Earth doesn’t care whether you live or die. You are utterly meaningless to the Earth. Your life holds no value. You adapt to this inevitable change, or you go extinct. Not its problem. No one’s asking the Earth to halt continental drift or sea floor spreading, are they? No one can prevent volcanic eruptions or avalanches or mass extinctions, they are a necessary term and condition of dwelling here on Arda. The fact that this force has a face and a voice suddenly makes it subject to our moral code, which is, Don’t hurt us!! Sorry, doesn’t work like that. Melkor’s a force of nature, the biggest one in fact, and since he was made he’s been shamed and ridiculed for being who he was simply because no one else had the capacity to understand his role.

During the time of the elves, a LOT happened. Melkor was fundamentally changed by the silmarils. I put forth the argument that throughout his time here, he’s attacked sources of holy light, the most powerful thing in creation apart from the Flame Imperishable, not (only) because he was petty and bitter and wanted to get back at his kin, but because as a force of entropy, he can’t help but be attracted to them. Bringing things from a high energy state to a low energy state is sort of his gift. The silmarils messed him up. Everything in his life went downhill after he stole them. He’s suffered from a lot of internalized issues forever - what I’d talked about above, but also everything concerning his right to Arda as king and how he was wronged there (I am, also of the belief he does have standing for that claim), and a nice slew of fear (being the only Vala to be able to even feel that emotion - scary imo) and abandonment issues and self-loathing. When he took on the burden of the silmarils, these things intensified and weighed on him. His fear turned into extreme paranoia to the point where nearly all of his actions were driven by it. He was willing to go out of his way to try and secure his safety through torturing for information (not a great success rate there), making rash decisions, and literally cowering in his tunnels like a naked mole rat. He predicted his impending doom and was clawing at any way to avoid it until he fell into such a pit of despair about it that he just gave up and let himself be taken. He was just so tired. But to stay on topic - I just view all of his actions in the First Age from a non-human perspective, as he would, seeing people and individual lives as meaningless and inconsequential (Sauron’s biggest mistake actually, as that became his undoing multiple times. Also, hint, the other Valar don’t really care as much as they claim to about the cost of mortal lives). He acts on the scale of Gods, not Man. To me, from this perspective, he is not evil. I’m not saying from a different perspective he can’t be. We don’t really know for sure Melkor’s true goals and intentions, seeing as no one ever cares to ask him. I have plenty of firm theories, and they concern themselves with Arda, Ea, and the Void, and no where in that list is included Iluvatar’s children.

Whatever Melkor’s done, it is a part of fate. He has not rebelled, he has not broken any rules, everything he’s done has been within the realm of Eru’s intent - and everything Eru’s done in response to Melkor has also been to drive this ultimate plot forward exactly the way it must. The Valar more than any other being are driven by their nature, they have far less, so to speak, autonomous choice. They cannot change. If they did, the world would go topsy-turvy, and that includes Melkor most of all. The others physically cannot see that, illustrated by their audacity to claim that the world doesn’t need him and they can just boot his Vala butt out of Arda. The paradise of the Valar, stowed away for their eyes only (and the elves who were Good Children) cannot last forever, and then it will be Melkor’s time to return. Nothing is meant to last forever. So Melkor may have done things that to the human perspective, were evil and atrocious, but to sum it up, everything happened just how it was supposed to, Melkor’s job is to do things you don’t like and is thus doomed to never getting appreciation, he really is under no obligation to give a shit about the Children, and really the elves killed way more people than Melkor ever did. Melkor’s documented direct casualties can be counted on a hand lol. He concerns himself with Arda, his creation, his charge, not with the little people that are holding onto the skin of the world demanding it stop being itself. Add onto this the corrosive power of the silmarils, basically making the most powerful and potent being under Eru go a bit cuckoo for cocoa puffs in his later years, and that to me is why Melkor isn’t evil. If one insists he is, then he is a necessary one. No two ways about it.