#i mean--i was thinking of thranduil full disclosure but

[meadowlarkx]

grief and pride - embroidery for @tolkienekphrasisweek day 4, Gardening & Landscape Architecture! I was thinking about memory and how Elves might tell of particular places in adornments on clothing (imagining both of these designs on sleeves.)

First: Years of the Trees Fëanorian ornamentation, reminders of the Gardens of Lórien where Míriel lay, with Finwë's crest.

Second: Late First Age or Second Age Iathrim ornamentation, reminders of Menegroth and the First Kinslaying.

welcome to 'more photos and rambles at length'!!

Working on these little guys for a while I had time to think a fair amount about them. The concept of being literally clothed in one's sorrows feels very Elven and Tolkien to me. It's something about the long years and accumulating griefs, laying claim to and embodying them (powerful!), and the accompanying actions and grudges, and it's a thread that runs through both these groups. Fëanor is one of the first in the narrative to have this sort of memory/shadow on his heart, that of Míriel's passing. I love the similarities and connections between him and Míriel and the way she haunts the story, so I really enjoy the idea of Fëanor (and his sons!) reminding everyone of her absence subtly or unsubtly at every chance, including with their clothing--a mark of family loyalty which is also a nice fuck you to Indis and her children. Lórien is lush and verdant with golden flowers and mountain immortelle, don't @ me silvery tolkiengateway descriptions. I wanted this one to feel bright and vivid to echo the noontide of Valinor and the family's pride and brilliance. Finwë's crest got included in the design partly because it's less complicated than Fëanor's crest (shh), but also because I can completely see Fëanor making a(nother) claim to heirdom by wearing it.

Then of course he sets in motion greater horrors to remember. I am always thinking (@swanmaids has a great post about this) of the support Elwing canonically has in Sirion for her decision not to relinquish the Silmaril. And after seeing the 2nd kinslaying, it had to be a difficult, brave, potentially very controversial decision to hold on to it, but people are with her on this--I imagine motivated partly by real anger and grief over all they had lost and insistence upon memory, pride, dignity, identity etc. which probably remain with the few who survive the Sirion kinslaying too. And remembering Menegroth's beauty goes hand-in-hand with the grief--so I went for a bleaker look here, not the deep forest I usually picture (the 2 green vines, though, symbolizing in my head the surviving royal family/Peredhel!). This design being more of a picture of the place and less "abstract" was an attempt to gesture towards some cultural and stylistic differences in art, etc. I know this one isn't exactly a garden, but if we squint all of Doriath is an enclosed garden, so...!

Also here are the other pics. I'm imagining them bigger, but they are pretty little in real life!

[handsingsweapon]

silver splendour fashion ask

so silver splendour ch. whatever i’m on is about 50% written except i realized i’ve literally only had a bagel egg sandwich to eat today and took a dinner break.

while taking the dinner break i got started answering an ask i got privately about clothing and costuming in this world, and because i’m terrible at descriptions and because i haven’t figured out how i wanna handle the next little bit of this chapter, i thought i might as well give it a go in a post.

full disclosure before i do so: i’ve been somewhat worried about about the horrific pitfall of relying on oriental themes to convey a place as exotic, especially in regards to shen-osheth and the south, but also to a certain degree with hasetsuil in the east as well.

i hope i’ve avoided this in the world-building of the fic but i’d be lying if i said that these places weren’t based on or enriched by a) my own travels b) my desire to craft cities that are in some ways acknowledgements of the backgrounds of the canon characters who inhabit them

hasetsuil: hasetsu as it is in the show + kyoto, japan + some rotorua, new zealand

vaux romandith: lake balaton, hungary + my bad and probably inaccurate idea of what geneva might be like + the pacific northwest redwoods + entirely too many elf stories with treehouses

mosciren: park city, utah in its physiology; edinburgh in its vibe (ancient city with giant castle); but inspired architecturally by cordoba

a’ve palmera: the american southwest, especially new mexico heading into arizona (red rocks, high mesas); the canyon referenced in ch. 1 is similar to the grand canyon for size and scale and a’ve palmera is not particularly far from it

shen osheth: a weird combination of shanghai (for how cosmopolitan it is and how much trade happens there) and venice (canals, canals galore); the architecture though references elements more commonly found in polynesia 

ast petyriel: the evergreen forests of the rockies + they have all that wood, so ...

there’s sort of a logical consequence of all this that makes hasetsuil and shen-osheth the more “oriental” places to a western reader, and i wanted to say all that because i’m conscious that it might have landed me in a pickle where i’ve oversimplified somehow and created this unintentional “east meets west” vibe between the four main kingdoms of the story. hopefully that doesn’t offend too terribly; it was both deliberate and ... not deliberate. gosh i started this post trying to talk about clothes. let’s do that real quick

starting with

the northerners!

these people are snobs. they dress to impose. here’s an example for lilia, except sans hood probably, and i think what her leathers would look like if she was going to bother with armor (spoilers she never does). yakov’s the only one in the story who i think does wear metal armor and it’s specifically because his magic can make it so easy to wear and so light that he’s probably considered the most amazing smith/architect in all four realms. it would look a lot like thranduil’s leathers from the hobbit, regardless, except instead of feathers there’s probably some falling leaves (a reference to lilia) or bear motifs. this means his sons wear some pretty intricate stuff and also that viktor’s going to give yuuri a heart attack that he can’t actually die from someday by doing an all out thranduil on the throne. northern colors are black, silver, and various gemtone shades. viktor prefers blue and silver; yuri tends to dress in monochrome; lilia wears lots of emerald green; yakov wears metallics; mila wears ruby colored stuff and georgi’s in purple because i said so.  lilia is super into weaving and embroidery so they do both of those things better than anyone really. this plays out in the cloaks thing for vitya + yuri. northerners also like jewelry and smithing more than some of the other kingdoms do thanks to yakov’s metal influences.  the easterlings! the easterlings tend to wear robes and their clothes are softer and more comfortable than any of the other four kingdoms. here’s an example for minako and something for yuuri. i think most easterlings favor springtime colors; pastels and greens, but yuuri definitely hates drawing attention to himself and tends to wear things that are more muted (and stands out as a result whenever he’s at minako’s school because everyone else is fine with it). flower motifs abound everywhere though. and they likely have a whole language of flowers in terms of what different ones mean and what people like, etc. these are probably painted or dyed generally and sometimes embroidered so they have a softer, gentler effect than what the northerners wear.  they’re terrifically good at braids and folds and draping. the southrons! the southrons have the trade capitol of the whole story so they can wear literally anything, but their attire is definitely more influenced by han fu; here’s an example for guang hong in full regalia. also, when festivals are on they headdress it up better than anyone in the rest of the universe even though the northerners probably frown on this because all of the actual crowns of the rulers are variations on a circlet, something very simple and actually rather plain. their colors are the boldest and most vibrant of any of the kingdoms: strong reds and yellows and summertime brights. tl;dr yakov never approves of them or their nonsense but they’re more creative and more willing to experiment than any of the other kingdoms, fashion-wise, as a general rule, and shen-osheth has so many different cultures mingling all the time that you can really see just about anything there. the westerners! they’re the practical athletes of the bunch; see jj for example or a couple different links for women. they’re really good at making and molding leathers, and they get a lot of cotton, linen, and wool from the farms / sheep / etc. they tend to blend in with the woods more, lots of greens and browns and harvest colors.  christophe bucks this trend and wears whatever the fuck he wants because he’s christophe. due to his upbringing he got a more cosmopolitan education and so he borrows from the other cultures depending on his mood and can be a little chameleon in that way. bonus: banshees! most of the ban side live in the central zone between the four kingdoms, an area that gets intermittently referred to as the wilds (think marshes), the ranges (think mesas), the desert we’ve already seen, or the canyon. these are more inhospitable places and they’re usually traveling nomads so when you see a ranger in particular (because they patrol and provide safety for the people living in these areas) they always look packed up and ready to go anywhere. that being said they have customs of their own and probably get the most avant garde when it comes to dressing for rituals; seung-gil’s mom, for example, might have once worn something like this and i have no issues whatsoever visualizing otabek wearing a crazy and rather useless scarf. they always dress for camoflauge so their clothes will typically match their environment; otabek however has been wearing black ever since he left and went to go work for yakov as a guard (which is partly a northern thing and partly otabek being an intimidating shadow person thing) ban side paint their faces sometimes for festivals when they’re traveling with their own people, and for battles, too. they’re also the only ones who do tattoos. did this help? idk. break’s over.