#the silmarillion

[willaminabaggins]

Dragons are in the air, you say! This is my opportunity to meet Ancalagon!

love is in the air? WRONG! dragons

[forestials]

Kings

For @maedhrosmaglorweek day 2

[strelkovski]

Armoured Ossё And Osse&Uinen drawing I did three years ago...

[whovianofmidgard]

Fated Ends

For Day 3 of @maedhrosmaglorweek

I was inspired to try this kind of poetry by @two-bees-poetry 's work, specifically this and this. And man oh man is it a lot harder than it looks.

Poem is also available on Ao3

[tanoraqui]

I increasingly believe that Eru's original plan was for all Elves to fade with time, becoming wearier and quieter until they're just notes in the Music mixed into the woods and waters that they love. That there was supposed to be a great Age of Only Elves, then a great Age of Elves and Men, then a great Age of Only Men, and that's just it.

And that - well, there were probably a lot of reasons for the Rounding of the World. Any decent god has a lot of reasons for doing anything. The Númenoreans were attempting to wreck the natural order, in a way that brought only suffering to themselves and everyone else. There were dark things gnawing at the edges of the world from within and without, which might have resulted in Morgoth or, worse, more things like Ungoliant getting back in, and rearranging things shored up those borders.

And the Valar were making big puppy eyes at their Allfather and pleading, "Pleeeease can we keep the Elves, if they want to be kept? They do! They do want to continue to be lively and make merry! Pretty please can we have a fully insulated place for them to dwell without Melkor's tainted, exhausting grief?"

BROKE: the noldor were wrong in wanting to leave valinor

WOKE: the noldor were right in wanting to leave valinor

BESPOKE: the valar were wrong to bring the elves to valinor in the first place

This is said because the invitation given to the Eldar to remove to Valinor and live unendangered by Melkor was not in fact according to the design of Eru. It arose from anxiety, and it might be said from failure in trust of Eru, from anxiety and fear of Melkor, and the decision of the Eldar to accept the invitation was due to the overwhelming effect of their contact, while still in their inexperienced youth, with the bliss of Aman and the beauty and majesty of the Valar. It had disastrous consequences in diminishing the Elves of Middle-earth and so depriving Men of a large measure of the intended help and teaching of their “elder brethren”, and exposing them more dangerously to the power and deceits of Melkor. Also since it was in fact alien to the nature of the Elves to live under protection in Aman, and not (as was intended) in Middle-earth, one consequence was the revolt of the Noldor.

Nature of Middle-earth, chapter 12: The Knowledge of the Valar, footnote 3.

i saw some discussion of the Valar the other day and i wanted to bring this to people's attention. i found this fascinating and almost a little shocking when i first read it and i need people to lose their minds over it with me.

i love it because it perfectly matches the way i see the valar, as loving figures who fail to understand the children of iluvatar, leading to great tragedy. however, until reading this, it never even occurred to me that this interpretation was even close to the way tolkien saw them at any point in his life.

[balrogballs]

had sudden brainrot about the Noldolantë in bed and wrote this little ficlet up on my phone for the @maedhrosmaglorweek prompt ‘Ship Burnings’ — also featuring one of the most tragically romantic characters in the legendarium — Círdan.

“I never liked the Noldolantë,” Círdan tells Maglor placidly, one evening. It is partway through the Third Age and the two old-new friends are sitting over the shipwright’s roaring fire and terribly cranky red wine. “It had always seemed wrong to me.”

“Ah, Círdan the bard speaks,” Maglor jests for a moment, before nodding seriously. “No, I am sorry, I understand. A commemoration of our fall at the cost of yours. I do not fault you for such a thought.”

“No,” Círdan laughs softly. “It is not so. If I were to turn up my nose at every lament written by those who have shed blood, I would never have time to look where I’m going. All songs are playing fields. In all songs, you can turn the point inwards. The right pitch, the right tune, can shake off blame from your most visible limbs, reattach it somewhere quieter, somewhere you must strain to find it.”

“Anyone can and will defeat blame with songs, try to represent things that cannot be represented. With any song, one can gild regret, slide past rigid law and blind justice. The Noldolantë is not unique in that regard. No, my friend — my problem with your ballad is not that you have commemorated the fall of the Noldor. It is because you have your dates wrong. It is because to me, it was not at Alqualondë that the Noldor truly fell.”

“Did we not?” Maglor raises his eyebrows, and then frowns. “Do you mean Doriath, then?”

“No,” Círdan chuckles, rises gracefully and moves across to the mantelpiece, lifting up a fragile-looking glass bottle sealed with wax. When he blows off the dust, Maglor’s eyes widen, recognising a shape he will never forget.

“One of the old Teleri vessels?” he asks quietly. Círdan nods, waves him over and places his finger on the glass, pointing halfway up the matchstick-thin mast.

“See here? There was a spot — a small wicker basket — in every Teleri vessel of Aman, up the foremast, carefully calibrated so that when you stood upon it you would seem to be standing still upon the water and you would not see the boat or its sails at all,” he tells Maglor, both reproachful and wistful at once.

“And you would look around and find yourself surrounded by the sea’s repeating, re-churning endless rhythms, this unchanging change in which you begin to catch emergent patterns, as isolated as you are to yourself and these quiet sums. You feel then that you are in correspondence with the world, cutting across Valar and Maiar and envoy and emissary, no, none of that — just you. The waves made highlands and lowlands, the stars and their crustal luminosity, plentitude and possibility all around you, even if just for those transitory minutes you stand in that wicker basket.”

“They say the earth in that moment… that it is a beauty beyond compare. Oh Maglor, my friend, they say it is beautiful in the way whalesong is beautiful.”

“I had always wanted to know how they did it. I tried and tried, but I could never get it right. It is an art, as you must know, being a lover of the arts yourself, every calculation that goes into a ship is an art, and a promise. That you will get to the other side, that you will have a moment of beauty beyond compare, and that you will return. Such arts cannot be learned through hearsay — one would need to touch the vessel, if not the hands of those who made it. I had always, always wanted to stand in that basket and look upon the world at its most radiant.”

He looks at Maglor with eyes that tunnel all the way to Valinor. “To me, the Noldolantë was wrong. The Valar were wrong. You spilled blood upon Aman and you would have been rightly punished, perhaps cruelly, but we are an enduring race. We would have invented systems, laws, just and unjust punishments and redemptions. You had fallen at Alqualondë, but it was in Losgar that you sunk.”

“When we burned the ships,” Maglor swallows hard, the smoke catching in his throat, as acrid as it was millennia ago. “When we set fire to the Teleri vessels we had taken. Is that what you mean?”

The shipwright does not nod, and nor does he shake his head. “Yes, though I see you do not understand why. Yes, I mean the burning. When your father ordered the ships to be set ablaze and you seven stayed silent.”

“But Maedhros d—“ Maglor is not blind to his brother’s faults but he is loyal beyond all, and the truth was that the only thing that broke through the silencing roar of the ship-burning was Maedhros begging Fëanor, truly begging, having actually fallen at his father’s feet. One ship, he had begged. Leave just one, please, Atya, leave just one — again and again until the words were irrevocably entwined with Maglor’s memory of the event.

“You seven,” the other sternly cuts across his reminiscing. “And your father, and all the lords, and all the stableboys, all of you caught up only in those left behind. Maedhros was the most noble on that night, but he too mourned for a love song, one that his own heart sung.”

“Love with its brightness turned him to mercy for fear of darkness, his grief, his falling at your father’s feet — they were all for Fingon and his people, for those of your house who crossed the wasteland. His tears upon the sand, his insistence on begging and pleading until the last coal faded, were noble. I will never take that from him. Of course they were noble actions — for he thought of his fellow cousins, his lover, the women and children who crossed the ice, when the rest stayed silent. Still, my friend, his song too, was for the Noldor.”

Maglor nods, for he is big enough to admit such things these days, no longer leaning on poetry to prop up his hollows. “So was our silence. So were our thoughts.”

“And so it was not only a people that you slayed, my friend. It was a song you silenced,” says the shipwright, still cradling the bottle, his fingers leaving soft marks on the dusty glass. “A song you never tried to hear. The ship-carvers were slain, and then their craft set ablaze — for what? Every single vessel, every single promise. Not one left. For what? For what amounted to a symbol bright red in the distance, like a fallen star. That, to me, will always be the Noldolantë, Maglor. Not the violence, but the silence after.”

Leave just one, thinks Maglor. Just one, Atya. Maedhros’ awful keening, the great and terrible burning, his father’s frenzied speech, the ashes dissolving in salt and forming a great black circle around Losgar, Maedhros’ voice matching his father’s word for word until the final ember faded. And then nothing at all.

Círdan runs a finger around the wax sealing shut the ship within. In the bottle, it is safe, this swan — and it is silent. Its sides are painted with little flecks meant to reflect the stars. Beauty beyond compare, Maglor cannot help but think. When he looks up again, he sees the shipwright’s eyes brim over with tears, though he is smiling at him. Círdan holds up the bottle — traces the glass over the thimble sized wicker basket, two inches from the thing itself.

“Beautiful in the way whalesong is beautiful,” he whispers reverently. “Imagine that.”

[quinn10121012]

“Now fair and marvelous was that vessel made, and it was filled with a wavering flame, pure and bright; and Eärendil the Mariner sat at the helm, glistening with dust of elven-gems and the Silmaril was bound upon his brow.” - the Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien

[fil3t]

Complicity

Then Maedhros alone stood aside, but Fëanor caused fire to be set to the white ships of the Teleri. So in that place which was called Losgar at the outlet of the Firth of Drengist ended the fairest vessels that ever sailed the sea, in a great burning, bright and terrible. - The Silmarillion, "Of the Flight of the Noldor"

Tolkien in Color: The House of Finwë (part 9/x) < part 8 ||

for @maedhrosmaglorweek

[numenoria]

Silmarillion Thoughts ✨

Still not over how Fëanor called Melkor a dusty jailbird and kicked him out of the his house. Like Fëanor.. sir.. sir.. that's Mr. Big Bad demigod wyd??

Aaaand! Not only did he kick out Mr. evil but he made him feel shame... Like not only did you kick out a Demigod but you embarrassed him as well?? The gaul, the gumption, the elfdacity!!

[piyo13sdoodles]

seduction

[sillylotrpolls]

I'm both unsurprised and surprised at the winner here. Unsuprised because of course "never read the Silm" was always going to win. However, I am surprised it only got as high as 32.5%. If you extrapolated that data without regard to the self-selection bias inherent to silly tumblr LotR polls, it would mean that in a group of 100 people, 68 would be able to correctly identify at least three times Fëanor looked hubris in the eye and said "bet."

Interestingly, in a previous poll about why people haven't read the Silmarillion, "I've read it" got 30.4%. This suggests that there is a certain number of people who will skip voting in any poll that doesn't apply to them even if given an explicit button to click. However, it also suggests that it's still a good idea to have that button, because in each poll that option got over 1,000 votes.

In second place (and therefore first place for people who did/will read the Silm) is "I liked the movies" (16.7%). This makes perfect sense; LotR fandom exploded in 2001 when we all first got a look at Elijah Wood's baby blue eyes. Right behind it, however, is "I enjoy reading mythology and histories" with 15.4%. And you know what? This is probably the best reason to read the Silm; you've got all the context for why it's written in the way it is and can appreciate both Tolkien's references and where he was truly original. I salute you, myth-lovers.

Then, in fourth ("third") is probably the highest placing yet for the "other" option (14.8%). And unlike every other poll where I include "other," this time y'all really did go into detail in the notes. <3 Related question: why were so many of you 11 when you first tried to read Tolkien?

A few other miscellaneous observations:

Some of you really, really want to be clear that you read the books BEFORE you saw the movies.

Although there were a lot of stories about how y'all first encountered the Sillmarillion and took it into your hearts, most of you preferred to use a dozen+ tags to tell the story instead of writing a comment. As a LiveJournal veteran, this preference continues to puzzle me.

Apparently "Found it at the library..." was confusing. This option was meant to imply "I read the Silm first, you mean there's a sequel called Lord of the Rings all about Mairon/Sauron?!" but I had trouble with the 80-character limit.

"Fanart appreciation" (4.4%) beat out "bullied by friends" (1.6%) almost 3:1, illustrating that it's easier to motivate people with treats than shame.

No one ever gets the lion joke. :(

[thetiredprometheus]

For @maedhrosmaglorweek Day 2: Kings

Based on this iconic Macbeth poster:

[angbangweek]

Here is the list of prompts for the 2025 event:

Day 1: Friend | Enemy Day 2: Freedom | Imprisonment Day 3: Temporary | Permanent Day 4: Concealment | Revelation Day 5: Holy | Unholy Day 6: Singing | Dancing Day 7: Fix it As always, there is a couple of prompts to choose between for every day of the week, with the last day being a bit more open to topics of choice. You can pick one each day, try to combine them into one work, or skip any day that offers prompts you find less appealing. Anything that reminds you of the topic of the prompt is encouraged and accepted. The only requirements are that the work is about the pairing, previously unposted, made by you, and that you tag things correctly if your works include sensitive subjects or are adult in nature. Anything written, visual, auditory, or any combination thereof goes.

When posting your works, feel free to post them on the day the prompt appears on or later, tag us directly or add one of the following tags (#angbangweek2025, #angbang week 2025, #angbang week2025) to your post's tag list. For any questions or clarification requests, feel free to reach out at any time.

Happy creating, and we'll see you in May!

[daily-smol-silm]

Day #215 - Chibi stare

I tried so hard not to draw angbang today but since these two demanded soooooo much I GUESS they can feature again.....

Redraw of this post :P

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

#so much relevance in the akallabeth story #and not just in the cult of youth #but in the refusal to respect the passage of time generally #a culture where the kings used to lay down their crowns willingly #to make room for the next generation #but now the powerful cling to their roles #long past the point of senility and decrepitude #because yielding power is seen as worse #than exercising it poorly (via @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras)

Númenor and the cult of youth though, the cult of deathlessness. Thinking about how much a really good Akallabêth adaption could do, making this society obsessed with the eternal a reflection of our own society which is so often afraid to age. Like! Youth enhancing creams. Expensive beauty treatments, crushed pearls, sheep’s milk, calf’s blood. Wigs to cover up hair loss. Compulsive hair dying—not one single grey. Makeup chock full of lead and arsenic. Scam artists promising that their potion or tincture will buy you another few years. Quacks selling certified 100% Valinorean spring water. Fringe cults praying to Vána the Everyoung. Dying parents exiled to country estates because it’s bad luck to see death’s face. Servants imported in the spring of youth and sent back home a few decades later. Children prized and resented, because they represent everything that you no longer are. A huge emphasis on “purity of blood”, on the good genes that let Elros last so long, leading to regular fibbing about how long people’s grandparents lived. A culture turned in on itself, so terrified of dying that it’s rotting alive instead.