Best Uncle 🌟🌟

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

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

Fruit harvest festival

Nerdanel & Feanaro

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.

Lúthien Tinúviel

"-for Lúthien was the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar. Blue was her raiment as the unclouded heaven, but her eyes were grey as the starlit evening; her mantle was sewn with golden flowers, but her hair was dark as the shadows of twilight."

The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien

And Maedhros answered: 'But how shall our voices reach to Ilúvatar beyond the Circles of the World? And by Ilúvatar we swore in our madness, and called the Everlasting Darkness upon us, if we kept not our word. Who shall release us?'

'If none can release us,' said Maglor, 'then indeed the Everlasting Darkness shall be our lot, whether we keep our oath or break it; but less evil shall we do in the breaking.’

—The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

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!

I'm generally very much supportive of different takes on characters in the Silmarillion because a lot of stuff is really vague and can be interpreted in a lot of ways.

However, it is wild to me that some people interpret Feanor as being on the same level (or worse) of villainy as Morgoth. Like, you guys do you, but to me, that is not a reasonable comparison. Feanor stole some boats, engaged in one potentially unintentional act of mass violence in the course of a confusing situation, and did one count of arson. Morgoth infused his evil will into the very heart/core/fabric of Arda so much so that it is still there even after both he and Sauron faced their ultimate defeats and it cannot be undone by any force in Arda other than Eru himself. Not to mention all the torture, slavery, manipulation, and murder he did for hundreds of years both before and after his initial imprisonment in Mandos. Like I'm not trying to absolve Feanor of his actions, but compared to Morgoth, they cast a far smaller shadow.

Feanor and Morgoth have one thing in common in the fact that they both stole something that was important to someone else and committed violence during the act of the theft. But honestly, given everything else Morgoth does in the course of the Silmarillion, I think it's pretty silly to put Feanor anywhere near Morgoth when it comes to villainy.

"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"