Avatar

Do Not Fear The Eyes Of The Dark Lord

@outofangband / outofangband.tumblr.com

“Witchwife they called her and shunned her; Witchwife it is but elf-friend in the new language” (Sador about Morwen, Chapter 12)
Silmarillion/The Histories and CoH writing, world building and sometimes edits. Fair amount of dark fic. Information in pinned post! Icon (Morwen and Aerin) by alackofghosts. background by houndsofvalinor-art now sadly deleted. previous icon art was by the amazing elwing who you should also check out)

updated pinned post

Requests and asks of all kinds are open and welcome. Even if you’re unsure if something has been asked before! I love infodumping and will be glad to link to an answer or answer again!

Thank you as always for your patience with me and thank you for continuing to send requests and asks, it actually really helps my motivation to continue to have things to work on, including my motivation for older requests

My current special interest/ fixation is The Children of Húrin (and related texts, The Wanderings of Húrin, The Lay, etc). Maedhros in/after Angband, specifically his dynamic with Morgoth is also still of interest to me, as always because I like to write unpleasant things.

Other areas of interest to me are environment/nature/society/culture/etc (world building) of Angband itself, Beleriand/Middle Earth and Valinor! Please ask questions about this! I now have a masterlist for environmental world building here and one for societal world building here

I am severely autistic. I get over excited so sometimes come off as rambling, awkward or repetitive. Please tell me if I’m interacting in a way that’s annoying or if I’m talking over you. I do love complimenting other’s works and talking with others so feel free to message me!

I like dark fic requests and talking about dark stuff with people. I have lots of darker stuff I don’t yet share publicly but I do on discord and in DMs though it does take some time for me to get comfortable talking to someone new<3

(Updated!)Tengwar commissions! $1.00 to $3.00 My kofi (if you have questions about why I link these feel free to ask. I also do take commissions for writing or world building/research though I am very slow at times. I typically charge five dollars for world building/research and honestly pwyw for writing

I have a post tomorrow for a world building introduction for the green elves of Ossiriand and I was just wondering if there were any topics you wanted me to cover!!

Or who to cover next!

Requests and asks are open and welcome! Thank you as always for your patience my inconsistent response time and for continuing to send requests! It actually really helps my motivation to continue to have new things to work on, including my motivation for older requests

Should be posting some Aerin HCs tonight and hopefully something before that too

Anonymous asked:

Send ur opinion to me on anon:

U are weird. U are very weird and very very nice. I actually really like ur aesthetic.

I have a drawing blog and I have tried to draw Morwen for u, but I never managed to do her justice. So the sketch is just, there. One day I will for sure finish it, but I do not think it is going to happen anytime soon.

After this weird thing, I say: "goodbye!!".

-v

!!! I accept all Morwen sketches and I am sure you will do her justice, anon! If you ever feel comfortable sharing I’d love to see! If not I understand though 🌷☀️

Thank you 🪺🪺🪻🪻

(even more) updated Maedhros and Kingship HCs

I edited and revised this a lot, and also added content about how others view him, and the kingship particularly after Angband. I know that I have written a lot about this. Most of it can be found in the post Angband tag! But I wanted to be able to have all my thoughts on this in one place as well as connected in this way 

I will probably make a second post about Maedhros and power in later years

Anonymous asked:

Okay we know that vampires/werewolves are a thing (not exactly the way they‘re described in our world, but there are still references to them) do you think other mythological creatures (like mermaids, unicorns and the like) existed? Personally I just really want unicorns to be a thing.

Yes! Tolkien says that in Valinor there were every creature that does or has walked the earth and many that never has. I generally extend this to Arda in general beyond Valinor and enjoy including prehistoric, extinct and fantastical creatures in my world building! I have some ideas here but I want to write more

Which reminds me I need to finish my posts about vampires and werewolves…

Fun fact: many elven languages including later versions considered more canon have words for mermaids! I’ve often wondered if they were a species of their own, a form adapted by Maiar of Ulmo or something else entirely

Flying stingrays is a favorite of mine. They flit over pools in the gardens of Lórien, Doriath and Nan Tathren in my mind

Fun reminder that Morwen Eledhwen

-was eleven or twelve when the Dagor Bragollach broke out and was presumably orphaned, lost her home to catastrophic terroristic fires and lost most of her family and community, culture and language

-lost her daughter about a decade later to more terrorism by Melkor

-lost her husband and only surviving blood relative and member of her people at the same time

-the safety in Hithlum she had was shattered when her home was once again invaded

-endured violent occupation and protected elderly members of Húrin’s people who

-had to send her son away and never saw him again

-faced endless persecution, was accused of being a witch and shunned by her husbands people and occupiers alike with those who would aid her facing extreme violence

-had to live with the knowledge that her dear friend was being beaten for helping her and her daughter not starve

-escaped Glaurung twice

-was extraordinarily brave in the face of the unknown, traveling as a young child from Dorthonion to Hithlum then to Doriath then towards Brethil

-searched for years for her children only to find their grave

Anyways I love Morwen so so much I am not at all normal about her and if you ever wonder why I get so overexcited on posts about her these are just a few reasons

I have some propaganda for Urwen!

In response to her death, Hurin says this "Marrer of Middle-earth, would that I might see you face to face, and mar you as my lord Fingolfin did!' His love and subsequent loss of her is definitely a motivator, I think, for his later valiant defiance of Morgoth! So she may have died young but she had a big impact. (I mean if we want to apply the butterfly effect she kinda caused the fall of Nargothrond: motivated Hurin to deny Morgoth, got Turin cursed to give really bad advice about bridges, no more Nargothrond. How many 3 year olds could claim that?

Also more seriously, a lot of the deaths in the Silm are violent and awful. But we little of mundane, quiet deaths from sickness. A young child dying in this way stands out in its more realist tragedy. And it shows the subtler ways Morgoth sowed despair in middle earth and also that he knew the Edain were a threat. The 'evil breath' mostly killed 'the children or the rising youth in the houses of Men.'

Sorry this got so long 😅

Avatar

Thank you!!! She’s my submission and I need people to understand how precious she is ❤️

Avatar

I love/hate the dual effects it has on Morwen and Húrin.

For Húrin this is one of the first great losses in his life. His father dies in battle and that's obviously awful but it's not shocking in the same way. This is his young child and he is completely helpless. He's a warrior and he can't do anything against disease and death. No matter how many of Morgoth's orcs he kills he can't bring his daughter back I think about that line from Buffy the vampire slayer about the slayer being helpless against death and disease...Húrin is not a man who likes helplessness.

For Morwen... She is the survivor of a genocide* that has killed nearly all of her people. She is without her home, her parents, most of her family. She has to learn an entirely new language and culture. She has been in Hithlum for over a decade now and after years, has been able to find family and to have a hope at her people surviving through her children.

And this weapon of the enemy comes here, where she might even have thought she was safe

And she is still losing family to Morgoth.

Is it any wonder she "met her grief in silence and coldness of heart"

*I use this word carefully as someone from a culture heavily impacted by it in real life. While the initial violence of Dagor Bragollach wasn’t necessarily intended to solely or specifically target the Bëorians, they were nonetheless subjected to mass slaughter and displacement and certainly afterwards, members of their culture were specifically hunted and targeted. And Morwen’s speaking of the losses her people have faced have always resonated very heavily to me on that level. Anyways just thought I’d note that here  (for new followers my tag for Morwen's trauma related to this is houseless for exiles. it goes into loss of culture and language, grief and identity, etc)

Maedhros did deeds of surpassing valour and the orcs fled from his face for since his torment upon Thangorodrim his spirit burned like a white fire within and he was as one who returns from the dead

I redid my favorite Tengwar of Maedhros!

I chose purple tulips because they represent nobility and rebirth!

I like this quote a lot. I love the themes of horror and trauma in Silm reflected in Maedhros for better and for worse

Also it’s in many ways a contrast to one of my other favorite quotes from The Children of Húrin

“Then many wondered saying, can the spirit of any man return from the dead or has Húrin of Hithlum escaped indeed from the pits of hell”

I’m still working on Tengwar so please feel free to request quotes to practice with!

I’m thinking a lot about the fear in young Niënor’s life

I wonder how old Niënor was when she learned she was protected to some extent by being the Witch’s Daughter. Morwen never hid the danger from her. I feel certain of that. Keeping Niënor ignorant of the outcome of straying too far from home, of having certain interactions with strangers and seeming friends alike, would do nothing but make her blind to the dangers. Morwen will keep her daughter safe even if it means that she is aware of these evil possibilities from a young age.

But I don’t think Niënor knew the extent of the rumors about her mother. Perhaps Morwen wouldn’t have wanted the stories of the hardened men who fled from her to give Niënor a false sense of safety, knowing in her heart that their fear could all too easily turn to violence. And Niënor is too young to know of a time when their family was visited by friends, by people of Húrin seeking his aid or company so she is not bothered by their absence.

Not at first

How much contact the two have with those outside their house or Aerin I go back and forth on and I have different verses with ideas based on each of the possibilities. But it’s clear that Niënor’s childhood was very isolated. Morwen was shunned and those who might have wanted to contact or help her often couldn’t (and I think so much too about how the pre Nírnaeth dynamics effect this)

I talked a bit about the likely traumatic circumstances of Niënor’s birth here but I just think so much about how dangerous and precarious her and of course Morwen’s situation is.

Her existence is a secret and it is hard to keep a living, screaming baby a secret. Morgoth’s men don’t go near the house often, they’re still too frightened of Morwen but that certainly doesn’t completely mitigate the danger. They still venture closer sometimes and all it takes is one time. One whisper from the wrong person, even an ally, if their secret is exposed

If she got sick there’s almost nothing Morwen can do. Outsiders are forbidden under punishment of torture or death to aid her and she’s in serious danger if she strays too far from home herself

I added this later but @theworldisquietheretooquiet (who always has super interesting thoughts and the best ideas) and I were also talking about the rumors, gossip, and information networks in post Nírnaeth Dor-lómin. There is so much secrecy and suppression and misinformation as Sador himself says more than once

With regard to information I think about this quote

but Morwen also was lost. Neither then nor after did any certain news of her fate come to Doriath or to Dor-lómin.

At the very least it seems to imply there were still people in Dor-lómin who cared what happened to Morwen and Niënor. I think that information in and out was extremely suppressed but there were some ways of it getting in or out; slaves who had been afforded more freedom, family members of occupiers who of course were trapped in Hithlum too by Melkor might play some role.

Anyways I’ve been doing lots and lots of world building for post Nírnaeth Dor-lómin (including mapping out Brodda’s house and its residents in great detail, definitely let me know if anyone is interested in seeing it!) so I’ll return to this later

Note: I took the phrase witch’s daughter from the comic by elwing which is beautiful

Building Materials and Methods in Beleriand Part One

for @caladir I’m so sorry for the delay

part one of a series on architecture in Beleriand! Part one will explore various construction methods and later parts will explore more about architectural styles!

The elves and humans of Beleriand employ a variety of methods to construct and design both temporary and permanent homes. These are dependent based on location, culture and lifestyle, environment/climate and available materials.

I didn’t go through each group or culture so please feel free to send one and I’ll tell my ideas of their building methods!

little musing about Aerin and drawing

Mentions of canonical abuse,

nothing graphic but this is still potentially a rough one. On that note unfortunately I probably am going to have to give Brodda a tag if only so people can filter out stuff more easily. In the meantime I’m using cw abuse still as a catch all

…I actually intended for this piece to be happy or hopeful in the beginning? It got out of hand

Some birds in Quenya! 

x x  x x  x x

the species are bullfinch, horned lark, sand lark, scarlet ibis! The last one refers to a species I believe found in Númenor  that were as small and had such high pitched song humans couldn’t here them! I’m still trying to figure out some biology for them but scarlet ibises have such beautiful red plumage