#hapless headcanons

[thehelplessmortals]

Main characters from my long haul Nazgûl fic.

I've never drawn any of them before. Obviously not complete cast, but these are the women and the men(wraiths) they’re associated with. All the guys here will be wraiths.

Couple little notes: Near Harad/Khand and Far Harad/Umbar get an Egyptian-style second age unification crown, Sunrise crown for Near/Khand and the Ivory headdress for Far/Umbar, worn by the high king of Harad, who comes from Near Harad. Near Harad/Khand uses a sunrise motif in a lot of their jewellery. Harad is very big and only recently unified, so while Hiram, Hazâl, Imane, and Afzal are all Haradrim, the former two are from Near Harad and the latter from the coasts of Far Harad, and from two very different cultural groups.

Izdahâr is the high queen of Harad, but she is from Rhûn, political marriages and all that. She styles herself vaguely Harad with her own homeland's flavour. Sahâr her twin sister remains a ruler in her home city, married to a prince from Harad. The immediate royal family of Rhûn (also a unified collection of city-states, but unified earlier than Harad) claim descent from their legendary king Khamûl the Deathless, who is still around. So 1: none of the royalty of Rhûn intermarry, because traditionally they are all siblings/cousins/etc., and 2: the royal men and women get very fancy with their face coverings, because their forebear Khamûl covers his face (some say it's to hide that it's actually not the original Khamûl at all and just an inherited persona, but his family swears by his immortality. It's actually because he no longer has a face, but they don't know that)

Imâruzir is wearing stolen Haradrim jewellery, incorrectly might I add (this is kind of on purpose, like "look how little these trinkets mean to me"), to spite the coastal Haradrim. He is probably the most brutal Númenorian general to take part in the occupation of Harad and actually could be considered the original Black Númenorian. He's a piece of shit by the way. He didn't even need Sauron to persuade him to evil, Sauron just sat back and let him turn himself.

Sahâr and Ûrenithil are turned away because they die first.

The Númenorians have super boring designs rn but that's because I'm still figuring out the garment culture. But they also are very elven, obviously. And they all have Elven names as well, other than Ûrenithil. That's her only name.

Them in their respective pairs. Note that Imane and Afzal are not a couple, they are just old old friends and allies

[thehelplessmortals]

hoo hoo hoo wraithed some Númenorians. Second age outfits, still wearing their own armour, more or less. For intimidation.

Like my adaptation of this absolutely ludicrous (/affectionate) Númenorian helm design from the author himself? Yeah me too, thank you, I think I did very well with them, very little I would go back and change.

[thehelplessmortals]

brother's wingman

i have a little headcanon that Boromir has no interest in love and had no intention of getting married or having children. He has always intended to adopt one of Faramir's children as his heir when he's steward. Only problem is, as they get older, Faramir (in spite of being very interested in girls) refuses to put himself out there because 1: he's busy trying to earn dad's love by overworking himself, and 2: he's worried about the drama that will ensue if he gets "ahead" of Boromir in any way. I imagine some time before the War of the Ring, Boromir starts kind of pushing him. Like "Go talk to her man. You have to continue the family line because if you don't, dad will lose it." "He will lose it ANYWAY MAN"

rebloggable version

[thehelplessmortals]

Hello fellow Menelaus fanatic! I saw your headcanons about Menelaus and Agamemnon and how Agamemnon struggled raising a traumatized kid during exile when he was still a traumatized kid himself, and it really reminded me of Nani and Lilo's dynamic in all the Lilo and Stitch movies. Do you think they fought like the sisters during exile or no? Also Menelaus not liking Clytemmenstra, the girl Agamemnon marries in the future is so funny to me, I can imagine him glaring daggers at her when she and Aggie got married lol. How did Menelaus get along with Tyndareus and Icarius’s other children? Also since Menelaus looks more like Atreus and Thyestes than the other kids did Aerope dislike him more? How old was he when she died? I'm assuming he was very young because he's 6 at the time of exile. What was his relationship with his father and his siblings? Since he was so young when all this traumatic stuff happened does he have fuzzy memories of his family and what his mom looked like? Did he even understand what was happening beyond the surface level during the early years of exile?

P.S. sorry for yapping too much, you don't have to answer all the questions if you don't have an answer or you just don't feel like it. I just feel like Agamemnon and Menelaus’s dynamic is far too underappreciated, and I love to learn about other people's interpretations of it.

Aw man you caught me two minutes after I posting about how I’m scrapping my retelling and overhauling all my headcanons 😂😭 But glad to see another Menelaus fanatic, he deserves so much more love.

I’ve actually done a lot of revising their origin story just recently, but a lot of basics are still the same, so all good I think?

I LOVE that comparison, yes they do fight like the sisters, and I’m not sure I want them to be very close before exile (Agamemnon being a more apathetic older sibling, maybe), but them learning to rely on each other and also learning that they butt heads A Lot.

I don’t really know how Menelaus got on with the other kids. He wouldn’t know Icarius or his children though (that’s a thing), and the triplets are a lot younger than him, and the older girls might be a little intimidating. Not sure lol.

I have Menelaus as his mother’s favourite child. I have been fighting to determine how she should die in this for years and never have, but she’s alive when they go into exile. And he does remember her a bit, but I don’t think he had the tools to process everything that happened as a child. And then his memories and feels get more vague and muddled as he gets older and harder to retrospectively process. I don’t think he thinks about her often. And yeah, same thing, he does understand what happened, but he doesn’t have the ability to really process it until he’s older, and it’s harder to do when he’s older.

And no no worries! I haven’t talked about them in AGES so thanks for asking :)) Again, overhauling so sorry it’s in a little bit of a vague state at the moment. But I agree, I love these two and their dynamic, it’s so underrated, which is wild because it’s so distinct in Homer’s works. I am obsessed.

[thehelplessmortals]

The Child

I drew him in March on my iPad but here is the child in reference to the Telegony angst post yet the kiddo exists and yes there in an au where shenanigans take place but ways are parted with no catastrophic alteration to the Homeric plot. In my defence it is an au.

[thehelplessmortals]

Penelope has a human mama in my fics

[thehelplessmortals]

Movie night with of Agamemnon's kids from the Hapless Oresteia (this draw the squad meme)

Left to right: Electra, Chryses, Orestes, Chrysothemis, Iphigenia

[thehelplessmortals]

I have returned briefly with a smol ipad doodle of young Tyndareus and his walking stick (i have given him walking stick lore among many other lores. i am normal about him. Menelaus also has walking stick lore. I just needed to post him, farewell again)