Do candles pity moths?

just another fëanorian apologist

[thelordofgifs]

Hello and welcome to my Silmarillion/Tolkien sideblog!

The basics:

she/her and an adult

find me at TheChasm on AO3

follows and replies from my main @theghostinthemargins

icon is by the wonderfully talented @biginvisiblespider

And a little about what you can expect from me:

a Maglor enjoyer

"the Eldacar mutual"

co-inventor of the Aerin/Tilion (yes, you read that right) crackship

More seriously, you can find all my writing, including the stuff that wasn't consequential enough to end up on AO3, under the #my fic tag, and my silm musings and ramblings under #my meta.

My fanworks permission statement for transformative works based on my fics can be found here.

Currently my main writing project is the fairest stars, a bullet point AU wherein Beren and Lúthien steal two Silmarils instead of one, and everything goes completely off the rails. You can find the latest instalment, plus regular memes, dvd commentary, and some INCREDIBLE fanart from even more incredible readers, under the tag #the fairest stars – or for easier navigation on tumblr, here's a masterpost with all the important links.

[dry-tofu]

[redreyenotarget]

The king he would have been…

[peasant-player]

Thanks to @happyperle and @they-of-clay for suggesting Feanor specific biblically accurate Feanor

So I drew him when he died😌✨️

I imagined it like a dying star, very beautiful and dramatic

I referenced Ivan Pokidyshev art of heat drawings but I made it even more intense <3

Commission are open/ my ko-fie

[xximmortalkissxx]

The rarest type of silvergifting. 🩶⚒️🩶

[thelordofgifs]

6 and 12 for the Silm fic rec ask game!

(silm fic rec ask game)

6. A fic you love about a rare character, ship, or legendarium setting.

@sallysavestheday once wrote me All Will Be Well, And All Will Be Well about my beloved Eldacar of Gondor and I adore it. Sally is always so good at slipping into underexplored settings – so here's a plea from me for some more Gondorian history, please! <3

12. The last 3 fics in your "Marked for Later" list.

No Docile Artefact by @sallysavestheday again – absolutely SALIVATING to get stuck in on this longer Nerdanel piece but I also know it's going to hurt me. But aahh I'm so excited!!

angels would not condescend by @crownlessliestheking – that summary!!! So intrigued by this one.

old longings by @queerofthedagger – this looks like just the flavour of russingon that undoes me and I'm Hyped.

[thelordofgifs]

Hello! About the recent ask game, 5 & 6? Your silm posting is always so interesting, have a nice day!

So I reblogged this ask game, instantly got full-body slammed by a chronic pain flare-up, and am now in the "fell asleep at work" stage of exhaustion so. belatedly. to the inbox I go. And thank you so much for the sweet compliment anon!

5. The fic or author who gets a character like no one else.

This one is hard to answer, because so many talented authors can make me believe in so many versions of the same character – but I think I want to shout out @eilinelsghost's Finrod in particular, for such a well-drawn, thoughtful, heartbreaking portrait of a character who's so often sidelined as "happy golden sunshine boi". And Frankie writes him with so much love and care that she's made me love him too. Go and read everything she's written of course, but the Atandil series is her masterwork and so, so beautiful.

6. A fic you love about a rare character, ship, or legendarium setting.

This took me an embarrassingly long scroll through my bookmarks (I think my tastes can be pretty basic lol) but Eru's a rare character, right? And Project Arda by Astrance is a delightfully fun and weird academia AU that has stuck in my head since I first read it. "That's not a sentient, that's a fucking undergrad!" makes me giggle at random intervals still.

[tobermoriansass]

13!

13. The last 3 fics in your bookmarks.

Portraits of Estel by @annarobots - Maedhros as George W Bush is frankly very funny, as is the revisionism and glazing of his subpar art & all the mealy-mouthed nonprofit-speak, but crucially it was so satisfying bc this dropped literally 2 or 3 days after a round of tweets claiming Bush's art was great or something while it was the most banal dogshit I'd ever seen and it was so so so satisfying to see someone rip it up even if at a fictional remove. Fic at its funniest transformative imo!!!

swan song by TheChasm / @thelordofgifs - just a stupendous all time Elwing, Earwen and Finarfin fic. GORGEOUSLY written and - I want to say operatic, but I think that describes the way the fairytale of the story is framed. Also there are so many metatextual layers to this re. the parallels between the First and final Kinslayings and I basically think about it all the time.

The Admiral's Folly* by @balrogballs - fic of my heart!!!!! just the most profoundly thoughtful and gorgeously written encounter with history, queerness, love and abuse in 70s in south india (kerala, specifically) in ways that still resonate today. All my feelings rly summed up in this extremely long close reading I did abt the multiple layers of pleasures to this particular fic.

[silm rec asks]

*ok i'm cheating a bit here bc this is a silm fandom fic game but honestly i don't know how many le carre fans are on here anymore (or if you're a le carre fan) but if you are, my actual third fic bookmark is eminently plausible by algulsiento, which is a sort of missing scene reunion of sasha/teddy from absolute friends and is just the sort of repressed homosexual spy fic longing ft. consummation that i adore and can read literally 1 million times forever and ever and if you (general you) are a le carre fan you should read it. immediately.

[blue-to-blue]

celebrían 🌼

[nimphelos]

círdan & ereinion

[nycterisg]

Silm Fic Rec Ask Game 🧝‍♂️

*tailored exactly to me:

The first character or ship you ever read fanfiction about.

The fanfic author you've read the most.

The fanfic author you wish you'd read more from.

The fanfic author you're currently most excited to read.

The fic or author who gets a character like no one else.

A fic you love about a rare character, ship, or legendarium setting.

A character, ship, or part of the legendarium you wish there were more fics about.

The character or ship that wasn't on your bingo card, but that fanfiction completely sold you on.

Unfinished Tales! Send some love to a fic on hiatus that you loved.

Pick a (or more!) fanfic author(s) and tell us why you love them.

The last fic you read.

The last 3 fics in your "Marked for Later" list.

The last 3 fics in your bookmarks.

Unhinged Award: the fic author who always surprises you.

That fic idea you're not going to write, but desperately hope another fanfic author will.

[thescrapwitch]

final song

The shade who arrives in the Halls does not look like his daughter: white haired instead of dark, lines etched into her face, shrunken and wizened and diminished. But her eyes still carry stars, and her voice, while changed, is no less musical. She sings as she walks, head held high, past the tapestries and the watching eyes, down a dark corridor towards the edge of Námo's domain where all the souls of mortals go. It is her most beautiful song, and her last. 

Thingol calls out to her. "Lúthien, Lúthien! Do not go!" He shoves himself forward to grab her hand and pull her back. He wants, desperately, to scoop her up into his arms, to hold her close to his heart like he once did when she was small. His miracle daughter, his precious child, his little, lovely, Lúthien. 

Without pausing her song, she glances over her shoulder. Her eyes, when they meet his, carry no apology or sorrow or even fear. Only love. Goodbye, Ada, those eyes say, and they carve a wound into Thingol’s heart that will never heal. 

“Lúthien,” he cries, reaching for her. “Please!” 

Still singing, she turns away and disappears into the dark.

[can also be read here on AO3]

[blue-to-blue]

happy saturday, here's a maglor doodle

[starspray]

a double drabble for @tolkiengenweek also written for the 7/4/2026 SWG instadrabble prompt: I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence

.

“Do you ever regret it? Leaving?” Celebrimbor asked.

Frodo thought about it as they walked down the path. Above the leaves were bright yellow, soon to fade to soft brown. Birds sang in the trees, their songs still unfamiliar and lovelier for it. The day was warm, but the night would be cool—as perfect a time for a walking holiday as ever there had been in the Shire. “Which time?” he replied finally.

“Either.”

“No—I don’t regret leaving the first time. There wasn’t really anything else I could do, was there?”

“And the second?”

Frodo sighed. “Sometimes. But there wasn’t anything else I could do then, either. I came home too changed for it to still be home anymore. But at least I know that it is still there—that Bag End is as full now as it was meant to be when it was dug, and all the woods and gardens are green again. And,” he added, “I’m very happy to have come here to make your acquaintance.”

Celebrimbor smiled. “Don’t say that in respectable company.”

Frodo laughed. “Oh, didn’t you know? I’m half a Brandybuck, with a little Took in me besides—I’ve never been respectable.”

[outofangband]

I’m thinking about Amlach again.

Amlach was a grandson of Marach (of whom Hador also descended) who was among a small group of men who especially distrusted the elves. His most famous deed was something he did not do at all.

During a meeting of different leaders, “Amlach” gave a speech urging those assembled to abandon the Noldor’s cause. His words inspired such dread that more than one person there fled the meeting.

Of course, it wasn’t Amlach at all but rather a servant of Morgoth impersonating him. We never know which servant exactly and that ambiguity makes it all the more unsettling.

I imagine Not!Amlach looking slightly younger and more handsome than he should (thinking back to Frodo saying a servant of Sauron would “look more fair but feel more foul”. Eyes just a bit brighter. A missing scar that might just be the light. Any who interacted with him having dizziness, vertigo, strange dreams for months after.

The paranoia it would inspire! You only have to do something like this once for there to be doubt in people’s minds forever! The fact that this trick was meant to be revealed so that fear and mistrust would spread. Especially considering the existing mistrust of former prisoners of Angband. How many were turned away because their own spouses or friends or communities doubted they were who they said.

[littlegentlewoman]

This came out so horrible I’m CRYING

[balrogballs]

HORSE GUY MAGLOR: YEARS OF THE TREES

Tried out a more simplistic single-brush colouring style (bloom brush) with this. Unfortunately I really hate it, but I know that you lot love horses and looove Maglor, so throwing it out to the hordes 🪣 I know this elf considered himself a horse whisper in the Years of the Trees. His sole 3 weeks of employment across 7000+ years of life was as a horse whisperer, and that only because Círdan felt bad for him. However, we are still in Valinor here. In his head, his life is a season of Heartland and The Crown and will remain so, always and forever. He has not yet heard of Spielberg’s 2011 offering, War Horse.

commission me | art insta