[AI] Crossing The Helcaraxë

[ex_flameandsong751]

Seven images, October 2024. The second one appears in chapter 6 of my fic Don't Disturb This Groove as one of my OC Sören's paintings.

Comments

[flamingsword]

These remind me of a comic book representation I saw once of Valaskjalf, the Shelf of the Slain, where instead of a “hall” being a building, it was a whole world, full of the dead, with a mirrored silvery night sky with no stars. It’s all very chilling. ‘Tis the season to be creepy, I guess?

[ex_flameandsong751]

Oh, neat!

Time to infodump *autistic noises*: in The Silmarillion, the Noldor leave Valinor en masse and cross into Middle-Earth, but the way there involves going through a frozen wasteland with a dangerous river [the Helcaraxë, "Grinding Ice"]. Fëanor, a mad genius who I headcanon as autistic, has a bit of a breakdown and does the Extremely Uncool thing of burning his brother's ships so they can't sail down the river and have to attempt to cross the frozen part on foot. It did not end well, people died. I like Fëanor [well, "like" is... not quite the word for it, it's complicated] but this is one of the times I acknowledge he fucked up, even though it's understandable how he got to that point. When I was five days sober, I made art of him burning the ships. [Withdrawal was one of the hardest things I've ever experienced.]

So anyway, in the story where I used this as an illustration, Sören is painting as Maglor plays music - Maglor asked him about his synaesthesia, and wanted to do a little experiment. Sören doesn't know this at this part in the story, but Maglor is playing a tragic song about his life, which includes the exile and the "survivor's guilt" of the Helcaraxë, and he's singing in Quenya which Sören doesn't understand, and Sören just... paints this. I had to pick one of the images to use in the chapter and decided to post all of them here and deviantART, instead of just picking one and deleting the rest; interestingly the one that's gotten the most favorites on dA so far is not the one I used in the chapter.

[flamingsword]

So what you’re telling me is that Sören has magical synaesthesia, basically.

[ex_flameandsong751]

Yes.