Qitian on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/qitian/art/Cosmologic-silliness-155408996Qitian

Deviation Actions

Qitian's avatar

Cosmologic silliness

By
Published:
578 Views

Description

... yeah.

This has (as usual with my stuff) a long backstory. And embarrassing, too.

So basically when I read the Silmarillion and came to the bit about the sun and moon, I always read "vessel" in the sense of "container". You know, like a goldfish bowl that Tilion and Arien carry around.
Then I encountered the German translation (which isn't stellar anyway) and there it was Schiff, "ship", and that rather stopped me short because - well, sure a "vessel" can also be a ship, but I'd simply never read it that way in that particular context.
As anyone who suddenly sees her beloved view of the "world" (even if it's just fictional mythology) threatened, my first reaction was disbelief and disdain. Ships? That's just silly. Sure, Eärendil's got a ship, but then he brought that ship with him in the first place. And he's just a little star (yes, shut up, I know that Venus is a planet, but the Elves don't know that). But the sun and moon? Getting kind of crowded up there, isn't it, with all those satellite ships around, huh?
In short, I thought it was nonsense and just another result of sloppy translation and I was preparing to write a rant on my LJ with illustrations, too, and---

well, then I realised (or rather, in discussion with ~LadyElleth , was reminded) that in the Book of Lost Tales the "ship" part was made kind of explicit, so... yeah.

That rant didn't get written, and the illustrations disappeared.

Now these days I've been tidying up my study (another looooong story) and came across my doodles again. And I thought... you know, it may have been unjustified, but it's kind of cute and amusing.

So what the heck, I scanned it and put a nice spacey background (courtesy of NASA, public domain) behind it and... well, that's it. So, have extremely silly Arien and Tilion. On ships. In space. I have no excuse for this except ignorance and boredom. *shifty eyes*
Image size
659x659px 192.02 KB
© 2010 - 2024 Qitian
Comments7
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
kindlethestars's avatar
That's really a cute story in it's own way... and so is the picture.