His Brother's Heroes

All the myths and legends are of luminous elves and fair-complexioned Numenorians - one of myriad silent snubs offered a quiet boy with olive skin, but in Faramir, whose world pooled like still water in his brother's strong dark hands, its thistle-claws found no hold. Let the storytellers keep their pale elven saviours. His brother's heroes were olive-gold like him, or dark brown like their Easterling great-grandmother (and, while some were fair, that bore no more comment than that the Anduin was wet.) His brother's heroes were not just kings wielding big swords all tangled in their own names, but farmers bearing plows and goatherds with their crooks, were bookish children with no tool save wits and kindness, were floury-handed baker women who rescued themselves and need no "-ine" to their "hero" and would have rolled their plain brown eyes at the languishing elf-princesses.

His brother stopped telling those stories, over the years. Later, Faramir couldn't bring himself to say "as we grew up" after Boromir gave up his own childhood in story after story, in all the hard lessons and the words of comfort their father never gave, in years - started far too young - as their people's shield.

Shadows

Peregrine Took is no good at sneaking. Maybe it's the big fuzzy feet, or maybe it's the worried little sniffles between attempts to hold his breath. Either way, Boromir keeps scrounging for kindling under the sad icy scraps of old snow, offering Pippin the small mercy of choice in whether to speak of whatever has him so much on edge, or simply to slip away and pretend he's stayed in camp with the rest of the party.

The not-quite-silence stretches. His own boots scuff on the rocks as he crouches to gather another bundle of moss and furze and offer a brief,equally arid thought of thanks to whatever powers might be that the mountainside hasn't thawed in a very long time. A leathery sound tells him Pippin's doing the nervous-foot-scuff thing.

She

He walked in on her bathing in the river, which, given their respective personalities, wouldn't have been either as romantic or as creepy (depending upon one's perspective) as it sounded, even if Merry and Pippin hadn't done so first and stood there with their mouths hanging open, waiting for something to fly in. Boromir flipped their cloaks over their heads and picked them up by the scruff, one in each hand, without breaking stride – and not a second too soon, to judge by the gruff bellow of “Oy! Hobbits!” from the water fast disappearing behind a screen of trees.

Fearless

His men said the Steward's elder son was fearless; they said he'd killed a troll with a bread-knife once, and calmly gone back to slicing bread for supper. It is easy to believe, as the encroaching storm follows him into his father's hall, tattering the long dark cloak about his calves and playing havoc with tangled dark hair, the wild curls of it matted with sweat and blood.

Faramir - facial ref. sheet

I subvert things, more or less by existing, and LOTR, despite its in many ways fantastic world-building, is ripe for subversion largely because Tolkein was so very Anglocentric - I mean, he was a British professor writing in the first half of the twentieth century, so it sort of comes with the territory but it's still quite glaringly THERE.

And Gondor is sort of the Faded Classical Culture of that world.

And I like doing character design.

And so I decided Gondorians look sort of Greco-roman, with olive skin, arched noses, dark curly hair, etc.  My friend Pearl enjoys my bizarre ramblings and has been wanting to draw my version of Denethor's sons, and was having a hard time with Faramir, ergo, facial ref-sheet.  He looks considerably less Grecian than many of his people due his Numenorian mum.