This Is A Title

He/him. I promise I like the Silmarillion a normal amount LoTR sideblog of campfire-octopus, campfire_octopus on AO3 Yes, I use different pronouns for different blogs. Mix and match, or deal.

[asinoeiv]

Gil Galad's chief councilors and source of headaches.

Two half-elves: one the Eldritch scion of pretty much every royal line—human and elven—and the other, the Fëanorian hardliner that may or may not be an actual Fëanorian. Both are having a dubious claim to your throne and a total disinterest in it at the same time. 

[lagriffedemaho]

[aroacebaggins-art]

hi friend <3 love your art ! happy pride woooooooooo!!!!!!!! 🏳️‍🌈💗 can I request Éowyn and Arwen with the lesbian flag please and thank you they mean everything to me

Ahh thank you! Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

lesbians hell yeah

I'm taking Tolkien pride art/pfp reqs this month! Just send an ask with the character, flag, and if you want a design from a specific adaptation!

Pfp version below

[ffigwit]

🤩🤩🤩AMAZING THANK YOUUUUU

[alfea]

consider the first fictional old man you aren't attracted to that comes to mind. that man is now your father. how are things?

very good

pretty good

decent

not great

horrible

Voting ended onJul 29

[chthonion]

im constantly thinking of in the harrowing curufins little fits about his smithwork now hes in aman, and how supposedly no one has need of weaponry and how he doesnt remember how to make anything else and, ignoring partially how 'weapon' is likely being used here more as shorthand for efficient-person-killing tool, as a (very mediocre) bladesmith and knife enthusiast its so hard to read that as anything but Local Man Forgor Kitchen Knives. even putting aside the fact that a sword is just a long knife and that the mechanics of both are exactly the same with slight differences on whats prioritized, a knife is a knife is a weapon. and somehow you *can* have kitchen knives that are so so poorly balanced that i, at least, had to filter them put of my drawers because any time i picked one up i genuinely cringed it felt so icky. i knoww theres little reason for you to know anything about bladesmithing and that curufins fits are there for character growth and plot reasons. and yet i cant stop thinking about how hes having a fit when he could be making his mother a better set of kitchenware.

I mean, he fully could be making his mother a better set of kitchenware and his brothers some really excellent pocketknives, yep! His skills are transferable! Eventually, when he finishes grieving all the myriad stuff he's grieving, he'll probably figure that out!

But if you've been the guy making stuff that keeps people alive in battle, and you've spent centuries focusing on that and making it an important part of your identity, "just make a kitchen knife" is going to feel a bit like a bit of a letdown, yeah? Because he doesn't value or care about a kitchen knife the way he values and cares about a sword. He probably has a lot of very specific tricks and strategies for making really excellent person-killing tools, a lot of which are probably magic by our standards and thus not very transferable to kitchen knives. And even if they are transferable, they aren't going to save anyone's life in battle. They're just going to make chopping things nicer/safer. (Not a lot nicer/safer, probably. I'm sure Nerdanel knows enough smiths to own very good knives already.)

It's not just about the skill, it's about the lost context. The real problem is not actually that he doesn't remember how to do anything else; it's that he doesn't remember a world where anything else matters to him.

And that really sucks, and is definitely affecting his interpersonal relationships, because mindsets which are fine in a war are not always great in a domestic, non-war setting.

[ela-draws]

it's me and Celebrian with bangs against the world

[kanellebullar]

[thelien-art]

Nimloth, the oldest daughter of Aragorn and Arwen - the name is inspired by @merilles and @peasant-player from this post.

[thelien-art]

bisexual Elros for the pride requests! <33

Our favorite Númenor king!

Celebrate Pride with me

[somepinkthing]

I like the idea that maglor is actually rather quiet when not performing, introverted by nature, and a bit of an airhead with anything that isn't his own specific interests (wherein he is unreasonably intense). This is juxtaposed on both sides by his older and younger brother—maedhros and celegorm both being extremely extroverted, ambitious, and as intense as you can possibly imagine all the time. Sandwiched between two people who constantly burn with passion and emotion, I like to imagine maglor adopted a more lowkey personality.

I imagine him to be generally well liked, moderate in his moods, compartmentalizes well, realistic in his expectations, does his tasks well whatever his opinions on them are—the kind of guy who can accurately assess what he's given and work with it instead of pushing for more. Careful, realistic, and steady. Still water to combat the blazing flame the rest of his family embodies. He is his mother's son in that sense—gentler by nature but fiercely pragmatic

To his detriment, these qualities also make him the kind of guy who generally follows the path of least resistance. He's got two geniuses for parents and the OG Oldest Daughter™ as an elder brother. He also loves his family wholeheartedly. He figures there's not really any reason for him to question his place following them, it just always made sense. He's a minstrel, he has no business making world changing decisions. Leave those to people more suited for it than he.

In a show of character growth however, towards the end of the story, we often see maglor showing more agency independent of others and displaying an ability to hold out hope despite the evidence.

[erumelde]

[nochd]

Tolkien wasn't super clear about this and what hints he did put in, the movies left out, but the answer is: The Ring controls people.

In the book, Frodo does this to Gollum on the slopes of Mount Doom, and curses him to "yourself be thrown into the Fire" if he ever touches him again.

I feel Peter Jackson didn't understand that -- as he also didn't understand why Gollum, having sworn on the Ring not to harm Frodo, couldn't (personally) harm Frodo (and therefore had to lead him into Cirith Ungol for Shelob to kill him instead).

"Smeagol promised!" "Smeagol lied" was never how it worked.

Which is why Jackson had Frodo still apparently be drawn to the Ring after it was bitten off him and attack Gollum and push him over, because he thought Gollum just "randomly fell off the edge" in the book. It wasn't random, it was the effect of Frodo's curse using the Ring's power.

At all levels the Ring's power is to give its bearer power. For small mortal folks like Hobbits that means the gift of invisibility, which, like the Ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic, removes social consequences for one's actions. For people like Denethor or Aragorn it would have meant the power to command armies, which is what Sauron thought was happening when Aragorn marched on the Black Gate and why he sent every soldier he'd got to take it back. For Gandalf ("through me the Ring would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine") or Galadriel ("all shall love me and despair") it would have meant phenomenal power over nature.

[lemonomelette]

young dior

[julijbee]

nothing to say for yourself?

[theoppositeofprofound]

Has someone written the story where Sauron doesn’t do all that swords in the dark art nonsense and just sends the Witch King to Hobbiton to file a lawsuit instead?

It’s not a strategy that would work in any other jurisdiction in Middle-Earth but hobbit law does not recognize wergild and does have the right of first finder, with the time limit being the death of the original owner, which works out great for Sauron who never died (?)

The litigation comes down to “Is this Dark Lord fellow actually alive and if so can he prove it” “has he consistently been alive” “what is being alive, actually, when you think about it” and “has he been making a good faith effort to recover his lost property for the last few thousand years”. All very tricky to adjudicate, especially with the entire Shire peeking into the court room. The whole case eventually gets thrown out when a strange tall man abducts Frodo in the night but it’s quite the philosophical crisis in the meantime.

[frodo-of-the-nine-fingers]

@hamletthedane

[ach-sss-no]

Shout out to Haldir for almost being the only person in LOTR to immediately clock gollum as a hobbit, but dismissing the idea because gollum is too good at climbing trees

There was something in this tree that I have never seen before,' he said. 'It was not an orc. It fled as soon as I touched the tree-stem. It seemed to be wary, and to have some skill in trees, or I might have thought that it was one of you hobbits (FOTR ch. 6: Lothlorien)

haldir's known the other hobbits for like two hours now, and he's quite certain anything good at climbing a tree cannot be a member of the same species

[ach-sss-no]

still funny 2 me

haldir: *points at gollum* that could be a hobbit but... gollum: *looks like gollum* haldir: problem is........he's too competent

[southfarthing]

me: I'm fine

also me: both celebrimbor and gil galad were personally killed by sauron. they defied him so fiercely and he had so much hatred for them that he killed them both, centuries apart, with his own hands

[disorganisedautodidact]

#i think a lot about the fact that Elrond was there for Gil Galad's death#a) he must have witnessed it#could he get to him? does he blame himself for not being there in time to try and help? DID he get to him and try and help?#sometimes I wonder if part of that duel was Gil insisting that Elrond stay back because a) someone had to pick up the pieces if he died#and b) if Sauron hated Gil Galad he must have HATED Elrond#I think Sauron would have LOVED to get his hands on Elrond#for all the last alliance stuff to be sure but also because he's Melian's descendent and the line of Luthien and all that#and then on top of that: like calls to like#i think the maia-ness was both hissing at each other like feral cats but also drawn like magnets y'know#idk it's late im incoherant#but i wonder how much of Sauron killing Gil with his bare hands was also Gil going if you want him you're going to have to get through ME#god i love Gil so much (via @runawaymun​)

yes, all of this!

[russingontrash]

@welcomingdisaster 's tags are also really cool

[thelien-art]

Celebrían lady of Imladris, Wife of Elrond

Hollyhock: Hollyhock symbolizes different things depending on their color; the red Hollyhocks symbolize a want for love, the yellow represents happiness and joy, while the white Hollyhocks symbolize purity and innocence.