becoming light

a small tribute to Galadriel main blog here & all things Middle-earth here.

[ladyoflothlorien]

okay look I know this is Dumb and Petty and Wholly Unlikely To Happen but I really, really really want there to be a scene where Nerwen spins around and yowls "AND GUESS WHO WAS RIGHT, BITCHES, JUST GUESS WHO" at Gil-Galad because goddamn son--

IM JUS SAYIN

[ladyoflothlorien]

My gods, she looks radiant here. ♥

[galadrielofthenoldor]

“for she was then of amazon disposition, she bound up her hair as a crown when taking part in athletic feats”

[haladrielgifs]

morfydd bts <3

[letthefairyinyoufly]

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER costume appreciation:

✦ Galadriel’s golden gown ✦ Costume design by KATE HAWLEY 1x01: A Shadow of the Past

[thranduiill]

Something moves in the shadows, unseen, hidden from our sight

[wondrousforest-blog]

art by Līga Kļaviņa(love at first sight)

[etiamsi]

By me. Upgraded quick illustration while listening to good music.

[anguirell]

A Fading Crown by Gold-Seven

[ladyoflothlorien]

You’re the woman nobody believes.

You knew that Fëanor was bad news even before he crafted the gems that brought all this about. You saw them all raise their eyebrows at your distaste for him, your refusal to give him the merest strand of your hair. He’s so clever! He makes such beautiful things! His genius knows no bounds! Oh, Artanis, don’t be foolish.

You still have nightmares about Alqualondë.

You’re used to it -- you hate it, but you’re used to it, all right. You’ve danced this dance before. You’ve seen the signs of the oncoming storm. You could write the book on it all, and sometimes you seriously think you just might, one day. If you survive.

If anyone else survives to read it.

Sure, you could run to safety. You’d be fine. You’d heal overnight, right? Except you wouldn’t, because your dreaming memories are almost as real as waking life, and you’d be reminded constantly that you lived.

Just you.

The guilt that comes with that will crash over you like a wave that can drown whole empires, that can wipe islands off the map. It saturates everything. But hey, you’re safe, right?

You know how regret and shame can make you cold, snowblind. You remember the times you’ve been frozen in a moment, bodily, mentally, feeling your own heart beating like an ice-pick thrust into a glacier as some more bad news sunk in. Guilt is the fiercest blizzard.

They’re wrong -- your part is not finished. Your duty has not been done, not yet. You cannot leave innocent people to endure terror and imprisonment and death.

All they see is your anger, it’s all they want to see. They don’t see your anxiety keeping you wide awake all night. They don’t see you literally bite down on your tongue when things go to ruin like you knew they would, like you said they would, they don’t taste the iron tang of blood that you concentrate on so you won't cry in frustration. They don’t see your battered heart. They see the lightning and hear the roaring thunder, see the winds forcing the trees to bend and snap. They don’t see the eye of the storm, where you stand, alone, unbroken. You, the tempest, cyclone, goddamn hurricane.

You’re just another angry woman, after all. 

[mirkwoodcore]

Ya'll. Galadriel is not acting like "a Karen". She is acting like "a Thingol". OR like someone who has spent centuries we cannot comprehend having her very real fears about Sauron being dismissed, hunting through frozen wastes that surely would trigger constant memories of the Helcaraxë, drifting out at sea for Valar knows how long on some wreckage with only thirst, hunger, heat and some smarmy, sketchy man for company. Not to mention all the loss and violence that's preceded the Second Age. She's stuck in this awful time of trying to balance when letting her guard down will get her and others harmed, and when keeping it up will impede her goals and get her and others harmed. By the time she reaches Númenor, she could be above and beyond dysregulated. She's in need of support on multiple levels.

I'm enjoying getting to see the characters more in their raw forms, getting pried and polished with experience and care. I don't agree with all the writing choices, there's no media that's above crit...but I do wonder how many less accusations of petulance and immaturity there would be if she was a he. Or if they had given her the Blanchett treatment, how many more would be complaining about her being "too cold", "too perfect with no development" or "even more of a Mary Sue."

[greenjudy]

ah yes

Re: Galadriel the ‘tired trope of the angry girl no one believes’:

I promise you ROP Galadriel hits different if you yourself are or ever have been an angry girl no one believes. 

[ladyoflothlorien]

lol how can you have a problem with Cate Blanchett as Galadriel

...because different people have different tastes? 🤔

Aesthetically, she’s wonderful (inasmuch as the Galadriel in my head was closer to Morfydd Clark lookswise than Cate is, I still love the ethereal and ever-so-slightly androgynous planes of her face, and think it suits Galadriel to a T), and look, to be perfectly honest, I’m probably phrasing it wrong, so let me correct things: I’ve never been able to find fault with Cate’s acting. She’s brilliant at what she does! The direction she was given is what grates, for me -- the oddly slow speech most of all -- was so incredibly far from the Galadriel I saw in my head when I read The Fellowship of the Ring that I could never warm to it. I always saw Galadriel as much, much warmer and far less holier-than-thou than she was portrayed in the films.

For the record, I love those moments we see in The Return of the King and The Battle of the Five Armies where she displays genuine human (er...elven?) emotion -- her smile and laughter as she helps a fallen Frodo to his feet in a vision, and her absolute despair at seeing Gandalf hurt and the set in her jaw when she states “I am not alone!” to the Witch-King, respectively. In those parts, I adore her performance and the direction.

YMMV, and that’s more than okay. ♥

[hikarielizabethbloom]

Look, I'm a hardcore fan of Galadriel and, as a woman and I tend to side-eyeing (does this verb exist? 🤷‍♀️) criticism (most of time unwanted) toward female characters so I'm probably biased...

But everytime I come across a post that calls Galadriel unlikeable and lists the reasons for that, I can't help feeling the problem is that she is a woman and the hero of the story.

She got a REVENGE plot, not a male revenge plot (like I didn't know revenge was gendered), she decide to follow her guts ignoring orders and yes, maybe she was a bit rude in ep3 but honestly she had a rough one hundred years so she had the right to be rude while in a hostile place.

How many male character have we seen act like this and be praised for it? Too many to count...

Also, it's incredible that in 2022 fighting is still seen as a male activity to the point that every time a woman is also a fighter people (mostly men) have tantrums and go around saying shits like 'a woman doesn't need to fight like a man to be strong'. 🤦‍♀️

[one-time-i-dreamt]

not me being in awe at how gorgeous Morfydd Clark is throughout every episode of Rings of Power and being completely slayed by her presence and incredible acting only to stumble upon this nonsense shsflwutsifruisg "hire fans lol" ifuhvksogijx

[elmendea]

One of the most ridiculous yet hilarious tells (tagged, always bloody tagged, isn’t it) I’ve seen that someone hasn’t read shit about the lore yet wants to moan about the existence of the show for no legit reason is Galadriel shouldn’t have looked happy while she was riding that horse.

I just. You’re being funny, right? Galadriel? Nerwen? She who was of Amazonian disposition and enjoyed beating even the boys in athletics in her youth…shouldn’t enjoy horseriding?

😂 

[iridescent-fingertips]