pedo mellon a minno

samwise gamgee appreciation blog

[witchchild]

[quixoticanarchy]

Finrod and Lúthien as friends is an underexplored dynamic but presumably they would've known each other, maybe hung out in Doriath... this girl Beren wants to risk death for is not like, an abstract concept to Finrod; he may know her better than Beren does. They’re even related (first cousins once removed)

Also makes it that much more painful when Lúthien gets to Tol-in-Gaurhoth and finds Beren still barely alive but Finrod dead

[edennill]

She actually mourns him out loud in the Lay! And calls him "the noblest of the noble race", which I can't stop thinking about... she's of the Doriathrim, I don't know if she'd be praising the Noldor like this, so she's likely saying he's the noblest of the Eldar and I'm gonna go insane.

[emilybeemartin]

Gondor Week day 6: Minor characters

When things are all said and done, I like to imagine Aragorn paying a visit to the nameless townsperson who supplied the six dried leaves of athelas that revived Faramir, Eowyn, and Merry.

@gondorweek

[assiraphales]

sick to my stomach bc samwise the brave wasn’t a fighter, a noble, a scholar, a wizard…. what could he do in the face of this darkness? and he chose to carry the hope of middle earth on his shoulders

[tolkienmatters]

Nienna was one of the Aratar, the most powerful of the Valar. Sister of Mandos and Irmo, she had no husband. She was the Valar associated with grief, sadness, and mourning, but also of understanding, pity, and hope. She always wore a gray cloak. Her song in the Music of the Ainur was what brought sadness into the world. She lived isolated in the west of Arda, and often went to the Hall of Mandos to console the souls of the dead. Her tears watered the Two Trees, and when they were destroyed her tears helped clean the evil of Ungoliant. She vouched for Melkor to be freed from the chains of the Valar following the destruction of the Trees, as she is the goddess of pity. During her time in Arda she was the patron vala of Gandalf, and he learned much about pity from her; which may explain his wearing of gray.

“Wisest of the Maiar was Olórin. He too dwelt in Lórien, but his ways took him often to the house of Nienna, and of her he learned pity and patience.” - Gandalf during his time in Valinor. Silmarillion, Valaquenta.

Art by https://victoriahwinter.tumblr.com/

[hacash]

It's still so funny to me that hobbit society has technology like pony-traps and handkerchiefs and post offices but the realms of Men and Elves, at least, are very much still in their version of the High Middle Ages. I would kill for a scene where Aragorn starts doing the whole Galavant thing - we shall meet when the night air grows as chill as the depths of Moria and the setting sun colours the sky that particular shade of blue as to recall to us the sinking of Numenor into the very Sea Itself - and Pippin just goes 'have none of you guys ever learned to use a freaking clock'.

[hacash]

Frodo offers to buy Gandalf a watch so he can actually be on time for once and nearly gets bodied into Bywater Pool.

[hacash]

Sam is nearly reduced to tears upon trying to learn Gondorian recipes because all the cooks in Minas Tirith are using that old medieval technique of recite five Paternosters and the fish will be perfectly fried. Please. They're called egg-timers. Every hobbit has one. He'll buy them one himself if they'll just let him cook like a normal person.

[hacash]

WAIT FUCK HANG ON

‘In the house of Elrond, and it is ten o’clock in the morning,’ said a voice. ‘It is the morning of October the twenty-fourth, if you want to know.’ I seriously doubt Elrond has a big old cuckoo clock hanging around Rivendell and messing up the aesthetics so wizards evidently do keep timepieces about their person. Does Gandalf have a Rolex?

[sea-salted-wolverine]

Gandalf knows exactly what time it is and is late on purpose.

[sindar-princeling]

Counter-theory: the phrase "o'clock" is just one of those things that Tolkien included while "translating" from Westron to English to make it more understandable for the reader - and so the reason why there is a phrase "o'clock" in LOTR is the same as the reason why there are months called July and August but no ceasar

[sindar-princeling]

I love cranky Gandalf so much

[astriiformes]

The Fellowship gets on the topic of their ages one night and Boromir comes to the dawning realization that he has absolutely no idea how old any of his companions are supposed to be at all

[astriiformes]

Boromir, pointing at the hobbits: I don’t know how your ages work

Boromir, pointing at Legolas and Gimli: I definitely don’t know how either of your ages work

Boromir, pointing at Aragorn: I thought I knew how your age worked but apparently I was wrong

Boromir, pointing at Gandalf: I especially don’t know how your age works

Gandalf: It doesn’t, but carry on

[elidyce]

Listen I will die on this hill. I don’t care what it says in the assorted apocrypha, if you go by the Actual Text of LOTR you can make a very good argument that Boromir is the youngest member of the group. 

The hobbits are the only ones given official ages in the text, and are between fifty or fifty-one and twenty-nine. Elves and dwarves notoriously age slowly, and Gimli is the offspring of one of Bilbo’s pals, so okay, we’ve established that he’s old enough to call the hobbits young, and Bilbo confirms for them that Aragorn is Pretty Old For A Bigjobs. Gandalf is, of course, eternal.

But we are never given any context for Boromir and Faramir’s ages, except that a) they are humans and, though Sons of Gondor, not much longer lived than most Bigjobs, and b) Faramir is A QuiteYoung Man. I was absolutely convinced, when I read the books as a youngun, that Boromir, being in ‘the flower of manhood’ iirc, was probably between 25 and 30.

And it would be Freaking Hilarious, okay, for Boromir to finally get around to actually asking how old this baby-faced hobbit carrying The Ring is, and get told ‘oh, he’s only fifty, but he’s very steady for his age.’

Boromir: ?!?!?!

And then Pippin and Merry start asking everyone how old they are because this is fascinating are we all official adults here except for Pippin or what.

Boromir: …. Pippin isn’t an adult HOW OLD IS PIPPIN.

Pippin is just 29, which is why everyone calls him Pippin, it’s gonna be at least another 20 years before he can make Peregrine work. Why, how old is Boromir?

Boromir, who would rather DIE than admit to being 28 right at this moment: …. 43. 

All the others, weighing up his apparent age compared to theirs: Sure, sounds legit. 

Gandalf, who knows for certain, does not say anything because he is absolutely certain that telling Pippin that he’s older than Boromir will be an unmitigated disaster. 

[lotrheritageposts]

LOTR Heritage Post

[overthinkinglotr]

I like how when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit he wasn’t planning to write Lord of the Rings at all… so a lot of the most iconic elements of Middle Earth aren’t Super Serious Lore that Tolkien Created After Hours of Intense Study in to the Gritty Realistic Dynamics of his Fantasy World™, they’re things that Tolkien originally created while he was having fun writing a story for his kids.

Like, in the Hobbit, Tolkien didn’t write Gandalf as a Serious Gritty Epic Fantasy wizard. Tolkien wrote Gandalf as an EXTREMELY PETTY sarcastic drama queen who just roasts everyone 24/7 and is almost like, a parody of a wizard– a funny character who isn’t supposed to be “realistic,” but a character that little kids would find funny and want to hear stories about.

but then years passed

and Tolkien decided to write Lord of the Rings

and he gradually realized the story would not be a lighthearted children’s book like the Hobbit, but a  dramatic serious epic

but he was like

“I already wrote Gandalf as a petty grumpy drama queen, and I have to be faithful to that. this element of his character must be preserved”

[overthinkinglotr]

I also like how Tolkien retroactively explained the weirdest parts in the Hobbit by saying it was written by Bilbo, an unreliable narrator. A lot of the things Bilbo wrote in the Hobbit were exaggerated or outright lies, which explains the contradictions in the Hobbit vs Lotr.

So does Bilbo (our unreliable narrator) describe Gandalf as a petty grumpy drama queen? yes

But is Gandalf really a petty grumpy drama queen? also yes

[torchwood-99]

Something almost bitter about how Denethor held the line for years, how Denethor endured despair and grief for years, and kept Gondor in the hands of those loyal to it, and only right at the end did he break, and succumb to years of suffering, and decide that instead of waiting any longer for the unbeatable enemy to kill him, he would at deny the enemy that and take his death (and Faramir's) into his own hands, and because of that his legacy would forever be tarnished and scorned, meanwhile we know that for five years Theoden had succumbed, Theoden had given in, he had granted power in his land to a traitor, his people and his family suffered, and he only pulled it together right at the end for a glorious last stand and because of that he would be honoured for years to come as a great and noble warrior king.

And there is something to be said for celebrating those who manage to heal and recover from such despair, but then you have to ask what Denethor might have achieved had he been able to heal as welll.

[ach-sss-no]

when brandon sanderson talks about villains in his famous free youtube writing class video lectures he'll say 'what's the difference between gollum and sauron' and of course he means the villain that's present in the narrative and characterized in a way the audience can potentially relate to or sympathize with vs. the looming threatening anonymous far-off force (among other things). but every time he asks that i think 'well one of those guys tracked down frodo and got his ring back'

[mysteryteacup]

Brandon Sanderson: What's the difference between Gollum and Sauron?

OP: Skill issue.

[goldenatreides]

Mightier than Este is Nienna, sister of the Feanturi; she dwells alone. She is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered in the marring of Melkor. So great was her sorrow, as the Music unfolded, that her song turned to lamentation long before its end, and the sound of mourning was woven into the themes of the World before it began.

nienna | unfinished sketch 2/?

[7lizardsinacoat]

"And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her."

A painting of Eowyn! I, may, have been a little in love with her as a kid. A lady with a sword? Sign me the hell up.

Please please please zoom in to see all the details I spent the past week doing. The chainmail took 3 days of that

Edit: This is now available on redbubble here!

[psstwantsomecheese]

*voice of son who had no idea where feanor was going with the oath* uh hey dad what was that last bit about the everlasting darkness

[will-ruadh]

Barliman Butterbur is just like me fr

[verkomy]

treebeard and the hobbits

you can get a print here

[mirkwoodest]

Chapter 1 of Don't Panic: Hahahah! Funny satire time! Just WHAT will this wacky woman do next!

Chapter 1 of Okay, NOW Panic: We shall now explore the chaos and casualties of the Battle of Pelennor Fields and behold the horrors of War.