nayrring

i post sometimes―☆ 21 °

[asinoeiv]

Firstly I love your art and you are one of my all time favourite Tolkien artists. Secondly, a crumb of Elros if you’re still doing requests? 🥹🙏🏽

Your Elros is finally finished ✨✨✨ young king Elros was probably a hot mess, he had to be with descendants like his. The design is half though out and pretty much just the first idea I went with. I like royal purples for him using a lot of influence from Byzantine/ancient Egypt and Rome.

[nayrring]

ZUTOPH ao3 fanfics recommendation!! (With my own commentary)

Toph and Zuko: Spun - By Anniered (super wholesome one shot of toph & zuko participating in a spin the bottle game the ending got me super giggly)

Hands - By en_vente (another one shot, just zutoph being vulnerable with eachother, toph feeling up his scar and it gets quite emotional i love it short n sweet n well written)

Jade - By WritingJustBecause (one shot- Zuko describes toph's beauty like the stupidly in love man he is)

Preference - By musicalinny ( this one follows up the movie, toph admitting zuko is her type and something grows between them, adorable!!)

Conductive - By musicalinny (4 chapters- zuko spending some time with toph at the metal academy, they're both overprotective of eachother in here which leads their relationship to bloom into something more <3)

Unrefined - By musicalinny (a jealous zuko AND jealous toph fic, genuinely love this one a lot)

Firecracker - By babydollbyers ( genuinely one of my FAV zutoph fics, the build up, the tension, the romance, the angst, it has EVERYTHING i had ever wanted to read about this ship 100% recommend)

Pretty Bird - By dottiedotcom (toph struggling with her insecurities about her looks and identity in the group and zuko is there to reassure & comfort her, It's so so adorable and emotional)

20/20 - By dottiedotcom (the gaang trying to figure out zuko's & toph's relationship, with a sprinkle of angst)

Catch and Release - By dottiedotcom ( "5 times Zuko is there to catch Toph, and 1 time the others find out why." the ending of this one is always stuck on my mind, absolutely recommend)

With Eyes to See - By dottiedotcom (god bless this author they have one of the best zutoph characterisation, i love the strong bond zutoph has in here)

Warm Ashes - By DarkHeartAttack (old zutoph fic going on a life field changing trip short n wholesome !)

Better Late Than Never - By MeGrimlockKing (another old zutoph fic it's super cute as well !)

Zero Progress - By PBandbeans (i think this one is inspired by that one fan art of toph laying down on top of zuko while he is doing pushups lol toph is veryyy into him in here iykyk)

sunspot - By miumius ("zuko helps toph get out from between a rock and a hard place." This was short n heartbreaking once you realise the implication behind it)

endless summer vacation - By miumius (kind of friends with benefits zutoph. Super hot)

Manners - By WritingJustBecause (Firelord zuko and his immense crush on the metal bender, cute realisation of feelings fic)

Pass - By en_vente ( "Zuko and Toph are lovers, but for how long? It's a pillowtalk that has to go somewhere." Love love love this one)

Sure - en_vente ( pregnant toph and super smitten zuko having a soft conversation about the future <3 )

Letters - en_vente ( 3 chapters of HEAVY ANGST, deadbeat father zuko alert. it's so sad but it's soooo worth a read if you wanna feel some anguish)

Regrets - en_vente ( Another heavy angst fic this time lin makes an appearance. Amazing read one of the best )

Earth Of The Fire Nation - By AVK9 (secret relationship zutoph that's quite steamy )

[nayrring]

The silmarillion deserve to be an 8 seasons anime and that's it

[nayrring]

I have like 15 or more zutoph fanfic links saved on my notes app rn i think i will make a proper post later to share all of them

[nayrring]

Streets saying toph and zuko were caught kissing aggressively

[thereisnowind]

If I was a relative/acquaintance of Caranthir and he was on my nerves I would simply refer to him as “Moronfinwë” instead of Morifinwë and it would probably piss him off so much my health and safety would be jeopardized

[permanent-detention]

mai is a subscriber to every fire nation tabloid

[liquidstar]

"only 90s kids remember-" wrong, if you're poor and/or rural enough, old tech and fashion doesn't just disappear when it stops being trendy. We had dial-up until 2012

[rrrrunk]

just furniture haters things

[nayrring]

Yooo they're taking down atla movie gifs on here for copyright laws everybody hiiiideeee

[marsipanart]

my shaylas <333

[mitrakats]

i do nawt play abt kataang

[soutryart]

i heard we are shipping zuko and toph

[nayrring]

Don't care much about game of thrones characters but im so weirdly obsessed with sansa stark and jon snow they're my beloved

[overthinkinglotr]

The racism in Lotr really is the worst…………….like…..Lotr supposed to be this story about love that transcends where you’re from or who you are, about different people coming together at the end of the world, but that message ends up feeling so hypocritical when racism is embedded in the fabric of how Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings, and in how Peter Jackson and co chose to mindlessly reproduce Tolkien’s racist coding in the films.

I do ultimately have the view that you can enjoy things while acknowledging terrible aspects of them.  I don’t believe we have to throw Lord of the Rings out, just that we should “understand the author’s prejudices, and be mindful of how they affect his work.” But again I’m white, so this issue isn’t really as painful/visceral for me.

 But yeah it’s just……. Lotr is about the good quote “white-skins” from the English-coded countries of “the west”  fighting the quote  “least lovely Mongol types” and “black men like half-trolls” and “slant-eyed foreigners” and Asian-coded easterlings/African-coded Haradrim of the sinister “East…” I know people like to twist themselves into knots trying to explain how it’s Secretly Not Racist (even though it obviously is) but it’s horrible that there’s clearly a reason so many people on the far-right see Lord of the Rings as something that validates their awful awful worldviews. It’s ultimately a story about the Good White People from the West vs the evil POC from the East. The speeches about the glory of the West wouldn’t be out of place in videos by vicious monsters like Jordan Peterson

And I know that some of the racial coding on the heroes is ambiguous in the book (like Sam) but I hate it when that’s used as a way for people to pretend Lord of the Rings “secretly isn’t racist at all.” Like, Sam is described as brown, and you can make a convincing argument that Tolkien intended for him to be a POC– but Sam is the pale white Frodo’s lower-class servant who literally calls Frodo his master. A couple characters possibly being POC doesn’t fix the huge overarching problems with the insidious way Tolkien used racial coding (white/fair= good, hero, wealthy; brown= evil, villainous, lower-class, servant, shady). It’s not a problem of a couple characters or just “not enough representation,” it’s a problem with Lord of the Rings on a deep thematic level.

Side note: I do think the racism in the Peter Jackson films is different from the racism in the books, but I am also very wary of this Thing I occasionally see where people act like the PJ films were the ones that created all the racism…… the PJ films deserve every ounce of criticism they receive on the way they handled race, but the books do as well, and I’m uncomfortable when people bring up the racism in the pj films specifically only to downplay, excuse, or flat-out deny the racism in the books. Even if a lot is different the overarching problems with the horrible racist coding in the films have their origins in the overarching problems with the racism/racist coding Tolkien wrote.

It’s a problem with literal racial cariacatures like Ghan-Buri-Ghan, and all the times when Tolkien uncritically portrays colonialism as a thing that was ultimately Fine while portraying the people who fight back against their colonizers as Deeply Misguided at best (the Wild Men joining Saruman because they don’t understand that the Rohirrim who colonized them are Good Actually.) And thematic things like the way the book ends with the Shire closing its borders to anyone who isn’t of their race, and this being portrayed as a good decision. earlier Tolkien says “the wide world is about you– you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out” but in the end the Shire just fences the world out, fences out all the foreigners and immigrants, and this is portrayed as the Right solution to their problems. (Honestly I HATE this plot point so much! It also is a clear example of what I was saying about how the racism/xenophobia is hypocritical…the plot point where the Shire fences the world out makes no sense with the overarching idea that “you cannot forever fence the world out.” Tolkien was so busy being xenophobic he didn’t notice it contradicted the themes of his own book)

I really hate how that hypocrisy really is at the center of Lord of the Rings– the hypocrisy of preaching love and kindness while at the same time coding the villains as POC and coding the heroes white, the hypocrisy of trying to be a critique of fascism/the industrialization of war while using imagery that fascists love and agree with.

I’m not going to throw Lord of the Rings away, because I imprinted on to it when I was a Child and it’s incredibly important to me. I especially need Lord of the Rings now, because it helps me get through times of stress! But I do think that part of adulthood is realizing that you can’t love anything “purely”  and it’s okay to have complicated relationships with the things you care deeply about. I also think that if your love for something is so shallow that it shatters under the realization that it’s deeply flawed, you might not have actually loved it that much to begin with.

Idk if this is coherent but a major theme of Lord of the Rings is that stories are like language; they have to grow and change with the cultures that created them if they want to stay relevant. And if I want to end this essay on a somewhat hopeful note I’ll say that I think if lotr wants to stay relevant, it does need to change, and it’s capable of changing. And acknowledging the deep awful racism of the original story is the first step to allowing the story to grow.

[nayrring]

The zutoph fanfics on ao3 are so good

[nayrring]

Never gaf that the avatar movie got leaked paramount+ donates millions of dollars to isreal they had that shit coming