as young and as ancient as spring

amaryllis | xxvii | tolkien

[silmaryllis]

i follow from @icvarus besties

[russingon]

the fact that at the council of elrond glorfindel is like “just throw the ring into the ocean” is so funny to me after reading the silmarillion just because it feels like the subtext is him being like “yeah let’s try maglor’s patented and tested method: Just Yeet The Accursed Fucking Thing Into The Water”

#in fairness they do do literally the other fëanorion approved method of magical item disposal #glorfindel: we could do like maglor and throw it in the ocean? #elrond: no we’re doing like maedhros and jumping into a volcano via @lesbianlanval

*at the council of Elrond*

Elrond: Alright, everyone listen up. We elves have 4 methods of dealing with Accursed Fucking Objects™, as demonstrated by my four parents. 

Number 1, the Elwing Method or Mom Method. This is to hide the accursed fucking thing away and keep it safe and close. This is highly not reccommended if the object can take over its user like the ring can, and Sauron will be searching for it, so this method is out of the question. 

Number 2, the Earendil Method or the Dad #1 Method. This is, send the accursed fucking thing across the sea or to some higher power. According to Mithrandir, the Valar will not take it and Tom Bombadil wants nothing to do with it, so this is also out of the question. 

Number 3 is the Maglor Method, or Dad #2 Method. This is to yeet the accursed fucking thing into the ocean. In this case, it is not a good idea as Ulmo will be very upset and we will still have to contend with Sauron. 

The last method is the Maedhros Method or the Dad #3 Method. This method is to yeet yourself into a volcano while holding the accursed fucking thing, and also the method we will be using. You will not have to yeet yourself into the volcano, only the ring, don’t worry, Frodo.

[art-of-a-diffrent-color]

Those…those really are the four methods aren’t they?

[armenelols]

@procrastinationonvacation how dare you hide this in the tags

[duelpersonality]

Listen, Boromir knows 1 (one) ancient elven story and damn it, he’s going to ride that horse until it dies.

[pangur-and-grim]

wait should I read Lord of the Rings. are they good

[voyaging-too]

Although Tolkien never really discussed this at length, the plot of LOTR and especially Silmarillion imply some really interesting ideas about immortality. Sure, he says that mortal men need to accept their mortality, because it’s inevitable, and the pseudo-immortality offered to some of them is a trap that will take their selfhood and autonomy. But then he also writes a whole race of immortals and says that they need to learn to accept loss and grief and change: even if they themselves don’t die, time will pass and things will change, and an immortal who cannot let go of ephemeral things will die over and over, or break the world in trying to recover what he lost.

[pansyfemme]

close your eyes and imagine freshly roasted root vegetables perfectly seasoned and crispy as far as the eye can see

[nighttimepatrons]

Sam trying to get Frodo to take one more step

[nighttimepatrons]

Sam psychologically tormenting Gollum

[that-angry-noldo]

how silm characters react to being faced with a horror beyond comprehension:

- fëanor: comprehends it out of spite. goes mad. possibly becomes an incomprehensible horror himself

- fingolfin: comprehends the horror. walks with the knowledge of horror for a century or so, quietly going mad. the day he snaps the land is aflame and he's riding to challenge the devil to duel

- finarfin: refuses to comprehend the horror out of spite. walks away from the horror. returns a century later to give the horror a beating, still refusing to comprehend it

- finrod: is so interested in the cultural background of the horror he forgets to comprehend it. possibly spends a year just chatting it up

- beren: comprehends the horror, walks away forever changed by the knowledge which he can't quite remember but which will forever haunt him, never speaks of it.

- luthien: uno reverse. the horror comprehends her

- eönwë: outhorrors the horror like some sort of an eldritch creature show off. comprehends it and is not impressed.

[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 portrays 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, they 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.

[scyllas-revenge]

This is all very important for fans of LOTR to keep in mind. We can love the source material while acknowledging how deeply flawed it is and do our best to understand how and why, and we can do what we can to make the fandom and our own creations more welcoming and accepting.

Maybe because I studied so much about colonialism in particular, but I start to think my head might explode every time someone tries to argue that Tolkien’s works aren’t racist. Like…they’re just so structurally racist, in a way that shapes nearly every aspect of the stories being told. And I’ve heard the argument too that, well, Tolkien was basing his works on all these old epics and poems and he was just reflecting those stories’ racism, for cultural or historical purposes–and that’s such a deflective, inane argument that it makes me want to start bashing in heads with a copy of Orlando Furioso.

But then some people on tumblr also recently got REALLY pissed at me for saying that Tolkien’s works were very obviously sexist, so I guess people will see whatever they want to see in the media they like.

[anthraxofeffervescence]

The core conceit of Lord of the Rings is pretty funny. You are a twenty three year old in a suburb of Maine. The little bracelet in your grandpa’s attic has an inscription on it that is the password to the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. It is up to you to walk to the only hydraulic press in the world, located in Arizona, before the FBI finds the bracelet, kills you, and enslaves the suburb of Maine you currently live in

[busket]

all sauron knew about hobbits is that one of those little dipshits had his ring. and the first hobbit that called in with the palantir he was like "....that must be the little freak that has my ring" but no, that was pippin. because there is more than one hobbit, but I guess he didnt consider that.

[busket]

probably didnt help that the heir to gondor, possibly his most formidable enemy, immediately called back and was like "yeah that short fella that just called? hes definitely got your ring and hes with me. fuck you" and sauron was like "ooooh that settles it!!!"

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

not only do i think huan was right to leave celegorm, i love that he does. i love that in a story called release from bondage, it is the animalized character who refuses to be accomplice to abduction, imprisonment, and planned rape. i love that loyalty framed as blind and unconditional is neither. i love that huan, who has seen celegorm grow up and watched him forming himself into something monstrous, will not follow him indefinitely, and judges him when no one else in his society will. can there be grief and hurt and sorrow on both sides? yes, although i think for celegorm it’s at this point mostly anger and resentment. but framing huan’s “betrayal” as just mean and nasty and selfish and based in ainur4ainur sentiment removes the vital context in which the action occurs. is it betrayal to reject the harming of another? is it betrayal to walk out on an attempted rape? whose suffering are we prioritizing here?

[itsthatalice]

Beren saying "even now a silmaril is in my hand", then showing off his empty stump, might be the best play in the whole mythology. Absolute king shit

[gamwisesamgeee]

The Dunlendings resisted colonization for centuries, became susceptible to Saruman’s advances by playing at their mistreatment at the hands of the Gondorians, and had their ancestral lands slowly taken over but no Tolkien you’re sooo right, they were just lesser men and were better off serving a king so they could *maybe* be considered second class citizens

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

once again tapping the sign that says 'elwing and eärendil's choice was not between staying with or leaving their children, but between dooming the people (and thus all the other children) of beleriand or saving them; thus to dismiss or vilify their actions as simply abandonment is narratively, politically, and socially short-sighted in the extreme, besides being directly contradicted by the plethora of textual indicators that given their circumstances, elwing and eärendil made the only morally correct decision possible. this does not mean that there is no complication within that decision, or that elrond and elros did not suffer from the loss of their parents, but rather that the prioritization of the individual nuclear family (which accusing elwing and eärendil of abandonment implicitly sets up as the highest ethical imperative) is not an infallibly moral act, and cannot be the altar at which the entire world is sacrificed.'

[arafinweanappreciation]

Late First Age Beleriand Dashboard Simulator

🦋 wilwarintrouble 🌿 yavannas-gf Follow

just watched lord finrod snap and tell celegorm that he’s gonna die and die badly lollll. go off king 👑

🌿 yavannas-gf Follow

KINSLAYERS AND APOLOGISTS DNI

#i know op is a sinda and making a joke #but as a longtime follower of the arafinwean host #i’m pretty sure this is just. factually correct #tw current events

(2.4k notes)

🪷 gigglingwillow

who up shipping they wright

🪷 gigglingwillow

BLOCKED. BLOCKED. BLOCKED. YOU ARE ALL BLOCKED. NONE OF YOU ARE FREE OF SIN

#c'mon guys that's my boss. I didn't need to know about the rpf 😫 #also he's not the only shipwright in the world???

(30 notes)

🪻 beeches-of-neldoreth

btw I arrived in the havens today if any of the mutuals want to meet up

(0 notes)

🪶 sparrowflight

🌄 secreteighthgate Follow

stop badmouthing the people who married into the line of finwe!

Míriel was CREATIVE

Indis is LOVING

Nerdanel is WISE

Anairë has INTEGRITY

Ëarwen is CURIOUS

Elenwë was BRAVE

Eldalótë was CONFIDENT

Celeborn is DEPENDABLE

Eöl

Tuor is COURAGEOUS

#gondolinposting

(30.6k notes)

🐚stars-n-sea

View from the western side of the Isle of Balar yesterday evening

#ocean #sea #beleager #isle of balar #havensblr #aesthetic #sunset #seascape #nature #falascore #naturecore #outdoors #mine

(126 notes)

🦾 silversmithin

anyone know if we got forge tomorrow

#queuezdul

(7 notes)

🦋 wilwarintrouble

🌟 cevienuin Follow

best king of the noldor so far

telperion

fëanor's favorite anvil

anonymous deer that lived in the woods around nargothrond

lúthien

the concept of the scientific method

aurúcenwë the frog

silmarils

the nauglamir

maedhros's missing hand

Voting ended onFeb 8

🌟 cevienuin Follow

we appear to have entered a cow tools situation

#ahsdfjkadskla #no the deer is fingolfin OBVIOUSLY

(76.9k notes)

💎 sapphirefire

😎 professionalhalethimpersonator-deactivated4550312

question for elvish friends: why do you sometimes just stare into corners or at trees for five solid minutes like cats. what's up with that. should I be concerned

😎 lakemithrimoffical-deactivated4550314

listening

😎 professionalhalethimpersonator-deactivated4550312

elaborate?????

😎 lakemithrimoffical-deactivated4550314

no

#i do be listening

(9.5k notes)

🪻 beeches-of-neldoreth

Endless roll the waters past! To this my love hath come at last, enchanted waters pitiless, a heartache and a loneliness.

Lúthien Tinúviel // The Lay of Leithian, Canto V

#q #quotes #poetry #lay of leithian #lúthien tinúviel

(203 notes)

🦆 ducksofarda

🍄 daeronsleftearlobe Follow

so was anyone gonna tell me that three of the sons of fëanor are dead or was i just supposed to find that out from a mandos's dodgeball meme myself

#could be worse op #i found out via turleg meme #text #not a duck fact

(32.5k notes)

🦔 viewer-of-caves

🌲 mountainlovr777 Follow

STARS i miss finrod felagund. untouchable diplomatic lynchpin and used it to do Whatever. could not have cared less what anyone thought of him. wandered off in the middle of a hunting trip and came back with an entire new society. the infamous pet snakes. the outfits. going on a whole tangent about wine recommendations during a public address ... i'm mithrimdrim but i would've ridden to war for him tbh. i understand bëor the old on a spiritual level

#you joke but that winery was overrun for years afterwards #we all knew he had TASTE #unfortunately we did forget that he was kinda integral for the behind the scenes stuff also

(126 notes)

🍃 treetime

feeling emotional about ents again

#augggh #the inherent tragedy of spending your life caring for things that will never be able to return it #no matter how much they might love you #things that cannot run away when you are not there to protect them... #tree tag

(5 notes)

💎 sapphirefire

🏞 ard-gaylen Follow

i know sea longing is supposed to be tragic and romantic and all that but it gets annoying pretty fast tbh. like shut UPPPPPP i have stuff to do

(107.4k notes)

[velvet4510]

To anyone who believes fairy tale romances never happen in real life, may I remind you that JRR and Edith Tolkien met and experienced a forbidden love in their youth, and then were separated for five whole years because of his guardian’s rules that he could not date till he was 21, and she got engaged to someone else only because she assumed he’d forgotten her and lost hope that she could ever be with him, but then on his 21st birthday, he wrote her a letter saying he still loved her and wanted to marry her, she responded basically saying ‘if I’d known you hadn’t left me on the shelf, I would never have said yes to anyone else,’ then a week later she greeted him at the train station and then immediately dumped her fiancé, and they got married and she converted to his religion and danced for him in a flowering field far away from the trenches into which he was drafted, which left such an impression that he crafted an entire story about the most beautiful maiden in the world who danced in the woods and made enormous sacrifices to be with the man she loved, and they had four kids and remained faithful to each other and blissfully grew old together and their gravestones are now marked with the names of that same fictional couple that he created, who broke every rule and overcame every possible obstacle to be together and get a happy ending, who only did all that because he based it all on their own real love story.

[tuulikki]

Knowing all this has always made this bit of Beren’s song instantly reduce me to tears:

Though all to ruin fell the world

and were dissolved and backward hurled

unmade into the old abyss,

yet were its making good, for this—

the dawn, the dusk, the earth, the sea—

that Lúthien on a time should be!

Tolkien straight up wrote a poem that said “the world could end, but it wouldn’t have all been pointless, because she was in this world, however briefly, and that justified all the rest.” Kills me.

Who can outdo Wife Guy Tolkien? Dude was writing elaborate AUs where his wife is an impossibly beautiful magic-wielding immortal elf princess who fights Satan and wins to rescue her human boyfriend from Satan’s doom fortress. Flawless.

[nayrring]

How it feels like everytime i make another annoying silmarillion reference while watching lotr/ hobbits movies around others

[fenja-illustrations]

PRINT AVAILABLE!

This is currently one of my favourite artworks I’ve made, like I’m violently proud of it O.O