no, I'm still not over it.

snarky and bitter mockery of dead Elves, mostly. 

[glowfic-out-of-context]

go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say “have you tried swearing a really stupid oath and then starting a war? that usually works for me”

(via glowfic-out-of-context)

[songsoftheirdeeds]

sometimes a family is you and your twin brother and the terrifying mass murderers who sacked the refugee camp you grew up in 

[songsoftheirdeeds]

“...he was much more excited to have a way to blackmail Aitim Neli than a way to get some random green executed and so Aitim gave him a gentle lecture on how to blackmail people in a positive-sum way and enlisted him to fudge the gun records so no one else can notice and sent him on his way."

oh my god, anitam, never change

(I mean, like, definitely change, become a functional modern state immediately. just not so immediately aitim can’t play you like a puppet.)

[songsoftheirdeeds]

okay so presently:

Katin doesn’t have a valid credit. Peka deserted the army. (everyone knows this).

Ladah is a secret red (Telkam, Kantil and Isel know this, Aitim presumably guessed)

Peka and Apef and Katin and Ana are secret reds (Makel and Telkam know this; Aitim wants to be able to credibly claim he didn’t know this)

Telkam smuggled guns and explosives to Evalee’s reds (Isel knows this, Afen knows this, Aitim presumably guessed)

Afen shut down streaming video function everywhere on the internet for several weeks and hacked a foreign government’s storage and backups to delay Evalee’s transition (Telkam knows this; might be that it’s actually a secret to everyone else?)

Isel snuck information to the resistance about which aristocrat children to hold hostage (Telkam knows this)

I’m presuming here that blackmailing people and misadjudicating a major felony investigation in exchange for donations to one’s favorite charity aren’t serious crimes, so Shasali and Aitim are in the clear there, but:

this family is collectively sitting on eleven capital offenses 

and they’re not templates I would characterize as tending to get away with things

[michaelblume]

There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And then the murders began.

[lastwaterbender]

I like in the Fellowship of the Rings where they are standing outside the big ass door with the riddle “Speak friend and enter” thing. 

And then they’re like, what’s friend in elvish and Legolas just stands there and says nothing.

[consumptive-sphinx]

Frodo: *looks at Gandalf*

Everyone else: *looks at Legolas*

Legolas: [internally] fuck you, in Eregion they spoke a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT kind of elvish, I grew up with like ten different dialects of silvan, this word is pronounced differently in every one of them, this sindarin and my sindarin probably wouldn’t even be a little bit compatible, who fucking knows the door might want it in Quenya, you know what it’s probably in Khuzdul, that’s the kind of language you’d want a password to be in, the one nobody knows, fuck they’re all looking at me I don’t know this there are dozens of different languages spoken by elves you stupid fucks

Legolas: [externally] silence

Gandalf: “…Mellon”

Everyone: *thinks Legolas is stupid*

[milesphoenix]

This is officially one of my favorite tumblr posts.

[curiosity-discoverer-of-worlds]

Yeah, fanfiction just sort of gets weirder and higher context the longer someone keeps the hobby and some people have been doing it a long time.

Said by Cam, possibly while leaning on the fourth wall.

[songsoftheirdeeds]

“...for example I am a genderswapped version of the protagonist of a set of mediocre teenage vampire romance novels who in fanfic becomes vampire empress, drops the masquerade and makes everybody immortal, and you are a doomed minor character from a posthumously published backstory to a mid-twentieth century British high fantasy series, reimagined as a wizard from 1802.”

[inquisitivefeminist]

Friendly reminder that

People in non-normative relationships are valid and should be supported

If you waited for one hundred years to confess your feelings to the woman you love because you felt that doing anything less would be disrespectful, you are valid

If you are dating a demon who killed over a million people, you are valid

If you believe you are in a hallucination caused by an evil god and that the second you let your guard down your boyfriends will become said evil god in your arms and proceed to do unspeakable things to you, you are valid and important

If you purchased your underage boyfriend from another dimension, you are valid

If you killed most of your boyfriend’s family, then kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured him for several decades, you are–actually you know what maybe we should examine that one

[songsoftheirdeeds]

minor: (being polite to the crotchety old lady who wants to lecture him) Timothy will be proud of how responsible and non-threatening I am!

timothy, like a few weeks earlier: I am going to leave this house assured that you will never bother my family again and the easiest way to achieve that is clearly a double homicide.

[argumate]

amazing to consider that the average Tolkien fan teenager knows more ancient lore than Gandalf

[earendil-was-a-mariner]

I really hate to side with Gollum on this, but “what’s in my pocket” is not a riddle and should not have counted. 

[songsoftheirdeeds]

character: *is sad*

me: do not fear! I will hug you!

character: ...I was tortured unimaginably and am permanently traumatized

me: they are VERY GOOD HUGS

character: being touched in any way sends me into internal screaming meltdowns of terror

me: yes but HUGS

character: I AM FICTIONAL

me: THE HUGS ARE REAL

[songsoftheirdeeds]

your fav is problematic: fëanor

no he isn’t what are you talking about

i’m serious

okay so admittedly when you threaten to kill people it’s considered courteous to apologize 

the oath was a bad idea

really really bad idea

how exactly were you planning to beat morgoth

alqualondë was a bad idea

really really bad idea

and if he hadn’t been a dick to olwë i bet they’d have at least agreed to help you build your own boats in which case you could have done it really fast and without any dooming or murdering involved

burning the ships was really evil man like everything else was a heat-of-the-moment-accident but you had an entire trip across the ocean to think that one through what the hell

charging angband so fast your escort can’t keep up: bad idea

whatever parenting choices led to the kids turning out the way they did: bad idea

other than that though

not problematic at all

basically 100% a reasonable, talented, delight of an Elf

i will fight you

[songsoftheirdeeds]

amber: "Of course. Telepathy, immortality, implausible good looks, and super hearing. I don't suppose you can fly on alternate Thursdays?"

aredhel: "What's a Thursday? If it's bigger than an eagle, I can probably fly on it."

[kelsbraintumbler]

“He was staring at his wife-to-be for three hundred years while a forest grew around them.  But it was mutual so at least they have common interests.”

[wordsnquotes]

Fear both the heat and the cold of your heart, and try to have patience, if you can.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales (via wordsnquotes)

I am really happy that this is being shared around as, like, words of wisdom from J.R.R. Tolkien when it is actually one of many thousands of exhausted lectures delivered to Túrin the walking harbinger of disaster (here an angry 17-year-old trying to raise an army to go fight Morgoth) by sad Elves who can see the trainwreck coming.

[wanderingswallow-deactivated201]

Finally, a decent overlay map of Middle Earth and Beleriand! I had no idea that so much of Thargelion was still there.

[thearrogantemu]

Worth noting how much of the Lord of the Rings - indeed, how much of Middle-Earth - is post-apocalyptic, picking through the half-salvaged scraps of a drowned world. 

[magicbunni]

Poetic. And true.

[songsoftheirdeeds]

this is a map of exactly how badly the Noldor fucked up