#elfmaidens

[valtsv]

character posters: legolas for the @tolkiensecretsanta2017

Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.

(insp.)

[rosedewson]

[arwens]

Why do you fear the past? You are Isildur’s heir, not Isildur himself. You are not bound to his fate. The same blood flows in my veins. The same weakness.

[celebrlan]

Their sister was A r e d h e l the White. She was younger in the years of the Eldar than her brothers; and when she was grown to full stature and beauty she was tall and strong, and loved much to ride and hunt in the forests.

Happy Birthday Sari!!!

[thewinedarksea]

mythology moodboards | brynhildr & gudrun

“i want to fill my mouth with your name.” (x)

requested by @elfmaidens

[argorns]

gif request meme | @sithobi asked → Lord of the Rings + favorite female character 

“For I am the daughter of Elrond. I shall not go with him when he departs to the Havens: for mine is the choice of Luthien, and as she so have I chosen, both the sweet and the bitter.”

[sinisterfeline]

@elfmaidens wanted some Tauriel content so here you go friendo, just for you

[elucubrare]

idk if you're still doing this-- but thoughts on tolkien's dwarves?

i'm literally always up for being asked for my thoughts on things! that said, there are a few things you have to know:

1) i'm about 3/4 asleep rn

2) i don't read or care what authors have to say about their worldbuilding if it's not in the text

3) i haven't read the books in a while, and I haven't read The Hobbit since I was a teenager, probably

4) it goes without saying that i don't even think about movie!Gimli, that's a character assassination that it's best not to talk about. 

All that being said, I think what we see of Dwarven culture is really cool - all of the races of Middle Earth have a long history, but I love the Dwarves' most of all - the song Gimli chants about Durin is one of my favorite of the poems in the trilogy. It encapsulates the sense of loss and the wounding of the world that is the pervasive feeling of Middle Earth for me: the world was fair in Durin's day -and no longer is, and Moria is a place of terror, not the gleaming kingdom it once was. 

I love that Dwarves are both lovers of beauty, even if it takes them too far, and great warriors, and that they make toys in Dain's kingdom in The Hobbit. I love that Gimli sees the beauty in the caverns below Helm's Deep, even while it's under siege: 

Legolas: 'Maybe the men of this land are wise to say little: one family of busy dwarves with hammer and chisel might mar more than they made.’

‘No, you do not understand,’ said Gimli. ‘No dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness. None of Durin’s race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap – a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day – so we could work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock. And lights, Legolas! We should make lights, such lamps as once shone in Khazad-dûm; and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain there since the hills were made; and when we desired rest, we would let the night return.’

He sees the future and the past in these caverns: both what could be if the caverns were "tended" by dwarves, and the comparison to the past, to glorious Khazad-dûm. He's not only looking back, the way Elves tend to; he's very much of the world (even if he chooses to leave it). 

I do know about the Dwarves-as-Jews conversation, and honestly I don't really see it, and I, from a position of privilege, choose to ignore it, but it should be mentioned; my main thoughts on real-world ethnic/religious groups in fantasy are 'don't do it'; but if you have to be represented by any group in Middle Earth, I probably would choose the Dwarves: sure, they awoke evil in Moria, but only through the search for knowledge and beauty; they're not arrogant as Elves are, or foolhardy and weak like Men. They're solid and rooted in the love of their home. They're good people.