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Elves in your standard fantasy setting are like ooh, look at us, we live in perfect harmony with Nature and spend all day doing whimsical dances and drinking moonlight juice, and also we built a nine hundred mile tall tower out of baby dragon skulls, which we use to shoot lasers at God.

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Lord of the Rings but it was Made Today and the Casting Director Just Started Watching Movies 2 Weeks Ago

Tom Holland as Frodo

Ryan Reynolds as Samwise

Timothee Chalamet as Pippin

Josh Hutcherson as Merry

Jason Momoa as Aragorn

Kevin Hart as Gimli

Chris Pratt as Legolas

Jim Carrey as Gollum

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Boromir

Robert Downey, Jr. as Gandalf

Willem Dafoe as Saruman

Jared Leto as Grima Wormtongue

Keanu Reeves as King Theoden

Jenna Ortega as Eowyn

Cillian Murphy as Elrond

Zendaya as Arwen

Idris Elba as the voice of Sauron

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Jack Black as Tom Bombadil

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Reblog daily for health and prosperity

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Reblog daily for health and prosperity

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I think about Azula shooters often and their common refrain of "if Azula hadn't had a mental breakdown, she would've won" and I'm here to tell you that no, she wouldn't have.

There is no universe in which Azula was winning that fight with Zuko (or Katara, for that matter).

Azula spent so much of Book 2 being built up as this deadly terrifying force against whom the heroes are badly outmatched that it can be difficult to catch exactly how quickly Zuko is advancing.

Back up a bit to Book One. For the fearsome exiled crown prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko's not that impressive a firebender. He's not bad by any stretch, and he's able to lay the untrained Sokka and Katara flat pretty easily. Then he gets in the ring with Aang, who is an airbending master, and the difference between a regular bender and a master becomes apparent when Aang literally puts his ass to bed:

People have attributed this to the fact that no one's fought an airbender in 100 years, but I think it's also worth noting that Aang (a 12 year old from a pacifist nation) has probably never fought anyone before. Like, ever. And yet the second Aang thinks "okay, I'll attack back", the fight's over.

Zuko's got the same genetic predisposition for firebending talent that Azula does, yet it never seems to manifest because of his mental blocks. At the beginning of the series, he's already so beat down that all he really has is conviction, pride, and anger, so even with training from Iroh (the firebending master, thank you very much), he struggles. Yet throughout Book 2, when he has no time to train because he's on the run, he actually seems to advance faster. The fact that his bending is literally tied to his character arc (as his morals become tangled and he has to fight off aforementioned mental blocks) is pretty brilliant. Like, by the time of the Crossroads of Destiny, Zuko getting his ass handed to him by Aang is a pretty consistent feature of the show--he just can't match wits with him.

Hell, at the beginning of the series, he and Iroh (again: the actual firebending master) launch a combined power surface-to-air attack...which Aang casually swats away into a nearby ice wall. Come the Crossroads of Destiny, however, and Zuko by himself launches this bigass fireball that blows through Aang's defenses.

Zuko advances so quickly that it's scary. That prodigious talent is in him even if it doesn't come through as cleanly as with Azula. Who, by the way, was busy about to get flattened by Katara some few dozen feet away, until Zuko took over and then effectively stalemated her himself.

All of this in retrospect makes it abundantly clear why Zuko's firebending seemed to skyrocket so much when he learned true firebending from the Sun Warriors: it was really the only thing left. He's hard a hard road learning how to fight waterbenders, earthbenders, and airbenders, and even if unconsciously, he's applying the philosophy Iroh taught him about augmenting his bending style with aspects of other styles (see also, the waterbending-like fire whips he uses in the above gif). Once he actually understands fire and how it works, he's got it mastered. Hence why any gap between him and Azula effectively disappears as soon as their next fight--before her friends have betrayed her and her stability goes out the window. There's no real sense of urgency to their fight at the Boiling Rock prison. True, Sokka's presence with the sword helps, but Zuko doesn't look remotely worried and he counters Azula's every attack perfectly.

All her life, Azula only ever learned fire. She was taught by the best people the fire nation can employ, so she knows all the cool tricks, but she's still poisoned by the corrupted firebending practiced in the modern ATLA timeline. Unlike Zuko, who managed to get the basics if nothing else from Iroh (fire comes from the breath, and can be used to survive as much as to kill), Azula has always used fire as a weapon and a means to hurt others. She has no true knowledge of the craft, meaning she's got the same weaknesses as Zhao, she's just better disciplined to the point she can make up for it.

Zuko's victory was a given considering Azula's complete loss of control by the time of Sozin's comet, but even had she been in a perfect mental state, she'd have lost, because in many ways Zuko is simply the better firebender.

And that's the truth of it.

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Look, the Fëanorians did awful unspeakable things (despite being my favorites), and there obviously isn't much of a generation after them. But I think it speaks to something that the three children that were raised by the Fëanorians (Celebrimbor, Elrond, and Elros) turned out to be overwhelmingly good. Celebrimbor is generous, so genuinely kind and trusting that it's used against him. Elrond is quite literally described as "kind as summer" he creates a sanctuary for everyone regardless of race and old feuds. Elros is a leader that shapes the fate of a race of men that is pure and good and curious until Sauron destroys them using all that curiosity.

The Blood of those who raised them, their hate, their grief does not seep down into the children they perhaps feel it somewhere deep at the core of their being the weight of the crimes of the elves they called father. But they bear it with raised heads, with kindness and friendship and an attempt to learn from mistakes. Even if they failed in the end they were still so so so good.

and I truly truly hope that says something about those that raised them. that they poured all the love they had left in their rotting weary hearts into those sweet little boys, and made sure they knew always, that history was theirs to live with and to work with, but the crimes and despair, belonged to those who came before them alone.

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rochallor arriving at hithlum riderless... fingon weeping as he touches his head to rochallor's, knowing fingolfin must be dead or rochallor would never have left him... rochallor dying of weariness and heartbreak by fingon's side and fingon giving him the burial he can never give to his father...

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BRO WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY THIS??? WHAT DO YOU MEAN????? YOU CAN'T JUST SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS AND NOT ELABORATE HELLO????????????

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feanor is definitely a flawed and complicated character and i make fun of him a lot but honestly??? he’s still one of my all time favorites. dude is a sexy brilliant mad scientist who has a big weird family and goes to parties in work clothes out of spite and tells the god of chaos to get tf off his lawn. absolute ledge.

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Honestly I have so many feelings about Maedhros being a mash up of his mothers name for him, and his brothers’ nick name for him, rather than just a Sindran alternative to his Quenya name, because it means his brothers were just yelling OI REDHEAD! All of the time, like in the heat of battle Celegorm is just like HEY GINGER CAN YOU STAB THIS GUY FOR ME! With enough frequency the Sinda just actually thought it was his name. Which is actually just peak sibling.

Plus it makes his name basically mean attractive redhead which is EQUALLY funny

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my contribution to the "neve in suits" agenda

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Reblog and in the tags list your top three Lord of the rings characters (and by that I mean the extended universe from all his middle earth related works and the many adaptations we have now)

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As a follow-up to my prior post, I present:

Top 10 Characters in the Tolkien Legendarium who are so psychologically healthy my broken ass finds them difficult to relate to but nonetheless is inspired by.

10) Gandalf: if it weren’t for the pipe-weed dependency he’d rank higher. But he’s late for Council meetings and annoys Galadriel, who has better things to do. Yeah I know he’s on the other list too, but I am large, I contain multitudes.

9) Celeborn: not a jealous bone in his body, content to be a background wifeguy who somehow wasn’t even a little bit annoying. Utterly unrelatable

8) Nerdanel: Literally the only reason Fëanor didn’t go off the rails sooner. If those 7 little shits were still minors you can BET she would’ve been granted full custody.

7) Sam: only crime was loving too much (see: Frodo, potatoes)

6) Legolas: a literal prince content to risk his life for a cause bigger than himself. Also a silly boy.

5) Fingon: did what even Maedhros’ nuclear family couldn’t (or wouldn’t), now he soaks in Bubble Bath and sips miruvor in the Undying Lands

4) Glorfindel: could have rested on his Balrog Blaster laurels but willingly went back to a shitstorm. Sort of regretted it as soon as he landed but shrugged and just did what needed to be done.

3) Miriel: the human one (the elf one is as broken as they come, but damn I love her for it) . She tried her best but just couldn’t win against Tar-Patriarchy.

2) Aragorn: head on straight. But yeah, completely unrelatable

1) Finrod: so good Mandos just fist-bumped him back into a body

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tolkien writing elves: this is Fëafineärenfindelwë he ruled as a king for 12,069 years and he slew seven balrogs and he created three conlangs and he invented light

tolkien writing men: this is Berengorn he's a nobleman with a fancy sword and he looks just like an elf and he was raised by elves and he marries an elf

tolkien writing dwarves: this is Durin XVI Ironking he forged a billion legendary swords

tolkien writing hobbits: this is Berry Bingo Bongfeet he writes songs about trees and he owns a weed farm

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*sighsssss*

Tarquin

my man is the biggest vibe

like

he is unstoppable

loved him from the damn start the way he was so happy to meet Mercar Rook again💕

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The Greatest Elven Smiths

Fëanor had made the Silmarils, the Palantiri, the ever-burning lantern. Celebrimbor made the Rings of Power that would protect the Elves in Middle-Earth for centuries. But somehow, one is missing here. Curufin, so like his father in mind and skill of hand, his son taking after him in turn. So, where then, is the Masterpiece of Curufinwë the second?

The answer is quite simple; he never got to make it. For when Fëanáro Curufinwë died, his body burned to ash in a flame brighter and hotter than the even heart of Mount Doom. During this moment, under the stars, Curufinwë Atarinkë held on to his father so tightly, so resolutely, even as the others backed away one by one, that his hands were burned so devastatingly that they might as well have been severed. Never again could anything detailed and delicate come from those hands. The blades he forged were strong and durable. He even enchanted some with song, and indeed, some of those blades were of great beauty, but never a masterpiece.

Thus, in the House of Smiths and the greatest jewels, only two are remembered and revered. The other forgotten, and if not that, then hated. And Arda was forever left to wonder indeed what miracles the Fifth son of the Greatest Smith and the Greatest Sculptor would have brung forth had Morgoth not tainted the house of Finwë, had not fire destroyed his hands.