#but he’s also got like all the elves and dwarves and men fighting to get him to mount doom so

[sapphoismymuse]

this is basically the plot of lord of the rings

being knightcore doesn't mean you have to be pro-monarchy. you can just swear your undying fealty to your best friend or your crush or something

[ciderjacks]

ok I mentioned this earlier and people were sort of confused but I’m gonna try to explain why I think the long AND short lifespan issues were resolved by the end of dungeon meshi. WARNING: DUNMESHI SPOILERS AHEAD

-

Part 1: the lifespans aren’t natural

ok so I’m gonna start with that no I don’t think Marcille got her wish, at least not the way she wanted. Marcille wanted to bend the rules of nature so everyone would live an unnaturally long time. However, the lifespans that the races in dungeon meshi have (besides tall-men, but I’ll get to that later) are also not natural. They only had those lifespans because the winged lion was maintaining that lifespan for their race.

You can see at least 3 different races here that are asking for different life spans, what they’re asking for lines up with what the lifespans are.

the dwarf asked for immortality, the elf asked specifically for a thousand year life, the half foot heard this and said that was too long, and to make it shorter. The only ones who didn’t ask for a lifespan alteration were the (would be) tall-men. The lifespans aren’t natural, they’re caused by the demons magic…

part 2: so what of the demons magic?

This is I think the most explicit statement, that the demons magic, every wish the demon granted, is lost. This includes lifespans, one of the oldest wishes it granted. And I wanna highlight one thing she says specifically. “We have the luxury of time”. I don’t think that means a long life, I think it means the opposite. The narrative regards these lifespans as unnatural, destructive and soul sucking. The immortal townspeople are cursed, time doesn’t matter to them, and so they have no desires, or drive to continue. This is depicted by them finding food flavourless.

and when they no longer have immortality look at how they think of food. That is the luxury of time, not to avoid it, but to experience it. This is what the “long-lived” races must learn in the absence of the demon, now lacking the extra hundreds of years the demon had gifted them. That’s why it’s important that Marcille didn’t get her wish the way she wanted, because she wanted everyone to live forever. And speaking of Marcille’s wish.

She says she’s learned to embrace death, and not because of anything the demon did. She wanted to live forever with her friends, she didn’t want to confront death. With the demons magic gone, she no longer has the extra thousand years. She’s learning to accept her friends mortality, yes, but she’s also learning to accept her own.

part 3: the theme of accepting death

Like I said earlier, Marcille is afraid of death. So is Delgal/Yaad. The end of the story resolves their acceptance around death and dying. As much as Marcille wanted everyone else to live, there’s a reason she decided everyone should just live a thousand years. She doesn’t want to sacrifice her own lifespan, she wants infinite time with the people she loves. In the aftermath of the winged lion, she instead gets a much shorter amount of time. Delgal/Yaad is similar, in that he feared death. He says he was afraid of dying and losing everything, but now he’s ok with that reality, because the reality of an extended or eternal life was much worse.

part 4: the curse of living and the curse of living too long

To desire is to eat is to live. Our most primal instincts. The long lived races, while not immortal and desire-less, had an unnatural amount of time on their hands. They were able to forego their humanity because they’d been gifted all the time they wanted, which lead to fighting and oppression of the short lived races (which is why it’s important for Laios to be the king, even though the elves and dwarves have lost the demons magic. Their mindset at that point in time, is of people with too much time on their hands.)

When Falin speaks to the demon, stripped of all his desire, he describes living as cruel. From his perspective, humans have a limited time and a constant desire, sorrow and anxiety pressing at them. Yet, Falin says it’s delicious. The fear inherent to living is natural, it’s what makes life interesting, and so it’s thematically important that the magic allowing certain races to avoid this reality isn’t maintained. Marcille’s wish was based in truth, it was how she went about it that was wrong.

Part 5: the end of the racial power dynamic

Obviously the races and cultures are still different, they were different before the winged lion began granting wishes, and will remain different, however what the narrative tells us again and again is that the lifespans are equivalent to a power structure. Elves and dwarves are at the top, because they were granted long lives. This power structure is explicitly not natural, it’s not how the races should be, Ryoko Kui emphasizes this several times. So given this, I think it’s really important that at the end, when the demons magic is gone, all the races become one unit. There is no more power structure, is what this implies. One of humanities oldest desires, the desire to live eternally, is undone.

Ryoko Kui wanted to show that the racism and the power structures weren’t logical, and they weren’t natural, and now the people will have to navigate without those, without differences of lifespan, and without the ability to push away death.

part 6: conclusion

“Surely your kind exists for no reason but to starve” = “you exist for no reason but to die”

as Laios literally consumes life force itself, destroying the demon and destroying its magic. After he does this, the races are portrayed as one unit. The elves say that while magic isn’t gone, the demon’s and what came with it is, and that things will be different from thereon-out.

magic will continue to exist, but its been effectively reset, or unraveled, by the death of the demon.

the ability to live hundreds of years is lost, and while the winged lion, an eternal creature, thinks of this as a curse, to humans it’s a secret blessing. The impact of time is what keeps us going.

The structures set up by the ancient lifespan wishes are also undone. No race should get to live longer than any other, humans shouldn’t have unnatural structures like that. It disrupts the natural flow of living. Thats the resolution to the lifespan issue. Not “Marcille has to accept that she’s going to live an unnaturally long life”, but “Marcille has to accept that no one should have that much time, including her”. That’s why I think the lifespan issue is resolved when the demon dies. Thanks for reading, if you managed to read all of this.

[howtofightwrite]

Sorry if you’ve already answered this, I’m having trouble finding different posts in your blog.

I know a lot of your asks are more practical-related, but how do you suggest fully encapsulating the horror and tragedy of war in a (fantasy) battle scene? I really need that emotional and gory impact but it also to seem reasonably realistic.

My favourite references are Battle of the Bastards in GoT and scenes from Lord of the Rings.

Thanks!!

Martin and Tolkien are not two authors I’d ever expect to find together when discussing thematic and abstract concepts like the horrors of war in their writing. One of them is extremely deep, and the other is a puddle. Neither of them are particularly “realistic” but only one of them claims that pretense while drawing from real history. If you’re wanting horrors of war, you’re much better off moving away from Martin and taking a gander at the actual War of the Roses.

Let me explain.

Tolkien served as an officer during World War I. By sheer body count, The Great War was one of the most bloody and brutal wars in human history. As a point of reference, over a million soldiers died during the Battle of Somme. Perhaps as importantly, World War I killed the cultural concept of the Summer War. Before World War I, the British upper class viewed war as a game. War was an adventure, something young men did between reaching manhood and getting married. Watson from Sherlock Holmes is an excellent example of the end result for this particular outlook. They figured they’d go off, have some jolly good fun, get a few scars, and be back in a few weeks in time for tea. What they got was a meat grinder. Two of Tolkien’s close friends died during the war. He also lived through the bombings during World War II while working as a professor at Oxford, he experienced the devastating effects that war had on the civilian population first hand, and, likely, saw a few of his students die. Despite his hatred of allegory, the man was working through some shit in The Lord of the Rings.

If you’re interested in learning more about World War I or even about effectively demonstrating the horrors of war, I do recommend reading All Quiet on the Western Front. I read it once in high school (more years ago than I’d like to admit here) and, much like Elie Wiesel, it has stuck with me. It was also such an effective anti-war novel the Nazis banned it and it was one of the first books they publicly burnt, so you know it’s good.

Back to Tolkien.

What they don’t tell you about fantasy is that it’s real life, just with elves and dwarves and magic. The real world forms the foundation of fantasy and it’s the humanity of the emotional experience in war, the good and the bad, with both ends cranked all the way to eleven that really makes Tolkien’s work so impactful. LOTR is operatic by design, but what keeps the narrative from falling into melodrama is the core thematic message underneath the pageantry. One of the major themes is hope, which gets symbolized in light, and hope’s interplay with despair, symbolized in darkness. Not just a rosy view of it either, but the genuine struggle to keep the light burning against all the overwhelming reasons to give up or give in. Tolkien allows his characters to be corrupted and redeemed, their struggle with temptation before ultimately choosing the better path or failing and falling into darkness. He commits to the idea that hope can be restored in the unlikeliest of places.

Boromir’s death is, perhaps, one of the best examples of Tolkien’s philosophy in action. Boromir is a character we’re not sure of, he wants the one ring from the outset, he’s the only one advocating that it shouldn’t be destroyed. The hearts of men are easily corrupted. When he tries to take the ring from Frodo, he falls into his worst instincts and breaks the Fellowship. But then, against the overwhelming flood of Uruk-hai, Boromir tries to save Merry and Pippin. He fights wounded, shot again, and again, until he’s felled by twenty arrows and he fails. Yet, in his failure he restores Aragorn’s hope in his people, gives him a reason to fight for Gondor, and inspires the audience to believe in Man’s potential for greatness.

Tolkien could have left Boromir in the dark, but he didn’t. He could’ve given into cynicism, but he didn’t. In every adaptation, Boromir’s death never fails to get me bawling. Boromir is both good and bad, both dark and light, his best and worst instincts are driven by the same underlying, sympathetic reason—his desire to save his people and fulfill his duty to his father.

On the whole, I find Tolkien’s presentation of the human condition and war to be more compelling and realistic than Martin’s. Tolkien’s underlying themes have more in common with All Quiet on the Western Front, Saving Private Ryan, and HBO’s Band of Brothers. For all that his characters often feel larger than life (by design, he’s telling an epic) there’s always a grounding quality that allows the audience to connect with them. Whether we agree with Tolkien’s core thematic message or not, Tolkien genuinely has something to say about warfare and its effect, both on personal and world changing levels, and he communicates that message very well.

The irony about the “horrors of war” isn’t about the horrors of war. Thematically, the “horrors of war” is about who we choose to become in the face of them when trapped in the crucible. Do we rise to our best selves? Do we fall to our worst? When every illusion about who we believe we are is stripped away, what’s left? It’s an existential question, not a “realistic” one.

You can’t write about the horrors of war in fiction if you have nothing to say about war, humanity, and its effects. All you’ll end up with is gore for shock value. The world becomes hopelessly depressing, and, in the end, all the blood turns brown before it’s finally shat out.

Hi, Martin.

Don’t get me wrong, Martin is a very skilled writer. His prose is genuinely beautiful and his first book in ASOF, A Game of Thrones is actually a pretty decent deconstruction in the traditional fantasy narrative and a fairly realistic treatment of how events would go for the standard well-meaning fantasy protagonist. And that’s… the deepest we get.

Martin comes out of the 24/Joss Whedon death for shock value school of writing and the land of Iron Age comics that doesn’t have anything to really say beyond, “people suck.” Underneath it all is a level of cynicism in the human condition that would make Garth Ennis blush. The deaths are just shock value. There’s nothing more to it than that. Once you’ve acclimated to the gore, there’s nowhere else to go and nothing else to think about. Ironically, out of his contemporaries, Robert Jordan is better at giving both war and death in his narrative lasting effect, driving character growth, and real meaning.

Martin and Tolkien are opposite ends of the spectrum in their approach to war and their outlooks are utterly incompatible. One of them is a complete cynic and the other is facing himself honestly, openly, fearlessly, and without a smidgen of irony. (The true irony here is that the latter is the Englishman.) Following Martin’s blueprint won’t bring you to a Tolkien outcome. Tolkien’s genuine emotion is the subject of mockery in Martin’s world. Season 8 may’ve been clumsy and infuriating, but it was the natural end of Comic Book Iron Age cynicism. There are no good people, people with power can never be trusted, and all heroes, no matter how noble, reveal their true colors as villains in the end. As Christopher Nolan said, “You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain.” This philosophical outlook may be sold as realistic but it’s really just Political Both Sidesism, Fantasy Edition.

The irony is that the real history Martin draws from, The War of the Roses, is simultaneously crueler, kinder, more noble, more horrific, more impactful, and ultimately more hopeful than Martin’s own work. And this was post the Hundred Years War and all the wars that preceded it.

I bring you, the Duality of Man.

If you want to write a realistic battle scene, start with real war. If you want to write about the horrors of war, start with real war. Pick a war, any war, and dig in. Reading the experiences of others is a way to gain insight into experiences you yourself don’t share and start to process the different philosophies born out of those experiences. The horror of war is a human one.

The most important lesson is that you won’t get there by focusing on the battle itself. To truly feel the impact, every character needs to be carefully built from the very beginning with a through line to every horrific event that happens to them. If you want to learn how to do that, then you need to go study every single war movie from good to bad (including the jingoistic rah-rah ones) like Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, Battle for Iwo Jima, etc, to really start internalizing the underlying storytelling structure and character design formula that makes those films tick. There’s no one better at portraying the horror and humanity of war than the war film industry. Part of what makes the best of these films really good is their willingness to allow their characters to be emotional and vulnerable. Which you won’t find in a lot of fantasy novels that run on machismo, but is the secret sauce that gives Tolkien his impact.

Having the confidence to allow your characters to struggle, be vulnerable, experience humiliating circumstances, and appear weak is an aspect of writing that a lot of men and women struggle with. Cynicism is a form of self-protection to keep those emotions away, to keep one from being emotionally invested, and is a means by which we protect ourselves from being hurt. We may portray cynicism as the more realistic reality but it’s just a cloak we hide behind. Martin’s approach to warfare is less realistic than Tolkien’s. Tolkien’s characters approach warfare with an eye toward protecting their civilians, safeguarding their future, or, in the case of his villains, focus on genocide. War for Tolkien is the eradication of civilization and the destruction of the future. Characters from experienced combatants to innocent civilians are willing to risk their lives for a world and for the people who matter to them. Martin has the Summer War. It’s there in the title, A Game of Thrones. An entertaining charade of musical chairs. And while all of his characters are chasing power, almost none of them have any sort of vision or goal for the future beyond the accumulation of more. In Martin’s world, the only way to truly win is not to play, but in the real world playing is the only way to create the world you want. Cynicism ends with no seats at the table and no means to change or save anything.

It’s funny because England during the War of the Roses had been in a state of near constant warfare for hundreds of years with their own domestic powers and France prior to the War of the Roses kicking off. The concept of a Summer War didn’t really exist for the medieval nobility. Much as we joke today about war being a game for medieval nobles due to their ransom protections, it really wasn’t. The peasantry was also much, much more dangerous en masse than they are in ASOF. They drove traveling monarchs to hide in monasteries plenty of times and, while that’s funny, it’s not actually a joke.

Now, picture Joffrey dragged off his horse in the middle of a riot and having his skull crushed by a local fishwife right before being trampled into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp by sharp hooves.

Or enjoying the Agincourt bathing route.

You’re welcome.

-Michi

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[ailendolin]

Live reaction to TRoP 2x04

I am actually so glad Amazon is releasing the episodes weekly now because I love the anticipation beforehand and all the speculation about what happens next. So let's see what episode 4 has in store

Elrond in Mithlond! We're off to a great start here. I've missed my sweet summer child in episode 3

Galadriel, please, you have no right to be even the slightest bit bitchy right now after the Sauron shit you pulled

thank Eru Elrond is having none of it. I love how unapologetically he stands his ground and refuses to engage with her childish passive-aggressiveness

epic camera shots are epic and very LotR-reminiscent

also can I just say that I love how they're including the map to help the viewer get a grasp on where the characters are?

new elves! And they have names! I have a feeling they won't survive this journey but still, hello new elves!

man I just want to give Elrond a hug. He's trying so hard and given everything that's happened it's completely understandable why he won't trust Galadriel and Nenya, and I hate that this sets him up for failure

oooooh is it Tom Bombadil time? I can't believe this show made me feel excited about a character that I couldn't have cared less about when I read the books. I blame Bear McCreary and his beautiful music

lol Tom is like one of those burrowing animals that accidentally throws dirt at someone behind it while digging

Old Man Willow desert equivalent - does Tom Bombadil just naturally attract malevolent trees?

oh I'm so glad Nori and Poppy are okay and landed together wherever they are

those two need to meet Elrond. Given their tendencies to jump off cliffs, I think they'd get along splendidly

omg Nobody! I love you! You are adorable! And your name is Merimac! Gods, I hope they'll keep you around

lol not Nori third-wheeling and being jealous

desert halflings my beloveds! Look at them! They're so different from what we've known and yet them living in holes and the children sitting around listening to stories is so beautifully familiar. I love this so much

oh they're Stoors! And they don't like the Dark Wizard. Got it. I don't like the Dark Wizard either but damn I love watching Ciarán Hinds play him

"You should not be waking." :) I still can't believe how much I love Tom Bombadil already

GOLDBERRY!

that flame trick was neat

omg his little hedgehog teapot! I want one!

oh no this is where we say goodbye to my new elf friends, don't we? The Barrow-downs. I always loved this part in FotR

"Fear not. Dead men are no threat." Famous last words

shit those are the horses from the messenger Gil-galad sent, right?

the Barrow-wights are giving me PotC-vibes and I'm here for it

please let Camnir survive this. Please let Camnir survive this

thank you, Elrond. I knew I could count on you

also yay for him being a bookworm and knowing how to fight the Barrow-wights

and we're back in Pelargir. Have I mentioned that I don't really care about Theo (yet)? I love that Arondir and Isildur are teaming up, though

Estrid, I don't like you. Please go away. Or get trampled by an Ent

or found out by Arondir. That works as well

have I mentioned that I miss Bronwyn?

Arondir, you're a kinder man (elf) than me. I would have let Estrid faceplant right into the dirt

lol Isildur is such an idiot and I love him for it. The way he got sucked into the mud and pulled Arondir along with him was so funny

hello mud worm! I love how many different creatures we're getting in this show

the cave art! Omg it's beautiful and perfect!

"We don't have a home." This is such a sad sentence and reminds me of the dwarves (and especially Bofur) in the Hobbit movies

Galadriel, I'm sorry, but Elrond just told you he is trying his best to save Celebrimbor (and certainly feels overwhelmed by and terrified of such a task) and you're saying all elves carry such burden? Are you serious?

fuck me, not Elrond getting captured in her vision. Is he going to be forced to watch Celebrimbor get tortured / killed?

I will not be okay if / when that happens. Just saying

also I absolutely adore Camnir and you can bet I am already thinking about writing a fic about him and Elrond

not surprised by Estrid's stunt

shoot her, Arondir. Do us all a favour and shoot her

or maybe she actually is stupid enough to get herself trampled by Ents. One can hope

getting smacked is good too

Arondir, please, was it necessary to stop the nice Entwife?

damn those shots of the Ents look pretty

also did anyone ever think we'd get to see an Ent and Entwife together? Because I didn't and my heart is full.

oh that scene between Arondir and Winterbloom was beautiful

the orcs look so good in this series. I'm so glad we went back to prosthetics

I love how calm Elrond is. He is always careful not to rush into anything, always waits and sees and it keeps saving all their asses

NO! Fuck, are you kidding me? Not Camnir. Please, not him

okay, I have forgiven you for everything you've ever done wrong, Galadriel

and I have so many Elrond and Camnir ideas right now, holy shit, that scene was everything

that flaming arrow move was badass

oh this is how she will get captured

yessss hello Adar! I've missed you! Time for Sauron's exes to team up and wreak havoc

his greeting, I can't. Perfect. I love him so much

what a great episode!

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Since a lot of people enjoyed the "Legolas bluescreening" joke in my Boromir post, have some further Fun Elf Lore from the books:

Even aside from the reality-bending stuff Galadriel and Elrond can do with their rings, elves casually disregard the laws of physics all the time. Legolas stands (and runs!) without sinking in snow that's chest-deep for Aragorn and Boromir. Elves can also sleep -or at least, gain the same benefits- while walking upright, an ability Legolas taps into several times while chasing the orcs that kidnapped Merry and Pippin.

Middle Earth used to be flat: you could sail west from the coast by the Shire and eventually hit the Undying Lands. Due to a long story of hubris, the gods got pissed and said "Fuck this, *unflats your earth*" and made the world a globe. Elves, however, were broadly exempted from this rule, which is both why they can still sail to the Undying Lands when no one else can and why they have such incredibly keen vision: they can ignore petty human concerns like "there's a horizon in the way" when sighting in on something.

The distinction between elf groups is broadly a matter of academic degree. Middle Earth was created via a Very Large Choir, which foretold the coming of Elves and Men (not dwarves: I'll get to that in a minute) but left the gods with a terribly long wait time until things actually happened. When Elves did finally show up, the gods were ecstatic and invited them all to hang out. The elves that went to the Undying Lands learned magic and wonders beyond mortal comprehension at the feet of Valar, which makes them automatically wiser and more powerful than the elves who loved Middle Earth more and never left. Basically, they went to Elf Uni and got a diploma while everyone else stayed home.

Galadriel was born and raised in the Undying Lands, and Elrond has a doctorate by descent, as does Arwen. No one from Mirkwood ever went to Elf Uni, which may partially explain why Thranduil is Like That.

"Wait why are the smart elves back in Middle Earth if they moved overseas?" A) Not all of them did come back and B) those that left the Undying Lands did so because Feanor involved them in a property dispute so big the Simarillion got named after it.

Who is Feanor, you ask? Feanor was an elf from the Undying Lands who made the shiniest bangingest blinging-est jewels to ever exist, and when they got stolen by Sauron's precursor/old boss Morgoth, he swore an oath to bind his entire line to the act of dire vengeance and dragged half the elven population of the Undying Lands back to Middle Earth after him in search of said gems. Morgoth also killed Feanor's dad on the way out after robbing him, but the patricide is mostly an afterthought to He Stole My Rocks!!!

If the elves of Middle Earth are involved with a non-Sauron-based conflict (and sometimes even when they are) there is a 98% chance that it is somehow, ancestrally, indirectly, the fault of Feanor and That Goddamn Oath. Except Mirkwood's beef with the Lonely Mountain -that's one of the sole outliers.

One of the first Elf-Men encounters was Galadriel's brother Finrod deciding that the best way to greet this new race was by sneaking into a warcamp full of sleeping humans and playing a harp solo to assure them of his harmlessness. This is objectively batshit, but it did in fact work, so Nat 20 for him I guess. He later died after being captured by Sauron; he was mortally wounded while fighting a werewolf in defense of a friend, which he managed to kill naked and weaponless. Another Nat 20, RIP.

Dwarves and elves tend to dislike each other due to Ancestral Curse of Thinking You Have Bad Vibes. Back during the long wait for sentient beings to show up, the smith god Mahal (Aulë to the elves) got impatient and made the seven dwarf lords. When Eru politely if frigidly asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, Mahal humbly explained that the wait was taking forever and he craved people to infodump at teach who shared his love of crafting. Eru felt that that was fair enough and accepted dwarves into the universal family, but added in admonition that "Since they're adopted, they and my eldest aren't going to get along. Also you have to put them back in a hole and wait for the elves to show up because you can't just jump the queue like that."

[11queensupreme11]

I didn’t finish my au about Percy getting teleported into the hobbit but it posted it anyway 🫥…

Au:

Throughout the entire quest Percy has killed so many Orcs and monsters with ease making Gandalf curious…how does she have a sword?..how is she so good with a weapon if she’s just a teenage girl?…Gandalf becomes suspicious but doesn’t find out she’s a child of the gods until they are surrounded by Azog and his followers..As Thorin was about to be killed bilbo is about to save him but instead Percy saves Thorin first.finally showing some of her power when defends Thorin…since I suck at describing fight scenes I’ll let it to your imagination…when the eagles save all of them Percy used her healing powers to heal Thorin a injuries shocking them more now knowing they had a child of the gods on their side..so they promise to help her find a way home and azog..ooohh azog…he knows now too…and he doesn’t keep quiet about it now everyone in all of middle earth the Mirkwood elves,the elves in Rivendell,dwarves,kings and queens all now hear that the company of Thorin Oakenshield have a god on their side making everyone shocked….and when they finally take Erabor back from Smaug Thorin becomes greedy..he forbids her from leaving and tries to control Percy into doing his every will and give him more power but when she refuses he tries to kill her and gets his butt beat..and because of that Percy goes with bilbo to give the Arkenstone to Thranduil and bard..they were both worried about the company being too powerful with a child of the gods on their side and the fact they don’t even know what the child of the gods look like so when bilbo arrives with Percy they don’t recognize her..so when they find out she is the child of the gods they try to convince Percy to join them and help them take down Thorin..she wants to deny and she only wants to go home..but they disagree Thranduil..Because he finally had someone powerful enough to steal back his wife’s gems..(and maybe because Percy reminds him of his wife very much) and Bard because Percy can help and protect the people of lake town..(also because he sees her as his child)..Gandalf wants her because she can help stop the war and she can help protect the company..during the beginning of the five armies the company demand Percy comes back while the Thranduil and bard demands she comes on their side..then Thorins cousin arrives and some hen he sees Percy he demands Percy is on their side…they all want Percy on their side so they all fight over it..then when azog comes he wants Percy so he can have more power(obviously) and joins the fight…and I’m getting very tired so Im sorry if I was very lazy with the ending..when Thorin comes to his senses and the army of elves,men, and dwarves reluctantly join together Percy finally joins the fight and uses a lot of her power taking down a lot of orcs…and she saves fili and Kili in the process..after the war they still fight over her but surprise surprise the summoning had a limited amount of time so while they fight over her she is sent away pissing them off as they try to summon her back..it never works again until…she is summoned again by the fellowship in the LOTR….thats all I got tell me if this idea is crap or not cause I think it would be a good story…especially if you wrote it..feel free to ignore this I just had an idea…

THERE'S MORE 🥳

"Thorin becomes greedy..he forbids her from leaving and tries to control Percy into doing his every will and give him more power but when she refuses he tries to kill her and gets his butt beat"

i got mixed results on thorin's height (saying he's 5'2" or between 4'5"-4'8") but he's a shortie regardless so i'm just imagining percy easily kicking him over LMAO

and thranduil.... 🤤

that name just awakened something in me.... 🤤 🤤 🤤

im pretty sure i had a huge ass crush on him when i was a kid (i'm probably gonna start looking at thranduil fics cuz of you lol)

[eggman91]

random dnd worldbuliding stuff I quess of the world of edo

ok so I play dnd with my friends for years now and over that time we bulid up our world with random stuff also some wargames play a part and existing stuff but yeah here 5 random things that I got written down in my world book warning I may ramble

5 cult of hastut (made by my brother he play couple of clerics and paladins of this faith)

while the follower of hastut covered in scars and blood rushing into battle like gore mad berserkers, they are the quite opposite of what you think they would be.

They are followers of god of justice, the god of fairness of sacrifice. No one know where the worship began but the legend said it hastut was a mortal man his village had committed some great crime and so the gods punish them But he hastut step up to take all the punishment for his people all all know torture and pain hastut was still standing all his skin gone his eyes burned suffer pain greatly then any other and so he ascended to the pantheon or not .became his own god

his followers ranges form the scars of the free who fight the southern slavers city states of gash freeing the slaves there to the order of broken hand giving shelter and food to the poor in the herzland “a odd sort ain’t a mad and flaying their own skin i don’t how they still live by they they kill slavers so cool by me “ gallo a member of the one anti-slavers groups in gash hilllands

4 cor’Quessir ath swi “‘’king of swing” (made by me as a dm and warlock

A Fae being of sorts a one focus on music partying and having a good time his worship and followers bought many strange things to edo such as jazz swing and other stuff other fashion trend like top hats

(but that a myth the first top hats was made by the Halfling of erdia and it was common for those wearing top hats to be attack by religious fanatics or anti-fae people but that practice stop after marley one of the major naval power government officials and lords start to wear them so that became uncivilized thing)

not hav seen this king of swing himself in ages but his court is still playing the Savoy in his realm the band still popping there was one time a bunch of city goblins who was influenced by the fae king they along with the local ratmen form a family of sorts a criminal family in the city of sunhaven which spread to other cities

3 Olaf murinson (this mostly happen in games of one page rules and this happen the most recently and don’t underestimate dwarf miners they got bombs)

in the fourth age like that of the elves the dwarves was falling many holds and fortress was lost to greenskins the underdark or the underearth was losing to drow and other creatures of the dark and infighting and clan wars was numerous and mirrormere stars was fading the oldest mountain hold the twin peaks was still ruled by a dragon

(fun fact, one of the games actually involve that dragon muratasxa and my player actually help her)

it was not looking good for the dwarves of all kin but in the hold of kelgathgard a thane rose after a battle with the men of the herzland and this thane Olaf murinson of clan blackshovel rose though many things the battle of kegath hold (Pepsi hold) the battle of the ruined house (there was a magic gem of the old elven Phoenix empire and he was able to get it) he united the northern leagues and clans into a new high kingdom which spead to the new holds like the south an across the sea ( fun fact dwarves try to build a navy to fight the eleven one in the secondth age the great stone fleet was quickly erased form the history stones)

reforging the old dwarven kingdom even with the slag or petty dwarves form the Kodar mountains trying heal the rift he basically dwarven, Charlemagne and Aurelian and ( my players did join in those efforts when we played an All dwarf party as a one off but that was happening on a different continent then we normally played) but before Olaf could reclaim the twin peaks he was slayed in battle by undead but his kingdom did not collapse a council of leagues thane and petty kings try to hold it together who knows but the kodar dwarves already left who knows if the kingdom of rock and stone fall again or will it hold?

2 elves yay😕 most like elven falls

Ok so elves start as the first race made by the earthmother or light goddess or elune or whatever they was the first to fight teh shadows of old myth and drove them back to there plane of darkness and these elves was the most of unearthly tall and black eyes but after a time there children became tire to the world and embraced more civilizations naming nature elune or whatever which confused there older kin (like why pray to this earthmother there. Perfectly good tree over there and etc)

these elves would raise as the high elves or ella’quor and rivaling with the dwarves and the left over giants and dragons (which they got there magic form the dragons)but then boom first demon invasion that never destroy them but boom Elrond came and destroyed them destroying the portal gate, whatever that was bringing them into the world( those demons who was left later interbreed and became Teifling and etc)forming his Phoenix empire that would last 300 years

then like the eldar decadence, hedonism, self-righteous end that was the Phoenix empire at it end wizard kings rule and princes fought each other over petty things cults of dark gods like lolth or kahine rose and well then the human migrations happen coming from the north with there serpent ships so like rome they panic there armies was overglorify spearelves and well they turn to magic to stop them…oh shit they got magic too like runes and thennic magic

(thenns was a large cultural group of the humans migrations, mostly settling in the western continent many was with the East there magic a mix of tomb necromancy and runes and minor magics and since there was more shamans then there was wizard kings and minor elven sorcerers well quantity over quality )so they turn to blood Mages and there flesh crafted starting off from the basic gremlin and ogre throw in some capture humans the greenskins was born orcs and goblins of many different breeds along with anthros(breath in wulfen tirgans marleians foxvisn and etc etc )and minor stuff like centaurs they sent them to go fight the human well just like rome that backfired hopefully the oven empire fell apart many fled but many more was slaughtered The Elven groups that survived were divided into two groups, light and dark, which was extremely bias light made up of remained high elves wood elves and snow elves dark made of drow and many many different dark elves groups (also sea elves but those freaks are just jumped up, ancient pirates)

1 infernal and the abyss

What is hell? Where the souls of the Damned are sent? Infernal id just normal dnd hell princess and all etc throw in some seven deadly sins and chaos gods but

The deeper you go, you arrive to the abyss with no demon of a infernal dared to go for they are just the imps compared to what down there true hell laid there abandon all hope who enters there.

any questions?

[whitegoldtower]

Concerning Thorin Oakenshield:

Thranduil’s way more patient than folks give him credit for, I’d have had a fucking aneurysm

Also Elrond. Composure king.

If you’ve read the Silmarillion and know the history and lore of the world, you know. The girls who get it get it. The girls who don’t, don’t.

Like show the elves some fucking respect, it’s not difficult. They have saved the world multiple times pretty much singlehandedly and the dwarves have refused to help them fight Sauron before. You’re not special, Thorin. 😒

(The elves and men worked together pretty well because of clear communication and team effort. The dwarves fucked off, holed themselves up away from everybody else and tried to do shit their own way even though they were all fighting the same thing.)

Also the dwarves refused to provide clear and direct answers to the elves because of their fucking pride and like

I don’t know about you but if my land was in the firing line of Mordor and some little twats were refusing to answer my questions but demanding use of my resources I’d tell them where to shove it, too. Not to mention that the dwarves in question literally stole a silmaril. Untrustworthy.

The arkenstone is a fucking silmaril. Give it back. The dwarves are in no way entitled to those. They were created by Feanor out of the light of the two sacred trees (Laurelin and Telperion - essentially, night and day). The arkenstone, giving off its own light, fits the description of a silmaril. That’s like stealing a star out of the sky.

The elves know how to use the silmarils. The dwarves don’t. It wasn’t stolen to be used, it was stolen because some fucker went “ooh shiny” (because when Aulë got too ambitious and created the dwarves, Yavanna was like “Iluvatar isn’t going to like this, and in fact, I hate it. They will have no respect for the natural world and will cut down trees without giving a thought as to how the tree feels about that” which is a particularly poignant and correct sentiment where the dwarves are concerned). And now Thorin Oakenshield feels entitled to its ownership.

Dunno why Thranduil didn’t just slice his head off to be honest. Probably because there was a part of him like “he’s young and audacious, I dont have time for this”.

Thorin is basically the Middle-Earth equivalent of an ipad kid and I would 100% drop kick him without hesitation.

[tap3werm]

Lord of the rings(fellowship of the ring) 6.5/10

Exposition

In the beginning of the movie, you are told the story of what had happened about three thousand years prior. This is where Sauron made a bunch of powerful rings and gave it to all the humans. Men, Elves, and Dwarves. They never really say exactly what these rings can do, but it doesn’t really matter, because Sauron made these rings in order to control the other wielders. With the “one ring to rule them all,” he controlled all the others and tried conquering everything. There was a war, Sauron got his finger cut off, and the good guys won. Apparently this all became legend due to how much time had passed, but everyone except the Hobbits, seem to know about this. Now, Sauron is back and he’s trying to get the ring so he can materialize. I’m not really sure why that matters, since he’s already so powerful and is able to raze giant ork armies, because all it’s shown is him being really giant and strong. Which yeah, is great and all, but that is not the deciding factor of a war I don’t think.

Then, you’re introduced to the Hobbits and Gandalf. Something I don’t like is all these black and white labels that are attached to all these races and such. Like that one is like this and the other is only like this. A little weird if you ask me. You then get to meet the current humans, elves and Dwarves.

As far as character exposition, there isn’t much. Granted, they have a bunch of characters, but you’d think they would focus on Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, or Strider more. Frodo is… the hero, and everyone believes in him. That’s about it, it seems. Sam is just there to be Frodo’s cheerleader. Strider is there to protect Frodo. Same with all the other characters for the most part. They actually made Gandalf kinda insufferable. Definitely not a wise old wizard type of vibe. He was pretty quick to emotion, anger, frustration, so on. The Dwarf guy was also pretty annoying. The writing of these characters wasn’t anything special. You’d think a 3.5 hour movie would have some extensive exposition.

 Rising Action 

There wasn’t really any grand climax it seems like. The main tension would be the characters growing slowly more agitated from the ring. There was an ebb and flow of tension going in and out with different challenges. This is like, The start till their arrival to Rivendell, Rivendell to the Balrog, and the forest elves till the end, with little ones in between.  I guess the overall rising tension is them getting closer to Mount Doom to destroy the ring, but that is a subtle one that lasts many movies.

Climax

As with the rising action, there was an ebb and flow when it came with this. 

Examples of this would include:

The fight right before rivendale

The battle in the mine

The battle in the forest

Summary

Overall, I thought the beginning of the movie was really strong. The music, setting, and serene attitude was perfect. The shire was super well done. The movie does a good job at holding my attention with stuff happening all the time. The energy is pretty great the whole movie, makes everything seem pretty important. 

I do not like the individual characters too much, not much to them. The writing was not the most amazing either, nothing getting me to think about things. You more or less know exactly what they’re gonna say. That is until Gandalf randomly yells completely out of character. 

The action was also pretty ass. The fights were super performative and drawn out. There wasn’t really a good energy to them and they had a ton of cuts.

[gayhawkelatehomicide]

Meet Harea Lavellan, my sweet girl who is maybe a little bit possessed by the fade ghost of Andraste.

I don't have a working title for any of it, but I've got a ton of little drabbles about her. Here's one that happens at the beginning of the Deep Roads DLC, which is the closest to finished of anything I have about her.

Lieutenant Renn has spent his entire life underground. Who he was before the Legion doesn't matter anymore, but since his funeral, he's been fighting darkspawn in the Deep Roads. The fifth blight was a mess, and some of the Legion even went up to the surface to fight it on the Hero of Ferelden's say-so (although she wasn't the Hero at that point, just some surfacer who managed to make the Assembly sit up and take notice). Renn, however, stayed below. His unit had been involved in a strike against a broodmother nest just a few days before the first battalions headed for the surface, and they'd been in no shape to fight. 

In the intervening ten years or so, he's seen his fair share of stupid casteless, shaft-rats, surface dwarves, humans, elves, and even a couple of Qunari running around in the Deep Roads. Most of them trying to make money, all of them in over their heads. He's walked over enough of their fool corpses to know that when you start finding evidence of a topsider caravan, you should be on the lookout for the 'spawn that killed them. 

Not every surfacer he meets is utterly incompetent, though. Occasionally, you'll get a group armed well enough to run through an old thaig, grab whatever they can carry, and haul ass back out without being overwhelmed. A few Carta clans have managed to hack out and defend some strongholds here and there. There has even been a decent number of Grey Wardens who checked in with the Legion on their way past, headed up or down on some inscrutable business of their own. Still, more often than not, those who go into the Deep Roads don't come back. Smart people don't go into the Deep Roads at all.

All this to say, Renn doesn't see topsiders often, and he can count the ones wise enough to bring a mage with them on one hand. A warden healer who mostly hid near the back of his unit, a lyrium-addled elf who threw some sparks at Renn then disappeared into the shadows, and a leashed Qunari Saarebas trotting behind its handler in the northernmost part of the Roads he's ever visited. Beyond that, and the (thankfully rare) darkspawn emissary, Renn's life doesn't have much magic in it. He likes it that way. It's simpler. 

The earthquakes in the lyrium mines make everything… complicated. Shaper Valta gets drafted to meet a group of surfacers who are supposed to come help, and Renn's ready to roll his eyes and prepare some funeral pyres until he hears who it is. Even in the Deep Roads, everyone has heard about the Inquisition going on up top. Their Inquisitor is supposed to be some kind of religious leader, but she's also apparently indestructible. The stories that trickle down to the Legion have passed through enough hands that nobody should take them as pure truth, but if even a fraction of what people say is accurate, the Inquisitor is a force to be reckoned with. 

Renn hears that she doesn't sit back like most surface commanders; that she and her crew fight like shock troops, out ahead of the main force of her army. The stories say she goes into places where her men might struggle and takes out enemies that ordinary soldiers shouldn't be asked to handle. She and her unit have killed everything from hurlocks to high dragons. High dragons plural. As in, more than one. There's a story about a trio of dragons set up in some place with a fancy Orlesian name Renn can't be arsed to remember, and the Inquisitor taking her little group down the line and killing all three one after the other. He's too old and far too experienced to get giddy over someone else's battles—especially not in front of his men—but he can't help thinking, What a fight that must've been!

When he hears that the Inquisitor is the topside help they're getting, Renn reconsiders his position. He can feel Valta watching him with that little smug expression she gets when she wants to say "I told you so," so he responds to the messenger with a grunt of acknowledgement and little else. The runner scurries off back to whoever sent her, trailing her pair of Legion escorts. Once they're relatively alone, Renn offers Valta his most forbidding frown. 

"Don't start," he says futilely.

"The Shaperate promised that they would send someone-" she begins anyway. Her face is straight, but that smile lingers in her voice and her big pretty eyes. 

Renn interrupts with a growl. "I know, I know. When are they getting here?" Another minor tremor rattles through the outpost they've claimed near the open rift in the Stone, sending dust and small pebbles into the air but thankfully not knocking loose any large boulders. "We need to get to the bottom of this soon."

"Within a week." Much of the glee goes out of Valta's tone, which is a shame. As much as it drives Renn nuts, it's good to see her smile. She hasn't been herself since the rhythm in the quakes started up. "Their forward scouts and the engineers from Orzammar should arrive in a few days to construct a mechanism for them to reach us safely. Or rather, as safely as is currently possible."

"Hm. Well. We'll hold out against the 'spawn pretty easily, as long as that seal doesn't get damaged." He picks up his axe. "Speaking of which, I should go check on the patrol we sent that way. They haven't reported back."

Valta's eyes widen. "Should you take another unit with you?"

Renn shakes his head. "No need. They're only a couple of minutes late. I'll probably run into them in the hall. Just a precaution."

"As you say, Lieutenant," she acquiesces. But Renn knows that look. Valta doesn't use his title unless she's up to something. She's going to send more men after him. 

Well, it's pointless arguing. She won't be convinced, and if he starts now, they'll still be standing here bickering when the patrol comes in. He shoulders his axe and offers her a mocking half-salute, turns on his heel and heads off down the hall. He only goes about twenty yards before he starts to notice things that put him on alert. It's the smell first, then the distant sound of steel on stone. Renn breaks into a jog. Then a run. By the time he's close enough to hear the distinctive shrieks, he's moving at a dead sprint. 

He skids around a corner to find his missing patrol, down to about a third of its original strength, making a fighting retreat up the corridor, chased by darkspawn. At the other end, where once there had been an old dwarven seal—an incredible feat of engineering which had held against the 'spawn since the time of the first blight—there is now a cracked ruin, broken in half by one of the recent earthquakes. Renn spits a few of the nastiest curses he knows and wades in to rescue as many of his men as possible. He prays to the ancestors that Valta's insubordinate little head tilt means there's an entire patrol on his heels, but he won't bet on it.

It's going to be a long week.

***

Five days later, the Legion have finally fought their way back to the room with the seal. It's been a painful slog, expensive in lives and resources, but the dwarves of old picked their choke-points well. It's going to be worth it to clog the tunnel here, instead of a few chambers farther along. They bring up lyrium explosives; If the seal can't hold the 'spawn back anymore, its rubble will have to do. Renn is starting to feel a little more positive about the situation, which is, of course, a mistake. 

Just as they're about to lay the charges, the biggest wave of darkspawn yet hits their position. An ogre bursts through the crack in the seal, slams through their defensive line, and runs off down the tunnel. Renn can't spare the men to send someone after it. His legionaries are falling left and right as a third hurlock alpha raises its blade to rally its fellows. He takes the beast's head off its shoulders. It's not enough. They're overwhelmed. 

Renn shouts for someone to prime the charges, but before he can confirm anyone heard him, a genlock alpha's shield bash sends him sprawling. He fetches up against a wall with enough force to knock the wind out of him. Valta's voice echoes from the entrance to the chamber, and through the ringing in his ears Renn can only think that it's a damn shame Orzammar will be losing a shaper as talented as her because of his failure. 

Then, something extraordinary happens. Renn feels the temperature in the chamber drop by what must be ten degrees. All the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up, like there's an emissary in the room about to cast chain lightning. He wonders for a moment if the feeling is some strange side effect of death.

A glyph etches itself into the ground a few feet from where Renn has landed. Green and gold light creeps rapidly—like roots growing through stone, only much faster—in intricate patterns out from a center point until a five-foot diameter ice rune shimmers an inch above the floor. Before he can really wrap his aching head around that, a blur of something just beyond vision zips past him, and a sword no dwarf could wield unsheathes itself from the air. It is easily five feet long, a full hand's breadth wide, and seems to be made primarily of that same green-and-gold energy. Its edges, though, shine with a searing white radiance that's so bright it hurts to look at. With one long, powerful sweep, the blade cleaves through the shield and into the body of the genlock alpha that had been bearing down on Renn. 

A pair of hurlocks, rushing up to take advantage of the lieutenant's weakness, step on the rune and are immediately engulfed in a blast of frozen energy that encases both of them in jagged, frost-edged ice. From the other direction, a hurlock archer is lining up a shot. As it draws its wicked-looking short bow, it too is frozen solid. All this happens in the space between two heartbeats. In the next, a woman materializes out of thin air—but no, she must've been the invisible thing that rushed past. 

The first glimpse Renn gets of the Inquisitor is brief. She shimmers into existence, left hand raised in a grasping fist as her ice closes its grip on the archer, right hand still wrapped around the hilt of the sword made from light. The gold-trimmed white leather of her mage armor fans out around her as she pivots sharply from her charge into a solid stance from which she can lock the archer down. The rune behind her (and the enemies it's captured) seems almost beneath her notice. Her back is to Renn, so he cannot see her face, but there is only one person this can be. 

Renn hauls himself back upright. There will be time to deal with his own injuries later; he has to help get these 'spawn handled so his men can prime the charges. The Inquisitor banishes the light sword and uses both hands to raise a wall of ice across the hole where the darkspawn are pouring through, buying them vital time. She wraps herself and the legionaries closest to her in armor made of light which, as Renn watches, effortlessly turns aside a half-dozen heavy blows. Then, right before Renn's eyes, she vanishes into smoke again. 

He applies his axe to the nearest frozen darkspawn just before an enormous Qunari warrior wades in after the Inquisitor, ramming a genlock's shield most of the way through its body with a single blow of his gigantic hammer. A crossbow bolt comes shrieking over Renn's head to hit the frozen archer and explodes, sending icy chunks of hurlock in every direction. A man in Grey Warden blues runs to the rescue of a few struggling legionaries near the opposite wall, bashing his shield into another genlock before it can bite down on the leg of the recruit it's got pinned. The rest of the combat is a blur of shouted orders, darkspawn blood, and lyrium explosives. 

When the dust settles, Renn slumps against the barricade they hadn't been able to defend. He lets his eyes close, just for a moment, and takes a deep breath. A small, cool hand touches his brow. 

Renn tries to brush it away with a growl. "I'm fine, Valta. Don't fuss."

"You have a head wound," an unfamiliar voice informs him. Renn's eyes pop open. Leaning over him, there is an elven girl with violet eyes and blonde hair. Her face is marked by strange, intricate tattoos that Renn can't quite follow the pattern of. She looks concerned but professional, and she displays none of the histrionics one might expect after battle from a child her age—though it's hard to eyeball ages in non-dwarves. She could be an adult. Clearly, she's a healer, which seems more immediately relevant. Perhaps she came in with the Inquisitor's party? A leader that important is bound to have a personal surgeon. 

"It's just a scratch," Renn insists, mostly out of habit. He tries to get up, but a wave of dizziness lets him know that he'll be staying right where he is. The surgeon's hand on his shoulder guides him back to a sitting position.

Her tone is disapproving when she replies, "Then it will be the work of a moment to heal it. Sit still and let me help." 

She closes her eyes. The sensation that follows is like someone wrapping his head in a cold compress. The pain eases quickly under the soothing chill, and clarity returns to Renn's thoughts. Her face swims into focus. (He realizes that he's been seeing double since the genlock alpha hit him, and spares a moment to marvel at the miracle of what must be magical healing.) The improvement doesn't stop there, though. As he sits, he can feel his minor wounds—bruises, cuts, aches, and pains from the past five days of fighting to reclaim this position—righting themselves all at once. Renn has been living on hard tack and healing potions, and with a minute of this stranger's attention, he feels like he's just come off a month's R&R in Orzammar. 

"Thank you," he says gratefully when she's done.

"You're very welcome," she smiles a sweet little smile. She reminds him of a cousin he had, before the Legion. His mother's sister's daughter. A good kid; she'd been nearly fifteen when he left. He wonders how she's doing now. He quickly banishes the thought, pulling himself up to his feet and turning away from the girl. He needs to check on his men. 

"How many did we lose?" He calls to his second in command, a former Carta bruiser named Hemmi. 

"Not as many as we could've," comes the reply. "Four dead, no wounded."

Renn frowns. "What do you mean 'no wounded'? Did the darkspawn carry anyone off?"

"No sir! The-"

"Sorry to interrupt," the elven girl cuts in. "I hope I didn't do anything wrong, but I did what I could for your wounded already."

"Already?" Renn rounds on her. "How? Did I lose time to that head wound?" 

She offers a sheepish smile. She has one small hand wrapped around the other forearm, and she's taken a few steps back to stand by the Qunari, who is cleaning darkspawn blood off his oversized ram's-head hammer. Renn has a moment to register that the staff on her back is a strange shape: almost like the hilt of a sword, but without any blade to balance it. "No, but I'm a fair combat healer. I got most of them during the fight, while I was trying to keep this fool alive." She elbows the Qunari.

"Hey, not all of us can make crap from thin air, alright?" He protests in a tone somewhere between grumpy and joking. 

Valta steps in before Renn can demand clearer answers. "Allow me to introduce Lieutenant Renn of the Legion of the Dead, veteran of the Fifth Blight." 

The girl nods politely. "It's an honor to meet you. I understand the Legion was instrumental to the Hero of Ferelden's success." 

"I was just a recruit," Renn deflects. "Didn't do anything useful." To Hemmi, he says, "And what do you mean only four dead? I know I saw more than that fall." 

Hemmi opens his mouth to reply, but Valta beats him to it. "Renn, let me introduce the Inquisitor. She revived a number of your men, and helped the rest beat back the darkspawn." 

"I'm only sorry I couldn't save everyone," the girl smiles sadly. 

It takes Renn another few moments of confused frowning before he understands what he's just been told. This little elven girl, whose entire body is about the width of Renn's upper arm, is the force of nature who turned the tide of battle within moments of her arrival. And while she was doing that, she had enough energy and attention to spare on healing his wounded legionaries. Valta will never let him hear the end of this.

[the-firebird69]

These people just won't give it a break normally adolescent Trump needs to get out smoking into a horror show the guys and numbnut put It Forward again request them out every time I do someone's bouncing them all over the damn place we should be taking this guys out when we're doing it need to have more people on it and I put them on and it's working and they need to hire people and they are

Really some people doing I told them just hire more people and they're getting them

-today is going to be a hell of a day going to wrap it up tonight with a whole bunch of idiots trying to get here and right now I'm just going at the porters Alabama and Georgia and it's a big number it's not a percentage point but it's a lot that's a huge number but really big numbers are coming up when they start to try and stop the empire

-Tommy f is preparing to launch and he is taking ships they can't tell yet it's very dry I was dry here for a few days

-Disney world is packed humanly impossible numbers are going to look at the dragon gigantic numbers and you're saying you shouldn't release the dragon it seems to be his dragon huge epithesis against Tommy f and against Trump and he's saying it too we need him to get the thing to get you down there cuz you suck so bad are we going to get rid of this Tommy F guy and they both show up in the assholes have this armies there the dwarves are mostly clones it's true too it's all these little clones it's hilarious and it's all of these elves which are trumpsters and boy they get toasted and Men come down and those are mostly bja and also pseudo empire but that's what it is now it's mostly pseudo empire and they clear out tons of them and they have to leave and he gets his body back eventually from Randall text Cobb and he goes after him with a fury and it's for hard knocks which is only a week from now and people start making the parts it's a giant giant deal to know the information as to what the thing was what it is huge things are coming out comic books about Randall text Cobb and his adventures and what is doing in Vietnam and he's this brutal guy he really is and he was and there's stories and there's kind of accurate and he was very mean to people it's not the same as the comedian he's actually done those things too and he's done what he did in the movie yeah he's a pig it's a horrible horrible show but really there's comic books coming out about almost everything and try and get her son in there and he's barely in there some of them he is not many and there's no white hulk or human hulk well he didn't look so he's going to look for that but seriously there are huge numbers of people reading these comic books and they're calling him the beast and comic book name is different though you would not believe how many people. It's excruciatingly famous and other episodes of Lord of the rings stuff is selling you would not believe how many people are buying it you would not believe it it's ginormous and Trump got it too he got the nice and white sand stuff

Thor Freya

It's very huge now and soon it's going to be much bigger they are talking about the ships and Saturn and how there's an opportunity and they might be up there people need to check tons of people are joining their army and ours is starting to get big and move once they clean that stuff out of the Midwest we're taking that area it's big it's the size of a state all together now they're saying it's a 1.5 States it's like Illinois and Missouri is very big it's a huge area and outside the in the perimeter too we're going to take territory there massive massive areas I'm going to come into our possession this week because of fighting and it's going to intensify throughout the month and it's going to be gigantic starting February 15th huge and that's where the big huge chunk of the warlock left last time other groups too but they were decimated they're getting hit now and the numbers I thought were higher but a lot of things haven't happened not fully and Trump is getting smaller it's not real small but he's going to start bothering other groups who are making bikes and he's going to get his ass kicked that's a big one by the way but for real he's going to start going after ships like all the other warlock right now they're going after ships in Florida and they're having a war and it's getting pretty big and it's going to get dark soon so he's got to get moving but boy what a day this is a day to remember

Hera

[tanoraqui]

Because it’s been brewing for about 21 months, I have SO MANY AUTHOR NOTES about this fic:

On the Battle:

It was very important to me that Finarfin got his real 1v1 time, led the fight and dealt the final blow, but also that the Houses of Fingolfin and Fëanor were represented as doing their parts. Anairë is co-fighting this battle, and they're hitting again and again the foot that Fingolfin first weakened! Maedhros has his big moment on behalf of the House of Fëanor, and Maglor and Celebrimbor play no small parts either! This is the House of Finwë united, the Noldor fighting as a whole!!

In his 1v1 time, Finarfin dealt 6 successful blows and took 3—less than Fingolfin but not by much! But he would have died, he very much would have died if Galadriel and the rest of the host hadn’t arrived—but he didn’t die because they arrived. Because for all his single-minded fury and sense of fate, unlike his brother, half-brother and father, Finarfin waited to have this fight until he could bring backup, and did so.

And not just the Noldor! By all their might, all their skill and power of sword and Song, the people and champions of the Noldor managed to bleed Morgoth enough to make him angry and cut off exactly 1 foot, after hewing at more or less the same spot for untold hours. Then Ilmarë, Handmaiden of Varda swept in and cleaved the other in a single blow. The Valar never lied: this was NEVER a fight that Elves could win, not remotely…

But there was some sort of pre-meeting of the Ainur, before the strategy meeting with which the fic opens, where someone said, “Now that he’s cornered, we should clear out the Children so we can freely strike against him directly—the land is a lost cause, right?” To which Eonwë, who had been commanding and fighting alongside the armies of Elves and Men and even sometimes Dwarves, Ents, etc. for the past 40+ years, said, “No, they need to be involved. They need this, psychologically. Especially the Exiles and their kin. If they don’t, I fear they will forever feel cheated of rightful justice.”

Finarfin at the start is like, Can’t let the Herald know I’m going to do my fucking best to KILL this sonofabitch, no matter what he and the Elder King through him say! and Eonwë is silently thumbs-upping him like, I know buddy. I got your back. Kick his ass as best you can, earn victory in your own eyes, then Tulkas and I will swoop in with the guys and finish the job WHILE saving as many of you kids as possible, because oh Allfather we (my beloved bosses included) screwed up with you guys on the first few tries but we’re trying to do it right, really.

And this does NOT invalidate Finarfin and his people’s triumph, not the glory of their love and their wrath and their stubborn refusal to go down any way but fighting. That defiance itself is a victory, against the so-called King of the World! The fact that they fight, that they do not stop!

And they gave him what for! They weakened him! They made him so pissed off that Tulkas could basically sneak-attack him, which meant the collapse of the continent could be much more controlled and generally safe, and they fought discord with harmony and they may not have themselves won but they sure as fuck didn’t lose either!

On Anan-Noldanan:

I described the sword at length here, more or less accurately (though the translation of the name has been reconsidered between then and now. Much like the final battle, in its creation, Aulë knew 100% that the Children couldn’t make a sword that would kill Morgoth—hell, he couldn’t make a sword that would “kill” Morgoth; Valar don’t “die” and certainly not one as strong as Melkor. But he made a little spacetime bubble of a forge and assigned one of his top Maiar to “get the Children anything they ask for,” (including additional smiths who may or may not have been entirely alive or born yet at the time), and watched with some excitement to see what they came up with.

This story is, in a large way, entirely about this sword. Because what they came up with is a sword that is very very good at:

Fighting Morgoth, either directly though piercing his defenses and damaging him, or indirectly by shielding people from his power

Detecting (or creating?) good kings, because it is in essence an Oath to Eru, like Fëanor’s infamous one, made physically manifest. It declares the wielder a representative of the will and well-being of not just the Noldor—though it was made foremost for their leader and champion—but all the people of Arda; to carry out justice on their behalf with wisdom, pure intent, and both mercy and unhesitating wrath when needed. This Oath applies If and Only If someone considers themselves the wielder of the sword—it doesn’t apply if someone is just holding it casually, or gives it up, and the power of the sword stops working if the wielder fails to uphold the Oath.

Finarfin does NOT know this, to be clear. Sometime after he wakes up post-battle, he finds Celebrimbor and demands, “What the hell did you put in that sword?”

“Um…iron. Mithril. Silima.” Celebrimbor admits, “Honestly, it’s kind of a blur. I looked out a window once and I think we were on the edge of the Void. I think Telchar may have been there, and he died of old age in 422.”

Finarfin decides to stop asking questions. He is not a master of craft. It was a good sword. It really got the job done. He hopes dearly to never have to use it again, not for any reluctance to wield it but because he is so, so, so tired of killing.

Anairë wouldn’t wield it as well in most circumstances—she’s too prone to prioritizing Her people, and maybe some vengeance. But pretty much everyone and everything in the Great Music was in agreement with her, in that fight, that Morgoth needed to fucking die already.

From the start, Finarfin was thinking to avenge not just the hurts to himself and his kin, his people, but to all the peoples of Arda; but it wasn’t until the rest of those peoples started to arrive at the fight that he started to win. It’s a sword for a champion, not a lone hero. It’s a sword for a ruler making choices for their people, in the sense of taking charge and in the sense of service.

All equations of Finarfin with the sword were deliberate, the strongest being “If this hell corroded all else away but the shining blade in his hand and the shining blade of his soul, then so be it.” It’s about being so determined that you willingly become a weapon in the name of what is right.

It’s also about “what is right” being Killing Morgoth, Him Specifically, That King-Killing, Jewel-Stealing, Bliss-Breaking, Spiderfucking Sonofabitch.

When the Noldor in Aman start electing their High Kings in the late Second Age, the new High King always swears into office with their hand on Anan-Noldanan, though the oath they swear isn’t quite the same as the Oath that the sword is; especially it’s not nearly as binding. I don’t think anyone realizes that the sword is a manifestation of an Oath (read: a commitment to being A Certain Way upheld in the Great Music itself) until like the Fourth Age. Anyone who picks it up can tell that it's existentially heavy, and true Oaths to Eru are common for marriage...but Oaths of Marriage feel very… different than this one, so you can’t just notice by picking it up casually, or even necessarily by being bound by it. Wielding it means something a little like being possessed by the concept of karmic justice, and something like just having a huge sense of responsibility.

Tagged Relationships

I waffled a lot over which, if any, relationships to tag, and eventually concluded that if a reader wants to see a compelling Finarfin&Galadriel or Finarfin&Maedhros dynamic, I think and hope that they’ll find it here.

With Galadriel, it’s that they don’t speak a single sentimental word to one another, she politely but somewhat pointedly does not acknowledge him as having any sort of royal authority over her, but after all their shared losses, they are both absolutely fucking UNHINGED in their need to keep the other alive. No limits, sprinting in, would attack Morgoth with their teeth if that was all they had. That’s his daughter. That’s her dad.

After this, they do manage to have at least one earnest sentimental conversation before he sails home and she stays. There might also be a fight, about her refusing to sail too. But they part on good terms. Children grow up and run off to do their own thing, and all you can do is wait for them to one day come home; it’s an unfortunate and proud part of parenthood.

With Maedhros, it’s that…there’s a mirror universe out there somewhere where Maedhros, Nelyafinwë, is High King of the Noldor, in Aman or Beleriand or even both, and it’s a good universe. He could have ably juggled the factions of his house and his people, he could have been beautiful and judicious in peace and righteous and resplendent in war—you can see it for a second there, as he confronts Morgoth directly by sheer force of will, shielding Galadriel when even Finarfin can’t—

But any chance to turn off this road and into that one is long since past, and Finarfin and Maedhros both know it. Maedhros can lead the way through Angband because it fucked him up in fundamental ways. He and Maglor can fight Sauron because they can sink to his level. Maybe Finwë-Nelyafinwë’s timeline wouldn’t have been successful at all, because as discussed, this (Morgoth) isn’t a problem that can be defeated by one magnificent hero with sheer force of will. Maedhros’s sword shatters and he collapses, while Finarfin continues wielding the sword which the best (mostly) surviving smiths of the age made for the specific purpose of Killing That Guy, For All Of Us.

Maedhros was born first, but Finarfin has finally come into his own, and thinks of Maedhros as one of “the kids.”

But they’re both aware of that other timeline.

Other:

Celebrimbor is using the “clever knives” wrought by Curufin which are also described at that link above for the sword!

Lalwen broke literally about 90% of the bones in her body by being under Ancalagon when he fell. She’d been shooting ballistae at him. She survived out of raw refusal to leave Beleriand until Morgoth did—someone of the “adult” generation had to see this war through from start to end. (She just wishes her baby brother hadn’t appointed himself the one to end it.) (It won’t occur to her to think what she’ll do after that until she’s standing on a half-sunken shore, not wanting to go but absolutely unable to bear staying.)

After Fingolfin reincarnates, she spends the rest of time winning petty arguments with him by playing the “your great-grandson dropped a DRAGON on me” card. She (almost) never teasingly blames Eärendil, nor Idril, Turgon or anyone else in the family—just Fingolfin.

Maglor arguing with Elrond & Elros: A person only gets to be immediately involved in the climactic battle of ONE Age of the World, and so help me Eru you are going to live to see the next one. Elros, who quietly has already decided how he’ll live and die henceforth, objecting logically: But— Elrond, just ready to argue: That’s— Gil-Galad: Metaphorical and synecdochal immediate involvement counts! Galadriel: I’m so glad you agree, beloved baby nephew* whom I will not watch die today! >:)

Anairë is rocking so much survivor’s guilt and honestly she’d probably be better off, long-term, if she HAD died in this fight and spent some peaceful time in Mandos. Unfortunately, the Maiar under Eonwë’s command are very earnest and successful in their determination to save as many Children in this final battle as possible. Anairë is going to spend many centuries insisting that she’s okay now, to herself and everyone else, or at least that she will be okay once her husband and all her children are returned to her.

Originally, the children of Anairë and Fingolfin were named in proper descending order as well, but I switched Argon and Fingon at the last moment because it made more sense for her to shout Argon’s name first. It’s better this way, but I do mourn the lines I had to change:

“Utúlie'n aurë,” spiderfucker,” Anairë panted. […] “Argon!” Finarfin called as he drew more oil-acid blood from Morgoth’s foot, for the boy who’d looked so much like Nolofinwë that they’d all teased Anairë that she ought name him Atyatar-Aninkë.

(2 Atar 2 too inkë!)

Also alas deleted, though it fit in so nicely with ideas described above:

“Maitimo!” Anairë cried as she struck at Morgoth’s left foot yet again, and Finarfin didn’t wonder at it, for surely the copper-wreathed youth who’d danced with Findekáno at every court function was as dead as all the rest. “Makalaurë!” he shouted when next he swung his blade, for the first infant he’d ever held in his arms—and maybe Anairë called “Tyelkormo” next, or maybe he did, or maybe someone else did entirely, for now all the gathered Eldar called the names of the dead.

(Not to mention the sense of Anairë calling Maitimo’s name because he and Findekáno had been best friends just as Finarfin called “Turgon” for his and Finrod’s youthful inseparability! But the time I got there, it was slowing the text down; it made more sense to jump directly to “Finarfin didn’t know if he and Anairë kept calling the names…” Just know that Word of God says they did shout the names of each of their Fëanorian nephews, dead in body and in heart.)

I do genuinely regret not figuring out some way to make Anairë’s first words be quoting her marriage oath—implicitly a blow for Fingolfin rather than any of their children, but also kinda for their whole family. But I just couldn’t make it smooth—couldn’t give enough explanation that the reader would understand that’s what she’s doing, without slowing down the action.

As I've said, this is a cornerstone of my elaborate headcanon tapestry, and that's because the events of this fic are basically why Finarfin is generally agreed to be the right and proper High King of the Noldor (in Aman) henceforth. Everyone either watched this battle in life, watched it on Vairë's live-weaving while dead in the Halls or at least saw the finished tapestry on their way out (and that memory sticks upon return to life, where none others do, even if it goes dreamlike and hazy), or heard about it from someone else. It's rarely immortalized in song, because even the plain-spoken memory is, uh, intense.

But everyone knows - that Finarfin alone of all the Kings of the Noldor fought Morgoth one on one and survived, and if he only survived long enough for backup to arrive that just means he was wise enough to arrange/wait for backup! He waited until there was a real chance to win (out of piety or strategy; both respectable), and then he fought alone, he led the battle, he got more blows in than anyone else but Tulkas ever did, and he even cut off the bastard's foot. By the innately understood laws of reality that govern Ëa, or at least govern elves in it, that's proof that he is The Best Of Us - so we're going to elect him High King of the Noldor again, a position which shakes out to something like highest judicial official, high official unofficial umpire of politics, and 1 guy who has to approve the Noldor going to war.

...which really, he qualified for by being the 1 guy (followed by a few others, but none of his kin) to turn back on the edge of the Ice, walk back to Alqualondë and say, "I'm so sorry. Before we do anything else, how can I do anything to set this right?"

Teen and Up Audiences | Graphic [but often poetic and/or supernatural!] Depictions of Violence | Gen

Words: 8,619 | Chapters: 1/1

Relationships: Finarfin & Galadriel, Finarfin & Maedhros

Characters: Finarfin, Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor, Galadriel, Anairë, Maedhros, Eönwë, Maglor, Celebrimbor, Celeborn, Amarië, Irimë |Lalwen

Additional Tags: War of Wrath, I tagged everyone but really it's about Finarfin, kingship, and personal and collective vengeance/justice/trying to kill an unkillable dark god

“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” Lalwen complained in greeting. “Two brothers I have already lost, blindly charging that place. Must you add a third to my tally?”

“Maybe,” Finarfin said bluntly. It was still gentler than the truth on his tongue: It’s my turn.

(Or: in which Finarfin is, after all, the third son in the fairy tale.)

I worry that I’ve hyped this up too much by having it as a WIP for so long, but Here it is at last: Finarfin’s due shot at 1v1-ing Morgoth (more or less), a cornerstone of my personal elaborate tapestry of Arda headcanons! (I regularly forget that the sword isn’t a canonical legendary weapon.)

[aragornsrockcollection]

Your post on Melian being the Maia of love, and how the Ainur all had their “domains” has got me wondering, what do you think Mairon’s would have been before corruption or if his corruption had never happened?

Always an interesting question, and thanks so much for being curious about my opinion!

I think his domain was the same before and after corruption, just like Melkor.

The chaos and extremes Melkor represents didn’t need to be evil, in fact they go into how his contribution is almost a way of swirling the domains of the different Valar together, like how Melkor’s influence on Ulmo’s domain creates clouds that allowed him to be close to Manwe… that’s off topic, but I want to point out that corrupted or not we should still be able to see Sauron hold down the same skills as he would as Mairon.

My initial instinct is that he is the Maia of Order, which intensifies into a need for control when he defects to Melkor. This gives us the idea of Sauron being the order in Melkor’s chaos, making his defection an inevitable part of his nature.

Tolkien was writing LotR in letters to his son fighting in WWII at one point, and the parallels between fascism and Mordor were not subtle as a result. Sauron seeks order and to implement that he needs control and for that he needs power. This drives him, and his understanding of systems and order makes him very, very good at getting it.

The rings are very neat and orderly in concept, a heirarchy of power created with numbers significant to each race- there were 3 original elves, 7 fathers of dwarves, and we can assume based on that pattern, 9 was the initial number of men.

But I also think a lot about his symbol being the red eye, and his perception being stifling and practically a weight characters have to bear. He was initially Melkor’s spy in the years of the lamps, so information might be his domain.

Now, Aule would definitely be the Valar of knowledge, so it’s not quite that, but he has a desire to share that knowledge (see creation of the dwarfs) and Mairon was initially one of Aule’s maiar. Also, can I just say that knowledge being the forbidden fruit in Christian mythology and Aule having as much if not more knowledge of the workings of the physical world as Melkor? Very clearly this is why his Maiar keep getting corrupted.

So if I were to marry the idea of order with the eye imagery which screams observation, I think it he would end up with a domain of…

Math.

I’m kidding but I’m also not kidding. Calculations and analysis that orders the world based on observation… hyper intelligence and recognition of patterns, association with chaos…

I think Mairon is the Maia of patterns and calculations… which is basically math.

Trust a liberal arts professor to make their villain a math guy, smh.

Really, information and organization of that information are his strengths, and I think it’s really significant that he ultimately falls because he did NOT have all the information and failed to understand all the factors until it was too late.

Ok, his domain is Order, final answer. But I still secretly think it’s math.

[danwhobrowses]

Rings of Power Eps 5&6 - Review

We now have reached past the halfway point of Rings of Power's 8-episode season, with most of the set up seemingly done, we'll see how the show carries its way in the end stretch.

Spoilers for the episodes

So we more or less had set-up and battle for these two episodes, but honestly I found the sixth episode less appealing than the fifth, it's still fine but it had less of what I wanted and more of stuff I wasn't too fond of.

My biggest annoyance remains Galadriel. In episode 5 she screws over Halbrand and gaslights him, not to mention all the patronizing. The patronizing is the worst part of Galadriel, I get she's an elf thousands of years old, and thus the race of men are like children to her, but she treats everyone this way, including her fellow elves, then complains that everyone is against her - even though she refuses to admit that her obsession and patronizing is the reason why everyone is alienated from her. She even refuses to accept that her motives and inability to stop aren't revenge-driven, even when called out by Halbrand in ep 5 and Adar in ep 6. For someone so 'learned' she takes joy in showing how superior she is (such as the sword fight) and yet doesn't realise that you can get more bees with honey than vinegar - I mean how can she when she continually gets vindicated by it? Her horseriding dodging was a bit over the top too, and I'm confused how she got her armour - not good looking armour either - back, it was on the ship to the Undying Lands after all. this was clarified not to be the same armour, still bad design though. Her chasing down Adar in episode 6 was unnecessary for me too, I'd much rather have had Arondir made chase with Adar - since their plots are linked - and then have Halbrand do the intercept.

Speaking of, the writing of Adar greatly disappoints me. We spent about 4 episodes building him up and he doesn't really do anything! Sure he succeeds and we find out he's not Sauron but an ancient orc (which should make him older than Galadriel too btw) but we could've seen him fight, this is the guy who claims to have killed Sauron -we know he hasn't but still let him dream - but we sucked out all the menace and threat in him.

I do understand that the Acolyte is meant to be working in Sauron's favour, but it did feel a bit much that so many left to his side, it's not like he is a charismatic leader and history would not have been on his side given how Morgoth treated Men of the East, even after that it feels like even if you disliked the Elves that they'd be the lesser of two evils. The same can be said for Númenor, aside from Isildur's sister who seems to simply want to protect her family from dying the response of Númenor is...1930s American. They are like 'this is not our war' and 'it's just a Europe thing, it'll never get to us', it's intentional but frustrating.

For the Dwarves/Elves plot, I was let down though that Elrond revealed Mithril to Celebrimbor, when you say 'what you tell me will end in my ears' it means you tell no-one, revealing Mithril to examine to me breaks the oath even if they treat it as not - I also think Elrond still doesn't validate his role as a 'politician' still. Bronwyn's lost faith let me down too, even if it did lead to inspiration, the woman flirting with an elf who has already killed an orc to protect her son made quite the leap of deciding 'it's the fate of our race to submit to evil'. I also don't understand why the Elven watchtower have the whole floodgate key that only the evil sword could activate, it feels a bit convenient for the Elves to station there without suspicion.

Episode 6's village battle did have a confusing stuff, Arondir definitely needed to carry something for close combat, instead of using his gymnastic Wire-Fu. It was short-sighted as well to not plan for a second wave, especially since you never see Adar leading the first. I'm still unsure whether I like Númenor's save, because it makes sense but it also feels like Galadriel's plot intruded on Arondir's and stole his big W.

The Volcanic meteor CGI was bad too, it did just look like jelly, and frankly everyone should be dead because volcanic ash is as hot.

On the positives side I will say that the Theo storyline finally got better by blending Arondir's story with it. Theo finally doesn't do something stupid and it leads into the discover of the sword being revealed as a key and a proto-tool of the rings, given how Theo misses having it.

The Harfoots story is still good, and adding Poppy's song just adds to it. Singing has often been a key part of Tolkein's storytelling, we got a bit in Númenor too. While Nori being scared of the stranger and a new Sauron-esque pursuer around to thicken the plot we will hopefully add to it soon, but it was a cause of worry since we didn't retread on it later or in the next episode. The CGI for the Wolves was pretty good as well, same with the ice effects.

The teases of villainy in Pharazon is interesting, his motivations are manipulative and cunning, he is the patriot villain for sure. There is the tragedy of Númenor's volunteers' belief that the war will be quick, paralleling belief of how they thought the World War would be done 'by Christmas'. I do like the friend dynamic Isildur has as well, it does feel realistic and helps extend some attachment to them, which also pushes him to try and save them at the village. Halbrand's hinting a darker backstory adds to his intrigue, he feels a lot more of a better character with ties to Adar now too, and I'm glad he finally called out Galadriel. As much as I didn't like that he was gaslit into returning to the West, I'm at least glad that he will be in the show some more.

The tension between Durin and Gil-Galad is fitting to continue the narrative that Elves and Dwarves still don't get along, but also that there is diplomacy in there which helps, albeit driven by distrust. Gil-Galad is an ass but I think that's a point, using a legend to tie Mithril with the Silmarils is interesting - and since the Silmarils have led to Elven obsession and downfall before it plays into both race's coveting of it. Elrond subtly breaking his oath annoyed me, but it does bring Celebrimbor into the foray a bit more and shows he's not all good, susceptible to Sauron-esque manipulation. Durin getting a table out of it does lead to some light comedy too, and the fact that Durin complies to share Mithril out of friendship - and some smugness - was at least a nice way to avoid what seemed like inevitable conflict.

Episode 6 primarily focused on completing the Orc/Southland conflict, which while it had its weaker moments had some really tense moments. There was some decent offensive tactics at play at the least from both sides, and the practical effects on the orcs remains great. I have mixed feelings on the Númenor save, but on the positive it is a good use of coincidence and the superior cavalry use - calling back to the Rohirrim at Helm's Deep a little - there's a counterplay of cruelty too with Galadriel and Adar. But the climax of episode 6 is what saves the episode, using the tunnels to erupt a volcano and darken the skies completes Adar's desire to build a home for his children - a home Sauron will likely then use to establish Mordor. It works as a failure on Galadriel's part, a wake-up call for Númenor, a fulfillment of Palantir's warning for Míriel, and a huge demoralizer for the villagers.

So at the very least, the episodes maintain interest for the final two episodes, merging the weaker side plots into one singular - albeit still a little weak - plot, but I feel like episode 6 could've been done a lot better than it was even by Rings of Power standards.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Today in Tolkien - October 25th

The Council of Elrond

It’s easy to lose track of who’s talking in a lot of the conversations, because so much of the chapter is big pieces of exposition, so I’m going to try to organize it in my head. For minor elf characters we have:

Beside Glorfindel there were several other counsellors of Elrond’s household, of whom Erestor was the chief; and with him was Galdor, an elf from the Grey Havens who had come on an errand from Círdan the Shipwright.

Sequence:

1) Gloín describes the messages the dwarves have had from Mordor seeking information on hobbits, and “a little ring, the least of rings”, with dwarven rings of power offered in exchange.

2) Elrond recounts the history of the Rings of Power, of Númenor, and of the Last Alliance. The information that Isildur took the Ring after the defeat of Sauron is news to Boromir; it is not known in Gondor (despite the fact that Isildur’s account of taking it is in the records of Minas Tirith - Gandalf found it there, but in a language that few now know). Elrond tells in brief of the history of Arnor and Gondor.

3) Boromir tells of his dream, and the needs of Minas Tirith. Aragorn shows the Shards of Narsil, and Elrond identifies Aragorn as the descendent of Isildur. Frodo shows the Ring. Aragorn asks whether Boromir wishes for the House of Elendil to return to Gondor. Boromir is skeptical about Aragorn and the sword’s identity. Bilbo gets annoyed and recites his All that is gold does not glitter poem. Aragorn is not offended by Boromir’s skepticism, and elaborates on himself, and points out that people other than Gondor, the rangers included, are fighting against evil in the world, and Gondor is only playing one of many parts. He commits to coming to Minas Tirith.

4) Boromir questions how they know that Frodo’s Ring is the One Ring, and if so, how he got it. Bilbo and Frodo give their accounts.

5) Frodo and Galdor ask about what’s been up with Gandalf, and Galdor asks for further evidence of the Ring’s identity, and for news of Saruman. Gandalf tells of his investigations into the Ring - including his finding of Isildur’s scroll in Minas Tirith (in records that few now can read, even of the lore-masters, for their scripts and tongues have become dark to later men - probably Quenya?), likely unread by, in Gandalf’s estimation, anyone but Saruman and Gandalf. Right after this discovery, he learned that Aragorn had captured Gollum, and Gandalf interrogated Gollum and learned of how he obtained the Ring. Gandalf also tells of the inscription on the Ring that he read, and also of his certainty that Gollum had been captured by Sauron.

6) Legolas tells of Gollum’s escape.

7) Gandalf tells of Saruman’s betrayal, and of captivity in Isengard.

8) Upon Gandalf’s mention of being in Rohan, that land is discussed. Gwaihir told Gandalf they pay a tribute of horses to Mordor; Boromir disputes this (though Aragorn is willling to believe it). [We later learn that Boromir is right - Mordor raids Rohan for horses, but they do not send them willingly.]

9) Gandalf continues his account with his return to the North, his conversations with Gaffer Gamgee and Butterbur, and his encounters with Black Riders and arrival in Rivendell.

10) The remainder of the chapter is the conversation about what to do next. Erestor suggests sending it to Bombadil; Gandalf, Glorfindel, and Galdor counter with why that wouldn’t work. Glorfindel suggests casting it into the Sea; Gandalf and Galdor counter that. Elrond states that they must take the Ring to Mordor to be destroyed. (He also gives an indication of his own committment to Middle-earth [bold mine]:

But it seems to me now clear which is the road that we must take. The westward road seems easiest. Therefore it must be shunned. It will be watched. Too often the Elves have fled that way. Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen.

The Elves have reacted to troubles and darkness throughout the Second and Third ages by departing for Valinor. Elrond doesn’t like that; he wants them to stay in Middle-earth and contribute to solving its problems.)

Boromir advocates wielding the Ring against Sauron. Elrond tells him why that cannot and should not be done. Boromir is disappointed, and regards this as Gondor being left in the lurch.

Gloín asks if other Rings of Power could be used - first of the Seven and then, when Gandalf tells that Thrain’s ring was regained by Sauron, then of the Three, which Elrond tells him are in use but not for combat, and that they will likely lose their power if the One Ring is destroyed.

Erestor asks how they could actually get the Ring to Mount Doom, as it seems hopeless. Gandalf says that at least it will be something Sauron isn’t expecting. Elrond says “This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong,” which prompts Bilbo to volunteer (“It is plain enough what you are pointing at. Bilbo the silly hobbit started this affair, and Bilbo had better finish it, or himself.”) Gandalf declines the offer. Bilbo asks the Council to come to the point - who will go on the quest? There is a long silence, and then Frodo volunteers. Elrond recognizes that this is what needs to happen. Sam, who has been sitting unnoticed in a corner all this time, insists on going with Frodo.

But That’s Not All!

The Council ends sometime in midafternoon, and the hobbits have a meeting of their own after that, in Bilbo’s room; Merry and Pippin want to go with Frodo. Gandalf pipes in through the window that he thinks he will come as well, to Frodo’s delight, and that they will not be departing for some time, until scouts have reported back on the fate of the Ringwraiths.

Aragorn has left very quickly - Gandalf says he “has gone with Elrond’s sons,” which means he must have left pretty much immediately after the Council ended. But at some point later they must split up, because when the scouts return in December we are told that Elladan and Elrohir went to what we can recognize as Lothlórien (“passing down the Silverlode into a strange country, but of their errand they would not speak to any save Elrond”), while “others…with the help of Aragorn and the Rangers had searched the lands far down the Greyflood, as far as Tharbad, where the old North Road crossed the river by a ruined town”. Given that “Many Meetings” also said that Elladan and Elrohir were away from Rivendell, this may be an inconsistency that Tolkien missed in editing.

Also, the conversation between the hobbits and Gandalf gives me the impression that Gandalf is actively enjoying teasing Pippin:

“We hobbits ought to stick together, and we will. I shall go, unless they chain me up. There must be someone with intelligence in the party.”

“Then you certainly will not be chosen, Peregrin Took!” said Gandalf, looking in through the window, which was near the ground. “But you are all worrying yourselves unnecessarily. Nothing is decided yet.”

[Later in the conversation, Gandalf says:] “Someone said that intelligence would be needed in the party. He was right. I think I shall come with you.”

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

My theory is that their power level depends on how much Sauron is feeding into them, and their behavior shifts based on how much power they have access to.

Sauron's only just gotten back on the horse, as it were, in the past hundred years. Prior to that he was on the downlow to the point that his shenanigans were mistaken for a mortal necromancer's until Gandalf was like, "Oh, dip." during the Hobbit.

Now he's dealing with Gondor, he's dealing with Rohan, he's trying to manage every orc and troll in the realm who have previously been left to more or less self-govern and probably aren't all in on the Age of the Orc if it means they've got three extra tiers of bossman telling them what to do. Smaug's dead-dead, so that's going to be a fair amount of jockeying around the edge of territory nobody previously wanted to fight a dragon over. The dwarves are on the move, and their political alliances are undergoing a massive shift. The elves are on the move, the eagles are on the move, etc. Fucking Saruman's building his own goddamned Russian front for Mordor's Germany.

There are a lot of irons in that particular fire, is what I'm saying. The Nazgul have been sent to retrieve something very important, yes, but from a fucking gentleman farmer in Fantasyland's version of Bumfuck, Nowhere.

Sending them out looking like they're about to terrorize Gondor into submission is going to draw a lot of attention, which would open yet another goddamned front for Sauron to deal with, as well as point everyone who wasn't previously on the alert for the Ring in its direction. Sending them out in full Kings of Men mode is also probably risking an internal challenge that Sauron absolutely cannot afford with all the other shit going on.

Like, is Sauron its master? Yes. Does Sauron need to deal with the fucking Witch-king getting his hands on the Ring along with his own ring while Sauron is trying to deal with Gandalf and Isengard? No. Plus it's not like they can be killed by an external force, no matter how nerfed he leaves them. The flood that takes them off their mounts is a temporary inconvenience, from Sauron's perspective.

So there aren't many drawbacks to throttling them down, and if it weren't for Gandalf getting wind of something being up and the hobbits having an experienced escort on the way to Elrond's, it absolutely would have worked.

Once they're back at their day job, there's no reason not to have the taps open full-blast, so they're back to being PTSD-machines.

Plus like... at what point in the entire history of the rings have these guys, separately or as a group, as mortals or wraiths, ever been sent out to find Some Dude? Not an elf-lord, or a warrior king in exile, or a wizard, or a goblin king who's been pretending he never got Sauron's letters requisitioning troops. Legit just Some Fucking Dude, who's so deep in Some Fucking Dude mode that he's like, "lol The Horrors are after me? Guess I'll just fucking walk to Rivendell. On the road. With my feet." The response to The Horrors being a lot closer than he thought was like "Guess I'll cut through this dude's fields!"

This is comically outside their skillset. This is outside their boss's skillset. They don't have their own henchmen to ask for advice. They're basically milling around at a crossroad crabbily smoking pipeweed while the Witch-king is furiously texting Sauron like "This isn't working, can we just nuke them?" and getting back "NO YOU CANNOT JUST NUKE THEM." "Okay, how the fuck are we supposed to do this without nuking them?" "JUST FUCKING FIND THEM I DON'T CARE." "There are elves. :( :( :(" "DEFINITELY DO NOT NUKE THEM OR YOU WILL GET GANDALFS. >:|"

"That Tom Bombadil asshole showed up." "DOES TOM BOMBADIL HAVE MY RING." "No." "THEN WHY AM I HEARING ABOUT TOM BOMBADIL."

"We need more money to bribe people and hire spies." "WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MONEY I GAVE YOU." "The price of bribes and spies has really gone up in the past 500 years, and everyone charges ten percent more when they see they're getting paid in cursed grave goods. Or we could just, you know..." "NO NUKING THEM." ":("

"Now there's a Ranger." "YOU BROUGHT ARNOR TO ITS KNEES." "I had a map to Arnor. And an army. And a budget." "DO YOU WANT TO BE WALKING HOME." "Okay, no, fine. It's not a problem."

"We almost had them." "IS THIS HORSE SHOES OR PERHAPS HAND GRENADES." "I'm just saying. I stabbed the one with your Ring. He's got maybe three days before he's a wraith himself. One way or another, we've got this in the bag." "JUST GET IT DONE."

"So, there were more elves." "ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME THAT YOU STILL DO NOT HAVE MY RING." "I'm telling you that we need to revise our timeline a little bit. And that we need a new batch of horses." "YOU DO NOT HAVE MY RING AND ALSO YOU DO NOT HAVE MY HORSES." "We can still pull out a win here." "DO YOU THINK I AM MADE OF HORSES." "Is this a trick question? Are you? Do you have a physical form again?" "JUST GET BACK HERE." "The horses drowned? Because of the elves?" "THEN WALK." ":("

(Context, credit, and source below poll.)

Today's poll is based on this thread with notable principles @penny-anna, @elodieunderglass, @elanorpam, and @earhartsease. All of the options above are paraphrased from their original answers.

The full original question:

Can I please ask for your top five theories on why the Ringwraiths become so much more powerful over the course of the LotR trilogy? By the end of the books a single Ringwraith holds an army of 6000 men in paralysing dread from a height of a mile, they're dismaying hosts of men, etc. And in the beginning, they're easily defeated by "jumping behind a tree," "pretending to be in a different room," "getting on a little boat," "man with a stick on fire," etc.