#but i also can’t overlook both of them being bi either ofc ofc

[seasideoranges]

despite everything i love how so many just agree that sokka, zuko and suki are bisexual. no questions asked, no arguments needed, just one look at them and its an immediate “oh yeah, they’re bisexual, anyways-“

[vardasvapors]

u kno. that first description of Elrond (and Arwen!) in imladris.......

Thanks for allowing me to select an actually-500-word snippet!! :P I decided on this bit:

In the middle of the table, against the woven cloths upon the wall, there wasa chair under a canopy, and there sat a lady fair to look upon, and so like wasshe in form of womanhood to Elrond that Frodo guessed that she was one of hisclose kindred.

I know I’ve already joked about the arwen = luthien + arwen = elrond thing and gotten a ton of appreciative notes on that one post, but this amuses me EVERY TIME.

Idk enough about uh, medieval? or smth? feast culture to know if the canopy is something significant or not. Anyway I like how this is specifically singled out as a high day and a feast, not a regular dinner.

Young she was and yet not so. The braids of her dark hair weretouched by no frost, her white arms and clear face were flawless and smooth, andthe light of stars was in her bright eyes, grey as a cloudless night; 

Sometimes I wish Tolkien wasn’t so hopelessly soft-hetero – we NEVER get this kind of sigh-worthy description of male characters, even the super elaborate descriptions of men’s good looks has an intractably un-gay (not no homo) vibe

I really like and appreciate again the focus on the eyes – the descriptions of arwen and elrond’s eyes – grey as a clear evening/night, with a light of stars in them – contrasts very sharply with the description of glorfindel’s (”bright and keen”) and gandalf’s (”under great snowy brows his dark eyes were set like coals that could leap suddenly into fire”), and was definitely not a trivial detail. I also really love how observant frodo is. ofc his impressions were probably consolidated by additional later interaction, but still.

yetqueenly she looked,

heeheeheehee sorry i’m just. so taken with the finduilas parallels. they’re so much more actually character and plot-existent (rather than conceptual on a completely different level) than the luthien ones, and so overlooked.

and thought and knowledge were in her glance, as of one whohas known many things that the years bring.

again i really like how this sharply contrasts as well as compares with elrond (”was written the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful”) and glorfindel (”young and fearless”). Arwen is very different from them both, in different ways.

Above her brow her head was coveredwith a cap of silver lace netted with small gems, glittering white; but her softgrey raiment had no ornament save a girdle of leaves wrought in silver.

Tolkien does the texture and flavor of images so well with words….ALSO….I had a crush long before i ever saw either an illustration or the movies, neither of which compare, or knew i was remotely bi, so.

So it was that Frodo saw her whom few mortals had yet seen; Arwen, daughterof Elrond, in whom it was said that the likeness of Lúthien had come onearth again; and she was called Undómiel, for she was the Evenstar of herpeople. Long she had been in the land of her mother’s kin, in Lórienbeyond the mountains, and was but lately returned to Rivendell to her father’shouse.

This “her whom few mortals had yet seen” combines SO fascinatingly with the repeated emphasis of her association with (preference for?) lothlorien as being as central to her character as her luthien and peredhil heritage; the fact that “Arwen” breaks from the El- scheme of all the rest of her family related by blood to her father’s side (not to mention is literally just another form of galadriel’s father-name “Artanis”), and with lines betraying a wildly different opinion of the dunedain and level of familiarity with human death than her father and presumably her brothers (”not till now did I understand the story of [the numenoreans] and their fall, as wicked fools i scorned them, but now i pity them at last”).

(I’m also like 100% sure this, plus the lothlorien thing, is what elrond meant about her regarding aragorn (”Lady of Imladris and of Lórien, Evenstar of her people, she is of lineage greater than yours, and she has lived in the world already so long that to her you are but as a yearling shoot beside a young birch of many summers. She is too far above you. And so, I think, it may well seem to her”), as far as he wasn’t wildly bullshitting an excuse (imo not very far :p) but that’s more conjecture.)

BUT STILL the Undomiel/Evenstar of her people is SOOOOO linguistically delightful

 But her brothers, Elladan and Elrohir, were out upon errantry: for theyrode often far afield with the Rangers of the North, forgetting never theirmother’s torment in the dens of the orcs.

LMAO THANKS JIRT. WHAT’S MOMS. WHO’S FEMALE CHARACTER. uh anyway. this kind of random “btw also this horrible thing in the middle of this dreamy passage” is i THINK a patented recurring tolkien Thing. i can’t actually recall other examples at this moment in lotr rather than the silm, but it’s good. Um, anyway. I REALLY like this immediate sharp contrast between arwen and her brothers’ relationship with the dunedain rangers, see above. And the very strong and memorable hint about Elladan and Elrohir’s characters in such a brief phrase. A+ job.

One of my less divergent gripes about Celebrian here is that imo the very affecting foreshadowing/parallel to Frodo is woefully minimized, even though LOTR, especially the pre-fellowship-formation section, is absolutely loaded with foreshadowing of Frodo’s arc and fate.

Such loveliness in living thing Frodo had never seen before nor imagined inhis mind

FRODO/ARWEN IS A GOOD SHIP I WON’T HEAR ANYTHING AGAINST IT. no really like, the few brief interactions, observations, and exchanged glances of Knowing that are exchanged between Frodo and Arwen are imo some of the most piercing and memorable and affecting passages in the books.