So it occurred to me that it seemed a bit weird that Legolas, who arguably has spent hundreds of years in a freaking cave palace, would be as anti-cave as he is in the books when Gimli goes off about the wonder of the Glittering Caves in Helm's Deep. So I had to reconcile these two facts. I consulted with the council of Elrond (aka my Tolkien friends) and one of them was like "just cause he lived in the caves doesn't mean he liked it. Thranduil had made the cave palace as a stronghold against the evils of the world outside his realm" while my thoughts was just "Legolas has cave trauma after Moria".
Because as we all know Legolas absolutely loses his shit when he sees the Balrog, like full on screaming Elvish meltdown.
So I combined the two theories to run along this line... Legolas was never a fan of caves, growing up on stories of the evil things that dwelt under the mountains he probably was not a huge fan when that's where his dad decided to repair to as the world grew more perilous. I picture little Leggy being especially scared of the Balrogs in stories told to him as a child. We gotta remember Balrogs are an extremely ancient and distant myth for even a lot of the elves, especially the "less wise" elves of Thranduil's folk. Most peoples are convinced that the last of the Balrogs perished in the War of Wrath, heck even people like Elrond may think this. So for Legolas this is his childhood monster under the bed, the Elvish Boogeyman. Balrogs shouldn't exist. They're just a scary story you tell kids to make them behave or to exemplify the valor of the elves of old who slew them. Some legends may say that some survived in deep places of the world but no one believes them any more, except maybe for little elven princelings but they grow up and grow out of it and after hundreds of years living in their dad's cave palace they're just an embarrassing memory of childhood fears.
But then Moria happens and it's his nightmares coming and standing before him more terrifying than he even imagined as a child and then striking down the most powerful being he's ever known. And it's just terrorizing and traumatizing and while the time in Lorien helps to settle his nerves he's none too eager to ever step foot underground again.
Especially to unknown caves.
Especially to a place underground that Gimli is a excited about.
The last time this happened he saw the terror of tales of long ago come to living reality in front of his eyes.
This may even be part of the reason why Legolas won't repeat the laments for Gandalf. "The grief is too near" and so is the terror. He doesn't wanna think about his living nightmare again, especially so soon. Of course he heals somewhat from his Cave Trauma and his friendship with Gimli helps I'm sure, after all they probably talked about it while they were hanging in Lorien becoming besties. And in turn seeing Legolas willingly go underground to take the Paths of the Dead encourages him to follow. He's just seen his bestie face his fears and now he must do the same.
tired of female rage being depicted as controlled and like a building storm that's executed perfectly and gracefully without a hair out of place. so well spoken, so well trained. i want women to scream incoherently. i want them to break mirrors and eat the glass. i want them to scratch eyes out and draw blood in chunks. i want brutality. i want ugly. i want people to be too afraid to move because they're worried she'll spot them next.
posts abt autistic ppl that are like "they are infodumping at you because they love you and feel safe with you 🥰" are so funny to me bcuz like. yeah sometimes that's true ig. but sometimes you just want to talk about a thing you like and any audience will do lol
See the forest through my eye by Angelika Stephan (formerly Hörschläger)
Via Flickr:
Vertical panorama with wide open aperture. I know that this format is not ideal for Flickr users on computers... but I guess smartphone app users should have a good visual experience. So if you view it on your computer, make sure you zoom in to the max.