#it is actually about lotr I think | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spookygibberish · 11 days

Text

Dogstock are typical of what are often deemed the ‘evil’ races in many other fantasy works. They were created by some higher force to be slaves, they are carnivorous by nature, they resemble animals other than human in dentition and build. They growl and bite and walk behind.

The Uhasr (a dogstock culture) are descendants of such slave-infantry that was abandoned when the empire that used them to capture the steppes decided the land wasn’t so profitable after all, and more pressing matters drew their attention elsewhere. Like tools left spent on the ground, the unneeded, excess dogstock were left to survive on their own in Hochkiskuph. The native peoples, of course, did not welcome them any more, or see them any less as oppressors when the hand released the lead. To the Hochkiskuph peoples, the Uhasr are a predatory ghost, an echo that consumes them even in absentia. To the Uhasr, one human is much like another, differing in number and equipment, but never in essence. Uhasr are a species of wild animal with a human face. Humans are prey on two legs. Humans smoke and poison uncovered dens on principle, Uhasr abduct and consume men and women and children all the same.

A common trend I have noticed in media which aims to humanize monsters, is that it often relies on passivity. Humanity is contingent upon kindness. The monster that is A Person only so long as they are a harmless thing at heart, something which can be understood and befriended. Their violence is reluctant, their hearts noble. Grace is a concession to the dominated. Only the toothless beast, declawed and pinioned and caged, is one which has earned its personhood. The ontological enemy supersedes the ontological man.

#haven't posted them much (all wips) but been thinking about the sphinxish people in my setting. same world as thrones #different part of the continent like 2 whole seas away #this is inspired by a shitty comic a friend is reading and also thinking some of the writing in the long way to a small angry planet re #hostile aliens really really sucked.#i want to talk abt this more so im posting it if you have thoughts i would like to hear themmmmm #i'm very cynical about this kind of stuff lmao #dogstock #im also reading tollkien rn so im thinking about ORCS #i dont actually like the lotr trilogy all that much but not even bc i think the writing is bad i just think its kinda boring. sorry.#thats not a very interesting reason to not like something i dont even think its not good im just not super entertained. rip #like not saying there is no issue with it at all writing wise there is very much to say abt how it is utterly and uncritically #white good black bad fair elves and dark orcs and shit like that #but i've liked things more that have bigger issues. hi pern. maybe i just like shlock! idk!#rambling. im keyed up hi #the gibberish in spookygibberish

92 notes · View notes

anarchopuppy · 1 year

Text

I'm glad people are starting to bring attention to how the vast majority of stories we're exposed to in mass media involve heroes trying either to prevent villains from changing things or to revert the changes already made by successful villains and return to a better past, but I feel like this is an even bigger issue than we let on

Stories are how humans practice understanding the world, and the fact that from childhood we're constantly bombarded with the idea that "villains change things, heroes maintain/restore the status quo" inevitably colors our view of society. It's a means to prevent us from imagining a better world*

Like, to vastly oversimplify things for the purpose of illustration, the worldview that any change is bad and evil and must be fought is called "conservatism", and the worldview that things were better in an imagined prelapsarian past that "they" "took" from "us" and that we must return to by any means necessary, well that my friends is what we call "fascism". We need to learn how to tell more stories where bold steps are taken towards a new and better world which is meaningfully different from both the present and the past or a lot of people won't have the creativity to take those necessary steps in the real world

(*I don't mean to imply that this is an active, malicious decision made by everyone who's ever written anything like this. There is nothing new under the sun - most people are just retelling variations of the stories they've been exposed to. But over millennia of history, people who are intentionally planting these ideas, and people in positions of power who decide which stories get created and distributed, have had a consistent influence that has entrenched these concepts in our culture. This isn't some kind of conspiracy, it's just a natural result of concentrating power within a small subset of people throughout most of human civilization)

#even the stories that try to depict a struggle against entrenched systems of power #star wars wall-e lotr etc #usually end up falling for the trap of depicting a 'return' to a 'better past'#there are PRECIOUS FEW popular stories about people imagining and fighting for something actually new #and most of the ones i can think of right now are historical (like les mis)

558 notes · View notes

unpretty · 1 year

Note

"Everyone I knew who said they were into Legolas turned out to be in denial about liking women."

ALKFJFJYWYGSHDHDJ OMFFFFG

As a former Legolas fangirl this felt targeted 😂

write what you know (friends who got really into legolas and later turned out to not be interested in men)

#original #ficblogging #i don't. remember.#if i ever actually used the bit about clark #and how he left a bunch of stuff in his childhood bedroom #which included a printout of an art trade a friend made him on livejournal #which bruce definitely noticed while trying to sleep during christmas in kansas and didn't say anything at the time but made a note of it #which is how bruce wayne found clark kent's teen lotr fanblog which he was VERY intense about #bruce found this extremely funny and immediately made a backup #in case clark remembered it existed and deleted it #i think i killed that particular darling for being TOO self-indulgent pop culture reference #but it exists in my mind as important background teen lore #along with clark and lana's terrible green day cover band #and clark's collection of thrift store flannel shirts and those little wrist sweatbands #sometimes in life you write a lot of things and think about a lot of things and then forget which is which

392 notes · View notes

radjerda · 8 months

Text

Story-time in Rivendell with Uncle Glorfindel! Elladan and Elrohir absolutely love going out adventuring early and listening to stories of old when offered the opportunity.

(Hopefully Glorfindel chose something more appropriate than the balrog story, this time.)

This piece is intended to be a panel of a comic that as of yet lives in my head, but it stands on its own (and I'm impatient), so I thought I'd share this as it is now

#Lord of the Rings #lotr #Glorfindel #Elladan #Elrohir #Elladan and Elrohir #Glorfindel of the Golden Flower #Silmarillion #Silm #Tolkien #Rivendell #(even if only my imagined version of a corner in the valley somewhere)#But I like to think that this fountain is the storytime fountain for Glorfindel - he finds it peaceful to sit by #Bonus points if anyone would like to take a stab at guessing at the meaning of the fountain/statue #Or if you just wanna know about the fountain: i WILL ramble #(gladly)#My eventual comic ideally will address what story is being told - but in the meantime feel free to fill in the gaps how you'd like!#Also feel free to guess at which twin is which - I did actually have a particular twin in mind when drawing them #Radj Draws

87 notes · View notes

essenceofarda · 9 months

Text

ngl i'm kinda blown away by the response on my Farawyn 1920's au mini comic 😅

Kinda makes me wanna turn it into an actual multi-chapter fic 🤔

Anyone interested in reading it if i do??

#lotr #lord of the rings #lotr fic #farawyn #eowyn #faramir #faramir/eowyn #faramir x eowyn #tolkien fic #my writing #I'm been... thinking non-stop about the fic/au LOL #Kinda wanna turn it into an actual fic heh #hopefully the person who sent the prompt doesn't mind tho!#i gave my own spin on the prompt... so hopefully it's okay if i turn it into an actual fic but y'know #Lothiriel x Eomer will feature heavily too as a side plot heh #also someone in the tags was like 'faramir having a crisis in a non-existent love triangle' and i'm like 'YES! you get the gist of the fic!#haha #it's kinda similar in... concept? To my “When fate Calls” WW1 au #but this is different in plot and also 1920's so fun in a different way

52 notes · View notes

welcometolotr · 11 months

Photo

am i late for @aspecardaweek ??

back in like. 2011 i read a gandalf/legolas fic on henneth annun and i am not kidding when i say it was formative to my lotr experience. i still think about it often

#listen. theres something beautiful in two not-young people coming together and enjoying time with each other once in a while #i don't even know what flavor of aspec they are in my head #but it's definitely A Flavor #actually i think i read several of them #but there was one that had a lot of timeskips and was rated G and was just a lovely story about them having a relationship through the years #where they were each other's Favorite ™#and that's how i think of my relationships as an aroace person so i think it really stuck with me #and they just. Spent Time Together !!!!#aspecardaweek #LOTR #gandalf #legolas #welcometolotr #i was so invested in explaining this that i forgot the regular tags.....

57 notes · View notes

anghraine · 1 year

Text

A more coherent part of the adaptation+Darcy post I was threatening to release from drafts purgatory:

While I think all adaptations' versions of Darcy are pretty bad at representing Austen's character, though sometimes compelling in their own right, I think the various choices made are all ways of addressing the same problem with the character as written.

It's not a problem in the novel—indeed, I'd say it's a remarkable achievement there—but I think we don't always realize how extremely ambiguous the presentation of Darcy is through the first half of the novel. It's easy to read him as basically hostile because he was when he first appeared and because Elizabeth, our smart, likable POV character, gets stuck in that perception of him for half the book. So it's only on re-reading that most audiences realize Elizabeth drastically misread his real feelings and the original interpretation of his manner is thrown into question, at the very least.

But as I said in the other post, Austen plays fair: it is entirely possible to realize that Elizabeth is mistaken about some things (esp about how he feels towards her), it is possible to realize that particularly observant characters find his expressions and behavior difficult to interpret, it's possible to notice that we are rarely told how he's speaking or smiling, and scenes typically cut off before we can be told. And it's possible to notice the many issues with Wickham's account of him.

But it's also entirely possible to read everything he says and does as Elizabeth does, and the narrative gently encourages us to do so without often committing to actual description that would guide us in those ambiguous scenes. Austen might have, for instance, described his smiles in the Netherfield scenes as contemptuous, polite, or pleasant. But she just repeats that he's smiling while drawing very little attention to the fact and rarely committing to an indication of what his smiles or presentation of dialogue are like. So it's mostly up to us to decide, with the occasional (dubious in some respects) interpretation from Elizabeth.

And we're likely to reach different conclusions on re-reading—the earlier presentation of Darcy rewards re-reading a lot, because a lot of the time, we don't even realize how much we're not being told until the letter or even the Pemberley scenes, where Elizabeth identifies the smile we saw in his earlier scenes as the same one in the painting done during his beloved father's lifetime—making, say, the "contemptuous" reading very unlikely.

Now, getting away with that level of ambiguity and obscuring that the ambiguity is happening in the first place, as Austen manages to do in the novel, is both impressive and a hell of a lot harder in visual form. Not impossible! But if we see and hear him ourselves we're less likely to form judgments shaped by Austen's tricks of narration and Elizabeth's POV, and this typically involves commitment to a particular aspect of his presentation in the novel.

And if you think about it, the four major adaptations of Darcy are essentially committing to some part of his depiction.

Laurence Olivier's Darcy is smiling, witty, and charismatic—which are a part of his personality, but skewed so far out of proportion that he's virtually unrecognizable. And there's no attempt to obscure his place in the narrative as the actual love interest (I assume because duh, it's Laurence Olivier—but it was a pretty unrewarding role for him as written).

David Rintoul's Darcy is (in)famously "robotic"—the 1980 version of him leans into the withdrawn, inexpressive, difficult to read but clearly uncomfortable version of Darcy. The smiles in the earlier part tend to be tight, a matter of form, and/or unconvincing, by contrast to the later Darcy's comportment towards the Gardiners and Elizabeth, esp after the second proposal.

Colin Firth's Darcy is, well—okay, I'm biased because of my intense dislike for the 1995 production, but I do think it's also struggling with the same issue, but responds in the opposite way as the 1980. Where the 1980 tried to replicate the ambiguity in a way that retained Darcy's tendency towards a certain severity and dignity and mostly ended up at expressionless, the 1995 transforms it into visibly intense, sexualized brooding. This is coupled with Elizabeth's perception of Darcy's hostility being much more validated than in the novel; he snaps at her, most of his textual smiles are removed, even his letter is rearranged with an eye to half-dressed angst rather than the subtle charity of the omitted "God bless you", and generally his angst and passion!!! are played up rather than down ("I shall conquer this!!" / the melodramatic pond dive and shift in focus from Elizabeth's shame to Darcy being barely dressed / Darcy being grim in London, etc).

If the 1995 version of Darcy commits to Darcy's behavior being largely how Elizabeth sees it, the 2005 drastically reverses that. Matthew Macfadyen's Darcy is also struggling with passion, but tbh he seems like he's kind of struggling with everything. He's visibly consumed with anxiety, he's obviously shy where Darcy has to explain his discomfort or experience it as a POV character in the novel, he seems sweet despite occasional classism, and at times his arc seems more about learning to relax than anything else. That is, instead of representing Darcy as more or less accurately seen by Elizabeth, it leans into emphasizing the extent of her misunderstanding, with Darcy's behavior both more sympathetic than she sees it and clearly comprehensible if she weren't so biased against him (fwiw, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries also emphasizes Elizabeth's misjudgment to a considerable extent and deals with the ambiguity by keeping him literally offstage).

The point of all this is that there is a core issue of adaptation here—the difficulty of representing subtle novelistic ambiguity while making Darcy emotionally compelling at the same time. Adapted Darcys are often given extra scenes, altered dialogue, or (where described in the novel) altered mannerisms/emotions to try and achieve this. And all lean so hard into the aspect they choose to emphasize that they tend to sacrifice most of the rest of his personality to the interpretation they're committing to, and his feelings for Elizabeth tend to be incredibly obvious to the point that it sometimes strains belief that she wouldn't see them, even with all her investment in not seeing them.

I guess the thing is that I think just stopping with "this is an issue of the different media and can't be represented on film" is boring and underestimates the potential of film as a medium. There are plenty of performances that can only be fully appreciated on re-watching or re-listening to something with a fuller knowledge of what is revealed later. And to some degree, the adapters do have to choose how much they want to incorporate Elizabeth's perception of Darcy vs the bare narrative and what they're willing to give away about him to preserve what seems most important.

These are all active choices with actual significance, IMO. They imply priorities about the production and their production's take on Darcy that are intriguing in a way that gets lost by just giving them a free pass by way of the challenge of the medium.

182 notes · View notes

iridescentoracle · 7 months

Note

Hello! I am here to ask about your Dior headcanons re: the political cohesion of Doriath. 👀

Oh man, I didn't expect anyone to actually take me up on that!

(Okay so I got partway into writing this and then realized I should probably note up front that I tend to stick to the Silm (& LOTR/the Hobbit where applicable, but they... aren't, here) as the most authoritative version of canon, and I can get into why and where the nuances/exceptions are there (I do say tend to stick, it's not hard and fast!), but that's mostly a side note here: the point is simply that I don't really factor other drafts or the poetic Leithian into my take on Doriath, Thingol, Dior, etc, just what we're told in the actual Silm. I also read the Silm as an in-universe history text compiled by in-universe scholars, who, being people, are going to have their own biases and blind spots, even when they're doing their best to be accurate!)

So, this is a two-part thing: #1, there's the political cohesion of Doriath before & at the time of Thingol's death, which i talked about in the tags of the post that prompted this ask but is kind of necessary as context for the Dior part to make sense, and #2, there's the actual Dior headcanons. Both of these parts are very long because I've never really seen anyone else suggest any of this stuff and I want to explain where I'm coming from thoroughly enough that it actually makes sense to people who aren't me, but the TL;DRs:

TL;DR 1: I think Doriath was probably a hot mess politically after Thingol died, with tensions between various groups of Sindar and Laiquendi in the leadup to Thingol's death & Melian's departure, and more political tensions afterwards between those who wanted Beren & Lúthien to come be the new rulers, and those who thought they should stay gone, with someone still in Doriath taking over.

TL;DR 2: I think Dior became Eluchil, potentially at the request of some portion of the Iathrim, hoping to help prevent Doriath from devolving into civil war, and saw dealing with the Silmaril-Fëanorioni situation as a lower priority than stabilizing Doriath's internal political situation until it was too late.

1. The political cohesion (or rather, lack thereof) in Doriath prior to Thingol's death

So, okay, the thing about Doriath is that we don't actually have any real idea of like... how much the Iathrim liked being the Iathrim? We're never told about any intra-Iathrim conflict, but a) the Silm was probably compiled mostly by surviving Gondolindrim or their descendants, so they wouldn't know about anything liike that unless surviving Iathrim told them, and after the Second Kinslaying I don't imagine many Iathrim would've been eager to talk about how things had actually been tense/messy/etc when they could remember everything as having been perfect until it was ruined by the Fëanorionrim, and doubly so after the Third Kinslaying, so why would anything like that make it into the Silm?

and b) what we do know about Doriath is that it wasn't really Doriath as we know it until Morgoth came back to Middle-earth, and everything went to hell.

At the start of the first age, you suddenly get Doriath (the fenced land!) being the one protected area of a continent that used to be totally free and open. How many Sindar actually didn't particularly care for Thingol's style of leadership, or simply preferred to live nomadic lives, going basically wherever they pleased, until suddenly that wasn't safe anymore, and you were only guaranteed survival if you were close enough to Menegroth to be within the Girdle when it went up? ditto how many Laiquendi had no interest in swearing loyalty to Thingol right after their own king had just been killed, but again, made it to safety and stayed there over taking their chances on their own in the outside world?

I think it's entirely possible that there were always potential political tensions under the surface in Doriath that just... never got written about, because they never boiled over into actual political conflict, and so it was never the sort of tension that had any bearing on the historical record.

Except then Beren & Lúthien happen to the world, and a few years later the Narn, and in the blink of an eye suddenly the only king Doriath has ever had is dead, and the only queen Doriath has ever had is gone and the Girdle with her—and more than that, the only rulers the Sindar had ever had for three thousand years before Doriath existed.

And where a few years earlier I think the Iathrim would probably have turned pretty universally to Lúthien, now she's abandoned them for her human husband—and while she's my favorite character in the entire legendarium hands-down and I don't blame her, I think that's another place there might have actually been some very mixed feelings among the Iathrim that nobody wanted to admit to later because how could anyone have been upset with Lúthien—and on top of her abandoning them for him, I think it's extremely probable most of Doriath did not actually get over their xenophobia about humans in general or Beren in specific when Thingol did (we know for sure at least some of Doriath didn't, cf. Saeros insulting Túrin's mother & sister to his face), but again, who's going to admit to having had a grudge against the holy couple of Middle-earth after the fact, you know?

Conversely, there could've been a sizeable faction of Sindar who had been totally loyal to Thingol until everything happened with Beren & Lúthien, but who found his actions towards them and/or Finrod to be where they drew the line, and while (unlike B&L themselves) that faction stayed in Doriath, there could've been a new, additional tension on that front.

Finally, for all we know there were multiple factions within the Laiquendi of Doriath, with political tensions stretching back to before their king died, rooted in who-even-knows!

2. Dior

All of that, of course, sets up a very, very messy political situation for Dior to walk into.

The Doriath stuff is arguably more speculation than actual headcanon, but here's where the unambiguous headcanons come in: I don't think "Dior Eluchil set himself to raise anew the glory of the kingdom of Doriath." Obviously that's how it got written down, but bluntly, I can't see Beren and Lúthien having a kid that stupid or, like, power-hungry and arrogant?

What I can see is a situation where the messenger that brought word of Thingol's death and Melian's departure asked Beren & Lúthien to come take over as the new king and queen, we promise we're not mad about you leaving and we won't be xenophobic to your husband anymore we swear it's fine now pretty please, Beren & Lúthien said no, and the messenger either asked Dior as a second choice, or said "okay fine none of that was actually true but Doriath is falling apart and we need a leader ASAP and there's about eight different contenders* (mostly kinsmen of Thingol or Laiquendi) being backed by various factions and it's going to devolve into civil war any minute so if you care at all—" and Dior said "would I do?"

(* Ask me about my Galadriel headcanon)

I don't think Dior necessarily wanted to be king of Doriath, and I don't think he saw the throne as his birthright or anything like that; I don't think anyone involved, from Thingol to Lúthien to Dior himself, ever considered the possibility of Thingol dying and needing an heir! I think it's possible he was asked, or at most that he offered, and either way, I think he saw becoming king as taking on a responsibility for the sake of others.

(Which, like, "well here's a potentially impossible task that I'm going to take up even though probably no one thinks I'm actually capable of it, but it's my duty to help others as best I can" sure does sound to me like an attitude one might develop when raised by Lúthien "I kicked Sauron's ass cast a sleep spell on Morgoth and persuaded the Valar to find a loophole in the fabric of reality" Tinuviel and Beren "I stayed by my father's side as an outlaw to give my mother time to lead the rest of our people away hopefully to safety knowing I would never see her or any of them again (and then spent several years being a giant thorn in Morgoth's side for good measure)" Barahirion, where "apparently my grandpa I may or may not have ever met died, guess that makes me the king of a place i may or may not have ever been" does... not.)

I also think he either took on the epithet Eluchil, or was given it by whichever factions of the Iathrim accepted him as king, when he actually became king. Obviously he's going to be referred to as Dior Eluchil even before that in retrospect because that's how he's thought of later, but that doesn't mean it was actually a name he always had, you know?

The final thing is, I think if Dior essentially walked into a political situation five seconds from devolving into civil war, it makes his inaction regarding the Silmaril prior to the Second Kinslaying make more sense: the Fëanorioni have been sitting around doing nothing about the Silmaril in Doriath / with Beren & Lúthien this whole time, the letter saying "hey that's our Silmaril give it back now" is probably just a formality, and Dior's only been ruling for a couple years, there's still plenty of people dubious about whether he should be king at all, he might well be subject to at least some of whatever xenophobia remains about humans in Doriath, and in general all the work he's done on stabilizing the kingdom will absolutely come undone again if he screws up; he's trying to keep a kingdom from falling apart, the Silmaril thing can wait.

Of course, it wasn't a formality, and it couldn't wait, but why would Dior have known that?

#shrikeseams #replies #doriath #the silmarillion #dior eluchil #lotr #lotr meta #i guess?#character: dior #jesus christ this is so much longer than i meant it to be i'm so sorry #also my lunch break was supposed to end twenty minutes ago WHOOPS please forgive any typos i have no time to fix #also there wasn't a good place to stick this in #but i also think everyone in doriath probably has PTSD about thingol's death #(many of them may also have had PTSD already esp the laiquendi or those of the sindar who had to return to menegroth in a hurry #when the first waves of orcs showed up #but anyone who didn't already almost definitely does by the time dior gets there #because holy shit our king is dead the girdle is gone none of us are safe now and he was murdered before the girdle even fell #so have we even been as safe as we thought all this time or were the last couple centuries a lie?)#but yeah those are my dior headcanons!! idk if that picture of doriath or dior in particular are to anyone's taste but mine #but if nothing else i like the idea of dior getting to be... an actual person? and someone i can see having been raised by beren & lúthien #and he doesn't really get to be either of those in the silm and i rarely see him in fanworks getting fleshed out like other characters do #and i think that's kind of a shame #you know?#also yes i am completely ignoring that dior's name theoretically means ''successor'' bc like. why would they name him that #that is from an early draft and there is no way to know if ''dior'' would even have stayed his name #if tolkien had gotten around to updating all the names in B&L/CoH etc into modern Sindarin #never mind if it would have meant anything remotely similar #this is mostly a first-draft post written in one sitting in the space of 45 minutes partially while late for work #i have Definitely left many points out and i am sorry if anyone has questions about things i probably have answers / can elaborate further?

26 notes · View notes

tathrin · 1 year

Text

This story is 100% tumblr’s fault so I feel like I ought to post it here, too. It was written in one quick two hour word-deluge, so hopefully it’s not too riddled with typos or other issues. Either way: I feel like it’s what tumblr deserves, because it’s tumblr that made it happen.

A story where Gimli died before they could sail to Valinor, but Legolas refused to accept their being parted. Or: Eurydice looks lovely in a beard, no?

Gimli had no idea how Legolas had managed this. One moment he had been sleeping the slow, stoney dreams of a dwarf awaiting the ending of all things; the next, his Maker had been drawing him up from his stone bed and helping him stumble into legs that had long ago forgotten how to walk across a long stone floor and up a short staircase to a hall of darkness and stars, a hall where his elf was waiting for him.

"Legolas!" Gimli cried. He tried to run but stumbled over stiff, unfamiliar feet and went down to hands and knees. The stone was not cold beneath his hands, but it felt as though it should have been; perhaps it was his hands that were too cold to tell.

"Hush," said a voice that shimmered in Gimli's mind like ithildin. "Enough. The boon is granted; the rules are set. Do not try our patience further."

Legolas stood with his head bowed and his face turned away, but Gimli had known him at once; would have known him at a glance, just from the way he stood (his feet so light upon the ground, slender body never quite still, like a bird poised ever on the edge of flight atop a thin branch); or the curve of his strong and slender arms at his side like a long bow; or the glimmer of his hair in the darkness, so much richer than any gold that mortal hands might forge. Gimli had run those smooth, heavy locks through his hands often enough that he could almost feel them even now, with the whole great hall between them; could almost smell the rain-crisp scent of fresh leaves that those fair locks somehow bore even in the dead of a cold and bitter winter.

"What boon?" Gimli asked. He was ashamed to hear his voice tremble, but he told himself that it was not fear that caused the tremor; his throat was merely dusty with disuse, like his stiff legs and unsteady feet. That was all; it was not fear. "What rules? Legolas?"

119 notes · View notes

youssefguedira · 10 months

Text

behold, the product of yesterday's lotr au discussion (for @spacegirlsgang)

Nicolò has not spoken to him in days.

He hasn't spoken to anyone. He walks silently at Yusuf's side, hand always on his sword, eyes always on the horizon. When there are people who need it, he helps, tends wounds and lifts the younger ones onto horses and hands out food. He still does not speak, and Yusuf worries for him.

They have already lost Quynh, and Sebastien. Dizzy and Jay may well be dead by now for all they know, and Nile and Lykon… he does not really want to think about it for long. He only hopes they are alive. And now Andromache, too, is gone, and Nicolò will not speak, and Yusuf cannot help feeling very, very alone without him. It is strange: Yusuf would have thought, just a week or two ago, that he would have been glad never to see Nicolò again. Now, the thought terrifies him.

When they make camp that night, Yusuf takes his place by the fire with his sword across his lap and prepares to keep watch. Nicolò joins him, after a while, but instead of taking a seat and silently watching the horizon as Yusuf has come to expect him to, he speaks.

"You should rest," he says, voice hoarse as if – well, as if he hasn't used it in days. He carries two bowls of stew, one of which he passes to Yusuf.

"So should you," Yusuf responds. He's exhausted, but neither of them have slept much – he's not sure Nicolò has slept at all since they lost Andromache.

"I do not need to sleep like you do," Nicolò says, which almost makes Yusuf laugh.

"Bullshit," he says. "Even you can't go this long without needing to rest."

Nicolò doesn't say anything to that. Doesn't even meet Yusuf's eyes, but Yusuf can tell how tired Nicolò truly is, and suddenly he cannot bear it anymore.

"We cannot keep on like this," Yusuf says. "This is not – if we're all that's left, I cannot do this without you, Nicolò."

Nicolò is quiet, for a while. When he finally speaks, he says, "Try to rest, Yusuf. I will keep watch tonight."

Yusuf waits. Nicolò does not move, nor show any sign of conceding. Just as stubborn as Andromache – well. He doesn't let himself finish that thought.

He waits a little longer, but Nicolò remains silent.

"Wake me for the second watch, then," Yusuf says, finally. Nicolò does not nod, but Yusuf no longer has the strength in him to push. He falls asleep quickly.

When he wakes, it is morning, and Nicolò is nowhere to be seen. Yusuf can only hope he found someone else for the second watch, and that he did not stay awake all night, but he would not be surprised if the latter were true.

During the day, they keep to their regular routine – Nicolò's silence and Yusuf's attempts to find anything to do that isn't think too much – but that night, when Nicolò finds him, he sets his sword down by his side and asks, "Will you wake me for the second shift?"

Yusuf nods quickly, too quickly, and Nicolò smiles, though it is small. It's the first time Yusuf's seen him smile in days.

He wakes Nicolò for the second shift and sleeps after that, and the next night, Yusuf takes the first and Nicolò the second.

It's a start, at the very least.

–

The day after they reach Helm's Deep, Nicolò is the first to see the rider.

He does not realise who it is at first: the figure is too distant. They wear a cloak with the hood pulled low over their face, and lean heavily over their horse, as if injured.

Nicolò's first thought is that it is a scout. His second thought, which he discounts quickly, is that it is Andromache, which. It cannot be. He does not dare imagine it.

When the figure keeps approaching, he shouts a warning to the guards on the walls. Yusuf, who had fallen asleep beside him, his back against the stone, startles awake. "What is it?" he asks, still half-asleep.

"I do not know, yet," Nicolò responds. He gets to his feet. Yusuf follows a moment later.

"I see it, now," Yusuf says, furrowing his brow. Nicolò's hand goes to his bow, just in case. If it is a scout, he will deal with them quickly.

Then, suddenly, Yusuf's eyes go wide, and he curses. Taps Nicolò twice on the shoulder, and runs along the wall, down the stairs, towards the gate, shouting at the guards to open it.

Nicolò looks again, then, and realises what Yusuf has seen. The rider's weapon is just visible over their right shoulder, and Nicolò knows the carvings on its handle, knows them because they are the twin of the carvings on the hilt of his hunting dagger, because both weapons were forged by the same person.

He is moving before he truly has time to process the thought. The gates are opened far too slowly, creaking with the movement, and by the time he can see the rider again she is sitting straighter in the saddle, a wide grin on her face, urging her horse forward. It is only Yusuf's hand on his arm that keeps him from running through the gates to greet her; when Nicolò looks back at him, his smile is bright enough to rival the midday sun.

Andromache.

Finally, she is there, riding through the gates like a king returning to her kingdom, like she had planned this all along, like Nicolò hadn't seen her fall from a cliff only a few days ago. She dismounts easily, before the horse has even fully stopped, and then he is running, and she is meeting him halfway and gathering him into her arms and laughing, even as he thinks he starts crying.

Then Yusuf is there too, and Nicolò has to step back but cannot bring himself to go far, and Andromache hugs him too, while Yusuf laughs, bright and loud.

"Where have you been," he is saying, and "I thought you were dead, Andromache, I thought we had lost you," and she laughs again and cups the back of his neck with one hand and says, "I'm okay, Nico, I'm okay."

"So," Andromache says once Yusuf steps back, too, her grin sharp despite how exhausted she must be. "Tell me what I've missed."

#neon writes #tog lotr au #the old guard #look. i have Feelings abt it #firstly. helm's deep is the Major turning point for joe and nicky's relationship but we're starting to lay the groundwork here #i think they're not quite there with talking about feelings yet. but on their way #nicolò a) letting yusuf sleep through the night and b) actively asking him to take the first watch (i.e. listening to him when yusuf says h #needs to rest) is really. its something for me #i don't know if the thing about elves not needing to sleep much is true just go with me on this one. also if ive mixed up timelines its in #service of the Brain Worms. ok #in the actual hypothetical longfic this would be interspersed with other sections / the reunion might be from another pov #the bit about blacksmith andy is one of my favourite details about this au #she makes quynh's necklace AND nicky's knife n him being able to recognise her by the design of her axe because it's the same as that of hi #knife. Yeah it's important to me #anyway mary as always i hope you like this <3 and thank you for continually enabling the brain worms

38 notes · View notes

kanalaure · 2 years

Text

if my username has not made it blindingly obvious, i love maglor. i love him a lot. sad beach cryptid makes my brain go brrrrr

realistically, i dont think he can, or will, ever go home. for a pile of reasons, beginning with all the murders and ending with "the home of his childhood died with finwë and the trees and he literally can never go back". i don't like "realistically"

the silmarillion is fundamentally a tragedy. it's about inevitability, and consequence, and exactly how FAR it's possible for a person to fall. which is why, of course, he did not go back to aman at the end of the first age, not even to stand trial. a trial may have ended in a redemption of sorts for him and that is not what the story is. but. that's the silmarillion

fundamentally, the lord of the rings is about hope. mercy. the love of all living things and the desire to preserve their freedoms. and that is why i have read dozens, and would read hundreds more, of stories about elrond, or his sons, or arwen and aragorn, or samwise gamgee, or daeron or celeborn or random mannish fishermen, or or or— coming across him, choosing mercy, and giving him a chance to become something new. i want it so badly. i hate the idea of him frozen in time as a relic and reminder of the tragedies of the first age, forever and ever, always. but honestly... that desire isn't really about him even if he has been my favorite since i first tried to read the silmarillion at age seventeen, gave up three pages into the ainulindale, and read the wiki instead. giving second chances to people who may or may not deserve them is kind of what people in this story DO. it suits the theme. as much as it would have been a betrayal of the silmarillion's themes for that to have occurred then, it would be equally a betrayal of the lord of the rings' themes if they came across him in the later age(s) and DIDN'T offer.

but beyond that, it makes me so goddamn SAD to imagine him fading into nothing more than a voice on the breeze. i literally cannot tolerate the thought, it physically hurts my heart. (so maybe it is a little about him, actually)

"realistically" is a state of hopelessness and stagnancy, and i'm tired of that. i want wild, unfettered, reckless hope. i want the fourth age to be the age of healing, for everyone. maybe he can't ever go "home". but he can go forward. they can all go forward.

#silm meta #silmarillion #lotr #lord of the rings #maglor #listen i know this isnt my usual sort of post because ive unitentionally cultivated a 'moderately popular shitposts' atmosphere #but i think about this a lot #and it is actually very important to me that if they found him they would try to help #sometimes forgiveness and mercy have fckall to do with the recipient and everything to do with the person offering it #and i dont WANT to see a valinor where no one can let go of their old grudges or anger or hatred no matter how hard earned

261 notes · View notes