#oh but tolkien elves are the standard for perfection

[helisol]

ye s, well

it basically came to me like a prophet receiving a vision from an angry god. you know. like brian david gilberts video ideas but with more slow burn.

no really i wrote all this down in my phone’s note app because some nearly coherent things popped up in my head every time i was on the train or bus these last few days.

(after-actually-writing-this disclaimer/note: this is 2000 words of slightly edited rambling about Bagginshield in the Afterlife. i had to put it in a read more.)

so the gist of it

the botfa goes just as in the movie with minor details altered. like bilbo kissing thorin just before he dies which inadvertently causes a ripple in time and space that makes the valar curious of them both. you know. minor stuff.

so bilbo goes back to the shire, the war of the ring goes down, and the hobbit/elf gang sails to valinor at the end. classic stuff, not much alternating of universes here.

but here’s where things turn into the “my city now” meme because DUDE DO I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS ABOUT VALINOR AND HOW THE AFTERLIFE WORKS

like, I’m sorry mister jolkien rolkien tolkien, but just putting people into a hall to await being judged like a hospital waiting room? snooze, that’s boring!

so first of all, and you can fight me on this, Yavanna Made The Hobbits And You Can’t Change My Mind.

it just makes sense for her to have been very saddened by the destruction of literally all her work on arda through melkor’s poison, so she made living, growing things that could protect themselves from harm. as opposed to the ents, by the way, which were made by Eru to protect all the other living, growing things. it was a nice gesture of Eru to make those, but not quite what Yavanna wanted or had in mind, i imagine.

as with the dwarves, Eru wasn’t all happy about the existence of another race he didn’t make but you know, whatever, ‘I’ll just let this married couple have their own kids aside from mine, it’s okay’.

so he hands both the dwarves and the hobbits independent thought and free will, but under the condition (and here is where the afterlife stuff comes into play) that Aule and Yavanna be responsible for their mortal creations after their death. meaning that both races have seperate afterlives from the halls of mandos, MEANING THAT ITS COMPLETELY FINE FOR AULE AND YAVANNA TO BE LIKE “oh look honey, these two are so very in love and remind me of us, shan’t we do something about that?”

so. they do something about that. more precisely, they rearrange their afterlife-realms so they’re next to each other and someone with enough willpower could cross through the barrier. because listen, they’re valar, they can do whatever they want just for kicks.

okay so after that tangent lets get back to the meat of the matter: gay dwarves. I know not everyone has read Sansukh, a 500k word mammoth of a fic, and I don’t really intend to copy any of det’s canon, but their version of The Halls of Mahal really inspired me. basically the dwarven afterlife is one big hunk of a mountain/underground city where they’re free to live their days until dagor dagorath doing what they do best in the company of their families and friends; like smithing, crafting, building and other JustDwarrowThings.

meanwhile the hobbit afterlife is Basically The Shire and instead of being given the materials to build things, all the hobbits who go there get to grow plants and do their gardening. they don’t have to- just like none of the dwarves have to craft stuff- since there’s always enough food for everyone, but they are just allowed to do what they do best if they so desire.

now when Bilbo arrived in the undying lands he was still Old As Hell and im sorry to put it this way, he definitely kicked the can after like, a week of living there. not really so undying, them lands, huh. anyway Bilbo bites the dust and LOOK AT THAT he’s suddenly young again, and another LOOK AT THAT he’s standing in a very comfy, but Not Quite Bag End hobbit hole that has a note hung up on the front door. you wouldn’t think gods could have handwriting but hey, again, they’re gods they can do whatever. the note just tells him that yavannah made this place special and just for Bilbo but that there’s another home waiting for him. very cryptic there, lady. he doesn’t leave at first because hey, his family is here. there’s a lot of reunions and celebrating and food because its the fucking hobbit afterlife, what else would you expect

it takes him a few days of Regular Hobbit Life in his new home to realise ‘holy shit, this is so boring’ so what does a Fool of a Took do when things get boring and there’s a note urging him to do something?

HE’S GOING ON AN ADVENTURE

so Bilbo runs through the whole not-shire, meeting all sorts of people he outlived on the way (looking at you, Lobelia), as well as some elves. because elves can definitely just waltz through all the afterlives. they can walk on top of snow, you think they wouldn’t walk around wherever they please in valinor? rip to mankind, but they’re different.

he gets to the furthest reaches of it eventually, and lo and behold, what awaits him but the view of a tall mountain, an invisible barrier and a very flustered Thorin who is at his wits end as to how Bilbo even got here.

now for thorin’s part of the story we’ll have to start after the botfa again. he basically woke up in the darkness like an episode of naked and afraid, and started talking to Aule. his maker, who loves him to bits by the way since he made thorin, just tells him he’s free to go wherever his heart takes him. again with the cryptic messages from the gods.

so thorin, still very self-loathing and bitter because of his actions right before his death, sees this as Mahal’s way of saying ‘please don’t step foot in my halls u disgusting litle creacher’, when really he just meant ‘please do some well deserved self reflecting and then come inside to be with your family, they all miss you terribly’.

after his chat with the maker thorin just spawns in right at the front gate of the mountain and he has a choice to make. go inside or stay outside. and we all know Thorin’s proclivity for drama so he basically spends LITERAL YEARS just living in self imposed solitary confinement.

oh also tiny hc here, thorin was said to have taken “any work offered to him in the towns of men”, and they showed him in a smithy, but personally I believe they meant it when they said “any kind of work”. so basically thorin is a jack of all trades, master of some. he definitely has master-level skills in certain areas though, enough to build a vaguely hobbit-hole shaped house. why is it hobbit hole shaped?

oh right, the part where Thorin is absolutely enamoured with Bilbo.

"Go back to your books and your armchair, plant your trees, watch them grow. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”- HELLO? GAY POLICE? I’D LIKE TO REPORT A CASE OF ‘DWARF KING REALISING THAT THE HOBBIT WAY OF LIVING IS A REALLY GREAT ONE IN CONCEPT / WISHING HE COULD HAVE HAD THAT KIND OF LIFE WITH BILBO’

anyway it’s a long 80 years until Thorin does get to meet Bilbo again, and in the meantime we have one of my favorite additions to any Hobbit fanfic ever: Frerin

For the uninitiated, Frerin is Thorin’s brother. They also have a sister, Dís, but Tolkien never specified when she died and she was a bit younger than Thorin and Frerin so I reckon she’d still be alive as an old dwarf lady somewhere?

Anyway, Frerin. Oh boy. Sansukh, again, does an excellent job at turning Frerin into a character with a level of authenticity that gets real fucking close to Genuine Tolkien™, so most of my own characterisation of Frerin is based on that in Sansukh. With the important omission of the dwarves not being able to see the present/their still alive loved ones in middle earth through a magic mirror pool.

so Frerin takes it upon himself to leave the mountain in search of his brother because he really does want him back. but also because Mahal has had it with Thorin’s antics and suggests Frerin fetch him so he can finally reunite with his family. Mahal doesn’t talk to the dwarves a lot because he’s like an awkward and distant dad, but he does actually speak to them.

so Thorin is supposed to go see his family, which he does, but not immediately. it takes like, a solid year of just brotherly (and sister-sonly) companionship for him to open up about all his anxieties and regrets and THEN he goes into the mountain to cry in his mother’s lap. as you do.

however Thorin still feels like he doesn’t 100% belong with the other dwarves in there, so he frequently spends long stretches of time outside, building away at his house, thinking about Bilbo. the company goes out to visit him sometimes.

more details on the house tho, cuz it’s Important; it’s built halfway into a hill near the mountain, like a proper hobbit hole would be, but the lower levels are built into stone. look, he’s had 80 years to work on constructing this. it’s near perfect in every way for both hobbit and dwarf standards and could definitely fit the entire company and more inside.

now about the barrier. elves can pass through without a second thought because they’re shiny little bastards who just get to do all the cool stuff, but the other races can’t just hop between realms like that; they really have to muster up the willpower. which usually means they can’t do it because a drawback for both dwarves and hobbits is that they favor isolation from other races even in death, and as such don’t want to mingle with each other.

unless you’re Bilbo Badass Baggins though, who simply runs through the barrier to yell at Thorin for leaving him sad and alone for 80 years. he is that bitch.

there’s gonna be some legolas and gimli shenanigans if i can fit them in (cuz i dont know when exactly they sailed west together), possibly a mention of tauriel because bruh peter jackson did us dirty by not giving her any closure besides ‘lol i guess she’s banished from mirkwood??’ and Mairon. because. I also have some thoughts about him.

also Fili and Kili as pseudo matchmakers because every fic needs that

and did I mention there’s gonna be hozier lyrics for chapter titles

i said this was the gist of it but i somehow ended up at ~1900 words. well, more power to me.

#bagginshield #the hobbit #bagginshield afterlife au #this is the most coherent plot summary I've ever done for a fic so please enjoy the trash #also it's my sleepover and I get to pick which parts of canon i'll adhere by

[vardasvapors]

Do you have any Lindon headcanons, if so please throw ALL of them at me because I have zero and it's terrible. This was more Elrond-centric bc I've been trying to fill in that thousand-year gap between Elros and war but then I realised how LITTLE I can actually picture of... the biggest Elven kingdom in Middle-earth... Galadriel's off collecting fairie court campsites, and Celebrimbor's kickstarting a magic object Renaissance, and what's every other elf doing this millennium? I just don't know!

omg i’ve lazily on-and-off thought about making a wip list of vague Lindon headcanons before so this is the perfect excuse. hope you don’t mind me limiting this to just the timeframe you mentioned, or this post would be WAY too long, instead of just regularly too long:

First: observe, my Lindon tag! It’s not very long, but

This and especially this are some of my favorite headcanon visuals for Second Age Mithlond as a capital city. Starting as a giant camp for everyone who escaped from Beleriand, lots of flux, more like a RL city than most Tolkien cities: gorgeous, but very disorganized, patchwork, built up ad-hoc, happenstance and convenience slowly rising into districts. All the people stopping in it or passing through it, either east or west, leave another layer of their presence there. um….I still haven’t read invisible cities despite buying it because of bamboocounting like….months ago. Anyway it’s 90% turned to dust by LOTR.

With abruptly going from lush inland forested river-filled Ossiriand to this newly-formed bluff-edged shoreland with a huge new saltwater gulf splitting it down the middle, I headcanon it being a pretty big mess for decades. Before Galadriel took a lot of them to Eregion, I picture all the characters you mention spending a lot of time on fixing up – collecting and reuniting scattered people, building houses, establishing diplomatic ties and supply chains, etc.

eg: there is very little formality or ingrained institutions and no palaces full of comforts let alone luxuries for at LEAST a century, thanks

BUT, the fixing-up period being mostly a very happy time! Like, I think there was certainly a ton of hardship and stress with trying to keep people fed and housed in this chaotic near-post-apocalyptic situation while new villages and stuff were built, and fighting stray dark creatures who had also escaped, but still a lot of general relief and feelings of being insanely fortunate and curious exploration, finally free from being under constant overwhelming threat again even if this peace is quite a different kind from the peace before Morgoth returned, going hand-in-hand with the work, and building together as a conduit for bonding and feasting etc – and celebration and joy as deliberate defiance against the loss and grief and war they suffered. I think this real-world thing would fit it well.

Not a very big population at first, since not a lot survived at all, and most of the elves went to Eressea and most of the humans went to Numenor, and most of the Sindar who remained went east. I headcanon the early “kingdom” as more…scattered villages along the shore with a large but transient population concentration around the Havens because most of those were just looking for their friends and relatives and waiting for seats to open up on the constant flood of ships heading west, and when the passengers finally dwindle down this distribution has taken root and multiplied, but not a really powerful force until post-The Mariner’s Wife.

After the establishment period, now that it FINALLY isn’t a time of war, after centuries of it, elves start having babies all over the fucking place, and all the accoutrements that go with it. Dozens of new and half-forgotten festival days that are literally just giant bacchanalias, zillions of weddings, society shifting to be very oriented towards sex and romance and children and child-rearing, rather than warfare, etc. With this showing up a lot in their songs, and art, and lifestyle, etc.

One of the most delightful Lindon-adjacent nuggets in the Histories of Middle Earth I think is that elves of Lindon spent at least 50 years, if not more, ferrying the Edain to Numenor. I won’t repeat the tag ramble I appended to that passage here, but just… *blows kisses off fingers* it’s so absurd and fitting….I think of this as a big post-war self-image thing, the cataclysm and Morgoth’s defeat just so utterly scrambling their view of the world and their role in it. >_o

Speaking of that, not a lot of cultural continuity between the Noldor of the First Age and the Noldor of Lindon. The people of Cirdan and therefore at first for Gil-galad were the Falathrim, so I hc that especially after lots of Noldor left for Tol Eressea and Eregion the dominant culture of Lindon was a blendy Falathrim twist.

But that’s mostly just dominant as a plurality – the real “main culture” of Lindon is the hodge-podge mixture itself. Exiles who stayed because they wanted to, exiles who stayed because they are ex-Feanorians or otherwise can’t face going back or aren’t allowed. Descendants of exiles, mixed Noldor/Sindar elves who weren’t even born during the early Silm. Noldor who feel totally alienated from everything, Noldor who feel more connected to their fellow people of Sirion than to the Noldor generally. Survivors of Gondolin, survivors of Nargothrond, Sindar who didn’t want to go east, Edain who didn’t go to Numenor, Edain who are just waiting around to go to Numenor, Dwarves who had to leave the Blue Mountains due to them being broken up in the war, other peoples of all kinds, who all scrambled convergently to Lindon to flee the incoming war and water like ants. The areas of Lindon, and the districts of Mithlond, array themselves as reflections of, or deliberate eschewings of, the weird headlong rush into intertwining and splitting apart and morphing into new things that characterizes late Silm-era dynamics and groups.

In addition to pre-existing Falathrim attitudes about the sea, a major cultural/religious/etc tradition would spring up in Lindon in relation to the sea – the destructive, overwhelming, healing, saving, unfathomable, un-tameable, enticing, perilous sea that broke the earth, yet cleansed it, destroyed both enemies and homes, the place that now holds everything that Beleriand was in its depths, the place that deliverance came from. Kind of a less cynical but still very terrified version of Voronwë’s complete lack of chill about it. Sea-longing and going to sea and either never coming back or not coming back the same carves out a major place in their understanding of the world. One of the Standard Identities available to a segment of the popular in Lindon is like, “oh, he’s Waiting For A Ship,” An overlap of understanding grows between them and the Numenoreans over this. Ahem. Feel free.

eg: great Implied Significance for the new shoreline and the gulf of Lhûn as the place where Beleriand broke off and sank. References to these places as idioms to refer to being just past the furthest reach of a calamity, or a now-innocuous reminder of past calamity, or the duality of homecoming and escape

also eg: “lmao X is as unpredictable as the Lhûn amirite #microclimates”

the Numenoreans love them, but are sort of boggled by them. They have the same strange varied mixture and mood swings of cheer and gloom and Issues as the ex-Exiles and ex-Sindar of Tol Eressea, but the Numenoreans don’t entirely understand why they stuck with Middle Earth, for after a few generations have passed, the Numenoreans can only really guess, from their own lore, what having life experiences that were once concurrent with the long-distant sufferings of their Edain ancestors might be like. The Tol Eressean elves, on their island of release, are easier to understand, they’re sort of like us! But what of these weirdos back east – and that way lies the peril of like…you know. Everything wild, that Numenor is not

ETA: Later, when they realize the shadow has returned, this slow kind of infuriated disillusioned backslide…like, really? really? again? and the buildup back to war being really grim and depressing, though a minority of them always knew something like this would happen again. And rising conflict short of outright hostility with Eregion. People relearning to be soldiers again…or generals…

#vaporous answers #lindon #the silmarillion #second age #long post #sorry this isn't SUPER isolatedly-headcanony most of my headcanons would work better in fic #i didn't want to make this post any longer for off-topic rambling that probably only you are looking for atm! #but #if you are still looking specifically for elrond stuff the two main points i think are: #'Time was when a squirrel could go from tree to tree from what is now the Shire to Dunland west of Isengard. #In those lands I journeyed once and many things wild and strange I knew. But I had forgotten Bombadil' #and #remember how the numenoreans started preparing the coasts bc the elves asked them to aid middle earth. but then they became assholes #long before the war with sauron #i'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how elrond and tar-aldarion might have gotten along lmao

[garden-ghoul]

of galadriel and celeborn

“special thanks to vardasvapors for helping me put off deciding whether to read lotr or the hobbit first”

The very first sentence begins, “There is no part of the history of Middle-earth more full of problems than the story of Galadriel and Celeborn.” There is also no elf more full of problems than Galadriel, so this is fitting. We’re off to a tremendous start! The problems Chris is having, though, are mostly historical inconsistencies.

...And these are the kind of inconsistencies that require a map. Lemme dig one up. All right I’m patching together 3 different maps in my head, this legendarium is Impossible. Originally Tolkien was thinking Celeborn was one of the Teleri who never went west in the first place (although, given that Cuivienen was a long way east of Lorien, he still went a LITTLE west), and had always lived in Lorien--east across both the Blue Mountains and the Misty Mountains from Beleriand. Then Galadriel hiked over two mountain ranges, just for funsies, and met a bunch more elfs there. However, in one of the appendices it says he lived in Lindon, which I think is just on the Beleriand side of the Blue Mountains.

In any case, the reason that she remained in Middle Earth after the big old war with Melkor was that “at the end of the First Age a ban was set upon her return, and she had replied proudly that she had no wish to do so." wow she truly is the greatest of the elves. The ban is because she was “one of the chief actors in the rebellion.” Like, was she? Did she convince a ton of people to come with her, all for the purpose of ruining Feanor’s life? I love her an unimaginable amount. Oh to be fair though “she longed to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will.” She has always been kind of into dominating other people? 

She really would make a fantastic nemesis for Morgoth; each of them trying to conquer more of the disputed lands and rule over everyone. Risk: Belerian Edition! I was considering her against some other elves who would make fun servants of Melkor, but she would never serve anyone, literally ever. If she got captured by Morgoth and he tried to break her mind she would just blow up his entire castle, killing everyone within half a mile. Is that something she can do? I know Luthien can do that, but Luthien is half-god so I dunno.

Back to the actual text: Chris is talking about Galadriel’s lover, Teleporno (Celeborn in Sindarin). This is the most unfortunate name had by any elf. Teleporno! They invented phone sex so Galadriel could run around far away from him and not get sexually frustrated! Another version of the story says that he lived in Alqualonde and was her first or second cousin. They built a ship together and after the destruction of Alqualonde they set sail by themselves, wanting to escape from the horror of their ruined city, but were Banned anyway. Banned! Banned! You’re all banned! None of you are free from sin! But this version of the story is pretty non-canon since it contradicts a bunch of actual published materials. Tolkien just wanted to make a point about how extremely separate from Feanor she is. Possibly he was being threatened by Galadriel to make this point.

Yet ANOTHER version is that they were still second cousins but they met in Doriath and lived there basically the entire first age, which doesn’t sound very Galadriel to me. Anyway in this version Galadriel and Celeborn hang out in northwestern Middle Earth for a while in the second age and then move to Eregion just west of the Misty Mountains for the purpose of thwarting Sauron. It says she might have chosen that place because she was pals with the dwarves of Khazad-dum (although Celeborn apparently blamed them for what the Nogrod dwarves had done to Doriath, because he was a racist fool). This is cute, I love to imagine that she has travelled all over the world and made friends with many different kinds of people. It’s interesting trying to imagine Galadriel being a guest anywhere except with her kin--she doesn’t like not having power like that. Must one assume that the people she visited were subservient enough to satisfy her pride? Ugh where’s my fanfiction of Galadriel travelling the world and having a personal crisis whenever she has to be humble. She needs to learn to play it like Teru and be The Most Gracious, Not That It’s A Competition. Her perfect etiquette gives her power. I dunno.

She looked upon the Dwarves also with the eye of a commander, seeing in them the finest warriors to pit against the Orcs. 

Oh.

Moreover Galadriel was a Noldo, and she had a natural sympathy with their minds and their passionate love of crafts of hand, a sympathy much greater than that found among many of the Eldar: the Dwarves were "the Children of Aulë," and Galadriel, like others of the Noldor, had been a pupil of Aulë and Yavanna in Valinor.

Mm... okay.

Now we hear about Celebrimbor, who lived in Eregion with our heroes. He LOVED crafting so so so much and he was dating a dwarf (Narvi), really ahead of the times. They basically carved a heart with their initials in it on the west gate of Moria:

I, Narvi, made them. Celebrimbor of Eregion drew these signs.

Cute... It says both kingdoms grew greater together than they would have apart, this is so so good. I’m a little concerned though, why they ever left...

Ah! It’s because Sauron taught a bunch of Eregion elves The Deep Craft Lore and convinced them to stage a coup against Galadriel’s family. She took her kids Amroth and Celebrian through Moria (to the other side of the mountains I think?) but Celeborn was too racist and stayed in Eregion. Because he wasn’t a threat and no-one cared about him. So Sauron hung out convincing the masonic smiths guild of Eregion to make him rings of power, and when Celebrimbor found out that it was actually for BAD REASONS he was SHOCKED and went to Galadriel for advice.

She told him to hide the three elven rings, and he gave her one, the water ring. It made her gay for the sea though, so she was a little sad. This was a Curse I guess. Oh shit this next part is good! Sauron makes war on Eregion, and although Gil-Galad sends Elrond to aid them they don’t quite get there in time; Celebrimbor makes a Famous Last Stand on the steps of the smiths guild that’s about to be ransacked for its magical treasure. He was probably expecting to die, but instead he is taken captive and tortured to find out where the seven rings and the three rings are. Then, disappointingly, Sauron puts him to death. This isn’t like in my fanfictions. WOW he does, uh, use Celebrimbor’s mutilated body as his standard while fighting Elrond’s forces though. Hell of a thing.

Elrond’s people withdrew to Imladris; the Lorinand elves and their dwarvish allies withdrew through Moria, which meant Sauron had a grudge against the Moria dwarves Forever. He’s so petty. Anyway then he marches to the coast to fuck with Gil-Galad’s fortress at Lindon. Blah blah war murders and the Numenoreans come to kick Sauron’s ass. The siege of Imladris is broken, Sauron retreats to Mordor with his tail between his legs. Galadriel, infected by Nenya with the seagays, moves to the coast until circumstances far later force her to return.

#next time: amroth and nimrodel #silm