Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

akaltynarchitectonica asked: any thoughts on elf sexuality?

cptsdcarlosdevil:

ONLY ALL OF THEM

The interested reader should consult What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex, the most extensive guide to elf sexuality I’m aware of. Also, be aware that I haven’t read Silm and anything in here contradicted by Silm is a result of ignorance.

The bits I find interesting are that (1) elf marriage is defined as being sex— the party is considered a good idea, but strictly optional, (2) elves don’t commit adultery and (3) elves can apparently tell from the way someone moves whether they’re wed or unwed. Now, this may just be that elves are Good Catholics, but are you kidding, there is an opportunity for my favorite tropes. I propose: elf hypermonogamy!

(I actually totally thought elf hypermonogamy was canon until I was researching my answer for this ask. GODDAMMIT TOLKIEN.)

Elves are universally demisexual: they literally do not experience sexual attraction to people they aren’t in romantic love with. Elves are only capable of being in love with one person at once. It takes them a long time to get over love; it’s quite common for a rejected elf to never fall in love again, and most of those who do go centuries before they do.

So, how does that affect my favorite ships?

I feel like Legolas/Gimli is super-more-awesome if Legolas was literally never sexually attracted to anyone before Gimli and has no idea what this emotion is. So he is all like OH GOD THIS DWARF IS SO ANNOYING >:( >:( >:( I JUST WANT TO THINK ABOUT HIM ALL THE TIME. BECAUSE HE’S ANNOYING. I WONDER WHAT HIS HAIR FEELS LIKE. And eventually this gets to the point where even Mr. They’re Taking The Hobbits To Isengard starts wondering if something’s up.

and then at Lothlorien he seeks the advice of Galadriel and Galadriel is like “Legolas, you’re in love” and Legolas is like “???!???!!!!!!”

and Galadriel thinks to herself “JESUS CHRIST, Legolas, Luthien and Arwen are one thing, human boys are sort of cute, but DID YOU REALLY JUST FALL FOR, OF ALL PEOPLE, A FUCKING DWARF”

(and then Gimli does the hair thing and she’s like “well, at least he has good taste”)

and then Legolas ends up having sex with Gimli. Now, dwarves totally have a culture of warrior homosexuality. (Also: everything homosexuality????) So Gimli is all like “ah, yes, manly men blowing off some steam in a manly way after battle, this surely does not mean Feelings” and Legolas is like “:( :( :( I will go stare at a river and write love poetry in Quenya more beautiful than the hearts of Men can bear” but he totally doesn’t let Gimli know because he doesn’t want to Pressure Gimli Into A Relationship and also because he will Take What He Can Get

and then at some point Aragorn is sadly singing to himself about Luthien as is his third-favorite hobby (behind beard growth and still not being king) and Gimli is like “why the hell would she give up her immortality anyway, dude, it’s fucking immortality? why can’t she marry an elf instead” and with one thing and another Aragorn ended up telling him about the Elvish Facts of Life

and then Gimli storms up to Legolas and is like YOU KNOW USUALLY I LIKE TO BE INFORMED WHEN I’M MARRIED TO PEOPLE

and Legolas is like “…I’m… married to you but you’re not married to me?”

and Gimli is like I DON’T KNOW WHAT NANCY SHIT YOU PONCY MOTHERFUCKERS GET UP TO BUT AMONG DWARVES MARRIAGE IS USUALLY CONSIDERED A TRANSITIVE PROPERTY

and Legolas was like “I am sorry, I understand if you will never speak to me again” and he is mentally drafting, like, the world’s saddest poem, like, it will win the Saddest Poem contest Elrond holds every year

and Gimli is like YOU FUCKING MORON OF COURSE I WANT TO BE MARRIED TO YOU HOW ELSE CAN I GET TO SHOW YOU ALL THE PRETTY CAVES

and Legolas is like “oh. Oh!”

and then he ends up smuggling his boyfriend into Valinor, I assume by just sort of shoving him into the luggage. “Dwarf? What dwarf? I don’t have a dwarf. What, no, my bag isn’t wriggling, you’re seeing things. Gosh, there are weird sounds on the sea, that one sounded almost like the word ‘fuck’.”

also I feel like this whole thing makes Elrond and Arwen infinitely more amusing

Elrond: NO YOU ARE NOT GOING TO MARRY ARAGORN
Arwen: GRANDMA DID
Elrond: AND LOOK WHERE THAT GOT HER
Arwen: I DON’T CARE I LOVE HIM
Elrond: THERE ARE LOTS OF NICE BOYS IN VALINOR, I’M SURE YOU’LL FIND SOMEONE ELSE
Arwen: NO I WON’T
Elrond: …fuck. You’re right.
Arwen: (looks smug)
Elrond: you know Elros really had the right idea, immortality is awesome but at least HUMANS HAVE THE CONCEPT OF SERIAL MONOGAMY

vld-multishipper-lesbians-deact asked: I have a Shallura fan fic idea and it hinges on whether or not you've read the Silmarillion. Shiro and Allura as Beren and Luthien.

shiroallura:

I have not, but I’m sure this idea is wonderful all the same!

SPEAKING AS SOMEONE WHO GETS THAT REFERENCE

I AM HERE FOR IT

DOES THAT MAKE THE BLACK LION HUAN OR WHAT

Anonymous asked: YOU GOT REBLOGGED BY SPACE-AUSTRALIANS

Holy fuck, you’re right.

I don’t even know how that post got so popular.  I just like to sit around and be a smart-ass about Legolas and Gimli, guys.  Also, since it’s not my post, I never know who reblogs it until someone tells me or it comes across my dash.

kyraneko:

lilylilymine:

i just imagined orcs getting into fights over how their wife is the biggest, most beautiful with the sharpest teeth.

“HOW DARE!!! THROG’S WIFE SHROKKA IS 10 FEET TALL, HER TEETH BREAK BOULDERS, HER BEAUTY SHAMES THE SUN”

Imagine Throg and Shrokka getting into the orc version of a cutsey couples argument.

“NO! SHROKKA’S WIFE THROG MORE BEAUTIFUL! THROG’S FANGS ARE SHARP LIKE MANY SWORDS, HER BEAUTY CAUSES THE MOON TO TURN AWAY AND HIDE! THROG WILL TAKE BACK HER WORDS, FOR THROG IS MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN SHROKKA!”

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

Let me just get this off my chest…

ELROND GOT DONE SO DIRTY IN THE MOVIES.

WHAT THE FUCK.

No really I’m pissed as hell, listen to me for a second.  I have Thoughts.

Like, sure, okay, it’s a little strange and inconsistent that he’s so skeptical of Aragorn after he was the one to raise him (*grabs Peter Jackson by the ear* ESTEL WAS RAISED AT IMLADRIS), but let’s put that aside for a second.

But the whole Arwen thing.  FUCK the whole Arwen thing, tbh.

So, what, Elrond pushes Aragorn into dumping Arwen, and then tricks his daughter into leaving for the Undying Lands.  

Um, WHAT.

First and foremost, this makes him a dick in the movies and he’s really…not a dick in the books, so like there’s that.  But I have more.

Now, see, here’s a critical thing about Elrond.  His whole family except for Arwen and Elladan and Elrohir is gone.  His mother was a bird and his father was a star (No.  Really.), so anyone could tell you right off the bat he was destined for nothing but tragedy.  Which pans out nicely when his mother throws herself into the sea to protect one of the Silmarils (thus the bird thing), but I digress.  And then he and his brother Elros were kidnapped, and of course their kidnappers got fond of them eventually and let them go, but…um, yeah.  But then his brother and he are free, and all is well, and everything is copacetic–right up until he and his brother are given the choice of Luthien, to either remain immortal Elves or to choose the Fate of Men and die.

And here lies the point.  Elrond chooses to be counted among the Elves.  Elros, his twin brother, chooses the Fate of Men, and becomes the first High King of Numenor.  And Elrond lets him make that choice.

And then there’s Celebrian, the daughter of Galadriel.  So Elrond falls in love with her, as you do (and I firmly believe he makes a complete dork of himself because Elrond seems the type), and it’s all good, his parents are long gone (not dead, though) and he’s the Lord of Rivendell so he’s free to marry whomever he wants.  He and Celebrian are really legitimately happy for a few years, they have a set of twins (Elladan and Elrohir) and a daughter (Arwen), and then…everything goes entirely predictably to shit.  Celebrian gets captured by orcs and tortured horribly, and after her rescue she can’t recover.  So she chooses to go into the West where she’ll be able to heal, leaving her husband and her three children behind.

And Elrond lets her make that choice.

So flash forward.

You’re telling me that guy, who is willing to sacrifice his happiness for his loved ones and who knows what it feels like to lose them, is not only going to force his daughter, who he loves, to abandon the people she loves in Middle-Earth, but he’s going to lie to her to do it?

I think the fuck not.

Anonymous asked: About your Thranduil cartoon commentary, couldn't find if anyone had said so already, so if redundant pls ignore: But Dain II Ironfoot is of the line of Durin, and precedes Gimli in succession. Thorin and Dain share a great-grandfather, Dain I, while Balin, Dwalin, Oin, and Gloin are Dain I's brother's descendants.

and I am OFFENDED of course I know that I love dain, but like on the list of dain’s top five wishes all of them are ‘go home to the iron hills out of this drafty old mountain’, (six is ‘punch thorin oakenshield right in the nose for stranding him here in the first place’), (but then again not even the force of dain’s exasperation can bust through to the halls of Mahal so), so dain IS king of erebor…against his will is the point I’m making up there, he’s too noble and honorable to tell erebor to figure it out their own damn selves

Basically: yes, Dain Ironfoot is an Erebor king of the line of Erebor kings, descendant of Durin, this is not questioned by anyone ever.  But Dain wants to go back to His Damn Hills out of Thorin’s ex-dragon-infested mountain, but his cousin went and got his entire line killed before Dain could get out of range.  

You can bet your ass that the Erebor dwarves are very aware that their king is an Iron Hills dwarf to the core–they love Dain!  They do!  (So do I!)  And he does a great job as king!  He leads them successfully for many years!  

But they want him to be happy, because they care about him.  And they know that he looks up at the inside of his great arching throne room and goes out to the battlements to look down the rock face of the mountain, and he misses his home.  There’s a certain tragedy to a homesick king.

The point is that Dain is an Erebor king who longs for a home that isn’t his kingdom, and whose people know it.  And that’s not a reflection on his skills or his lineage, merely on the fact that he’s not an EREBOR KING in the way that, say, Thorin (who fought his way back to the Mountain for his entire life) was.

So now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I’d like to point out that there are two ways for Dain’s death in battle to pan out:

• He is interred in the stone halls of Erebor, a home not his own, and his son the Stonehelm is reminded, every time he pays homage to his father, that Dain is still not home.
  
• His people, who love the king who fought for them in the throne room all these years and died fighting for them still, make the pilgrimage to bury their king at home.
  

I do not know which of these I like better.

elidyce:

ashleynef:

simaethae:

so on the subject of stolen property, i’ve seen various arguments on this point but it is in fact true that inheriting something from a relative, when you know full well that it was stolen, does not make it yours.

this clearly goes doubly so for powerful magical artifacts, and especially for artifacts which are strongly implied to contain part of their creator’s soul!

you can talk about consequences - maybe the artifact in question has benefits for you, maybe you’re not convinced its rightful owners would use it responsibly - but talking about the consequences doesn’t erase the fact that whatever benefits you think you’re getting are achieved through wrongful means.

which is why i, too, think Frodo should have given the One Ring back to Sauron. thief.

Hahahahaha here comes the law student nerd ready to complicate your wonderful post, op.

(Really this is just pretext for me to study for my property final in a week, so thanks yeah)

Because according to the principles of common property law, the matter of who actually owns title to the One Ring becomes really complicated really fast.

Buckle up babes for the pedantic law lecture no one asked for.

(more under the cut)

Keep reading

This is superb.

@im-lost-but-not-gone