to darkness and ruin

support:

she was particularly friends with Celegorm, so it's reasonable to conclude that she, too, was a hunter. stealth is a valuable skill for a hunter.

why did a woman who grew so impatient with Gondolin that she badgered her brother for years into letting her leave, and then slipped away from the escort he insisted upon, even move to such a secret city in the first place? Because she's the one who helped hide it in the first place

seriously, someone in the building of Gondolin must've been an expert at concealment spells. Even with Ulmo's blessing, you simply can't build and move en masse to an entire city without anyone finding out where it is without serious juju. why not Aredhel?

Turgon let his sister leave Gondolin on vacation when he never let anyone else go not out of weakness to the pleas of family, but because he knew that if Aredhel didn't want Morgoth or his spies to see or track her, they fucking wouldn't see or track her - and if they could, Gondolin's hope of secrecy was lost anyway.

alas that Eol was even better at it than she was (maybe this intrigued her at first. maybe there was delighted hide-and-seek beneath the dark trees before there was only hiding)

it is bad

it is so bad

and anyone who has ever hemmed and hawed over whether or not diversity has a place in tolkien’s works, or what that place should be, or which characters should be allowed to exhibit diversity, is aligning themselves, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, with the worst of that racism and sexism

going around reminding people that tolkien probably intended all of his heroic characters to be read as white europeans, and thus anyone who interprets them differently, regardless of how little description we’re given in canon, is going against the intention of the text is directly handing ammunition to white supremacists 

there is no legitimate reason to debate the canonicity of an artist’s character designs in terms of race or gender expression

that kind of argument, regardless of its framing or its original intention, is only ever going to be used to push an agenda of white supremacy within and outside of the fandom

if you believe whole-heartedly in defending tolkien’s original vision and the intentions behind his works then spend your time on his ideals of simple living, of anti-aggression, of restoring nature, of hope in dark times

I think the ideal response to ‘this is what Tolkien intended’ in regards to race is to say 'Yes, and that is why it is incumbent on anyone who is reinterpreting Tolkien’s work, both licensed and unlicensed, to combat and undermine the white supremacy in the text when creating.’

I totally agree that if you want to combat white supremacy you should certainly not be telling artists or anyone else who’s working to reimagine the heroes and people of middle earth as POC that their depictions are inaccurate.

“I was saying—oh, that tickles, Russo, stop it—I was saying, I told him there was no one in all of Tirion who would care about a treatise about the angulature of—Russo, I can’t focus if you—”

But Maitimo did not care about the story: he had long since been distracted by Findekáno’s hand on his chin, his arm curled around his back, and if he interrupted the sweet cadence of Findekáno’s voice with a few ticklish caresses, it was well worth his surprised laughter as Maitimo snuggled closer to the gentle, comforting warmth of his melotorno’s fëa.

kano about to tell nelyo news that he knows is going to ruin his day