Wandering Child

This Ring quest will have two hobbits. Maximum.

Then they all get to Rivendell and have somehow multiplied into four hobbits. And it's like. Okay. Maybe the others are right.

Maybe this is too many hobbits.

We have as many hobbits as we have not-hobbits.

But damn it, you just don't want to get rid of any of these hobbits. Screw it! Everyone can deal. Four hobbits. This is a four hobbits problem.

So away you go.

And things go bad in the worst possible way.

Over and over.

You've lost your hobbits. You've lost yourself. The fellowship has been separated.

It takes everything in your power to help the humans defend themselves, bringing them together to save Rohan. Finally, as things begin to look upright, you're ready to face the war with everything the Rohirrim have left.

You're ready to face him. This may be the hardest battle you've ever fought. But you ride.

Then you get there and two of your fucking hobbits are sitting there like "Yeah, while you were gone, we raised a tree army and beat Saruman's ass. Wanna help us loot his tower?"

....

There were not, in fact, too many hobbits.

I forget where I read it, but I'm pretty sure that at some point there were millions of elves on Middle-earth, and by the end of the third age, it's down to a few thousand, aka a very small portion. These are the elves that got told way back in the first age, "Hey, just so you guys know, you're totally welcome to come back and live in heaven now without any worries" and responded, "No thanks, we're good!" and then proceeded to not only hold to that but survived the next 7.000 years of bullshit including but not limited to:

Multiple continents sinking into the sea

orcs

dragons

balrogs

multiple wars with Sauron, a literal divine being

The rise and fall of several human empires

more orcs

wargs

a bunch of their territory being overtaken and burned to the ground

And all of their loved ones either dying or sailing, even though we know that grief can and will kill an elf

Like, you can't tell me that third age elves start showing up in the undying lands, where everyone has spent the last few thousand years basking in the magical equivilant of free therapy and probably have as many defence measures as a suburban coldesac, and aren't viewed as the most feral, twitchy, paranoid mother fuckers; held together by suspicion, stubornness, and at least 25 contingencies for every situation they've collectively encountered during their time in Middle-earth.

My favorite examples of feral, hyper-vigilant behavior include:

Elrond: Security clearance; sure, Turgon may have threatened to kill anyone who tried to leave his hidden city, but he also took an entire army out of and back to the city at once, and then also didn't realize that his own nephew snitched on where the city was. His security protocols sucked. Meanwhile, Elrond had hundreds of strangers coming in and out of Rivendell for over 3,000 years, at one point completely surrounded by enemies and full of nothing but a bunch of refugees, and Sauron still never found it. You can't tell me that he didn't have at least 25 security checkpoints on the way into his city(sorry, house-that means it's private property, right?), even if you didn't know they were there.

Galadriel: Paranoia; This woman was magically keeping track of everyone she knew and even did it often enought that she knew what to look for of those she couldn't directly track (gandalf) and looking into their minds and testing them. All while having Sauron constantly clawing at the walls of her mind, at least for a few years

Thranduil: Spite; it was basically only his sheer audacity holding his nuclear bunker- cough cough- sorry, I meant vast underground halls together, while his next-door neighbor was some cursed ruins, a dragon-infested dwarf kingdom, and evil, man-eating, car-sized spiders on his front lawn.

Haldir: he blindfolded the fellowship when they tried to enter his city (super secret hideout), need I say more?

Multiple examples of groups of elves jumping out of trees fully armed and ambushing anyone who wanders into their territory. And while the characters seem surprised to be ambushed, they don't seem surprised that elves ambush people in general, leading me to believe this is normal behavior.

Gandalf. Who has been to Rivendell a shitton of times, probably. Gandalf struggled to fimd his way in.

And in LotR, Elrond clearly controls Bruinen in a way to deter intruders

The siege of Rivendell by Witch-King's armies during wars with Angmar lasted 50 years. Rivendell is a house, not a fortress, and it lasted half a century.

richard armitage's audition for thorin oakenshield in peter jackson's the hobbit trilogy.

Gelmir is brought to the front lines from Angband already having lost his eyes or his vision during his captivity, such a disturbing detail in itself. We don’t need a detailed description of how this happened to create a deeply unpleasant picture; as disturbing as the more explicitly gruesome nature of the scene is Tolkien’s habit of leaving the worst up to the imagination. It creates a chilling combination

The herald who has come to the front boasts “we have many more such at home, but you must make haste if you would find them, for we shall deal with them all when we return even so.”

Then, in a shocking spectacle, his limbs are cut off and he is left to bleed out

Gelmir spends his last terrifying moments among his captors and tormentors while still in view of his people and his brother, who of course he cannot see. He dies in sight of what might have once been hope, with no comfort or mercy and barely anyone left alive to even mourn his brutal end.

And Gwindor soon will be trapped in the same caverns, experiencing the same horrors his brother did, giving new agony to his death. Perhaps Gwindor even meets prisoners who knew Gelmir

And this is no longer a new tragedy for the Noldor (and it never has for the elves who stayed in Beleriand). Many among their number has loved ones taken captive or who vanished and were beloved, hoped to be dead rather than the alternative. Gwindor might not be the only one there who has an imprisoned sibling, parent, or other loved one

Sam: From the first days I can remember, I knew that my dad was going to raise me to be the best gardener in all the Shire.

Sam: How about you, Mr. Legolas? Did your father raise you to be any certain way?

Legolas, while gently helping an injured Dragonfly off the ground: Terrifying.

Pippin: Come again?

*Legolas picks up the spear Aragorn had just set aside in frustration at not being able to catch a single fish for almost an hour, and throws it up stream without half a glance*

Legolas, watching as Aragorn waits for the spear to float back down stream to him: My father raised me to be able to enter almost any situation and be the most terrfying thing around for miles.

Pippin, staring in shock at the massive fish attached to the other end of the spear: Tell him that he did a splendid job.

HoMe is truly a treasure to read, because what do you mean you can find such comedy in a linguistic essay??

Imagine being the only Elf in Valinor interested enough to actually put effort into learning the language of the Gods, becoming the most fluent in it, only to then refuse to share your knowledge with anyone on principle.

What if Aragorn introducing Legolas as "Legolas, of the Woodland Realm" is a habit he developed because when they were travelling together in the past, when people realised that Legolas was a Prince, they usually tried to kidnap him for ransom

0 dubai chocolate ingested

0 labubus bought

It feels like a million years since the last time I saw st related to Viggo on Orlando ins. The first impression is that everyone looking at the camera and Vig look fondly at Orli (or just my imagination + terrible eye sight). Second impression is that this kinda look like it comes straight from some AI program (sorry I lost my fate but 😭)

Anyway, seeing st like this from Orlando after a long long longgggg time is really something for me. Can't deduce yet what that feeling is, but I guess it's a mix of "OMG my OTP live, they are real im not" and "OMG is that mean Orlando gonna come back as Legolas with AI help?"

Frankly speaking Im terrified...