legolasoflasgalen

[legolasoflasgalen]

legolas seems like a collector to me. he feels like the type to pick things up and pocket them for later, especially things that remind him of his friends. rocks for gimli, feathers for frodo etc

[legolasoflasgalen]

do you think legolas instinctively collected different leaves and berries to decorate thranduil's crown with as the seasons changed forgetting that he wasn't able to give them to him because he was on the quest

[legolasoflasgalen]

hot take: Pippin is the only one of the hobbits who is ‘team Arwen’ in the ‘who is the most beautiful woman in the world’ argument

[legolasoflasgalen]

get in loser we’re living past the end of our myth

[legolasoflasgalen]

The funniest part of the LOTR movies is Legolas. This man has like five lines total across all three movies but sometimes they'll zero in on his face during a big scene and he's having the BEST reactions. It gets better when he's in the back of a shot judging everyone around him. Orlando Bloom was doing the MOST

[legolasoflasgalen]

Ilúvatar and Ainulindalë

Valar

The Two Trees of Valinor

Thingol and Melian

Ulmo, Ossë and Tol Eressëa

Fëanor and The Silmarils

The Flight of the Noldor

Maedhros and Fingon

The Fall of Fingolfin

Beren and Lúthien

Art by Wavesheep. Part I | Part II | Part III.

[legolasoflasgalen]

Things I headcanon happens to half-elves (but we are using Elrond as the subject of this post)

Yawning. When Elrond was new to Lindon, Gil-Galad kept thinking his charge was threatening him by baring his teeth.

Illness. I mean there's an entire subsection of ao3 dedicated to Elrond being ill so...

Sneezing from high pollen. It doesn't affect him as he gets older, but when he was young he sneezed in the middle of a ceremony and half of the elves nearly fell off the cliff.

Teeth chattering. Galadriel asked the young half-elf once why he was biting at speed. It was a very confusing half an hour.

Snoring. Gil-Galad had him admitted to the Healers, thinking he had a severe chest infection. Círdan found it very funny.

Pulling faces. This is one exclusive to Elrond as Elros, being the leader of a kingdom of Men, learnt the habit and would stick his tongue out at Elrond, who picked up the action. It resulted in many bemused looks over the years from Elves, so Elrond had to remind himself not to do it. When his brother passed, anytime Galadriel managed to make him smile, she would poke her tongue out at him and his smile would grow ten fold.

Daydreaming. Elves do not daydream, they do not lose themselves in imagination once grown. But occasionally Elrond sported a far-off look.

Bone cracking. Elrond's elbow clicks occasionally and his knees crunch when he crouches. Often, the elves around him are startled and enquire after his health. Elrond was very surprised to hear no one else's joints did that. When he was younger, he would crack his knuckles to make Galadriel shudder, it seemed to make her squeamish.

Laughing. Elrond snorts when he laughs. There is a rumour that Galadriel does the same if you make her laugh hard enough.

Ticklish. Elrond is terribly ticklish in his side and on his neck. Elros used to enjoy poking him in the rib during serious conversations, to see if his twin would jolt and giggle.

[legolasoflasgalen]

Looking back on it now, I think that one of the strangest things about The Lord of the Rings is that either 

Aragorn and Legolas managed to compose an absolutely epic lament for Boromir in the time it took to get Boromir’s body down to the river and arranged all nicely in the boat, 

or Aragon just started singing on the spur of the moment and Legolas took over for the second verse while Aragorn quickly made up the third. 

That’s some Cyrano de Bergerac wizardry right there.

[legolasoflasgalen]

Legolas chilling under the sun

[legolasoflasgalen]

Do you ever lie awake wondering how the heck Gimli knows what a nervous system is

[legolasoflasgalen]

Boromir Lives AU: Panic! At the Ballroom

Got some new soup for you.

CW! PTSD, panic attack, crowds, physical violence, blood, smoking

It's, uh, less cute soup than some of the others.

The last panel is a nod to when I was having regular panic attacks a few years ago, and the only thing that helped was lying on the floor, the colder and harder the better. At night I would lie in bed and feel like I was drowning in the blankets, until finally I'd move to the bare floor, sometimes with weight on my back, until I eventually fell asleep.

Anyway! Surprisingly this actually came from a very happy and lovely fic in which Boromir has a delightful time; in writing a crowd scene, though, I figured having spent 40+ years training to die in battle, he'd never shake the PTSD. It's okay, Aragorn can spot it coming a mile away. Hard to prep for a crushed windpipe delivered by 250 pounds of war trauma, though. Happy Thursday!

Boromir Lives: Helm's Deep

Boromir Lives: Whump-Time After Pelennor

Boromir Lives: GO TO SLEEP

Boromir Lives: Aragorn's Coronation

Boromir Lives: Faramir and Eowyn's Wedding

Boromir Lives: It's a BABY

Boromir Lives: High Uncle of the White Tower

Boromir Lives: We Didn't Have a Choice

Boromir Lives: The Haircuts

[legolasoflasgalen]

PETER JACKSON PLEASE GIVE US THIS SCENE. WE NEED IT 😭

[legolasoflasgalen]

… I feel like I might be in the minority in this but I don’t take book Legolas’s cheerfulness at 100% face value. I think that guy has experienced loss (whether it’s friends and fellow fighters or his mother etc.,) I think he’s seen so much darkness and violence it would a blow a mortal’s mind. It’s not that I think he’s NOT happy or cheeky. It’s just that I think it’s at least partly a coping mechanism, which is largely cultural.

We know from the Hobbit that the Silvan elves party around a bonfire in the middle of a forest infested with giant, eldritch spiders; a forest that is suffering from a blight that is, in fact, the embodied evil of a wounded, bitter, hateful Sauron holed up in Dol Guldur. I imagine them dancing in spite of this - they’re dancing in its face.

‘No matter how many of us you kill, we will never succumb to this hopelessness and hate! We will survive you! Our beloved forest will survive you!’

I see that spirit of defiance against hopelessness in Legolas. He’s that soldier on the team who comes up with a joke to keep everyone’s spirits up. His company, on the most critical quest taken in millennia, is dying on the side of freezing mountain and he’s off walking on snow, teasing his silly mortal buddies for being stuck in a drift. And, it’s written as kind of lighthearted but - isn’t the body counting game with Gimli macabre? Isn’t that dark af? How desensitized to killing and death do you have to be to be able to kill creatures, no matter how foul, and go ‘LOLZ my buddy how many lives you end tonight?’

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel any of it. I think he very much feels it. Why, in Lothlorien is he unwilling to sing the end of the song of Nimrodel? Because it’s too sad. A person who is purely joyful, who has never known sorrow, probably would just sing the whole song. But Legolas doesn’t want to sing the sad part, because he knows sadness and he’s determined to keep the mood from falling. He knows how important that is for himself and his friends.

Despite being young for an elf, we know from his comments in Fangorn that he is very much aware of his age relative to his companions. He’s happy to let Aragorn take the more obvious leadership, but I think Legolas is doing some leading by example. He repeatedly stops to observe things, trying to understand the truth of them. When he’s provided with new information he changes his mind - crossing a famously bitter divide between his people and the dwarves. That’s a mature thing to be able to do.

Plus, I think his extreme sense of loyalty speaks to some loss as well. Legolas is the definition of ride or die. He resists the call of the sea until Aragorn dies, then takes Gimli with him to Valinor. (I’m pretty sure if Gimli had been unwilling to go, Legolas would have stayed until he died as well.)

The books say nothing about his mother, but I know it’s been accepted by a lot of people. I’m including it in my story myself. I see it: Legolas knows you keep your people close while you have them. You stay with them until the bitter end - and then you find way to keep moving forward. He could get to that place by other means, but I think ‘his mother died’ is at least plausible.

Finally, the end of his story is imbued with some of the melancholy of the end of the elves' time in Middle-earth. He and Gimli famously discuss the ways of humans, who will outlast both their people and inherit the world. It’s a changing of the guard on an epic scale and an enormous personal transition for him as well. After thousands of years, he’s finally leaving his beloved forest behind to go into the West and face what the rest of the days of Arda have in store for him and his people.

So… yeah, I think I write Legolas a bit darker and a bit sadder than many people do, but it makes sense to me.

[legolasoflasgalen]

forever mad that legolas in pj's trilogies was watered down to basic stereotypical mysterious stoic slightly confused brooding blonde elf instead of the whimsical quippy silly guy we see in the books who jokes about grabbing the sun from the sky to warm his mortal friends and screams when he sees a balrog :/

[legolasoflasgalen]

i know it was a very 2000s feminism girlboss movie addition but you have to love arwen drawing her sword at the river and telling the witch king to come over and claim frodo if he wants him so bad. truly the high fantasy equivalent of yelling “come say that on my side of the street motherfucker”. the spirit of luthien tinuviel was alive within her in that moment.

[legolasoflasgalen]

Processing existential anxiety one painting at a time.

[legolasoflasgalen]

citation: so said Legolas