#mirkwood spiders

[mothdalf]

Tolkientober day 2: spiders

For today’s offering we have the web shrouded path through Mirkwood

[tathrin]

re: this post and @mirkwood-hr-department's tags:

#okay now ive decided that mirkwood has a tradition of spidersilk gowns #from spiders that the betrothed company hunted themselves #the more ornate the gowns the bigger the party because you made the forest that much safer #or you can split the work so one person does the spider killing and the other shows off their spinning and weaving skills

OH HELL YES. I love this so much.

[i-want-to-see-mountains-again]

The funny thing about this image is, most fans will be like, “Ah! Richard is so hot as Thorin!”🥰

And I’m over here like “Ha! Look at poor Mr. Brophy all covered in spider webs!”🤣

[chicotfp]

Because Legolas clearly got his skills from someone)

[silvantransthranduiltrash]

Legolas, responding to a request from the peredhel family to make some traditional silvan meals bc they’re curious: i don’t have the ingredients.

[imagine-all-the-elves]

Imagine killing spiders with Tauriel.

Author: @thatkgrl

Art source

[camille-lachenille]

Do you think Thranduil uses spider silk to make his shiny, spectacular robes? And maybe they have some special magic quality bc it’s giant Mirkwood spiders silk.

[melthehoneybee]

“Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins: Bravest Little Hobbit of Them All”

I was recently commissioned to draw the scene of Bilbo in Mirkwood. I took inspiration from the Rankin Bass Hobbit film for the spider designs and the Hobbit 2003 video game for Bilbo. This was such a challenge but so fun

[realtacuardach]

Headcanon: Legolas befriends or at least greatly respects all living creatures, from the tiniest ant to the largest oliphaunt. He hunts because he needs to and wounds sometimes when he has to, but never out of malice.

Except for spiders.

After fighting off giant spiders for as long as he's been able to defend himself with a bow, he is hyper vigilant and ready to throw down whenever he gets even the hint of a spider.

The catch being that, having lived his life in Mirkwood, he's never seen a spider smaller than a hobbit.

So the first time someone is startled by a spider on their trek, everyone is more startled when Legolas swoops in, arrow nocked and ready to slay a spider. He, for his part, is gobsmacked that it's so tiny.

This repeats a couple of times because while he's not exactly trigger-happy, centuries of battling very large, very angry spiders is pretty much ingrained in his muscle memory.

Suffice to say, he is the Most Impressed when he finds out after the War that Sam faced down Shelob, and is determined to drag him home for a feast in his honor.

[toasterdrake]

hunting

[weezlbot]

Tl;dr: Tauriel as a descendant of Feanor

The Feanorian troops are routed from Sirion. Finally. 

Elwing is gone. Earendil is gone. The little princes are taken, and even if they are not dead, they’re lost. Oropher coordinates clean-ups of the dead bodies. So many unmarked graves.

One of the dead is identified as the wife of Amras, the youngest Feanorian. She lies dead in a ditch, her neck crushed by a horse’s hoof, her dress torn and dirty...

... and a tiny screaming bundle still clutched in her rigor mortised arms. 

Oropher takes the infant, frigid, filthy and starving but otherwise unhurt. Against all odds, he finds a wet-nurse for the babe, cleans and warms him, and eventually gets him adopted by a friend of his. The friend names him Athaedil, 

Athaedil grows up into a fine young man. Tall and slim, with fiery red hair, freckles and a noble, extroverted disposition. He is never told about his real parents, and is raised Sindar. When he does eventually discover he’s adopted, he is told that his parentage is unknown--that his parents died nameless. Eventually, he moves with Oropher to the Greenwood and remains a friend of the family, Thranduil’s friend especially.

The Last Alliance happens. Oropher dies. Thranduil takes over as King. 

Athaedil marries a nice girl, a daughter of a powerful Silvan lord. He gives her the epesse of Fainladh, the White Tree, as she is tall and slim with thick, pure white hair. A few years later, she falls pregnant. Eventually, they have a little girl of their own.

Her name is Tauriel.

When Tauriel is still young, Athaedil and Fainladh are ambushed during a routine patrol. Thranduil hears the commotion and arrives, driving off the giant spiders, but he’s too late. Athaedil is critically injured. 

Thranduil orders the healers to focus on him, but Athaedil says it’s too late, and to focus on Fainladh, who is less injured and could still be saved. The healers group onto Fainladh and leave Athaedil with Thranduil.

Thranduil takes Athaedil in his arms, cradling him gently as he struggles for breath. Athaedil manages to creak out a “Take care of Tauriel” before he draws his final breath. 

Thranduil closes Athaedil’s eyes and they bury him snug in the roots of a large tree. Fainladh passes soon after from her own wounds, and she is laid by his side. 

Thranduil raises Tauriel as his own charge. He tells her she is Silvan, like her mother was. Tells her her father was the son of an old friend, adopted and of unknown heritage. He raises her in what he thinks is the “proper” way--Sindar for official business, Silvan for socializing with commoners and having fun at parties. If you asked Tauriel herself, she’d probably call herself Silvan. 

Thranduil’s worst fear is that Tauriel might someday find out who her real grandfather was. The Feanorians hang over Thranduil, specters of childhood fears, and he really, really wants to discourage any connections between his hot-headed, reckless charge and her kinslaying ancestors. 

Anyway, that’s why I think Tauriel is Like That. It’s in her blood. Her impulsivity, her hot-headedness, her willingness to solve problems with violence. Her red hair, when that’s such a rare trait. She’s Feanor’s great-granddaughter!

[tathrin]

Dead Faces In The Water, Dead Faces Everywhere

A response to this WIP Weekend game.

Ahh, my current obsession! Thank you so much for asking about it and coercing me into writing more (not that I've been doing much else lately anyway lmao) because it really is such fun. Again, I'm not sure whether or not we're supposed to share the bits we write because of this ask-thing, so in case we are here it is:

(tw: discussion of giant spiders that eat people)

"Okay, but the real question," Calim says, raising syā voice decisively, "is why you don't just exterminate the spiders then, if they're such a threat?"

"Exterminate them," Legolas cries. He flops back against his seat and looks back and forth between them in the mirror. "You mean…slay them all? Purge the forest of their entire species?"

"Well, yes," says Calim.

Gimli cannot deny that it is a good question. He had always thought that the elves of Mirkwood were incapable of such a feat, or else too flighty to contemplate it. But if they arrange for regular spider-culls to regulate the numbers of the beasts, then why not simply cull them all and be done with it?

Legolas looks horrified. "What, all of them? But that would be terrible. And for what reason, only that of our own comfort? No." He shakes his head again, very firmly. His thin braids flap around his narrow, beardless chin. "The forest is their home too."

"Forgive me," Calim says delicately, "but…if these spiders really do exist, then—unless I'm remembering the old histories all wrong—they aren't exactly natural inhabitants of your forest, are they…?"

Legolas blinks at essë. "I suppose they are not," he agrees, "if by that you mean that they were first born elsewhere, and migrated to Mirkwood many thousands of years ago—but you could say the same of the elves." He shrugs. "If the forest is our home—and it is—then it is no less the home of the spiders. It would be appalling for us to decide that we have more right to those trees than any of the other things that make their home there."

"Even the things that want to eat you?" Gimli cannot help asking.

"Many things in the forest eat each other," Legolas retorts primly. "Such is the way of nature. We elves do the same; does that make us evil?"

"Of course not," says Calim. "But…giant spiders…"

"They are as much a part of the ecosystem as any other creature," Legolas says stubbornly. "Without their predation, the bone-deer population for one would get quickly out of hand, resulting in such an increase in numbers that they would soon denude every trunk within reach of its bark, and all the low-lying leaves and underbrush as well. Not to mention how our domesticated spiders would soon fall to inbreeding and disease without being able to cross their lines periodically with their wild cousins."

"You—what?" Gimli sputters. "You breed the things?"

Legolas slides forward, folding his elbows over the center console and tilting his head sideways to look up at Gimli beside him. "We do gather wild spidersilk too, of course," he says, "but at least half of the silk we weave comes from our spider-pastures, yes."

Gimli looks at Calim. Calim looks back. Despite the fact that essë has no beard on syā colorfully painted face, the look of subdued horror resting on those smooth, slim features feels very familiar to Gimli in this moment.

"Oh," is all Gimli can think to say.

"They truly are not such a danger," Legolas insists, twisting his spine somehow so that he can look back and forth between them without rising from his cramped sprawl between the seats. "No elf of Mirkwood would be foolish enough to go into spider-territory haplessly, and we know how to deal with and protect ourselves from their webs and their hunger. It has been many hundreds of years since any spider succeeded in hunting and eating an elf—which is more than the spiders can say about us!"

Calim opens syā mouth. Gimli says, very quickly before se can speak and ask a question that Gimli's stomach cannot bear to hear the answer to, "All right! But I still don't believe that your silk shirts can magically repair themselves when they tear."

"Of course it is not magic," Legolas says dismissively. "Who said anything about magic?" He tosses his head and sits back, and Gimli fears that he has somehow, finally, insulted the elf. He draws a breath to make some apology but before he can, Legolas draws his long knife and slashes it at his own wrist.

Gimli shouts. Calim yelps in shock and nearly drives them off the road. Gimli shouts again—and Legolas shoves his arm forward between the seats.

"Watch," he commands. Gimli could not have taken his eyes from that thin brown wrist if a dragon had been roaring at him from the other side of the road, but there is no blood on Legolas's skin—just a thin, small slice in the pale fabric of Legolas's sleeve, a hole no longer than the length of Gimli's little finger.

Legolas reaches forward with the fingers of his other hand and pinches the cloth on either side of the hole. He twitches his fingers in some small, complicated little gesture that Gimli's eyes cannot quite follow, bunching the shimmering fabric up—and then when he lets go, Gimli can see that there are strands of cloth already stretching across the hole, drawing it back together again.

The dwarf's jaw drops. Beside him, he hears Calim give a strangled gasp of surprise.

"It will take a few more twists before enough fibers interlace to close the slice completely," Legolas tells them, "and some days after that before the weave settles tight enough to hide the scar, but." He gives his arm a little shake, making the sleeve flutter. "As you see, the fabric does indeed recover itself."

Gimli cannot seem to find any words. He manages an inarticulate grunting sort of acknowledgement of Legolas's demonstration, but that is all he can muster.

Calim has no such trouble. "That's amazing!" se cries.

[i-want-to-see-mountains-again]

Which do you think is scarier, the CGI spiders or the traditionally animated ones?

Personally I find the traditionally animated ones more disturbing because they’re more monster than animal. The CGI ones are just like real spiders only bigger and I’ve never been afraid of those.🤷🏻‍♀️🕷❤️

[cassandrablah]

It's so annoying to try and write an AU for a fan fiction cause a part of me wants to go along with the plot of the movie/show as closely as possible because its what I'm familiar with, but on the other hand I want to completely blast the audience with something original that I may as well write something original to dull the pain of wanting to one up myself

[jo-does-things]

This has nothing to do with anything but I do occasionally think about how CS Lewis's world is so focused on the East we have a tonne of lore and maps between Narnia and the east end of the world and then to the West its just.... Forest and mountain I guess???? BUT then Tolkeins world everything faces West. From Erebor West to the end of the world is mapped and we know language groups and lore... and then the East is just.... Desert and forest I guess?? I wonder if they ever had discussions about their worlds being connected in their writing group. Personally I think the Blue Wizards wound up in the Ettinmoors and got eaten by those fucking giants from The Silver Chair.

[gotham-at-nightfall]

Thorin's Company face the spiders of Mirkwood!

The Hobbit: A Graphic Novel