212th As Bizarre T Shirts

yeah same here

Y'all the worldbuilding is getting intense rn, I'm having so many thoughts, because Elrond is a mosaic of dozens of different people, so many facets and multitudes, and different people see different things in him. People see his starry grey eyes and dark hair and hear his Voice and think of Lúthien, think of Maglor. They see his braids and attribute it to Turgon’s preference for traditional styles rather than that well-known Fëanorian obsession. His gracious courtly manners are from Melian or Idril, though clearly taught by Maedhros, who learned from Finwë. His skills and wisdom and bearing are clearly passed down from any or all of the 20+ different kings, queens, lords and princesses he is associated with. He dances like Lúthien and Idril. He is as courageous as Fingon and Beren and Eärendil, as fierce in battle as Fingolfin and Maedhros and, Eru forbid, Fëanor. He speaks archaic Quenya, just like the Gondolindrim, if only one ignores the Fëanorian accent. His giggle is Elwing’s, birdlike and odd; his laugh is rich and merry like Finwë’s; that half-despairing chuckle is Beren’s; the endearingly awkward titter is Finarfin’s; the exhilarated whoop is Fingon’s; the manic mid-battle cackle is Fëanor through and through. He fights left-handed like Eärendil and Maedhros, plays the harp right-handed like Fingon and Finrod and Maglor; he can write with either hand, producing a spindly scrawl with his left (so like Maedhros, so like Elwing) and authoritative calligraphy with his right (so like Fëanor, so like Thingol). His eyes are the chasm of the heavens - he gets that from Melian - but did Maeglin not also inherit his piercing gaze from Aredhel? He has his father’s jaw and his mother’s hair, or was it Turgon’’s jaw and Finwë’s hair, or maybe those angular bones came from fair Nimloth and the little flick of a curl at his temple from Beren. In certain lights he’s the spitting image of Thingol - or was it Fingolfin? The tilt of his wrist is as bird-like and fragile as Dior’s, as graceful and deliberate as Idril’s. His cheeks dimple when he smiles, just like Fingon, and his eyes crease when his face softens with fondness, just like Tuor, who looks little like Haleth but in moments like this. When he’s concentrating, the furrow of his brow is Thingol’s and the lip between his teeth is Beren’s, who took after Bëor. That eyebrow raise brings to mind 15 different people, all of them dead. One may look at Elrond and see a lost loved one in his profile, until the light shifts just slightly and he becomes the one who killed them, before he turns his head just so and suddenly looks like a complete stranger. Elrond is a Silmaril of ghosts, each facet a memory, love and terror and awe and joy and grief reflected and refracted upon one another again and again, radiant, hypnotic, infinite.

Literally nobody asked but i feel the need to explain.

There are 6 named Avari peoples, much like the Noldor, Vanyar and Sindar. The one that lives the furthest north are the Hwenti. Before it's destruction at the end of the first age, the Hwenti have a duty to guard Middle Earth against the things that crawl out of ruined Utumno.

Erestor was not born into the Hwenti people but is absolutely considered one of them once he takes up this duty. He's part of the branch that defends the Western Arctic of First Age Middle Earth... right near the Helcaraxë.

One fine... well the sun hasn't risen yet so it's not a day... anyway, he leaves the camp to keep watch for wargs and catch some fish.

He returns completely baffled with 2,000 starving doomed Noldor and absolutely no idea who they are or what they're doing here, except that they maybe escaped the Far God's Land?? But don't seem to know how to make functional coats or navigate the ice floes??

His unflappable CO, bless her heart and patience, goes "well, they aren't fish, that's for damn sure" and it catches on!

Fingolfin's Noldor are hitherto jokingly referred to as the Fish People - a gag which grows in infamy as the Noldor proceed to set fire to Beleriand - and with the joke goes the story of the poor Hwenti fuck who went out to get fish and came back with the Tyrants of the West. Poor guy. Poor, stupid guy. What a legend.

It becomes a general catch-all phrase for stupid shenanigans and stupid people: like kitchen maid no. 1 goes "hey, did you hear that the Empress' second son is secretly engaged to the rebel leader trying to depose her??? It's scandalous!!" and kitchen maid no. 2 goes "wow! and do you also believe that the Noldor are fish?? because that's absolute bullshit!" - and general 1. says to general 2. "we could attempt that defensive manoeuvre, if we felt like catching Noldor instead of fish and causing a massacre instead of covering our retreat" - tailor unimpressed by assistant acquiring 100 bolts of pomegranate satin when he specifically requested carmine silk; assistant defends herself by saying "well at least it's not 100 Noldor - we can still make this work!" - Silvan soldier at the Last Alliance, with a grand gesture towards the Noldorin Armies, lisps "look at all those fishes!"

Anyways, Legolas meets Erestor and sure it's cool and all that he's Lord Elrond's Chief Councellor but uh. The Silvan are a cultural fusion of Sindar and Penni (another Avari group) so of course he's heard the Noldor are Fish Gag, and of course he knows all about the Hwenti guy who went out for fish and came back with the Doomed Hosts of the Noldor. It's like if you met the 'What The Fuck Richard' guy and he's somehow the Vice President of Switzerland sending you on a top secret mission to destroy Russia's nuke codes?? Like ok sure this is important but consider: I Know What You Are

Elrond: And this is my Chief Councellor, Erestor. He is 8000 years old, and very wise and venerable. I trust him with my life. Legolas, Silvan, knows all the shit that his guy did: Oh, the Fish Guy! Hey! ヾ(＾ ∇ ＾) Erestor, the Fish Guy: ... hello

In fics, people often use the Quenya for adult male/female: 'the nér did this' or 'the nís said that' which is... fine, I guess? Tolkein did use them in some of his translations to mean man/woman in a non-species-specific kind of way... and this is completely irrational but to me it still sometimes comes across as directly calling someone a 'male' or a 'female'... like, technically, yes? But also wtf?

Anyway. Sindarin doesn't have a clear equivalent that I can see...

(Also nís is sometimes níssë - still singular, means exactly the same thing, idfk why)

Can 2025 maybe be the year we as a fandom finally stop using the term 'she-elf', which was invented for the Jackson movies and comes across as intentionally derogatory?

Tolkien himself referred to female elves as 'women' or 'elven-women' or similar.

a silmkinkmeme prompt:

Silmarillion Kinkmeme prompt by Anonymous: Adar/Elrond - First Time Enjoying Sex is Dubcon. (RoP, Explicit, M/M, creator chose not to use archive warnings, no particular DNW for Elrond’s past relationships.) Elrond’s only ever been with lovers who are at best selfish and at worst abusive. Every time he’s had sex, it’s been painful. He had nothing to compare it to, he assumes this is just how it was supposed to be. When Adar takes him prisoner and makes it clear sex will earn Elrond better treatment, Elrond expects it to be even worse than he’s used to. But Adar treats him gently and makes it physically pleasurable. (Bonus if Elrond says something that makes Adar realise all this and Adar is disturbed. Because he knows he’s not a good person, and he knows that it’s wrong to use Elrond’s position to coerce him into sex… so wtf is wrong with the elves for treating Elrond worse than the Lord Father of the Uruks?)

I really like this one, which is bizarre because I. haven't gotten round to actually. watching? RoP? Like I've read To Partake (x) and a handful of Adarond fics but in general I have absolutely no idea what I'm taking about. I'm not sure anything I write will turn out like anon wanted because I'm basically an illiterate three year old waving around someone else's action figures but I'm guaranteed to have a great time so let's do it.

As with all things, let's start with tequila orange juice and gratuitous world building, and we'll see where we end up!

my roomkey stopped working in the middle of my midnight snack run to the flat kitchen, so guess who had to march two blocks down to site security at 2am in fucking January, -5C, in fucking ankle socks and t shirt?????

anyways currently googling frostbite symptoms because i cant feel my feet. if i die tell my parents i love them and my brothers to get fucked

Me: that "younger man" vibe tho... Me: *is 18 years old* Me:...right well I guess we have that to look FORWARD to in 20 YEARS TIME

@frenchkey gave me the prompt 'getting the blood out' last night and I turned it into CodyWan angst

He shouldn't have taken it. It wasn't his to take, and had been abandoned as unimportant. It was just cloth, after all; empty and useless and bloodstained.

Bloodstained. Because Obi... Because General Kenobi had helped a wounded soldier to their transport before the Sith had attacked, and the General had discarded his cloak in order to give chase. There was no reason for Cody to have retrieved it, and less reason to have kept it, rather than returning it to its rightful owner.

The bloodstains bothered him, though. It seemed... rude to return the cloak in its dirtied state. So he'd kept it.

The fabric was soft under his fingers, well worn and thick enough to provide protection from the elements for a wide range of human and near-human species.

For a wild moment, Cody felt the urge to slide the garment over his shoulders and feel the weight of it falling into place, to feel a sensation that was so familiar to his General. He gave himself a mental kick in the shebs to move on from the urge, rather than do something so ridiculous as try on a Jedi's robes.

Instead, he moved to the 'fresher, glad that, as Marshall Commander, he was afforded his own berth with attached cleaning facilities. He had everything needed at hand to remove blood from clothing, though he usually sent his blacks to the laundry rather than washing them himself, regardless of their state. It wasn't as though his blacks were any different from anyone else's, so he was hardly worried about them getting mixed up in the wash.

The cloak held onto the dried-in blood more stubbornly than Cody's blacks ever had, crafted more with the intent to be sturdy and long lasting than with consideration for the number of bodily fluids likely to soil the fabric. Still, Cody was patient, refusing to devolve into frustrated scrubbing and risk damaging the cloak.

It felt almost soothing to work the flakes of blood out of the weave, and while the harsh scent of chemicals stung at Cody's nose, he found great satisfaction in the results of his work.

He hung the garment up to dry, resolving to bring it to General Kenobi in the morning.

His berth seemed cold when he finally made it back, though Cody was sure that the cause was entirely emotional.

They'd been betrayed. The Jedi had turned on the Republic; tried to murder the Chancellor. He couldn't understand what would drive them to such an act. Obi-Wan had always spoken of a desire for peace, for an end to the war and senseless killing. Why would the Jedi - why would Obi-Wan - then try to undermine the Republic in such a way? Had it all been a lie from the start?

Who would fight for the clones, now that the Jedi had turned traitor? They'd been among the few to treat the clones as anything more than droids made of flesh and bone, and that made the betrayal sting deeper. How could Obi-Wan abandon them like that? How could he leave them to face a galaxy that saw them as unthinking, unfeeling tools? How could he leave Cody?

Buried at the very bottom of his footlocker, under his spare blacks and his dress greys, Cody withdrew a bundle of brown fabric, worn soft and still smelling faintly of tea and cleaning chemicals. He'd never had a chance to return the cloak, having been thrown into an ambush before the ship's night cycle was over, and then running from one engagement to the next until it had seemed far too awkward to reveal he'd had the cloak the entire time, and Obi-Wan had soon requisitioned a replacement, leaving Cody to hide the original away.

He should have thrown it away long ago. There was no good reason to have kept it at all, and yet...

The fabric felt warm as it settled around his shoulders, the scent of Obi-Wan's favourite tea mingling with the ozone smell off blasters and lightsabers. Cody's eyes began to burn, and he lowered himself to his cot, wrapping the voluminous folds of the cloak around himself like a youngling in a blanket, swaddled safely by a parent.

Obi-Wan was gone.

Cody had killed him.

Traitor or not, Cody had killed the first and only natborn to call him a friend. Obi-Wan was his friend, and he'd betrayed everything they had fought for, everything they had sacrificed and bled for, and so Cody had been made to do the unthinkable.

Lifting one overlong sleeve to his mouth to muffle his sobs, Cody fell apart, tears soaking the fabric in a matter of moments as he shook with the force of his grief. Obi-Wan was dead, and Cody had killed him, and now he would never have a chance to beg for answers, never know why Obi-Wan had chosen to betray the Republic.

He fell asleep still wrapped in the cloak, unable to bring himself to forgo the comfort of one last embrace from the man he'd called his friend.

Can i share something that happened to me last year

I'm minding my own business and this guy who I kind of know but wouldn't really consider myself friends with (trauma bonded on a school trip last year and haven't spoken since) comes up to me like hey, what are you doing? And I say: world-building the ancient history of Lord of the Rings. And then I proceed to tell him all about the various genocides of the first age, with a side note on Maedhros' Quenya name, which literally means 'the hot redhead who's third in line for the throne', with his mother name meaning 'hot damn', his father name meaning 'third of the king's name' and his nickname meaning 'redhead'. Then I explain that loads of elves get nicknames, like Gil-Galad and other people who I can't remember.

And he goes cool, can I have an elvish nickname? And I say sure, what do you want it to mean?

And he goes: big daddy

and I don't know what's more embarrassing: a) he thought that, b) he asked that, or c) I could translate that off the top of my head.