ok so, for people who have seen the LOTR films but not read the book I’d like to share some things that are 100% canon:
– Sam Gamgee uses the word ‘boner’. In a song. Several times.
– he also writes a poem that contains the phrase ‘golden showers’. (this is actually in the extended cut but they changed it to ‘silver showers’)
– at one point after he’s defeated Saruman steals Merry’s weed & runs away
– Denethor has actual mindreading powers
– so does Faramir (but he’s a nice person so they manifest more as heightened empathy)
– Gandalf ALSO has mindreading powers but for entirely different reasons. he reads Frodo’s mind while he’s sleeping at one point, casually reveals this to Frodo, and Frodo’s just like ‘huh neat’
– rather than bravely drawing the orcs away from Frodo like in the film, in the book Merry and Pippin just kind of, panic, bolt into the woods, and run directly into the orcs’ arms.
– Merry then draws his sword and hacks a bunch of orc hands off
– Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli name themselves ‘the three hunters’ before setting off to rescue Merry and Pippin because they are dorks
– they also improvise a whole song about how much they loved Boromir
– Aragorn does not initially tell the hobbits he’s a friend of Gandalf bcos he wanted them to like him for who he is. im not kidding. he openly admits to this.
– i feel like this is fairly well known but, if you didn’t know Frodo is 50 years old and looks 33
– hobbits PROBABLY age different to humans so looking 33 in practice means he looks about 21
– in accordance with the above Pippin is the equivalent of a 16-17 year old human
– Pippin can pass for a human child and looks like ‘a boy of nine summers’
– this isn’t that weird i just think it’s really cute: Pippin has 3 older sisters and their names are Pearl, Pimpernel and Pervinca.
– Sam & Rosie have 13 children. One of them is called Goldilocks.
– Frodo has another best friend. His name is Fatty. He stayed behind in the Shire to cover for Frodo’s absence and ends up getting jailed for months by Saruman’s forces.
– Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, who steals spoons, is also jailed by Saruman. (She whacked one of his goons with an umbrella.)
– Grima Wormtongue MAY have eaten an entire hobbit
– Saruman invades the Shire and turns it into a communist hell police state.
– the whole Tom Bombadil thing is common knowledge but if you haven’t read the book i guarantee you he is weirder than you think.
– to give just 2 examples: 1) the whole tom bombadil arc provides the explanation as to how Eowyn and Merry were able to dispatch the Witch King
– and 2) for unknown reasons sleeping in his house causes everyone to have horrible nightmares… EXCEPT for Sam who has a peaceful and dreamless night. no explanation offered for any of this.
considering that Pippin’s dad is named Paladin, you fucking know he claimed the right to name each and every one of his children and his poor wife just begged him to choose a different letter to start with
also aragorn openly admitting to being fucking lonely and just wanting friends is treated like a weirdly funny joke in the book by the way that some of the hobbits react to it, and frodo also proceeds very soon after to basically tell aragorn that he’s pretty foul-looking but seems a good guy
yes to the above & a small correction + one i forgot:
– Merry does in fact gift Saruman the weed. It’s the bag it’s in that Saruman steals and runs off with. (also give that Merry stole the weed from Saruman’s personal supply in the first place i can’t say i blame him)
– Aragorn literally has magical healing powers. i don’t think they ever explain this in the films but he does very much have healing powers.
– the Ents are able to tear down the entire wall around Isengard, but can for whatever reason not make a single dent in the tower of Orthanc itself
– several riders knew that Merry was there and coming with them to the fields of Pelennor even though he was forbidden to do so, and they just sort of shrug and don’t tell the king
– GOD Merry and the riders: they don’t just shrug they straight up act like he isn’t there. to the point where if he talks they just pretend like they don’t hear him. this hurts his feelings.
– Merry doesn’t recognise Eowyn until she reveals herself to the witch-king. it could be that her disguise is just that good but Eowyn herself seems to be kind of surprised that he doesn’t recognise her so it’s possible he’s just a dumbass.
– Pippin goes all in for a suicide mission at the Black Gate because he thinks that Frodo and Sam are captured and/or dead and everything is lost anyway, so he just decides that if he’s going to die, he’s going to die fighting, and then he almost gets squashed by a troll
– Gimli found Pippin underneath said troll after the battle, only because Pippin’s fucking foot was sticking out, and probably had a bit of a panicky moment while he was MOVING the troll to drag Pippin out of there
– i can’t believe i forgot about the troll: Pippin single-handedly slays a troll & then its body falls on him and he’s just lying there like ‘well i guess this is how i die’
– Gimli 100% thought pippin was dead when he found him and was so distraught he almost ripped his beard out
– There’s also Aragorn making the Mouth of Sauron flee with terror because he glared at him. Not a joke. (An argument can be made here for Aragorn having psychic powers)
Or intimidation proficiency
If I may add…
– Legolas falling out of a tree and screaming.
– Legolas dropping hie bow. And screaming.
– Legolas just screamed. A lot.
– Legolas singing a song that he only knew half of.
– “Do what you will in your madness but I wish to see no eyes!”
– Legolas straight up walking away after a battle and singing
– Legolas sneaking Gimli into Valinor like contraband Twizzlers into the movie theater.
Provided by Mod Manwë
@criticalrolo heeeey claire you know LOTR, so uh
what the fuck
LISTEN… THESE BOOKS ARE A LOT
– everybody rags on Frodo for being a dumbass at the Prancing Pony, but listen, Merry knew they were on a top secret mission carrying the Ring and that the forces of Sauron were actively searching for them and not far away and he still decided it would be a good idea to just go out for a walk, at night in a strange city, all by himself, just because he fucking felt like some fresh air
Ok TO BE FAIR to Merry, unlike the others he hadn’t actually SEEN the Nazgul at this point (just glimpsed one from the other side of the river) and as a result doesn’t understand just how much danger they’re in.
I found my copy of the books a few days ago… might be time for a reread…
don’t forget when saruman went evil and told gandalf he promoted himself from saruman the white to “saruman of many colours” gandalf was like “but i liked white better”,,,,,he legit said that that was his rebuttal
Ok but what about when legolas, gimli and Aragorn are tracking merry and pippin and legolas just watches as Aragorn rolls around in the fucking dirt and when he’s like “there are a lot of riders on horses coming this way!!” legolas is basically like, yea I know I’ve seen them for awhile there are 105 and their leader is tall LEGOLAS
Tag: tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
like… Tolkien really wrote all this
Things that crack me up about Legolas:
- Okay, so maybe the film guide says he was born in TA 87, but looking at clues from HOME and the Silmariilion, he’s at the very most a bit over 2000 years old at time of The Fellowship of the Ring. He’s the youngest elf that we know about in that time period. ARWEN is older than him. He’s creeped out by Fangorn being so old but he calls all mortals children because he’s a little shit.
- Tolkien would get super pissed off when Legolas was shown in illustrations as “pretty or lady-like” and insisted that he was the biggest, roughest, toughest of the elves and the most hardcore of the Fellowship. Legolas is like the freaking Schwarzenegger of the elves, nbd.
- Best friend is a dwarf whose father was literally imprisoned by Legolas’ father and yet he still brought him to the Undying Lands for the most awkward family reunion because screw you Thranduil. And let me remind you that a) Gimli is the only, only dwarf who got to make the trip and Legolas invited him. Other people had to get permission from like the literal Valar and Legolas was like I want to bring my mortal bff yeah he wasn’t a ringbearer but whatevs. Also b) most of the people who left in TA 3201 went on like these fleets of beautiful vessels with a master shipbuilder but Legolas was like nope, going to build one myself, never built one before but it can’t be that hard, right?
- While Sindarin is the most common Elvish language by the time Legolas is alive, it’s considered really ugly and and unrefined, but here Legolas is running around probably not even able to speak the language of his ancestors, and I imagine him super proud of what must sound like an awful accent to his people.
- Also super explains how useless he was at Moira trying to decipher the door because he doesn’t have time to deal with those snobs.
- All the Fellowship got useful gifts or ones with spiritual meaning but instead Galadriel was like no, Legolas, I’m going to give you this big ass bow that’s bigger than the Mirkwood ones and it’s going to be so sick yeah it’s like taller than you are BUT ITS GOING TO LOOK SO SWEET.
are you telling me that Legolas is like… the baby gay dudebro redneck of the elves?
yes my friend, that is exactly what I am telling you
I have been given a gift.
Bless.
crownless-again-shall-be-king:
gandalf is middle earth’s equivalent of a crazy cat lady
the cats are dwarves
having just followed a bunch of new people, i’d like to say, there’s definitely an autistic LGBT lotr nerd collective on tumblr.com & I think that’s beautiful
another lotr thing I think about a lot: Legolas, in Minas Tirith during ROTK, trying to explain to people what he knows about hobbits
He’d probably answer any questions people had that he didn’t know the answer to with just blatant lies
Like “oh yeah and then when you feed them enough they split into two, it’s how they reproduce. But every seventh one is evil.” “Once a month Hobbits eyes glow red and their teeth become sharp.” “Bilbo baggins grows to seven foot tall when mad. You haven’t heard about it because he’s too polite to be mad often.”
Someone asks Merry about the ‘if you feed them enough they split in two’ thing and he’s like ‘haha yeah I ate too much and that’s how Pippin got made’
Pippin says that he was the original.
Who came first, the Merry or the Pippin?
Frodo: you misunderstand, there was no ‘original’. There was a single, large hobbit called Merrippin and one day he ate so much he split in two and Merry and Pippin were brought into the world
Beregond, hyperventilating: please tell me you’re joking
So hobbits are like Australians in the sense that any single one, without being told of the joke ahead of time, will emphatically agree that it is a thing in order to maximise the fun of fooling foreigners?
Did you ever doubt it
anyway, galadriel “man maiden” artanis is a trans woman
One of my fav things about Gandalf is, he can & canonically does Full Name hobbits when he’s angry like he’s their mum or something
important follow up Qs:
1) does it frustrate Gandalf that he can’t do this to Bilbo & Frodo with the same impact bcos they don’t have nicknames
2) does he do it to non hobbits
Gandalf, in the distance: ARAGORN SON OF ARATHORN
Aragorn: oh shit I’m in trouble
I think when Gandalf is pissed with Hobbits he reverts to the extremely formal Mister Baggins!
you’ve cracked it, that’s absolutely what he does
you know how mad he is based on how far back into your lineage he goes, consider:
Mild: Meriadoc Brandybuck! (last name only, you’ll probably live)
Mad: ARAGORN SON OF ARATHORN! (now your ancestors are involved, bad)
Murderous: THORIN, SON OF THRÁIN, SON OF THRÓR! (you are maybe about to meet your ancestors, via Gandalf… and not glorious battle)
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 