in defense of thranduil

hello! so you know how i occasionally do “in defense of” meta posts about unpopular characters ( X X X ) ? well, i’ve been thinking for a while about doing one for thranduil, but i wasn’t quite sure how to go about it since tbh, i don’t think anyone could call thranduil unpopular. his ao3 tag is very well-populated, and, ahem, a good portion of it is smut lol. he even has a ton of “x reader” stuff about him on tumblr, which to me is usually the hallmark of a popular character. but i’ve felt the urge to defend him anyway, and i think it’s because... well. i do think a character can be both popular and misunderstood, and for all the thranduil enthusiasm i’ve seen, i’ve seen just as much thranduil hate and criticism, so clearly something about him has people at odds. specifically, a lot of people seem to think he’s a bad dad, and/or that the peter jackson movies totally butchered his character, which is really interesting to me because i actually believe neither. so i’m going to try to illustrate why! i’ll be primarily discussing movie-verse thranduil in this post, with a few references to the books as a secondary source. so without further ado, here is why i think thranduil is A Good Dad Actually, and the movies are not a “butchering” of but a compelling darker/grittier spin on a character who - since he exists in tolkien’s written works only in a book for children and in the margins of a sprawling and very bloody history - only really works if you reconcile those two things. 

under a cut because as always, this is LONG!

let’s first talk about what seems to be people’s main grievance with movie-verse thranduil: the fact that he’s “turned into this greedy character whose only motive is getting back those gems” when that’s not what he’s like in the book. while it’s definitely true that there are a few key differences between book thranduil and movie thranduil, i actually don’t think that the two versions are so incongruous with each other. the areas where they differ, i think, flesh out movie thranduil into a character who compels beyond his simplified, kid-friendly presentation in the hobbit book and who makes sense within the larger historical context of his world. it’s true that the elvenking in the hobbit isn’t explicitly interested in material gain. he mainly seems to get involved in the battle of the five armies to help out bard, since mirkwood is allied with laketown. and there’s also no mention in the book of the elvenking having lost his wife, even though that’s a key part of his backstory in the hobbit movies. in the movies, those gems that he’s so interested in getting back from the dwarves are actually a necklace that belonged to his wife before she died. he’s still motivated by wanting to help laketown - which is why he shows up before the battle with wagons of food and supplies for the starving people - but he’s also motivated by grief - something deeply personal that none of the other characters (except gandalf, because gandalf knows everything lol) are even aware of, and this, i feel, gives depth to his character. 

the thing is, thranduil seems greedy because none of the other characters know of, and thus inherently cannot understand, his real reason for pursuing the gems. and it’s true - at face value, it doesn’t make sense why he’d seemingly put his people at risk for a random necklace. a pretty harsh reading of thranduil’s motives could even align him with thorin’s dragon-sickness. but remember how the battle of the five armies started? thranduil and bard pulled up with their forces thinking it was gonna be all of them against twelve dwarves and a hobbit lol. they probably thought there’d be no casualties and it’d be over in twenty minutes! they had no way of knowing how many other forces were going to get involved. and when thranduil does see the first elves laying dead on the ground, he tries to draw out. he never wanted to spend his people’s lives like that. he realizes he had been blinded by his grief for his wife and had acted selfishly - and personally, i like this a lot better than the book’s sort of handwave-y explanation for why the elvenking is even bothering to involve himself and his kingdom in the (petty, by his standards) affairs of dwarves and men. because... movie thranduil is not just Like That for no reason. he has a whole history, going wayyy beyond his wife’s death even, that makes him the way he is - and that is what is so satisfying about his portrayal in the movies, because it actually attempts to acknowledge that deeper context. 

we have to remember that thranduil, at least in comparison to pretty much every other character in the hobbit, is old as hell. he reminds us of this multiple times in the movies: “a hundred years is a mere blink in the life of an elf. i can wait.” for a character who presumably shouldn’t need to worry or think about death, he’s unusually fixated on his own immortality in the movies, a trait that is missing from the books. and while i do get why some readers are charmed by the idea of an elf who doesn’t seem to perceive himself very differently than the men and dwarves he’s surrounded by, i’m a lot more drawn in by the idea of an elf who just can’t forget about how different he is. because if you actually think about where thranduil fits into the bigger history of middle-earth, it’s sort of hard to turn the page back from this darker, more scarred side to him - because yeah, he might live forever if he avoids conflict, but he also knows death in a way that someone like bilbo baggins would not even be able to conceptualize. thranduil was born in doriath in the first age, making him old enough to likely have been involved in not one but two kinslayings against his people. we know nothing about his mother, making it likelier than not that she was lost in one of them when he was still a child. his father, oropher, the original elvenking of the greenwood, was killed in the battle of dagorlad in the second age - the “last stand” of elves against sauron. thranduil, fighting alongside him and the silvan elves, had to watch his father die and then be crowned as the new king right then and there. (also, oropher died in the very first charge of the battle, which then continued on for months. imagine how hard it’d have been to stave off that creeping hopelessness.) and finally, thranduil’s wife was killed in battle at some point not long after their son was born. thranduil’s dragon fire scar on his face is an invention of the movies, and it’s unclear when exactly it happened - at the same battle where he lost his wife? some time earlier? but anyways. i’ve been going on and on about his life for a reason, and that reason is Thranduil Has Seen A Lot Of Shit. it’s easy to look at him in the movies and critique him - why is he so cold? why is he an isolationist ruler when in the books he’s more welcoming (after initially chucking the dwarves in jail, lol)? but the hobbit isn’t really thranduil’s story, so exposing all of this context in the movies wouldn’t have made much sense, would it. and i actually like that there are some gaps, because that’s what makes him so interesting. no one knows his history, and why should they? when it comes down to it, thranduil is just a side character in someone else’s adventure. 

the last thing that i really want to address is thranduil’s relationship with legolas, his son - partly to refute the idea that he’s a bad dad, but also partly to talk about how despite all the griping that i’ve seen about how stupid it was to “randomly” insert legolas into the hobbit movies, it actually made so much sense for both of their characters. obviously, while it’s confirmed elsewhere that thranduil/the elvenking is legolas’s dad, legolas is not actually in the hobbit book. but this, i think, is more so to do with the fact that tolkien wrote the lord of the rings (and invented legolas’s character) after he wrote the hobbit, and less so to do with the idea that legolas is inherently “irrelevant” to the story of the hobbit. because if legolas is irrelevant to the hobbit, then is he irrelevant to thranduil? i really don’t think so, because even though tolkien gave us no clues as to what their relationship might’ve been like, even the fact that they’re father and son is really important. for thranduil, the fact that he has a son adds dimension not just to who he is in the movies - and yes, we see a fraught side of his dynamic with legolas as he has to reconcile with legolas growing up and wanting a freedom that thranduil with his too-deep understanding of the world’s dangers doesn’t want to give - but also to the concept of his character. thranduil has lost so many people he loved in horrible ways that now legolas is all he has left, and consequentially there’s so much talk about him as an oppressive parent, so paranoid of losing him that he keeps him imprisoned inside the always-closed kingdom gates. but at the end of the hobbit movies, thranduil also gives legolas his blessing to go on the quest to destroy the one ring. when it comes down to it, he is willing to let legolas do what's best for him, even knowing that this could be how he loses him. i know thranduil isn’t a perfect parent, that’s pretty obvious lol. but i don’t see how people watch these movies and their takeaway isn’t that he’s at least trying his best and that he does genuinely love his son. also, look at legolas! legolas is clearly proud of his identity as a wood elf. and he’s happy, he’s caring, he’s adventurous, he’s even pretty wise despite being one of the youngest elves. i don’t exactly see a traumatized victim of horrible parenting in him (and believe me, there is no shortage of victims of terrible parenting in the silmarillion/elsewhere in tolkien’s works) - i see a strong and well-adjusted young adult who wouldn’t hesitate to threaten anyone who spoke ill of his father’s kingdom with his bow lol. 

anyway, if you’ve made it this far through my rambling, i hope you can understand at least part of what i’m trying to say lol. it’s hard, because i have so many things i’m kind of trying to say all at once, but: tl;dr i actually think the hobbit movies did thranduil’s character right, not wrong, and that they do the opposite of proving that he’s a bad dad. :3

[Astarion] is a cat. He's a black cat. There's a stray that comes into my house called Red... and he's quite feral. It took me three years before I could pick him up and hold him. He's totally cool with me now. Three fucking years. He gave me a lot of inspiration about Astarion.

- Neil Newbon, on developing Astarion's physicality and mannerisms

i still think abt this every day btw:

the tressym would only accept a good-hearted master

tara not only fighting for gale so hard because she loves him so very much, but also because she knows he has a genuinely good heart i'm >-Io

i see matt posted again

If there is one line I like to over-analyze in the ASoIAF books it is a rather famous thought that goes inside Cat's head before her death. As the steel is close to her throat Cat thinks "No, don’t, don’t cut my hair, Ned loves my hair." And this line and her entire inner monologue is absolutely heart-breaking but one thing I fixate on is the actual sentence itself.

"Ned loves my hair."

Anyone who has read the books knows that Cat holds contempt for the fact that except for Arya, she has failed to give Ned children who look like him. It is also one of the reasons she dislikes Jon so much, because the mother of Jon (who she assumes to be Ned's bastard son) has managed to give Ned a child that looks just like him while she, his lawfully wedded wife gave birth to five of his children only for four of them to come out looking exactly like her. Red hair, blue eyes. Unlike Jon (and Arya) who share Ned's dark hair and dark eyes.

And knowing that it is so interesting to me that Cat's last thought about Ned (and her last thought ever) was that Ned loves her hair.

Because Ned loved her, he loved her hair, he loved her the way she was. And every time he looked at Robb, Sansa, Bran and Rickon he saw the reflection of the woman he loved, while Cat was so upset that they weren't all reflections of the man she loved.

Every time Ned ran his fingers through their hair, he ran his fingers through the hair of the woman he loved. He never resented Cat for the fact that four of his children didn't look like him, he loved that they looked like their mother, again, the woman he loved so much. He loved that they had the same hair he loved on Cat, and judging by it being her last thought Cat also knew that Ned loved her hair (and the way she looked), whether she ever came to the realization that Ned was perfectly happy with the way their children looked at all, or if she realized after he was dead and it was too late, it is unclear. But all those years she beat herself up over nothing.

Ned loved her the way she was, Ned loved his children the way they were, when they looked like him and when they didn't. Because when they didn't look like him, they looked like the love of his life, his darling wife.

And if the books decide to go with R+L=J it also adds another layer to Cat and Ned's relationship. Because Jon's mother was always a woman she didn't know but was still competing with in her mind for Ned's love for all these years. Turns out she didn't even exist. Turns out she didn't need to feel inferior to the woman Ned loved enough to not even talk about with her, no need to feel bad about the fact that she was able to give Ned a child that looked like him while Cat "failed".

At the end of the day, all the voices in her head making her feel insecure in her marriage never needed to be there, because everything she thought of as a problem with her were not problems at all for Ned. He was perfectly happy with her and their children.

Cas wakes up in a world where all versions of Dean exist at once. He makes sure to validate them all accordingly and hangs this up on the fridge

i drew something last night hooray

KIRBY + SONIC

Hello Stranger. Whom I have never met.

 [First] Prev <–-> Next

one thing that lives in my mind rent-free but that i’ve never seen anyone talk about are these few lines from the hamilton musical: 

the way that hamilton says “macbeth” right after referencing the superstition surrounding that word in theatre... i know a billion other ppl have already praised lin manuel miranda's musical genius (and/or made fun of him for being cringe) but this lyric literally hasn’t left my brain alone since i first heard it. what a way to characterize this man who calls himself macbeth on stage without missing a beat... what a way to drive home hamilton’s fatal flaw of courting death in his hunger to prove himself! 

I'm obsessed with Nami in the realm of female character writing, because on the surface her arc is to be saved by a guy/group of guys, and generally with female characters that's used to take away their agency or power and/or support a romance. But with Nami...it does none of that. Her story is about learning to depend on others, but rather than reducing her power in any way, it increases it. The isolation she experienced before wasn't independence, but part of her oppression, so having a family to support her gives her infinitely more freedom.

Luffy is her captain, but the way Luffy does that is never to lord over people, it's to raise them up with him. And, importantly, he waits for it to be her choice. He stays supportively in reach until she asks for his help. The only time he intervenes without permission is to stop her from actively harming herself. And when he does intervene, it's not to whisk her away and keep her somewhere else safe where she's dependent on his security and protection, it's to literally beat the crap out of her oppressor so he's never a problem again and she's free to live her life either way. And although Sanji acts romantically toward her and the rescue follows his grand ideals of fighting for a beautiful lady, there's no expectation that she now owes him anything or has to give him a chance just because he helped her out of an abusive situation. He did it because he cared, not in exchange for anything. They were all willing to fight and bleed for her with next to nothing in return, and that's so vital.

Nami being a woman is definitely relevant to her story (using her beauty and pretend helplessness to steal without suspicion, the fact that she takes after her mom who was tough as nails in the male-dominated marines, the very real isolation and fear of being female surrounded by [fish]men with power over her), but it's important to note that she doesn't need saving because she's a woman, or due to any weakness on her part. She is shown as incredibly strong, brave, and clever, right from the beginning, but she was trapped in a situation with Arlong that would've been impossible for anyone to get out of alone. Now with a crew by her side, she no longer has to.

hearing about gale from tara is always such a treat because she's known him for so, so long, ever since he was just a boy and has watched him grow into who he is now:

Player: Excruciatingly awkward. On my side, at least. Tara the Tressym: Don't be too hard on yourself, sir. You've been like that all your life.

Player: It's very unsettling how you can tell what I've been up to just by looking at me... Tara the Tressym: Tressyms are exceptionally intuitive. And also, you wear your emotions like a very garish cravat.

Tara the Tressym: If that's all, then what comes after is for you to decide, Mr Dekarios. Think well on all that's happened, and stay true to that heart of yours. It's a good one.

which also sort of ties into this:

Player: I'd never want to lose you, Tara. I'll return the Crown to Mystra. Tara the Tressym: There's a good humanoid. You had me scared for a moment here. But you're wise - and wiser all the time. 

Player: That's just my boyish charm. Tara the Tressym: Boyish charm and knees that creak like rusted hinges! Quite the combination.

Player: I'm honestly not sure. But don't worry - it's nothing I can't handle. Tara the Tressym: Very tough.

Player: Must be the beard. Tara the Tressym: Don't be silly. What is it really?

she's absolutely not averse to teasing him. however, it's never cruel and always light-hearted, just like she's not afraid to call him out on evading questions or making him reflect on the choices he takes if she does disagree with him. it really speaks of how long they have been at each other's side.

Tara the Tressym: Mr Dekarios. Gale. You are the finest mind - the finest wizard - I have ever had the pleasure to know. If anyone can beat this thing, it is you. When you tried to control the Weave - when it all went, pardon my language, belly up - I was terrified. Scared you'd be hurt. Scared Mystra would punish you for your transgression. But do you know what never crossed my mind? That you wouldn't figure a way out of it. My clever friend never leaves a knot knotted. This parasite is one more knot, so get to tugging threads. And - Mr Dekarios - please. The beard. I'd cut it down myself if I could hold a razor.

so from tara's pov, gale's always been awkward and obvious with his emotions.

she's convinced he has a genuinely good heart, one that she hopes he'll stay true to.

tara thinks he's wise, and growing wiser (condition: gale rejects to take the crown for himself).

she also thinks he's clever and brilliant.

s.. styrofoam

Danny covered his nose with his hand. Where ever he landed smelled absolutely foul, like rotten fruit and burning tires mixed with chem lab.

"Remind me to bring a face mask the next time I explore the Infinite Realms." He muttered, before kicking a soda can down the alley he was in and being repulsed by the squelch sound it made when it came into contact with a very questionable looking puddle, "Better yet, a gas mask." He glanced at the puddle again, "Or I could go full Hazmat." Clockwork had told him this world was full of superheros and villians and to steer clear of it, but once he learned there were aliens in this world he couldn't help himself. Danny had always been weak to his curiosity, but he liked to believe he was cautious, and chose to stay in his Phantom for for added protection.

Turning on his heel he exited onto a deserted street lined on one side by a chain-link fence. The sky above him was filled with clouds so ominous and dark that Danny honestly couldn't tell you if it was night or day, all he knew was that it was going to rain soon and hopefully these awful smells would be drowned out by the downpour.

Danny got his wish only minutes later. Thankfully Phantom was unbothered by the cold and could just bask in the rain as it fell apon him. A lesser known fact about ghosts is that thier clothes are made from thier ectoplasm and are part of thier bodies, much like a second layer of skin, so one would be able to feel things on thier clothes as easily as they would with thier bare skin. The level of sensitivity varies with the type of clothing however. All this to say Danny loved the feeling of the rivulets of rainwater traveling down his ghostly hazmat suit.

He was so preoccupied with enjoying the sensation that he didn't notice anything was wrong until he was jolted forward from the weight of someone landing on his back. The person was quick and precise, taking no time at all to have his wrists pinned behind his back and- weirdly enough- thier teeth digging into the material around his neck.

His parents designed the Hazmat suit Danny was wearing not only to deal with dangerous chemicals, but to fight supernatural foes. The area around the neck was reinforced with the intention of protecting against fatal gunshots and decapitations so naturally someone's jaw wasn't going to be enough to break through to his neck.

Danny let out a laugh as the person kept chewing on his neck like a confused puppy. Oh, Danny thought, they've gone feral. It was odd for someone to go feral but it could occur when a person has gone through something traumatic recently or through extreme stress. It made sense since the person ridding piggy back on him was dressed like a superhero. Danny wondered if that was why the person didn't have a scent. Danny learns facepalmed when he remembered that scentblockers existed and not everyone's scent dramatically changed whenever they went out as a hero. The scent change was probably one of the few things that have kept him alive up to this point to be honest.

"So, I guess you're not going to tell me why you're chewing on my neck like the worlds most pathetic vampire, are you?" No one deserves that title more than the fruitloop to be honest. He made a mental note to use that one against Vlad the next time he saw him.

Chewy whined at this, seeming to slump a bit from the apparent failure to bite him. What was that about? Was this actually a vampire? How would a vampire even react to Dannys ecto-blood combo meal anyway? Would it be like food poisoning? Or would it taste amazing from one undead to another. "I'm not exactly human, are you sure you wanna bite me? I might not taste so good." Danny warned, but the moment he mentioned letting the person bite him they were eager again.

Danny chuckled and unzipped the material only a bit before it was loose enough to move out of the way. The vampires bite came with a sharp pain like he expected but there was no suction. No drinking of blood. Just some weirdo biting Danny on the neck. Huh.

Danny hoped he didn't get rabies from this.

He must have accidentally said that out loud as there was a small laugh from the rooftops above them. There stood another person in a superhero outfit with some really tall dude dressed as a giant bat, and that was when Danny decided to bail. It was one thing to let a maybe vampire bite you in a random street in the middle of the night but more of them? And ones a big scary furry? Hard pass.

Phantom did as Phantoms do and went invisible and intangible, escaping from Biteys jaws and startling the heros. He ignored the distressed whine Munchy let out after loosing their spookyest chew toy and quickly rubbed the scent gland near dannys jaw on the top of thier head as an act of comfort before bolting.

----

Danny poked at the bite mark on his neck. Screw rabies, he better not get turned into a werewolf. He didn't need that on top of his ghostly crap. Sam seemed fascinated by the mark, after all, it wasn't every day that Danny got a scar, especially one so obvious. Most injuries heal quickly and leave no trace of him ever being injured in the first place which helped a lot in keeping his secret identity.

Luckily Danny hadn't needed to lie to mom and dad. He truthfully told them about some wierdo jumping off of a nearby rooftop and plunging thier teeth into his neck and that two other people had tried to corner him during this. He assured his mom that he had gotten away quickly but was a little shaken by it and his dad praised him for being brave and managing to escape.

That was nice. But he still had to figure out what was up with this bite...and why he felt so compelled to go back to that city.

Back to that hero.

-----

Aka an A/B/O au where in Danny's universe all the Alphas are extinct and the betas followed soon after and the DC universe all the Omegas went extinct and betas followed after . Not like a "they finally went extinct in the 1700s after centuries of thier numbers dwindling" thing and became a myth/fairytale (tho I like that too) but a "this might be the missing link between cave men and modern humans" kinda thing.

Its up to you which bat bit Danny and exactly what that means. I love abo aus without smut cause there's so much potential for chaos and I am very much ace.

The Paris Special did some really interesting things with Adrien's apparent 'death wish'.

We've seen it so many times - him sacrificing himself for Ladybug, or jumping off Montparnasse Tower in Gorizilla, or preparing to cataclysm himself in Guiltrip.

Then in the Paris Special, we saw his alter happily accept Cat Noir's cataclysm, as if it's a sign of strength how much pain you can take without breaking.

Later, when Shadybug takes Claw Noir's miraculous, she rubs his face and reveals the scars he's been covering up with makeup. Superficially, they're the scars from overusing their magic. Symbolically, he's hiding his emotional scars. I assume she does the same, when she goes to school. The point is, he's there showing off how much pain he can handle...but it's all a front. Underneath, he's fragile and hurting.

Then, at the end of the special, our Adrien voluntarily meets Claw Noir's cataclysm. As already noted, he's done this kind of thing so many times before. But he doesn't want to be hurt. He trusts he won't be - just like he trusts Ladybug to save him each and every time he takes one of those literal leaps of faith.

In fact, that's the gift he gives Claw when he touches his hand - faith - much like Ladybug shows Felix faith in his ability to make the right choice, in Emotion. She sacrifices herself, trusting that he will bring her and everyone else back. Likewise, Adrien risks sacrificing himself, trusting that he will somehow be okay - that Claw won't kill him. It demonstrates that sometimes all people need is to feel like someone believes in them, to help them believe in themselves.

When he touches Claw's hand, he seems to cancel out the cataclysm with his positive energy. His optimism and love overcomes destruction. All of this is to say he does have it in him to resist all the Cat Blanc nightmare stuff. He's far more powerful than he seems to believe he is.

I thought this was the most beautiful, important moment in the whole special.

Just finished ch 23 in my Nona reread and i think Ianthe dismissing Blood Of Eden as "terrorists" is especially jarring because of the evolution of how BOE is presented in the text

like first in GtN, Gideon never mentions who or what she could be fighting if she had succeeded in her dreams of joining the Cohort. she wants to be part of the "invasion force on whatever", and her fantasies of violence are exclusively oriented around perceived personal freedom and making Harrow feel bad

And then in HtN, Blood of Eden is finally named as the Empire's enemy, but they're very specifically never called "terrorists". they're "insurgents" per both John and Judith, which not only has a wholly different definition (revolutionaries!) it's also an interesting intentional choice on the part of the *writing*. It would make in-universe character sense for Cohort Captain Judith Deuteros to call BOE "terrorists" in the personal notes she takes while prisoner, and it would make in-universe character sense for Emperor John Gaius to call them "terrorists" when he is explaining to Harrow that they are The Enemy. and i feel like it is narratively important that Blood of Eden is very intentionally *not* presented to us the readers with the kind of aggressive dehumanization/dismissal connotation combination that the word terrorist has.

and then like, obviously, the first BOE character we meet is a hot MILF with a gun. and sure she's trying to kill God, but Augustine and Mercymorn also try to kill God like 3 pages after we (properly) meet Wake so it's not like killing God is presented as a negative thing.

So going into NtN, I feel like the general impression of BOE is revolutionaries who hate the Empire and hot ladies with guns. which as far as impressions go is like, pretty positive, and that impression is only emphasized in the first 300 or so pages of the book. You have more hot women, you have more hot women with guns. There are factions of BOE that hate Our Protagonists more than the ones we meet, and there's infighting and hostages and burning suspected-necros in the park, but the BOE members we meet are explicitly sympathetic to the characters that we the audience care about, so the "scarier" parts of BOE are in many ways de-emphasized to the reader. We're *also* given an up-close-and-personal view of how bad it is for the people living under the Nine Houses' rule/resettlement via Hot Sauce and the gang, which further solidifies BOE as *at least* bordering on (if not outright!) "someone to root for", even for resistant readers.

and then Ianthe shows up and calls them terrorists and it feels a bit like a slap to the face. It serves to emphasize and perhaps consolidate what has been building for the series, which is essencially that the protagonists of the previous books are on the wrong side. Necromancy is on the wrong side. the Empire is doing bad fucking things and they are calling the revolutionaries who resist them "terrorists" as a way to delegitamize their resistance and dissuade support, something that no longer works on the *reader* because of the way Tamsyn Muir has hansel-and-gretled the fuck out of that story arc. send post.