it will never cease to delight me that in the trilogy, gimli is shown to be charming, with all the polish and grace of a trained diplomat—he trades wits with elrond and speaks so graciously to galadriel that she gives him a gift denied feanor; his extemporaneous description of the glittering caves is what convinces legolas to travel there with him after the war, he sings the song of durin so well that sam begs to learn it.
whereas legolas is this big cheerful lug of a hunter-tracker, incidentally a prince, only unwittingly beautiful and graceful—his speech is decidedly stiff and formal, even when he’s trying to be gentle, but then turns around and starts singing without realizing he’s forgotten half the song. He has strange moments of seriousness, when the ancientness of him shines through, but then—
I do wonder what their first conversations were, gimli dignified but a little chilly; legolas stiff even as he attempted humor, but a way forward nonetheless.
oh yikes, okay. Let me preface this by saying THIS DOES NOT REFER TO ANY ONE PERSON OR AUTHOR IN PARTICULAR OKAY?? I’ve been accused of that shit before, and it’s nonsense. This is my personal private and totally thoroughly SUBJECTIVE OPINION. It harms nobody, and is not directed at anybody, but is rather directed at tropes and ideas based around fictional people. I have been asked to give my opinion and so I’m doing so. I wish everyone a zillion million kudos and all the reviews in the world.
okay? okay.
here we go. Still with me?
– it irks me when the balance is omfg!LEGOLAS IS JUST SO AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL AND INCREDIBLE AND INTERESTING!!!… and then Gimli is just… meh. He’s there, I guess. *shrug* I like my Gimli magnificent and just as amazing and incredible as Legolas, pls. 🙂
– I’m not a fan when Gimli is portrayed as some sort of brutish sex buffoon, whose every second word is ‘fuck.’ Poetic, gracious, well-spoken and courtly Gimli is my jam. I definitely nope out of ‘fuck! Fuck! Oh fucking fuckfuck!’ fics. Sorry.
– Any sort of infidelity fic is not my thing. Sorry if it’s yours. But it ain’t mine.
– weepy, maudlin, emotionally insipid and tremblingly CONSTANTLY teary Legolas. uh, what. I have to backclick out of there, in case my eyes never stop rolling in my head.
– This isn’t exactly a nope-out, but it gives me the irrits: Gimli is a very handsome dwarf. Legolas is a very handsome elf. they may not have the same cultural beauty standards, but they can recognise other forms of attractiveness when they see it! And they wouldn’t agonise forever and ever about not being attractive to each other, not when there’s ample bloody proof that this is not the case at all 😉
– Modern AU!Gimli celebrating Christmas
(while we’re at it, may I add: Gloin being aggressive or abusive towards Gimli in ANY WAY. No. NOPE. I have my reasons, which I reserve the right not to elaborate upon. It is Not. My. Thing. And I will nope out of there so fucking fast you will see my smoke trail.)
And *drum roll* the MAIN PET PEEVE OF THEM ALL, THE BIG KAHUNA….
– Gigolas being named as a pairing, and hardly being mentioned at all. No focus, no dedicated time given to the development of the characters or the relationship. Not even a paragraph. A couple of passing sentences, if THAT. *grumbles into cup of tea*
still with me? I hope you enjoyed this guided tour of the salt-mines 🙂
each Discworld series has a sort of set of key themes, which match the key characters, and all the books in that series centre round the theme
for example the Witches’ books are all centred around words and their power, so it’s all theatre and plays and stories and fairytales and opera and shakespeare – because on the Disc the power of witches comes through words
and the Death books are all about great big capital-lettered human concepts, like Justice, Oblivion, Hope, Belief, and Time, because after all, that’s what exactly Death is (only he happens to have developed a conscience and a like of cats)
and then the Vimes books are all about people, and people in charge of other people, and how the people in charge of other people are perhaps best suited to not being people at all, and instead being something much more harmless like a teapot, and so you’ve got so so many repeated themes of mobs of people and kings of people and the importance of caring about the little people because the big people are too busy being big to give a damn and each Vimes book has more and more types of people, dwarves, werewolves, trolls, gargoyles, feegles, zombies, goblins, even vampires… because the whole point of Watch is people – to keep the bad people away from the not-currently-bad-people & keep the occasionally-alright-people safe.
anyway, basically, Terry Pratchett’s a genius.
I have never noticed this before. What about Rincewind’s stories? Is there a theme there?
ok so compiling what some lovely people (x, x, x, x, x) have said about the main themes of Rincewind’s:
running, destiny, running, sanity in an insane place, running, the world (and all it’s dangers), science (and all it’s dangers), anything and everything you really don’t want to do, running (including the planned benefits of running and the accidental benefits of running), fear (and how it’s actually a pretty smart thing), cowardice (and how it’s also a pretty smart thing), trust, screwing your reputation up the buttock, screwing your destiny up the buttock, self-acceptance, self-realisation, running, survival, accidental survival, survival through running…
so, to summarise, I guess the Rincewind books are about screwing up destiny/reputation/science/the world by running away from them as fast as possible in the opposite direction
@insomniabug, these are gr8 precis for each subseries!
“Aye, he certainly does.” The elves laugh, the peanut gallery cracks up and Gimli continues to half heartedly complain about those annoying punny (aha, get it?) Elves. (2/2)
AHHHH YES I LOVE, more cheeky silly irreverent elves, with their barrel songs and their tralalally pls and thank
what if they notice that nowadays Legolas says ‘aye’ on occasion, and so try to make him say it as often as possible, lmao
*whispers* Audacity has a pitch adjustment function for fixing that one intonation mistake in a recording that is driving you crazy
BUT I’VE ALREADY RENDERED AND MIXED ALL THE PARTS TOGETHER. i’d end up re-pitching all the rest of the harmonies as well, and they’re all correct and in-tune already. In short, I am an eedjit.
It’s an acappella section too, no place to hide. Gonna have to re-record that entire section, all 16 bars, despite the fact that the fuckup is a blip right at the end. Gah.
*steels myself* Here we go. Three takes for each part, 16+ individual recordings, coming up.
Female staffers adopted a meeting strategy they called “amplification”: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.
“We just started doing it, and made a purpose of doing it. It was an everyday thing,” said one former Obama aide who requested anonymity to speak frankly. Obama noticed, she and others said, and began calling more often on women and junior aides.
Aw Yiss 