Tag: gandalf

Headcanons about the dolls: Once all the stories are told and peace comes, dolls of literally everyone get made: there’s Faramir, Eowyn and Eomer, Theoden (and their horses), Treebeard and the Ents, Each wizard, Radagast and his rabbits and sled, Saruman (2 versions: one with white robes and another tye-died), the 2 Blue Wizards, there’s even one of Gandalf’s Shadowfax. Of elves like Elrond, Celeborn, Galadriel, Arwen, Elladan, Elrohir, Haldir, etc. (Part 1)

(Part 2) Laerophen eventually ends up with dolls of his brothers and father while in Erebor (Gimizh and the kids give them to him; they worry about their loved ones too and the dolls help them so they figure the dolls would help him too). He’s not quite sure what to do with them, but he keeps them anyway safe in his room and they go with him back to the Greenwood. Legolas eventually visits Erebor and gets them too, along with a Gimli, Tauriel, Fellowship set, and dolls of the friends he made.

(Part 3) Gandalf was given a doll of Bilbo by a dwarfling years ago and couldn’t refuse it. He secretly loves the dolls and has collected a doll of everyone he’s ever met since. He keeps them safe in Rivendell and takes them with them when he sails. (It’s a large chest that ends up holding them all.)

This is all SO cute, omfg. I can’t believe that a little detail in the fic has turned into such a lovely world-building thing, and that people are thinking up their own headcanons for it! *boggles and awwws* 

(I AM TOTALLY STUCK ON TIE-DYED SARUMAN HELP HELP HE IS SO TUBULAR AND RAD)

I’m not sure if you’ve ever explained this somewhere, so I wanted to ask: the people in Sansukh who can see Thorin (well, Gimli and Gandalf), how exactly do they see him? Does he look like a completely normal dwarf or is he somehow… idk, translucent or something else that would make you notice he’s not actually physically there?

Ahhhh, I have answered this in the fic, really. 

Gimli doesn’t normally SEE Thorin, not under normal circumstances. All he can feel is Thorin’s voice, Thorin’s presence. He has seen him exactly twice: once, in Galadriel’s mirror, and once during the Ride of the Dead. The first time he appears as solid as the living, thanks to the magic of Galadriel’s mirror. The second time, he appears as one of a host of Dwarves ‘limned in starlight’. 

Gandalf sees them at all times as a faint watermark upon the world, a ghost in truth. Translucent, yes, and not always obvious. Sometimes he notices, sometimes not. 

https://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/determamfidd/114038841793/tumblr_nlfebaxmr41reywtl?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
https://determamfidd.tumblr.com/post/114038841793/audio_player_iframe/determamfidd/tumblr_nlfebaxmr41reywtl?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fdetermamfidd%2F114038841793%2Ftumblr_nlfebaxmr41reywtl

strongenhelm:

Here’s my intro for the Sansukh podfic. Enjoy ^_^

It is spectacular to hear you, Olorin! 

Well, I hope I’m not annoying people by answering these – I think I should just mention that these are my opinions, and they’re neither right or wrong. They’re opinions, and TOTALLY subjective. Other people take different things away from the text, and that’s awesome, that’s why we engage with it. 

So, I think I should also say that I don’t think Gandalf is a dick at all. I actually love him a whole lot. I have a major problem with the fact that people suffer and die as a result of his decisions – but it’s also true that he has to make those decisions for the sake of ALL lives. In the Appendices he mentions the consequences of leaving Smaug in Erebor – and they are CATASTROPHIC. Smaug is a creature designed by Sauron’s master, they are similarly aligned. If Smaug had decided to join with Sauron, ‘Think of what might have been. Dragon-fire and savage swords in Eriador, night in Rivendell. There might be no Queen in Gondor. We might now hope to return from the victory here to ruin and ash.’

Gandalf cares about all these people. He really really does. We learn in the Silmarillion that he was a pupil of Nienna, the weeping Valier, and from her he learned pity and compassion. He’s basically an angelic being, and he has no obligation to go to Middle-Earth. We find out also that he didn’t want to be an Istari – he wanted to stay in the Gardens of Valinor. Manwe told him he must, though – and so he obeyed. He is Faramir’s friend, he is Belladonna’s friend, he is Bilbo’s friend, he is Aragorn’s friend, he is friend to many. Won’t stop him from using them, though. 

I have no answers to the moral quandary of lives-of-a-few vs lives-of-many. I don’t like it, but I don’t think it’s meant to be an easy thing to accept. I think it’s probably meant to be hard. It is undeniable that Gandalf sacrificed himself as well as others, that he debased himself and worked tirelessly and even passed through death, and that he was ultimately victorious. But people were hurt who might not have been, and people died who might never have ventured near danger at all in their lifetimes. Who’s to say? We don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t meddled.

What are your thoughts on Gandalf? Do you like him or not?

I… have mixed feelings about Gandalf, tbh.

I admire him in some ways. I love his love of Hobbits. I love that he makes fireworks for children, and smokes pipeweed in wizardly ways. I love his willingness to warn others, and to get dirty doing the work that must be done, even though (most of the time) the people involved want him to butt out. I love that he feels sympathy for Gimli in Moria. I love that he is an itinerant wanderer: ‘I have been a stone doomed to rolling.’ I love his humour. I love his dangerousness. I love how alien he is compared to the other peoples of Middle-Earth; he looks like an old Man, but he reaaaaaaally isn’t. I love those brief glimpses we see of his true power. I love that he has actively sought out trouble, in order to solve it (the other Elven ringbearers just sit tight and wait for trouble to come knocking – not Gandalf). I love that he has worked tirelessly, decade after decade, century after century, trying to rid Middle-Earth of evil. I love that he is the most unrepentant horse-thief in Rohan. 

I DON’T love that he uses people. I DON’T love that he never says everything that he is planning. I DON’T love that he cares for these chess-pieces in his way, and still goes ahead with his plans no matter the consequences for their little lives. He says, ‘it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so’ – right before the Scouring of the Shire, in which he basically leaves them to deal with Saruman on their own. About 27 Hobbits die. He uses Thorin’s desperation and displacement and grief to get rid of Smaug. He uses Bilbo (for amusement!) to manage Thorin. He uses Frodo mercilessly as the Ringbearer, because he cannot carry it himself. He uses Theoden, he uses Aragorn, he drives wedges between families (Faramir), he uses the entire race of Men as cannon-fodder. 

Gandalf is a hard one. His driving force, as he says at the end of the books, is to be the enemy of Sauron. ‘The Third Age was my age. I was the Enemy of Sauron; and my work is finished.’ Even though he cares for these little people and their little lives, they are secondary to that awesome, terrible purpose. And I don’t like that, because those lives are all people, and they are all important. Aragorn has him place the crown upon his head, ‘for he has been the mover of all that has been accomplished, and this is his victory’. But a lot of people died who might not have, and a lot of pain came from his decisions. That’s not an easy thing to forgive, sometimes.