Tag: headcanony things

Off the wall question that I woke up thinking about bc I’m rereading sansukh to catch up: if a dwarf were to drop something while in the star pool what would happen? Would it ‘float’ out or would it be lost on Arda but not visible to the living?

*stares helplessly at ask*

ummmm….

*stares some more, thinking furiously*

HELP I DON’T KNOW

They’d have to pass through not one, but TWO metaphysical barriers. There’s the wall between the living and the dead, of course. But there’s also the mists between Aman and Middle-Earth that separate the Blessed Realm from the ‘real world’ and keep it apart and inaccessible.

Hell, it’s hard enough for the spirits of the dead dwarves to make it there!

This is just an silly/odd idea, but I like to think that if a dwarf deliberately dropped something into Gimlin-zaram (say, a hammer, or a pen?), it would immediately sink without trace beneath the glowing water. No other change or sign to show its passing.

The next time that dwarf saw Mahal, that hammer or pen would be in His great hand, and he would give off a slight air of mild annoyance. He would give it back with pointedly deliberate movements.  

“Please refrain from littering, my child. Please use the bins provided.”

violent-darts:

cakesandfail:

So I was just thinking about those posts you get in the Discworld tag about the way belief works on the Disc and how Vetinari and/or Vimes is so integral to the way Ankh-Morpork works that they might just sort of… not ever die.

You know, the ones like ‘Vimes is going to become a god of policemen and he’s going to hate it”.

Well. What if it happens to both of them? There are two parts to the city, after all. ‘Proud Ankh’ needs taking down a peg or two (or seven) by Sam Vimes, and if anyone can terrify ‘pestilent Morpork’ into being better then it’s Havelock Vetinari. And they can drive each other mad with stealth puns for centuries, if they want.

Also, this would potentially make them literally Law And Order, and that just seems very fitting in a way that would probably annoy them both.

My favourite sort of riff on this is the idea that they aren’t there ALL the time, but if someone who’s taken over their authority or whatever starts fucking up, they become Active. 

Sort of like Carrot’s comment in Men At Arms: when you need them, you REALLY need them, but when you don’t, best if they just go away and get on with things (in their cases, being dead). So when things are going all right it’s very quiet and ordinary. 

And then when things start going WRONG suddenly you have things like the current patrician waking up to a Very Angry Manifestation of the Late Duke of Ankh, proceeding to remind him or her (would it be matrician, then?) about How Things Are Done (By Law). 

Or the abusive Commander of the Watch coming into his or her office to find a calm man, thin man like a predatory flamingo there to discuss the virtues of temperance and accountability and not having his/her Watch-house and/or personal lodgings being literally struck from on high by a meteor (can’t be lightning, Vimes and Io can’t even exchange a civil sentence, but Vimes has always been good at getting around these things). 

And yes in the mean time when things ARE quiet, they can watch everything and get on each other’s nerves and it’s basically like Colon’s office except instead of for old street monsters it’s for ancient legends of civil justice who can’t quite stand to even fade away and still have enough people believing and invoking them that they can stick around and growl when people get out of line. 

Who gives the best hugs, Gimli or Legolas?

Ooooh. A truly challenging and very important question.

The best enfolding, bone-squeezing, I’m-so-glad-to-see-you, my-arms-are-a-safe-wall-for-you, holy-shit-we’re-alive-we-made-it hugs? Gimli. 

The best silent and still and peaceful hugs, the breathing-slowly-together hugs, the ones which make your shoulders loosen and your heart gentle? Legolas.

The best comfort hugs, the cry-it-out hugs, they-can’t-get-you you’re-safe, your ear upon his heartbeat, rocking ever so slightly hugs? Gimli.

The best joyous hug, the one that sweeps you off your feet, full of sunlight and laughter and twirling and leaping, the celebratory hug to rule them all? Legolas.

(however, they’re both equally good at the you-are-the-dearest-thing-in-this-world-to-me, you-are-so-wonderful, I-could-hold-you-forever hugs, the ones which say I love you over and over again.)

Gimli visiting Eryn Lasgalen and like, the jokey elves noticing he says ‘aye’ q lot. They walk up to him and say “Legolas has pretty eyes, doesn’t he?” And since Gimli notices they aren’t out to give him a cold shoulder he goes (1/2)

“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 

In the same vein as the oropher anon, do you have any head canons about Thranduil before he was king?

Ooooh crumbs. Yes? Thank you for asking, Nonnie 🙂

Okay, so we know that Thranduil was present when Doriath fell, and that he fled with his father to Lindon and thence to the Greenwood.

So, he saw that massacre when he was still young. 

I feel that young!Thranduil would have been full of a red-hot rage, a fire. He would have been passionate about the wrongs he saw that were done to his people, and to the world. 

Then he meets Aelir, and she brings out the gentleness and curiosity in him. Her influence calms him, makes him breathe without tasting the injustice of it all at the back of his mouth. They are given two beautiful children, and Thranduil’s grief and anger are briefly allayed by the joy in his life.

Thranduil names the first child ‘Free Forest’, or Laindawar. A wish for the future, a prayer for things to come, a promise to this little soul. He will be free. They will stay free.

Aelir names the second ‘Tree Song’, or Laerophen. Her ears were forever full of their music, her body swaying with their branches, half-wild dryadlike thing that she is. 

So. They’re happy. But it doesn’t last.

Then: Dagorlad. Another massacre, one full of monsters and horror and loss. In Thranduil’s case, the loss is deep and personal. He loses his father, and the grief and the rage inside him begin to crystallise.

The darkness builds, the Second Age turns into the Third. Aelir grows worried: the song of the trees is sickening, twisting itself into new and gruesome sounds. It twists her inside as it does so.

They are given a last, late gift long after their other children: a Green Leaf, Legolas, a small bright dancing spark amidst the gathering gloom. Aelir names him, her child, so small and hopeful, a green shoot in a forest of dark and blackened things. 

Thranduil is grim. He fights against the encroaching darkness with an ever-more-stony countenance. His determination is clad in ice. His home will not die, not again. No more massacres of his people. Not again. Laindawar is of his mind, and fights at his side. Laerophen is more timid, and shrinks away to surround himself with books of the past.

They fight and fight as the years roll on, bringing the rotting trees back to health, rooting out and destroying the nests of spiders, singing away the mists that cling like slime to the southern forests. The years roll on, and Thranduil misses the signs of sickness in his wild woodland wife.

Until he can’t miss it, not anymore. She has always been close to the trees, nearly part-tree herself. And now she is sickening and failing for want of sunlight, and the clashing songs of the forest are an agony to her. She must go.

Thranduil fights this, as he has fought everything else. They try everything that can be done, to no avail. The healing has begun too late: not even the arts of Elrond can halt Aelir’s illness. The only hope is to go to the West. 

She does. Weeping, but her chin held high. She will see them again, she breathes into the hair of her family. Her voice is feeble, and she must be carried onto the ship.

Watching, Thranduil holds onto his youngest child, his green leaf, and his heart turns to diamond inside him. 

This world will take no more from him. 

What are your Oropher head canons?

I don’t really have that many, tbh Nonnie.

I think he was a lot warmer in his demeanour than our chilly diamond Thranduil. We know he was impatient – heck, that’s why he died at Dagorlad, through impatience. He didn’t wait for the signal.

I also think he had a real open dislike and resentment for the Noldor, heh. After the fall of Doriath, we know that the Sindar didn’t want to stay with Gil-galad and the rest of that lot, and instead they left the safety of Lindon and moved east. I suspect Oropher was all ‘fuck you, i’m out. Gonna be a king far far away from you crazy tragic murdering nutbags and your crazy world-destroying dramas.’

Basically, my mental picture is of an Elf who doesn’t have the icy demeanour, long-hidden wraths and griefs, and incredible ancient endurance of Thranduil. Instead, my Oropher was a quick-speaking, quick-thinking, witty and personable sort of Elf, with an almost-Manlike lack of patience, and TONS of Sindar pride. I suspect he was very well-liked, a very popular Elf. I mean, the Silvan Elves made him King, after all.

I bet he was a great dad.

If Custard is a thing that exists, does anyone in the Halls have a dog? Or any other kind of pet?

YUP.

No dogs at this stage, or at least not ones I’ve written about. But definitely there are other pets!

And in particular: Watch the pigs that manifest around Dain as the rest of the story progresses. Now that he’s in the Halls, he’s always with a pig, or pigs.  

But. They’re never the same pigs. Sometimes its a gigantic bristly boar, sometimes a sweet old sow. Sometimes there’s a piglet in his arms, or a litter racing around his mismatched feet. Nobody knows where they’ve come from, or where they go.

There’s one he calls ‘Petal’ and one he calls ‘Princess’. There’s Boots and Mittens and Blackie and Beryl and Beastie and Patches. They all have names, and he never seems to confuse them at all. 😉