If you’ve read the Silmarillion, you know who Fëanor was. If you don’t, Fëanor was the dickhead who created the Silmarils: three indescribably beautiful and magical jewels that contained the light and essence of the world before it became flawed. They were the catalyst for basically every important thing that happened in the First Age of Middle Earth.
It is thought that the inspiration for the Silmarils came to Fëanor from the sight of Galadriel’s shining, silver-gold hair.
He begged her three times for single strand of her beautiful hair. And every time, Galadriel refused him. Even when she was young, Galadriel’s ability to see into other’s hearts was very strong, and she knew that Fëanor was filled with nothing but fire and greed.
Fast forward to the end of the Third Age.
Gimli, visiting Lorien, is also struck by Galadriel’s beauty. During the scene where she’s passing out her parting gifts to the Fellowship, Galadriel stops empty-handed in front of Gimli, because she doesn’t know what to offer a Dwarf. Gimli tells her: no gold, no treasure… just a single strand of hair to remember her beauty by.
She gives him three. Three.
And this is why Gimli gets to be an Elf Friend, people. Because Galadriel looks at him and thinks he deserves what she refused the greatest Elf who ever lived—- and then twice that. And because he has no idea of the significance of what she’s just given him, but he’s going to treasure it the rest of his life anyway.
Just look at that smile on Legolas’s face in the last panel. He gets it. He knows the backstory. And I’m pretty sure this is the moment he reconsiders whether Elves and Dwarves can’t be friends after all.
The Gulabi Gang, or Pink Gang, is an all-women vigilante group in India.
“Yes, we fight rapists with lathis [sticks]. If we find the culprit, we thrash him black and blue so he dare not attempt to do wrong to any girl or a woman again,” boasts Sampat Devi Pal, the group’s founder and head.
Devi first discovered the power of the stick in the 1980s when she used it against a neighbour who abused his wife. Devi’s intervention had the desired result and the recalcitrant husband was forced to mend his ways. More importantly, Devi’s model of delivering alternative justice inspired a movement that now boasts of a network of 400,000 women – dressed in pink sarees and all wielding a stick – across 11 districts of India’s largest province of Uttar Pradesh.
From fighting violence against women, preventing child marriages, arranging weddings of couple in love despite local resistance, to ensuring delivery of basic rights for the poorest of poor, the Gulabi Gang’s vision is to ‘protect the powerless from abuse and fight corruption’ has found easy resonance across much of India’s hinterland, blighted by unending reports of sex crimes and gang rapes.
“When a woman seeks the membership of Gulabi Gang, it is because she has suffered injustice, has been oppressed and does not see any other recourse,” says Suman Singh, the group’s deputy commander, from Mahoba district. “All our women can stand up to the men and if need be seek retribution through lathis,” she adds.
“The Gulabi Gang has stepped into the vacuum left by the state and offers an alternative means of attaining justice.”
How many times am I allowed to reblog this before it gets weird?
Fun facts: Tolkien constructed this scene because he came out of Macbeth thinking that Shakespeare had missed a golden opportunity with the ”Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” prophecy
Being letdown by Macbeth is apparently a significant factor in Tolkien’s writing because the Ent/Huorn attack on Isengard was the result of his disappointment that the whole “til Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane” thing was just some dudes holding sticks and not actual ambulatory trees.
so he basically took his favorite shakespeare headcanons and put them into his AU fic
This revelation just knocked me over.
LET ME TELL YOU A THING ABOUT JOHN RONALD REUEL TOLKIEN. BACK THE FUCK UP SIT THE FUCK DOWN YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ANYTHING YOU’RE FUCKING JON SNOW HERE. LET ME TELL U A THING
JONNY T WAS LITERALLY THE BIGGEST FANBOY TO EVER WALK THE EARTH. LITERALLY THIS FUCKIN NERD WENT INTO WORLD WAR ONE AND WROTE NORSEFIC EDDA FANFIC IN THE TRENCHES AND SENT IT TO ALL HIS FRIENDS WHO WERE PRESUMABLY LIKE “JOHN WHAT THE FUCK”
BUT IT DOESN’T END THERE
HIS WIFE? MADE HER AND HIMSELF INTO SELF-INSERT OCS IN SAID FIC. ALSO MADE HIMSELF A TOTAL TYR SELF INSERT CHARACTER. ALL VERY DRAMATIC. KEPT WRITING THIS FIC UNTIL IT WAS HUGE. AFTER HE DIED HIS SON PUBLISHED IT AND CALLED IT THE SILMARILLION. JRR YOU FUCKIN NERD
WAIT I’M NOT FUCKING DONE YET. TREEBEARD? BASED THE WAY HE TALKED OF HIS OLD FRIEND JACK WHO YOU ALL MIGHT KNOW AS CS LEWIS. THAT’S RIGHT. THAT NARNIA MOTHERFUCKER. WROTE HIM INTO LORD OF THE RINGS AKA THE SEQUEL TO THE SEQUEL OF HIS ORIGINAL FANFIC MASTERPIECE. CS LEWIS FUCKING HATED LORD OF THE RINGS. TOLKIEN FUCKING HATED NARNIA. BASICALLY THEY STARTED THE OXFORD PROFESSOR LIVEJOURNAL CLUB AND THEY FLAMED EACH OTHER’S SHIT RELENTLESSLY YET REMAINED BFFS
SHELOB? FUCKING TARANTULA BIT J-TIDDY ON THE FOOT WHEN HE WAS LIKE 3. WROTE IT INTO LORD OF THE RINGS.
HIS AUNT’S HOUSE? NAMED BAG END. YEAH YOU GUESSED IT WROTE IT INTO LORD OF THE RINGS
THIS FUCKING DORKUS SUPREME MADE UP HIS OWN LANGUAGE. WAIT NO IM WRONG. HE MADE UP LIKE 80 LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS AND ALPHABETS AND SHIT
BEST PART OF ALL?? HIS OWN LAST NAME, TOLKIEN, WAS DERIVED FROM THE GERMAN “TOLKHUN” MEANING “FOOLHARDY”. DOES THAT RING A BELL TO ANYONE FAMILIAR TO LORD OF THE RINGS??? BECAUSE YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT PEREGRIN “PIPPIN” TOOK’S LIKE FUCKING CATCHPHRASE WAS “FOOL OF A TOOK”. TOLKIEN FIC’D HIS OWN FAMILIAL LINGUISTIC HISTORY INTO HIS WORK WHAT A DWEEB
IN 2008 HE RANKED 6TH ON A LIST OF THE TOP 50 BRITISH WRITERS SINCE 1945. HE WAS A PROFESSOR OF LANGUAGES AND OTHER IMPORTANT STUFFY SHIT AT OXFORD
AND JRR TOLKIEN WAS THE BIGGEST DWEEB EVER TO LIVE
Mashups and Exports 