This Sword Was Made By The Elves And Will Glow Blue When Orcs Are Around. Green Means It's Fully Charged,

Bilbo was declared dead while he was away in the Hobbit (and had to do a bunch of paperwork to get declared alive again) but there’s no indication he was formally declared dead after leaving the Shire, even though most people assumed he had died.

Therefore I posit: having a missing person declared dead in the Shire requires the consent of their next of kin. Whoever Bilbo’s next of kin was at the time of the Hobbit (possibly Otho? I’m not sure) had him declared dead at the first opportunity but Frodo refused to ever do it.

Frodo had anxious hobbit bureaucrats knocking on his door every couple of years like ‘Mr Baggins… blease… it’s been 10 years… he was eleventy-one… can we fill out his death certificate yet’ and Frodo was like ‘absolutely not’.

Early on he genuinely couldn’t bring himself too but after a while it was more that he enjoyed irritating the local magistrate’s office than anything else.

I try not to post about real life serious stuff, but there’s been a lot of… unfortunate essays written about how it is Zuko’s duty to help Azula because Iroh helped him.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it is never your ‘duty’ to stick around and help someone through person through their mental illness. That is redoubled when they are abusive or put you in physical danger.

I think most people realize that cartoons do not equal real life and liberties can and SHOULD be taken for fiction, but this trope seems to be gaining traction so I gotta put it out there. When the cabin pressure drops and someone you love is going through a mental breakdown, make sure you put the oxygen mask over your own face first before you help them with theirs. If you know what I mean.

Who takes Middle-Earth-born Celebrian under their wing and make her feel at home in Valinor, and why is it Finrod?

Okay, you guys were excited about this so here's how I would have written the Water Tribe characters as an Inupiaq

Note: this is entirely for fun and is based on my cultural experiences as well as my personal taste in media. There's no way I actually expect Nickelodean would let any of the darker content fly, nor am I trying to play script doctor or say any of this should have been canon. I have my own writings for that. I'm also not bothering to assign them Inupiaq names for the sake of simplicity and ease of communication.

Sokka

Sokka would be named after Bato's father who was killed in one of the Fire Nation raids. He would have dismissed the idea he was Bato's reincarnated dad whenever it was used to embarass him (usually courtesy of Katara calling him a grumpy old man) but go along with it when it was a positive thing like Bato calling him "little dad" or people saying he was brave like the one he was named after. He would probably use more Inupiat language than Katara, because he was less interested in works of fiction and poetry that were available from the rest of the world. He reads weather conditions, the process of learning that from his father was his first introduction to science, and respects the animals he hunts.

Katara

Named after her mother's uncle, who showed signs of waterbending skill but kept it hidden so he wouldn't be taken away. A bunch of her and Sokka's little cousins call her Grandpa and she later jokes to Aang they should have called him that because he's the one who's technically over 100 years old. More likely to explain cultural things than Sokka, who prefers to let them observe and figure it out, but knows more of the traditional stories. Even Sokka will admit she's a better storyteller than him. Eventually everyone who travels with them asks her for a story and she gives her best every time

Kanna

Still dumped Pakku for his suffocating ideas of a woman's place but also over some family drama he wouldn't let go of. Her grandchildren make a point that she has sworn to never drum, dance, or sing, and won't even be in the same room as it until the War ends

Bato, Kya, and Hakoda

Bato and Hakoda have labrets now. Hakoda is not just a prankster, but also a skilled dancer. Bato and Kya were both known for the beautul masks they made

Yue

I've already said she's the closest to perfect rep the series has, so all I'd add was scenes of her alone with Sokka's carving. She'd try to find ways to explain to him, holding the carving and talking to it as if it was him, that it wouldn't work out between them, as much as she'd want it too. Stuff like "You've had great adventures and that's exciting, but I don't want that for myself" and "You don't understand, I have a life here and I can't go galavanting off and leave it all behind" and ultimately deciding it would just hurt him more.

Arnook

We'd get to see more of his governing, specifically in the form of figuring out what to do with Fire Nation soldiers taken prisoner. When the Fire Nation says that a few foot soldiers aren't worth calling off the seige, Arnook gives them the choice to live among them and try to assimilate, or take their chances on the tundra. Terrified and abandoned in a strange, dangerous land, two of them agree to stay. The other one decides to take the banishment because he will not live under another nation's rule. Later, when Aang says they can't just leave Zuko behind, we see ravens picking at shreds of a Fire Nation soldier's uniform. This underlines the nature of Arnook's decision to give the soldiers options and shows that he hates senselessly throwing away people's lives.

Pakku

Still unwilling to teach Katara and firmly held to the belief that women shouldn't fight, but specifically as a result of his sister dying after defending against an animal that would have killed her and an unconscious friend. Some bitter part of him thinks the (male) friend should have died instead, even though said friend was Kanna's favorite cousin. Less smug and convinced he's always in the right, more sad and prone to anger, still as unpleasant to be around.

Hahn

His mother was a shaman, or something close to it, with a special connection to the spirit world, who asked the moon to breathe life into Yue. The youngest of three brothers, Hahn was the only one not to go missing on a hunt. Rather than believe they're dead like everyone else, he insists that he will find them someday. He's happened upon various animal spirits before and can painlessly finish off large game with his bare hands. Knowing the spirits are on his side as well as the attention his skills as a hunter have gotten him have made him arrogant. He has the dream of Yue sacrificing herself instead of Arnook, but he mistakes it for Yue sacrificing herself for Sokka, starting the animosity between them.

Hama

Taken from the Southern Water Tribe but after being kept prisoner, a man of minor Fire Nation nobility decides to keep her as a maid, mistreating her and eventually forcing her to marry him. They have a son, who ends up being the first person Hama bloodbends into the underground cave. She accuses the woman on a nearby property of bewitching her son and making him disappear, and the next full moon she bloodbends the unwanted husband into that cave. The people are convinced and the woman is driven away. More people disappear, regardless of class but nevertheless people around her. She plays up the grieving just enough that no one could ever suspect it's her. She's assumed to be cursed and lonely, and so when she leaves this house where her family was taken from her, people understand. When she weeps that the curse must have followed her after the first full moon she lived in that town, the people show her pity. A few suspect her, but they are shut down as being cold and heartless.

Elven Fashion Week

Nandor elves- wear rich and vibrant earth tones, complimented with a silvers and turquoise. Nandor clothing is sturdy and easy to move in, but ornamentation is not sacrificed for functionality. Their hair is almost always a shade of brown and is worn either very long and braided or styled short and manageable.

Avari elves- don’t see the light all that much and both their collective complexion and clothing traditions reflect that. Like the Nandor they prefer long braided hair or short and sleek styles. They prefer the darkest clothing of all the branches of elves, which they accent with deep blues, rich purples and sometimes irredescent hues. They never wear anything shiny or flashy, but they are fond of embroidery as long as it’s subtle.

Teleri elves (Sindar & Falmari)- are almost the same people aesthetic wise. Clothing, adornment and hair styling are all practically the same save color schemes. Sindar adore darker blues and greens, while the Falmari are into pastel, or lighter colors, namely sea foam green and teal. Falmari elves absorb themselves in pearls, shells and corals, while their cousins the Sindar prefer silver and precious gems. All Teleri elves have varying shades of blue eyes. Silver hair is common in the Falmari while Black hair is more common in the Sindar.

Vanyar- long golden hair, amber eyes and sun kissed skin are the main features of this branch of elves. Each vanyar has a fondness/devotion to a specific Vala which they model their personal clothing after. Embroidered golden feathers or jeweled vines for Manwe or Yvanna, a radiating headdress for Varda or flowing robes that dance and shimmer like fire for Aule.

Noldor- unless they are busy crafting, their hair is worn free, very long and unstyled. Almost all of the Noldor have green eyes and black hair, with red hair being very rare (they are the only group that has redheads). Noldor will wear all the colors on the spectrum in a variety of styles. They have the most ornate clothing of all the elves, and are famous for their intricate embroidery and stunning jewelry which is always worn with tremendous pride.

túrin wakes up everyday and chooses violence

thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes

reasons for this:

basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.

like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.

here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.

TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.

Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”

all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that

I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.

But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.

In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.

On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”

like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not

You know which bit of The Fall of Gondolin made me go really, truly feral? After Tuor and Voronwë see Túrin, without knowing who it is (my heart), we get this:

The cries of the hunters grew fainter; for the Orcs thrust never deep into the wild lands at either hand, but swept rather down and up the road. They recked little of stray fugitives, but spies they feared and the scouts of armed foes; for Morgoth had set a guard on the highway, not to ensnare Tuor and Voronwë (of whom as yet he knew nothing) nor any coming from the West, but to watch for the Blacksword, lest he should escape and pursue the captives of Nargothrond, bringing help, it might be, out of Doriath.

Part of the reason that they manage to cross the Vale of Sirion (apart from the cloak of Ulmo) is that Morgoth is so concerned with keeping a watch out for Túrin that his scouts keep to the road, and aren’t bothered about pursuing two “stray fugitives” come out of the west into the wilds beyond. He is so preoccupied with Túrin that Tuor slips right through his fingers.

Without ever knowing it, Túrin helps Tuor to reach Gondolin, to deliver Ulmo’s message, to marry Idril and father Eärendil, putting in motion Morgoth’s own downfall. Cursed as he is, he is still able to play his own part in bringing that about, and all without ever knowing it. And that gets me right in the heart.