I have noticed a tendency to have Glorfindel as just another beautiful Elf, but the dude fought a balrog….
~~~
The safety of Elrond’s realm was one of the constants of the world. The sun rose in the east, the seasons turned, and Rivendell was a safe haven. As such, Thorin felt comfortable walking its grounds at night without weapons or armor. The chance might never come again, so he breathed softly and appreciated it.
He came into a moonviewing glade with a pond and benches and thought to lose himself in its stillness. He was lowering himself onto a bench before he noticed another, hunched in a long cloak even though the June night held no chill and not feeling the peace of the glade.
“Forgive me,” he said, rising. “I did not realize…”
“Do not apologize,” the other said, voice rough as Thorin had heard from survivors of the dragon or Azanulbizar. “There is little peace for me anyway.”
That made Thorin pause. “Do not your people have a place to go when there is no rest in this world?”
“For me?” the other asked, throwing back his hood. And there indeed was one who had seen battle. One eye was missing, and much of the Elf’s visible face and threat were marred by burns and scarred over gouges.
Thorin sank back onto the bench. “What battles have you seen, honorable father?” he asked in awe.
The Elf relaxed at his lack of horror and his lips twitched in the hint of a smile. “I slew a balrog once.”
Thorin’s mouth dropped open. “Golden-haired Glorfindel,” he breathed. “Why are you said to have died?”
The Elf gestured at himself, revealing a missing finger and more scarring. “Younger Elves cannot stand to look on me. In these times of peace I am an unwanted reminder of another time.”
“Among Dwarves you would be revered, your scars the outward signs of your courage.” Thorin was silent a moment then moved closer. “Balrog-Slayer, I go to wrest my home from a dragon. There are those who think me mad and the task too dangerous. The dragon has not been seen for years and they ask why we should wake it. What think you? Tell me and I will follow your counsel.”
There was no hesitation. “Evil must always been opposed. Humans may not live long enough to see the dragon come back. It may even be longer than the lives of Dwarves. But it is there and will wake again. Killing it is the only way to stop its destruction.”
“May it be done,” Thorin said, feeling the peace of purpose wrap around him. He stood, ready to rejoin his company. Before leaving, he took Glorfindel’s ruined face in his hands and touched their foreheads together. “When Erebor’s is habitable once more, there will be a place for you.”
Not an encounter I would ever have thought of, and now it is absolutely headcanon.
@bitchinj this is very relevant to your interests!
moonblossom: silentstephi: derdoktorsschnabel: chocolatequeennk: spatscolombo: cracked: 12 Times Han Solo Used The Force Without Knowing It I need Han to …
those ao3 “kudos” emails where someone has gone through and read pretty much all of your stories, one after the other: blessings upon you and your household
don’t authors find that weird though? i don’t do that, just because i always figured it might seem stalkery, going story by story through people’s older work (which of course i do ~all the time~ because awesome fic is addictive)
if people are happy to have the kudos, i will totally start leaving them as i read
I mean, I can only speak for myself here, but no, I don’t find it creepy. Someone I’ve never met going through my old instagram selfies and systematically liking them – creepy. Someone I’ve never met obsessively reading my old fics and liking them – my favorite person of the day. Just MHO.
seeing the same person’s name on a string of kudos for your fics because they’ve obviously read through your back catalogue is one of life’s great joys
xcziel, there’s nothing I like more as a writer than someone who is obviously reading everything.
Well, maybe comments. Yes, on old fic too.
I once (back on lj) had someone comment on every single chapter of a fic I wrote in one evening. It was the most thrilling night of my fanfic career. I didn’t feel creepy in the least.
COMMENT. I don’t care how old it is or how many chapters a reader comments on.
The only thing that might possibly be more flattering is the “I stayed up all night because I couldn’t stop reading” comment.
Yes, please.
YES ALL OF THIS
all of this
Reblogging because readers somehow still have this idea that too many comments/kudos are seen as creepy or stalkery. IT’S NOT. Seriously. Every comment, all of the kudos, they’re greatly, GREATLY appreciated. And knowing that someone liked your work enough to click on your name and go through your other fics and liked those too, even the old stuff you’re kind of self-conscious about, is the greatest feeling a writer can have. So if you like a fic, say something/leave kudos, no matter if it’s the first or fifth fanfic you’ve read in one night from that author.
I LOVE when I get an email where it’s the same name, like a dozen or more times because they went through and read like, /everything I ever wrote/ apparently. It makes me so happy! 😀
Multiple kudos and/or lots of comments are the best thing ever
Not at all creepy. It’s like, they are reading, get to the end, said they liked it, and Prove they liked it because they read another and liked that…
And yes, it’s just as fun to see this with old stories. Maybe even more?
The other thing that is super nice? When someone comments and says, hey, I tried to kudos but I had already kudos’d so I’m commenting to kudos again because I do that ALL THE TIME. I either forgot I’d read this lovely thing and want to kudos again, or I’m doing a re-read of something and I *want* to kudos again. When it happens to me it’s seriously lovely – someone enjoying your stuff enough that they re-read.
I LOVE EVERY LAST PERSON WHO INTERACTS WITH MY FICS
There is literally no better way of stroking a writer’s ego than liking all their fics or comment on a fic no matter how old.
In fact, older fics are even better because you know someone actually bothered to dig through your shit.
I got a kudos on the oldest (seriously, I wrote it coming up on 40 years ago) thing I have in the archive (its there because I am a completist, and consider the AO3 to be an *archive* in the original sense) and it made my morning. (The was also the question of ‘How did you even *find* that???’ but the ways of the archive are mysterious.)
I’ve not seen Sense8 (yet – I really ought to) but I have seen Sylvester McCoy in a thoroughly creepy role – Michael Sams in Beyond Fear. The creepiest part is how not over the top or obvious he is.
That thing you wrote that isn’t “good enough” to put up on the AO3. You can put it up there! The AO3 isn’t meant to be The World’s Classiest Showcase. It’s an archive. It exists because most other forms of hosting fannish work eventually degrade or disappear. Accounts get deleted. Websites shut down. The AO3 preserves those things. Ten years from now you’ll be like, “Shit, there was this really great tag essay, but the person changed their Tumblr URL and then Tumblr closed up shop…” (look, even Tumblr will die eventually) and your only hope of finding it will be if the page was cached, or if somebody uploaded it to the AO3.
The AO3 exists to preserve ephemera as much as substantial works. You know how valuable it is for archaeologists to be able to read the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii? The little things, the notes, the headcanons, the notfics, the meta, the back-and-forths, are all important too.
YES YES YES THIS.
Tumblr’s likely to die sooner than you expect, and suddenly – it’s owned by Yahoo. (Anyone remember
del.icio.us, later delicious.com?) Yahoo’s trying really really hard to squeeze money out of tumblr and it’s not working, for all the reasons discussed in synec’s post and because a huge portion of its userbase is 13-18 years old and HAVE NO DIGITAL MONEY so can’t buy things online even if they wanted to.
There is no “worthy to be on AO3.” None. The early fics were often really well-written; it was a high-standards archive – not because “it strove for high standards” but because the only people who knew it existed, who cared about a new multifandom archive, were the ones who’d been around watching archives disappear for years; they were veteran fic writers who wanted a permanent place to share their stories. It took a long time for AO3 to have enough server capacity to allow open invites; in the early days, it was friend-of-a-friend for invite codes. (They wanted more people; they couldn’t handle a flood. So they handed out a few codes at a time)
We even talked about it while setting up the original terms of service – knowing that by saying, our standards are less restrictive than ff.net, less restrictive than LJ, we were going to eventually have HUGE amounts of really bad fic. FF.net got the nickname “pit of voles,” and AO3 was going to outdo that… eventually.
And. We wanted it ALL. All the reader-insert Mary Sue “date with hot dude” fic; all the “quiz to find out which power ranger you would be” fic; all the “band came to my home town and their bus broke down in front of my house and they needed a coffee and…” fic. And later, all the meta: the thinky character analyses; the “who’d be best on a first date” discussions; the “why the new movie sucked rocks and should never have been made because they ruined my favorite sidekick” rants.
ALL. WE WANT IT ALL.
AO3 is not about “the best of fandom;” it’s about “the truth of fandom.” And the truth is, fandom is not comprised of 90% well-written tightly-plotted carefully proofread fic. Fandom is comprised of people who love their favorite shows and books and characters and want to share that love with others.
AO3 are not the fanfic standards police. We’re the ones cheering for the “GLOWING BLUE SKELETON DICKS” tags.
Wanderings and Perigrinations 