melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote2021-08-15 10:10 pm
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100 Days of Enemy Recs: 19. Legolas/Gimli

Legolas and Gimli are a pair who deserve so much more fanfic than they ever got - not that they're exactly a tiny pairing, but their pairing tag on AO3 still qualifies for yuletide, and that includes the many, many stories where they're just a background pairing. For one of the most canon pairs in one of the oldest, most enduring large fandoms, that ought to be a surprise. (And before the Hobbit movie taught the internet the truth that dwarves are sexy, it was much much less.)

It isn't really, though, and when I think about it, it does make sense. Legolas and Gimli always sort of felt like guests in someone else's story, in Lord of the Rings: the more I've spent time with the kind of narratives Tolkien was inspired, the more they fall for me into the mold of heroes who have their own, much more famous and exciting, saga somewhere else - who have just been borrowed into this one, to give the new heroes a bit of extra coolness by association.

I can just see a small Human-child of the Fourth Age, being told the story of the Nine Walkers for the first time, and the Halflings are sort of fun, they're the ones the story is about anyway, and of course you need Gandalf and Elrond in any kind of Third Age quest - they're practically obligatory - and so is the Man of Gondor (I bet he dies heroically, one of the kids whispers, and shush I'm listening, says the other.) Aragorn is kind of cool and you figure out eventually that he's going to turn out to be Elessar, who was King in Gondor in your grandparents' day, and it's fun to hear about what he did before he became a real hero -

- but then Legolas and Gimli show up. Legolas and Gimli! The pair who ended the age-long animosity between dwarves and elves! Who built Aglarond of the Glittering Caves, and slew the Balrog of Moria, who made Ithilien green again, the last of the High Elves to sail to the West, and the first of the dwarves! whose names are always spoken as one (is this really the first time they met? the child asks. I bet they just added that in fot the story. shhh) And that's when you know things are going to get serious, if Legolas and Gimli are there.

There are plenty of tales in Middle-Earth of Elves and their kin who fall for mortals, from Beren and Luthien to Estel and Arwen, and you know the story will end one of two ways - either the mortal dies, and their beloved mourns alone forever; or the elf takes on mortality, and dies with them. Legolas is the only one in all four Ages to say: "Nope, fuck that, I'm going all the way and he's coming with me, if we have to fight God to do it. Gimli, are you in?" and Gimli says, "You have my ax, as always" and they do.

(Frodo and Bilbo and Sam got special dispensation to go into the West, as Ring-bearers. But Gimli? Gimli and Legolas just went, and nobody stopped them.)

Anyway here are a few recs!

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