Tolkien and long hair: what do the books say?
Any time Tolkien describes the length of Elves’ hair, it’s always said to be long:
- Glorfindel: ‘His golden hair flowed shimmering in the wind of his speed’ (FOTR
- Amroth: ‘The wind was in his flowing hair’ (FOTR)
- Celeborn: ‘The hair of the Lord Celeborn was of silver long and bright’ (FOTR)
- Elves even made bowstrings from their hair: ‘A bow such as the Galadhrim used, longer and stouter than the bows of Mirkwood, and strung with a string of elf-hair’ (FOTR)
- Celegorm: ‘Golden was his long hair’ (The Lays of Beleriand)
- The Elves of Valinor: ‘With their gleaming hair in the wind flying’ (The Lays of Beleriand); ‘There blowing free unbraided hair is meshed with beams of Moon and Sun’ (The Lost Road)
- The Teleri: ‘With their long hair gleaming like foam’ (Morgoth’s Ring)
- Olwë: ‘The hair of Olwë was long and white’ (Morgoth’s Ring)
- Thingol: ‘Elwë himself had long and beautiful hair of silver hue’ (The War of the Jewels)
- Fingon: ‘He wore his long dark hair in great plaits braided with gold’ (The Shibboleth of Fëanor)
- And then there’s this quote which implies that long hair was seen as desirable among the Elves: ‘All the Eldar had beautiful hair (and were especially attracted by hair of exceptional loveliness), but the Noldor were not specially remarkable in this respect, and there is no reference to Finwë as having had hair of exceptional length, abundance, or beauty beyond the measure of his people’ (The Shibboleth of Fëanor)
But it’s not just Elves—Men are also described as having long hair:
- Aragorn: ‘He threw back his hood, showing a shaggy head of dark hair flecked with grey’; ‘His hood was cast back, and his dark hair was blowing in the wind’ (FOTR)
- The Witch-king of Angmar: ‘His hair was long and gleaming’ (FOTR); in an earlier draft of the scene, Tolkien wrote that all the Ringwraiths had long hair: ‘Upon their long grey hair were crowns and helms of pale gold’
- Boromir: ‘They combed his long dark hair and arrayed it upon his shoulders’ (TTT)
- The Rohirrim: ‘Their hair, flaxen-pale, flowed under their light helms, and streamed in long braids behind them’; ‘Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?’; ‘Their golden hair was braided on their shoulders’ (TTT)
- Eorl the Young: ‘His yellow hair was flying in the wind’ (TTT)
- Théoden: ‘His white hair was long and thick and fell in great braids’ (TTT); ‘The hair that flowed beneath his high helm was like snow’ (ROTK)
- Men from the South: ‘They have black eyes, and long black hair’; ‘His black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood’ (TTT)
- Faramir and Éowyn: ‘And so they stood on the walls of the City of Gondor, and a great wind rose and blew, and their hair, raven and golden, streamed out mingling in the air’ (ROTK); this would only be possible if Faramir also had long hair
- Túrin: ‘For his garb was of the wild woods and his hair was long’ (The Book of Lost Tales)
What about Maiar?
- Gandalf is described as follows: ‘His long white hair, his sweeping silver beard, and his broad shoulders, made him look like some wise king of ancient legend’ (FOTR); ‘His snowy hair flew free in the wind’ (TTT)
- Even the Balrog is described as having long hair: ‘Its streaming hair seemed to catch fire, and the sword that it held turned to flame’ (The Return of the Shadow)
Interestingly, I only found a few instances of characters cutting their hair short, and all of them are women:
- Lúthien cuts her hair in The Silmarillion, although it does not say how short, but in The Lays of Beleriand, it says she ‘cut the hair about her ears, and close she cropped it to her head’
- Vána cuts her hair too in The Book of Lost Tales: ‘There follows an account of how Vána...cut short her golden hair and gave it to the Gods, and from her hair they wove sails and ropes’
- In The War of the Ring, Éowyn is described with shorn hair when she goes to war, although this was changed in the final version of ROTK: ‘In the passage that follows, Éowyn’s hair is described as shorn upon her neck’
In conclusion, long hair is clearly the norm in Tolkien’s books. No Elf is ever described as having short hair apart from Lúthien, and no mortal is ever described as having short hair except for Éowyn in the rejected draft. If anyone should have short hair, it’s certain female characters, not male Elves. Fight me!
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just to be completely clear, the amount of military power and political influence Israel has has NOTHING to do with its settlers being Jewish. Israel is a force for American & European interests in the region and they're just doing what America does and allows/encourages its close allies to do.
war crimes aren't considered war crimes when someone America finds useful is doing them. european and american pushback against anyone criticizing Israeli apartheid & genocide is 100% because these crimes are useful to American & European hegemony.
Governments that are deeply antisemitic, like France, aren't suddenly caring about Jewish people. Jewish people, persecuted the world over, don't hold some kind of hegemonic power outside of Israel.
The state of Israel and its attendant brutal treatment of the locals are both incredibly useful to the US, and American hegemony means we're expected to celebrate both.
not bc they're Jewish. this isn't a break in the pattern of western antisemitism and it's not evidence that antisemitism doesn't exist.
it's just like how you could get fired for saying shit against the US war in Afghanistan when i was growing up. it is 100% about US military and political interests (ok slightly western europe too but lbr)
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You know, it would be amazing if Hollywood learned the right lesson from the success of Nimona. Something like "Hey, maybe don't throw out a nearly done movie as a tax write off" or "people want queer stories" or even "don't be afraid to take some storytelling risks and be original" but you just know they're going to come away with some absolutely batshit takeaway like, "next time delete all the evidence and burn it to the ground so the gays can't make us look bad!"
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'It was late spring, the first time all year that the sunshine had any real strength behind it. Satoru was wittering on about something inane as always — Tentomon or something equally ridiculous.
There was nothing special about the moment. Not really. Except for the fact that Satoru had shrugged off his jacket in the heat. It was draped around his shoulders just so, exposing the long column of his throat, pale after a long winter.
Really, there was nothing special about the moment. But when Suguru looked at the boy silhouetted against the spring sky, bright and blue and boundless and beautiful — just like his eyes, Suguru thought — his heart skipped a beat all the same.
With all the sight afforded to him, Satoru never missed a thing. So it was risky, what Suguru did. Later, when he was looking at his new phone wallpaper under the cover of darkness, grinning like an idiot, he'd wonder how he ever got away with it.
Yet, if Suguru's yearning to capture that perfectly ordinary moment forever was stronger than all reason, perhaps it was stronger than the Six Eyes, too. After all, not even Satoru could stop time.'
- by my beloved @fushiglow ♥
(( also glo says: FUN FACT! Tentomon is voiced by Suguru's VA — ergo it's Satoru's favourite Digimon, obviously ))
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freshly added headcanons:
• gojo at some point randomly barged into sugurus room and put glowy stickers all over his ceiling
• suguru has gojo as his phone wallpaper, but keeps it a secret
• suguru is a hamasaki ayumi fan
• the cinnamoroll phone charm is from gojo who spent almost an eternity getting that out of a gatcha machine for him
• they were happy
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