I made an entirely new tumblr account

Follow @vosplay if you want to keep up with me and my cosplays

Also I need new blogs to follow on my account so please reblog or like this and I will check out your account

Margaery and Sansa cosplays by us. You can also find us here (Margaery) and here (Sansa) on facebook. Picture by AvK Fotografie 

To the Editing Room and Back Again: How Warner Bros Almost Ruined The Hobbit

Something that I noticed really irritates me is the stunning lack of research in the Tolkien fandom regarding The Hobbit trilogy and how they pin the blame for everything on Jackson. But as I discovered over the past three months, there’s a bigger story. The trilogy had one of the most nightmarish productions in recent memory and all of it is Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema’s fault. 

The first problem emerged in 2008 when New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. refused to pay the Tolkien Estate the money that they owed them (including for The Lord of the Rings). What followed was two and a half years of everything spiraling out of control, not only sending the film into Development Hell but causing Guillermo del Toro to leave production after having been attached to it. To make matters worse, these legal issues got so bad that it would have taken the production out of New Zealand entirely. Only when Peter Jackson decided to come back to the director’s chair in late 2009 was everything sorted out.

And then the studio only gave Peter Jackson and Weta six months of pre-production and told him to start filming immediately afterwards or else. And before production could even begin, Jackson was hospitalized in January 2011 for a perforated stomach ulcer, which eerily was one of the contributing causes of Tolkien’s death. Luckily, it was caught in time and surgery went smoothly. This, however, forced production and principal photography to be halted for a month.

Filming itself went smoothly for the most part until the decision was made to split it into three movies instead of two. The sound designers, mixers, and editors had to create and edit new sound effects halfway through doing the second film. Then there was the decision to CGI Azog, Bolg, and the orcs in the first and second films, with the decision with Bolg being made so suddenly that whole sequences had to be re-shot, which is why in the trailers Azog is the one chasing the dwarves but in the film it’s Bolg.

Another piece of evidence of the suddeness of switching from two movies to three: the scene where the group tries to bury Smaug in gold in the forges was added only because the filmmakers needed a cliffhanger (they confirmed this when asked) and the actors and some of the crew literally had no idea what they were filming until the finished film.

The romance between Kili and Tauriel was always intended to be in the film from as early as 2010 with her relationship with Legolas being strictly platonic and more like a brother and sister. But when re-shoots were done to turn it into three films, the studio forced them to write Legolas into the love story and turn it into a love triangle. Both Evangeline Lilly and Peter Jackson have admitted they hated the idea of a love triangle and just wanted to tell a simple love story. This is also evidenced in the healing scene in Laketown. In the original script, she healed one of Bard’s daughters (most likely Tilda) but when re-shoots happened it was changed to Kili, which coupled with the aforementioned Bolg switch suddenly explains Kili being hit with an arrow.

When it finally came time to do the third film, the studio practically took the film away from Jackson and forced him to edit it in a way he didn’t approve of and imposed tons of baggage onto film, demanding more emphasis on the love story and possibly more Alfrid scenes.

All of this ended up blowing up in Warner Bros’ faces and while the trilogy did do well, it became a Base Breaker for audiences and critics and the Tolkien Estate has relinquished the film rights to the books until further notice. All the aforementioned meddling was confirmed not just by Peter Jackson but also by Graham McTavish and Evangeline Lilly, with McTavish confirming the theatrical cut for the third film isn’t what was intended and that the extended cuts of all three films are closer to Jackson’s original intention. 

Yikes. Now you know all this, I hope you at least are aware of what was going on behind the scenes. Thank you. 

Just gals bein’ pals. AKA: “what do you mean this is not how episode 5x06 went?” Pictures by Adriaan Kastelein

I loooved that part in the last episode where margaery burst into the room, bitchslapped ramsay out of the window and agressively made out with sansa

tauriel and dís talking and eventually becoming friends after the events of botfa is super important to me

And finally, here it is… our little Mirkwood Family. ♥ (Legolas was off fighting Orcs or drinking with Dwarves or… something. We found him again later!) We did it at least; I mean, it’s not like we only talked about it for a year or anything. Of course I’ve been Thranduil for ages and Anouck finished Lothíriel already last summer, but we never managed to do it together and by the time HobbitCon came around with a chance for us, Essie had decided to join us as our daughter. ♥ Then procrastination hit and I ended up making her dress in just two days, after a design Essie came up with. We call it Elf Couture ^^

Thranduil, King of Mirkwood.. Felix Lothíriel, Queen of Mirkwood.. tookishcosplay Edlothia, Princess of Mirkwood.. Essie Pictures by thranduilandhisswagstag​, thorinsbitch​ and ourselves Our headcanon about the Queen of Mirkwood is quite different to what is in the movies, as we were developing it long before The Battle of Five Armies was released. Lothíriel was the daughter of Oropher’s bodyguard, who died trying to save Thranduil from dragon fire at the end of the Second Age. She already held a good position in the court, but after Oropher died and Thranduil became king, she became his most trusted adviser. He felt terrible guilt about her father’s death, and feared she could never see through his wounds, but despite this they fell in love. Soon after their marriage, their first son Arthalion was born. After several centuries, they adopted Erynion, the child of a guard who had died in a fight and his wife who faded from grief. Later followed Legolas and their daughter Edlothia. When Legolas was a small child, his mother took him out to visit the woodland guards as Erynion was amongst them and the young prince was fascinated with what went on outside the palace. Upon arriving, it became quickly apparent that all was not well. Something strange had happened to the wood. The guards were not in sight but something loomed in the trees above. Able to get Legolas out of harm’s way, Lothíriel took up her sword to protect herself and her son from the unknown threat… but it was in vain. Lothíriel died, as one of the first victims of the spiders. After this, Erynion turned his mind and his body into avenging her death, hunting the spiders. Arthalion took up his mother’s position in court as Thranduil’s councilor and ambassador. He and his wife helped to raise Edlothia and Legolas. As Edlothia was born just before the shadow fell upon the land, she was from then on known as “the last blossom of the Greenwood”.

look at these awesome pictures of our happy family <3 I was so incredibly happy when felix asked me to be his wife and had so much fun making this costume. it is my second original character ever and so very different to create than my previous dwarf lady

-Anouck

i love this gif cuz it looks like he was just trying to hug his kids and then everybody joined in and he’s just like what the hell

[insp] [x]

Finished my book cover for the Hobbit! Working on the Fellowship cover next.

Return of the King cover [x]

Thorin

watercolor painting