Tauriel and Legolas: In the Hobbit or Out?

*sigh*

Yes. Sort of.

Tauriel is the captain of the guard. Right? And Legolas is the son of Thranduil? Right? And we know Legolas isn’t only 100 years old in The Lord of the Rings, which takes place (the main storyline, I mean) about 80 or so years after the events of The Hobbit. So we know that Legolas was alive during the events of The Hobbit. So…

1 - Thranduil had a captain of the guard during The Hobbit book.
2 - Tauriel is the captain of the guard in The Hobbit films.
3 - There is no gender bias in Elven society, so a woman could be anything.
4 - The guard captain in The Hobbit isn’t described at all - gender, age, name.  There is no information to go on. Just that there is a guard captain.

Which means that the guard captain in The Hobbit novel could very well be a Sylvan Elf woman with red hair named Tauriel, without in any way breaking the canon rules. Tauriel herself may not be specifically by name in the book, but the captain of the guard was, and that is who she is.

As for Legolas, they mention Thranduil’s kinsmen in The Hobbit, just (again) not by name. So there’s no reason to assume that Legolas wasn’t there when we know he’s Thranduil’s kinsman and was alive and patrolling/defending Mirkwood during the events of The Hobbit.

So yeah, just because they weren’t mentioned by name doesn’t mean their characters weren’t in the events of The Hobbit.

Proof of Damage

Pitch Wars Mentee Bio

Hi everybody!

 My name is Cathryn and I have a double-hyphenated last name because there were only 8 Martyn-Dows in the world (my 2 brothers, my niece, my parents, my sister, my sister-in-law, and me before I got married) so instead of changing my last name I just tacked my husband's on at the end. My husband is amazing, and he's taught me a lot. He's high-functioning autistic, very set in his ways, and LDS (Latter-Day Saint; aka Mormon) but he loves me, the Tim Burton-loving bisexual Mormon girl with Asperger's. I blame him for addicting me to My Little Ponies, though. Evil, evil man...

 


 I also blame him for our only girl-cat loving him more than me. But that's okay, because I hold the other two in thrall. Muahahaha!

I go by LA Knight because that's what I was first published under on Fanfiction.net and then later in Foliate Oak Magazine and Combat Magazine back in 2007 and 2008. Blame this young lady for inspiring me at an early age and giving me the name idea.

That's Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and her first book, written when she was like, 12, is amaze-bunnies.

I've been published three times—one sci-fi western short, one poem that was reprinted in a Best Of anthology—and I've got two pieces slated to be published in the next year: a Cthulhu mythos piece and a Persian steampunk fantasy short. I've also won a bunch of Inkpop contests (they're Figment now) and got second or third place in a few others. The photosets displayed on my background are for various projects, some complete and some not.

I own over 2600 books (impressive cuz my apartment is itsty-witsy). Some of my fave authors include Laini Taylor, Neil Gaiman, Francesca Lia Block, Catherynne M. Valente, Ally Condie, JD Robb, Anne Bishop, Ann Brashares, Libba Bray, Naoko Takeuchi, Rosamund Hodge, Michelle Hodkin, Tahereh Mafi, and Marissa Meyer. I work at a call center that provides services for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. I have no adorable carnivorous munchkins (aka children) at this juncture but I wish for them.

I started writing with Power Rangers fanfiction in crayon when I was a kid.

(don't judge me, lol)

 

Now my epic fantasy Hellboy fanfic series, Once Upon a Time, has over 1200 reviews. Because dude...haaawt prince!

 
And my Loki fic, Darkness There and Nothing... isn't doing too shabby, either.

I wrote my first book when I was 8 over the course of third grade. It was horrible. I later felt compelled to kill it with fire.

I've written other books since then (including this past November for NaNoWriMo). But last year back in February 2014 I wrote a book in about 3 weeks that was basically 

mixed with  

 
but looking like 

And I'm still madly in love with it, even after a year of revisions, but it still needs some work. I've had it critiqued by several of my peeps, and it's gotten several full requests but no takers. Clearly I need some outside expertise. I love writing. Like, I have to do it or I can't sleep or focus on anything. I love the worlds I make. I also love cats (I have three; and I'm extremely ADD except when it comes to writing; once I sit down to work, I work until my back begs me for mercy 'cause my chair is awful). 

I love my book and I know it's got a lot of potential. It just needs something, obviously, and I'm hoping I can get that from Pitch Wars.

So, the big question.

WHY SHOULD YOU PICK ME AS YOUR MENTEE???

I will work my butt off. I know how to take constructive criticism and work with it. I'm professional, but I'm friendly and cute, too! And cuddly! See?

 

Also, my book offers kick@$$ girls who don't need to be catty to each other to feel good about themselves, healthy romantic relationships, complex sibling relationships and fun girl-friendships, gorgeous clothes, guns, epic mythology, an MC who's interested in STEM, and time-space travel! 

Also romance! This kind! The swoony kind!

Except my male lead looks like this. Sort of. 

Mostly. Complete with the cracked face.

Biggest reason you should pick me! Ben Barnes is my MC's love interest! Okay, not really, but he makes a good model for the guy. :)

For the record, a disclaimer: that is not a demon. Repeat, that is not a demon.That is a [redacted due to spoilers].







 


So to sum up you should pick me because

Thank you!

BLOG HOP: My Name Isn't Katie (Query+250)

GENRE: contemporary magical realism

WORD COUNT: still editing/revising, don't want to make promises. Somewhere around 60-70K max.

Note: my bio paragraph is missing because it's the signature for my emails. Also missing is my "why I'm querying you" paragraph, because this is highly individual depending on the agent.
 

QUERY

"The Tale of the Bamboo-Cutter's Daughter" meets FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC in this 60,000-word novel about a young woman locked away from the world who claims to be a magical princess from an ancient Japanese fairytale.

Katie has been trying to escape the refurbished attic of her house for over six years. Her parents have installed bars on her single window and deadbolts on the outside of the door. She has no computer, no television, and no phone; a walkie-talkie is her only way to communicate with the outside world. Her only sources of comfort are dancing to her iPod, her carefully hidden collection of old Polaroids, and reading. Her parents, the social workers, and her psychiatrist all say she's there for her own good. That this way she doesn't have to be institutionalized. That her delusions are growing worse.

But Katie knows she isn't crazy. She knows she came from hundreds of years in the past, from a magical city on the moon, and that she was found inside a bamboo stalk when she was a baby. She knows she's really Princess Kaguya and that Jade the Moon Rabbit, her best friend and faithful servant, is searching for her. She knows that a terrible darkness from the past is coming to their small Alaskan town, bringing with it something terrible Katie can't bring herself to remember. And she knows she has until her seventeenth birthday to escape her prison, or she'll be trapped on earth forever.

Then she sees a boy named Mark through her window. Katie claims he can turn into a fox and control the dead. That Mark is her long-lost love from centuries ago. Her heart says they belong together and they're running out of time until the window home closes for good. But with no sign of Jade and a sympathetic but adamant Mark denying he's ever met Katie, she begins to doubt. The darkness is coming, Katie's desperation is growing, and as her seventeenth birthday rapidly approaches, the truth will finally come out—is she really Princess Kaguya? Or is her past all a delusion?

Using prose, verse, Japanese poetry, annotated interview transcripts, pictures, playlists, and Japanese folklore, MY NAME ISN'T KATIE tells the story of a sixteen-year-old girl who might be an alien princess trapped in a sinister mind-game...or who may simply be a deeply psychologically disturbed young woman.

FIRST 250(ish)

6 days, 12 hours, 41 minutes

They've let me in the downstairs bathroom because I cut my arm on a nail sticking out of my prison bedroom wall. The woman who claims to be my mom needs more room to stitch me up than she can find upstairs. The attic is large but the attic bathroom is small. The light isn't good, either.

I watch the moon through the tiny bathroom window. A sliver of white, a soft glow against black and the stars, so many stars. Is this the edge of the world? They're so clear. Like diamonds.

They don't twinkle. Only in sick cities do stars twinkle, their light battering futilely against the smog. There's no smog here at the edge of everything. No poisonous air. Only me and the people who say they are my parents but they're lying, no I can't think like that, don't think and this prison this house and the attic and the stars so bright you could read by their glow and the light of the moon.

They won't let me read for a long time after this. Not until they figure out if I did this to myself on purpose this is an accident. If something I read gave me the idea to use my pain as the key to escaping made me hurt myself.

Or maybe they think I'm trying to call him but this is all wrong. He doesn't want blood and a dying heartbeat, he is soft things, sweet things. Frost and snowflakes and winter and death, yes, but mourning. Passing. Moving on. Not pain and hurt. They don't know him, they don't understand he can't find me yet because there's something wrong here. I think this is a trap.

I think my parents are trying to kill him. 

But you can't kill Death. There will always be Death.