On the advent of the discovery of the Dwarf Racist Party Dad Tumblr, one could say that my father the King, Thranduil (you Hobbit readers might know him better as the Elvenking) was not amoosed.

—Amused! My father was not amused!

…Oh, Eru. I do believe that's a sign I needed a break.

I'd been at it for hours, combing the internet on my father's orders all in a vain attempt to 'cleanse it from this filth'. Never mind the Thorinduil slash fanfiction and the terrible Deviantart devoted to it, my father insisted his name and likeness be removed from any context wherein 'Dwarf Racist' and 'Party' were mentioned. He didn't find it kingly, and with our growing economic dependence on Erebor for trade, tourism, and taxes, we really couldn't afford a spat with the dwarves over something so petty.

I couldn't help but notice the references to failed fatherhood hadn't made it to his list.

My erstwhile companion, fletmate, and former Fellowship member had agreed in the spirit of "diplomacy" to assist me with the task. So far, Gimli's only contribution had been spilling ale on my keyboard and pointing out if you slowed down the Desolation of Smaug trailer, you could see Tauriel and myself both mouth 'oh fu—er, fudge' instead of 'our fight.' Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. I should know—by this point, it had been looped onto my desktop by a conniving dwarf. At least this meme was silent. I'd only just gotten Mithrandir to debug the viral "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" song not a moon past after what my fletmate claims to have been 'the vengeance of Sauron' got past my firewall. I've since added password protection on the administrator account, and surprisingly, 'Sauron' has had a hard time breaching it and I haven't heard from him since.

…Naugrim.

I'd also been treated to an earful of ranting regarding the appropriation of Gimli's image for advertising purposes for a men's beauty product ("How undwarvenly! And it doesn't even condition the beard! And your mother's axe, you beardless orcspawn!") I'd also become the target of his ridiculous photoshop campaign, finding my face applied to Cover Elf magazine and Lasgalenpolitan, and, to add horror to horrific sense of humor, cut and pasted onto the scantily clad bodies of Vanyar's Secret models.

To add insult to injury, the Esgaroth Herald and the River Running Tattler had just arrived, claiming:

Legolas Greenleaf and Tauriel of Mirkwood end their relationship after only 600 years

Tauriel Dating Erebor Billionaire

Prince Legolas 'still completely in love with love' after 'amicable separation'

Tauriel Who? Prince Spotted Getting Cozy with Old Fellowship Pal Arwen

By the time Tauriel came home from work that night, I'd never been so glad to see my friend in all my life. "Where have you been?" I asked, helping haul her catch in through the flet's narrow doors.

"Dinner," she dropped a brace of geese in my hands, pulling off her gloves and placing her palms against her wind-swept cheeks. "Shopping," came her muffled reply as she shrugged out of her cape and hood. "And a haircut. Do you have any idea how ridiculous it is designing a character to fight with waist length hair? At least when they filmed Arwen showing up at Helm's Deep they had the sense to braid her damned plait," she flipped her newly shorn locks behind her shoulder and rubbed the red tips of her ears. "I took off at least five hands of this stuff and it's still atrocious! How much more of a fucking Mary Sue can they make me?"

It was never too early to discuss tropes for her. Misogyny, as she'd said repeatedly over the years, didn't sleep."You could always have anime eyes and be some sort of furry," I called from the pantry, twining the birds' feet. They'd make quite a lovely Christmas supper later, although to be honest I wasn't looking forward to the plucking.

"Not to mention the inevitable traveling animal companion," Gimli called from the couch, patiently clacking two knitting needles through what I feared might just be my Christmas present this year. I'm no expert in dwarven textiles, but it appeared at this phase in its nascent development to be a mustard yellow onesie.

She slid out of her snow and ice-encrusted boots and shuddered. "Point taken. But all I'm saying is they designed me to be working class, more reachable, more 'practical', but then they gave me this keratinous monstrosity!"

"They were probably trying to avoid the whole butching-up thing, you know, 'only lesbian Elves can join the military'," I explained.

"More likely it's because our little girls are manlier than your men," Gimli quipped, his left eye squinted through a jeweled monocle at the cabling pattern of my future pyjamas.

"I know, I know. Exaggerated tertiary sexual characteristics to distinguish me from the male androgyny. But this hair?" Tauriel insisted. "With this dress? I'm practically Merida. Not to mention you've got full scale armor covering your shoulders, chest and neck. Mine's just designed for embonpoint and leaves me completely exposed."

"Embonpoint?" I asked, unfamiliar with the term.

She leveled a stare at me, almost pityingly. "Titties, Legolas. Titties. That armored corset is about as functional as nipples on a breastplate."

I flushed as Gimli chuckled, puffing large clouds of smoke from his lips and pipe. "It's a palatable color combination," I said, wafting the smell and haze away from my face, desperate for both air and a change of conversation. "They go well together."

"You're really not helping dismiss the gay rumors, you know," she smirked as the corners of her twinkling eyes upturned. "And remember the part where the fandom threw a hissy fit that you were blonde when you don't have a drop of Vanyar blood in your veins?" she asked, her fingers finding and unlacing 'that corset' with expert ease and tossing it aside with equal parts finality and disdain. "Tolkien describes the Elves as dark-haired and grey-eyed, with Nerdanel's father and three of her sons being the only examples of red-haired Elves in the canon. So what are us Silvan Elves supposed to be, Maedhros' bastard children?"

"Hey, you might be a flamboyant ginger, but at least your eye color stays the same," I reminded her.

"At least you can blame the continuity guy," she argued. "I'm just another damned trope. Did you know they purposefully made me ginger just so I could be 'our red-head' and bring 'that feminine energy'? Apparently no one minds the spunky female sidekick so long as there's a genetic reason for her sass."

"Someone actually said that?" I gaped.

"A screenwriter. A female screenwriter," she emphasized, removing the shopping from the scattered bags and hanging her new more practical armored attire in her spacious wardrobe. "Then they went and made the rest of the Silvan Elves ginger for continuity's sake despite the fact that Haldir and his brothers are portrayed as blonde!"

"Oh, Eru, I just now realized that," I hung a beautifully intricate scale jerkin next to silvery-shadowed haulberk made of smooth, supple leather. "I mean, can't they at least be consistent with their inconsistencies?"

"And Haldir's ears?" she pressed, adding a matching pauldron of tooled leather in a complex leaf design to her new collection.

"…the same size as mine," I groaned.

"Yep," she spun in the floor-length mirror, making faces at herself and admiring her newly braided coif. "So I'm all gingerfied because tropes and I have batshittingly insane ears because yeah."

"Rough day?" I asked as she cast herself onto the couch without a hint of her usual grace.

She pulled a fuzzy, olive green crocheted pillow (last year's gift from Gimli) over her face. "You have no idea."

"Yrch?" I broached the subject tentatively from the hearth, filling the empty kettle with water for tea. "Ungolianth? …Sues?"

"Sues," she called, kicking her feet in frustration. "So many damned Sues!"

"Well," I offered, "I know how that is."

"I seriously doubt it."

"Gimli and I both had to put up with all the Tenth Walker fanfics out there," I assured her as the water began to steam. "ValarSues, MaiarSues, Self-insert Sues, Half-Elven Sues, gender-bent! Sues. Trust me, we've seen it all."

"Speak for yourself, laddie," Gimli opined over that vomitous present-in-progress, still puffing his pipe. "It's either you and me slash or the fanon just ignores my existence."

"If I have to see one more damned genderbent Bilbo…" Tauriel bristled. "And why is it always Bella? Fucking Twilight."

"Probably from Belladonna Took," I soothed, pouring steaming water through the tea strainer. "His mother."

"All I'm saying is if you want to write Thorin smut, write your own damned character or stop being such a fucking homophobe and just pair him with male Bilbo," she huffed.

"Tauriel, you're speaking to a fandom that would rather see me pregnant than genderbent," I said hopelessly, placing a mug of freshly brewed green tea in her outstretched hand. "They'd report a reviewer for abuse if someone used the word fag, but they're perfectly accepting of homosexuality being used as a prop or gimmick for comic relief or heterosexual gratification. Their so-called yaoi is often used for shock value, and shown as grotesque or hilarious. If the social injustice and combined anatomical and genetic impossibilities of mpreg can't constrain them, I doubt common sense is going to have any effect."

"Sure, it's easy for you to be calm and rational about it because you stay at home in your cozy flet all day—" she fumed.

I smiled down ruefully at my dwarven guest still clacking away and muttering in Khuzdul as he counted stitches. "You make it sound so easy."

"All you have to do is entertain the Erebor ambassador," she rolled her eyes, taking a tentative sip of tea. "I'm out there protecting the kingdom and dealing with this fanfiction fiasco."

"Ring. Mordor. Saving Middle Earth, remember?"

"Forget Sauron," she swallowing the last of the tea with a dainty gurgle. "It was the Sues you should've been after."

"It can't be all as bad as you say," I sat down across from her. "Even back in 2001 there was still a good fic or two with character development and actual plot in our fandom for every hundred or so that were rubbish."

"This is ten years later, Legolas," she set down her empty mug, the ceramic still steaming. "I'm dealing with a fandom that grew up on those thrice-blasted movies instead of the books, and sites like fanfiction. net are now widely accessible because dial up internet is a thing of the past. I mean, even The One Ring. Net has positive reviews of The Desolation of Smaug!"

"Oh, Eru," I nearly spilt my tea. "Does it really?"

"And believe me when I say you don't want to see the viral videos of two teenaged girls squeeing and splooshing themselves over the trailer."

"I've dealt with pre-teen audiences and their hormones before," I reminded her, although still keen to avoid said video at all costs. "For the most part they're lonely or excited and they just want to be part of something special—"

"And by ' something special' you mean they're hoping there's a position open on you or Thorin's staff—"

"Tauriel!" I yelped.

She sat up suddenly, throwing the crocheted pillow at me as I snatched my tea up out of harm's way. The carpet was woven white wool and quite intricate—I would hate to see it stained.

"Admit it, Legolas. They're using me or their damned OC's to get the action they can't. An entire world—an entire universe!—to explore and create in and their idea of storytelling and immersion is fucking reality TV."

"I never get paired with an OC," Gimli harrumphed, frowning down into his broad lap overflowing with knitting. "I'm always stuck with Mr. Pointy-ear over there."

"Same here," Tauriel drawled. "Unless it's Kili. Or Thorin, surprisingly enough. Either way, I'm still in a love triangle that involves you and a dwarf. I mean, couldn't someone pair me with a tall, dark, handsome stranger? Where's the Tauriel/Aragorn or Tauriel/Bard fanfiction? Nope. I'm always stuck with my incredibly effeminate blonde best friend or a bearded hairy midget monstrosity."

I avoided spewing my tea on the rug solely by aspirating it. "You want to be shipped with Aragorn or Bard?" I managed to cough.

"That's beardless hairy midget monstrosity!"

"Absolutely not!" she scoffed, ignoring Gimli entirely. "But if I have to be shipped—and since I'm the only female character and purposefully invented for the sake of being a love interest I'm going to be—can they at least pair me with an attractive, interesting Jack Ryanesque type? Both Bard and Aragorn are excellent hunters and marksmen as well as savvy interventionalist politicians and military strategists. At least we'd have something interesting to talk about besides 'starlight' between our obligatory sessions of tantric boning."

"I'd like to be shipped with anyone," Gimli grumped.

We sat in awkward silence broken only by the steady, rhythmic clacking of knitting needles.

"What?" he demanded, casting stitches with vehemence. "For once I'd like to know what all the fuss is about!"

"It doesn't help that the movies are dwarf and ginger racist," Tauriel agreed. "Dwarves don't get romantic pairings unless they meet anachronistic standards of beauty, and I'm the sexualized red-head woman, while you're the shunned hypermasculine, apoplectic Violent Glaswegian ginger," she rolled her eyes. "Really, it's like they copy-pasted us both from a TV Tropes page."

"I'm not negating that most fanfiction is terrible," I rushed before this impromptu meeting of Gingers Anonymous could ignite into a full scale riot . "I'm just saying there's got to be some good fics out there that make some of the Sues worthwhile."

"Have you been online lately?" she sneered.

"I've been cleaning up my father's memes all day," I told her in exasperation. Swag Stag, Thrandizzle, various hashtags to Kesha lyrics... "What do you think?"

"Memes, schmemes," she grimaced playfully. "Fanfiction. net is where the really tropetastic fun is. Here, I'll show you—"

"Don't—!" I cried as she wrest the computer from my unwilling hands.

"Why, mellon?" her nose crinkled as her bright eyes squinted in mirth. "Do you have Galadriel foot porn on here again?"

I felt my face flush. "It wasn't pornography it was a movie still and I already told you, that was Gimli!"

My erstwhile fletmate continued knitting, unabashed.

"Sure, sure…" her eyes registered the looped desktop. "Really?" she addressed our dwarven companion. "I expected so much better from you. The whole world of terrible Legolas/Tauriel fanart and you went for a simple f-bomb? Durin's beard just withered a bit."

I glanced over quickly, knowing by this time he was quite used to my teasing. I didn't know how he would react to her semi-blasphemous barb. But I needn't have worried. He ripped out a nauseating chemical attack in retaliation, sending us fleeing from the couch.

"Gimli!" I choked as my Dwarf friend chuckled.

"Now that's an aroma a Dwarf could market!"

"Yeah, if you advertise it as anti-Elf spray," I coughed as Tauriel clutched her nose and danced a disgusted jig on the spot.

"Anti-Elf…" he mused, adjusting his monocle and resuming his knitting. "Aye, laddie. I could sell that."

"Remember the time you were the strange, stoic member of our Fellowship rather than the brunt of all bodily function humor and comic relief?" I asked him, fanning my face. "Valar save me, I miss the canon."

"Nah," Gimli dropped the fabric to scratch himself quite inappropriately. "Too much singing, not enough ale, and besides, too much taking life far too seriously. Relax, laddie. Learn to live a little."

"You're. Not. Scottish," I groaned. "And my entire flet smells like cabbage. So I don't care what either of you say, I'm going out into the open air to see what the wind and sky are doing." I threw on my Lothlorien cloak. "You're more than welcome to stay and entertain the Erebor ambassador," I told Tauriel.

"Oh, holy Halls of Mandos no," she bundled herself back into her boots and heavy fur cloak still gagging, for once a witty comeback eluding her.

We ran out of the flet together, down the stone stairs and out through the underground halls and gate.

"Mmm," I sighed once we'd reached the midpoint of the bridge, breathing in the crisp, clean winter air without a trace of Dwarf stench. The moon was bright, and the frozen waters muttered underneath us. After a day closeted up in my flet with friend Gimli, it was paradise. "Much better."

"Yep," she agreed, tossing her newly shortened braid over her shoulder coyly. A knowing smile crept over her lips, and I was about to ask her when—

She dashed away. "He who smelt it dealt it!"

"Tauriel—!"