@folatefangirl / folatefangirl.tumblr.com
"why did the ring mostly affect frodo and not bilbo who had it for a gazillion years" objectively has a textual answer but i think the best answer is that sauron just likes bilbo more than frodo
bilbo: *uses the ring to hide from his relatives*
sauron, remembering almaren: yknow. real.
that theory that the Arkenstone is a Silmaril…it’s doubly implausible, but imagine if nobody knew. If the dwarves were guarded enough of their greatest treasure that…you wouldn’t even need to hide it from that many people, honestly. Mostly a few elves, and all wizards.
and then Bilbo sidles up to Gandalf like, “Thorin and all are holed up in the Mountain, but I think they’re being nuts, so I…kind of stole the Arkenstone, I think.” And (it’s been thousands of years since the light of the trees was doused save for the precious brilliance locked away in Feanor’s gems, since oaths and blood and war that raged until the skies cracked and the earth shattered, and the little people of the Shire have no memory of it at all) he pulls out a fucking Silmaril.
Gandalf: *spittake*
Gandalf: *hurriedly glances at Thranduil. the king of Mirkwood’s eyes shine with curiosity and greed, but not recognition, nor the terrible lust that overtook Feanor and his sons. right, right, he was never in Thingol’s court while the jewel that Luthien and Beren took was there. we’re good. we’re good for now*
Gandalf: That’s, uh, nice, Bilbo. Put it away, would you?
Gandalf, telepathically(?): EMERGENCY RINGBEARERS ONLY CONFAB NOW
Gandalf: [mental image of a goddam Silmaril in hobbit hands, labelled “thisfuckingrockagain.jpg”]
Galadriel, who watched 95% of her family slaughter everyone within 100 miles for several thousand years over these things, including each other and themselves: no.
Elrond, who was very nearly one of those people slaughtered, and did watch most of his town be killed before he and his twin were kidnapped for a while: Absolutely Fucking Not.
Gandalf: Apparently fucking yes. The legendary Arkenstone-
Galadriel: You’ve got to be kidding me.
Elrond: Thorin Oakenshield has a Silmaril right now?
Gandalf: No, no.
Gandalf: Bilbo stole it.
Elrond: *wordless sputtering*
Gandalf: @Galadriel [information packet: BilboBagginsoftheShire.pdf]
Galadriel: Oh yes, Belladonna’s boy, you were telling me about him last winter.
Galadriel: Btw, orc+warg army probably coming your way. Spotted it in the mirror last night. Thank goodness we dealt with Dol Goldur at least, huh?
Elrond: No fucking shit.
Gandalf @Gwaihir Windlord: hey, sorry to bother you again, I know it’s nearly mating season. but we have a situation again
Gandalf: [thisfuckingrockagain.jpg]
Gandalf: [oncomingorcwargarmy.jpg]
Gandalf: [flashbacktobadasseaglesinwarofwrathhinthint.mov]
I mean, given that Tolkien retconned “The Hobbit” so Bilbo’s little invisibility ring became an ancient piece of jewelry that controls minds and drives the mighty mad, one can at least understand why it seems plausible that the other shiny white gem that destroys empires and makes the mighty go mad with greed could be linked from his kid’s book to his gigantic early mythology in retrospect??
You know this actually explains a lot about why Gandalf didn’t immediately raise the alarm about Bilbo’s ring out of an abundance of caution. I mean, what are the odds, what are the fucking odds, that this one little hobbit stole both a Silmaril and the Ring of Power? Like, you are Gandalf the Grey and you have already dealt with the heart attack to end all heart attacks because this little innocent fool stole a world war inspiring artifact once. You still get flashbacks every time Bilbo offers to show you something and have to employ all of your angel’s serenity and thousands of years of learned composure not start giBbERinG “ pleaseletitnotbeanotherartifactpleaseletitnotbeanotherartifact”. And then. AND THEN! One day he’s like, “hey Gandalf let me show you this neat ring I found back on our journey”. And on the inside a tiny part of you is screaming “nottheoneringnottheoneringnottheonering” while a more rational part of your brain assures you it could not possibly be the one- “It’s this plain gold ring that’s very precious to me and turns me invisible!”
AND THEN YOU FUCK OFF AND SEARCH THROUGH EVERY POSSIBLE TOME YOU CAN TO PROVE IT CAN’T REALLY BE THE RING OF POWER, SAURON’S RING OF POWER, THAT RING, THE ONE RING, LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE TOME, BEFORE FINALLY FUCKING ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THIS SHIT IS REALLY HAPPENING AGAIN
@shewhodoesnotexist what says you? :P
I’ve never been a proponent of this theory, but I gotta admit the idea of Bilbo finding two world war inspiring artifacts is alluring ;D
Next you’ll be telling me Sting is Gurthang
Sting may or may not be Angrist, the knife that Beren used to get the Silmarill off of Morgoth’s crown
It's only polite to ask first.
(In the third panel, Elrond is thinking "Who else does this sort of thing? Where in his tiny body does he keep all that Audacity? This kind of thing is why I love this guy").
In Bilbo's defense, I, too, would have been quite upset if a person I just met invited 13 strangers to my house without telling me, and they all started rearranging my house while eating literally every speck of food I have in my kitchen, then came up with a song on the fly poking fun at me and how strict I'm being.
Bilbo: wait I get it now. The dragon is a metaphor for greed and power. We need to ‘defeat’ it by being humble when we get the treasure.
Thorin: Bilbo, for the last time, it’s a real dragon and it has my gold
Bilbo: wait I get it now. The dragon is a metaphor for greed and power. We need to ‘defeat’ it by being humble when we get the treasure.
Thorin: Bilbo, for the last time, it’s a real dragon and it has my gold
More stuff I had planned for my fanbook back at April, this was the introdutory comic (never finished to write the ending and last dialogues ugh) and the coloured pic is a crop of what would be an index page for the book.
The truth is that most of them don’t think I should be on this journey. THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (2012)
Happy Birthday, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins! And Happy Hobbit Day!
still obsessed with the idea of bilbo being a (very) unreliable narrator
Bilbo was declared dead while he was away in the Hobbit (and had to do a bunch of paperwork to get declared alive again) but there’s no indication he was formally declared dead after leaving the Shire, even though most people assumed he had died.
Therefore I posit: having a missing person declared dead in the Shire requires the consent of their next of kin. Whoever Bilbo’s next of kin was at the time of the Hobbit (possibly Otho? I’m not sure) had him declared dead at the first opportunity but Frodo refused to ever do it.
Frodo had anxious hobbit bureaucrats knocking on his door every couple of years like ‘Mr Baggins… blease… it’s been 10 years… he was eleventy-one… can we fill out his death certificate yet’ and Frodo was like ‘absolutely not’.
Early on he genuinely couldn’t bring himself too but after a while it was more that he enjoyed irritating the local magistrate’s office than anything else.
I raise you: the hobbitish bureaucracy has no means to re-declare someone dead. They had no precedent to declare someone who was once-dead dead again. They would need the Thain, the Mayor, and the Master of Buckland to agree to changing the statute, and since the Thain and the Master are too amused by the whole henclucking that they haven’t gotten round to it just yet.
I’m upping the stakes with: last time Bilbo was declared dead when he was, in fact, not dead, they removed the law stating that you can have someone declared dead without a body, so when Bilbo left (happily aware of this legal loophole and snickering) he could never become legally dead again.
I am loving the implication here that Bilbo can literally never die in the eyes of the law. He’d love that.
a hobbit parent telling their kids the story of Mad Baggins and being like “thanks to a loophole in hobbit law he’s technically still alive today”
a hobbit child misinterprets this and lies awake at night worrying that Mad Baggins is still out there and will appear in their room without warning
Alternatively: the laws for declaring somebody dead if they’re missing for long enough are still in place, but the magistrates are just refusing to enforce them in this particular case.
After all, last time they declared Bilbo Baggins dead— which involved filling out all the paperwork necessary to declare somebody dead without a body— he had the rudeness to show up again, forcing them to do a lot more paperwork, and this time with an indignant Bilbo having a go at them while they did it.
As a result, the magistrates have decided that they’re not going to declare Bilbo Baggins dead a second time unless they have a body, a coroners reprt explaining the cause of death, and a three day wake to make sure that he doesn’t get up and walk away again.
Centuries later, hobbit parents tell their children that Mad Baggins is forever gone from the shire— at least until the day when somebody is stupid enough to declare him legally dead, at which point legend states that he will immediately come marching back, demanding an explanation.
quest to Erebor day 18. the dwarves get bored and decide to have a ‘nicest beard’ contest. as the only non-bearded party member they decide Bilbo has to be the judge as he’s the only one able to be impartial.
unbeknownst to them Bilbo judges the Hobbiton pie-making contest AND best garden contest AND pumpkin growing contest every year. he spends 3 hours judging all their beards on various metrics including length, softness and fanciness. by the time he declares Balin the winner they’re all kind of tired of it.
Balin subsequently brings up his ‘objectively nicest beard’ at every opportunity tho.
when ppl outside the party question him on it he’s like ‘Mr Baggins said mine was the nicest and he judges the Hobbit best garden contest EVERY YEAR’.
no-one outside the party knows what the Hobbiton best garden contest is so they assume it’s something very important & that Mr Baggins must be someone important & influential in his own country, to be able to make those sorts of judgements, and are suitably impressed.
I mean, these are hobbits. the annual Best Garden Contest IS something Very Important!
somebody asks Bilbo about it and he answers, truthfully, that it’s one of the most important events of the Hobbiton social calendar and they’re like ah… that does sound important
The best garden contest is perhaps the most ruthless, cut-throat, and vicious contest in hobbitish culture. Families have been fractured, blood-feuds sworn, and casseroles thrown out to feed the pigs instead of eaten. It is Very Serious Business and Big Folk may sigh and shake their heads, but when it comes to gardening, it has been known for a Hobbit to take a tea-kettle and beat a goblin to death with it for daring uproot their award winning roses (that said Hobbit might have been Bilbo’s younges aunt, a Brandybuck now by marriage, was completely beside the point). You do not mess with the Gardening Contest, and more importantly, you don’t get caught messing with the contest either.
This is why Sam was able to walk all the way to Mordor with Frodo. Frodo may be the Ring Bearer ™ but Samwise Gamgee has won The Best Garden Competition 3 times in a row and Sauron himself is nowhere near as tough as that
can i just say that ‘hobbits are the most ridiculously competitive and cut-throat race of middle earth’ is probably my favorite thing ever
If you’ve ever lived in a small farming community, you know this is completely accurate.
I’ve seen old women draw blood over whose patchwork quilt deserved to be in the raffle draw.
Farmcore people be built different, my bros.
I love found family as much as the next girl but the fact that Bilbo goes home at the end of the Hobbit is so fucking funny to me. “Yes, we had a life changing experience together and I’ve saved all your lives. What of it? I miss my arm chair. Good morning.” ABSOLUTELY PRICELESS.
Family doesn’t have to live together, he literally said his doors always open with tears in his eyes. Family is family, doesn’t mean he has to sacrifice his armchair
My Role Model is Bilbo at 111 telling his guests “Half of you are okay but fuck the other half", disappearing with a flash, and absconding to Rivendell leaving nothing but a pile of sarcastic gifts to remember him by.
