@neraiutsuze / neraiutsuze.tumblr.com
listen hobbit pussy could be mediocre (doubtful) but even if it was it's still followed by a 17 course homecooked meal and the kind of weed that would make sauron scared. lithe beautiful immortal elven pussy has no power compared to the simple, hardworking hobbit. and it goes without saying that you cannot handle dwarven pussy.
I love that Tolkien took a paragraph aside in Bree, after all the horses were run off, just to let us know that A) Merry’s ponies were going to be fine and B) Mr. Butterbur would not, in the long run, suffer financially by the incident. He understood what was really important.
Tolkien would have let us know how the Cabbage Man was doing.
One of the recurring themes in Tolkien’s works is that the world belongs to the baker down the street as much as it does to the Lord of the Golden Hall. In almost every city we visit, Tolkien talks about shops and living arrangements and where people work and how they get their food.
One of the noticeable things about Tolkien’s Enemies are their complete disdain for the little people – even the ones that are loyal to them. Smaug, Sauron, Saruman are all rich, powerful, knowledgeable. All of them are disdainful of those weaker and smaller than they are, while Sauron and Saruman are obsequious to those stronger than they are (until they can become stronger). They don’t value parties and lunch and working in the garden.
They’ve missed the point of life.
This is so well said, and this is also why I think the hobbits are able to resist the temptation of the ring better than Men or Elves. Hobbits, of all people, understand the importance of parties and lunch and working in the garden. They don’t want power or realms or armies. When Sam was tempted by the ring, what Tolkien calls his “hobbit-sense” was still there, and he realized that “The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.”
Farewell, Master Burglar. Go back to your books… and your armchair… plant your trees, watch them grow. If more people… valued home above gold… this world would be a merrier… place…
It’s very, very easy for Bilbo, a landed gentlemen born into the Hobbit equivalent of massive wealth, who has never had to work a day in his life, and whose presumed source of income is rent, to value “home above gold.”
It’s pretty clear most hobbits value home above gold - the Sackville Baggines are an abberation, not the standard.
Oh, the Sackville-Bagginses value home above gold. They’re just non-specific as to whose. :p
Wait a minute though - Thorin’s quest is as much for home as it is for gold! It’s his gold, sitting in his home! It’s not like it’s an either-or situation here. The mountain itself is arguably even more important than the treasure it contains. Hang on.
“There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now.”
It’s not “home over gold,” and the word hoarded is hugely important. It’s the comforts (that wealth can provide) over the (hoarded) wealth itself. It’s the exact same sentiment as Faramir’s “I love not the bright sword for its sharpness [etc]… but only that which they defend.” The wealth, the war, are not bad per se - they become bad when they become ends in themselves, rather than means to ends.
And as for Bilbo - while he is certainly landed gentry it’s worth noting that he doesn’t keep servants. He does his own gardening, his own cooking, his own dishes - his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command. (My analysis is that he only hires Hamfast after seeing the mess 13 months of absence have done to his garden, and as someone recently in a similar situation I don’t blame him). And it’s not like he wants or needs the treasure - he wants “to be thought fierce”, and indeed Thorin compliments his courage in the end. Bilbo is content with what he has and is enjoying it. Unlike the villains of the piece. Ungoliant’s defining feature is that she can never be sated. How wealthy is “enough”? Bilbo’s gold is not hoarded - it’s deployed towards food and cheer and song.
I also wanna say- Bilbo is incredibly and consistently generous. Practically the first thing we learn about him, before his name even is “the hobbit was fond of visitors.” There are several places where it talks about him giving particularly good gifts, particularly to his poorer neighbors, with whom he is on good terms (and this goes back to the original point about disdain for the little people and its opposite - Bilbo is wealthy but he never sees that as making him superior). About the Troll’s hoard, Frodo says “he gave it all away.”
Bilbo Baggins does his own dishes and uses his wealth to materially improve the lives of people around him, so I would say his values are in precisely the right place.
love how much of Aragorn’s initial interactions with the hobbits is just telling them not to say things
aragorn: could you stop casually invoking the dread name of the ancient and terrible evil that even now follows at our very heels for FIVE MINUTES
aragorn: hey I gotta take a breather can you take over the hobbit duties for a bit
gandalf: no worries got you covered
Aragorn’s given up
elrond: hey you can’t say that here
gandalf: you can’t tell me what to say, do I look like a hobbit to you
hot take: Pippin is the only one of the hobbits who is ‘team Arwen’ in the ‘who is the most beautiful woman in the world’ argument
Pippin, after being formally introduced to Arwen for the first time: hey Merry. do you think if I asked nicely enough she’d marry me instead?
Merry: Pippin. *lays a comforting hand on his shoulder*
Merry: I think it is worth a shot.
Pippin: got it *wanders away*
Frodo: why would you do that
Merry: I want to see if he’ll really try it
#PIPPIN: IF I BEAT STRIDER IN ROCK PAPER SCISSORS CAN I MARRY YOU INSTEAD? #ARWEN: UHHHHHHH #PIPPIN: GREAT! BRB
Aragorn accepts the challenge knowing full well that, as he can literally read minds, it is impossible to beat him at rock paper scissors.
Aren’t you forgetting the minor detail that Pippin would likely never think of which one he will throw?
consider: Aragorn accepts the challenge assuming he’ll win easily. Pippin wins immediately.
Arwen: well, now I must marry him. we ageed.
Pippin: :D
Aragorn: Arwen please
Arwen: I love my tiny fiance
I love it
Elrond: I don’t like it either but you agreed that if he beat you in fair combat then he could marry Arwen
Elrond: so now my daughter must marry this hobbit
Arwen: I’m comfortable with that
Aragorn: please this isn’t funny
Arwen: you should have thought of that before you accepted the challenge, I’m engaged to Pippin now.
Pippin: listen I know this isn’t actually going to end with me marrying you but this is still the best day of my life so far
Nobody has a more peak college experience than Gimli Gloinsson.
Like.
He goes on this great study abroad deal, his parents are proud, he’s already so cultured and has such a way with words-
And here their perfect son, with the golden tongue, and the classic dwarven beauty comes home with this skinny elven redneck on his arm and three hairs in a special locket on his jacket like “so I decided to major in Elven Studies and this is my boyfriend Greenleaf Greenleaf. We’re moving close to a forest so we can look at the stars together.” While Gloin sobs LADDIE NO and wonders where he went wrong.
#…….to be fair he also shows up having founded a new city#AND won the contract for a major security upgrade to the palace#so in a professional sense he’s nailing it!
legolas: oh he’s nailing it in an unproffesional sense too
“DISTRESSED GLOIN NOISES”
sam’s reveal at the end makes this a thousand times funnier
Activate Stiflingly Protective Big Brother Turbo Boost
Labor Day
The Gondor Chronicle's headline reads Brilliant Military Strategist and War Hero Absolutely Loses His Goddamn Mind During Sister-in-Law's Routine Labor
Beregond didn't anticipate this under the Extra Duties as Assigned clause in his job description
Somebody say uncle, quick
NEW LIFE NEW LIFE NEW LIFE IN A WORLD HE THOUGHT WAS ENDING, YOU GUYS
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Hello I’m here to talk about an opinion that isn’t so much unpopular because people don’t like it, but because it is splitting hairs and basically an argument based in semantics that sane people reasonably do not waste their time caring about it.
I am neither sane nor reasonable and therefore think about this a lot, and get ready to pull out a soapbox and type the Text Wall of China any time I hear people offhandedly contradict this opinion, and so I have come here today to die on this molehill, and write the over-long post of my dreams, because fuck it, it’s my blog.
Drumroll please:
The Lord of the Rings is the main antagonist though, so furthermore,
I internally go insane every time someone says “Sauron, the eponymous Lord of the Rings” or “The antagonist never actually appears in Lord of the Rings” or uses Lord of the Rings as an penultimate example of having a flat ‘evil for evil’s sake’ villain. This is mostly in YouTube videos so I’m not calling out anyone here.
So who is the Lord of the Rings? Where do I get this shit? Why should anyone care?
I will tell you in far too much detail under this cut, because I told you I was gonna be extra about it and this is already long enough to inflict on my followers without their consent.
Every time Sean Astin makes a statement on whether or not Sam and Frodo were indeed gay for each other in lord of the rings he’s always like “well we have to acknowledge that attitudes around sexuality have changed dramatically over the past several decades and since authorial intent is only up to speculation, the story is open to multiple readings, some of which might have different significances for different groups of people also they kiss on the lips because I said so”
at the rose city comic con panel this month a fan asked them (sean and elijah) if sam and frodo were in love and they said
Sean: .....yes. absolutely
Elijah: 100 percent.
Sean: dont tell rosie
Rosie: "This is my husband Sam, and that's his husband, Frodo. Frodo is my husband-in-law. I'm not into him, he's he's a bit too 'elfy' for my taste, but Sam likes him, and that's fine with me. As far as I know, Frodo can't give Sam children, but Frodo looks after ours all the same, so I don't mind sharing Sam if it means another pair of eyes on the wee ones. In all honesty, our family tree is right simple compared to some hobbits. Yes, I'm referrin' to you Lobelia, over there pretendin' you ain't eavesdroppin'. Still bitter you ain't got either of my boys or their house, eh?"
Tbh it's canon that Frodo invited Sam and Rosie to move in to Bag End after their wedding and they all lived there for a couple of years until Frodo went to Valinor, so yeah. Running with it.
And once Rosie dies, Sam says his goodbyes and disappears after him.
what’s funny is people assuming that rosie would somehow be too dim or naive to KNOW that sam loved frodo, instead of looking at a guy who would loyally follow a beloved friend to hell and then help carry him home again, and not be like ‘oh i can’t not fuck that.’
Polyamory, specifically polyandry, would be an interesting solution to the oddball population of the Shire.
The Shire is excellent farming country, with consistently good weather, and only one tough winter in living memory; hobbits like to produce large families; they’re resistant to disease, rarely violent, and encounter few dangers. It is usual for hobbits to produce many children, so that (for example) Bilbo and Frodo are unusual in both being only children, with no siblings, and not having children of their own. All of this should point to a population that increases every generation if not doubling outright. Young people (and their ideologies!) should rapidly outnumber the old with an ever-increasing effect and impact on society. However, the Shire has a surprisingly stable history; it never seems to increase or decrease greatly in population, and the bell curve of age seems… demographically balanced? There certainly isn’t a conflict from rising young bloods challenging the middle-aged reactionaries; there’s no unemployment; there are no housing crises or waves of emigration, or even a tendency for young people leaving home to marry. Meanwhile, not only does the Shire not suffer from internal pressures, but it remains obscure and hardly noticed in global politics.
What makes sense here is that adult hobbits form a loose group. Four parents in a polycule, between them all, may produce four children. All four parents claim to have four children. An outsider would assume this meant the adults had eight children.
Hobbits therefore are not especially fertile or fecund. They simply have large families. Much of their interest in genealogy is due to the complex relationships of blood-kin, hearth-kin, love-kin and pledge-kin, who must all be carefully tracked and measured - not just because you need to make sure that you don’t climb into bed with an un-permitted degree of blood-kin, but to track family alliances and carefully quantify the precise level of thoughtfulness to put into the proper present to gift your father’s lover’s lover (too much implies a degree of intimacy that might upset the polycule.)
Thus, while a hobbit matron may tell a startled dwarf that she has seven sons, she might only have borne five of them herself, and have one hearth-son by her wife, and a pledge-son of her first husband’s. There are between three and four fathers involved at various stages of production, from conception to pledge-duty, but there is debate about the precise number of fathers, as one child was festival-conceived and therefore provisionally pledged to the Brandybucks until more distinctive paternal traits should materialise. It’s expected that four of the sons will be uninterested in women, and their contribution to family life will be in raising hearth-children and pledge-duty. However, this level of detail is normally negotiated later in conversation, as a mutual overture of friendship. So she’s just clear and simple: yes, certainly, she has seven sons. Yes, they’re all hers. Yes, that’s fairly normal - yes, hobbits like big families. How big? That’s really hard to say! Well, about thirteen hobbits live in her house… er, she has forty-three nieces and nephews. Yes! She has nine siblings, that’s correct, but some of them are still babies themselves..
In this way, a bewildered dwarf might assume that hobbits are absurdly fertile, producing an average of seven children per couple, at an absurd pace.
When in fact, with about half of hobbits never bearing biological children, the population of hobbits is pretty much always the same.
Tl:dr, hobbit population works perfectly well, both internally and in the perceptions of outsiders, if the majority of the Shire is gay, they’re all polyamorous, and they all firmly claim to be parents of high numbers of children. Of course Frodo fathered Sam’s kids - he named them! They were pledge-kin but not hearth-kin, as Frodo needed a lot of quiet and stability in the home.
No outsider ever parses hobbit genealogy well enough to understand this except for Gandalf, who never explains anything either.
are you kidding? Gandalf would WEAPONIZE his knowledge of Hobbit genealogy against outsiders
Since “pledge” kinships are multidimensional and can occur in different directions, hobbits can form - and formalise - family bonds simply because they choose to. Gandalf doesn’t tell anyone that the formation of Thorin’s Company, the Fellowship of the Ring, and Belladonna Took’s Accidental Troop of Mercenaries* are legal formations of pledge-siblings, a hobbit family structure usually claimed to increase social class and prestige (as high numbers of pledge-kin confer distinction on a hobbit, being a sort of popularity vote/endorsement that adds greatly to their social power. Incidentally, this is partly why Bilbo was both controversial and successful in his pledge-claim of Frodo; outsiders mistook his “bachelor” status as someone living outside of heteronormativity, while the Shire was bewildered and increasingly annoyed by his rejection of pledge and hearth commitments. By rights Bilbo had too few pledge-kin, and too little parenting experience, to claim rights to an orphan, especially one from Brandybuck hearth; but conversely, his social status was high enough that his belated bid for his very first pledge-son couldn’t reasonably be denied by anybody.)
In short, all of the hobbits enjoyed achieving even larger families on their adventures, legally and without argument or debate. It’s free real estate. If nobody else is going to sibling these losers, we will. (The condensation of so many entanglements at once also legally made Pippin his own father-in-law.)
Gandalf never explained.
* see the post about the Old Took’s “enchanted diamond cufflinks” that obeyed the wearer’s commands; which were probably, given the general state of things, two lost silmarils recovered by his Remarkable Daughters and gifted to him because things stay small and safe in the shire
@elodieunderglass wouldn't that make pippin both denethor's pledge-son-in-law, and (as pledge-brother to the king) probably outrank him?
Only through Boromir while Boromir was alive! Pippin’s familial claim through Boromir technically dissolved on Boromir’s death, as Denethor hadn’t been privy to it, and those bonds rarely stretch to a stranger when the person in the middle has died before introducing them; although Pippin, who was well-brought-up, perfectly and politely rectified the problem at once by simply swearing himself as Denethor’s pledge-son. but through his blood-cousinship to Frodo, who was older than Boromir, his status as the Took double-primarc (don’t ask) and the proximity-enhanced status-doubling effects of having a five-way cousin in Merry, Pippin was demonstrably higher status as a pledge-sibling and was also his own father-in-law and approved of himself. As such, he would have significantly raised Boromir’s social status and marital prospects in the Shire.
Inheritance follows parent-child pledge as the primary consideration, with matrilineal descent as the secondary. Pippin would have been bewildered to gradually understand that Denethor held his two sons in such odd and different standing :-/ hobbits don’t recognise kingship so it would’ve been very upsetting and disappointing to Pippin to understand how Denethor stood in position of sworn-father to a whole city of people without even being slightly fair to his younger hearth-son. Aragorn is demonstrably much better dad-material and therefore had Pippin’s vote. Pippin, by virtue of being an excellent father-in-law to a spectacularly promising young son-in-law, also considered himself a better candidate for king of Gondor than Denethor, by outranking him in Dad Competence - but was too busy by the time he realized this to point this out .
Ironically, the events in which Pippin realized this made Faramir his own hearth-son - so Pippin won in the end and took a great interest in ceremonially approving of Eowyn. Gandalf never explained
the movie really undersells the fact that frodo spent half a year planning to make his departure from the shire as inconspicuous as possible and merry and pippin and sam saw him doing that, figured out he was leaving the shire and that it had something to do with bilbo’s ring, and then spent nearly as long preparing to go with him. icons
worth nothing to people who havent read the books: they didnt tell him they were planning to come with him until the very last minute when he’s finally about to spill the beans, and merry’s just kind of ”yo frodo you have the worst poker face in the shire and you constantly walk around saying shit like ”oughhh i do wonder if i shall ever look down this path again oughhwh woe” out loud for everyone to hear” and frodo just sits there like
AND and. frodo's like don't try to stop me from leaving!! i must go!! and the girlies are like SILLY BILLY we mean to go with you!! and he's like NO NO you don't get it i'm probably gonna DIE!! and they're like no no YOU don't get it we KNOW!! you think we'd let you march off to your doom alone??
okay but don't forget fredegar "fatty" bolger...the one hobbit who was like "I see you're going on some sort of quest...have fun with that, I'll stay here and housesit" and then the freaking NAZGÛL come visit while he's housesitting
Me, ready to remind everyone about Fatty Bolger: I knew there was a reason Adib and I are friends.
But seriously, my boy Fredegar volunteered to deal with nosy Brandybucks and MAYBE Lobelia, and ended up with a Nazgûl drop in and then got thrown in jail for resisting Saruman.
#TRUE FRIENDSHIP#from everyone including Fredegar#who managed to ESCAPE the Nazgul#by running out the back door#he stayed behind in Frodo's house as a DECOY and it WORKED#time the Nazgul didn't know Frodo had left the Shire was lifesaving#they made it to Rivendell by the skin of their teeth as it was#a couple extra hours *mattered* - from @cygnahime
he wore Frodo's clothes for this which probably made no difference given the data the Nazgul had to work with but it sure does show his commitment to the body doubling bit
I’m just rereading fellowship and I’m stuck once again on Frodo really very much spending half a year preparing to leave, among other things catapulting the quest into even more tense geopolitical times, allowing the Nine Riders to converge on the Shire and miss him by days; and commuting a very long camping trip to occur in winter, resulting in not just winter storms and less available foraging, but shorter days to hike and stay safe in the sun from orcs/dark things, because of his whimsical plan to leave on his and Bilbo’s birthday at the end of September. It was practically possible to leave earlier - Gandalf’s letter, which went astray, urged him to leave at the end of July at the latest.
But Frodo wanted to leave on their shared birthday. Anyway.
The best part is when he gets to Rivendell and Bilbo criticises him politely for this, not just because it made the whole Fellowship that much harder, but because it “wasn’t the day Bilbo would have picked to let the S.B.s into Bag End…” because, of course, Frodo begins his journey when he sells Bag End to the odious Sackville-Bagginses. So to celebrate Bilbo’s birthday, Frodo gives his beloved home to his local nemesis; a home which he spent most of his lifetime keeping her out of.
Anyway. Bilbo’s a funny little guy. Nephew turns up three months late on a time-sensitive journey about the end of the world, and he reaches for “Weird birthday gift to me, lad, but okay.” 💯, no notes
GHGNGBGJKHGNJKFDNGKDGFNJK I saw that Tolkien Gateway was doing a giveaway of art prints if you make an actually helpful edit. so I looked at where the prints are coming from and it's this guy
it's 'hot renaissance boy gollum' guy, the thumbnail's right there!!!! i mean his art is beautiful- gorgeous. love the silm dragons.
but that two towers one is just. a very interesting take
anyway, if you want to win a print you can tell the wiki something helpful: https://tolkiengateway.net/ maybe you can take one of the obscure facts on a wiki page and find/cite where tolkien actually said it, that seems to be missing a lot
"pff, hot renaissance boy gollum," I scoffed, "what could that mean?"
It means exactly that. I was not ready. Behold, "The Taming Of Smeagol":
The terrible Gollum game is only the beginning, folks. The Hobbit enters the US public domain in just a little less than ten years, so the current rights-holders are going to be trying to squeeze every last bit of profit they can out of the little fucker before he becomes free to use. You have no idea what's coming.
Two kinds of people
Both The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (...books, NOT movies) will enter the public domain in Canada in 2024.
The last of Tolkien's children died in early 2022. Everything from here on is managed by the "Tolkien Estate," which has the main purpose of keeping itself funded; it's not providing for his family.
LotR should be public domain in the US in 2033, and 2044 in the UK.
Silmarillion could be 2028 or 2044 in the UK (look copyright law is tangled) - but will be much later if his son is considered a co-author.
Unfortunately, that's no longer true. Canada bumped its copyright duration from life-of-the-author-plus-fifty to life-of-the-author-plus-seventy at the end of last year in order to bring it in sync with the US; while this change is explicitly not retroactive to works whose authors died in 1972 or earlier, Tolkien died in 1973. His works thus enter the Canadian public domain in 2044.
It's also not correct that The Lord of the Rings will enter the US public domain in 2033. The US didn't adopt the life-of-the-author rule until 1978, and elected not to make it retroactive. Works published prior to 1978 thus calculate their US copyright duration using an older rule based on the date of first publication; in this case, the applicable duration is 95 years, and The Lord of the Rings was first published in 1954–1955, so it will enter the US public domain in 2050–2051.
(Interestingly, Canada did apply the life-of-the-author rule retroactively, so this creates a weird situation where The Hobbit enters the US public domain before the Canadian public domain – 2033 in the US versus 2044 in Canada – while for The Lord of the Rings the opposite is true, the trilogy entering the US public domain in 2051, versus 2044 in Canada. This an artefact of the fact that, for works published prior to 1978 whose authors died less than 25 years after publishing them, the US's older first-publication-plus-ninety-five rule actually yields a longer copyright duration than the newer life-of-the-author-plus-seventy rule.)
Adding Fuck to LOTR, from the Hobbits.
[image description: tweet by Netchimen’s Reverie that reads “Tolkien describing places that are evil: no trees grow there” /end description]
This is doubtless because of his experience of the trenches in the Great War.
Like, this is what things looked like to soldiers who fought in that war (image in black and white of a solitary soldier walking across a muddy wasteland pocked with puddles):
Here’s Delville Wood, the site of a battle in 1916 (sepia image of a wasteland dotted with broken and dead trees):
Here’s an image from the Battle of the Somme, in which Tolkien participated (image of soldiers standing above and inside a trench or earthwork in a grey wasteland; smoke from artillery is on the horizon)
So yeah: no trees = evil was Tolkien’s own direct lived experience. It’s precisely why Mordor and the wastelands around it look like they do in his books.
the plateau of gorgoroth, the heartland of mordor, is described as being scarred by countless pits dug by orcs the true seat of evil is full of foxholes and trenches
There’s a lesson to be learned here.
I hope Tolkien would be happy to learn that a hundred years on, trees grow again here:
From The Atlantic.
I think that Tolkien would be very happy to see that.
The trees have reclaimed the land in which hell had been brought
Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
Legolas:
~*~earlier~*~
Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits
Merry: Frodo what’d he say
Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish
Merry: I mean you could do that but consider
Merry: you can only tell him ONCE
Frodo: Merry. You’re absolutely right. I’ll wait.
Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible
Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK
Frodo: :)
Frodo: Hello. My name is Frodo. I am a Hobbit. How are you?
Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve
Frodo, crying: please I can’t understand what you’r saying
Ok, but Frodo didn’t just learn out of a book. He learned like… Chaucerian Elvish. So actually:
Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.
Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.
Aragorn: *laughing too hard to walk*
dYinGggGggg…
i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.
english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.
they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max. frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.
so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.
plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.
so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.
to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.
so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!
considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.
…it’s also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.
which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.
this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!
Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.
Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*
Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now
Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?
Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?
Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.
Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.
Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y'all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.
Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man
Boromir, from beyond the grave: j e s u s
Tolkien would be SO PROUD of this post
If I remember correctly, in the “tree of tongues” material from The Lost Road, Tolkien goes into some detail about how the reason elves have so many dialects is that elves view language as a form of collaborative art, which they delight in, so a newly-coined word or grammatical construct gets spread around just like a new song would.
Elves may be immortal, but they’re also immortal nerd OCs and we must never forget this
Thank you for this addition which is both lovely and educational
So what you’re saying is, they’re us. They’re the internet. Sending “yeet” and “smol” and “I lik the bred” all over creation until two elves who’ve never met in their lives and be like “beans, amirite?” and “yeah I love kitter feets too.”
EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS BEAUTIFUL
Somewhere in the Grey Havens, Tolkien is reading this post.
He is simultaneously laughing with delight, and utterly PISSED that he can’t reblog with a whole nerdy essay to build on what you’ve all said.
hello gay people. it's whether or no wednesday
take his hand thursday <3
don't go where i can't follow friday
sit like that in endless happiness saturday!!!
sleeping side by side sunday (x2)
my dearest hobbit monday 🥺
and finally... the end of all things tuesday.
Elrond: Let's maybe not swear a binding oath to keep jewelry away from an Ainu at all cost. Let's maybe. Let's maybe just like, pinky promise to do our best. Trust me on this, you don't want to swear any oaths
I find this moment very interesting not just because of the Oath of Fëanor but because of what it says about oaths in general.
Because imagine that all of the Fellowship did swear to go with Frodo to Mount Doom. Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn would have felt obligated to abandon Merry and Pippin to the orcs to go with Frodo; who knows how the Ring could have used that guilt to twist them. Gollum would never have had the same dynamic with Frodo, because he hated Aragorn. Gollum wouldn’t have been at Mount Doom to destroy the Ring. Aragorn wouldn’t have been there to take the Paths of the Dead. Minas Tirith would have fallen. There would have been no march on the Black Gate that cleared a path to Mount Doom by distracting Sauron.
“No oaths,” means: the world is larger and more complex than you know. You don’t know that the thing you’re swearing to do will turn out to be the right thing, the best thing, in every possible circumstance. Have the humility to recognize that complexity.
