@northisnotup / northisnotup.tumblr.com
sam, reading bilbo’s book: “well now, i’m sure he had a very nice voice, but that’s hardly a reason to go on an adventure with someone you just met”
sam: turns page to an illustration of thorin, with his dark hair and blue eyes
sam: “understandable, good for you mister bilbo”
Frodo: Sam hates Gollum, but that is what I shall become once I have lost myself to the ring… he’ll despise me…
Sam if Frodo did turn into a Gollum: That’s a very nice fish you caught with your bare hands, Mr. Frodo, and its very smart of you to eat it raw, saves us the trouble of starting a fire. I knitted you a sweater in case you get cold running around in that loincloth of yours. Is the sun hurting your eyes? I’ll kill it if it’s bothering you. I’ll kill the sun
A quick Bilbo/Thorin drawing
sorry op, i REALLY needed to preserve your tags on this,
Thank you!
I know that ‘Bilbo the biased/sometimes unreliable narrator’ was in large part just Tolkien’s way of retconning the lighter tone of The Hobbit into the darker canon of Lord of the Rings. But at the same time—! The retcon adds such an interesting layer to the book.
I love the idea that the tonal shift between LOTR and the Hobbit isn’t *just* caused by the higher stakes, but also by the attitudes of the authors. Frodo is more earnestly melancholy, willing to delve honestly into the anguish and trauma he suffered. But Bilbo wants his story to be uplifting and satisfying. He wants it to be ‘fun to read.’ He wants it to be ‘good.’
In the Fellowship of the Ring Frodo mentions that Bilbo “always jokes about serious things,” which puts the cheerful funny tone of the Hobbit in a new and kinda heartbreaking light.
I feel like Bilbo would teach the elves of Rivendell the concept of a mathom with the express purpose of oh so politely asking them over dinner how were the Silmarils not a mathom
Random Feanorian elf inherited by Elrond: That's not... No.
Bilbo: Oh so they were useful?
Elf: Well. No, not exactly
Bilbo: But the owners didn't want to throw them away.
Elf: Yeah
Bilbo: And they were in possession of several people over the course of years.
Elf: Yeah
Bilbo: That's a mathom.
Elf: No! We loved them because were very pretty!!! And one of a kind!!! Crafted by hands more skilled than any of ours!!!
Bilbo: Yes, like my great aunt's set of painted dishcloths
Elf, in tears: The Silmarils were not like your great aunt's set of painted dishcloths
Bilbo: How's The Great Mathom War as a title for a poem about the First Age?
By the way, it's important to me that Elrond supports Bilbo's claim and finds it quite insightful actually
Not only does Gimli describe the Glittering Caves in a way that makes Legolas interested, he gets Eomer (who’s suspicious of anything elvish and uncanny) to become such a fan of elves he eventually marries a woman with elf ancestry! That’s charisma.
Gimli, every day waking up: I’m going to love things so hard it’ll be contagious to everyone around me
Something I’ve been thinking about since 2012...That glamor sketch of Bilbo he’s kept all these years...icon, I love him.
Stephen Colbert and Jon Batiste have a rap to celebrate the 20th anniversary of "Lord of The Rings." Featuring friends of the show: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis, Orlando Bloom , Viggo Mortensen, Method Man, Killer Mike GTO, and Anna Kendrick! #LOTR #LSSC
Between the Arkenstone, the One Ring, and that cache of magic swords Bilbo uncovered during Thorin and company’s confrontation with the trolls that just happened to be the former property of the High King of the Noldor, Bilbo and Gandalf’s relationship is just a constant process of Bilbo showing up with some random artifact of world-changing significance and Gandalf sagely stroking his beard and making a pithy remark while internally screaming “WHERE DO YOU KEEP FINDING THESE THINGS”.
argument: hobbits basically step-down voltage converters for magic. that’s what they’re for. they improve the local soil conditions by eating sixty meals a day and shitting it all out again, and they also take big magic and convert it harmlessly and without any unpleasant side effects into small magic. small magic is then stepped down into no magic.
like, gandalf’s fireworks are small magic and in the shire they’re just combustion, just slightly cooler than what hobbits can already do with gunpowder. bilbo’s use of Big Fucking Deal Magic Items only really employed them as such when he was outside the shire, running along at the same speed in the same situations as dwarves and elves and once-in-an-era heroic men–and even then, he still employed magic items in a much more sensible and less High Fantasy way than his companions. as soon as he got back to the shire and was surrounded by other hobbits, the one ring was simply a neat trick and sting was a letter opener.
when frodo took the ring back out of the shire, the further he got from it, and the less hobbits it had around, the more power it regained. if gandalf hadn’t flipped out and demanded the ring be destroyed by volcano, burying it for a thousand years in the shire might also have worked fine. like, it was safely hidden for centuries by smeagol, despite the fact that he was hiding under a mountain full of evil goblins, and it only managed to get as far away as the shore of a lake he patrols all the time….before getting picked right back up by another fucking hobbit.
hobbits are meant to be sensible, ordinary, decent folk, and to enforce that decency and sense on whatever they get their hands on, and then to go have lunch. i think gandalf gets a huge kick out of this.
The whole LOTR plot pretty much hinges on this idea! Hobbits are simple folk, sturdy & sound of mind, body, & soul, and this is exactly why they’re your best bet for magic neutralization.
Power corrupts, & those who desire power are particularly susceptible to malevolent magic like that of The Big Bad Ring. Even those with relatively good intentions - like Boromir, who wanted to use its power to win victory for his people - are easily corrupted by it.
Hobbits don’t really desire power though. They value good food & good company & generally live peaceful lives in their little corner of Middle Earth. The ring uses temptation to corrupt its bearers - using one’s deepest desires against them - but Hobbits are more likely to be tempted by a second serving of pie than money or power or whatever nonsense the tall folk prattle on about all the time.
Hobbits neutralize powerful magic because they simply have no interest in it. That’s why Bilbo uses the Super Ring of Unimaginable Evil to avoid annoying relatives more than anything else. That’s why Gandalf’s fireworks are only a neat party trick to them - good for an evening’s entertainment but not much else. That’s why Gollum was driven mad by the ring for years but was still more focused on having the ring than using it for anything. And that’s why Frodo & Sam were the only ones who could conceivably take the ring all the way to Mordor! They didn’t want fame or fortune or the strength & wisdom to impress others - they just wanted to go home.
The tags ^
It’s a token.
Fantastic fuckin' tags by @csheary
we make fun of thorin getting lost in the shire but you know the nazgul also had to keep asking for directions to find bag end so maybe hobbits’ city planning is just wack
The Hobbits have spent generations making their roads complex af to keep Gandalf out
Theory accepted
Which is also why Gandalf is always late
Why just Gandalf?
Hobbits are so very definitely the type of people who would construct their towns out of pretty, winding, twisting, puzzling roads, hills, alleys, paths, river crossings, jaunts through the woods, and other little details that make perfect sense if you’ve grown up with them but are confusing as fuck to anyone more used to some semblance of directness in their city planning, and take some degree of smug amusement at how visitors can’t go three blocks without getting lost.
The roads twist and turn around hills, trees, and gardens; what promises to be a quick jag through the forest turns into a nice meander to a pretty waterfall, Farmer Proudfoot’s lands are in a sort of a wonky star shape so the road past his place zigzags three times because of course it does, what sort of idiot would put a road across someone’s land instead of at the proper boundaries, well, except for those places where generations of hobbit children have worn a path through the corner of someone’s back garden, that’s fine, if the owners had a problem with it they would’ve planted thorny roses back there, and depending on how it’s worded, a direction to take the next left could mean the next road, the next path, or the next hobbit-sized gap in the hedge.
If the hobbit giving you directions says “you can’t miss it,” you’re definitely going to spend the next three hours completely lost and the person talking to you knows it and is going to spend those three hours laughing at you.
my headcanon here is that legolas is just BARELY visibly holding it together
since canon tells us that mirkwood elves like to party and are fully capable of passing out from drunk
so legolas is using EVERYTHING HE HAS to fuck with gimli and pretend he hasn’t a clue what it’s like to be affected by alcohol
while inside he’s all ‘sdkla;hgsj you can do this leggles you can do this’
‘don’t think about that time you blacked out from dorwinion wine while naked in the middle of an impromptu archery contest’
‘and all your friends drew orc penises on your face’
‘and when you woke up you were halfway to dale without a clue as to how you got there’
‘And especially don’t think about that time you drank so much that the dwarves you were supposed to be watching escaped in the empty barrels of wine.’
‘Dad never let me hear the end of that one’
Leggles
While all of the above is great, I’d like to offer that dwaven ‘ale’ probably isn’t made from barley. they live underground. what grows underground? Mushrooms. I’m saying Dwarven Ale is halucinogenic. I’m saying Legolas was tripping balls.
actually in that scene they were drinking Ale made in Rohan. Rohan is, per Tolkiens notes, inspired by the Anglo-Saxons. in Anglo-saxon culture, beer and Ale were fairly common drinks (mead and wine were the more high class beverages), and of the two both were relatively low in alcohol content, with Ale being the weakest of the two (beer was brewed with fresh mash, Ale was made from mash that had already been used to brew beer). given the common methods of brewing available to that tech level, the alcohol content would likely have been only a few percent perhaps 2-3% at most.. enough to ensure the beverage stored well (”old ale” was frequently mentioned in written documents, apparently the flavor improved some as it aged.) but not enough to really get people drunk unless they really worked at it. beer was not much stronger in general, perhaps twice as alcoholic as Ale. The elves of mirkwood in The Hobbit were drinking Wine from Dorwinion, said to be a “heady wine” (a term referring to particularly strong alcoholic beverages.) and meant for small bowls. regular wine can get up to 15% alcohol, which would make it about three times as strong as beer, or about six times as strong as the ale the rohhirim were drinking. further, the description of the beverage in the hobbit actually sounds like distilled wine, known historically as “heart of wine” but better known today as Brandy. which can get up to 60% alcohol, and is usually thus served in very small amounts. the Jailer and the Quartermaster were drinking Dorwinion wine in big flagons, and from the description in the scene, were drinking for several hours before nodding off. whether wine or brandy, that is a lot of alcohol.
which suggests that Elves are not easily effected by alcohol, and if legolas was faking anything, it was that the ale was having any effect on him at all.
also that Dwarves are lightweights.
Consider: Hobbits unused to carrying swords, initially VERY unclear on when it’s appropriate to whip em out
Merry and Pippin have a disagreement over, idk, whether cake or pie is better and both draw their swords like ‘HAVE AT THEE’
meanwhile Aragorn in the background like, boys please, please boys those are sharp
Frodo: *napping*
Boromir: hey Frodo wake up we need to talk-
Sam: he’s having his nap sir
Boromir: Sam please this is important
Sam: *draws his fucking sword* HE’S HAVIN HIS NAP GO AWAY
Frodo is slightly more sensible & very polite
Frodo: *sees Aragorn with his sword drawn* oh is there trouble. should i get out my sword
Aragorn: …no that’s alright
Frodo: are you sure it’s no trouble
Aragorn: Frodo if i want you to draw your sword I’ll. I’ll say so alright
Frodo: ah, alright :) just say the word
Boromir: *grabs Sam’s sword* ok I’m confiscating this till you learn how to use it appropriately
Sam: *does not let go*
Boromir: *pulls harder*
Sam: *still does not let go*
Boromir: *slowly dragging Sam across the ground* HOW ARE YOU SO STRONG
Frodo: *waking up* WHAT… is going on
Boromir: *holding sword like 6 feet up in the air w Sam dangling off it* um
Sam: I’m handling it Mr Frodo go back to sleep
euripides’ Orestes (from an oresteia trans. Ann Carson) x
truly one of the funniest things about lotr to me is how much hostility the hobbits, a race of cheerful, fun-loving farm people, bear towards gandalf for absolutely NO reason except that he kills their chill vibe
the hobbits of the shire whenever they hear gandalf is in town:
#what does it look like #it looks like a fucking wedding that’s what it looks like #w t a f #i mean you have confetti raining #and then there comes the bride all dressed in white with his throng of bridesmaids also he has a tiara??????
Headcanon accepted. Movies are 300% better now.
i saw this gifset before i watched lotr and i actually thought they were canonically getting married
*crying* and don’t forget how at the beginning he stood up for him at the council
'wehhhh i dont like tauriel she's so cliche she's pretty AND a perfect fighter AND guys want her AND she has healing skills she's too perfect it's unrealistic'
here is a list of things for you to consider, friend
