Pointless LOTR headcanon of the day: Frodo & Merry both take after their mothers, meaning Frodo looks more like a Brandybuck than a Baggins and Merry looks more like a Took. This is a constant source of petty contention.
(Pippin meanwhile absolutely takes after his father & is the most Tookish looking)
Merry: call me a Took one more time
Gandalf: if it looks like a Took and acts like a Took it’s a Took
Merry: I will END you
Gandalf is the only nonhobbit in the fellowship who understands the minutiae of Took Vs Brandybuck Vs Baggins rivalry & he delights in it, everyone else baffled
Frodo: look it’s perfectly simple. The Brandybucks don’t like the Tooks because they play golf and think they’re better than everyone because they occasionally go on adventures. The Tooks don’t like the Brandybucks because they live on the wrong side of the river and like boats. And nobody likes the Bagginses because they’re annoying.
Aragorn: are you… Including yourself in that
Frodo: I said what I said.
Frodo: now the Bagginses don’t like the Brandybucks OR the Tooks because they’re highly disrepectable but also richer than they are. And as far as a lot of the Bagginses are concerned I’m a Brandybuck because I grew up in Buckland and I have the Brandybuck Profile
Merry: which just means he’s not pug-ugly
Frodo: quite.
Aragorn: this is all ridiculous. Keep going.
Gandalf: Hm now I wouldn’t say UGLY but… every Baggins I’ve ever met has been perfectly Round or perfectly Square… There is no middle ground.
Gimli, baffled: Frodo isn’t round OR square
Merry: that’s because he has the Brandybuck profile
Gimli: so… Is he a Brandybuck…
Merry: ABSOLUTE not
Frodo: slander!! I’m a Baggins how dare you
Pippin: was your father a Round Baggins or a Square Baggins
Frodo: my father… Was the ROUNDEST Baggins who ever lived… A perfect Sphere of hobbit…
Personally I always felt like Hobbits age at roughly the same rate as exceptionally healthy humans and that the reason they don’t come of legal age until 33 is because have you met people in their 20s because Tolkien did
Funny: Pippin is an idiot because he’s not an adult yet.
Funnier: Pippin is an idiot because he’s 28.
Buzzkill: Approximately 85% if soldiers fighting in the trenches of WW1 were under the age of 30. A quarter of a million British soldiers were under the age of 19….and the average life expectancy of a trench soldier was six weeks.
Six weeks.
Tolkien was pressured to enlist and did so at the age of 23. He was in the trenches during the Battle of the Somme where he watched so many young people die around him, all kids like him. His entire battalion was decimated. So he was no stranger to the effects (both experienced and observed) of very young men being tossed into very adult situations and having to grow up very, very quickly. Yes, Pippin is an idiot and the youngest…but he joins the soldiers of Gondor and fights in a war where EVERYONE is bigger, stronger, and older than he is.
Pippin is a badass and so was Tolkien.
Another reason I believe we’re supposed to see Hobbit aging as at the same rate of human aging: the Shire is so sheltered and idyllic you don’t have to come of age until 33. No village boys sent off to die en masse in the trenches of WW1, no sons sent across oceans to fight in the deserts of WW2, a long childhood and a sheltered adolescence and a slow transition into citizenship.
The reason Sauron’s ring has a hard time corrupting Hobbits is because they are simple. Not in a stupid way or anything like that. But Hobbits tend to only care about their comforts. Let’s look at my two favorite Ring bearing Hobbits (no matter how long or short they had the Ring.), Samwise Gamgee and Bilbo Baggins.
Sam briefly bore the Ring when he believed Frodo to be dead, killed by Shelob. The Ring of course set about corrupting Sam by offering him his heart’s desire which was…. A garden. Yes, a GARDEN. So the Ring, not having much to work with there tries to make it bigger. How about the ability to make ALL OF MORDOR into a garden!? And Sam just says the equivalent of “Lol. How am I going to take care of a garden that big? A small one is good for me.” and the Ring almost destroys itself out of frustration.
Now Bilbo used the Ring more and so suffered some corruption for it, but what he used it the most for after his adventure? Hiding from unpleasant visitors. The Ring right now is foolish and has no idea how difficult Hobbits are yet. “Oh you want to hide? I can work with that! We can create a fortress with labyrinths upon labyrinths and,…” “Lol. Nope. Bagend’s fine for me. We’ll just put the ring on until they go away.”
And THAT ladies and GentleDwarves is why the Ring hates Hobbits and why they were really the only option to bear the Ring.
“6) Tolkien’s hero was average, and needed help, and failed. This is the place where most fantasy authors, who love to simultaneously call themselves Tolkien’s heirs and blame him for a lot of what’s wrong with modern fantasy, err the worst. It’s hard to look at Frodo and see him as someone extra-special. The hints in the books that a higher power did choose him are so quiet as to be unnoticeable. And he wouldn’t have made it as far as he did without his companions. And he doesn’t keep from falling into temptation. A lot of modern fantasy heroes are completely opposite from this. They start out extraordinary, and they stay that way. Other characters are there to train them, or be shallow antagonists and love interests and worshippers, not actually help them. And they don’t fail. (Damn it, I want to see more corrupted fantasy heroes.) It’s not fair to blame Tolkien for the disease that fantasy writers have inflicted on themselves. […] Fantasy could use more ordinary people who are afraid and don’t know what the hell they’re doing, but volunteer for the Quest anyway. It’s misinterpretation of Tolkien that’s the problem, not Tolkien himself.”
The whole point of The Lord Of The Rings… like, the WHOLE POINT… is that it is ultimately the hobbits who save the world. The small, vulnerable, ordinary people who aren’t great warriors or heroes.
Specifically, Sam. Sam saves the world. All of it. The ultimate success of the great quest is 100% due to a fat little gardener who likes to cook and never wanted to go on an adventure but who did it because he wasn’t going to let his beloved Frodo go off alone. Frodo is the only one truly able to handle the ring long enough to get it into Mordor – and it nearly kills him and permanently emotionally damages him – but Sam is the one who takes care of Frodo that whole time. Who makes him eat. Who finds him water. Who watches over him while he sleeps.
Sam is the one who fights off Shelob.
Sam is the one who takes the Ring when he thinks Frodo is dead.
Sam is the one who strolls into Orc Central and saves Frodo by sheer determination and killing any orc who crosses him. (SAM THE GARDENER GOES AND KILLS AN ACTUAL ORC TO GET FRODO SOME CLOTHES LET’S JUST THINK ABOUT THAT). And then Sam just takes off the Ring and gives it back which is supposed to be freaking impossible and he barely even hesitates.
Sam literally carries Frodo on the last leg of the journey. On his back. He’s half-starved, dying slowly of dehydration, but he carries Frodo up the goddamn mountain and Gollum may get credit for accidentally destroying the ring but Sam was the one who got them all there.
Sam saved the world.
And let’s not forget Pippin and Merry, who get damselled out of the story (the orcs have carried them off! We must make a Heroic Run To Save Them!) and then rescue themselves, recruit the Terrifying Ancient Powers through being genuinely nice and sincere, and overthrow Saruman before the ‘real’ heroes even get there.
Let’s not forget Pippin single-handedly saving what’s left of Gondor – and Faramir – by understanding that there is a time for obeying orders and a time for realizing that the boss is bugfuck nuts and we need to get help right now.
Let’s not forget Merry sticking his sword into the terrifying, profoundly evil horror that has chased him all over his world because his friend is fighting it and he’s gonna help, dammit and that’s how the most powerful Ringwraith goes down to a suicidally depressed woman and a scared little hobbit.
Everything the others do, the kings and princes and great heroes and all? They buy time. They distract the bad guys. They keep the armies occupied. That is what kings and great leaders are for – they do the big picture stuff.
But it is ultimately the hobbits who bring down every villain. Every one. And I believe that that is 100% on purpose. Tolkien was a soldier in WWI. His son fought in WWII. (And a lot of The Lord Of The Rings was written in letters to him while he did it.)
And hey, look, The Lord Of The Rings is about ordinary people – farmers, scholars, and so on – who get pulled into a war not of their making but who have to fight not only because their own home is in danger but so is everyone’s. And they’re small and scared but they do the best they can for as long as they can and that is what actually saves the world. Not great heroes and pre-destined kings. Ordinary people, doing extraordinary things because they want the world to be safe for ordinary people, the ones they know and the ones they don’t.
Ordinary people matter. They can save the world without being great heroes or kings or whatever. And that is really important and I get so upset when people miss that because Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli and Gandalf and all the others are great characters and all but they are ultimately a hobbit delivery system.
It is ordinary people doing their best who really change the world, and continue doing so after the war is over because they have to go home and rebuild and they do.
If nothing else, I have to reblog this for the phrase “hobbit delivery system.” So accurate it hurts.
What I love too is how even the foretold king and the assorted great heroes themselves all come to recognize that their main (and by the end, only) role is to distract Sauron. To the point that by the end they’re all gathered up before the black gates of Mordor in order to keep his attention focused on them, with only the hope – not the certainty – that they can buy Frodo whatever remaining time he needs, if he’s even still alive.
One thing the movies left out but has always been such a key part of the books for me was how when the hobbits returned home, they found that home had been changed too.
The war touched everywhere. Even with all they did in far-off lands to protect the Shire, the Shire had still been damaged, both property and lives destroyed, and it wasn’t an easy or simplistically happy homecoming. They had to fight yet another battle (granted a much smaller one) to save their neighbours, and then spent years in rebuilding.
Hobbits are basically the total inversion of the whole “looks about nine years old but is totally an adult, trust us” trope. Shifty little bastard spend their entire lives looking ambiguously thirtysomething, and far more respectable than they have any right to be – they’re like an entire species with resting responsible-adult face. That’s why you never see them coming.
They’re pretty much a PTA mom for their entire lives.
Well, that’s exactly it. The books always talk about how easily overlooked they are, but it’s not because they’re naturally inconspicuous. Quite the opposite, in fact: it’s because you’d never expect it of them. All going around looking like a bunch of slightly befuddled suburban PTA parents, so you assume they couldn’t possibly be up to something – and then they shiv you in the knee and rob you blind and somehow manage to look apologetic while they’re doing it!
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:
Wide Spread Interests 