Meme Answer: The Hobbit
Jun. 30th, 2013 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityYeah, the Hobbit gets its own post. I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS. Also, I haven't talked about the Hobbit in a while, and I miss it.
This is going to treat the book and the movie as the same entity, for the most part, because I think it will be more fun.
my favourite female character
Ahahahahahaha, oh god.
So "The Hobbit" is a great book, but it suffers for Tolkienism, which is to say it suffers from "I was a white British dude in the early-mid 1900s", and therefore it's KIND OF TERRIBLE when it comes to anything BESIDES white dudes.
That said, I am going to love Tauriel if I have to re-invent the entire internet to do so. I have already decided.
my favourite male character
When I was a kid, I would have said Bilbo in a heartbeat, and while I think I'd still give the same answer now, I give it for entirely different reasons. Back then, Bilbo was how we saw the world, the centre-pivot for the entire adventure. Of course I loved him. Now, though, even played by an actor I don't particularly like (as a person, I mean. It's hard to fault his work here), Bilbo is my favourite character because he never stops. Well, he never stops for very long. He's tired and hungry and alone for a lot of time in this book, and those are three things Hobbits aren't great at, but he keeps going. He keeps thinking. And when he's helped them save the world (or at least part of it), he has the courage to go back home and live his quiet life however the hell he wants, regardless of what his neighbours think. I just love it.
my favourite book/season/etc
Ooooh, boy. OUT OF THE FRYING PAN, INTO THE FIRE, probably. When I was a kid it was the part where the book finally got EXCITING for me, and as an adult, I like that the dwarves and Bilbo (and Gandalf) act like a team on PURPOSE for the first time. Dori, Dori, Dori.
Anyway, I also love "Fifteen Birds", and the eagles grabbing Gandalf just before he can jump to his (probably) death.
In the movie, they brought in some new characters to give Thorin a plot, which I can't really argue with. I will basically watch the dwarves fight in their family groups and with their new friends FOREVER.
my favourite episode/issue/chapter, etc
I'm going to go with a "cut scene" here, which appears in the appendix for RotK. Gandalf is talking to Gimli and Frodo about how Dain and Brand died defending Erebor in the last stand against Sauron's forces, and how they're not really mourning Dain because he was SUPER OLD and basically got the best death a dwarf can have. Gandalf muses that he's really, REALLY glad they did the whole dragon-killing thing half a century before, because it meant Smaug was taken out of play: "But that has been averted - because I met Thorin Oakenshield one evening on the edge of Spring in Bree. A chance meeting, as we say in Middle-Earth."
This is a nice mirror of the scene that made it into the movie ("The dragon has long been on your mind"), but also of the scene at the end of The Hobbit, where Bilbo is all "Hey, we got super lucky, eh?" and Gandalf is all "Really? You think it was luck? You don't think there were bigger things in play?" and Bilbo is all "Quiet life, starting five minutes ago, dude! Have some more tobacco."
One of the things GRRM tries to put in his books is "realism", hence The Red Wedding. I politely invite him to bite me. I will take my chance meetings and pre-destined quests every time.
my favourite cast member
I refuse to answer this question, on the grounds that it might serve to incriminate me.
my favourite relationship
ALL. OF. THEM. Seriously. Just watch the fight scenes, the way they work together. Or the scenes at Bag End where the family groups are still insulated (highlights here are the way Thorin smiles at an off-camera Kili, and the way that Dori watches his brothers during the singing, instead of Thorin, like everybody else). MY HEART.
Also I love the interplay between the four present at the White Council. Elrond is just SO AMUSED, and Gandalf is SO PISSED ABOUT SARUMAN, and Saruman is SO PISSED about everyone else, and Galadriel is just SO THERE AREN'T WORDS FOR GALADRIEL.
In the book alone, it's probably Bilbo and Gandalf, or the way that Tolkien talks specifically to me as he's telling me the story.
a character I'd die defending
Thranduil. Dude watched his grandfather get murdered by dwarves, and then watched 1/3 of his people (including his father) get slain in the Dead Marshes (well, they're the Dead Marshes now, anyway). He probably could be nicer, but I get that he wants to protect his people as much as Thorin does.
a character I just can't sympathize with
Thorin. I mean, I get that he wants to go home and stuff, but he is SUCH A WINDBAG in the book, and then he goes insane and tries to get everyone killed! And in the movie, HE IS EVEN WORSE. BabyKate had no sympathy for Thorin at all, and adult Kate can just see too many other ways he could have solved his problems.
a character I grew to love
Thorin. NO WAIT, I PROMISE. I mean, I still think he's kind of a moron about important things, but I like him more now? I have no idea.
my anti otp
Um...kind of all of them? Which makes no sense, I realize, because I read AND WRITE them all the time, but when push comes to shove, it has to be an EXQUISITELY written fic to make me not be just a little side-eyed. SOMETHING BLUE is the best example of this, obviously, but generally speaking I think Tolkien did enough background* on this that we don't have to.
*on their love lives, I mean. I am already writing Tauriel fanfic, so I can't really talk about the rest. ;)
This is going to treat the book and the movie as the same entity, for the most part, because I think it will be more fun.
my favourite female character
Ahahahahahaha, oh god.
So "The Hobbit" is a great book, but it suffers for Tolkienism, which is to say it suffers from "I was a white British dude in the early-mid 1900s", and therefore it's KIND OF TERRIBLE when it comes to anything BESIDES white dudes.
That said, I am going to love Tauriel if I have to re-invent the entire internet to do so. I have already decided.
my favourite male character
When I was a kid, I would have said Bilbo in a heartbeat, and while I think I'd still give the same answer now, I give it for entirely different reasons. Back then, Bilbo was how we saw the world, the centre-pivot for the entire adventure. Of course I loved him. Now, though, even played by an actor I don't particularly like (as a person, I mean. It's hard to fault his work here), Bilbo is my favourite character because he never stops. Well, he never stops for very long. He's tired and hungry and alone for a lot of time in this book, and those are three things Hobbits aren't great at, but he keeps going. He keeps thinking. And when he's helped them save the world (or at least part of it), he has the courage to go back home and live his quiet life however the hell he wants, regardless of what his neighbours think. I just love it.
my favourite book/season/etc
Ooooh, boy. OUT OF THE FRYING PAN, INTO THE FIRE, probably. When I was a kid it was the part where the book finally got EXCITING for me, and as an adult, I like that the dwarves and Bilbo (and Gandalf) act like a team on PURPOSE for the first time. Dori, Dori, Dori.
Anyway, I also love "Fifteen Birds", and the eagles grabbing Gandalf just before he can jump to his (probably) death.
In the movie, they brought in some new characters to give Thorin a plot, which I can't really argue with. I will basically watch the dwarves fight in their family groups and with their new friends FOREVER.
my favourite episode/issue/chapter, etc
I'm going to go with a "cut scene" here, which appears in the appendix for RotK. Gandalf is talking to Gimli and Frodo about how Dain and Brand died defending Erebor in the last stand against Sauron's forces, and how they're not really mourning Dain because he was SUPER OLD and basically got the best death a dwarf can have. Gandalf muses that he's really, REALLY glad they did the whole dragon-killing thing half a century before, because it meant Smaug was taken out of play: "But that has been averted - because I met Thorin Oakenshield one evening on the edge of Spring in Bree. A chance meeting, as we say in Middle-Earth."
This is a nice mirror of the scene that made it into the movie ("The dragon has long been on your mind"), but also of the scene at the end of The Hobbit, where Bilbo is all "Hey, we got super lucky, eh?" and Gandalf is all "Really? You think it was luck? You don't think there were bigger things in play?" and Bilbo is all "Quiet life, starting five minutes ago, dude! Have some more tobacco."
One of the things GRRM tries to put in his books is "realism", hence The Red Wedding. I politely invite him to bite me. I will take my chance meetings and pre-destined quests every time.
my favourite cast member
I refuse to answer this question, on the grounds that it might serve to incriminate me.
my favourite relationship
ALL. OF. THEM. Seriously. Just watch the fight scenes, the way they work together. Or the scenes at Bag End where the family groups are still insulated (highlights here are the way Thorin smiles at an off-camera Kili, and the way that Dori watches his brothers during the singing, instead of Thorin, like everybody else). MY HEART.
Also I love the interplay between the four present at the White Council. Elrond is just SO AMUSED, and Gandalf is SO PISSED ABOUT SARUMAN, and Saruman is SO PISSED about everyone else, and Galadriel is just SO THERE AREN'T WORDS FOR GALADRIEL.
In the book alone, it's probably Bilbo and Gandalf, or the way that Tolkien talks specifically to me as he's telling me the story.
a character I'd die defending
Thranduil. Dude watched his grandfather get murdered by dwarves, and then watched 1/3 of his people (including his father) get slain in the Dead Marshes (well, they're the Dead Marshes now, anyway). He probably could be nicer, but I get that he wants to protect his people as much as Thorin does.
a character I just can't sympathize with
Thorin. I mean, I get that he wants to go home and stuff, but he is SUCH A WINDBAG in the book, and then he goes insane and tries to get everyone killed! And in the movie, HE IS EVEN WORSE. BabyKate had no sympathy for Thorin at all, and adult Kate can just see too many other ways he could have solved his problems.
a character I grew to love
Thorin. NO WAIT, I PROMISE. I mean, I still think he's kind of a moron about important things, but I like him more now? I have no idea.
my anti otp
Um...kind of all of them? Which makes no sense, I realize, because I read AND WRITE them all the time, but when push comes to shove, it has to be an EXQUISITELY written fic to make me not be just a little side-eyed. SOMETHING BLUE is the best example of this, obviously, but generally speaking I think Tolkien did enough background* on this that we don't have to.
*on their love lives, I mean. I am already writing Tauriel fanfic, so I can't really talk about the rest. ;)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-06-30 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-30 03:21 pm (UTC)In all of ME, I'd pick Luthien...but I have a type. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-06-30 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-30 04:40 pm (UTC)Plus. Ah. I've always been slightly biased towards the Greenwood elves, and perhaps not for the best of reasons -_-; It was just that scene in the movieverse, when the Fellowship enters Lothlorien, and suddenly Legolas goes from being the most elegant guy present among the humans/hobbits/dwarves to the scruffiest guy in the room among the elves (though he cleans up pretty well afterwards). Which, if you'd ever seen me moving from an informal to a formal setting, is basically me all the time. Too formal for the informal setting and just scruffy-looking in the formal ones -_-;
It just ... it kind of fixed the Greenwood elves in my head as the scruffy elves? Add to that the lack of a Ring of Power, and the lack of the sense of security and rarified atmosphere you get in Lothlorien or Rivendell, and the way the Greenwood was becoming the Mirkwood and more dangerous all the time, and they kinda pinged me as the underdogs among elves?
I'm not even going to pretend it's logical, over here. It just means I'm inclined to back a Greenwood elf if there's one going, is all. *grins sheepishly*
no subject
Date: 2013-06-30 05:48 pm (UTC)I didn't notice that!
no subject
Date: 2013-06-30 09:46 pm (UTC)