Can’t Wait For, Like, 2025 When We Look Back On The 2018/2019 Era And Say “hey, Remember When We

Violet: HI HONEY IM HOME

Xaden:

Ridoc, impersonating Xaden: but Violence I told you not to look for me?! I need to protect you from myself! - OH THE DRAMA!

Imogen: before you start she nearly died last week

Sawyer: and the day before yesterday

Garrick: and two days before that

Violet: and right now can someone help me get this knife out my thigh?

Really fun laszlo/matt s6 collection posted by the official shadows insta 🦇

EXCUSE ME BARMAID! I’M AFRAID YOU ORDERED THE WRONG OFFSPRING! I ORDERED AN EXTRA LARGE BOY WITH BEEFY ARMS! EXTRA GUTS AND GLORY ON THE SIDE! THIS HERE! THIS IS A TALKING FISHBONE!

When you put it like that 😂😂

Some of y’all are not appreciating Bilbo Baggins enough. I am here to remedy that. This guy has:

• somehow managed to establish himself as a respectable, staid hobbit by the time he was fifty, despite being both a grandson of Bullroarer Took and the Shire champion of pretty much every aiming-game known to hobbitkind

• had an in-depth debate on pleasantries with a random guy passing by in the street, who turned out to be GANDALF

• collapsed in front of his own fire shaking and muttering “struck by lightning” over and over again in response to hearing about dragons and danger

• mind you, this was after he screamed loud enough to startle a roomful of Dwarves

• signed up for a dangerous quest completely outside of his league out of spite

• when told to scout out a mysterious light, saw some trolls, and instead of reporting back with the information, decided to PICK THE TROLLS POCKET

• arrived in Rivendell for the first time and said it “smelled like elves”

• upon meeting a strange creature that visibly wanted to eat him, he decided to play a riddle game with him- and guessed pretty much every one, and made up his own riddles, afraid and alone, that not only were good and full of linguistic puns, but actually stumped the other guy- AND THEN CHEATED AND WON WITH A QUESTION

• showed mercy to said strange creature who wanted to kill him, and was now standing between him and freedom

• eavesdropped on the dwarves arguing over whether to try to save him, then popped up casually smack in the middle of them just as they were debating

• somehow managed to sleep like a log at the really really high eyrie full of wild predators

• found himself in a bad situation, said eff it, and turned around and antagonized and fought off an insane amount of man eating spiders, like enough of them that fifty was a small portion, by singing at them with incredibly complex and punny insulting songs composed on the spot, while simultaneously slaying them in multitudes despite having zero combat training. Seriously, we don’t discuss enough how epic the spider scene is.

• broke a company of dwarves out of the very secure prison of the Elvenking by inventing white water rafting with barrels

• charmed his way out of being eaten by a dragon

• stole the frickin Arkenstone from the guys who employed him, one of whom was a king

• took part in an epic battle, only to be knocked out in the first ten minutes and miss the entire thing

• was named elf-friend by the guy who’s prisoners he sprung

• wrote his own autobiography, complete with all the narrative recognition of his own heroics

• spent 60 years writing said autobiography

• taught his lower class neighbor’s kid how to read

• taught his nephew Elvish- not only Sindarin, but Quenya too

• spent decades telling his cousins his own story as fairy tales, complete with character impressions accurate enough that one of them was able to fool a servant of the Enemy with a second hand impression

• used the One Ring of Power to hide from his neighbors

• planned an elaborate feast with multiple social faux pas to mess with his neighbors, complete with a purposefully bewildering speech and culminating in him vanishing into thin air in front of everyone

• left his cousins and neighbors very unsubtle passive aggressive gifts in his will

• settled into Rivendell, randomly befriended the heir to the throne of like half of Middle Earth, and apparently spent his time writing very personal poems about his hosts and reciting them to crowds of elves

• after being invited to a Council of basically every major kingdom in the continent, spent a quarter of the time reciting vague poems about his friends, a quarter of the time telling anyone who would listen about his heroic past, and half the time interrupting to ask when lunch would be

• volunteered to bring the ring to Mordor

• became one of only four or five mortals in history to live in Valinor

Seriously, Bilbo Baggins may well be the most chaotic, insane person in the entire legendarium, and that includes the likes of people like Finrod “bit a werewolf to death to save the life of guy who he just met and gave up his kingdom for” Felagund.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

do you think their periods ever synced

So Meg and I were chatting on Discord the other day and came to a realization:

Hey! now! Come hoy now! Whither do you wander?

Up, down, near or far, here, there or yonder?

Sharp-ears, Wise-nose, Swish-tail and Bumpkin,

White-socks my little lad, and old Fatty Lumpkin!

This is the rhyme that Tom sings when he’s looking for the ponies. The first five of them are Merry’s ponies: presumably one for each of the hobbits to ride, and one more for the baggage. (The last is Tom’s own pony.) And Meg noticed a surprising parallel between the ponies’ names and the hobbits:

Sharp-ears = Merry

Throughout the story, Merry is shown to be the one with the best head for details. He’s “sharp”, if you will; observant and intelligent.

EDIT: Merry is also the one who spies on Bilbo and Frodo to learn about the Ring! He’s got very “sharp” ears, and eyes too.

Wise-nose = Frodo

This is the easiest one. Frodo’s name means “wise” or “wisdom”, so this pony fits him well.

Swish-tail = Pippin

Tell me whose vibe fits Swish-tail better than Pippin. That’s right; you can’t. The name conjures a picture of careless jollity, which couldn’t be more Pippin.

Bumpkin = Sam

A “bumpkin” is defined as “an unsophisticated or socially awkward person from the countryside”. As much as I would be the last person in the world to call Sam a backwards yokel, he is nonetheless the most “country” of the four hobbits, and his name literally means “half-wise”, or “lacking wisdom”.

That leaves White-socks to be the baggage pony, which likely doesn’t have much significance (aside from the fact that he’s an outlier because hobbits don’t wear socks).

We’re not sure there’s any particular point to this. We’re also not sure whether or not Tolkien did it on purpose. But either way, it’s a fun thing to think about!

I love them, your honor

The Fellowship playing never have I ever together and just realising that each of them has no fucking clue what counts as a normal life for the others, like inagine;

Legolas: never have I ever killed a giant spider!

Boromir: a giant what.

Legolas: y'know, the big ones! normally quite snappy, huge webs

Boromir: no the fuck i do not??

Aragorn: Legolas, that's a mirkwood thing.

The same thing happens with each of them, the hobbits finding out that Second Breakfast is in fact just a hobbit thing, Gimli realising that dwarven drinking games aren't as popular as he thinks, and Boromir just being so fucking confused.

As Tolkien often observed; “names often generate a story” and always nearly contributed or suggested something of the nature or personality of the character, thing or place that has been named. Yet the most intriguing name he has created in my opinion, is the main protagonist of “The Hobbit” Bilbo Baggins who is the hero of the classic tale, and despite being seen as such, his name holds interesting and contradicting connotations. For Baggins suggests harmless, humble and well- contented characters (though with criminal undertones!) Yet the name Bilbo suggests an individual who is sharp, intelligent and even dangerous….

The family name of Bilbo is  “Baggins” which derives from a double source-the English Somerset surname Bagg, which means “moneybag” or “wealthy.” The term “Baggins" itself means “afternoon tea or snack between meals” and at first is appropriate in describing our well off  hobbit. Initially he is presented as a mildly comic, home-loving, upper middle class “gentle hobbit” who seems harmless and composed enough, if given to some annoyance. He is mostly concerned with his mothers dishes, doilies, domestic comforts and food. However, once recruited by Thorin and his Company, we see the respectable gentle hobbit reveal his true colours- he is an excellent and highly skilled burglar.

Tolkien has maintained that his tales are often inspired by names and words from the real world, and indeed, in the jargon of the nineteenth-and early twentieth century criminal underworld there were a cluster of names around the term “bag” and forms of theft. “To bag” means to capture, to acquire, or to steal. “A baggage man” is an outlaw who carries off the loot and a “bagman” is the man who collects and distributes gold on the behalf of others by dishonest means or purposes.

His surname not only characterises himself, but also plots out the narrative for the story. For in the hobbit we discover Baggins is hired by Dwarves to bag the Arkenstone. He then becomes the baggage man who carries off the loot. When he realises Thorin has fallen under the gold sickness, he becomes the bagman and is dishonest to the newly crowned king, distributing the Arkenstone to Thrandruil and Bard. After the Battle Of The Five Armies he hands out the treasure to those who are rightfully in need of it, and thus ends him being the bagman.

Another aspect of Bilbo Baggins character can be revealed by the analysis of his first name. The word “Bilbo” entered the English language in the late sixteenth century as a name for a short and deadly piercing sword of the kind once made in the Spanish port city of Bilbao where the name derives from. This is an excellent description of Bilbo’s elvish sword (often called a letter opener) named “Sting.” Found in the troll hoard, Bilbo’s “bilbo” can pierce through any animal hide that would break any other sword. In The Hobbit however, it is the hero’s sharp wit rather than his sword that gives Bilbo his sharpness. Bilbo’s well-honed wits allow him to survive the journey and to trick monsters, a dragon  and to get himself out of bad situations. 

When we put these two names together as Bilbo Baggins, we fully understand the two aspects of his character, showing someone who is dangerously witty, but ultimately good and humble to a fault. If we want to dig deeper into how these names also affected the events of the Lord Of The Rings, one has to look no further than Frodo Baggins.

 Along with the Baggins family name, further “baggage” is passed on to Bilbo’s nephew and heir, Frodo Baggins who in the context of the one ring is a link to another underworld occupation; the bagger or the bag thief. This bagger or bag thief has nothing to do with baggage, but is derived from the French word bauge, meaning “ring.” A bagger then, is a thief who specialises in stealing rings by seizing a victim’s hand and stripping off its rings. It had common usage in Britain’s criminal underworld between 1890 to 1940. The Baggins name holds the idea and plot for both The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings. For Bilbo’s skill as a burglar, one might say that in the perspective of outsiders, the Baggins baggers of Bag End, Bilbo and Frodo, are naturally born ring thieves.