Hobbitted

fyi, i ruin the ending of this beloved book.

This blog is chock FULL of spoilers, so in case there exists any other Hobbit-virgins in da house, I've changed the design to show oldest posts first.  Page back if you really wanna see the ending, and hint: I DON'T LIKE IT.

i started this blog a little late.

I've read a quarter of it so far.  Stuff has happened, like goblins, running, mountains, and a few men with beards.  Have yet to see a lady in this book...maybe they live in a society without them? 

No Spoilers Request

Yes, really, I have not read this book, or any in the series, nor have I seen any of those silly Ring movies that geeks fawn over, so please don't spoil it for me just yet. 

And no, I do not plan to make a blog when/if I ever start watching Star Trek.

character overload. :|

Why are there so many characters in this book?  Okay, Bilbo the Hobbit has the book named after him, and Gandolf is The Wizard, so clearly they're memorable, but there are thirteen other useless names I'm supposed to find familiar later in the story.  Is this some kind of British memory skillbuilder for little kids reading the book at home?  Whatever the hell it is, it's too many, and none of them have died yet, so it doesn't seem to be a "strength in numbers" tactic.  So far, I remember that they're part of the Good Guy Crew when they say something goofy or poke fun at Bilbo.

Speaking of Bilbo, I totally have the mental imagery of a little baby pig whenever he speaks.  Hairy, slow, questionably useful -- Babe the Pig.  Bilbo is going to be this character, isn't he?  He's going to save the sheep somehow?

I also cannot keep up with the similar-sounding creature names.  Trolls.  AND.  Goblins. How can I tell them apart?  Dwarves AND elves?  Same problem.  Gimme some sugar, Tolkien, I'm an imaginative reader.  And Gollum?  What the hell is that thing?  A goblin-troll-elf?  Or just a slightly smaller goblin who has a problem swallowing and talking like a normal goblin? 

I need a character box-line diagram, stat.

The Hobbit. Legend of Zelda. Discuss.

Something feels familiar here.  Anybody know of a connection or influence? 

plotzed

here's what i've got so far.

1. Gandalf shows up at Bilbo's house like a creepy old uncle, then Gandalf and a horde of dwarves crash Bilbo's house, eat all of his food and drink all of his wine like a big bacchnalian scene from Animal House sans femmes.  There are more than a few jokes about how Bilbo would make a better grocer than a burgler.  Unclear at this point why anyone thinks Bilbo would be a burglar, because he's still meant to be the character from Babe the Pig.  The adventure begins, but Bilbo prefers to be at home near his fireplace and cupboards. Scene.
   
   
2. Trolls in the woods!  These are talking trolls, and some dwarves do something doofy and become in peril.  Gandalf bails them out, uses sunlight to scare off trolls as if they were vampires and this were a teenage love story based in a small town in the Pacific Northwest but more realistically the animals living out in the wild would be werewolves but they're actually trolls, and then Gandalf gets two wicked swords.  More Bilbo jokes, including Tolkein's own dorky admittance that hobbits "really love maps".  Scene.
   
   
3. They go to Gandolf's friend Elrond's house (the Last Homely House) and they eat and drink and smoke for a few days.  Scene.
   
   
4. They keep adventuring, they go into a cave, there are goblins in the cave, the group is separated.  One delinquent dwarf loses Bilbo or he's too delinquent to be able to remain unseen in a lightless cave--whatever. There's like a war or something, and the wicked swords are involved, and the goblins are mad. After Bilbo recovers from a little fainting spell or panic attack or something, he finds a ring, and bumbles on, runs into an outcast, smaller, annoying goblin named Gollum who asks riddles. Bilbo stumps him, realizes the ring is Gollum's, realizes the ring turns people invisible when they wear it, runs away, runs outside, sees his friends having fun without him but he's invisible so he's kind of awkwardly realizing how little his peers respect him, he becomes visible, everybody awkwardly laughs, the ring is still a secret.  Scene.
   
   
5. More adventuring, they're hungry, they come to a clearing, there are wolves, wolves are angry, the crew climbs trees to hide from wolves, Bilbo is pathetic and can't climb trees so he climbs a dwarf instead, and gandalf throws fireballs at the wolves, and then the wolves go away, and then giant hawks come and pick them all up like a fast taxi service and everyone hangs out in a cool hawk tree house platform thing.  Scene.
   
   
6. They go to a bear-man's house, and Gandalf treats the bear-man like an idiot. G tells the whole "omg there were wolves and we climbed trees and we threw fireballs" story to the host and brings in the whole crew, two by two, and really acts like an asshole by treating the bear-man so insultingly.  Would you treat a man who could become a bear like an idiot?  Then everyone eats and drinks and smokes all night, bear-man tells people not go to outside or they'll die, they stay for a few days drinking and smoking and eating, and then they leave.  Bear-man doesn't eat anyone and I feel taken advantage of at this point. Scene.
   
   

Oh, I'm at the point in the book where if they describe their setting as windy one more time, I'm throwing this goddamned book into the subway tracks.  Led Zeppelin taught me that this world is MISTY and there is a MOUNTAIN and little creatures bounce to insane guitar riffs, but nowhere so far has that message really rang true.  The second half of this book better involve a lot more ass-kicking.

Not a Hut. A Hole.

@rayners reached out to me with great urgency to correct my thought process thoroughly-steeped in American surburbanitis. Bilbo does not live in a house, nor a hut. He lives in a hole.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.  Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor a yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Page one, paragraph one.  Cupboards and fireplace do not define a house, apparently. 

(image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/heilemann/2121456932/in/set-72157603495410365/).

WTF, Gandalf?

What's so awesome about Gandalf, and what makes him a wizard besides being old, having a beard, and being generally sneaky?  I haven't heard a single mention of a magic wand or anything tied to sorcery.  So far, he has a map and he's out seeking a magical treasure. 

Gandalf is not a wizard.  He's a conniving, drinking, smoking, bearded, smooth-talking, well-connected, sword-fighting pirate.  

"You People" and Murderous Hobbit Rage

Just got through with all that plotzing, and the next hunk of the story is a head-scratcher.

First of all, Gandalf leads his trusted peers to the woods and proclaims that he's not going in there with "you people".  He YP'd them!  His own crew! 

"It is no use arguing.  I have, as I told you, some pressing business away south; and I am already late through bothering with you people.  We may meet again before all is over, and then again of course we may not."

Who called this mission to order?  Gandalf.  And he's ditching the crew.  Sup with that?  What about wolves?  What about trolls or goblins?  He took the wicked swords AND the horse from bear-man and made everyone else return their ponies, and now he wants them all to march into a deep dark forest and maybe he'll see them on the other side.   Can they walk around?  Yeah, but its hundreds of miles, Gandalf says. Hmmm, how does that phrase go, again?  "F*** you. No smiley." I think that's it. 

Okay, okay, okay.  So the fearless 14 here are walking through the forest, and when trying to cross a creek, one of them falls in the water.  They help him out, he's all wet, he's shook up about the whole thing, and it turns out that the guy goes into a coma because the water was cursed!  Terrible.  His friends carry him and continue into the woods, and, then the guy wakes up, and what happens next?  Fellow dwarf Thorin snaps at a man who just woke up from a coma.

"In fact, if you can't talk about something else, you had better be silent.  We are quite annoyed with you as it is.  If you hadn't waked up, we should have just left you to your idiotic dreams in the forest; you are no joke to carry even after weeks of short commons."

Unfriend. 

Oh, and by the way, what's with the way they address Bilbo?  When I write about him, I use his name, because that's how our society addresses beings that speak -- by name.  When the dwarves are frustrated with him, though, they call him "hobbit".  Thorin is the only dwarf that consistently calls him "Mr. Baggins".  Combined with the earlier YP of this scene, I think it's time we talk about Tolkein's racist undertones.  I know, I know. Tolkein?  Racist??   Well, do you consider James Cameron and his treatment of blue people to be along the same lines?  I haven't Gotten Blued, so to speak, but feel free to spoil movie that for me.

So, they walk on, they get hungry and super cranky and they stray from the path Gandalf said not to, and there are mysterious little bonfires that appear and magically disappear when they get close, and all of a sudden...SPIDERS!  Big ones!  Big ones who want to eat dwarves!  SNAP!  One tries to enclose Bilbo in a web, but, being the resourceful and hopeful Babe the Pig character, Bilbo uses his pocket knife to cut through the webs and, get this, duel with an effing spider!  Then he lunches forward and stabs the thing right between the eyes.  

Pretty impressive.  A turning point, one might say.  But what he goes on to do next is just kind of sick. 

"Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the hep of the wizard or the dwarves or anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins.  He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath.  'I will give you a name,' he said to it, 'and I shall call you Sting.'"

So at this point, Bilbo is high off of his latest kill, and he's looking for another taste of blood.  He runs into a few spiders, and, get this, they're talking (spiders talk!) amonst themselves about eating some dwarves.  So what does Bilbo do?  He puts on his magic ring, unsheaths his murderous sword, starts singing creepy chants to confuse the spideys, kicks his gruesome killing spree into the next gear, and, last but not least, frees all of the dwarves stuck in webs. 

Yeah, right, you're saying the spiders were going to eat everyone!  And they looked super scary!  But the common theme of The Hobbit so far is "When In Doubt, Slash The Hell Out Of It", especially after that whole goblin/cave massacre, so this continues that theme.  I mean, the spiders spoke English! Bilbo could have at least talked to them, held them hostage, or not killed every single last one of them.  I had no idea he had so much pent up murderous rage; can children grasp this glorification of war and violence, or can they relate because they find spiders megacreepy and therefore not fit to live?
 
So....now that everything is dead....the dwarves know that the ring turns Bilbo invisible, and they're all looking to get back on their forest path. Kind of awkward.   I kind of wish they stayed on that path, because as an innocent bystander to all of that, I now know we have a killer on our hands.

They're going to make a movie out of this?

TWO movies, even?  Guillermo del Toro is directing with Peter Jackson as the writer? 

Are the dwarves and elves going to be little people?  Are they going to emphasize Gandalf's pirate-like behavior and make his flake-outs super dramatic?  Will they cast Steven Colbert as Bear-Man for comedic irony? 

OH NO! SPOILERS!  Cate Blanchett is in this movie and I don't think she's pulling a Bob Dylan.  Code red, people, there may be a female in this story after all!

LOTR Name Generator (now with a "Race" dropdown!)

You clearly need a more Hobbit-appropriate name if you're reading this blog.

Love,

Ybaoclya Elendil