Summary:The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is a collection of poems set in Middle-earth around the time of The Lord of the Rings. Some of them are purported to be written by Frodo or Sam, but many have more mysterious origins, or have clearly been passed down from older times as oral tradition among hobbits.
Why should I check out this canon?
Did you enjoy the Hobbit poetry in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, such as Roads Go Ever On and On or Sam's poem about the Oliphaunt? Would you like to read more poetry about and by hobbits? Then The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is the canon for you! From the ridiculous "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late" to the epic "The Hoard" to the sad "Sea-bell" and "The Last Ship," there's all kinds of poems here for the enjoying!
Where can I get this?
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is sold as a book on its own wherever you would normally purchase books. It’s also available in Kindle format from Amazon. If you aren’t able to obtain it for whatever reason, let me (@edgeoflight) know, and I’ll provide you with a copy.
What fanworks already exist?
There are 21 works so far on AO3, and they involve everything from femslash about Mee and Shee, to exploring what Gorcrows are, to works inspired by the various poems.
It's fun how things come round again and gain greater resonance from time.
Now I remember LJ of that era, which was a joy, wonder if the lolrus is more surprising than a fairy, and see his blue bucket and think: old-fashioned! No call for them. ( If you haven't watched 'Small Prophets' yet, I highly recommend.)
I don't know why but lately I have been in the mood for some Silmarillion (or tragedy, which is basically the same thing), so I'm sharing again this (for me) heart wrenching collection of Maedheos pics 😭
So I was just thinking about LOTR and the movies vs the books. And honestly there's a lot of things I wish the movies had done differently and I could rant about them for hours.
But the more I think of it, one of the main issues, or like the largest thing, one of the things that isn't just a small detail, is Aragorn's portrayal. The movies, understandably, cut out a lot of things from a lot of characters, Aragorn included. For the most part what I tend to point out about him is little nitpicky details, mostly certain jokes and funny things they cut out (like Aragorn getting really dramatic about Having To Leave His Cool Sword At The Door at Edoras, because like seriously, that was funny as hell, but he gets Anduril so much later in the movies that it doesn't happen).
But I feel like beyond that, the movies just really left out a lot of the nuance and depth that makes the character interesting to me. The humor/funnier side of him being cut out is in a way part of that, but it extends to other aspects as well. Such as, I feel like, really the sense of age and experience his character has, the feeling that this is a character who's seen pretty much every corner of the known world, who's lived and known so much joy and so much pain already. The sense of wisdom coming from long experience that the character has, that I feel like kind of is what makes him the most fitting leader to the Fellowship when Gandalf dies. So much of it is just kind of lost. So ultimately in the movies he just ends up coming across as... really kind of a relatively basic Fantasy Hero.
And it's like... don't get me wrong, he's still kinda cool, and Viggo Mortensen plays the character he was given very well! Aragorn is still fun to watch in the movies! But it just feels like he's kind of... reduced and altered into a fairly ordinary fantasy hero who struggles with His Great Destiny in a way that I don't feel like he ever was in the book? I'm also not a fan of romance in general so the amount of focus the movies put on the Aragorn/Arwen romance ends up being a little dull to me, but that's a personal preference. But just. Like, the parts of Aragorn that got cut from the movies are largely the exact same parts of him that really make him interesting and make him stand out from other fantasy characters to me. The movie version just doesn't feel as... idk, unique, I guess. And like I get that there are always things adaptations must sacrifice for the sake of the story, and LOTR is just such a massive work that there's no way one movie trilogy ever could include every single moment that brings more nuance to some character or thing or plot point, but I feel like they could have been able to keep more of Aragorn's nuance in the movies if they had wanted to.
Ok so I'm tired and in pain cuz once a month my reproductive organs decide to make my life hell so I wasn't able to articulate this very well, sorry about that. If you want me to elaborate you can ask and I may add onto this when my brains decide to actually be present. Or feel free to add your own commentary if you feel like it!
Actually, fuck it. I'm gonna elaborate, whether or not anyone cares or wants to know. Aside from a few petty things that are about personal preferences, not plot, most of my issues regarding Aragorn's characterization in the movies can be condensed into the comparison of two quotes, one from the movies, one from the books.
"Put aside the Ranger. Become who you were born to be." –Elrond (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003, written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson, directed by Peter Jackson)
"I am Strider and Dúnadan too, and I belong both to Gondor and the North." –Aragorn (The Two Towers, Chapter 9 - Flotsam and Jetsam, by J.R.R. Tolkien)
The movies present the Strider persona and being a ranger as something false that Aragorn must cast away in order to become the king. He must choose one or the other; he cannot be both, and furthermore, it's as if by being a ranger he is running from his destiny and his responsibility. The movies paint him as a reluctant hero, one who must be convinced by others to take the part he was meant to play. Who is afraid of the responsibility (okay, that kinda is fair, it is a big responsibility, but still) his heritage puts on him, and who isn't sure he wants to claim the throne until towards the end of the movie trilogy.
In the books, Aragorn is much less reluctant. If he ever struggled about whether or not he wants to become a king, he is long since past that. I get the impression that what he really has been waiting for is the right time for traveling to Gondor and making his claim for kingship known; had he attempted it earlier, it's very likely he would have only divided the people of Gondor and caused more harm than good for the people. It's only as the events of LOTR take place that the right time comes, when he knows his presence is needed. I don't remember whether or not it's discussed one way or another in the movies, but in the books his initial plan was to travel with the Fellowship only as far as Rauros, and then leave those who headed for Mordor, and instead go to Gondor with Boromir, and I think it's reasonable to assume that said plan included him at some point presenting his claim to the throne. He was ready and determined and working towards it in subtler ways long before LOTR took place.
I feel like on a symbolical level you can see that in Narsil/Andúril, which is both a sign of his ancestry, and a symbol of his own claim to kingship. In the book he already carries it when we first meet him, but it is still broken; he keeps the sign of who he is on him, he recognizes and accepts his heritage and who he is is tied to his lineage, but he is not yet ready or willing to present his claim to Gondor's throne, the time for that is not yet come. It is still called Narsil or the sword that was was broken; it is a symbol of his ancestry, not of his own claim. But before he leaves Rivendell with the Fellowship, he has the sword reforged, and names it Andúril. The blade is whole again, because it is the time for him to go to Gondor and claim his throne. It is reforged at his request, and he names it, and so it is no longer symbol of only his lineage, but also of him personally and both his own capability and his own desire to be the king.
In the movie, not only is Narsil broken but it is initially kept on display in Rivendell. Aragorn knows of his ancestry, but he has not accepted it as part of who he is and is not yet willing to take on the responsibility that his heritage would place on him. Even as the Fellowship leaves Rivendell, the broken pieces are still left there. Whether or not Aragorn initially intends to go to Gondor (as I said I literally do not remember), he is not intending to present his claim for the throne, is not yet willing to do everything that fully accepting his heritage would require of him. It is only much later in the story, that Elrond, at Arwen's urging, has the sword reforged and presents it to Aragorn. In the movie it is also Elrond who tells Aragorn the sword's new name; Aragorn doesn't name it himself. Elrond thrusts the responsibility of kingship and of his heritage upon Aragorn, Elrond makes him claim it. And yes, Aragorn does accept it and embrace it, and turns out he is pretty good at it, but it is not fully his choice, it is other people and outside forces that convince him to take up the burden.
And as I implied before, the books also don't treat the Strider side and King Elessar side of Aragorn as mutually exclusive. He can be both and he is both, and they are not in conflict. He even chooses "Telcontar" the Quenyan translation of "Strider" to be the name of his house when he becomes the king of the Reunited Kingdom. It's also important to note that in the books, while he is not a king, he is already a leader; he is the chieftain of the Rangers of the North, and has been for a long time. He already knows the responsibility of a leader, and has already accepted it and acted according to it for a long time. Yes, it is a much smaller scale of things than that of being a king, but it is responsibility of leadership, responsibility over people, even so. Admittedly, the movies technically do not conflict with him being a leader already, but neither do they confirm it. The Grey Company is entirely cut out/replaced with the troop of elves from Lórien who appear at Helm's Deep and then are never mentioned again. The references to the Rangers of the North are few and far between, and it's never really in any way explained that they're also Dúnedain and descendants of the people of the kingdom of Arnor. And quite frankly there are parts of Aragorn's characterization in the movies that in my opinion simply do not make any sense if "ranger" means the same thing it does in the books and he is the chieftain of the Rangers, so I'm going to assume it's just not a thing in the movie canon.
Anyway, point was, in the book canon Aragorn does not need to reject one aspect of who he is in favor of another, but instead he is who he is, he knows who he is, and embraces both of those sides. I feel like that is also part of what makes him feel older and more experienced in the books, although part of that is also just the fact that he has more dialogue where he talks about things he has seen or experienced, gives exposition about lore stuff, and overall just shares his knowledge more, and there's more moments when you can see the way his past experiences have shaped him (whether that's moments where you can see the effects of traumatic experiences - there's been a post going on about that specifically recently, so I won't go into that - or memories of good times such as at Cerin Amroth in Lothlórien, or whatever). In a way the more humoristic side of him ties into that too, whether it be the intentional jokes and pranks, or the sarcasm and thinly veiled bitching when people annoy him, or the moments when he just gets unnecessarily dramatic about one thing or another in a comical way. All of that just comes together to make the character feel more complex, which again adds to the sense of age, like he's old enough to no longer feel the need to present himself in one specific way to others, but instead letting every side of himself show. It also just makes him feel more human in a way, because he's not just one thing and one thing alone.
Book!Aragorn does still face problems and conflicts, but his conflict is not about accepting or rejecting his heritage. Instead it is about meeting that responsibility, about taking responsibility for and protecting what he has claimed as his, about showing the people of Gondor not only the proof of his heritage, but also of his actual capability and competence to that job. This is a bit of a sidenote, but I've seen before on tumbr a post about how he actually takes his time before returning to Minas Tirith after Sauron's defeat, enough time for Faramir to heal, enough time for the city to start to recover or at least kinda find its balance and get things together. Enough time that the people of Gondor, if they'd wanted, could have decided that hey actually we've been doing fine with stewards for so long, what do we need a king for, we don't really want one. He didn't just barge back in when everything was still a mess and chaos and use that lack of balance to take control and establish his position, he took long enough that people would have had the time to consider it and actually decide that yes, we do want him to be our king. In the book his obstacle is not overcoming his self-doubt, it is proving himself to other people, to the people he hopes to rule (and, when it comes to the Rohirrim, the people he'll need to build a diplomatic relationship in the future, I guess).
In the movies, though, his main conflict is with himself, his main obstacle is his own self-doubt and whether or not he actually wants to be the king in the first place. This is also one of the things that makes him seem younger than the book version, because his main struggle is largely in deciding who he is and what he wants, he hasn't quite figured that out yet. I think he also ends up just kind of feeling a little less complex and a little more one-sided and more of an average hero (because let's face it, "am I worthy" is the typical fantasy hero's main dilemma and internal conflict) because of that.
Now, the question of course remains, is movie!Aragorn actually worse, or is he just different? I don't know for sure, and I'll leave that up for the rest of you to debate, but I definitely personally don't like the movie characterization as much as I like the book characterization, and it's really one of the biggest (and also, in many ways, to me at least one of the hardest to articulate due to being so complex and kinda vague and hard to explain set of differences) issues I have with the way the movies are written, and one of the things I'd personally like to change about the movies if it was up to me.
Nature is incredible, you can really see just at a quick glance how these evolved to speak together in rhyming riddles while performing a spooky dance, laughing at you because they're The Wee Creatures Three and you will Never Get Their Key.
Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.
Challenge yoinked from @cycas.
A is for All Spring and All Summer - Gen, Pre-Canon, Blue Mountains, Dís&Kíli, Fíli&Kíli, five years is a big difference when you're very young
B is for Behind the Silver and Glass - Teen, Éowyn/Faramir, Dark AU
C is for Come, Loving, Black-brow'd Night - Teen, Aragorn/Faramir, Political marriage (Sedoretu marriage), Oblivious Aragorn, Eventual Fluff
D is for A Draught of Sun and River-water - Gen, Gimli&Legolas, Field of Cormallen, Skinny Dipping
E is for Enclosed: the Aftermath - Gen, feat. Dwalin, Fíli, Kíli, Post-Canon, Mostly Everyone LIves AU, Epistolary
F is for Faithless Be - Not Rated, Gimli/Legolas, Sailing to Valinor, Beware of the Sea, I am not sorry
G is for Go Not Unknown - Teen, Fíli/Ori, Post-canon, First Kiss
H is for Hold My Number - Teen for implied shenanigans, Gimli/Legolas, Modern AU, meet-cute, this is very silly
I is for In the Blossoming Time - Gen, Frodo&Sam, Post-canon-ish, Friendship Fluff
J is for .... a glaring empty spot I guess lol
K is for A Knight Returned - Gen, Éowyn&Merry, Post-Canon, Old Characters
L is for Love, in Triplicate - Teen, Bilbo/Dwalin/Thorin, Post-Canon, Epistolary, dorks in love
M is for A Mismatched Set - Teen, Dwalin/Nori, Post-Canon, A small unhappy story
N is for Nothing He Should Miss - Explicit, Arwen/Éowyn, implied infidelity, short and messy
O is for Of the East-light We Ask No News - Teen, Boromir/Théodred, Sleepy cuddles, bittersweet
P is for Poetic Omissions - Not Rated (for gore), Elvenking's dungeons, what if Bilbo heavily embellished the way he really got those keys?
Q is for The Quiet Upon the Land - Gen, It's winter again in Edoras, and Éomer remembers his sister
R is for Rent a Room, Stay Forever - Gen, future Frodo/Sam/Rosie, Modern AU, and they were housemates
S is for Stabbing into Spring-melt Snow - Teen, Éowyn/Tauriel, second chances in love and war
T is for To My Eyes Forever Be Fair - Teen, Éowyn/Faramir, genderqueer Éowyn, sparring as flirting
U is for The Understanding - Gen, Bilbo/Bofur, Post-canon, Fluff-ish
V is very much not here (another missed letter)
W is for Well Met On A Rainy Day - Gen, Bilbo/Thorin, fem!bagginshield, Modern AU, Meet-cute, Thorin's electrified harp
X is for nope
Y is for Your Half of The Night - Not Rated, Dwalin/Thorin, goes from pre-canon to post-canon, sad fluff
Z is non-existent
I scored 22 letters out of 26 in a total of 259 fics, which is not bad at all!
(Also it's ridiculous how with some letters I had an embarrassment of choice, and with some, only one or two.)
Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.
OK, so I was originally tagged to do this, and I had fun doing most of it, and then. THEN, I realised I only had four letters unfilled. At once I was SEIZED with Feanorian levels of hubris and decided it would take no time at all to write 'just a quick thing' for four letters. Several months later...
I thought at first that removing 'A' and 'The' made this particularly tricky, but now I realise that A + T are 1-point scrabble tiles for a reason: I had lots of options for A&T.
Also, apparently almost everything I write is gen so I don't know why I bothered listing the Gs,.
This challenge made me think: why are so many things I write SO LONG. But my recent things are short, so that's a win!
@sallysavestheday tagged me to do this one, thank you for that!
But I am going to be extremely cautious who I tag. I think @hhimring might enjoy it though, and probably has enough fics already that the trap of 'just four more!' will not be too risky to attempt.
So: the stories:
Angmar Rising Glorfindel (background Glorfindel/Ecthelion) G Words: 11,683
Books Should Have Good Endings Bilbo Baggins & Various in Valinor G Words: 12,926
Cornflowers in Belfalas Celebrían/Elrond Peredhel, G, Words: 8,711
Dragon, Ghost, King and Bowman Bard the Bowman/Thranduil, G, Words: 12,074
Gift of Uncertain Seas Nerdanel, Indis, Elros, G Words: 3,767
Heart and Head Celegorm & Nimloth G, Words: 1,391
Into the Mists A prequel to Eagle of the Ninth, with Marcus's father. Canon-compatible tragedy. G. Words: 3,296
Jumping at Shadows Original Dwarf Character, G, 300. OK, I admit it, I fished this one out of drafts, fixed it up and published it because I was annoyed I didn't have a J.
Kintsugi Nerdanel, G Words: 590.
Lands, Lords and Ladies, lost beyond the Sea Fingon joins King Arthur's court. G. Words: 9,881
Maglor's Lament for Ambarussa First outbreak of poetry! Least it's short. G. Words: 172
Not Leaving Kudos fic about Ao3. Contains margarine. Words: 624
One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters G. Words: 615
Primary Sources Bilbo & Elrond, Words: 4,422
Quenta Narquelion My beloved retelling of the First Age from the POV of Feanor's ghost. Words: 119,524
Rexque Futurus Arthur, Merlin, Jormundgandr, bees. T. Words: 71,092
Spirit in a Bottle Celebrimbor, Elrond, Sauron. G. Words: 1,447
These Words Many Remembered Bilbo & Glorfindel. G. Words: 4,406
Use Well the Days Cirdan/Lalwen, Words: 2,706
View from the Western Coast Cirdan & Osse. G. Words: 5,895
Watch the wall my darling, while the gentlemen go by Edrahil & Finrod. G. Words: 1,461
Xanadu Samuel Taylor Coleridge & Finrod. 5,774 words of 'damnit, I CAN write something beginning with X'. I read most of Coleridge's collected letters for this and learned quite a lot about the late 18th century.
Yield The one orc that did in fact surrender considers writing home. 290 words.
Zirakzigil Durin & the Mountain, Words:826
Oh, hang on, I was supposed to give a tally. So, that's 26/26 and my total number of fics on Ao3 is 155.
Though, I really don't know precisely what my total *fic* count is. I am fairly sure I've put a few things on SWG that aren't on Ao3, and vice versa, plus things written spur of the moment on discord or DW or LJ plus drafts, of course. But let us say 155 for the sake of simplicity.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Orc Character(s)
Summary:
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
blakekathryn
