Ok kids, let’s talk about snarky sidekick characters. This is in part to help me, because I have some sidekick characters I need to create in my own works, but there seems to be lately a lot of misunderstanding by mainstream movie makers about why we love snarky sidekick characters, and why they should never be the protagonist.
Case in point, Jack Sparrow. Everyone loved Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean 1. His presence elevated the narrative with his jokes and quips. He could comment on the absurdity of the fantasy premise and we loved him for it. He got all the best one-liners.
But Jack Sparrow can’t carry the plot forward, at least not in a traditional high fantasy-adventure hero’s journey story. Because you need someone earnest in that role to move the story, like Will and Elizabeth. They have to earnestly want things and struggle forward even when things get difficult, they have to grow and change and learn from their mistakes. Sparrow doesn’t want anything except gold and comfort, we can’t cheer for those things, and we don’t want him to change or grow as a person because it would detract from his comedy and one-liners. The reason the post Will-and-Elizabeth PotC movies fell apart was because they lost track of this, and tried to put Sparrow in the lead role, where he does not belong because he can’t move plot, grow, or change without losing what makes us like him. Which is why those movies stagnate with him at the center.
Similarly, it’s going to be hard to pull off this upcoming Han Solo movie for similar reasons.* Han Solo was the Jack Sparrow character. He’s there to roll his eyes at the earnest young hero Luke Skywalker, and flirt with the princess, and comment on the absurdity of the Force at the same time the audience is questioning it, so we feel we have an advocate for our alternate viewpoint on the screen. “Adversarial Allies”, characters who are on the same side but argue about how to achieve their goals, are a great way to present exposition ( “We can’t do it that way because of these reasons!” Aha, the audience just learned something!) and so that the audience isn’t left wondering why they didn’t try another method especially during moral quandaries (“There HAS to be another way!”). But in the end, it’s up to the main character to move the plot forward by picking from amongst several options.
Case in point, Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy 1 thinks it’s a dumb idea to save the world, but we need someone to make the decision to save the world in a story about saving the world. That’s why Starlord, no matter how boring and milquetoast he may seem, is critical to the story. He makes the decision and goes with it out of an earnest desire to help people. If the movie was about Rocket, there wouldn’t be a movie, even if we love him and think we want a movie about him because of how funny he is when saying he doesn’t want to save the world.
Side characters, especially quippy fun ones, are about offering alternatives to the plot. It’s why we love them. They say what we’re thinking. But they’re not saying what needs to be done. They can’t carry a traditional narrative forward on their own because they don’t want anything that we want them to get. We enjoy watching their desires get frustrated because they’re petty and greedy. If Han Solo, Rocket, or Jack Sparrow, got what they wanted at the beginning, they’d just be sitting on a pile of gold somewhere and we wouldn’t care anymore. We laugh because of what they do when they don’t get what they want, namely selfish wealth, while they support the character whose desire is the center of the story – their desire to save the world or otherwise resolve the conflict at the heart of the plot. When these sidekicks become traditional good guys, once they’re weighted down by the plot, we stop liking them and they become boring.
So someone please explain this to whatever Disney exec keeps making movies about the sidekicks, please!
(*Btw, I’m not going to judge the Han Solo movie before it comes out, they could very well pull it off. But the character on screen has a serious uphill battle because he’s not the Han Solo people care about, he’s Han mixed with Luke and that’s going to be a challenging story to pull off because those characters were distinct and separate for a reason.)
every time I see more of the ‘ao3 is evil’ crap circulating I think, ‘well, tumblr is evil too and I don’t see you stop using it’
You know, the more I think about this, the more I think the real complaint isn’t that AO3 hosts “evil” content, it’s that it doesn’t allow harassment/dogpiling of “evil” creators as easily as Tumblr. Abuse won’t remove or even re-tag a work except in a handful of very specific cases, but they will suspend or ban users for harassment, including filing repeated unfounded Abuse reports. Authors also have at least some ability to screen/block comments on works, and there’s no direct messaging system outside of commenting on works through which to pursue harassment. You can follow a creator but you can’t block them (much less encourage others to do the same).
Tumblr, by contrast, generally ignores any abuse report that doesn’t involve the DMCA, and aggressive anons can and have driven bloggers off the site entirely. The fact that the same tactics are used by social justice bloggers and neo-Nazis (for instance) doesn’t matter – they’re the affordances of the site, by accident or design, and an entire fannish generation have gotten very used to performing their fannish (and moral) identity in this fashion.
(I thinks it’s relevant that AO3 was designed by fandom’s LJ generation and in some respect mirrors the affordances of LJ circa 2010. Tumblr is a very different site and that, moreso than age differences, seems to be at the root of this – though of course age intersect with site experience in a non-trivial way.)
ding ding ding ding.
Ao3 requires you to police your own consumption of content. Ao3 won’t let you destroy someone’s online presence simply because you don’t like it. Ao3 won’t let you impose your own morality on other without cause.
If you have issues with this, and the fact that Ao3 requires you to have responsibility and agency, then you seriously need to sit down and have a damned good long hard look at yourself.
The question I usually fail to see being answered when people bitch about the content on AO3 is – so who gets to decide?
You? Me? A committee of my friends? Of yours? Of those who have the most kudos? Of those who have no interest in fandom, but want to protect other people from dangerous content, whatever it may be? Who gets that power, and how long will they have it?
Who are you comfortable with giving the power of regulating all the content? What happens in grey areas? What happens when something you like isn’t liked by the Decider? Is there an appeal? Who gets to make the arguments for and against something?
The world is complex and there are no easy answers.
The impossibility of creating a censorship board that curates based on content is a great reason why those things don’t exist, and shouldn’t.
Certain people are screaming that AO3 is bad because it’s not a “safe space.” The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space – for writers. And it does a pretty good job of that. It was designed to be a place where writers are safe from arbitrary content rule changes, random and unwarned deletions, and abuse-report abuse (which is common on ff.net). The Four Big Warnings + CNTW system is beautiful in its fairness and simplicity.
Antis can’t take control of it. And because control-freakdom is at the heart of their “movement,” this drives them into frenzies. Good. It motivated me to dig a little deeper into my pocket to donate on the last drive. For all the pleasure AO3 has given me over the years, that’s money well spent.
The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space – for writers.
Preach it loud and hard!
I’m a member of the LJ generation, and when I first came to Tumblr (grudgingly and out of desperation, I might add, since it tragically seems to be the only place to really connect with other fandom peeps) I was horrified at how people here had established this sort of fucked up bully culture, where nobody is responsible for monitoring their own consumption, and rather they expect everyone else to custom tailor content to the whims and desires of the Shrieking Banshee Masses. And woe be to the person who doesn’t bend and break! “I’m going to bully you while accusing you and your Big Mean Poopie Content of being the actual bully, so I can hopefully distract you and others from realizing I’m being a royal intrusive asshat who failed Astronomy 101 b/c I clearly believe the world revolves around me.”
The irony here is that this in itself is an abuse tactic – victim blaming with a side of gaslighting. Pot, meet kettle.
And it’s the exact same mentality that drives right-wing lunatics to kick up a fuss about the existence of icky cootie gay people in media because we need to “protect family values”, or who take to screeching at Starbucks because their particular religious symbolism isn’t portrayed on the winter holiday cups and OMG WAR ON CHRISTMAS, STARBUCKS STOP OPPRESSING ME BY NOT CATERING TO MY PERSONAL TASTE.
The mentality is one and the same – “Cater to ME ME ME or FACE MY DIVINE WRATH even if it means taking away other people’s freedom!” while hiding behind a flimsy-ass shield of faux righteous anger.
And when these bozos find an environment or situation where they’re unable or not allowed to bully people into silence and submission, they stomp their feet and pitch a tantrum and claim that they’re the ones being oppressed. Identical shit, different pile, and it’s the exact same infantile, schoolyard rubbish no matter which side it’s coming from.
I get excited by my AO3 “You’ve got kudos!” just like I do for comments, and I know other writers do too. I think the issue stems from a difference in perspective between writers and their audiences.
Writers see giving kudos as meaning, “This fic meets my minimum requirements for liking a thing. It’s not great, but it’s not that bad. I can give it a thumbs up, sure. Why not?”
On the other hand, readers often mean, “This was great! I really liked it! Good job, Author! Thumbs up for you!”
Because authors know how important feedback is to us, we tend to write comments for the good stories and kudos for the “okay” ones. If we don’t like it at all, we pretend we never read it by doing neither.
Unfortunately, we assume readers approach things the same way. That’s why we can sometimes be dismissive of kudos. We’re looking at it from our perspective rather than from the reader’s.
This is also why we get discouraged if we have 1000 hits and 20 kudos. To us, that means that 980 people didn’t feel like our story met the bare minimum requirement to be considered “okay.”
This is such a fascinating discussion. As a redear/fic reccer I have never ever imagined that authors treat kudos as
“This fic meets my minimum requirements for liking a thing. It’s not great, but it’s not that bad. I can give it a thumbs up, sure. Why not?” This thought is an eye opener and a little bit of a bummer, tbh.
I personally give kudo when I liked/ loved the fic and want to support the author. Maybe I’m spoiled because my OTP has too many fics on AO3 and I can easily ignore fics that meet my minimum requirement? Also, as a reader, I see kudos as a bat-signal to other readers – come here, read this fic! A good amount of kudos tells that this fic is appreciated by many readers. I’m not saying that a lot of into kudos = good fic (or even the fic I will like), that is not the case. Still, a lot of readers pay attention to the amount of kudos, not comments, when deciding to read a fic. So, for me it boils down to comments are personal and emotional (and then the discussion about how authors respond to comments is important) and kudos is my thank you to the author + me giving boost to the fic to get more readers.
I’ve read some discussions on anon meme about kudo vs comments practices.. And yes, some readers will leave kudo if they simply managed to finish the fic, others treat kudos as a thumbs up, good job! button only when they liked the fic. And some folks said that they leave kudos if the fic was adequate and comment if they really loved the fic, but they don’t give kudos when they comment (since kudo is impersonal). I wonder how writers feel about getting a lovely comment but not kudo from the same reader?
Nearly every writer I know, myself included, has said to me at one or another that we ourselves kudos as a “this fic meets minimum standards.” Basically any fic I finish, I kudos. I now try to comment also, and if it’s a friend I comment as much as I can (often every chapter).
Honestly I’ve never once checked to see if someone who left a comment also left kudos. A comment is enough for me, even if that happened I don’t think I’d mind. (But it’s impossible to tell especially if the comment is anon, they might have left guest kudos…)
But basically: as a writer the original reply completely reflects how I feel about it. Kudos are awesome, I do love them, but it’s not the same…
Thanks for your additions, and for answering the person above.
Kudos are very nice and I like seeing the number climb but they don’t tell me WHAT you liked about my fic. It’s the equivalent of a drive by thumbs up. I know I must have done something at least passable but I don’t know what it is and so its nice but it doesn’t move me in any way. A comment tells me WHAT you, as the reader, enjoyed, what you loved, what you hated, what tore your heart out or made you laugh. THAT tells me what I’m doing right and tells me what parts of my fic are resonating with my audience. They’re what motivate me to do more. Kudos give me a small burst of satisfaction when I see them get higher – but comments are what make me stretch out my fingers and say ‘wait til you see what I do THIS time!’
Honestly, I personally don’t even see possessive Thorin?? A lot of talk is going on that giving the Mithril shirt to Bilbo made sense because he saw Bilbo as part of his hoard and saw him as an object in it too and I JUST DON’T SEE IT. He says, “the gold is ours and ours alone,” and to me that speaks of joint ownership, not that Bilbo is a possession. Arming him for war too says he sees him as a person, he expects Bilbo to join the battle (another essay I’m writing is about how Thorin’s protectiveness never manifests as keeping people he loves from a fight) and on Ravenhill they split with Dwalin for what for a moment there looks like some serious joint ass-kicking together.
My point is, Bilbo moves freely around Erebor. Thorin never tries to control his movements or indicates that he sees him as any less than a partner. He never refers to him in object terms or controls him possessively, even in the depths of his sickness. So I’d say “possessive dragon-sick Thorin” has been debunked too, at least in my mind.
If anything his biggest issue was deciding they were an unstoppable married power couple without informing bilbo
Right? Thorin has clearly decided Bilbo is his equal, that they both have ownership of the hoard (“the gold is ours”), that he stands beside Thorin on the dais of the throne, that they are immediately side by side in battle (Ravenhill), and basically that Bilbo is allowed into his personal bubble, past any safeguards or walls of royalty or right. Bilbo belongs by Thorin’s side.
The thing is, I really do not believe that Bilbo is aware of that power? Granted, I don’t think he could have just ordered Thorin to give up the hunt for the stone, because that’s going head-to-head with the sickness itself, and I think any attempt to strong-arm or command Thorin would have gone poorly, because it’s the very fact that Bilbo doesn’t do such things that sneaks him past all of Thorin’s defenses.
He does try, twice, to bring Thorin to his senses by gently reminding him of his oath and the fact he’s acting uncharacteristically, but those clash hard against the walls of the dragon sickness. Actually, I’d argue he tries three times because of that, “Thorin…” during the acorn scene looked like his first attempt (on screen) to broach the subject. Anyway, they hit the wall of the dragon sickness, but clearly his words (as well as Dwalin’s) are building up against that wall until the dam breaks (or “The Clouds Burst”?).
Still, you’re right, I’m just flabbergasted by the extent to which Thorin in his dragon sickness still took Bilbo into his confidence, that he was absolutely operating that they were a matched set and perhaps even that Bilbo matched his authority….
…Now there’s an interesting possibility. I don’t think Bilbo could have used that power to command Thorin, because Thorin doesn’t make any attempts to command Bilbo. Not even on the wall during the “outnumbered” bit does Thorin tell Bilbo to be quiet, instead he tells him not to worry. But I wonder if Bilbo knows that he probably had the authority to command the other dwarves in Thorin’s name? That would have been interesting, because there is a certain deference with which the dwarves treat him, especially during the goodbye scene, that lends some credence to the idea that “Bilbo was already the Consort and didn’t know it.”
Also I think either bewareofdragon of grimapparitions made some comment that Thorin is very dependent on Bilbo so it could take a potentially dark turn if Bilbo decided to be manipulative, or if Thorin became emotionally dependent on him? All of these are things I’d love to see explored more in fic. I don’t think Bilbo as we know him would ever even realize how much power he (definitely) had during that situation, for the very reason that he’s a hobbit, and it’s the essence of his personality that he would never seek that power or even be aware when he has it (helloooo One Ring. It’s the reason he resisted for so long). But what would have happened if Bilbo had begun to exercise that power, or done so without knowing he did it, and what effect would it have had on Thorin?
I love the way all your minds work. I love this fandom. I love this ship.
It’s an issue I’ve discussed at length before – but Thorin’s way of acting around Bilbo is very much in line with how people with borderline personality disorder act around their so-called “favourite person”, or “FP”. Due to very strong abandonment issues, borderline people tend to “latch” on to a person: they idealise this person, obsess over this person and see them in an incredibly positive light. This is very much in line with how Thorin, throughout BoFA, treats Bilbo before Bilbo’s betrayal: given Thorin’s increasing paranoia (psychosis is often a symptom of untreated, or insufficiently treated, BPD) Bilbo becomes a point of reference. It’s not possessiveness as much as it is a desperate, ailing mind clinging to what sense of security having an FP can muster: it’s not healthy (at all) but, given Thorin’s situation, it’s all he can manage to do. This also explains Thorin’s violent reaction up on the battlements: an FP is a borderline person’s entire world. Take that away, whether on purpose or not, and you’re putting at risk that person’s stability, sense of self and sense of self worth, let alone their relationship with their FP.
I always wonder whether RA played Thorin as showing so many BPD symptoms on purpose, if PJ and PB knew what they were doing as they wrote the script, or if BPD (and other illnesses) has become synonymous of “scarily crazy” to such a degree that people aren’t even aware they’re writing borderline characters. Either way, Thorin showing symptoms is something I will never cease being happy about.
What a good addition! And I do recall Richard saying he did a lot of research on different psychosis (that little head shake he does during the line “… as if I were Thorin Oakenshield” was always the clearest manifestation to me, but I’m sure there’s tons of others) so yeah I totally believe at least Richard was showing such symptoms on purpose.
One of these days, most likely after I finally see The Star Wars on Friday, I will sit down and do a proper essay about the fact that fanfiction writers in particular are set up to hate every sequel movie ever and it’s their own damn fault but it’s also TOTALLY NATURAL AND OK
Look, guys, a movie comes out. We love the shit out of it. We love it so much that we make up elaborate headcanons about what’s going to happen next, spend hundreds of hours writing thousands of words about those headcanons, and coming up with elaborate theories of mind on all the characters WHO DON’T EVEN HAVE A COMPLETE CANON YET
The problem is, the writers of those sequels are DOING THE SAME THING, sometimes at THE SAME TIME or even BEFORE YOU GOT HERE, I KNOW RIGHT?
You’re getting mad at a fellow fanfic writer for writing YOUR characters OOC because let’s face it, fanfiction gives a sense of ownership and hey, in my opinion it’s a completely LEGIT sense of ownership if you accept that other people own these characters too when they make creative works with them
And it sucks. It’s a lottery. Sometimes this other fan writer nails the characterization as you see it, and sometimes you want click the fuck out of that AO3 fic that got EVERYONE WRONG but you CAN’T because it’s the damn movie theater and they’ve got like a bajillion times more budget than you and I GUESS this is canon now because everyone has read THAT ONE FIC that the whole fandom loves even though it’s WRONG
Basically, in loving what we love we are setting ourselves up for despair over everyone else’s take on it, with very, very few exceptions where we get ridiculously lucky. Throw in the lingering sense of guilt and shame that copyright culture has instilled into fanfic writers over “canon” and “not canon”, “allowed” and “not allowed” so this particular take is even more angering because it’s now a gold standard according to everyone else including that nasty voice at the back of your head.
We are eternally doomed to disappointment, it’s just a fact of what happens when you sit down for the first time and write these characters and love them as if they were your own. So might as well just sit back, grit our teeth, and see what we can relentlessly steal from this latest iteration rather than stressing out about what THOSE BASTARDS did wrong THIS time
My money is heavily on them writing ‘new’ Aragorn backstory between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, like Born of Hope and The Hunt for Gollum. It’s the obvious setting: you get a well-known hero, you get familiar characters like Arwen, Gandalf, Elrond, Bilbo, you can put Gollum in there if you like, there’s room for Dis, Balin, Gloin, maybe some Moria backstory too, but you aren’t competing directly with either set of movies and can sprinkle in OCs to make it a bit less male-heavy.
It could be fun, I just hope they resist the temptation to go self-indulgently OTT grimdark or porny. There’s enough darkness there without wallowing in it gleefully, and I’d rather leave the porn to ‘proper’ fanfic.
Do I want this? Yeah I do.
Perhaps I’m overly hopeful, but I’m pretty ardently in favor of adaptations. Yeah this has come back to bite me – I loathed the Hobbit movies – but, I dunno. Instead of thinking “Shit, they’re probably gonna mess this up” I’m thinking “Great! I get to go back to my favorite fictional world! And see someone’s take on what it looks like!”
So I’m excited for something. Sue me. I don’t have enough these days to be excited about.
The article says that the show is gonna focus on stuff from before FotR. Obviously it won’t be anything from the Sil, because we’re getting the film/tv rights to that over Christopher Tolkien’s dead body. But some cool stuff I’m hoping is gonna make it into the show:
1. Some explanation for what Aragorn was doing all the years he was wandering around.
2. Actual characterization for Arwen.
3. Scratch that. Characterization for her and all the Rivendell elves too, like Glorfindel and the twins.
4. It’s canonical that Boromir was in Rohan before the War of the Ring. I like to think that he and Eomer got up to Shenanigans.
5. Visits to the lands outside Middle-earth, Rhun and Harad and whatnot. This could work if we’re following Aragorn. I know that a lot of people want a more diverse Arda, this could give us a chance to see fictional cultures that aren’t based on medieval Western Europe.
6. Related: more original characters, particularly female ones.
7. Some of the battles in Gondor before the war.
8. Depending on how far back the show goes, we can maybe see stuff relating to the wars in the North, and the fall of Arnor.
9. I agree with OP about maybe can we keep the porn to a minimum?
Look. If y’all want to be cynical about this, you be my guest. As for myself, I’m going to continue to be excited about this unless and until it proves itself to Suck, and then y’all can feel free to say “Told you so.”
Agreed. If you JUST make it about the years Aragorn worked hard to become worthy of being King of Gondor, you’d have a story that could take him all over the map. I can practically see the taglines now. (A KING IN EXILE, A QUEST TO BE WORTHY, THE NEVER BEFORE SEEN TALE OF… ARAGORN)
Does anyone know what would happen if a dwarf put on the One Ring? I’m looking for a Tolkien scholar here, not just an opinion.
(I believe they’re resilient to change from the outside so they wouldn’t go invisible. I also have an instinct that LotR says somewhere that they could shrug off the effects of its corruption more easily than almost anyone, but would like confirmation.)
Pretty sure it would do the same as one of the Seven, but to a greater extent mentally. Physically, the Dwarves are too rooted in the world for it to turn them invisible or have any physical effect, though it may extend their life. The Seven are the same as the Nine, but all those did was make them more greedy and angry. Since the One is basically the same but way more powerful, I’m pretty sure the effects would just be maginified.
Thank you! This is very helpful.
Unfortunately I thought I had a really cool idea for a scene where one of the dwarves does try on the One Ring during the Hobbit era, and doesn’t turn invisible. But I’m also wrestling with the fact that even though the Ring was dormant during that time and probably wouldn’t have much impact at all if Bilbo got it back immediately, the reader would most likely be obsessing over the Ring as a plot device and wondering what happens, when all I really want the scene for is a bit of a joke. So I’m thinking I may just need to leave such a scene out entirely because it’ll cause too much confusion.
I did actually read a fic where the author touches on the not invisible thing briefly, and Thorin falls under the Rings thrall for a minute. It may not work as a joke, but it’s definitely floating around.
That was probably @mithen‘s Clarity of Vision, if I recall correctly (an excellent fic). It’s kind of a shame that the Ring looms so large in everyone’s mind, because when The Hobbit was written it really was just intended to be an invisibility ring, and that concept is woven into the fabric of the story. It really does take decades for the Ring to wake up enough to be anything more than a harmless party trick, but every time I’ve used it as device in fics it’s caught the reader’s attention as a dire threat, which is a shame because of all the fun one can have with the power of invisibility in a story.
Question: could it be argued that the ring, though dormant, could awaken should it sense the possibility of finding a will it could control? I’m asking because if this happened say, post-locating the arkenstone, right when thorin is under the thrall of the gold sickness, it could make for a very interesting turn of events. It’s a suggestion for op and I was curious to see how it’d hold up against lore.
could the One Ring help explain why Bilbo was so ready to rationalize stealing the Arkenstone? (in the novel) he’d worn it for a long time by then (thanks to the whole elvish dungeons thing), and it wasn’t as dormant as you might think, given it still managed to abandon Gollum.
Bilbo rationalizing that the stone could be his share, when he knew the dwarves would never accept anyone else having it.. seems so out of character for him.
Now THAT is something I could absolutely get on board with as an interpretation. It’s a great point that the Ring decided to leave Gollum because it realized he wasn’t going anywhere out of that mountain, so it was in fact active, though I believe Tolkien mentions that it very badly was hoping to end up with a goblin instead and the whole Forces Besides the Will of Evil thing is it getting to Bilbo instead of one of those goblins.
What I like most about this point is that it distinguishes between book and movie canon. Yeah, in the book, Bilbo’s motivations around taking the Arkenstone are not 100% pure, in fact the whole bargaining chip use for it was not something he could have planned in advance, he really did take it out of greed, and it is weird that he keeps it even knowing how badly Thorin wants it. They changed that in the film so his motivations are entirely altruistic by adding Smaug’s warning and Thorin’s sickness.
Bilbo also goes on to lie that he won the ring from Gollum fair and square in a riddle contest (ie, the first published edition of the hobbit book) and only later it came out that he stole it then did the riddle game to escape (the second edition of the hobbit book, lol) so it definitely was changing his behavior back then, but mostly causing him to lie about his possessions, and arguably, to hoard things. Very interesting!
thinking on it, i originally i suspected that (in the book) the Ring probably wasn’t trying to effect the Dwarves much.. one dwarves are harder to tempt, and the main avenue it could have used, greed, was already more or less filled by the Mountain and Smaug’s hoard. but then i realized, you could make an argument for it.. while there was no ‘gold sickness’ in the book, the Dwarves were greedy little jerks after they realized the dragon was dead. there was so much wealth that giving Bard some gold to help rebuild laketown wouldn’t have even made a dent in any of the group’s shares (and seriously, Bilbo should have been offering to pay for it out of his own share, which by then he’d had realized he’d never be able to move all of it back home), and negotiating with Thranduil to honor old contracts shouldn’t have been a big deal either. instead they fortified the gate and continued to starve (well, to eat Cram.. same thing really) rather than give up any part of the mountain’s hoard. I could totally see that as the Ring manipulating the dwarven emotions, tspark a battle where the dwarves would be overrun (13 vs several thousand?) and some human or wood elf ends up with the One ring. both of which would be much easier to manipulate than dwarves and hobbits.
only the Humans and Elves had Gandalf to help defuse things, Bilbo proved unpredictable, and a bunch of Dwarves and orcs showed up at exactly the wrong time.
honestly i was expecting the movie to go with that version.. they’d spent so much time building up how the master of Laketown was a greedy oppertunist, and that the people of Laketown were greedy people too (because the master kept them in such abject poverty).. which would actually justify Thorin’s reasoning for not giving anything in the novel, and would make for a great hook for the Ring to indirectly manipulate him, the way it did Boromir later. instead they went with the gold sickness thing, which i guess was easier to show, since they were definitely trying to avoid obvious references to the Ring and what it could do to people.
….Holy shit.
Wow, I was usually going from the angle that the Ring wasn’t doing anything at all at that point. The thought that it basically helped cause the Battle of Five Armies by luring tons of Men and goblins more susceptible to its influence to that spot, not to mention a war that would make things easier for Sauron by wiping out Erebor’s defenses in the North and killing a bunch of potential enemies of Sauron like Thranduil, Bard, and Thorin’s people is… quite frankly terrifying.
Avelera 