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February Shipping Post: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Since I need fannish joy in my life and since apparently February is the month for ship posts: my recent return to Middle Earth has also reassured me regarding my inner slasher. More recently, there has been many a ship, both m/m and f/f, which I either couldn’t see or which didn’t appeal to me. But say what you want about the Tolkien & Jackson cinematic combination, they bring on the homoeroticism. (Also unexpected het couples, see Gandalf/Galadriel. Plus I’m fascinated by Tauriel & Thranduil both as an ampersand and a /, the later if it’s a slow burn.) When I was a young reader, I loved various of the friendships and was fine with, say, Eowyn/Faramir (yes, it happened fast, but he was Worthy), but it wouldn’t have occured to me to ship in the sense of seeking out fanfic, or wanting the characters to have more romance in between the platonic handholding. Fast forward a few decades, and not only did Sean Bean as Boromir plus the Philippa Boyens/Fran Walsh scriptwriting suddenly make me love a character whom I had been indifferent to, but I suddenly shipped him in every sense of the word with Aragon. (Whom I also felt much stronger about on screen than I had on the page.) The hobbits I loved in either incarnation, though I thought that maybe they were too, hm, cute for jaded old me to ship them?
The Hobbit movies a decade later proved me wrong in this regard. (And I’m even older now!) I fell for Thorin/Bilbo, hard, and, going by my Middle Earthian expeditions in recent weeks, am staying smitten. This, mind you, is a movieverse only thing, since both Thorin in general and the relationship Bilbo has with him have been significantly altered from the novel.
Again, part of it is certainly the actor: as with Sean Bean, so with Richard Armitage. But it’s also the writing. Overall, if a relationship appeals to me so strongly I need to see both parties getting something from it that is unique in their lives. Doesn’t mean they don’t care for other people and/or causes, strongly, too, but for me to root for a pairing, they more often than not need to challenge each other in a particular way.
Both bookverse and movieverse Bilbo Baggins have suppressed the adventurous side of their personality before Gandalf shows up. (Bilbo and the narrator usually label this the Tookish part of himself, which he gets from his adventuring mother, as opposed to the respectable, stay-at-home Baggins side, inherited from his father, but it should be pointed out that Bilbo’s father married the most adventurous female hobbit of the Shire, so he certainly had the capacity to fall in love with someone completely different to himself.) In both cases, the moment where Bilbo after being overwhelmed and indignant about the unexpected rush of dwarves in his home, and downright horrified to hear about the dragon and the prospect of becoming burglar toast, first starts to feel that long repressed love for adventure and longing for the unknown, happens when he hears the dwarves sing the song of the Misty Mountains.
But in the movie, that moment is prepared for by the slightly different way things happen before. In the book, Thorin arrives with a bunch of other dwarves, he’s very verbose and pompous, bossing the other dwarves around, but doesn’t voice disbelief at the prospect of Bilbo as their burglar. In the movie, Thorin arrives last and late (causing the fanon that he has a terrible sense of direction which I must admit I love and have adopted); until then the movie, and the dwarves, have been presented completely in a comedy manner, but with Thorin’s arrival this changes, and not just because Richard Armitage does his brooding and smoldering thing. Jackson’s movies shifted the emphasis in the dwarves‘ motive for their quest from „getting the treasure from the dragon, and oh yeah, maybe also the mountain back?“ to „getting our home back from which were were brutally driven away, and also the treasure“. The dwarves-as-homeless-exiles/refugees theme starts with Thorin’s arrival (and the news no other dwarves will aid them, as well as the debate between Thorin and Balin as to whether they should try to return at all or should stay in the diaspora). The comedy isn’t entirely gone; both in the lines that are pure Tolkien – the quotes from the contract Bilbo is offered, funeral expenses and all – and in the Boyens/Walsh lines – Bilbo’s reply to Thorin’s question whether axe or sword is his weapon of choice. („If you must know, I’m reasonably good at conkers.“) But now it’s clear this whole enterprise isn’t just a lark and a way for Gandal to amuse himself; there are enormous emotional stakes involved for the dwarves.
It’s also when Bilbo starts to respond to the entire invasion of his home with something other than annoyance. Thorin’s unflattering disbelief at being told by Gandalf that this is their burglar brings out his first touch of snark. (The reply quoted above.) (Btw: this is why fanfiction that forgets Bilbo has a sarcastic side – this is the same hobbit who will later troll the entire Shire – doesn’t really work for me.) He’s still irritated (and when the whole dragon business gets explained, panicked), but he’s also truly curious as to what this is alll about. And once the singing starts, he’s definitely charmed despite himself, and longs for this entirely alien world.
In the novel, Bilbo still needs to get pushed out by Gandalf the next morning. In the movie, he wavers a bit but then makes the decision to run after the dwarves himself, which agenda-loving me prefers. Mind you, the movie also provides Bilbo with a learning arc that involves him attempting to go back, which in the novel he never does, and then, post-Gollum experience, a new commitment to the dwarves and their quest, which carries him through the rest of the story. Said commitment is about the dwarves in totem, not just Thorin; Bofur, the first dwarf to actively befriend Bilbo, is an important factor for Bilbo to internalize the importance of the dwarves‘ homelessness, for example. But Thorin – who continues to treat Bilbo as a liability while also (disdainfully) saving his life during the battle of the stone gians – works as a catalyst here, a continued challenge to prove himself for Bilbo. (The extended edition also provides Bilbo with a first glimpse at Thorin’s more vulnerable side when he overhears Elrond talking with Gandalf about the streak of madness in the Durin family and suddenly realises Thorin is listening as well.) The emotional climax of the first movie isn’t just the Company’s escape from the wargs and their first glimpse of Erebor but Thorin’s admission he was wrong about Bilbo and (literal) embrace of him.
Which brings me to „what is Thorin getting out of this“ (other than repeatedly getting his life saved in various situations)? If Bilbo needs something to break him out of the respectable routine that has all but buried his sense of adventure, curiosity and capacity to learn new things, something to challenge him not just in terms of courage but in terms of empathizing with complete strangers, Thorin, who has as fixed a mindset as any Shire hobbit (just about different things), who sees the world in terms of „my people“ and „enemies and potential enemies“, and whose first reaction to anyone not a dwarf is to distrust them, needs to learn empathizing with a stranger and a stranger’s values even more. There’s also the fact that as not just this particular company’s leader but as a king in exile, there’s a hierarchical barrier between him and the other dwarves (which is fatal in the third movie in that the others really take their time to challenge his increasing irrationality, which wouldn’t have been the case if anyone but Thorin had been the dwarf to go througha mental breakdown dragon sickness); they are his subjects, even his nephews. Bilbo is not. He’s an outsider, who doesn’t owe Thorin a thing, and certainly not his loyalty, which is probably why Thorin is so completely won over when Bilbo gives it regardless near the end of the first movie. The Desolation of Smaug has Thorin trusting Bilbo will come to the rescue when the company is imprisoned by the elves without question, and supporting his escape plan with the barrels immediately.
I’m always in two minds when storytellers base a character’s (terrible) decisions on external factors, so initially I wasn’t that keen on Team Jackson making Thorin literally mad in Battle of the Five Armies (as opposed to just being incredibly stubborn as in the novel), until he snaps out of it again. But the movie itself, flawed as it is, won me over to this version, for various reasons. Not least because Bilbo’s initial decision to keep the Arkenstone in the novel isn’t justified by anything but Bilbo doing it for a lark; that he later tries to use it as a bargaining device to end the stalemate between Thorin, Bard and Thranduil doesn’t change the fact he originally had no such reason. (Book!Thorin at that point wasn’t guilty of anything but his usual verbosity.) This would not have worked in the movieverse unless they’d tried to explain as an early kind of ring corruption, and even then there would not have been any emotional pay off, since Bilbo’s relationship with the Ring was canonically due to continue.
Otoh, corruption by greed, be it caused by gold or power or both, certainly is a red thread through both movie trilogies, so the gold sickness and/or dragon sickness (not exactly the same thing) as a plot device works thematically, and it does give Bilbo a genuine, understandable reason to keep the Arkenstone hidden. Also, while otoh movieverse Thorin acts worse than his bookverse counterpart due to it (when the battle starts and he at first refuses to join Dain) , otoh he also gets to show, in the middle of sickness-heightened paranoia and greed, positive emotions as well – Bilbo-specific ones, which of course makes shipping easier, but even that aside, enriches the overall narrative. By which I mean: the (Boyens & Walsh written) acorn scene provides a basis for Thorin’s later (mostly Tolkien-originated) lines to Bilbo when he’s dying; in it, Bilbo’s idea of home has gone from something eyed in disbelief in the first movie to a peaceful ideal (which btw the Shire isn’t, see later Bilbo’s return, but I’ll get to the idea of home vs the reality in a moment) that momentarily counteracts the madness. It’s Thorin envisioning a hopeful future – Bilbo getting home to plant that acorn – at a point where for everyone else, and certainly himself, starvation by siege or death by battle seem to be the only fates available. As for the (Tolkien-originated) gift of a Mithril shirt to Bilbo – the fact that he gives something that according to Gandalf is more worth than the entire Shire while otherwise in firm „I’ll not part with a single coin“ mood makes it all the more remarkable. It’s also worth noting that Bilbo keeps it through the decades until Frodo starts the journey to Mordor from Rivendell, and then gives it to Frodo in a scene that triggers a Ring freakout in Bilbo.
Which brings me to another reason why I’ve ultimately made me peace with dragon sickness as a plot device. Because Bilbo, too, will have his mind warped by a magically enhanced piece of shiny metal. Not as quickly as Thorin, nor as badly in general, - the Ring heightens Bilbo’s crankiness and hermit tendencies, but he seems to have used it mostly to escape unwanted visitors, while still being sociable enough to teach his gardener’s son writing and poetry and adopt a distant cousin - but at least once in those 60 years, it will drive him into a (near) killing rage towards the person whom at that point he loves most in the world. Those are very poignant parallels to me.
Speaking of Bilbo post-quest stage and parallels: Bilbo in the novel can return to Bag End only to find his entire community in the middle of auctioning off his belongings, and it’s played for comedy, not changing the general „and he lived happily to the end of his days“ conclusion. Bilbo in the movie returning to Bag End to find the same situation does get some laughs, but it’s also devastating, as we haven’t seen Bag End (which always signals home and coziness until that point) in such a plundered state. Not to mention that once he’s alone again in that ramsacked home, Bilbo finds himself drawn to the Ring, and there’s an eerie parallel to Thorin in the post-Smaug Erebor full of ruin, corpses and gold, not a home that has been longed for through all those decades as much as it is a tomb. No wonder Team Jackson chose to frame the movies with a flash forward to old Bilbo on the day of his 111th birthday – it allows them not to leave him in what emotionally is a devastating conclusion but to end on a happier note, with Gandalf arriving. (And since the entire Hobbit movieverse is framed as Bilbo writing down the story for Frodo in its final version, there’s also the reminder Bilbo will go on to form attachments again.)
Hobbits in either the books or the movies aren’t types for explicit love declarations. (Sam in the novel might reflect that he loves Frodo, but out loud „I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you“ is his declaration of choice, while Frodo’s is „I’m glad you’re with me, here at the end of things“. Or, to quote a less fate of the world burdened moment, Frodo’s reaction to Bilbo trying to express his affection at the party is „Bilbo, have you been at the Gaffer’s homebrew?“ „Yes, but that is not the point.“ Ah, Bagginses.) Dwarves, if Gimli’s courtly declarations re: Galadriel and Kili’s re: Tauriel are anything to go by, can be more poetic if they want to be. But Thorin at least (ironic, given his book counterpart never uses one word with ten will do) strikes me as more the type to express himself through gestures as well. (Unless speech is absolutely called for, as with the admission of having been wrong re: Bilbo at the end of the first movie and the apology and „if more people“ etc. in his death scene; but when he apologizes to the other dwarves earlier, it comes, in the case of Kili, complete with forehead-against-forehead pressing.) It’s therefore both ic and fiendishly effective that the movieverse version of Thorin’s death scene is performed in such a way that it also doubles as as a mutual declaration of affection (without, again, using just those words). And when Bilbo later does try to verbalize how he felt about Thorin when saying goodbye to Balin, he can’t find any words and falls silent – that „to me he was – he was…“ coupled with Martin Freeman’s expression still devastates me in every rewatch.
And yet, if Bilbo, as Gandalf predicted, returns to the Shire a changed Hobbit, who won’t ever be regarded by the majority of the other hobbits as normal again (Mad Baggins, „cracked“ or „queer“ being the most often used tags, unless you’re Merry and Pippin, who like him and refer to him as „the old Hobbit“ or simply as „Bilbo“ when mentioning him), he has undoubtedly grown through that experience of wonder, courage and ultimately heartbreak. By which I don’t mean he’s suddenly a saint; even leaving Ring-effects aside, Bilbo in his old age can be as petty as they come (see also: farewell gifts, not just the spoons to Lobelia). But he’s someone capable of understanding the world and the people in it in a new way. As for Thorin, again, even leaving aside gold-and-dragon heightened negative traits, he’d started out with an obsessive nature, a one track mind and a not so hidden death wish (well, if you go up against a dragon who previously laid waste to an entire city population with only thirteen companions...), but he, too, had come to a very different understanding of the world and the people in it by the time he died, and knowing Bilbo was key tot hat. They made each other better. How could I not ship them?
The Hobbit movies a decade later proved me wrong in this regard. (And I’m even older now!) I fell for Thorin/Bilbo, hard, and, going by my Middle Earthian expeditions in recent weeks, am staying smitten. This, mind you, is a movieverse only thing, since both Thorin in general and the relationship Bilbo has with him have been significantly altered from the novel.
Again, part of it is certainly the actor: as with Sean Bean, so with Richard Armitage. But it’s also the writing. Overall, if a relationship appeals to me so strongly I need to see both parties getting something from it that is unique in their lives. Doesn’t mean they don’t care for other people and/or causes, strongly, too, but for me to root for a pairing, they more often than not need to challenge each other in a particular way.
Both bookverse and movieverse Bilbo Baggins have suppressed the adventurous side of their personality before Gandalf shows up. (Bilbo and the narrator usually label this the Tookish part of himself, which he gets from his adventuring mother, as opposed to the respectable, stay-at-home Baggins side, inherited from his father, but it should be pointed out that Bilbo’s father married the most adventurous female hobbit of the Shire, so he certainly had the capacity to fall in love with someone completely different to himself.) In both cases, the moment where Bilbo after being overwhelmed and indignant about the unexpected rush of dwarves in his home, and downright horrified to hear about the dragon and the prospect of becoming burglar toast, first starts to feel that long repressed love for adventure and longing for the unknown, happens when he hears the dwarves sing the song of the Misty Mountains.
But in the movie, that moment is prepared for by the slightly different way things happen before. In the book, Thorin arrives with a bunch of other dwarves, he’s very verbose and pompous, bossing the other dwarves around, but doesn’t voice disbelief at the prospect of Bilbo as their burglar. In the movie, Thorin arrives last and late (causing the fanon that he has a terrible sense of direction which I must admit I love and have adopted); until then the movie, and the dwarves, have been presented completely in a comedy manner, but with Thorin’s arrival this changes, and not just because Richard Armitage does his brooding and smoldering thing. Jackson’s movies shifted the emphasis in the dwarves‘ motive for their quest from „getting the treasure from the dragon, and oh yeah, maybe also the mountain back?“ to „getting our home back from which were were brutally driven away, and also the treasure“. The dwarves-as-homeless-exiles/refugees theme starts with Thorin’s arrival (and the news no other dwarves will aid them, as well as the debate between Thorin and Balin as to whether they should try to return at all or should stay in the diaspora). The comedy isn’t entirely gone; both in the lines that are pure Tolkien – the quotes from the contract Bilbo is offered, funeral expenses and all – and in the Boyens/Walsh lines – Bilbo’s reply to Thorin’s question whether axe or sword is his weapon of choice. („If you must know, I’m reasonably good at conkers.“) But now it’s clear this whole enterprise isn’t just a lark and a way for Gandal to amuse himself; there are enormous emotional stakes involved for the dwarves.
It’s also when Bilbo starts to respond to the entire invasion of his home with something other than annoyance. Thorin’s unflattering disbelief at being told by Gandalf that this is their burglar brings out his first touch of snark. (The reply quoted above.) (Btw: this is why fanfiction that forgets Bilbo has a sarcastic side – this is the same hobbit who will later troll the entire Shire – doesn’t really work for me.) He’s still irritated (and when the whole dragon business gets explained, panicked), but he’s also truly curious as to what this is alll about. And once the singing starts, he’s definitely charmed despite himself, and longs for this entirely alien world.
In the novel, Bilbo still needs to get pushed out by Gandalf the next morning. In the movie, he wavers a bit but then makes the decision to run after the dwarves himself, which agenda-loving me prefers. Mind you, the movie also provides Bilbo with a learning arc that involves him attempting to go back, which in the novel he never does, and then, post-Gollum experience, a new commitment to the dwarves and their quest, which carries him through the rest of the story. Said commitment is about the dwarves in totem, not just Thorin; Bofur, the first dwarf to actively befriend Bilbo, is an important factor for Bilbo to internalize the importance of the dwarves‘ homelessness, for example. But Thorin – who continues to treat Bilbo as a liability while also (disdainfully) saving his life during the battle of the stone gians – works as a catalyst here, a continued challenge to prove himself for Bilbo. (The extended edition also provides Bilbo with a first glimpse at Thorin’s more vulnerable side when he overhears Elrond talking with Gandalf about the streak of madness in the Durin family and suddenly realises Thorin is listening as well.) The emotional climax of the first movie isn’t just the Company’s escape from the wargs and their first glimpse of Erebor but Thorin’s admission he was wrong about Bilbo and (literal) embrace of him.
Which brings me to „what is Thorin getting out of this“ (other than repeatedly getting his life saved in various situations)? If Bilbo needs something to break him out of the respectable routine that has all but buried his sense of adventure, curiosity and capacity to learn new things, something to challenge him not just in terms of courage but in terms of empathizing with complete strangers, Thorin, who has as fixed a mindset as any Shire hobbit (just about different things), who sees the world in terms of „my people“ and „enemies and potential enemies“, and whose first reaction to anyone not a dwarf is to distrust them, needs to learn empathizing with a stranger and a stranger’s values even more. There’s also the fact that as not just this particular company’s leader but as a king in exile, there’s a hierarchical barrier between him and the other dwarves (which is fatal in the third movie in that the others really take their time to challenge his increasing irrationality, which wouldn’t have been the case if anyone but Thorin had been the dwarf to go through
I’m always in two minds when storytellers base a character’s (terrible) decisions on external factors, so initially I wasn’t that keen on Team Jackson making Thorin literally mad in Battle of the Five Armies (as opposed to just being incredibly stubborn as in the novel), until he snaps out of it again. But the movie itself, flawed as it is, won me over to this version, for various reasons. Not least because Bilbo’s initial decision to keep the Arkenstone in the novel isn’t justified by anything but Bilbo doing it for a lark; that he later tries to use it as a bargaining device to end the stalemate between Thorin, Bard and Thranduil doesn’t change the fact he originally had no such reason. (Book!Thorin at that point wasn’t guilty of anything but his usual verbosity.) This would not have worked in the movieverse unless they’d tried to explain as an early kind of ring corruption, and even then there would not have been any emotional pay off, since Bilbo’s relationship with the Ring was canonically due to continue.
Otoh, corruption by greed, be it caused by gold or power or both, certainly is a red thread through both movie trilogies, so the gold sickness and/or dragon sickness (not exactly the same thing) as a plot device works thematically, and it does give Bilbo a genuine, understandable reason to keep the Arkenstone hidden. Also, while otoh movieverse Thorin acts worse than his bookverse counterpart due to it (when the battle starts and he at first refuses to join Dain) , otoh he also gets to show, in the middle of sickness-heightened paranoia and greed, positive emotions as well – Bilbo-specific ones, which of course makes shipping easier, but even that aside, enriches the overall narrative. By which I mean: the (Boyens & Walsh written) acorn scene provides a basis for Thorin’s later (mostly Tolkien-originated) lines to Bilbo when he’s dying; in it, Bilbo’s idea of home has gone from something eyed in disbelief in the first movie to a peaceful ideal (which btw the Shire isn’t, see later Bilbo’s return, but I’ll get to the idea of home vs the reality in a moment) that momentarily counteracts the madness. It’s Thorin envisioning a hopeful future – Bilbo getting home to plant that acorn – at a point where for everyone else, and certainly himself, starvation by siege or death by battle seem to be the only fates available. As for the (Tolkien-originated) gift of a Mithril shirt to Bilbo – the fact that he gives something that according to Gandalf is more worth than the entire Shire while otherwise in firm „I’ll not part with a single coin“ mood makes it all the more remarkable. It’s also worth noting that Bilbo keeps it through the decades until Frodo starts the journey to Mordor from Rivendell, and then gives it to Frodo in a scene that triggers a Ring freakout in Bilbo.
Which brings me to another reason why I’ve ultimately made me peace with dragon sickness as a plot device. Because Bilbo, too, will have his mind warped by a magically enhanced piece of shiny metal. Not as quickly as Thorin, nor as badly in general, - the Ring heightens Bilbo’s crankiness and hermit tendencies, but he seems to have used it mostly to escape unwanted visitors, while still being sociable enough to teach his gardener’s son writing and poetry and adopt a distant cousin - but at least once in those 60 years, it will drive him into a (near) killing rage towards the person whom at that point he loves most in the world. Those are very poignant parallels to me.
Speaking of Bilbo post-quest stage and parallels: Bilbo in the novel can return to Bag End only to find his entire community in the middle of auctioning off his belongings, and it’s played for comedy, not changing the general „and he lived happily to the end of his days“ conclusion. Bilbo in the movie returning to Bag End to find the same situation does get some laughs, but it’s also devastating, as we haven’t seen Bag End (which always signals home and coziness until that point) in such a plundered state. Not to mention that once he’s alone again in that ramsacked home, Bilbo finds himself drawn to the Ring, and there’s an eerie parallel to Thorin in the post-Smaug Erebor full of ruin, corpses and gold, not a home that has been longed for through all those decades as much as it is a tomb. No wonder Team Jackson chose to frame the movies with a flash forward to old Bilbo on the day of his 111th birthday – it allows them not to leave him in what emotionally is a devastating conclusion but to end on a happier note, with Gandalf arriving. (And since the entire Hobbit movieverse is framed as Bilbo writing down the story for Frodo in its final version, there’s also the reminder Bilbo will go on to form attachments again.)
Hobbits in either the books or the movies aren’t types for explicit love declarations. (Sam in the novel might reflect that he loves Frodo, but out loud „I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you“ is his declaration of choice, while Frodo’s is „I’m glad you’re with me, here at the end of things“. Or, to quote a less fate of the world burdened moment, Frodo’s reaction to Bilbo trying to express his affection at the party is „Bilbo, have you been at the Gaffer’s homebrew?“ „Yes, but that is not the point.“ Ah, Bagginses.) Dwarves, if Gimli’s courtly declarations re: Galadriel and Kili’s re: Tauriel are anything to go by, can be more poetic if they want to be. But Thorin at least (ironic, given his book counterpart never uses one word with ten will do) strikes me as more the type to express himself through gestures as well. (Unless speech is absolutely called for, as with the admission of having been wrong re: Bilbo at the end of the first movie and the apology and „if more people“ etc. in his death scene; but when he apologizes to the other dwarves earlier, it comes, in the case of Kili, complete with forehead-against-forehead pressing.) It’s therefore both ic and fiendishly effective that the movieverse version of Thorin’s death scene is performed in such a way that it also doubles as as a mutual declaration of affection (without, again, using just those words). And when Bilbo later does try to verbalize how he felt about Thorin when saying goodbye to Balin, he can’t find any words and falls silent – that „to me he was – he was…“ coupled with Martin Freeman’s expression still devastates me in every rewatch.
And yet, if Bilbo, as Gandalf predicted, returns to the Shire a changed Hobbit, who won’t ever be regarded by the majority of the other hobbits as normal again (Mad Baggins, „cracked“ or „queer“ being the most often used tags, unless you’re Merry and Pippin, who like him and refer to him as „the old Hobbit“ or simply as „Bilbo“ when mentioning him), he has undoubtedly grown through that experience of wonder, courage and ultimately heartbreak. By which I don’t mean he’s suddenly a saint; even leaving Ring-effects aside, Bilbo in his old age can be as petty as they come (see also: farewell gifts, not just the spoons to Lobelia). But he’s someone capable of understanding the world and the people in it in a new way. As for Thorin, again, even leaving aside gold-and-dragon heightened negative traits, he’d started out with an obsessive nature, a one track mind and a not so hidden death wish (well, if you go up against a dragon who previously laid waste to an entire city population with only thirteen companions...), but he, too, had come to a very different understanding of the world and the people in it by the time he died, and knowing Bilbo was key tot hat. They made each other better. How could I not ship them?
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That said, most of the fic I've read simply puts Bilbo in the "female" role, more-or-less languishing, romantic or spunky. It turned me off of that pairing nearly completely.
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