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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.
( Cut for length of ramblings about a hobbit and a dwarf )
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.
( Cut for length of ramblings about a hobbit and a dwarf )
