None of these are new, but they may be new to you as they were to me, fellow readers.

There are notoriously few female characters in Tolkien, and even fewer allowed some dialogue and personality, but thankfully, this has not stopped fandom to work with what is there and flesh out the ladies in question. Take Bilbo’s mother Belladonna Took, of whom we solely know that she had adventures, knew Gandalf, and that that Bilbo’s father Bungo built Bag End with her money. Two stories providing wonderful versions of Belladonna:

Light words about nothing, and other pleasures : in which she encounters Thorin’s sister Dis (remember, dwarves have a far longer life span than Hobbits, who in turn live longer than humans); Dis herself, whose pov the story takes, is also a Tolkien female of whom we only know the name and whose relation she was, and who took on a life of her own in fanfiction. More often than not, she’s stuck with the role of shipping cheerleader, but not so here.

Back, and there again: Tolkien was clear on what kind of afterlife was available for elves and dwarves, but not so much for Hobbits. This means some creative liberty for fandom, and not least due to Sansukh, afterlife reunions have become an entire subgenre. In this version, Belladonna and Bungo have been waiting for Bilbo to join them after his long life is finally over. But one hobbit’s paradise is not another’s, and so Belladonna goes on one more adventure, together with and for her son.

The Crone of Bagshot Row: no Belladonna in this one, but an old friend of hers, who has been keeping an eye on her son from afar.

But of course the most famous female Hobbit in Tolkien’s world is also the one with the worst press: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. Lobelia is usually used as comic relief (fair enough, that’s how Tolkien uses her, with one remarkable exception), if she isn’t used as in an uncanonical mean stepmother role for Frodo so he can be rescued. (As ridiculous as that is, it pales next to the AUs where Lobelia gets to be Bilbo‘s mean aunt. I mean, AU or no AU, she’s younger than Bilbo in canon, and my own preferences for AUs is that they should keep the generational outlines of the original.) legionseagle wrote a witty and spirited defense of Lobelia, which I urge you to read, so I shan’t repeat to her but will quote the moment of glory Tolkien gives her, during the Scouring of the Shire, as recounted to Frodo: it’s Lobelia Sackville-Baggins versus Saruman (via his henchman): ‘ “I’ll give you Sharkey, you dirty thieving ruffians!” says she, and ups with her umberella and goes for the leader, near twice her size. So they took her. Dragged her off to the Lockholes, at her age too. They’ve took others we miss more, but there’s no denying she showed more spirit than most’.

Bearing this in mind, I can entirely believe the following AUs take on what would have happened if Lobelia in her penchant for acquiring shiney objects of metal not hers (shared, as legionseagle mentioned, by Cousin Bilbo) would have gotten hold of the One Ring:


The curious case of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and her magic ring

And lastly, not a female-centric tale but one of the funniest I’ve ever read (with one angsty interlude), using the movieverse circumstance of Thorin addressing Bilbo as a“Mr. Baggins“, „Master Baggins“ or „Master Burglar“ up to and until he’s entered the Lonely Mountain, at which point he switches to „Bilbo“ to spin a hilarious yet entirely in character explanation (Thorin didn’t catch Bilbo’s first name before Bilbo had won his respect near the end of the first movie and afterwards was too embarassed to ask directly) into this glorious epic:

The Naming of Hobbits

Off to a train, thus in haste a few links:

Black Sails:


Queer and diverse, Black Sails is qietly TV's most revolutionary show: I'll say.

Marvel:

After the day's work is done Nick Fury character study in vid form, reminding me that morally ambiguous middle aged spies are my catnip and that canon Fury is way more interesting than the irate boss version of him usually found in fanfiction.

Tolkien:

How many miles did Frodo and Sam have to walk to get to Mordor?: not as many as today's refugees do, but pretty close (Serbia to London, or Texas to Los Angeles in US terms).

This is why German book fairs are the best. I mean, clearly. Where else can you see Thranduil in his comfy slippers on the lookout for the latest bestsellers in Sindarin and Quenya?

The announcement of a movie about the friendship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis reminded me again how inconvenient real life often operates when it comes to dramatizing, especially regarding giving a story climax and resolution. The last time C.S. Lewis was the subject of a biographical movie, Shadowlands, it was focused on a relationship of his as well, true, but the death of the other main character, his wife Joy, and Lewis struggling through the immediate aftermath provided a natural third act and resolution, so to speak. Even so, the script simplified and exised people a great deal (Joy went from having two sons from her first marriage to having only one, Lewis' friends - Tolkien, Williams et al. - were all represented, sort of, as one fictional character named Christopher, and absolutely no mention was made of Lewis' pre-Joy decades long relationship with a woman, "Mintho" Moore. (As I understand it the nature of the relationship - filial, romantic or a mixture of the two - is still under debate, but what's not under debate is that he lived with her for decades and she hadn't been dead that long when he met Joy.) Mentioning this isn't meant as a put-down on my part, by the way. All this exising of characters allows for a tighter focus, I found the film very moving and superbly acted by Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger (one reason why I was so dissappointed when the film's scriptwriter recently was such an ass about his Mandela biopic flopping), and at any rate, Shadowlands isn't supposed to be about Lewis' entire life and never claimed to cover all the aspects.

Now, with Tolkien and Lewis, I wonder what kind of structure they'll go for. Act I: Our Heroes meet and hit it off between love for all things Norse and Tolkien converting Lewis to Christianity, leading to Inklings, Hobbit, Screwtape, Tolkien starting LotR, Lewis starting Narnia. Act II: Lewis dashes off Narnia books at top speed, happily mixing fauns and Father Christmas, and becomes a Christian Explainer To The Masses, both of which irritates Tolkien a lot for various reasons. However, "Fellowship" getting published and Lewis writing glowing reviews while suggesting Tolkien for the Nobel Prize papers over the cracks for a while, until the arrival of either Charles Williams or Joy Gresham or both (depending on whether the script wants to use both) in Lewis' life and Lewis insisting on Tolkien befriending them when he, Lewis, had previously refused to have anything to do with Edith Tolkien leads to serious enstrangement. Act II climaxes with a big argument. Act III: well, there's the problem. As far as I know, and I could be misremembering or not knowing in the first place, Tolkien and Lewis drifting apart wasn't, in fact, a dramatic series of arguments but more a slow and entirely undramatic series of contact lessening and terse remarks in letters to other people. It's not like either of them ever wrote a How Do You Sleep? about each other or attacked each other via the press. Why so restrained and dignified, English professors? I bet the script will go entirely fictional at that point, inventing both a dramatic face to face argument and (after some scenes of pining) an equally dramatic reconciliation (maybe after Joy's death), and it fades out with them sitting on a bench a la Bilbo and Gandalf early in the film version of Fellowship, two battered old friends together.

So far, so semi-serious speculation on my part. Now for some completely irreverent flippancy: fandom being what it is, if this movie will cast actors as Tolkien and Lewis who are in any way regarded as hot, there will be slash. Depending on how successful the movie is, it could be solely a tiny corner at Yuletide or the next Big Thing. If the later, I predict Joy and/or Edith bashing of the She Comes Between Them type as well. If Charles Williams exists in the movie, He Comes Between Them As Well, but that traditionally doesn't lead to bashing in a male character, it leads to rival ships. Williams could have a postmortem career as the next Castiel there, with Lewis/Williams the alternative to the big Lewis/Tolkien juggernaut, and a small but vocal minority writing Tolkien/Williams hate sex. Poor Mrs. Moore probably won't exist in this one at all, either, and definitely won't get played by Helen Mirren which as I seem to recall was A. N. Wilson's suggestion, but if I'm wrong and Mintho Moore makes it into the Tolkien/Lewis saga, and if there is even the smallest hint she's something other than a mother figure to Lewis, then she'll probably join Edith and Joy in the ranks of bashed female characters, and stories set in the early stages of the Tolkien and Lewis relationship will cast her as the villain trying to prevent it. Oh, if someone unearths Lewis' "Four Loves", to be specific, the essay praising (male) friendship and comparising favourably with male/female romance, then tumblr will go wild using photos from the movie with quotes.

...or the movie could sink without a trace in either fandom or critical attention. Or never get made. But where'd be the fun in that?

Before I go to do my daily conferencing (not the fun kind today, but the necessary kind), we have another trailer, this one of the special about the birth of Doctor Who, so to speak:

An Adventure in Time and Space

In which Jenny from Call The Midwife is Verity Lambert, first DW producer ever, and David Bradley gets his William Hartnell on. It looks like they're the two main characters of the story, which makes me suspect Mark Gattiss, who wrote the script, is going for something of a A Star is Born structure, only without romance, i.e. male character's professional career peaks, then declines while female character's rises. As long as Gattiss doesn't do what The Artist did (and that's one of several reasons why I couldn't join in the Artist squee a few years back), i.e.make the female character feel guilty about her success and has everyone throw a pity party for the male character, I'm good with that. And going by the trailer, he doesn't.

Also: Verity Lambert pitching the Doctor as "C.S. Lewis meets H.G. Wells meets Father Christmas" evoked a double reaction from me: on the one hand, given that's not how he comes across in An Unearthly Child where the heroes are Barbara and Ian, I can't imagine this pitch having happened, otoh, I have to admit I don't care because the description cracks me up, and I now shall ascribe all the Doctor's interpersonal relationship troubles to the fact he was modelled after C. S. Lewis and H.G. Wells.

(Yes, yes, in all likelihood Film!Verity is referring to Lewis and Wells as writers, with the TARDIS doubling as wardrobe that leads into Narnia, but that's not as much fun as wondering whether, if the Doctor is C.S. Lewis, that makes either Warnie Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien the Master.) (Joy Gresham is clearly Romana.)

Five questions you would like to ask authors or creators of source material in your fandom(s).

1.) So, Will, what is up with the Third Murderer, and does Lady M. have children or doesn't she?

2.) Dear Professor Tolkien, while I deeply appreciate the splendour of your imagination and linguistic skills, did it ever occur to you that to create entire species described as evil and utterly incapable to be reasoned with or redeemed, only fit to be killed, was to express the spirit of the age in a, euphemistically put, highly questionable manner? But go you for making female dwarves having beards as well; Terry Prattchet did wonders with that. Yours sincerely, A Reader.

3.) Orson, do tell me you've made a copy of The Other Side of the Wind that's not locked up in some moneylender's safe and slowly but surely decaying beyond the restoration possibility. You knew what happened to your other films, and so you must have made a copy. WHERE IS IT? Also: any chances you'll film that Yuletide story of Falstaff as a space pirate from the Hereafter BECAUSE YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO?

4.) Dear Miss Austen: why the infatuation with that stupid goose Mary, Queen of Scots and the Elizabeth Tudor bashing?

5.) Dear Paul, will you record and release that song you co-wrote with Keith Richards in 2005? I am dying with curiosity as to what a McCartney/Richards song sounds like, plus the mere fact of its existence is bound to infuriate certain rock critics. Yours tactlessly, a fan aware that nobody is getting any younger, including herself.