[ SECRET POST #2573 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2573 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 073 secrets from Secret Submission Post #368.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[intrigueing]

I think you've completely misunderstood the entire point of LotR and The Hobbit -- that perfectly ordinary run of the mill people who stumble into a situation out of pure chance can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be heroes.

Like, it's literally the central theme of these stories.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly! Like, I understand why someone would be sitting there thinking 'but what, exactly, was it that drove Gandalf to seek out this particular hobbit who has nothing to do with this quest otherwise', but the implication that Bilbo would have had to have something ~*special about him to be chosen and taken along makes me very sad.

[(Anonymous)]

This. I thought Bilbo's relative ordinariness was the point, to show that you don't have to be extraordinarily gifted or special to do heroic things.

[(Anonymous)]

But in Bilbo's case it wasn't pure chance -- Gandalf picked him and sent him along.

[(Anonymous)]

Not for the Hobbit. The theme is literally that it didn't matter how pathetic and unsuitable Bilbo was, because Fate needed to play out, there was no way he could have failed and it didn't matter at all what he did, it was predestined.

[(Anonymous)]

"Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!" said Bilbo.
"Of course!" said Gandalf. "And why should not they prove true? Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"
"Thank goodness!" said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.

[dreemyweird]

OT, but awwww thank you. All the interactions between Gandalf and Bilbo make me melt. One of the best fictional friendships ever :D
(and I support the point, too)

[(Anonymous)]

He didn't stumble into it. Gandalf specifically sought him out for a quest that from reading Tolkien's other writings that tried to better fit the story into the Middle Earth mythos was really important.

[intrigueing]

I meant that Gandalf's choice of him was kind of off-the-cuff, not because of some ~special skill~ or any specific reason except that Gandalf liked him.

[greenvelvetcake]

The drawfs didn't want to travel with thirteen people, since thirteen was an unlucky number, so Gandalf went looking for a fourteenth member. If the dwarfs had been happy with their company, I'm sure Bilbo would never have gone, and the story wouldn't have happened at all.

[intrigueing]

Yeah, the hilariously minor quibble (to the readers, anyway) aspect of the decision was always something I really liked :)

[(Anonymous)]

But Bilbo succeeds mostly though luck. I meant what if say Gandalf chose him because hobbits are good at hiding, which they are, and Bilbo used *that* skill instead of the Ring to hide from the spiders and Elves, thereby proving to the warlike Dwarves that that humble, seemingly useless people can have their own specific talents and can turn out to be very important and helpful and that there are other skills worth valuing aside from martial ones. We don't learn much now but that small, humble people might luck out and find a magic token that will make them useful because otherwise Bilbo could have done nothing.

[(Anonymous)]

Most of it, yeah, but not all of it. And he uses his luck in active ways -- like getting the ring was luck, but his decision to use it for the barrel ride wasn't. And he gets more competent and more confident in making his own decisions over time. The ring would also have been useless if Bilbo hadn't decided to do useful things with it -- things that he thought of and put into action. The presence of luck doesn't necessitate the absence of agency.

[(Anonymous)]

i think the whole point was that because biblo found the ring, something that had immense power that be could never have hoped for/desired, it made him be brave. it made him dare to do something out of his norm.
it's like a stepping stone for bilbo. would he have survived without the ring, probably not, but it was biblo who utilized the ring to his needs and not take advantage of it.
he became invisible to hide from the elves not to trick the elves on purpose, and that's why in the movies, he should've never been drawn to put the ring on by the evil forces~. He genuinely used the powers and it wasn't until after such an unexpected journey, back to mundane comfortable life, it is then you get into dangerous territory with the ring because he is taking advantage of the situation at hand to be above everyone else and use it for his own greed

[(Anonymous)]

EXACTLY. To be fair to the secret maker, the movies have done a really good job of obscuring this point (says the bitter Hobbit fan).