My Collection So Far

Selina: (goes literally anywhere)

Batman, quick changing out of his Bat suit into the motorcycle suit: fuck shit-

Retelling The Hobbit Chapter 15: Unattached First chapter / Previous / Next (coming November 13th 2023, tentatively) Webtoon/A03 /Instagram/Tumblr Sideblog

Thank you for reading! The next chapter of this comic adaptation of The Hobbit will be titled (drumroll)....The Song of the Lonely Mountain!

Check under the cut for notes on the callbacks to previous chapters of this comic, and to Tolkien stories like the Unfinished Tales! —-

—-

One of my guiding ideas for this comic is that the story is being written/drawn by Bilbo Baggins, an  “unreliable narrator,” who has a biased way of recounting events. As the comic goes on, parts of the story get retold through new perspectives (or through the eyes of other characters), and you realize the initial version you read was incomplete. 

A lot of you probably noticed that this chapter features a ton of callbacks to the earliest chapters of this comic! We saw child Bilbo and Gandalf's friendship told from Bilbo's POV in Chapter 3.....but in this chapter we see it retold from Gandalf's POV. However, Belladonna Took is our biggest instance of that!   Not to overexplain my own writing, but Chapter 1 is an older Bilbo painting an idealized happily-ever-after fairytale picture of Belladonna, while Chapter 15 features a younger Bilbo telling a far less optimistic version of her life.  While there's truth to both of them, neither of them is the full truth.

In the Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo tells Frodo that ‘books need to have good endings,' like endings where everyone "lives happily ever after." If I were to continue this comic to the end of the novel, Bilbo’s habit of “rewriting things to be happier" would become a whole Thing. 

Second: Much of this chapter is taken directly from “The Unfinished Tales: The Quest For Erebor.” That story was Tolkien’s attempt to unite the tone of The Hobbit with LOTR, by having Gandalf explain what The Hobbit looked like from *his* perspective. The gay line about Bilbo feeling incapable of settling down into a Traditional Marriage with a Wife And Kids is taken almost directly from the Unfinished Tales. So are all the lines where Gandalf reflects on what Bilbo was like as a child, and the moment where Bilbo reflects that all of his desire for adventure has dwindled to a private dream.

Third: Obviously, the other big influence on this chapter (outside the original novel) was a similar scene in the PJ film. The little bit where Gandalf reveals the lore behind Bullroarer took monologue is the only dialogue I’ve directly lifted from that scene. ;3

Fourth: some of you may have caught that I used a quote describing Frodo’s wanderlust in the Fellowship of the Ring to describe Bilbo. The bit describing "the maps that only show white spaces beyond their borders" is also why I emphasized Bilbo’s canonical nerdiness around  maps in earlier chapters (chapter 5 especially, but also in Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in chapter 14.) 

Fifth: one of my favorite things in the original book are all the scenes where Gandalf does fun Whimsical things with smoke/smoke rings. In the book he usually makes them change color or race around; in my comic he usually makes them turn into butterflies (he also does this in chapters 3 and 11.) you may have noticed that Butterfly Symbolism is a big thing in this comic.  But yeah, in another callback: Gandalf finally had time to blow smoke-rings with Bilbo, which he said he 'had no time for' in Chapter 2!

Thanks again for reading! I tentatively plan for the next chapter to arrive on November 13th.

Christmas if Gojo, Shoko and Geto had been able to raise Megumi, Tsumiki, Nanako and Mimiko together (Featuring Nanami)

don't forget about him

I’ve always loved these frames being back to back. It makes it look like Obi-Wan is judging the shit out of Luke because he’s fiddling with some snakes.

Happy Minecraft day

Some Rankin/Bass The Hobbit mildly funny content.

some iconic quotes from the podcast 'bait' about merthur

"if we're taking queerbaiting as representation, which we are, morgana is a much better queer figure than merlin is"

"merlin's whole thing is 'if I stay closeted long enough and keep on supporting my oppressor, then maybe maaaybe one day his son will love me'"

"the show ends with merlin living in the present day still waiting for arthur to rise again and maybe fuck him this time"

"because he's immortal, merlin could have called the cops on stonewall"

"merlin in the present day is probably some arthurian scholar and is absolutely insufferable" "writing really erotic– have you ever read an academic essay by someone who wants to fuck the historical figure they're talking about, that's what merlin is doing"

"my favourite merthur fanfic trope is uther will consistently be like 'arthur it's ok that you're having sex with a man because at least you're not going to get any bastards but you can't have sex with a sorcerer'. like no it's the same thing! you don't understand the show you're watching"

"arthur is like 'if you're a sorcerer merlin, I guess that's okay, I just don't believe your kind should have rights'. he's one of those people that's like 'it's fine if you're a homosexual but I still think it's a sin'"

Bilbo and thorin sketches!

Might paint them later today me thinks (´ᵕ `ก)

any damian and tim bonding headcannons? since dc is utterly set on making them hate each other urgh

Once in a while Tim likes to knock Damian down a peg by reminding him he already discovered Batman and Robin's identity while Damian was in diapers

Damian showed up to Tim's room on a random Saturday afternoon. It took some prodding to figure out the petting zoo got a new goat, but the adults were busy and he wasn't accustomed to asking for "frivolous" things like that

Damian: "Do you have games on your phone?"

Tim, handing Damian his phone: "No"

Pet photoshoots are one thing, but consider: pet music videos

Damian is jealous of how the law keeps him from doing things meanwhile Tim has freedom as an emancipated minor. Tim responds by saying "haha loser"

Tim is in Camp "If you ruin Damian's excitement I'll frame you for tax fraud 4 months from now"

Tim's playlist gets put through the Damian Test, which is like Rotten Tomatoes except Damian plays it for Titus to see how he reacts. Tim has a solid 22% approval rate

Damian's a vegetarian but he'll still fight Tim over the wishbone

Damian stays inside with the dogs during Fourth of July fireworks. Tim swings by to drop a cup of hot chocolate and sneak his dirty laundry into Damian's hamper

Tim's favorite "-core" aesthetic is Microsoft Windows Landscape Screensaver Core. Damian's is Change Your Brother's Microsoft Windows Landscape Screensaver To A Lungfish Core

Tim let Damian drive home one night. Damian took two wrong exits, almost rear-ended a truck, and kept forgetting to use his blinker. When Tim said, "I thought you knew how to drive" Damian replied, "Yes. I never said I drove well. Come on, Drake, I can hardly reach the brakes" (Tim also had a small moment of being proud that Damian picked up his sense of humor)

Damian convinced Tim to chaperone his group on a class field trip to the harbor because Damian wanted to dig through the sludge for evidence on a case

When Damian tells him not to do something, that's when Tim stops and re-evaluates the kind of danger he's willing to put himself in

Tim's apartment was stocked with frozen pizza, coffee, Doritos, and Mountain Dew prior to moving in. Damian's housewarming gift was an apple

Damian occasionally peels and puts an orange on Tim's desk when he's gone too long without a snack

Unlike Dick, Tim doesn't censor himself around Damian, and unlike Jason, he doesn't avoid uncomfortable topics for the sake of not getting in trouble with Bruce. Thus, Tim taught Damian what the peach emoji actually means

Damian: "Drake, how do you like your egg?"

Tim: "Scrambled"

Damian: "Too bad. Pennyworth forbade me from cooking"

They veered from patrol on a side quest to try Jokerized seasoning on top of as many things as they could

Tim once napped through a Wayne Enterprises fire drill. He woke up to firefighters knocking at his window with Damian next to them making an L on his forehead

When Tim went off on a mission with Young Justice, Damian packed him a lunch box consisting of a loaf of bread, two 5-hour energy shots, a flash grenade, Cheese Viking band-aids, Damian's lucky pen, a fake ID, and a handwritten note saying "I'm stealing your pants. Don't expect them back"