Subject: This is why...
Author:
Posted on: 2013-11-08 21:44:00 UTC
... I always loved the A/V Division's missions. They were the definition of unarmed - they weren't even Action agents and didn't have a clue what they were supposed to be doing - but they still pulled it off beautifully. I seem to recall them appearing in the Alumia exorcism doing the same thing, actually.
hS
Yep, same old story. Tenth Walker, falls in love Legolas, tragic background, etc., etc.. It can't get more cliched than this.
What's up with the second? It's not even funny, it's just weird. Plain, crazy weird.
As for the first...super angsty and tragic background, check. Incredible skills, check. Extreme beauty, check. Annoying song that seriously doesn't make sense, check. And...a generic elf city named Elf-Maiden? Let's hand it to DOGA to burn it-oh, wait. It's already burned? Good. DMS, then. This honestly must be the most typical Sue I ever read.
~Autumn
Given the nature of the Circle, you know the quality. Ow...
http://www.quotev.com/story/3882920/Two-Sides-to-Everypony-An-mlp-fim-story/ -COMIC SAAAAAAAAAAAANS!!! So, based off of these posters (which are awesome and everybody should see. I'll leave one of them at the bottom for fans of Doctor Who) this story shows how everypony has a dark side to them...By making Rarity murder Sweetie Belle and commit suicide via hanging. Right, because this explores the darkness within the ponies souls so much better then, say, Pony Psychology or Pony POV seres.
http://www.quotev.com/story/3985240/Pony-ninjas/ -This one is so bad, a fellow Lemming asked, "How old are you? 9?" Sadly, the author is nine.
http://www.quotev.com/story/3788869/One-Last-Party/ - So, Rainbow Dash is dying from over exercising, which is causing her organs to shut down one by one. Pinkie admits her love to Dashie, and it's all so sad. Boo hoo. Sniff de frickin sniff. Honestly, the formatting makes me sadder then Rainbow Dash's death in this fic.
...Remind me to never go back to that place...
Oh, right, the Doctor Whooves poster! Here: 
http://www.quotev.com/story/3543980/The-Forgotten-Story-Thorin-love-story/
No no no no NO! Everything here is wrong wrong wrong! Claimed.
The Emperor Protects!
I thought fangirls were going only for Fili and Kili.
Anyway, do you want me help you put it on the Claimed Badfic List again? Or just leave it? (I'll be happy to act as anyone's personal secretary, since I don't plan to get Permission until I'm thirteen.)
~Autumn
Don’t they know that Fili and Kili are girls?
I didn’t watch the movie, so I don’t know whether the actors look like they might be women, but for readers the "evidence" is obvious:
• There is an infuriating lack of strong women in The Hobbit.
• "Fili" and "Kili" sound distinctly different from the other dwarves’ names.
• Bilbo thought they were younger, so they probably didn’t look as manly as the other dwarves.
• Female dwarves have beards, probably by Discworld contamination, but this is never mentioned in LotR or The Hobbit, so Bilbo obviously didn’t know this and didn’t realize that some of his companions might not be male.
I’m not sure about this, but didn’t Peter Jackson mention the fact (female dwarves have beards) in the LotR movies? And then he didn’t use it in the Hobbit movies? Can movies never do anything right? Or is he building up to a big surprise in Part Three?
HG, wondering
That would be cool, and the part about Bilbo possibly not knowing what he was seeing actually makes logical sense for explaining how it could be so despite what the book says.
But no, I don't think it's really the case in the books or the movies. If I remember correctly, Tolkien explains somewhere (The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, something like that) that Dwarf women number much fewer than Dwarf men and the reproduction rate is fairly low, so they typically don't venture out into the world because they're just too valuable to risk losing. I suppose you might occasionally see one traveling to find a husband she's not related to, but you'd more likely just see the heavily armed troop of Dwarf men around her.
As for the movies, I seem to recall some shirtless shots of Fili and/or Kili at some point. Pretty sure they're dudes. I think PJ is more interested in marketing than promoting women in Middle-earth. If you're looking for a director who actually cares about strong female characters, you want Joss Whedon.
~Neshomeh
and I didn’t even expect my comment to be taken seriously.
But the thirteen dwarves didn’t venture out into the world on adventures. They were going to reclaim the home of their ancestors and to stay there. Wouldn’t they want to take some females with them? Two Dwarf women surrounded by a troop of eleven heavily armed Dwarf men sounds even more plausible to me now.
HG
...there was still a rather large dragon lurking in the mountain, so the thirteen dwarves went to secure the area before others arrived.
It wouldn't do much good if your first colonizing party was incinerated by the local wildlife, eh? Though I have to admit it sounds like something that would happen in Dwarf Fortress.
... that dwarven females have as, uh, prominent mammary glands as human females. Which... what causes the growth of facial hair? Because if they're both tied into the same hormonal systems, there's no reason the abundance of one can't imply the absence of the other.
(Having fun yet?)
hS
PS: Also, I'm now imagining Joss Whedon's The Silmarillion (for the high-supernatural-faintly-scifi feel), or, even better, his Numenor. I've recently seen a comment that Numenor may well have gone steampunk under Pharazon... yeeeeessss, I think I'd watch that. ~hS
...females, despite what some people will say, do have a bit of facial hair, so in essence, the female dwarves would just not bother with the whole shaving and plucking of said hair? The dwarves, I believe, are said to not be sexist so no one would really mind about their overall body and face appeal, I suppose.
PS: Oh my Eru, that sounds so awesome.
~VE~
They may not. If a woman works out enough, and I think it's safe to say Dwarf women would, her bosom tends to be not as obvious. Heck, maybe we shouldn't even assume Dwarf women lactate. Could be a Dwarf pregnancy lasts long enough that they're born a bit more done than other mortals, ready to eat real food. Aulë was all about hardiness and practicality, right?
As for hormones... now I'm just imagining the massive mood swings that would result if pregnancy were accompanied by an abrupt reduction of testosterone from typical male levels down to typical female levels, during which time you'd also get your expected upswing of estrogen and progesterone and the enlargement or outright appearance of the aforementioned mammary glands. Dwarf pregnancy would really, really suck...
~Neshomeh
PS: Heck yeah, sign me up! ... Lúthien the Vampire Slayer? *snerk*
... then we really need to reevaluate our ideas about dwarvish biology.
Think about it: the guy's a blacksmith. The Valar were actually involved in biological creation (Arda was completely empty when they came down), but I don't think he was. So when Aule decided to make himself some kids - do we really think he would have thought to put in hormones? I mean, we know he never asked his wife for advice about it.
So: dwarves are made by a guy who mostly deals in rocks. Maybe they're basically made of stone. That explains the idea that they revert to stone when they die (not conclusively disproven). It may also explain their lust for gold and gems, if they actually need them as trace minerals - simple handling could let them be absorbed through the skin.
Now, dwarves do eat, which could be used to argue against this - but so do furnaces! Organic material goes in, energy, in the form of heat, comes out. With an efficient enough furnace - exactly the sort of thing Aule was good with - any 'food' would be a viable fuel source. (And if you like the idea that they drink a lot - alcohol? Biofuel? Yes please!)
Then we have the encounters of the dwarves with dragons... in the Wars of the Jewels, the dwarves were the only ones able to stand up to Glaurung's fire. Is it the masks they made, or is it that they're simply heatproof? Yes, they keep being driven out of places by creatures of fire - Durin's Bane, Smaug - but we don't actually have proof that any were killed by those creatures. (Possible exception - the Durin who was bane'd. But the Durins have always been a bit weird, with their possible-reincarnation thing)
What else, what else... well, obviously they can be harmed by weapons, we've seen that over and over, but I never said they were made of tough rocks. I'm thinking maybe sandstone, with a colloidal gold suspension (noted for its vivid red colour) as 'blood'. That gold content goes back to the skin-absorption theory. It would be used mostly for heat transfer from the furnace, I imagine.
By this system, dwarf 'pregnancy' may actually be an incredibly involved process - it could resemble the animal method only in appearance. That would explain why female dwarves don't get out much - they're busy spending ten years on internal baby construction!
... that's a terrible thought, actually.
hS
Here is some rebuttal to your points:
1st Point rebuttal: This is not a good reason... the Hobbit doesn't include any female characters for whatever reason. Doesn't mean Tolkien hates women.
2nd Point rebuttal: All dwarf names are different but some rhyme. They just do.
3rd Point rebuttal: They are just younger than the other dwarves in the company.
4th Point rebuttal: Discworld dwarfs are a homage to Tolkien dwarves. The differences are apparent though, females braid their beards to distinguish themselves from their male counterparts.
And finally, they were distinctly referred to as male by Tolkien.
The Emperor Protects!
Initial point to make: while the theory that Fili & Kili are female obviously has no grounding in the canon text, there's no reason it can't be true in the movies. And so:
First rebuttal rebuttal: The fact that there are no known female characters in The Hobbit doesn't mean F&K can't be women. Nor does it mean they are. This one's sort of a non-point either way. The only real argument is that Tolkien didn't really have many women in his stories at all, and those that do go adventuring... wait.
Those that do go adventuring tend to do it in disguise. We have Luthien (who dressed up as a vampire, and in a nightcloak), and, notably, we have Eowyn, who...
... wait for it...
... disguised herself as a man. ;) That's relevant, right here.
Second rebuttal rebuttal: The best way to look at 'sounds different', I think, is the vowels. Khuzdul is known to use consonant-based roots, and to change the vowels around to inflect them. That means male and female names could very well just differ by their vowels.
Among the other eleven dwarves (Thorin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori, Ori, Balin, Dwalin, Oin, Gloin), we see:
-Two instances of 'a'
-No(!!!) instances of 'e'
-Nine instances of 'i'
-Eight instances of 'o'
-Three instance of 'u'
Additionally, every 'i' is paired with another vowel - often an 'o' or 'u', but twice (Balin & Dwalin) an 'a'. Fili and Kili, of course, have only 'i's, which is definitely different (there are no other instances of the same vowel being used twice in a name).
Of course, all the dwarf names except Balin come from the same Norse source, so there's that.
(And on the flip side - the only attested Tolkien female dwarf is called 'Dis' - not the 'i' again)
Third rebuttal rebuttal: You're both wrong. ;) Fili and Kili are definitely younger than the rest of the Company - it's in the appendices - but that's irrelevant. By their age, dwarves have reached their adult appearance, and they basically don't change until they hit their mid-200s. So any 'younger-looking-ness' - which I don't recall actually being mentioned in The Hobbit - would simply be how they look.
Fourth rebuttal rebuttal: This is a quirky little subject. Tolkien did (obliquely) state that female dwarves are bearded - it's in Appendix A, as 'They are in voice and appearance... so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart' - but it's nowhere in the main stories. My suspicion is that D&D and its ilk are responsible for this idea making it into the public mindset, which is where PTerry got it - and I suspect they probably didn't realise it was in Tolkien.
The beard-braiding you mention isn't mentioned anywhere in Tolkien, and is highly controversial in Pratchett - to the point where several books revolve around the question of whether female dwarves should outwardly portray themselves as female. Of course (countering your final point) all Discworld dwarfs (traditionally) are referred to as 'he'...
In summary: there is no real justification for assuming that book!Fili&Kili are female, though there are facts which could be used to at least claim it isn't utterly ridiculous. However, given the tweaking performed by Jackson, and his tendency to draw from D&D-inspired stereotypes (such as drunken Gimli), there is no reason they couldn't be in the films - or a fanfic of them.
Oh, except one: there were a couple of female dwarves in the opening of the first film. I don't remember them having beards. ;)
hS
"...no Man nor Elf has ever seen a beardless Dwarf - unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame... For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike..." ~JRRT
If the name argument holds any weight, and the two 'i's are significant...
... then what are we to make of Gimli?
Also a 'young' dwarf, has a fascination with Galadriel's hair (and yet Celeborn doesn't feel threatened by this), and then ends up in a very close relationship with a certain elf... yep, the case can definitely be made. ;)
hS
If there's an attractive male character in a movie, book, or any medium, there will be fangirls. And in the movie, Thorin Oakenshield is attractive. I am pretty sure that if they made any of the other Dwarves attractive, there would clouds of goofy teen-age and twenty-something women drooling over them.
Ahem. Sorry, had to get that out of the way.
http://www.quotev.com/story/2659037/The-Black-Child-of-Mordor-Legolas-Love-Story/1/
For the record, I'm not claiming these. These are up for grabs.
The Emperor Protects!
http://www.quotev.com/story/2893231/The-Second-Ruling-Ring-Legolas-Love-Story/
Also, I made an account on Quotev and I am writing a story based on Eredan. I will need a beta or a few...
The Emperor Protects!
That's a great idea! Nice to see goodfics for once in that Sue-infested place for a change.
Also, I would love to be your beta, but I'm going to be on holiday without a computer or laptop for quite a while, so I can't. I'm not the best beta out there, but the least I can do is correct some speliing errors and punctuation mistakes.
~Autumn
I made a spelling error in the word "spelling". Sigh, Irony Overpower at work.
~Autumn
I went Circle-diving for Pacific Rim, and I found a couple stories that look like Sues (well, duh, it's the Circle).
If the Sues are Jaeger pilots for Pacific Rim, does that mean the PPC Agents nab a Jaeger or some other giant Mecha thing from DoSAT, or do they disguise themselves as Kaiju?
Just food for thought.
Portal into the Jaeger's cockpit while the Sue(s) is/are strapped in, pull some wires from a random maintenance hatch to deactivate the Jaeger, charge and kill the Sue(s) while she/they is/are still strapped in and so immobilized, strangle with the previously mentioned wires.
There, our Agents can be completely unarmed and without a DORKS and still pull it off.
... I always loved the A/V Division's missions. They were the definition of unarmed - they weren't even Action agents and didn't have a clue what they were supposed to be doing - but they still pulled it off beautifully. I seem to recall them appearing in the Alumia exorcism doing the same thing, actually.
hS
The first one is a typical sue.
I would like to do some of the second one, though.
The second on isn't even a story. The first looks like a bog-standard Lord of the Rings Sue. Why do people keep writing those?
This is why I hate people.