come to think of it, why wouldn’t someone with superman’s powers use them for physical comedy? like. buster keaton style. or dick van dyke. he is invulnerable and can fly, those are the perfect circumstances for a pratfall. half the time only he is aware that he is joking and he just looks like a clumsy asshole but he knows in his heart that the timing on that gag was perf. add this to my list of stupid fucking headcanons.
clark sits down too aggressively in a desk chair, rolls backward across basically the whole office before the chair tips backward and he rolls out of it and into a vending machine in the break room that drops candy on his head because he whacked it. lois is laughing so hard she can’t breathe but the joke is on her, he did that on purpose. he planned that gag for days. she is laughing with him, not at him. who is the real winner here. score one for kent.
at least once he has nearly given lois an aneurysm because his glasses broke and he decided the best way to deal with this was to go full mr magoo. constantly barely avoiding catastrophe. lois keeps having to try to rescue him so he has to plan things so she won’t get hurt. nonetheless he enjoys the change of pace. the next day at work he listens to her regale the office with tales of how clark nearly fucking died like fifty goddamn times when she was walking him home. he feels like he did a good deed giving her a fun story to tell at parties. after lois finds out he is superman there is hell to pay.
But have you considered: Thorin might be nearsighted?
Case in point:
Exhibit 2
“It cannot be.”aka Doesn’t actually recognize Azog until he starts talking…
This needs no explanation:
*BOOM*
Exhibit 3:
Not subtitled, but Thorin shouts for Kili when actually Fili is the one who was almost crushed >.<
Exhibit 4
Not pictured because I couldn’t find a gif, but Thorin prompting Balin to lead them out of Rivendell because he “can see knows these paths”
Exhibit 5
Cut off Azog’s arm, was probably aiming for something slightly more fatal, couldn’t tell he was alive when dragged back inside Moria…
Exhibit 6
WHERE’S BILBO?
(”I have no idea because I can’t see for shit.”)
Conclusion:
Since wearing glass in front of your eyes is slightly more of a liability for a fighter than people’s faces being slightly blurry, I’m just gonna throw this out there as a possible explanation for fandom to run with 😉
Ok but I think this is my favorite post of mine that’s done well because
1) it give a humorous explanation for Thorin’s random moments of fail that’s cracky and funny
2) it actually kinda makes sense and it gives Thorin a minor (or not so minor for his life and world) disability that he works around and actually kinda explains said moments of fail realistically and honestly guys the more I think about it and replay the movies in my head the fewer contradictions I can find for this headcanon???
There is a fanfic in here somewhere
Convincing arguments!
Thorin has suddenly become more human and more pleasant (short-sighted person speaking here)
You are not wrong OP, Thorin IS nearsighted. In the book, it was even canon:
“How far away do you think it is?” asked Thorin, for by now they knew Bilbo had the sharpest eyes among them. “Not far at all. I shouldn’t think above twelve yards.” “Twelve yards! I should have thought it was thirty at least, but my eyes don’t see as well as they used a hundred years ago-” (From the chapter, ‘Flies and Spiders’
of The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien
)
Thorin isn’t just slightly nearsighted either, he thought a large object at across-the-street distance was three-quarters of the length of a football field away. By modern standards he would be legally, coke-bottle-glasses-or-we-don’t-let-you-drive, blind.
In the movie Thorin’s nearsightedness is never actually stated, but I love the clever ways in which they worked it into the acting (as avelera highlighted very well), and also into the costume and set design (implying that Dwarves tend to be nearsighted in general): Dwarven ornamentation is always three-dimensional, be it stamped leather, cut runes, thickly-embroidered brocade, or cast-metal beads. There are no purely painted or smooth-inlaid designs anywhere that would require sight, let alone 20/20 vision.
Dwarven cities too, are violently three-dimensional and ornamented with a lot of straight-lined geometry and gigantic statues. Perhaps most telling of all, the terrifyingly high stone bridges found in both Erebor AND Moria are treated as perfectly ordinary sidewalks… which would make sense for a race that couldn’t even SEE the ground below.
As for Thorin’s precision-jump in the forges…
Brass ones. Solid fucking brass ones.
When I talk my glasses off, the last two images look identical to me… just saying, I relate
What I love about this too is that you CAN’T tell me that the dwarrow didn’t invent the use of glass for lenses. Like, you CAN’T.
Not only are they incredibly necessary for detail work on very, very fine gem work, glasses are really freaking necessary for interacting with the world outside the mountain if you’re as fucking blind as Thorin is
Which brings up the point- why doesn’t Thorin wear glasses?
There are two theories I can think of right off the bat. The first is that Thorin doesn’t wear them because they don’t look “kingly,” which, while absolutely hysterical, I don’t think is likely to be true.
No, what I’m willing to bet is that glasses are too expensive to create and maintain for a people in exile, and if his people are going without you can be damn sure that Thorin will be right there with them.
My theory @weresehlat is actually that glasses during any kind of sword fight would be a huge liability. Having GLASS in front of your eyes just waiting for your opponent to shatter and blind you would be super dangerous, much better to just take the blurriness (in a hand-to-hand fight you don’t need that much precision vision anyway).
(Holy shit I just realized that’s why Thorin misses Thranduil’s white deer by like a MILE when he shoots at it!)
The other alternative could simply be: Thorin doesn’t know.
See, across all the reblogs of this post I’ve seen SO MANY people mistake nearsighted and farsighted. I’m saying specifically that Thorin is nearsighted, he CAN see things that are near to him, he CAN’T see things that are far away.
I absolutely believe dwarves have figured out lenses for close-up work like jewel-cutting or even just for reading, after all Balin has reading glasses, we see them in the film. Farsightedness (not being able to read close-up) is a product of the eye muscles growing tired over time from constantly focusing in and out. It would be very likely that people who do fine detailed work would go farsighted very quickly.
However, going back to Thorin complimenting Bilbo on his “keen eyes”, Thorin may genuinely believe that Bilbo has unusually sharp, almost elvish eyes, and not realize that Bilbo is just a normal 20/20 and that Thorin nearly blind as a bat. As someone who was nearsighted, the first time you put on corrective lenses is a revelation (THE TREES HAVE LEAVES!) but until that point you don’t know that you have a problem. My theory is that Thorin may genuinely not know that his vision sucks, and reading glasses are actually just easier to make than distance-glasses, he may not ever find out. Or he knows and just takes the hit to vision because having Azog headbutt him in the face while he’s wearing them would end very poorly for him 😛
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6) Tolkien’s hero was average, and needed help, and failed.
This is the place where most fantasy authors, who love to simultaneously call themselves Tolkien’s heirs and blame him for a lot of what’s wrong with modern fantasy, err the worst. It’s hard to look at Frodo and see him as someone extra-special. The hints in the books that a higher power did choose him are so quiet as to be unnoticeable. And he wouldn’t have made it as far as he did without his companions. And he doesn’t keep from falling into temptation.
A lot of modern fantasy heroes are completely opposite from this. They start out extraordinary, and they stay that way. Other characters are there to train them, or be shallow antagonists and love interests and worshippers, not actually help them. And they don’t fail. (Damn it, I want to see more corrupted fantasy heroes.) It’s not fair to blame Tolkien for the disease that fantasy writers have inflicted on themselves. […]
Fantasy could use more ordinary people who are afraid and don’t know what the hell they’re doing, but volunteer for the Quest anyway.
It’s misinterpretation of Tolkien that’s the problem, not Tolkien himself.
The whole point of The Lord Of The Rings… like, the WHOLE POINT… is that it is ultimately the hobbits who save the world. The small, vulnerable, ordinary people who aren’t great warriors or heroes.
Specifically, Sam. Sam saves the world. All of it. The ultimate success of the great quest is 100% due to a fat little gardener who likes to cook and never wanted to go on an adventure but who did it because he wasn’t going to let his beloved Frodo go off alone. Frodo is the only one truly able to handle the ring long enough to get it into Mordor – and it nearly kills him and permanently emotionally damages him – but Sam is the one who takes care of Frodo that whole time. Who makes him eat. Who finds him water. Who watches over him while he sleeps.
Sam is the one who fights off Shelob.
Sam is the one who takes the Ring when he thinks Frodo is dead.
Sam is the one who strolls into Orc Central and saves Frodo by sheer determination and killing any orc who crosses him. (SAM THE GARDENER GOES AND KILLS AN ACTUAL ORC TO GET FRODO SOME CLOTHES LET’S JUST THINK ABOUT THAT). And then Sam just takes off the Ring and gives it back which is supposed to be freaking impossible and he barely even hesitates.
Sam literally carries Frodo on the last leg of the journey. On his back. He’s half-starved, dying slowly of dehydration, but he carries Frodo up the goddamn mountain and Gollum may get credit for accidentally destroying the ring but Sam was the one who got them all there.
Sam saved the world.
And let’s not forget Pippin and Merry, who get damselled out of the story (the orcs have carried them off! We must make a Heroic Run To Save Them!) and then rescue themselves, recruit the Terrifying Ancient Powers through being genuinely nice and sincere, and overthrow Saruman before the ‘real’ heroes even get there.
Let’s not forget Pippin single-handedly saving what’s left of Gondor – and Faramir – by understanding that there is a time for obeying orders and a time for realizing that the boss is bugfuck nuts and we need to get help right now.
Let’s not forget Merry sticking his sword into the terrifying, profoundly evil horror that has chased him all over his world because his friend is fighting it and he’s gonna help, dammit and that’s how the most powerful Ringwraith goes down to a suicidally depressed woman and a scared little hobbit.
Everything the others do, the kings and princes and great heroes and all? They buy time. They distract the bad guys. They keep the armies occupied. That is what kings and great leaders are for – they do the big picture stuff.
But it is ultimately the hobbits who bring down every villain. Every one. And I believe that that is 100% on purpose. Tolkien was a soldier in WWI. His son fought in WWII. (And a lot of The Lord Of The Rings was written in letters to him while he did it.)
And hey, look, The Lord Of The Rings is about ordinary people – farmers, scholars, and so on – who get pulled into a war not of their making but who have to fight not only because their own home is in danger but so is everyone’s. And they’re small and scared but they do the best they can for as long as they can and that is what actually saves the world. Not great heroes and pre-destined kings. Ordinary people, doing extraordinary things because they want the world to be safe for ordinary people, the ones they know and the ones they don’t.
Ordinary people matter. They can save the world without being great heroes or kings or whatever. And that is really important and I get so upset when people miss that because Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli and Gandalf and all the others are great characters and all but they are ultimately a hobbit delivery system.
It is ordinary people doing their best who really change the world, and continue doing so after the war is over because they have to go home and rebuild and they do.
If nothing else, I have to reblog this for the phrase “hobbit delivery system.” So accurate it hurts.
What I love too is how even the foretold king and the assorted great heroes themselves all come to recognize that their main (and by the end, only) role is to distract Sauron. To the point that by the end they’re all gathered up before the black gates of Mordor in order to keep his attention focused on them, with only the hope – not the certainty – that they can buy Frodo whatever remaining time he needs, if he’s even still alive.
One thing the movies left out but has always been such a key part of the books for me was how when the hobbits returned home, they found that home had been changed too.
The war touched everywhere. Even with all they did in far-off lands to protect the Shire, the Shire had still been damaged, both property and lives destroyed, and it wasn’t an easy or simplistically happy homecoming. They had to fight yet another battle (granted a much smaller one) to save their neighbours, and then spent years in rebuilding.
What? How does this even make sense? Seriously, what kind of harassment can a 13 year old inflict on an ADULT on a BLOGGING PLATFORM that even remotely is like this? I’m legit curious, as an adult, what can a kid do that is this upsetting on this crappy website?
Okay, I’m just going to assume you’re actually asking for information, and answer that.
Suicide-baiting.
Telling dozens to hundreds of people that the adult is a “pedophile”, or “rapist”, or whatever else.
Harassing messages.
Harassing messages to their friends.
Malicious gossip in general.
(Also, keep in mind: 17 years and 364 days is still a minor too.)
I mean, seriously. Imagine that you’re an adult CSA survivor who’s still in heavy therapy and suicidal a couple days a month minimum, and then for two months straight every single day you see people telling other people that you’re “a pedophile” because you disagreed with them about something, once. Plus multiple death threats, occasional rape threats, and suicide-baiting every fucking day.
You seriously think that wouldn’t be upsetting? I promise you, most of the CSA survivors I know get pretty upset at just one completely inaccurate accusation of pedophilia, and I’ve seen people get dozens-to-hundreds.
I’ve seen teenagers wait until someone just got out of the hospital after being hospitalized for becoming intensely suicidal due to a bad medication side-effect to actively call for other people to “send hate to” that user, and then startt suicide-baiting them.
I’ve seen teenagers accuse rape victims of being rapists, CSA survivors of being pedophiles, and so on. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes because they just don’t fucking care whether it’s true or not, they just want to hurt someone and don’t care how.
I’ve had a friend hospitalized by this shit. Like, they were in a psych ward for two or three weeks. Awesome person, doing school stuff to become a social worker so they can make life better for trans people with mental illnesses who would like to have people get their fucking pronouns right in therapy or psych care or something. Super cool person. What do “minors” do? Harass them. I don’t even think it was for anything they specifically did, just because they happened to interact with someone the kids were mad at.
So, what kind of harassment can a 13-year-old inflict on an adult? The same kind anyone else can, which is constant emotional abuse, both direct and indirect. Which is pretty effective on nearly everybody.
