I don’t know about you but I hate when Hobbit fics forget there’s a reason the Company was so loyal to Thorin and just think because he has flaws he’s nothing but a bumbling idiot who they just put up with, even though he was their leader in exile and the toughest time of their lives.

Yes, I agree with this completely.

idk how you feel but there’s a hugely popular meta post about thorin and i agree he’s a flawed character (but not the only one in the hobbit even though the story only made his matter) but i don’t see traits like greed or selfishness as part of that. am i wrong? i feel like disagreeing would get people calling me dumb, i just don’t agree with those particular flaws or takes.

God no. Go right ahead and say that. I don’t agree with them, either.

The magical mental illness is right, which is why the ending is so unfair and I just ignore it. Because talk about unfortunate implications.

Fuckin’ right.

Upon rewatching the Hobbit movies and remembering old meta I got the feeling that “greedy” is an informed attribute to Thorin, something I think canon wants me to believe is just part of his base personality, but I still don’t see it.

Yeah, neither do I. Brusque, absolutely, but he’s not greedy. His arc at the end of DoS and through BotFA is pretty clearly a downward spiral into magical mental illness. (Damn Smaug.)

I reread the Hobbit and I need to rant because the antisemitic undertones are so obvious to me and the story is falls apart if you don’t agree with it. I can’t deal with posts saying Tolkien hated the rich just because he made his Dwarves a representation of greed when the end has Bilbo going home richer than before. How is this anti-rich? I wish ppl would challenge this more because ppl use Jews to make some anti-greed message all the time and everyone praises it while rich gentiles are fine.

You know, you’re not the first person who’s said this. Like them, you are not wrong.

Agree, I think RA did want Thorin to be a character people could empathize with, but the entire narrative would have to be changed. I’m confused by your stance, is the character good, or because most of the fandom still sees him defined by gold, there’s no salvaging it?

Here’s the thing.

I have a hard time believing that Thorin himself, of his own volition, actually did anything wrong. He was cursed – by hereditary severe mental illness, a dragon, or both (I lean towards both). Smaug was the causative agent of the war and Smaug fucked with Thorin’s head, much more explicitly in the movie. I see Thorin as an inherently good person who was thrust into horrific circumstances, not a raging, gold-sick Dwarf who split his time between greedily counting his money and playing the berserker.

The Hobbit movies didn’t do enough to rid the antisemitic theme of the book. When the majority of humor about the character of Thorin Oakenshield is about how he’s a dick and obsessed with gold, then it’s the common opinion, so it did not do enough. I am tired of Jewish coded obsessed-with-riches fantasy characters.

Yeah, this. (But if they’re going to dick around with Jewish-coded fantasy characters, they should at least cast Jewish people. Non-white-passing Jewish people.)

If you disagree with how the narrative portrays Th orin you get accused of thinking he’s perfect, no I think he’s still a good character and his flaws do not need to result in death, and I’m with you on not thinking he needs to spend his entire life and afterlife just self-flagellating. I don’t agree with that being the only way to do good after making mistakes, and that he’s the “bad one” in the story. Sry for blowing up yr inbox, yr just the only one I saw who shares my feeling!!

Thanks again, anon! 🙂 Feel free to blow up my inbox anytime.

Ia with your points about the Hobbit movies but I think they were too inconsistent with the gold sickness. i read it that Th orin acts differently under it than the established moments in AUJ, but since most of the fandom sees him as discourse character status instead of good and most jokes about greed, I think that’s the common reading so the movies didn’t do a good enough job with the antisemitic undertones. It’s too ingrained and not enough folks want to think about it. So, conflicted :/

“Discourse character status” is a really good way to put it. Those who hate him see themselves as rightfully excoriating a horrible, greedy, abusive character (he is none of these things) who only got what he deserved (wrong). On the other hand, those who like him see themselves as infallible saints who treat a canonically mentally-ill character as a combination of their pet and a way of saying that they’re not ableist, even if they’re mentally ill themselves. On either side, the only way of “redeeming” Thorin is to have him essentially debase himself on his knees, begging forgiveness from anyone that he directly or indirectly affected through the dragon sickness and curse. Usually this is done through years of brooding and grief. Come on, now.

I completely agree with everything you said.

In the book I don’t you’re supposed to relate to anyone other than Bilbo. I know this will get read the wrong way but I don’t hate Bilbo at all, but from a different perspective I can’t ignore the real world antisemitic tropes loaded on the Dwarves. The movie hasThorin more well rounded and talks about the dragon spell but the character is still more remembered for the gold obsession so when I think of the associations people make with Jewish influenced characters I feel uncomfortable.

Yeah. This, all of this. Which is why I flesh out Thorin as much as I can in fic. 😀