06-03-2016, 12:20 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Helmouth, The Netherlands
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
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Cold-Blooded creatures? |
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06-03-2016, 04:55 AM | #12 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
I agree with those that say hobbits being overweight and apparently gluttonous is a result of their sedentary lifestyle with plenty of available food. Every town has a butcher, too, by all accounts, so they have cattle and pigs for draft and eating, no doubt (although the Nelwyns in Willow were not specifically hobbits, they're the same basic idea, and the title character there used pigs to pull his plow). I wouldn't put it past hobbits to have four-field crop rotation, either.
The books say "six meals a day, when they could get it." That last phrase is key: "when they could get it." They're not required to be constantly eating. Pippin, being the son of a very wealthy hobbit himself - Frodo, Merry, and Pippin were all Wealthy if not Very Wealthy or even Filthy Rich, by hobbit standards - and heir to the only hereditary title inside the Shire (the Thane) is used to having many meals. "Breakfast, second breakfast, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and second dinner (supper)" make sense for the six meals; "elevenses" was added in the movies to make it seem like they had a meal every two hours in the average day: breakfast at seven, second breakfast at nine, elevenses at eleven, luncheon at one, afternoon tea at three, dinner at five, supper at seven. I wouldn't put it past such a well-to-do hobbit family to have a separate "dessert" at nine in the evening, either, before going to bed, making it eight distinct meals. As for Sam, he appears to be stronger than the typical hobbit, though we don't see it until they hit Mordor. He carried Frodo for several days across the plains to Mount Doom, IIRC. Then again, he was a hobbit who was a field hand/hireling, for the most part, earning his living from Bilbo and later Frodo, so he was probably stronger due to working out more. In that sense, the live-action movie depiction can be believed to if we take him being larger as being more muscle than fat.
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06-03-2016, 10:14 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
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As for Brandybucks, there are hints that they are weirdly martial for Hobbits even more then Tooks. Merry notes offhand that about chopping down evil trees some years earlier. And when the Nazgul came for Fatty Bolger they had a regular system for sounding an alarm almost as if they were used to raids. I wonder if a Brandybuck aristocrat would be as chubby as all that; he might well make up for gluttony by keeping in shape artificially.
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06-03-2016, 11:27 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
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I'm not so sure "client" is the right word for the Gaffer, though it fits from a certain point of view. I got the feeling that the Gaffer had worked Bilbo's farmland as a youth in exchange for rent, and "retired" to being Bilbo's gardener, which he passed on to Sam. The Gamgees always seemed more "blue collar" than most of the other hobbits shown; Status -1 (assuming Maggot and Cotton to be Status 0, owning their farms instead of working others' lands) rather than the Status 1 or Status 2 of the Big Name Families ("Bagginses and Boffins; Tooks and Brandybucks; Grubbs, Chubbs, Hornblowers, Bolgers, and Proudfoots!" "ProudFEET!"). Bilbo and Frodo (and later the Sackville-Bagginses) were certainly his landlords, but "client" seems wrong, impersonal. Frodo felt personally responsible for the Gaffer being turned out by the SBs, which makes it a bit more personal than just "client".
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"Life ... is an Oreo cookie." - J'onn J'onzz, 1991 "But mom, I don't wanna go back in the dungeon!" The GURPS Marvel Universe Reboot Project A-G, H-R, and S-Z, and its not-a-wiki-really web adaptation. Ranoc, a Muskets-and-Magery Renaissance Fantasy Setting |
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06-03-2016, 11:49 AM | #15 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
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He's almost certainly better off than similar hobbits of his Wealth, simply because his Patron (past and present) is a particularly nice hobbit. Quote:
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06-03-2016, 12:26 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jan 2009
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
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On the original topic, though, I guess one way to look at it: Do we get any impression of whether hobbits are more or less able to carry a comparable number of days of rations, compared to larger folk? They presumably are not, in general, as strong as beings twice their height (though I'd argue for Samwise having a bit of Lifting ST, in both book & film he notably overpacks) - if they need to (as opposed to wanting to) consume as many calories per day as Aragorn or Boromir, then presumably they have to restock twice as often. If they're able to go just as long without stopping for more food, then either they are all much stronger than they look (stronger, as distinct from tougher, which they definitely are), or they're eating less food per day (regardless of however many times they stop to eat it). |
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06-03-2016, 01:44 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
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06-03-2016, 01:48 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
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06-03-2016, 01:53 PM | #19 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
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If you're using the lizard-like kobold instead of the furry ones from earlier additions, and you opt to have them be cold-blooded. I personally tend to interpret dragons as being more "primordial mammalian" (the earliest milk-producers were scaled) than reptilian, and associate them more with late dinosaurs than with proper reptiles - in either case, this lends itself to being warm-blooded. As the scaly kobolds are meant to be related to dragons, I'd be inclined to have them be warm-blooded as well. Quote:
Last edited by Varyon; 06-03-2016 at 02:00 PM. |
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06-03-2016, 03:38 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Hobbits: Hungry Quirk, or Human-Sized Appetite?
In Fellowship, the hobbits are in fact shows foraging, getting excited over tasty edible mushrooms in the movie. I don't remember if that's also in the books, but they're clearly keeping an eye out - and experienced. Wild mushrooms aren't things you just casually pick because you were hungry - or at least, if you do that, you won't live long enough to be hungry.
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