Lady In Green

The powerhouse of YOUR cell

sorry for what, bud?

Within a year, the statue had sustained so much damage that it was unrecognizable and the lettering unreadable, so eventually the council came and took it down. Also apparently, the person in the Hi-Vis vest didn't even work for the council. They were supposedly just some 'good samaritan' who cleaned it, often before the council even discovered it needed cleaning, so they just let them do it and ignored the problem. They didn't bother putting the statue up again.

A new character with almost but not quite identical stats and appearance comes hurrying up to the party, insisting that you’re the real [name], and the [name] everyone knew was an imposter; when informed that they died just before you arrived, cryptically remark that this isn’t the first time they’ve pulled that trick  

A character who nobody recognises speaks up from the party’s midst, acting like they expect to be familiar to the party; if questioned, claim that you’re the deceased character’s personal assistant, and that you’ve been here the entire time, then digress into a rant about how nobody every notices the help  

Following the next encounter, the party discovers a large, ornate treasure chest, which proves to contain nothing but your character, bound and gagged; once released, any complaint regarding the lack of gold and jewels should naturally be met with dramatic indignation at the implication that you’re not treasure enough  

The target the party has been sent to slay unexpectedly greets them warmly, explaining there’s been an awful misunderstanding: you’re not the true master of the dungeon, you’ve just been mistaken for the prophesied Lord of Evil, and you’d very much like to make your exit before the monsters figure it out  

There’s a mayor. We don’t know what his jurisdiction is. Is he the mayor in Hobbiton? Buckland? Over-the-Water? The Tooks, Brandybucks, and Bagginses are stupidly rich and everyone kinda looks to them as community leaders, but they don’t actually make laws.

Over in Bree the response to there being a king in Gondor again (because that whole area is technically part of Gondor) is, “that’s neat. You reckon he’s gonna fix the roads? The potholes around here are awful, and the bandits are way out of hand.” But in the Shire no one could care less.

If you read British period drama though (Austen, Dickens, Eliot et al), this is very familiar. Mr. Darcy is bizarrely rich but has no title, and Pemberly is clearly a local powerhouse. The people in the nearby town all recognize this. But Darcy isn’t a magistrate or anything. He doesn’t even have a seat in the House of Lords, although his Aunt is a Lady, so his Uncle, Lord de Bourghe might have?

There’s a King whom everyone knows they kind of owe allegiance to, but that only seems to be super important in situations like you get in Lorna Doone, when the Scottish monarchy takes it into their heads to invade (again). And a Parliament who mostly seem to be ignored, except in situations like Middlemarch where redistricting is a major plot point.

The Mayor is the Mayor specifically of Hobbitton and is an elected position with a seven year term. Mayoral duties seem to consist primarily in “presiding at banquets”, but presumably if there’s any actual city administration to do, that would be the Mayor’s job as well. Frodo in his brief stint as Mayor defunded the police.

So the police are interesting because you’ve got two sorts of groups? The Bounders were border guards, so their jurisdiction presumably covers the whole Shire. And then the Shirrifs I believe were the local Hobbiton constabulary before Lotho co-opted/expanded them into his own private army. If I am recalling correctly, their authority/presence really only begins oncr they cross the Water into Hobbiton proper.

The Master of Buckland is both the head of the Brandybuck family and a political position. Buckland was established/colonized by the Brandybucks - they’re not just extremely rich, they literally carved out their own little sociopolitical domain arguably external to the Shire itself. So again, the Master of Buckland is not just a very rich person with a big house and lots of family members, he’s the governor of a semi-sovereign state. This is demonstrably different from the Bagginses, who, among other things, don’t all live together. But this is part of why Lotho’s takeover is anomalous. He’s just a Rich Guy, not a political authority.

But we are given a third political authority, who is: the Thain of the Shire. Nominally, at least, the Shire as a whole is ruled by a Thain. (Does the Thain have authority over Buckland? I am sure this is something Merry and Pippin have different opinions about). And we know this is a Thing because, re: Lotho, there’s a line to the effect that if anyone is making a power grab it should be “the right Thain of the Shire, and not some upstart.”

Paladin Took is not just a Rich Guy (as Lotho is), he is not just the head of the Tooks and the leader/ruler of Great Smials, he is the Thain of the Shire, the closest/only example of Hobbit nobility as such. I mean, nobody cares per se, but that’s just what Hobbits are like.

So Pippin is Ernil i Perrianath not because he’s some rich kid/landed gentry who wandered into a high fantasy setting by mistake (though he is also that), he’s literally the Prince of the Halflings because he is the heir to the Thain of the Shire. Pippin is 100% technically a prince, it’s just that absolutely no one cares.

If I had to speculate wildly, I would say this all comes down to Bandobras. The Thainship was probably established as a way to recognize the Bullroarer’s heroism repelling the goblin invasion during the Long Winter. That’s why it’s passed along the Took line. When you knock off a rival king’s head (RIP Golfimbul) you get to be king now, it’s only fair. And of course for Tolkien kingship means service and being a protector of your people, so that’s what the Thain of the Shire is for. It just doesn’t come up much, and so the Thain typically stays in his own lane. The Bounders were probably established at the same time and for the same purpose. Why do you employ people to walk around the borders of your country and drink free beer? To see if wolves are invading across the frozen rivers again. The Bounders probably report to the Thain in the event that there’s anything to report. There just never is.

The only real official in the Shire at this date was the Mayor of Michel Delving (or of the Shire), who was elected every seven years at the Free Fair on the White Downs at the Lithe, that is at Midsummer.

Tolkien, J. R. R.. The Fellowship of the Ring: The Lord of the Rings, Part 1 (p. 13). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

2) The Shirriffs were the police force for the whole Shire. However they were very limited in number until Lotho expanded their ranks:

The Shirriffs was the name that the Hobbits gave to their police, or the nearest equivalent that they possessed. They had, of course, no uniforms (such things being quite unknown), only a feather in their caps; and they were in practice rather haywards than policemen, more concerned with the strayings of beasts than of people. There were in all the Shire only twelve of them, three in each Farthing, for Inside Work.

Tolkien, J. R. R.. The Fellowship of the Ring: The Lord of the Rings, Part 1 (p. 13). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

3) The Thainship has nothing to do with Bandobras. The office was established after the last king responsible for the Shire fell and the first Thain was Bucca of the Marish, the founder of what would become the Brandybuck family. The office of Thain was given to the Tooks after Bucca’s descendants the Oldbucks left the Shire to found Buckland, centuries before Bandobras was born. (Bandobras was also never the Thain - he was the younger of two brothers.)

ETA: OH just for anyone curious here’s the Citation on Frodo de-funding the police:

The only thing that (Frodo) did as Deputy Mayor was to reduce the Shirriffs to their proper functions and numbers.

What name to call Aragorn

What name to call Gandalf

What to call their meals. Boromir thinks, if it is eaten at dinnertime, regardless of whether it is the first meal of the day or not, then it is dinner. Sam thinks it isn't proper to call the first meal of the day dinner. Aragorn suggests they combine the two words but now everyone is fighting over whether it should be called breakfast-dinnner or dinner-breakfast. The fight nearly becomes physical

Whether Legolas or Gimli is winning their daily argument with eachother

If hobbits are regular sized and everyone else is really big, or if everyone else is regular sized and hobbits are small

The same as above except with horses and ponies

If Gimli's beard is real or not. This one started as a joke between Merry and Pippin but then Legolas saw how mad it made Gimli and so continues to bring it up

Inter-hobbit fighting about whether it is called pot-ae-toes, pot-ah-toes, or taters

"Can Legolas really talk to trees, or is he just fucking with us?" Aragorn and Gandalf refuse to weigh in on this

Whether the Ent-draught caused Merry and Pippin to grow or if they just did that on their own. This fight is Pippin vs. Everyone Else

Whether the non-hobbits of the Fellowship would be Tooks, Brandybucks, or Bagginses. This argument is unintelligible to most of them, although Gandalf has the knowledge to be offended when Pippin suggests he would be a Took.

"What would happen if someone ate the ring?"

Fights over whether the elves, the dwarves, or the hobbits tell the story of the reclaiming of Erebor most accurately. Even though Gandalf was there, he just shrugs when anyone asks him

Which variety of pipeweed is the best kind. Merry threatened Gimli to a duel over this one

Frodo:

Sam:

Merry:

Pippin:

Legolas:

Aragorn:

Gimli:

Boromir:

Gandalf:

I’ve missed this (I’ve been taking a Twitter holiday for the last month, for my own mental health), but I can imagine. I’m sorry. 

You can imagine how much fun tube feeding him is right now....

Where do I begin?

- Criticized the Jews for defending themselves against the Holocaust because he insisted that they should have committed public mass suicide in order to “shame” the Germans instead of fighting back. His exact words were, “But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from the cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

- Wrote an open letter to the British people in 1940 telling them to surrender to the Axis even if it mean accepting genocide.

- Was very anti-black. I hope you can stomach reading how he treated black people in South Africa. It’s fucking disgusting.

- Refused his wife life-saving medication (for religious reasons), but those religious reasons all of a sudden no longer applied to him when he was in a similar position.

- Refused to have sex with his wife for the last 38 years of their marriage. He felt that in order to test his commitment to celibacy, he would have beautiful young women (including his own great niece) lie next to him naked through the night. His wife, whom he described as looking like a “meek cow” was no longer desirable enough to be a solid test.

- Believed that Indian women who were raped lost their value as a human.

- During his time as a dissident in South Africa, he discovered that a young male was harassing two of his female followers. He responded by cutting the girls’ hair off to ensure the “sinner’s eye” was “sterilized.” He later boasted about the incident in his writings, pushing the message to all Indians that women should carry responsibility for sexual attacks upon them.

- Argued that fathers could be justified in killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the sake of family and community honor.

- Believed that menstruation was a manifestation of the distortion of a woman’s soul by her sexuality.

- Waged a war against contraceptives, labeling Indian women who used them as whores.

- Held the attitude that women were simply creatures that could bring either pride or shame to the men who own them.

Sources:

Websites:  Women Suffer From Gandhi’s Legacy,  People who most likely chose Gandhi as a historical figure to do a report on and immediately regretted it, On Mahatma Gandhi, his pathetic racism and advancement of segregation of black people by Sentletse Diakanyo, Not All Peaceful: 13 Racist Quotes Gandhi Said About Black People by Nick  Chiles

Europe is currently being burned alive and people still think climate change is a joke. It’s warmer in North Europe than in the middle eastern deserts.

Loki, holding up the newest baby Lion King-style: IT’S!!!!! A WOLF!!!”