Fight Me: Acquiring canon knowledge of fandoms one is not a part of in order to impress your partner is actually a nerd mating ritual
Last night, I was listening to the Silmarillion audiobook as I cooked dinner. Girlfriend came home from work and naturally slipped in to the rhythm of the kitchen with me, as she often does, for we have been together for years. I offered to turn off the Silm and turn on a true crime podcast—because she is not Tolkien-obsessed but we are both true-crime obsessrd—but she refused, alleging that the book sounded “Interesting enough.” (When I tell you that my partner is not a Tolkien fan, I mean that the only reason she has even opened the trilogy is because of me, and the only reason she has seen the films more than once is because they are what I watch when I am miserable or sick.)
We were partway through the narration of Chapter One when she paused the story to ask me about the lights and the Trees, and her questions wound about so much that I was eventually focused again on the work of my hands as opposed to the expressions of her face, and eventually her questions led me to a place wherein I had to explain how Ages worked, in Aman and Arda both.
But then she got real quiet, and I looked up from chopping potatoes in the silence to see her watching me very seriously, and it seemed very clear that she was hoping to impress me with whatever it was she would say next.
“So,” she finally said, “Lord of the Rings...that happens in the Third Age, right?”
And I swear to all things that are good, I dropped my knife, wiped my hands off on my apron, and then took her face in my hands and kissed her.
It was a Hermione & Ron and the basilisks fangs during the Battle of Hogwarts moment.
Eventually, I pulled away to whisper, “Yes, the quest took place from Fall 3018—more or less—through, arguably, Spring 3019.” She smiled at me guilely—knowing, I am sure, how hopelessly she had me wrapped about her generally Tolkien-ignorant finger—and I pulled away, poured her a spiced toddy, and exclaimed “I LOVE YOU” as I pressed the mug into her hand.
She took it and turned as if to go back to the meat she had been preparing on the sideboard, before asking me slyly over her shoulder, “So, 3019. Does that mean we’re just shy of a millennia of things truly fallling apart?”
I stared at her back and sputtered: “Actually, it’s generally accepted that the myth of Middle-Earth precedes—”
But she had turned back around by then, laughed, pressed a hand to my lips, and told me with a smile, “Baby, I was joking—I know,” and then the Silmarillion was on again, and we cooked in peace.
Later, as I finished pounding the mashed potatoes and slipped them into the oven so they wouldn’t over-cool, she casually offered to listen to Chapter Two with me after dinner, while I knit and she worked on a CAD design, and it would be a lie to say that, in that moment, I did not completely melt.
I am therefore writing this today—the next morning—from a congealed puddle on the floor.
It is just nice to know that when you open your big trap to expound on the virtues of elevenses, to explain how the chasm between elves and dwarves extends to the dawn of time, to come near to tears in describing your love of a particular fictional culture, it’s canon and your headcanon, because it reminds you of *you*...
Well, it is nice to know they are actually listening.
Nerd mating rituals are too endearing for words.
