Tom Bombadil

Icalasari

I never found him irritating or out of place, so stumbling upon this analysis of why he's in the trilogy was great

ClockworkUniverse

I...don't have time to read that, nor do I want to read it on such a horrid background, but I'm pretty sure Tolkien agreed that he was kind of out-of-place, and mostly just included him for fun.

Tre

...is it sad that the mention of Tom Bombadil didn't bring Lord of the Rings to my mind but did make me think of My Immortal?

Icalasari

^^ Well, the short form of it basically is that Tom is a Valar - specifically Aule, the Maker



^ Huh?

ClockworkUniverse

Oh. Neat.

Alkthash

That may be but being somebody who is big and important to the setting isn't the same as being somebody who is big and important to the story.

DYRE

^ Huh?

In legendary Harry Potter fanfic My Immortal, Tom Riddle's name is somehow misspelled as "Tom Bombadil" at one point.

Alkthash

Like say you want to tell a noir detective story set in New York. Obviously in that story the important people are take [strike]halfboiled[/strike] hardboiled detective and the criminals and police and other people they bounce off through the plot. Now zoom out to the setting, where folks like the current president of the USA or past ones like George Washington are important. But for the story the don't really matter. So there is now real reason to include them-



Yeah I'm having to much fun picturing a noir story that breaks up the plot off the rails violently when the detective goes to an informant, only for the informant to turn out to be a singing, dancing and possibly drunk George Washington

ClockworkUniverse

I would totally read that.

Kraken

I love Tom Bombadil.



When he shows up it's all like; "Hey, let's put off your immensely dangerous and important quest for a bit, why don't you get naked and have dinner with me and my wife, did I tell you guys I wrote a song years ago about how we met?"



He's like the classical portrayals of Pan, only hobbit-ish.