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I'm having all kinds of Gimli feelings all of a sudden, and I've decided that you all have to suffer through me jabbering about them. (And if you're at all moved to chat about them, I would love that.)
The feelings started because of an ongoing sense I've had in the personal little Tolkien 'verse/series of characterizations I write: this knowledge, fueled by nothing in particular, that Gimli and his best friends before LOTR start drifting apart shortly after he returns home from his quest. I know it's because he's become a different person than he used to be: more focused, more open-minded, a little wiser, and with broader priorities than he used to have. Oh, and an elf-lover, of course.
I'm not the first person to feel this way, obviously-- this wonderful fic does an excellent job of exploring the concept (and it has architect Gimli, a personal favorite of mine)-- but it made me start thinking: if the reason for the distance is that Gimli has changed, what was he like before?
I didn't have the following in mind when I wrote my personal Gimli (though I suppose it still applies), so I'm not necessarily talking about him specifically, but I did want to throw it out there anyway. Fandom Gimli has come to be almost defiantly perfect, as a response to the horrible way he was butchered in the movies: intelligent, talented, wise, serious, diplomatic, etc. And while I certainly agree about his general magnificence, I started to wonder: in contrast to the idea, referenced in this Tumblr post, that he was always that way-- what if pre-quest Gimli was a bit of a disaster?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he isn't still talented and intelligent and amazing-- but what if he was purposeless? We know he's well past a hundred, probably older than most dwarves are when they find their partner and/or their passion-- but what if Gimli has spent all these years just kind of floating? And his family despairs of him, because he has all this talent and so much potential that's just going to waste, but he hasn't found anything to direct it at?
Maybe he's a bit of a party boy-- oh, he's reliable and you know you can count on him in a pinch, but he spends his evenings out with friends instead of working on projects or getting his life together. He's got a brilliant mind that could do great things, but he hasn't made any effort to pursue them, and instead just volunteers for every mission or journey that will take him away from home. His parents ask him when he's going to give them grandchildren, but he prefers to sleep around and has shown no interest in settling down with anyone in particular.
He takes things seriously, of course-- the state of the world, the threat of Sauron-- but he won't do the same thing with his own life, and it drives his parents to distraction.
He insists on coming along to Rivendell even as his parents ask hopefully if he's quite sure he doesn't have anything going on here that he'd rather stay for? And when he's chosen for the Fellowship, Gloin is proud, of course-- but he can't help fearing that this is just another of Gimli's tactics to procrastinate on starting his own life. And he can't help hoping that maybe this journey will awaken something in Gimli, that the exposure to new things will give him a sense of purpose, some kind of path. Maybe it's destiny, he thinks. Or something.
He's more right than he knows.
The feelings started because of an ongoing sense I've had in the personal little Tolkien 'verse/series of characterizations I write: this knowledge, fueled by nothing in particular, that Gimli and his best friends before LOTR start drifting apart shortly after he returns home from his quest. I know it's because he's become a different person than he used to be: more focused, more open-minded, a little wiser, and with broader priorities than he used to have. Oh, and an elf-lover, of course.
I'm not the first person to feel this way, obviously-- this wonderful fic does an excellent job of exploring the concept (and it has architect Gimli, a personal favorite of mine)-- but it made me start thinking: if the reason for the distance is that Gimli has changed, what was he like before?
I didn't have the following in mind when I wrote my personal Gimli (though I suppose it still applies), so I'm not necessarily talking about him specifically, but I did want to throw it out there anyway. Fandom Gimli has come to be almost defiantly perfect, as a response to the horrible way he was butchered in the movies: intelligent, talented, wise, serious, diplomatic, etc. And while I certainly agree about his general magnificence, I started to wonder: in contrast to the idea, referenced in this Tumblr post, that he was always that way-- what if pre-quest Gimli was a bit of a disaster?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he isn't still talented and intelligent and amazing-- but what if he was purposeless? We know he's well past a hundred, probably older than most dwarves are when they find their partner and/or their passion-- but what if Gimli has spent all these years just kind of floating? And his family despairs of him, because he has all this talent and so much potential that's just going to waste, but he hasn't found anything to direct it at?
Maybe he's a bit of a party boy-- oh, he's reliable and you know you can count on him in a pinch, but he spends his evenings out with friends instead of working on projects or getting his life together. He's got a brilliant mind that could do great things, but he hasn't made any effort to pursue them, and instead just volunteers for every mission or journey that will take him away from home. His parents ask him when he's going to give them grandchildren, but he prefers to sleep around and has shown no interest in settling down with anyone in particular.
He takes things seriously, of course-- the state of the world, the threat of Sauron-- but he won't do the same thing with his own life, and it drives his parents to distraction.
He insists on coming along to Rivendell even as his parents ask hopefully if he's quite sure he doesn't have anything going on here that he'd rather stay for? And when he's chosen for the Fellowship, Gloin is proud, of course-- but he can't help fearing that this is just another of Gimli's tactics to procrastinate on starting his own life. And he can't help hoping that maybe this journey will awaken something in Gimli, that the exposure to new things will give him a sense of purpose, some kind of path. Maybe it's destiny, he thinks. Or something.
He's more right than he knows.
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Can I just say I want to adopt this Gimli-as-a-talented-disaster hc like yesterday? Because it's perfect and gives so, so many possibilities.
Also personally, I headcanon Gimli as having siblings (usually a sister, bc of the way Tolkien wrote the Durin family tree), and it immediately struck me how your headcanon might produce different family dynamics if Gimli was his parents' firstborn vs. if he was the younger sib.
Because you might be more willing to forgive some aimless drifting from offspring #2 than offspring #1 (or the opposite, if #1 is some sort of overachiever...) -- or the aimless drifting might develop as a counter-reaction to too many iterations of "you're older than her; you should be setting a good example".
And now I'm imagining Gimli's parents having this mixed bag of emotions about his post-WR shenanigans; like, they're happy he's finally doing something meaningful with his life, but also a little concerned that he might be... sort of... overdoing it a bit. (But overdoing things is a grand old Durin tradition, is it not? XD)
... ok time to get back to work, I guess.
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The seeds of this hc were planted during a discussion Urbanspaceman and I had, long after the fact, about the sister we'd written for Gimli in Lovesick Blues. (She appears again in the draft of another story that I still hold out hope will be finished one day, but it might not be for a long long long time.) We joked that she'd married someone very opposite from Gimli-- a dwarf of simple comforts and commitments-- and we started thinking: well, maybe he wasn't all that unlike Gimli pre-Quest. Or maybe Gimli has always been a little strange, and she was drawn to someone very steady in contrast.
We also realized we'd been headcanoning the sister differently: US had been picturing her younger; I had imagined older - but I think it can work either way. As the younger sibling it makes sense for Gimli to have been a bit odd if his sister was always pretty perfect and playing everything by the rules-- that's certainly how I imagine Legolas and Laerwen in my own stuff, though I personally write Gimli as an only child. But I also think-- you know how the older child can be something of a disappointment, and the parents kind of try to "start over" with the younger sibling? That might be overstating things a bit, but it's also totally possible for Gimli to have gone off the rails and then his sister follow the opposite of his example. I've known more than one family where that's the case.
Urbanspaceman and I didn't talk about this in this much depth, but yesterday I found myself thinking about it again for no reason, and took Gimli's "strangeness" to the next level. I think he and Legolas were probably similar in that way, pre-war, but I think for Legolas it was more driven by necessity. He was kind of born into a siege state, and has been at war pretty much his whole life-- there wasn't much of an option, other than military. So I think after the Ring War, he found a lot of friends who were happy to go to Gondor and Ithilien with him-- to see other places, to focus on rebuilding rather than destruction, to find a purpose for their life. Growing up in Mirkwood can't have been easy, and I bet Legolas had a lot of kindred spirits.
But for Gimli? I'm having ALL THESE FEELINGS about what it must have been like for him going back. His family seeing him finally taking some responsibility and showing some ambition-- but in a completely different direction than they always imagined. He comes back a hero known throughout Gondor and Rohan, and says "hey, my new best friend is the King of Gondor and I'm gonna go rebuild his city! And my other new best friend is the King of Rohan, and I'm gonna go start a colony in some caves in his land!" Which is-- great, Gimli, but not quite what we imagined, and are you sure-- "Oh, and this is my husband, Legolas. He's an elf, and he's gonna go start his own new settlement in Gondor!"
And let's say maybe Gimli had a big crowd of friends he always liked to go out drinking with, who suddenly don't know how to relate to him now that he's gotten so serious. And he had a couple of recurring "friends with benefits" who have been looking forward to his return, but now he gently tells them that he's very monogamously married, so it's been nice, but no thanks. And-- and--
I'm sorry I keep rambling about this. It's something I'd quite like to fic about, but I already have one set of characterizations to worry about, and I think I'm too burned out to start on another one. So I have to jabber forever instead. Thank you so much for responding; I'm so happy the thought makes you happy too!!