Forging The Fellowship Tag~ In Which I Struggle To Count To Nine Successfully

Hello, my dear companions.

I have been tagged for the Forging the Fellowship tag. Of course I could not pass up this opportunity, because it’s based on The Lord of the Rings. How could I possibly say no to The Lord of the Rings? Well, I couldn’t. Many thanks to the illustrious Jem Jones for tagging me!

Basically, I am meant to create my own fellowship by plucking characters from other books and squashing them all together into some semblance of a Ring-destroying-team. I’ll just say up front that nothing I come up with is going to beat the original, but it still sounds like a grand old time.

So, let’s do this.

The Rules:

Include the tag banner in your post
Link back to the creator of the tag ( LITAFLAME.BLOG )
Thank and link back to the person who tagged you
Forge your Fellowship out of BOOK CHARACTERS by answering the given questions!
Tag three bloggers to pass the Ring to. (I think I can manage three…)

The Questions: 

1. [The Ring Bearer]: If you could choose, which of the four races would you be: Elf, Dwarf, Human, or Hobbit?

Hobbit, hands down. I practically am a hobbit anyway (I adore food and peace and quiet, and I am vertically challenged). I admire the four main hobbits in The Lord of the Rings so much, and I aspire to be as awesome as them one day.

So, yeah, I would choose to be a hobbit, even if they aren’t the strongest or the fastest or the most cunning warriors. They always take the cake in the end, and who doesn’t want cake?

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2. [Gandalf the Grey]: A wise/powerful elder/mentor character:

Hm, I think I will go with Minverva McGonagall from the Harry Potter series.

I mean, wise: check

powerful: check

elder/mentor: check

It’s actually kind of a no-brainer.

McGonagall is very strict and has a no-nonsense aura about her. Though her students may not always appreciate this, they have to admit at some point or other that she is actually pretty amazing.

Despite her sometimes severe exterior, she cares a lot about her students and offers much needed guidance and encouragement. She’s also my personal favorite head of Hogwarts.

Definitely leader-of-dangerous-quest material.

3. [Aragorn]: A character with good survival skills:

Lemony Snicket. Oh, you heard that he was dead? Well, you were wrong about that.

This man is great at Hiding, which I think would be very useful on this quest. He is also very good at Evading Bad Guys and Putting Out Fires, which are very good skills to have when trying to stay alive, I think.

His disguise kit would come in real handy on the road to Mordor.

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As a side note, I really just want him and his typewriter along so that he can record our quest with as much accuracy and wit as possible, as well as define words we encounter along the way that I don’t know.

4. [Boromir]: A character who makes mistakes, but has a good heart:

(Okay, so for some reason my very first thought was Rodion Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment… But then I thought ….no. This guy murdered someone with an axe. And wasn’t actually that sorry about, except when he was afraid of getting caught.  I think “good heart” might be stretching it just a tad…)

So.

I’ll go with Marcus Heilbroner from When You Reach Me.

This kid. He may just go up to a random boy and punch him for dumb reasons, but he totally has a heart of gold.

Marcus is kind of an oddball. He loves science and thinking about things that normal people don’t want to bother thinking about. He reads Relativity (you know, by Einstein?) for fun. Like you do.

His social skills are not the best. At all. Which might have something to do with the whole walking-up-to-a-kid-and-hitting-him thing…

But he’s GREAT.

5. [Gimli]: A stubborn character:

Kate Sutton from The Perilous Gard or Puddleglum from The Silver Chair.

I know, I know, I can’t decide. Can I have them both, please?

Kate is determined to figure things out and to keep her own mind. When she is captured by fairies she refuses to budge on her principles or give up any of her mental faculties for the sake of comfort. When everyone is telling her that Christopher is dead, she doesn’t just believe it. She says You idiot and snaps him out of it. Well, kind of. Stubborn is definitely a good word to describe her. In the best way.

And Puddleglum. Ah, Puddleglum. He sticks to his purpose even when it gets tough, and he would rather burn his feet off than get sucked into someone else’s idea of reality. He’s kind of a wet-blanket, but he’s got it where it counts. Best Marshwiggle there is.

6. [Legolas]: A character who is talented:

Ulysses from Flora and Ulysses. He may be a squirrel, but he can fly and write poetry. There’s talent for you.

Ulysses was an ordinary squirrel, until he got sucked up in a vacuum cleaner and became a super-hero squirrel. The only issue here is that if we brought Ulysses, we’d need to bring Flora along as well… (I feel like I’m just slowly accumulating more than nine members for this fellowship…shhhh…)

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7. [Peregrin Took]: A character who at first seems useless, but ends up surprising you:

Neville Longbottom from the Harry Potter series! Not that he ever seemed useless to me, but most of the characters seemed to view him this way until he proved them wrong. And he proved them SO WRONG.

Neville is always made fun of and struggles a lot in school. He starts out super insecure, but underneath it all his heart is full of courage and love and he would do anything for his friends, even from the beginning. It takes everyone WAY too long to figure out how awesome he is, but he more than proves himself time and time again, and finally they start to catch on.

So, yeah, I really want Neville in my fellowship.

8. [Meriadoc Brandybuck]: A character who is small/not very strong, but has great courage:

Despereaux Tilling from The Tale of Despereaux. He is a mouse. Not only that, but he is a very small mouse. Not only that, but he is a very sickly mouse. Great questing material, am I right?

BUT his heart is so big, and that’s what counts the most. He loves light and music and stories. He would face anything, even the deepest dark, to save his princess.

9. [Samwise Gamgee]: A character who is extremely loyal and doesn’t give up:

Do you realize how hard it is to resist the urge to just put down Samwise Gamgee here?

It is very hard.

Um, okay, so I’ll go with William Dobbin from Vanity Fair. Loyalty/not giving up is pretty much his defining trait. If nothing else, Dobbin is loyal…perhaps sometimes a little too loyal.

That, and he can play the flute. What’s a fellowship without a little music?

But also he is in the military, so I think that would be useful for this kind of mission….quest…thing.

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Yeah, Elrond, there are totally just nine of us. Hehe…

Ookay, so we have:

Me (as a hobbit)

Minerva McGonagall (our steadfast leader)

Lemony Snicket (our disguise expert)

Marcus Heilbroner (our scientist)

Kate Sutton or Puddleglum (our reality-check person)

Ulysses and Flora (our super-talented flying, poetry expert and his best friend)

Neville Longbottom (our stouthearted warrior)

Despereaux Tilling (our other stouthearted warrior)

William Dobbin (…our third stouthearted warrior…and also flautist)

…Yeah, we could totally destroy the Ring with this crowd.

Even though two of us are rodents. And some of us may or may not be children.

THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A WONDERFUL IDEA.

Epilogue

Well, there you are. Let’s sally forth on our quest! …Though I’m not too keen on being the Ring-bearer.

Now I am really trying to wrap my mind around what the dynamic would be between these characters and it’s making my brain hurt.

Marcus, Ulysses and Despereaux would probably be too zoned out to realize we were even on quest. And McGonagall would probably lose patience pretty quick with all these space cadets. Meanwhile Puddleglum would be soliloquizing about how we were doomed to fail, as optimistically as possible. And Lemony Snicket would probably just kind of…disappear. Survive, sure. Work with a team? Not so much.

Hm. Well. It might still work.

At least I didn’t bring the axe-murderer along, guys.

I tag…

…um.

The Temperamental Writer @ All Things Trivial and Insignificant

Sarah Seele @ Sixty-Something Trees

Eden @ The Happy Hedgehog

Middle Earth Musician @ Music, Mystery, Middle Earth, and Mitochondria

Ta-da! I did it.

That was three, right?

For your convenience, here are the questions all in one place:

1. [The Ring Bearer]: If you could choose, which of the four races would you be: Elf, Dwarf, Human, or Hobbit?

2. [Gandalf the Grey]: A wise/powerful elder/mentor character:

3. [Aragorn]: A character with good survival skills.

4. [Boromir]: A character who makes mistakes, but has a good heart

5. [Gimli]: A stubborn character.

6. [Legolas]: A character who is talented

7. [Peregrin Took]: A character who at first seems useless, but ends up surprising you.

8. [Meriadoc Brandybuck]: A character who is small/not very strong, but has great courage.

9. [Samwise Gamgee]: A character who is extremely loyal and doesn’t give up.  

Now, go forth and forge your fellowship.

What do you think of my fellowship? Are you familiar with any of the characters I chose? Do you think they would figure out how to work well together, or would it be a total disaster? Do you think that music is an important thing to have on a perilous quest? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!