#it’s not game of thones in the later seasons or rings of power bad

[spookyjarchivist]

i understand where you’re coming from, but you’re misunderstanding me a bit, this isn’t actually an in-universe perspective, this is a literary perspective, i was analyzing this from a thematic and narrative standpoint, in which case yes they do in fact age like humans bc that’s part of tolkien’s themes and narratives about war, regardless of the theoretical science

however, you do bring up an interesting point on that in-universe note and i think that’s an interesting path to pursue for fandom purposes

the thing is… they’re still human?

hobbits are stated in canon to be humans, they are simply an evolutionary offshoot of men, so it’s reasonable to assume from an in-universe perspective that they age the same and we have no in-canon evidence that they are magical in anyway despite rampant fanon (that i love, no shame)

tolkien was not a historian or archaeologist, he was philologist, and it shows bc there are major inaccuracies in his work about a lot of things historically, even if you include the fantasy aspect

the shire is an idealized (tho imperfect) representation of home, comfort, and plenty, and the hobbits are (to an extent) stand-ins for the everyman, while yes this is more literary in nature, what it DOES mean in-universe is that he either directly states or implies that all the necessary things for a happy healthy life are things the shire has in abundance, we have proof in canon and/or extended canon for easy access to food, shelter, and healthcare AND they all get regular sun and are implied to have some form of regular exercise whether through work or walking holidays or gardening of some sort, plus a vibrant community they regularly interact with, all of which are key characteristics of areas on our real earth where people DO regularly live to around and past 100 (there are about seven well known areas, iirc i think okinawa is one?), in fact when you read descriptions of those hotspots? they sound alarmingly like the shire (the one in europe and the one in south america especially), like basically everything that’s not a culturally exclusive or geographical thing sounds like a description of the shire

aside from the long-life hotspots, scientists have also have recently estimated that the longest a human could theoretically live in absolute perfect conditions with no health problems like illness or hereditary diseases and the like is about 150, which is over when bilbo sailed into the west at 131 and he is canonically the longest lived hobbit, considering hobbits are in about as ideal a setting as you can get (bilbo even more so by living in rivendell at the end with literally the best healer in middle earth) then i think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that they work the same on an in-universe level to us, particularly since tolkien wasn’t an expert on any of this and was just pulling anything that wasn’t linguistics-based or straight from the works he studied mostly out of his ass

while i do have a soft spot for “hobbits age slower than humans so 33 for them is our physical 18” i rlly dont think that’s how it is bc they get to about the same age as humans before death by old age, i also really dont think we appreciate enough a few things about what this means narratively and thematically

tolkien really said no child soldiers, no 20-something year old soldiers, they’re not really adults yet, they barely know anything of the world we’re sending them to die for it and that’s not okay, not when there are other options

he also addresses this with the hobbits specifically, frodo and bilbo are 50 when they go on their journeys, FIFTY, and we can see that they handle them differently than the others. while bilbo changes afterwards, it’s not in a coming of age like we would see if 50 really was the equivalent of ~27, he just accepts a part of himself he’s been suppressing for years, for him it’s accepting that getting older and being an adult doesn’t restrict you from the excitement and opportunities of youth. similarly frodo doesn’t change much either outside of his ptsd, all of his change is trauma, not maturity

now sam and merry are both past the age of majority, but they still grow into themselves in a way bilbo and frodo do not, they mature

but pippin, sweet beautiful pippin grows the most out of all of them. he’s the most childish, always running after his cousins and you can tell he’s not even 30, this is HIS coming of age story, before this journey he’s known nothing of true responsibilities, but by the end he’s ready for when he eventually has to take over as thain of the shire

and i think that this is a really beautiful way of saying something that has started to get really popular in the last few years

instead of being terrified of that big 30, we should be excited for it, we should embrace it wholeheartedly, because it’s the time when we’ve finally started ironing out the last of the kinks in being an adult, we’re growing into our responsibilities and and we can start learning how to cultivate that balance of responsibility and excitement and FUN that makes life living instead of surviving