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Why dwarves, Precious?
I finally realized why my brain latched onto the dwarves of the Hobbit so damn hard.
Middle Earth is basically full of post-apocalyptic wastelands, with small pockets of prosperity. The Shire fools you with its sweet innocence, but it stands on the bones of an older human kingdom, surrounded by tombs/barrows, a VERY hostile forest, and beneath it all is older elven kingdoms, fallen to the Enemy. No, not that one, the one before.
Which is TOTALLY my jam. I'm not so much about the apocalypse as rebuilding afterwards. I loved Robert Adams Horseclans series because of that (before I realized: hey, this fave is WAY problematic.) Flint's 1632 series and both of SM Stirling's series: Island in the Sea of Time and The Change are in that vein. 1632 moreso: Germany during the Hundred Years war has the same feel, and Tolkien would be more familiar with that sense of building on top of old bones.
It's not something we're used to in America: the bones over which our civilization was built are more ephemeral: the North American natives built in earth and wood, and their history is not lauded the way the Roman empire was, but erased in silence: victors get to write history... and that's another rabbit hold to noodle down sometime re: Middle Earth.
Anyway: the idea of reclaiming a stolen kingdom and rebuilding both the kingdom and the relationships around it are really what I'm most after. Add in bonus cultural fun (I've read my way through the entirety of the Dwarven Culture tag) and that's where I'm having the most fun.
... and I was going to start talking about food.
Middle Earth is basically full of post-apocalyptic wastelands, with small pockets of prosperity. The Shire fools you with its sweet innocence, but it stands on the bones of an older human kingdom, surrounded by tombs/barrows, a VERY hostile forest, and beneath it all is older elven kingdoms, fallen to the Enemy. No, not that one, the one before.
Which is TOTALLY my jam. I'm not so much about the apocalypse as rebuilding afterwards. I loved Robert Adams Horseclans series because of that (before I realized: hey, this fave is WAY problematic.) Flint's 1632 series and both of SM Stirling's series: Island in the Sea of Time and The Change are in that vein. 1632 moreso: Germany during the Hundred Years war has the same feel, and Tolkien would be more familiar with that sense of building on top of old bones.
It's not something we're used to in America: the bones over which our civilization was built are more ephemeral: the North American natives built in earth and wood, and their history is not lauded the way the Roman empire was, but erased in silence: victors get to write history... and that's another rabbit hold to noodle down sometime re: Middle Earth.
Anyway: the idea of reclaiming a stolen kingdom and rebuilding both the kingdom and the relationships around it are really what I'm most after. Add in bonus cultural fun (I've read my way through the entirety of the Dwarven Culture tag) and that's where I'm having the most fun.
... and I was going to start talking about food.