Hours Gone By

One of Tauriel's Sermon on the Riverbank graphics came up in my Tumblr feed this morning and it made a very good point: what does Smaug eat? I mean, he's a dragon, and he's massive. He'd be an apex predator, right? So the area surrounding Erebor should be pretty much emptied of game, including humans, if he's an omnivore or carnivore. If he eats trees, like the Draccus from The Kingkiller Chronicles, the area should be deforested, which it clearly isn't.

A lack of a sufficient food source could explain why he stays in the mountain: it means he's expending less energy, possibly spends time in some kind of hibernation, and so needs less food when food sources are scarce. If he eats gold or gems, he'd want to stay close to that food source and again, it's a finite source of food so he'd want to conserve as much energy as possible. He also can't get smelted gold - or at least can't get it easily, dragonfire might be able to melt gold out of the rock that surrounds it? - on his own. Tolkien's dragons aren't natural creatures, they were created by Morgoth, and a good way to keep something that powerful under control is to control its food source. (Like the lysine dependency in Jurassic Park.) Morgoth's gone, Sauron's not in a position to gather or feed dragons even if he could control them, and they're definiely not designed for mining if minerals are their food source.

Or do Tolkien's dragons, like Discworld high dragons, exist on magic? There's a definite feeling of 'the magic goes away' throughout the legendarium, best shown in LotR with the elves departing to the West. Animals in an environment with a limited food source will select for smaller sizes (insular dwarfism) and this would again explain Smaug's lack of activity outside the mountain: he's conserving his energy. He could also be staying close to a food source: there are certainly magical artifacts in his hoard (and the Arkenstone is theorized by some to be a Silmaril) and he's grouped the whole thing together to concentrate that source.

Or am I just really overthinking this?

Master post is here.

2. Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.
Let's see...

1. Transformers, when I was younger, but that's all offline now and either intentionally deleted or wiped from existence by a harddrive that turned into a brick.


2. Supernatural, five fics and a couple of WiPs, though I haven't written anything in SPN since mid-season 5. I really should upload those to AO3 at some point.


3. Lord of the Rings, three fics, including one I just finished recently for the LOTR Community September Challenge.


4. Doctrine of Labyrinths, one fic, and I can't say if I'd keep writing in DoL or not because I just find it so hard to write Felix and do him justice.


5. The Iron Elves, one fic, written for a Snowflake Challenge back in 2013, and I don't know that I'd write more because I find the story pretty complete as-is.

Fandoms are in alphabetical order. Ratings and summaries are per the authors.

Fanfic Recs

The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery - 4 recs

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - 1 rec

The Doctrine of Labyrinths - 6 recs (fanfic), 1 rec (art)

The Goblin Emperor - 6 recs

The Kingkiller Chronicles - 2 recs

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn - 2 recs

Tolkien's Works: The Lord of the Rings; The Silmarillion - 3 recs

Other Fanworks

Misc. fanworks recs - 2 recs

Day 4

Comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've interacted with and friend/follow them. Afterwards, leave a comment in this post with the equivalent of "I did it!"

It doesn't have to be anything complex - it can be feedback for a fanwork or discussing something you might have in common or even simply admiring their icon. The point is to reach out to someone you normally wouldn't and connect with them, even if it's only for the briefest moment.

Er, so I did this one sort of accidentally? (And actually on the 9th, I backdated it because having the entries out of order would bother me.) I left a review on mangacrack's A Smear of Grey Across the Sky, which is a lovely fic about Fëanáro comforting one of his youngest sons.