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Description
Buckle up, this is a long one! In summer of 2016, I reblogged a meme that said:
1 - TAKE YOUR OLDEST FANDOM you know the one, that first thing you made art or wrote fic for, where you made all those really weird over the top OCs because you didn’t know any better
2 - TAKE YOUR NEWEST FANDOM yeah, that thing that you love and can’t stop thinking about right now
3- SMASH THEM TOGETHER like freakin’ conceptual play-doh
4 - MAKE SOMETHIN’ OUT OF IT make fic! art! a song! whatever!
And I remarked (in the tags): “if you think I wouldn’t do a Tolkien-Gravity Falls mashup, then you have another thing coming”.
My initial thought was more along the lines of, Ha ha, that would probably work really well with a DD&MD reference or something, Ford and Dipper as elves, etc. etc.
Then on the bus home, it hit me. The Pines are totally hobbits. Disreputable hobbits with a taste for adventure, of course. But absolutely hobbits. And after that, it wouldn’t leave me alone.

(Apologies that there isn't really a way to do a "read more" cut on dA. Below are all the vague thoughts I had about this AU. I'd like to return to do some more art for it someday! I have a list of ideas. But my list of ideas is always much longer than my free time to work on them, so.)

See close-ups of the various figures, plus a bonus pic of Bill Cipher in this AU: (Stan, Ford, Bill) , (Mabel and Dipper) and (Soos and Wendy) .

***
Ford is obviously someone who was always a freak within staid hobbit society, even before you get to his six fingers. Growing up he dreamed of meeting elves and going on adventures. His journal/s would be full of entries about elves and ancient lore and languages, dwarf legends and rumors of Tom Bombadil, and trolls and barrow-wights and magical objects, dragons and history and sketches of ruins. I figure at some point he moved to the edge of the spooky Old Forest, north of Buckland and across the Brandywine, near the East Road, to be closer to the outskirts of the Shire and to the wild lands.
Stan could have lived for some time as a traveling peddler. I honestly haven’t figured out what the basis would be of his estrangement from Ford; though I imagine their parents as: a merchant/grocer/peddler, middlingly successful, who married an eccentric and adventurous Took, which didn’t help the Pines reputation; I have no idea where in the Shire I think they’d be from. (The problem is that if Ford exhibited interest in all of that weird stuff from an early age, as he did in canon, that would have been more problematic in hobbit society, and it’s harder to imagine their father pinning the family’s hopes on Ford’s success. Rather, I’d expect Filbrick to spend a lot of time trying to get Ford to conform? But Ford being a smarty-pants isn’t a respectable path to success amongst hobbits, really. And I don’t yet see what Stan could do that could be perceived as ruining Ford’s chances at respectability or success. Hmm.)
That all said, I could see Stan having been kicked out by their stern father and taking to the road to try to become a more successful peddler than his dad. But, I’m also still kind of blank on the reasons behind Stan going to find Ford, and then taking over Ford’s smial and possibly identity, and turning it into a way-stop for travelers (savory and otherwise). Whether the Pines hobbit living there has a reputation for going out on adventures, or whether he merely has a reputation for dealing with humans and dwarves and who-knows what other riff-raff happens across his smial, he would certainly be considered weird by mainstream hobbits.

Further, why on (middle) earth Dipper’s and Mabel’s parents would send the twins to spend a summer with their very disreputable great-uncle is also somthing of a mystery. Or maybe (tragically) it’s more of a Frodo situation? i.e. their parents are both killed at the same time, and for some reason the best solution for the two children is to send them to live with their eccentric but wealthy relative? (Which makes as much sense as Frodo ending up with bachelor Bilbo, really.)

Wendy is very obviously from an independent-minded family of woodcutters who venture fearlessly into the Old Forest. Soos is also very obviously a good-hearted gardener and handyman who works for Stan.
I don’t think a portal comes into it, but Ford clearly disappears into the Wilds for 30 years – trying to outrun the minions of the One Eyed owner of a certain seductive Magical Object he discovered on one of his adventures? Did he hide the Ring, along with the journals? Does he only return because the kids find the Ring (successfully resisting its temptations) and he’s somehow aware of the dangerous attention it will attract to the Shire?
(I don’t know, I’m not super happy with that, as it doesn’t really give Stan anything to do for those 30 years to try to find Ford or help him? Needs more thought.)
I’ve also only gotten as far as figuring that Fiddleford is, of course, a dwarf; and Robbie and Pacifica are probably elves. I’m not sure about Gideon (although he and his family work as hobbits who are extremely concerned with appearances, and nasty-polite; a sort of Sackville-Baggins vibe; and it fits with the idea of them being locals with a long-standing feud with Stan). I would do Grenda as a dwarf in a heartbeat (and the heck with figuring out why a dwarf family would be living in that area), while Candy works as a human.
And I’m also not sure that Wendy wouldn’t be better done as an actual Human (still from a family of woodcutters). I may do her that way in subsequent art for this AU (for which I already have a few ideas).
Mainly because, part of me sort of wants the Cipher Wheel to function here as a Fellowship sort of deal (and I don’t know who else to have as the representative of Men; maybe Robbie as well, not sure). (But part of me says it can’t be an exact match, because oh my god, if the point is needing to destroy the Ring, then you don’t take several kids along with you on the walk to Mordor, FCOL.)
(Hmm. But perhaps you *would* take several kids along with you on the start of the journey, if you had to flee and thought that the Shire wouldn’t be safe for them. Perhaps you would mean to leave the kids in safety at Rivendell or something. But being Dipper and Mabel, they don’t want to be left in Rivendell, so they follow until it’s too late and too dangerous to send them back there, and the next best option is either to try to leave them with Multibear (/Beorn) or in Lothlorien.)
(5am trying to get back to sleep thought: …and the role of Gandalf will be played by Rick Sanchez. OH GOD. OH GOD NO.)

Description
Buckle up, this is a long one! In summer of 2016, I reblogged a meme that said:
1 - TAKE YOUR OLDEST FANDOM you know the one, that first thing you made art or wrote fic for, where you made all those really weird over the top OCs because you didn’t know any better
2 - TAKE YOUR NEWEST FANDOM yeah, that thing that you love and can’t stop thinking about right now
3- SMASH THEM TOGETHER like freakin’ conceptual play-doh
4 - MAKE SOMETHIN’ OUT OF IT make fic! art! a song! whatever!
And I remarked (in the tags): “if you think I wouldn’t do a Tolkien-Gravity Falls mashup, then you have another thing coming”.
My initial thought was more along the lines of, Ha ha, that would probably work really well with a DD&MD reference or something, Ford and Dipper as elves, etc. etc.
Then on the bus home, it hit me. The Pines are totally hobbits. Disreputable hobbits with a taste for adventure, of course. But absolutely hobbits. And after that, it wouldn’t leave me alone.

(Apologies that there isn't really a way to do a "read more" cut on dA. Below are all the vague thoughts I had about this AU. I'd like to return to do some more art for it someday! I have a list of ideas. But my list of ideas is always much longer than my free time to work on them, so.)

See close-ups of the various figures, plus a bonus pic of Bill Cipher in this AU: (Stan, Ford, Bill) , (Mabel and Dipper) and (Soos and Wendy) .

***
Ford is obviously someone who was always a freak within staid hobbit society, even before you get to his six fingers. Growing up he dreamed of meeting elves and going on adventures. His journal/s would be full of entries about elves and ancient lore and languages, dwarf legends and rumors of Tom Bombadil, and trolls and barrow-wights and magical objects, dragons and history and sketches of ruins. I figure at some point he moved to the edge of the spooky Old Forest, north of Buckland and across the Brandywine, near the East Road, to be closer to the outskirts of the Shire and to the wild lands.
Stan could have lived for some time as a traveling peddler. I honestly haven’t figured out what the basis would be of his estrangement from Ford; though I imagine their parents as: a merchant/grocer/peddler, middlingly successful, who married an eccentric and adventurous Took, which didn’t help the Pines reputation; I have no idea where in the Shire I think they’d be from. (The problem is that if Ford exhibited interest in all of that weird stuff from an early age, as he did in canon, that would have been more problematic in hobbit society, and it’s harder to imagine their father pinning the family’s hopes on Ford’s success. Rather, I’d expect Filbrick to spend a lot of time trying to get Ford to conform? But Ford being a smarty-pants isn’t a respectable path to success amongst hobbits, really. And I don’t yet see what Stan could do that could be perceived as ruining Ford’s chances at respectability or success. Hmm.)
That all said, I could see Stan having been kicked out by their stern father and taking to the road to try to become a more successful peddler than his dad. But, I’m also still kind of blank on the reasons behind Stan going to find Ford, and then taking over Ford’s smial and possibly identity, and turning it into a way-stop for travelers (savory and otherwise). Whether the Pines hobbit living there has a reputation for going out on adventures, or whether he merely has a reputation for dealing with humans and dwarves and who-knows what other riff-raff happens across his smial, he would certainly be considered weird by mainstream hobbits.

Further, why on (middle) earth Dipper’s and Mabel’s parents would send the twins to spend a summer with their very disreputable great-uncle is also somthing of a mystery. Or maybe (tragically) it’s more of a Frodo situation? i.e. their parents are both killed at the same time, and for some reason the best solution for the two children is to send them to live with their eccentric but wealthy relative? (Which makes as much sense as Frodo ending up with bachelor Bilbo, really.)

Wendy is very obviously from an independent-minded family of woodcutters who venture fearlessly into the Old Forest. Soos is also very obviously a good-hearted gardener and handyman who works for Stan.
I don’t think a portal comes into it, but Ford clearly disappears into the Wilds for 30 years – trying to outrun the minions of the One Eyed owner of a certain seductive Magical Object he discovered on one of his adventures? Did he hide the Ring, along with the journals? Does he only return because the kids find the Ring (successfully resisting its temptations) and he’s somehow aware of the dangerous attention it will attract to the Shire?
(I don’t know, I’m not super happy with that, as it doesn’t really give Stan anything to do for those 30 years to try to find Ford or help him? Needs more thought.)
I’ve also only gotten as far as figuring that Fiddleford is, of course, a dwarf; and Robbie and Pacifica are probably elves. I’m not sure about Gideon (although he and his family work as hobbits who are extremely concerned with appearances, and nasty-polite; a sort of Sackville-Baggins vibe; and it fits with the idea of them being locals with a long-standing feud with Stan). I would do Grenda as a dwarf in a heartbeat (and the heck with figuring out why a dwarf family would be living in that area), while Candy works as a human.
And I’m also not sure that Wendy wouldn’t be better done as an actual Human (still from a family of woodcutters). I may do her that way in subsequent art for this AU (for which I already have a few ideas).
Mainly because, part of me sort of wants the Cipher Wheel to function here as a Fellowship sort of deal (and I don’t know who else to have as the representative of Men; maybe Robbie as well, not sure). (But part of me says it can’t be an exact match, because oh my god, if the point is needing to destroy the Ring, then you don’t take several kids along with you on the walk to Mordor, FCOL.)
(Hmm. But perhaps you *would* take several kids along with you on the start of the journey, if you had to flee and thought that the Shire wouldn’t be safe for them. Perhaps you would mean to leave the kids in safety at Rivendell or something. But being Dipper and Mabel, they don’t want to be left in Rivendell, so they follow until it’s too late and too dangerous to send them back there, and the next best option is either to try to leave them with Multibear (/Beorn) or in Lothlorien.)
(5am trying to get back to sleep thought: …and the role of Gandalf will be played by Rick Sanchez. OH GOD. OH GOD NO.)