Title: Back Again
Author: Waugh
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Friendship
Status: WIP
Fandom: The Hobbit
Pairings: None
Summary: Bilbo Baggins wakes up. He is twenty-one again, with all his life ahead of him. But first, there are things he must do. Time-travel, fix-it, friendship fic. Slow build. Cross-posted to Ao3.


Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684838/chapters/1256772

added because FFN link is dead.



I'm a sucker for a decent time travel fic, and this is one. It's very well paced and engaging, with a good balance of action, drama and introspection. It avoids the usual pitfalls of massive angst and gathering all the other characters together and revealing everything. It's also mostly avoided retread so far, while still feeling familiar - although possibly that's because I haven't seen the hobbit film, which expanded on the book a lot iirc.

Anyway, to a novice like me it seems to be fairly respectful of canon. Bilbo is somewhat OP but in a satisfying rather than a ridiculous way. It's a solid 4/5 all the way through for me.

 

This is a great fic. It breaks out of the usual time travel routine by having Bilbo travel back to some decades before The Hobbit, and uses the extraneous information from book canon to illustrate the Shire as it might have been in his youth... shortly before he breaks the timeline in a dozen small ways that are leading to much bigger changes.

Bilbo's characterization is inspired by the new movie (balancing between LotR Bilbo and Hobbit Bilbo), but nothing else seems to be so far. Many of the characters are canon characters who might as well be OCs, given that they were nothing but names in the books, but they're well developed and fun to read.

This fic is also notable for being one of the few to use Tom Bombadil in any meaningful way. Or in any way at all.

4.5/5 with every indication of becoming 5/5.

 

Ha, great, thanks for that. I assumed that was the case while I was reading the fic, then as I was writing the post above it suddenly struck me that the author might just have been using events and characters from the movie, and I had to delete half of what I'd written in case it was complete bollocks.

 

I loved the fic. It's easily a 5/5 for me.

I didn't like Fortinbras at first, but he's really grown on me. Bilbo, Arathorn, and Gilraen are fantastic.

 

For anyone who hasn't noticed: there's a blooper reel series of one-shots on ao3.

 

5/5 Its fucking fantastic and enjoyable, and you all should read it.

It starts slow, but that pace is deceptive, and you don't quite realize how fast things are going until you're knee deep in a flash flood of things happening and events being changed and suddenly awesome.

 

This is a great story. I have recently read Hobbit and didn't have any problem with the story. More than that story reads like original without the parts that made me want to roll my eyes in the Hobbit (telling but not showing for example was Hobbit's weakest point IMHO). So this story actually reads better than Hobbit itself and yet gives you the same air.

Also story goes of rails as far as sorce plot goes and it makes sense. Every thing that happens has resonable explanation and the parts that was AU wasn't over the top. (ie. Bilbo's mother died from old age in the original yet I didn't had any problem when author changed that.)

This story deserves 5/5. This is The Time Travel story as far as LoTR fandom goes IMO. Also an update today.

 

This is hands down the best fic I've found written in Middle Earth. There's a slow but realistic development of Bilbo's presence as ever so slightly larger than life - the best way I can describe his impact on the world around him would be as if an NPC suddenly became a player character.

Unlike most Peggy Sue fanfiction, there's no rehashing done here. It's a completely original story replete with what we must admit are OCs. While the likes of Fortinbras may have been named by Tolkein, it's the fanfic author who deserves the credit. The characters are distinctly Hobbit-like; there's a sense of archaic British middle-classness throughout their approaches to conflict and camaraderie in the exact same way Tolkien had a fetish for.

The tone, characters, and setting are all consistent with the source material, and consistently good besides. I've re-read this several times and will undoubtedly do so again in future.

5/5 would go There and Back Again

 

Link is dead, so is the author profile it seems. Rip.

 

Bruh.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/684838/chapters/1256772

 

I’d read half of it back in the day, and appearently I had fonder memories of it then it deserved. God I think trigger warnings make me trigger. Ao3’s tag mechanics are ver annoying.
The story the idea behind it at least is pretty good but the writing and characterization is very weak. The author is very much a slash writer. It definitely feels like one.

3/5 for me.

 

I did cringe heavily in one author's note early on where she assures the readers that this fic will be LGBTQIA+ friendly, whatever the fuck that means. No lesbians will be made to sit at the back of the haywagon to Bree? I did like that she suggested Bilbo was asexual in that A/N and literally never brought it up in any capacity during the actual body of the story. It fits with the unmarried middle-aged bachelor raising a nephew vibe we saw in LotR.

This is literally the only Hobbit fanfiction which isn't Bilbo/dwarfcock. I suppose it was inevitable that slashiness would creep in somehow.