ok so, for people who have seen the LOTR films but not read the book I’d like to share some things that are 100% canon:
– Sam Gamgee uses the word ‘boner’. In a song. Several times.
– he also writes a poem that contains the phrase ‘golden showers’. (this is actually in the extended cut but they changed it to ‘silver showers’)
– at one point after he’s defeated Saruman steals Merry’s weed & runs away
– Denethor has actual mindreading powers
– so does Faramir (but he’s a nice person so they manifest more as heightened empathy)
– Gandalf ALSO has mindreading powers but for entirely different reasons. he reads Frodo’s mind while he’s sleeping at one point, casually reveals this to Frodo, and Frodo’s just like ‘huh neat’
– rather than bravely drawing the orcs away from Frodo like in the film, in the book Merry and Pippin just kind of, panic, bolt into the woods, and run directly into the orcs’ arms.
– Merry then draws his sword and hacks a bunch of orc hands off
– Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli name themselves ‘the three hunters’ before setting off to rescue Merry and Pippin because they are dorks
– they also improvise a whole song about how much they loved Boromir
– Aragorn does not initially tell the hobbits he’s a friend of Gandalf bcos he wanted them to like him for who he is. im not kidding. he openly admits to this.
– i feel like this is fairly well known but, if you didn’t know Frodo is 50 years old and looks 33
– hobbits PROBABLY age different to humans so looking 33 in practice means he looks about 21
– in accordance with the above Pippin is the equivalent of a 16-17 year old human
– Pippin can pass for a human child and looks like ‘a boy of nine summers’
– this isn’t that weird i just think it’s really cute: Pippin has 3 older sisters and their names are Pearl, Pimpernel and Pervinca.
– Sam & Rosie have 13 children. One of them is called Goldilocks.
– Frodo has another best friend. His name is Fatty. He stayed behind in the Shire to cover for Frodo’s absence and ends up getting jailed for months by Saruman’s forces.
– Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, who steals spoons, is also jailed by Saruman. (She whacked one of his goons with an umbrella.)
– Grima Wormtongue MAY have eaten an entire hobbit
– Saruman invades the Shire and turns it into a communist hell police state.
– the whole Tom Bombadil thing is common knowledge but if you haven’t read the book i guarantee you he is weirder than you think.
– to give just 2 examples: 1) the whole tom bombadil arc provides the explanation as to how Eowyn and Merry were able to dispatch the Witch King
– and 2) for unknown reasons sleeping in his house causes everyone to have horrible nightmares… EXCEPT for Sam who has a peaceful and dreamless night. no explanation offered for any of this.
considering that Pippin’s dad is named Paladin, you fucking know he claimed the right to name each and every one of his children and his poor wife just begged him to choose a different letter to start with
also aragorn openly admitting to being fucking lonely and just wanting friends is treated like a weirdly funny joke in the book by the way that some of the hobbits react to it, and frodo also proceeds very soon after to basically tell aragorn that he’s pretty foul-looking but seems a good guy
yes to the above & a small correction + one i forgot:
– Merry does in fact gift Saruman the weed. It’s the bag it’s in that Saruman steals and runs off with. (also give that Merry stole the weed from Saruman’s personal supply in the first place i can’t say i blame him)
– Aragorn literally has magical healing powers. i don’t think they ever explain this in the films but he does very much have healing powers.
– the Ents are able to tear down the entire wall around Isengard, but can for whatever reason not make a single dent in the tower of Orthanc itself
– several riders knew that Merry was there and coming with them to the fields of Pelennor even though he was forbidden to do so, and they just sort of shrug and don’t tell the king
– GOD Merry and the riders: they don’t just shrug they straight up act like he isn’t there. to the point where if he talks they just pretend like they don’t hear him. this hurts his feelings.
– Merry doesn’t recognise Eowyn until she reveals herself to the witch-king. it could be that her disguise is just that good but Eowyn herself seems to be kind of surprised that he doesn’t recognise her so it’s possible he’s just a dumbass.
– Pippin goes all in for a suicide mission at the Black Gate because he thinks that Frodo and Sam are captured and/or dead and everything is lost anyway, so he just decides that if he’s going to die, he’s going to die fighting, and then he almost gets squashed by a troll
– Gimli found Pippin underneath said troll after the battle, only because Pippin’s fucking foot was sticking out, and probably had a bit of a panicky moment while he was MOVING the troll to drag Pippin out of there
– i can’t believe i forgot about the troll: Pippin single-handedly slays a troll & then its body falls on him and he’s just lying there like ‘well i guess this is how i die’
– Gimli 100% thought pippin was dead when he found him and was so distraught he almost ripped his beard out
– There’s also Aragorn making the Mouth of Sauron flee with terror because he glared at him. Not a joke. (An argument can be made here for Aragorn having psychic powers)
Or intimidation proficiency
If I may add…
– Legolas falling out of a tree and screaming.
– Legolas dropping hie bow. And screaming.
– Legolas just screamed. A lot.
– Legolas singing a song that he only knew half of.
– “Do what you will in your madness but I wish to see no eyes!”
– Legolas straight up walking away after a battle and singing
– Legolas sneaking Gimli into Valinor like contraband Twizzlers into the movie theater.
– everybody rags on Frodo for being a dumbass at the Prancing Pony, but listen, Merry knew they were on a top secret mission carrying the Ring and that the forces of Sauron were actively searching for them and not far away and he still decided it would be a good idea to just go out for awalk, at night in a strange city, all by himself, just because he fucking felt like some fresh air
Ok TO BE FAIR to Merry, unlike the others he hadn’t actually SEEN the Nazgul at this point (just glimpsed one from the other side of the river) and as a result doesn’t understand just how much danger they’re in.
Merry was a landowner’s heir in the calmest part of the world, and best friends with the guy next in line to be Thaine of the Shire. At that point in his young life, the greatest danger he’d ever been in was from a really mean dog.
By the time they got to Bree he’d also had a tree try to eat him and got attacked by Barrow Wights BUT I don’t think anyone but Frodo remembers much about the Wights and Tom Bombadil seems render the Old Man Willow thing non-traumatic somehow? So yeah it’s entirely possible he’s back to square one by the time it’s all over.
This is right after Gandalf says, “A balrog. A demon of the ancient world.”
I just love how PJ chose to cut to Legolas’ face because he is exactly who you should cut to at this moment. You need an elf to show what it really means. Other than Gandalf, the rest of the Fellowship can sense something is gravely wrong, but they don’t understand just how grave. Like Gandalf, Legolas knows the terror. He understands the gravity of what lies around that corner. He’s got a piddly little bow and he is mere steps away from a demon of the ancient world. This frame shows a kid coming to the realisation that he is way out of his depth, that this mission will take him to places he only knew to exist in legends of the Elder Days, a time long gone, barely history.
He’s probably one of the youngest elves in Middle Earth at this point. He probably grew up on stories of the balrogs, slaying the ancient High Kings of the Eldar and tearing Middle Earth apart, thousands and thousands of years ago. They are legends in old crumbling books, read illicitly by a little elfling who was kept up at night by the terrible tales.They are the monsters under the bed and the shadows in the heart of the forest. They are the beasts behind the winged hordes of hell, that older elves, who’ve seen the worst that Arda has to offer, always assured him were no more than distant nightmares, stories relegated to dust and ancient memory. Except now they are real. They are here. They are coming.
The best part is that in the books he just starts screaming when he lays eyes on it
In its right hand was a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire; in its left hand it held a whip of many thongs.
‘Ai! ai! wailed Legolas. “A Balrog! A Balrog has come!’
Legolas can be relied upon to have the correct reaction to everything.
It is not necessarily normal, or socially appropriate, or sane, but it is always 100% correct.
Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
Legolas:
~*~earlier~*~
Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits
Merry: Frodo what’d he say
Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish
i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.
english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.
they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max.
frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.
so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.
plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.
so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.
to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather
was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a
somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.
so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his
upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his
Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice
from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really
obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!
considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.
…it’s
also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though
with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.
which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.
this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!
Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.
Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*
Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now
Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?
Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?
Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.
Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.
Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y’all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.
Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man
“Many places I have been Many sorrows I have seen But I don’t regret nor will i forget All who took that road with me.” (The Last Goodbye, Billy Boyd).
“The Company of Thorin & the Fellowship od the Ring, after Rivendell”, watercolours and golden ink.
Update: Sauron is not afraid of hobbits. He was unaware that hobbits existed up until very recently. he literally did not have time to be afraid of them, they went from a 0 to 100 threat level in twenty seconds. There he was, minding his own business worrying about the usual Elves and Men when suddenly these kids are on his lawn and now he’s dead, like just;
What did— who–
did I just get one-shotted by an infant how is this occurring
Honestly I have to love this whole thought process that the Fellowship must have cultivated in Sauron, like…
“These children have found the Ring! But they’re taking it to the elves, of course. I will simply have to catch them on the way.”
“Well, the elves are still not to be trifled with, it seems. It looks as though they have a group of intrepid heroes, how cute! Wait, who’s leading them? Aw, hell.”
“OKAY! Olorin’s out of the way, and now I can finally kill them all and reclaim the- OH DAMMIT, IT’S IN LOTHLORIEN.”
“Well, okay. They’ve taken it onward. Curunir says one of the halflings is still carrying the ring, so he’s going to capture them and we’ll see how this develops. Thankfully Olorin’s still out of the picture and their little group just shattered into pieces, so that’s one less thing to worry about.”
“Aaaaaand Curunir shat the bed. Excellent. Trees, who would have thought? Okay, so we’re back to plan A: conquer Gondor, because if the Ring’s going to be anywhere, it’ll be there.”
“Wait, who’s on the– Isildur’s WHAT? Ohhhh. Ohohoho. Oh now everything makes sense. Isildur’s Heir is back, and he’s here being all prideful again. That’s fine. Really. I’ll just crush him and his kingdom, and then nobody can stop me!”
“WHAT? FUCKING WHAT? THEY SENT HIM BACK? Ugh, alright, alright, I’m cool, I’m fine. He’s still got that stupid wizard costume on, and I’m still stronger than he ever was. It’s not like he can come toe to toe with me, even if he does have an army behind him. This’ll be fine.”
“They’re… actually marching on the Black Gate? Sweet lord, I didn’t think they’d actually do it! This is perfect, everyone’s right here! Olorin, the human princeling, most of the remaining fighting forces of Men, all I have to do is kill them now and– Wait. Someone just put on the Ring. Someone just– That’s a halfling. They’re inside the mouNTAIN OH GOD NAZGUL GO GO G–”
…aaaaaand curtain.
you can laugh but that is literally what happened
This is the single best brief summary I have ever seen of the entire point of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
konekorambles 