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
just moving along like everyone else 